russia: dubosekovo and volokolamsk

I'd been back in Moscow just a bit over a week before taking off for my first day trip of the year. I met Angela the first weekend in town, then this second weekend she joined Claire and I in the day trip. If you haven't figured it out by now, traveling is really important to me, I needed to know if she would fit in well with the travel style Claire and I had developed the year before.

The three of us met up early Saturday morning, it was easy enough to catch a local train (called elektrichka,) to our first destination.

I'd first heard about a giant war memorial in a small village called Dubosekovo last year when a friend posted a photo on social media. I looked up the location and was excited to see that public transport would get me there easily enough.

The train 'station' at Dubosekovo wasn't really a station, it was more of a platform. It wasn't difficult to figure out where to go, as there was just one street. The war memorial I wanted to see consisted of several HUGE statues, memorializing the officers who were part of a group often called Panfilov's Men.

Panfilov's men were a group of soldiers from a rifle division in the Soviet Army that were involved with the defense of Moscow in WW2. According to official Soviet history, (which is sometimes debated, though I don't know enough to get involved in the debate,) this group was killed in action on 16 November 1941, after destroying 18 German tanks, and stopping the enemy advance with those tanks.

Apparently there was an investigation by Soviet authorities was carried out in 1948, the results of which showed that the 'official' story was a lie. 

The German casualties weren't confirmed by either side, and not all 28 soldiers in the group died; in fact six of them survived. Why a provably false narrative is part of official history is beyond me.

History gets even better after the war: one of the survivors was arrested and charged with treason for voluntarily surrendering to German troops, then later becoming a German police officer!! This second bit was kept secret for a long time as well. I'm not sure how much of the truth is known by the general Russian public. 

There is a movie about the events and people of that day, it was released in 2016; I haven't watched it. I don't know what version of events it follows, though I am curious.

We looked at the huge statues and wreaths laid at their feet, but skipped the museum. Then we started walking.

When I read the information board, it said the distance to Volokolamsk was not so far away. I can't remember the exact number, but I do remember thinking it wouldn't take long at all.

I was wrong. It took us at least two hours to walk to Volokolamsk, whoops. Much of the walk was along a highway, in the bright sun. I didn't mind getting more sun, but Claire and Angela were both very fair skinned and not prepared for that much time in direct sun.

Volokolamsk is a city of approximately 23,000 people, on the Gorodenka River. It has a long history, it was first mentioned in history in 1135. Like other Russian cities it was later burned down and rebuilt, and was part of several different principalities over time.

The Soviet government set up authority in Volokolamsk in 1917, and the city was under seige by Germany for a little over a month during late 1941. This was part of the battle in which the 'heroes' were trying to destroy German tanks.

We found the kremlin, which turned out to be one of the smallest we'd ever seen. As kremlins often do, it sits on a hill, visible from different areas of the city. We found several churches inside the brick walls, as well as a museum, and a bell tower. 

I'm not exaggerating when I say it took us about 10 minutes to explore the entire area.

When we came back down the hill we found a bust of Lenin, of course we took a photo.

Not too far away we found a WW2 memorial, it was quite large for a small town. On the other hand, this is Russia, and you're not a real town/city if you don't have a big WW2 memorial.

We tried to find a couple other things in the city, but they weren't marked correctly on the map so it didn't happen. Not surprisingly, one of the things we tried to find was another smaller war memorial. (Every Russian town has a big one, and many have a smaller one as well.)

When I looked to see how far we had to walk to get to the train station, it said one hour. At that point we felt as if we'd already walked enough for the day, so we opted to take a taxi instead. Go figure, yandex (the uber of Russia,) didn't have any taxis in Volokolamsk. We had to flag down a taxi, which I haven't done in quite a while.

We got to the train station just in time, as we were able to buy tickets without waiting in a queue. We hopped on the train straightaway, it departed just a few minutes later.

Yay for starting off another year with excellent travel adventures :)