Moshenskoye

About the settlement. Moshenskoye is an old village first mentioned in the census books of the Bezhetskaya Pyatina in 1545 as “Nikolsky Pogost in Moshna”. The origin of the name remains uncertain: it may come from “moshna”, meaning purse or wealth, or from words connected with moss. Local tradition links it either with the many prosperous estates along the Uver River in the 16th century or with the moss-covered pine woods on its steep banks. Burial mounds along the Uver show that the riverbanks were permanently settled about a thousand years ago, while temporary human camps existed here in the Stone Age. On the Nikolskaya side stands a stone church with a stone bell tower built in 1787. After damage and rebuilding, the building was transferred to the Novgorod Diocese in 1992. Today services are held again in the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. Several 19th-century estates survive. In central Moshenskoye, on the high bank of the Uver, stands the manor house of Kruglik, a St. Petersburg timber industrialist. The wooden-lace house of merchant A. Ryabov on the left bank now houses a museum. Three Bozheryanov estates are also cultural heritage sites. The Church of the Protection of the Mother of God, built in 1764 by landowner I. M. Levashov, stands on the left bank in the village centre. Among the memorial places is the school attended by intelligence officer Zoya Kruglova. The building was constructed by landowner S. Ya. Tsatsura in 1872 and later sold to the zemstvo; from 1872 it housed a zemstvo school. A memorial plaque is mounted on the façade. The district is associated with many notable Russians. In the late 18th century, poet Gavriil Derzhavin and pianist Field visited the Spas na Moshne estate of St. Petersburg prosecutor Ivan Levashov. Geographer, ethnographer, publicist and Lieutenant General Alexey Maksheev spent long periods at his Olekhovo estate on Lake Velikoye and published his study “On Fishing in Lake Velikoye” in the Memorial Book of the Novgorod Governorate for 1864. His estate park survives as a protected landscape monument. Children’s writer Vitaly Bianki was closely connected with the district. His family lived in a house in Mikheyevo village from 1935 to 1942. The house survives and is the annual centre of the “Bianki Readings”. Bianki worked, hunted and observed birds here with young naturalists from Leningrad, and wrote both literary works and the research study Birds of Moshenskoye District. A memorial plaque was installed on the house in 1998. The tourist project “Journey to the Land of Wonders” follows places where he lived in 1935 — 1942; a memorial stone marks the boundary of the “Land of Wonders”. The “Bianki Readings” have been held since 1994. During the Great Patriotic War, the future artist Ilya Glazunov was evacuated as a boy from besieged Leningrad to Greblo village. Marfa Skorodumova nursed him back from severe exhaustion. Memories of the Moshenskoye landscape and lakes later inspired many of his works.