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human settlement in Bronnitsy Urban Okrug, Moscow Oblast, Russia
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Bronnitsy (Russian: Бро́нницы) is a town in Moscow Oblast, Russia, located 54.5 kilometers (33.9 mi) southeast of central Moscow and 13 kilometers (8.1 mi) west of the Bronnitsy station on the Moscow–Ryazan railroad. The town is surrounded by Ramensky District but is administratively incorporated as a town under oblast jurisdiction. Population: 21,831 (2021 census).
Local economy relies on food processing and packaging, construction services and jewellery manufacturing. Bronnitsy is listed among the twenty-two historical towns of Moscow Oblast.
Existence of Bronnitsy is attested since 1453. The village emerged as a stopover station on the highway between Moscow and Ryazan (present-day M5 road), and its population and economy traditionally tended to horses. The House of Romanov stables, established in Bronnitsy by 1634, evolved into stud farms supplying riding horses to the cavalry. In the 1780s the administrative reform of Catherine the Great turned the village into a proper small town with a grid plan and a growing merchant community. In the second half of the 19th century Bronnitsy was gradually industrialized, becoming a town of small textile mills and jewelers.
Bronnitsy had a minor role in the military history of the Time of Troubles and Napoleon's invasion of Russia, when it became the farthest point of French advance after the fall of Moscow, but were spared from military action and destruction. Its key landmarks are the five-domed cathedral of Archangel Michael (completed in 1705), the church of Entry into Jerusalem (1845) and the neoclassical cavalry barracks.
Toponyms starting with Bron- (plural Bronnitsy, Broniki; singular Bronnikovo, Brontsa etc.) are common to all Eastern Slavic territories, from Bronytsia in Lviv Oblast of Ukraine to Bronnikovo in Chita Oblast of Russia. Each of these towns and villages has a different etymology behind its name. In case of Bronnitsy in Moscow Oblast, all proposed versions were contested and none gained a solid preference of the historians.
The latter version is supported by the fact that another, and older, village once named Bronnitsy, present-day Bronnitsa on Msta River, also evolved as a yam station.
The historical center of Bronnitsy stands on the southern bank of narrow and shallow Lake Belskoe, a former path of the Moskva River that is now completely cut off from the river. Narrow and flat land between the lake and the river is in part occupied by fifteen soccer fields and the Olympic Reserve school, specializing in training rowing athletes; the lake itself serves as a rowing channel. Two small islands on the lake are uninhabited, the lake itself is spanned with a pedestrian suspension bridge.
The Moscow-Ryazan road, which once ran through Bronnitsy, now bypasses the city center north of the A-107 Ring Road and returns to the old track south from it. Sovetskaya Street, the segment of the M5 road that passed through Bronnitsy, is still an important street, passing through the town center. A-107, the main east-west corridor, crosses the city and Moskva River a few blocks south from Lake Belskoye. The old and narrow bridge across the Moskva River causes traffic queues that have sometimes reached 10 kilometers (6.2 mi). In August 2008, the poor condition of the bridge due to its extensive usage led to a ban on truck and heavy bus traffic over the bridge, further aggravating congestion. One year later the town administration agreed to proceed with the construction of a second two-lane bridge next to the old one, but no funds have yet been firmly allocated.
Most of the town's territory retained traditional single-family houses. Midrise housing concentrates in the southern part of Bronnitsy along A-107.
Bronnitsy were first mentioned, as Bronniche (Бронниче) in the 1453 testament of Sophia of Lithuania; she bequeathed Bronnitsy and other villages of her private domain around Kolomna to her grandson Yury. Wars of the 15th and 16th centuries spared the village; the first, although insignificant, military action took place during the Time of Troubles. In 1606, prince Vasily Mosalsky troops, engaged against Ivan Bolotnikov's rebels, passed three versts from Bronnitsy. In 1618 Hetman Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny, acting in accord with Władysław IV Vasa, stayed in Bronnitsy on his march from Serpukhov to Moscow.
Mikhail Romanov owned Bronnitsy as his private domain, and kept there royal stables with up to 190 horses (the first written evidence of Tsar's stables in Bronnitsy is dated 1634). Romanovs of the 17th century maintained Bronnitsy merely as a household item and the village evolved in relative prosperity, evidenced by the construction of the Cathedral of Archangel Michael, launched in the 1690s and completed in 1705. Peter the Great reformed it into a productive stud farm. He granted Bronnitsy to Alexander Menshikov; after his fall in 1727 control over the village and government-owned stud farms passed to statesman Pavel Yaguzhinsky who "managed" the business into a ruin. Statesman Artemy Volynsky, Yaguzhinsky's nemesis, took control of the stud farms in 1733. The business recovered slowly; by the time of Volynsky's treason trial in 1740 the farm in Bronnitsy had 221 horse and specialized into breeding riding horses. The next manager, Alexander Kurakin, increased the number of horses to 277 in less than a decade.
Microhistory of Bronnitsy of the period, despite substantial surviving archives, has not been properly collated and published yet. Everyday life of the town in the 17th and 18th centuries remains, largely, unknown, apart from a few unusual events that attracted attention of the imperial government. For example, when nearby Kolomna was hit by the plague of 1770–1772, the priests of Bronnitsy refused to respect quarantine enforced by civil authorities and kept on organizing potentially hazardous mass processions. The Holy Synod had to press on archbishop Feodosy who, in turn, personally pressed the priests into obedience.
