Novorossisk

Novorossisk, Hero City of the Soviets

There are only twelve cities that have been awarded this medal and despite studying modern Russian history, I had had to look this one up. But first I had to leave Gelendzhik but on my morning walk along the beach before breakfast, I caught this Ulyanov parked by the side of the road. Locally, they are better known as Buchanka, which is a local rounded love of bread which is the same shape.

 Then we stopped at a site of several dolmens, believed to be burial sites of the same age and culture as Stonehenge and burial mounds on the Scottish islands. My shoulders were too big to squeeze through the hole.

 We crossed a small small in a deep canyon to reach another dolmen.

 These one had a grander approach but the hole in the single stone slab was still too small to get my shoulders through.

 Then it was further up the coast to reach the Abrau Dorso winery.

 It was started under orders from the Tsar in 1870, established to produce champagne style wines for the imperial court. It harvested its first viable crop in 1877. There is a fountain in front of the main building completed in 1891, said to represent the neck of a champaign bottle.

There are 5.5 kms of tunnels built into the hillside behind the building.

 Old and new science is used to produce the best selling champagne type wines. Some modern fermentation vats are used as well as traditional wooden casks.

 There is also an interesting bottle conveyor belt to transport bottles full of wine to the area where the sediment from the secondary fermentation process which has settled in the neck of the bottle is removed before the bottle is topped up and the permanent cork inserted.

 Bottles are no longer periodically turned by hand but by machine.

 The estate also makes cheese and their local restaurant will serve home made cheese and champagne.

 I had a tasting session to myself.

 With a selection of six champagnes and some locally produced mineral water.

 Then it was a total change of scene back to Novorossiysk and a chance to see a battleship, Mikhail Kutuzov, a general at eh time of Napoleon's invasion of Russia who fought the battle of Borodino and counter attacked Napoleon to force the retreat from Moscow.

The battle ship had some heavy fire power fire both bow and aft and smaller guns along the gunwhales.

 The reason that Novorossiysk was so important and earned the title of Hero of the Soviet Union was that it was a major industrial and well protected port in a bay but a determined resistance of sailors and others on the southern horn of the bay prevented its use by the Germans. The encircled troops were resupplied at night and held out for over 225 days until the Germans and their allies were pushed back. There is a huge monument to the defenders...so huge that it dwarfs the figures in the photo walking beneath it. It is called Malaya Zemlya, Little Earth.

 The area has been left as it was fought over with tank ditches, shell holes and trenches.

On the other side of the bay opposite Malaya Zemlya is a memorial to the soldiers who defended the city and prevented it from complete domination by the Nazis.

 Opposite to the main memorial is a small monument to the sailors of the Black Sea Fleet consisting of a naval flag message...

 ...within a granite block, to the memory of the communist Black Sea Fleet, ordered to be destroyed by Lenin during the Revolution to prevent it falling into the hands of the Fascist White Army General Von Denikin, leader of the White Army who had his base in the Caucasus.