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I went to Sestroretsk (the name can be rendered as ‘the City on the Sister River’) with a friend of mine, Igor, who came from Birsk to St. Petersburg for a week. From the administrative viewpoint, Sestroretsk is a part of the city of St. Petersburg, its Kurortny District. It is a well-known climatic resort on the coast of the Gulf of Finland. The city is made up of six districts, namely Gorskaya, Alexandrovskaya, Takhovka, Razliv, Kurort, and Dyuny. It can be reached easily from Finland Railway Station (about 45 minutes on commuter train) or by buses (I think from Chernaya Rechka or Staraya Derevnya metro station). Sestroretsk is among the few remaining places in the vicinity of Petersburg which I haven’t visited. The city is worthy of a single-day visit or perhaps longer if the weather is hot and fine and sunny. I went to see three main sights: the lake, Lenin’s Shalash, and Dubki Park.
The city has pure ionized marine air, pine forests, and sandy beaches. In the city’s vicinity is a deposit of sapropelic muds also used for treatment. The city was founded after Peter I visited the area in 1714. He ordered the building of
a summer palace on the Gulf of Finland coast (the palace was later demolished, in 1781). A dam was later built on the Sister River and was used for the gun factory built in 1721. The lake, Sestroretsky Razliv, was formed thanks to this dam.
We started walking from Tarkhovka station which is the nearest to Lenin’s Shalash. The road to Shalash (the hut) is about 4.5 kilometers, winding along the lake bank among trees. It is quite good for biking and roller skating, and picnicking as well. You can bathe in the lake or sail a boat there. We saw lots of people enjoying themselves in various activities, mainly eating, fishing, and biking, playing some outdoor games. I at once decided to return to the place later with my wife and my rollers.
Lenin’s Shalash is a museum complex in Razliv dedicated to the events of 1917 when Vladimir Ilyitch Lenin had to hide from the persecution of the Provisional Government. There are: a granite monument in the form of a hut, a straw model of the 1917 hut, a huge head of Lenin, a stone rose, and a museum building. The Shalash monument was opened on
July 15, 1928.
Vladimir Lenin moved to Razliv (Razliv is the lake) under the disguise of a scytheman on the night of July 9
th because the Provisional Government issued a warrant for his arrest. After several days Lenin had to move to a different hiding place, on the other side of Razliv, because policemen came to the settlement. He had to leave the hut in autumn because it became cold. Vladimir Ilyitch wrote his book, ‘The State and the Revolution’, in the hut.
We entered the museum building and had a glimpse of its small exhibition, and then went to the pier to wait for the boat. It was supposed to run hourly between the two banks of the lake, but it didn’t came on schedule so I considered it to be non-existent and we had to walk the 4.5 kilometers back to Tarkhovka. It was bad because the boat would take us to the center of Sestroretsk where I wanted to see a church and the Dubki Park. We also had a hearty meal at the Shalash Restaurant not far from the museum.
We walked many kilometers and I gradually realized that we would not reach
the center of Sestroretsk on foot. When I saw a bus stop, we stopped there and the bus came in about ten minutes to take us quite close to the Dubki Park.
The Sestroretsk Dubki Part was founded by Peter I who came to the oak wood on the coast of the Gulf of Finland in 1714. In 1717, several thousand young oaks were planted for the construction of Russian marine fleet.
We had to walk a couple of kilometers from the bus station to the park. I was horribly tired by that time as we had walked almost fifteen kilometers already. We crossed the park to the gulf coast and sat there for a short time. There was strong wind and waves. Finally, we returned from the park and boarded the commuter train at Sestroretsk Train Station.
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