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The town is quiet and business-like.
«The
Vyatskaya Nezabudka» wrote in
1876, «One of the peculiarities of Slo-bodskoy is a plenty
of trade institutions, in addition to two huge arcades many
shops are arranged in
private houses as well, especially in the Glazovskaya
street - our Nevsky
Prospekt, thus in the town itself and its sloboda
Demyanka there are up to
170 big stores and shops, not to mention the trifling
retail outlets available almost at every crossroads...
In general it is a quiet and business-like town with very
little developed public life, with patriarchal
customs and without any pretensions to them».
- Today
Slobodskoy looks as quiet and
business-like as before.
The town with old merchant traditions. Rich in handicrafts,
talents, knowledge, liking for hard
work and experience. The
town remaining today as significantly staid, provincial,
reserved in expressing emotions as before. The town
which has accumulated enormous spiritual values.
- Town the
toiler and town the trader. Being in the XVIII-XIX centuries
a merchants' capital of
the Vyatka Region in its own way, Slobodskoy
digressed to the
background gradually in the XX century.
However, it hasn' t lost
its charm because
of this. Each stone here breathes history, each house is
surrounded with a legend.
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Lefs go out
into the square where the time has
connected several centuries
together. Lets go along these quiet streets, look
into these windows, stand
for a while on the porch of Anfilatov's
bank, admire the beauty
of St.Catherine's
temple, bow to a miracle-working icon.
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Describing his meeting with Slobodskoy during his service in the
army, journalist and student
of local lore, history and economy V.A. Grechukhin from
the Myshkin town of the
Yaroslavl Region admires: «At first it simply suppressed
me with the ancient richness ofthe Anfilatov's
street, the cold powerful
rise of a huge
cathedral bell-tower, the stone lace of the
Catherine's church. Well,
Slobodskoy, you are a
richman and that's that! But then,
the second grant leave of
absence threw light
on and mollified my soul with the pictures
of whole streets with wooden, different, painted houses.
Since then and easily (and I think correctly) I understood
that Slobodskoy was a very
arts town, quite a big part of it was like an alive
picture of old years of the
nineteenth century». And
some more: «And I still
remember the smell of Slobodskoy. Satiated with food,
languid, swe-e-et! There was
a smell of spice cakes
in Slobodskoy!»
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Inhabitants of Slobodskoy are not
willing to open their hearts to anybody, they suppress emotions
as it is usual in the North.
They keep their town cautiously, take care of it and
love tenderly these small old houses, their native land, from
which
Russia begins. Here is how T. Murina
has written about this:
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