by Olga BAZANOVA, journalist "... We cannot tell when it came into being," says a topographical and historical description of 1783-1784 about the town of Torzhok. "However, the Venerable Father Yefremy, the founder of the Sts Boris and Gleb Monastery at Torzhok, lived in the beginning of the 11th century, he was in the service of the grand Russian princes Boris and Gleb; upon their slaying in the year 1105, he desired to live the rest of his days in solitude, and he came to this particular place, already rather populous at the time..." Its exact foundation date is still unknown. A Novgorod chronicle mentions it under the year of 1139, the earliest evidence known so far. What we know is that Novgorodian merchants found it a suitable place for a trade center at a crossroads of busy routes catering to Russia's northwest in essential goods like bread, honey, flax, wool, leather, timber and what not. A brisk trade was carried on, both ways. The young town built on both banks of the Tvertsa, a Volga tributary, was growing apace. Its original name was New Torg (torg, a Scandinavian word meaning a "market place"), and then it was changed to Torzhok, a Russian diminutive meaning the same thing (as mentioned already in 13th-century chronicles). And it came to pass that Yefremy (Yefrem), who chose to renounce wealth and earthly joys, set off for these parts early in the 11th century. In the year of grace 1038, he and his pupil Arcadius (Arkady) put up a stone church that стр. 81 gave rise to the Sts Boris and Gleb Monastery, one of the oldest Orthodox cloisters in Russia. It became Torzhok's citadel, or kremlin, protected by a wall built of logs, an earth bank and a water-filled moat against "evil men". Upon their demise both Yefrem and Arkady were laid to rest within the church they had built with their hands. In 1238 the Torzhok kremlin sheltered militiamen captained by posadnik* Ivanka, who for two weeks were making strong and spiri ... Читать далее