Chudovo

About the town. Chudovo, a district centre of the Novgorod Region, stands on the Kerest River, a tributary of the Volkhov, in the marshy Priilmen Lowland. It is almost equidistant from St. Petersburg and Veliky Novgorod, and the major railway linking the northern capital with Moscow passes through it. The town’s founding date is considered to be 1539, when the village of Chudovo on the Kerest and Chudovskaya Luka were recorded in a land survey of the Vodskaya Pyatina. The settlement was probably older. The name is sometimes linked to the Chud people who lived in the region before the Mongol invasion, though it may also derive from the personal nickname Chudo recorded in 16th-century documents. When the postal road from Moscow to the Neva was built, postal transport developed here and the village became Chudovsky Yam. In the early 19th century, residents of Yam-Chudovo fished and harvested hay and firewood for sale in St. Petersburg. The name Yam-Chudovo remained until 1851. Many famous travellers stopped here to change horses. One chapter of A. N. Radishchev’s Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow is titled “Chudovo”. In 1849, the first section of the Nikolayevskaya Railway between St. Petersburg and Moscow passed near Chudovo. An imperial train carrying Nicholas I travelled to Chudovo to mark its opening. In 1871, construction of the Novgorod-Chudovo narrow-gauge railway was completed, turning Chudovo into a railway junction around which a large settlement grew. Industrial enterprises developed along the Volkhov, including I. E. Kuznetsov’s porcelain and faience factory and a glassworks. By 1874, 12 of the governorate’s 14 match factories were concentrated in Gruzino and the surrounding area. V. A. Lapshin’s joint-stock company later became the industry’s dominant producer. In 1877, a stone railway station designed by architect Lorberg replaced two wooden stations; it is one of the few 19th-century buildings in the town to survive. From 1924–37 Chudovo had the status of an urban-type workers’ settlement, after which it became a town. From August 1941 to January 1944 it was occupied by Nazi German forces. A pyramidal granite obelisk near the station commemorates Chudovo railway workers who died during the occupation. Local tradition also connects the area with the story of the Apostle Andrew’s journey to Rus. According to a later 16th-century addition to the legend, in the 1st century AD Andrew reached the middle Volkhov and planted his staff in the ground, blessing the Novgorod land. The memory survives in the name of the village of Gruzino, 12 km from Chudovo, where a stone Cathedral of St. Andrew the First-Called was built in the 16th century. The story later inspired Peter I when designing the Russian naval flag with St. Andrew’s cross. Today Chudovo has 16 thousand residents. The main attractions include the N. A. Nekrasov House Museum, G. I. Uspensky House Museum and I. E. Kuznetsov Factory Museum.