Ust-Tsylma Village

Ust-Tsylma stands on the right bank of the Pechora opposite the mouths of the Tsylma and Pizhma rivers — where the river turns from an east-west course to the north. The village was founded in 1542, when the Novgorodian Ivashka Dmitriev Lastka was granted a royal charter to the Pechora lands; from the 18th century Old Believers of the Pomorian accord settled here, and their world has survived to this day better than anywhere else in the European North. The main cultural event is the 'Ust-Tsilemskaya Gorka', an annual spring-and-summer round-dance festival held on St Peter's Day, with republican status since 2004. The bylina-singing tradition is alive here: it was in this village that Nikolai Onchukov recorded the Pechora bylinas in 1901, published in 1904. The women's costume of the Ust-Tsilyom with slanted sarafans and 'soroka' head-dresses is one of the most recognisable ethnographic images of the Russian North. Near the village worked the Tsylma mines — the oldest non-ferrous metallurgy enterprise in Russia. Getting here is a journey: about 690 kilometres by road from Syktyvkar, the railway ends 220 kilometres away, a local-line airport operates — but it was exactly this isolation that shaped a living island of old Russian culture, touched by tradition rather than fashion.