In 1781, Bronnitsy, then having a population of five hundred, became the administrative center of an uyezd of Moscow Governorate. Catherine the Great granted the former village a town charter and a coat of arms featuring golden horse on a green field, a nod to Bronnitsy stud farms. Influx of petty bureaucrats resulted in a significant growth in population and construction of the first public buildings; the new grid plan was approved in 1784 and by 1787 population tripled. It leveled at around 1,500 until the middle of the 19th century.
In September 1812, Bronnitsy and Bogorodsk became the farthest points reached by the French troops in Napoleon's invasion of Russia. After the surrender of Moscow on September 14, the main Russian Army retreated south-east along the Ryazan road, "cautiously" shadowed by Murat's cavalry. On September 17 Kutuzov made a sharp westward turn to Podolsk; a small task force continued movement to Ryazan, impersonating the whole army. Murat missed Kutuzov's turn and did not discover the deception until he reached Bronnitsy. Although by September 21 Napoleon suspected the Russian maneuver, the French lost the track of the Russian Army for two days and waged a wide pursuit that culminated in the Battle of Tarutino. Murat's raid, accompanied with inevitable plunder and fires, was the last foreign incursion into Bronnitsy ever (World War II spared the town).
After the war of 1812, Bronnitsy slowly evolved as a typical small trading town and served as a base of a cavalry regiment; the former cavalry barracks, built in Empire style, are attributed either to Vasily Stasov or to Alexander Kutepov. Rotunda of Jerusalem church, standing near the Cathedral of Archangel Michael, was built in the 1840s by Alexander Shestakov in late neoclassical style. Its pseudo-Russian red brick belltower was erected in the 1850s in apparent mismatch to historical churches. These landmarks survived despite a number of sweeping fires; the worst recorded fire of 1861 destroyed 115 houses. Another major fire struck in 1863, yet despite the damages Bronnitsy still had one inn, two pubs, and 118 trading outlets; two hundred families held trading patents but the town's finances were poor and could not even pay for paving the unbearably impassable main square.
In the 1850s and 1860s, Bronnitsy became home to notable members of the declining Russian nobility. Decembrist Mikhail Fonvizin (1787–1854) and his wife Natalya, a local landowner, retired to Bronnitsy after exile to Siberia. Fonvizin died soon upon return; the widow married another decembrist, Ivan Pushchin (1798–1859). Both Fonvizin and Pushchin were buried near the Cathedral of Archangel. Retired Army colonel Alexander Pushkin (1833–1914), son of poet Alexander Pushkin, served as the justice of the peace in Bronnitsy in 1862–1866, administering the Emancipation reform of 1861. His son, also Alexander Pushkin (1863–1916), born in Bronnitsy, became judge of Bronnitsy uezd (Russian: Земский начальник) in 1890 and since 1897 later managed the whole zemstvo of the town and country.
Railroad boom of the 1860s bypassed Bronnitsy: eponymous Bronnitsy railroad station, operating since 1864, was actually built 12 versts (13 km) from the center of the town, on the opposite bank of the river. The dam and bridge across the river were built by local contractor Smorchkov in 1872. Residents were eagerly leaving Bronnitsy for industrial and service jobs in Moscow: by 1882, Bronnitsky, Podolsky, Serpukhovsky, and Moskovsky Uezds were the leading suppliers of manpower to the metropolis. Bronnitsky Uyezd was sending twice as many men as densely populated and far better industrialized Bogorodsky Uyezd.
Relative share of migrants to total population, however, was less than in the western uyezds of Moscow Governorate. Bronnitsy gradually became a minor textile industry hub and its factories employed a substantial share of the remaining population, especially under-age girls. By the end of the 19th century one quarter of all local girls under the age of twelve and 65% of the girls under the age of fourteen were employed in the industry, compared to only 7% and 23% for Volokolamsky Uyezd. Jewelers emerged in Bronnitsky Uyezd earlier, in the middle of the 19th century, and by 1900 there were 737 independent, predominantly male craftsmen. The largest jewellery business, in nearby Sinkovo, employed around twenty workers. Cost of living in Bronnitsy was very low, at least according to imperial government: the 1902 Army regulations placed it in the seventh grade of housing costs—just a notch above the cheapest eighth grade, or two and a half times cheaper than Moscow and Odessa.
Mayor Alexander Pushkin (the third) struggled to improve the performance of peasant households; increase in average area of a family lot, he reasoned, would enable a switch from obsolete three-field crop rotation to intensive farming methods. He set up five model farms attended by qualified agronomists and provided subsidized loans to the peasants. In twenty years of his tenure, the uyezd opened twenty-five new elementary schools, two high schools for boys, and one high school for girls. Despite Pushkin's efforts, cultural split between landed peasants and urbanized classes widened to a point of armed conflict. During the 1905 Russian Revolution liberal-minded teachers and medics supported the political changes while the peasants distrusted their promises, fearing a return to dreaded serfdom system. On one occasion the peasants stormed and burnt down a school building housing a convention of zemstvo employees who barely escaped the mob.
The town slowly grew until World War I. By 1914, Bronnitsy hospital acquired an X-ray machine, one of the first in the region. According to Bronnitsy Museum staff, in 1914 the Fifth Air Company of Bronnitsy operated from a military airfield near the town; local pilot Konstantin Savitsky, distantly related to the Pushkin family, and lieutenant Mikhail Lyaschenko were killed there in an accident in April 1914. In November 1914, the company left Bronnitsy; a different air wing was based there from 1917 to 1919. According to pilot Ivan Spirin, in 1924 Moscow-Bronnitsy-Moscow route was used to test new instrument flying technologies.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Bronnitsy”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.