Pereslavl-Zalesskii

(until the 15th century, Pereiaslavl’), a city under oblast jurisdiction, the administrative center of Pereslavlskii Raion, Yaroslavl Oblast, RSFSR. Pereslavl’-Zalesskii is situated on the southeastern shore of Lake Plesh-cheevo, at the mouth of the Trubezh River. A railroad branch connects the city with the Berendeevo railroad station (on the Moscow-Yaroslavl line). Population, 33,000 (1974).

Pereslavl’-Zalesskii was founded in 1152 by Prince Iurii Dol-gorukii as a fortified point covering the Rostov-Suzdal’ land. From 1175 to 1302 it was the administrative center of the Pere-slav (Zalesskii) principality. The city became part of the Moscow principality in 1302. Pereslavl’-Zalesskii was destroyed many times by the Tatar-Mongols between the mid-13th century and the early 15th century. It was ravaged by Polish interventionists in 1611 and 1612.

Between 1688 and 1693, Peter I organized on Lake Pere-slavskoe (Lake Pleshcheevo) a “play” flotilla, including the skiff of Peter I, which is considered to be the beginnings of the Russian Navy. Assigned to Moscow Province in 1708, Pereslavl’-Zalesskii was a province city from 1719 and a district city from 1778. In 1894, V. I. Lenin came to the village of Gorki near Pereslavl’-Zalesskii to print by hectograph his work What the “Friends of the People” Are and How They Fight the Social Democrats. The painter D. N. Kardovskii lived in the city in 1919 and 1920 and again from 1941 to 1943.

Beginning in the mid-18th century, textile and paper factories were established in Pereslavl’-Zalesskii. In the Soviet period the city’s industries have been largely reconstructed. A cotton-spinning factory has been rebuilt, and a nationally known factory producing motion-picture film was built on the former site of a small dye factory. A chemical combine was built in 1970, and handicraft embroidery shops have given way to a mechanized sewing and embroidery factory. The city has an automobile-repair shop, a brickyard, garment and furniture factories, and enterprises of the food-processing industry.

Within Pereslavl’-Zalesskii’s ring of earthen walls are the white-stone Spaso-Preobrazhenskii Cathedral (1152–57) and the tentlike stone church of Metropolitan Petr in Gosudarevo Court (1585). The city is the site of the Trinity-Danilov Monastery (16th to 18th centuries; cathedral, 1530–32; mural paintings, 1662–68, G. Kineshemtsev, S. Savin, and others), the Nikitskii Monastery (16th to 19th centuries; walls and towers, 16th century; cathedral, 1561–64), the Fedorovskii Monastery (16th to 19th centuries; cathedral, 16th century), and the Goritskii Monastery (17th and 18th centuries; the Holy Gate, 17th century). There are monuments to Lenin (bronze, 1929, B. D. Korolev) and Alexander Nevsky (bronze and granite, 1958, S. M. Orlov, architect L. L. Kapitsa). The city has a history and art museum with two branches: the Skiff estate and the village of Gorki-Pereslavskie.