Tver (Тверь)Tver is a peaceful and very pretty stop along the highway from Moscow to Saint Petersburg but in centuries past this ancient city (referenced in history as early as 1135) aspired to be the capital of Russia in the 1300s and 1400s but was defeated in battles with Moscow. Ivan the Great led the Moscow army in battles of the 1400s and later Ivan the Terrible finished off any remaining heirs to the throne by having them executed in the late 1500s.
(foto: Boris Mavlyutov)
In more peaceful times, like now, cars make their way across the Volga river in full confidence that Ivan the Terrible is long dead and the executions have ended.
(12 Feb 2014; flackelf LJ)
During Soviet rule the city was known as Kalinin (Калинин) from 1931 to 1990. Mikhail Kalinin was the first official leader of the new Soviet Union and the Chairman of the Party and of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. He was born on a farm near Tver and became a close associate of Vladimir Lenin in the years leading up to the Revolution and continued after Lenin's death to be part of the inner circle of Joseph Stalin.
During the Stalin era he was the official head of state and received diplomats and chaired non-important commissions. He was one of the few inside Stalin's inner circle to avoid arrest during the repressions although his wife was arrested in 1938 but even then he kept silent (translation: he threw her under the bus). She was tortured into a confession and sent to the Gulags only to be released in 1945 just months before he died of cancer.
Kalinin was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis after a full state funeral. Three cities were renamed in his honour: Tver, Korolyov and Königsberg. Of those three, only the former German city of Königsberg, Kaliningrad, still bears his name.
(foto: Andrei Hammer)
The Volga and Tvertsa rivers meet in Tver and it is probably good to have all that water because the city has been almost completely burned twice. The first time was in the 1700s and the city was rebuilt by Catherine the Great.
(foto: Natalya Shishkina)
In 1941 the city was against destroyed by the Nazi invasion of Russia. Tver was occupied as part of the German campaign toward Moscow and was the first European city in Russia to be liberated.
(foto: Boris Mavlyutov)
Catherine the Great built a travel palace in Tver, a sort of plush "
rest stop" along the way from Petersburg to Moscow. The palace had fallen into disrepair just like the travel palace near Moscow, Tsaritsino, and Soviet officials refused to care for the estates given their ties to the old monarchy. Today the Tver palace is being restored to its former glory.
http://gallery.tver.ru/(foto: Yuri Surin)
Tver is about a 2.5 hour train ride northwest of Moscow; the city population is just over 408,000.