Poddorye

About the settlement. Poddorye lies on the Redya River, 162 km south of Veliky Novgorod. The district is considered environmentally clean, and its main natural resource is forest. Protected areas include the Rdeisky State Nature Reserve and the Poddorsky State Biological Sanctuary. There are 5 churches in the district. One is an 18th-century architectural and urban-planning monument: the Church of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God in Markovo village. There are also two holy springs — St. Andrew the First-Called and St. Nil Stolobensky — two footprint stones, and a bend on the Lovat River linked with the historic route “from the Varangians to the Greeks”. One large boulder near Peregino village is mentioned in the Mining Journal for 1824. Archaeological sites along the Lovat include sopkas, burial mounds and zhalniki dated to the 8th — 13th centuries. The district has 10 military burial sites and 14 memorial signs connected with the Great Patriotic War. The central Sambatovo burial site, 9 km from Poddorye, is the largest and contains more than 10 thousand soldiers. In 1942—1944, Sambatovo was in the near-front rear area of the 1st Shock Army, 7–8 km from the Soviet defensive front line. In 1958, remains from mass and individual graves in many villages were reinterred here. A memorial gathering is held every year on 9 May. Natural monuments include a unique cranberry bog of hydrological importance and the Poddorsky State Biological Sanctuary, created to protect rare and endangered wildlife and their habitats. The Trofimovsky Mokh bog is also a regionally protected area. The 18th-century Church of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God is the district’s only church to have survived continuously since 1750 and is still active. Every year on 10 August, pilgrims arrive for the feast of the Hodegetria Icon of the Mother of God from nearby villages, Leningrad, Veliky Novgorod and Staraya Russa. The holy spring of St. Nil lies on the Redya River, 5 km from Poddorye. Tradition says the elder stopped here while travelling to Staraya Russa. The well was destroyed during the anti-religious period, then restored in the 1990s by local residents Anatoly Alekseevich and Yuri Anatolyevich Sigov. Every year on 9 June, Archpriest Vasily Kiselev of the Holy Trinity Church in Poddorye blesses the water. On 9 June 2003, Archpriest Ambrose, dean of the Staraya Russa district, and the rector of the Holy Trinity Church consecrated a chapel dedicated to St. Nil. At the edge of Peregino village on the Lovat stands a revered spring of St. Andrew the First-Called, who according to legend stopped here on his way to Valaam Island. There is also a bathing place by the spring. Since 2016, the village of Belebyolka in Poddorye District has been developing the open-air military-history museum “Partisan Camp”, a symbol of the partisan movement in the Novgorod land.