Efremov: Life by the Krasivaya Mecha
Tula Region, 2019
Efremov is an old provincial town in the southern Tula Region, located on the banks of the Krasivaya Mecha River. Its streets bring together several layers of Russian life: pre-revolutionary brick buildings, Soviet-era housing and monuments, modern public spaces, industry, and the agricultural landscape that begins almost at the town’s edge.
Efremov traces its origins to 1637 and became a district town in 1777. The writer Ivan Bunin lived here for several years, and aircraft designer Vladimir Myasishchev was born here. But Efremov’s identity is shaped not only by its history. The town remains closely connected to the surrounding agricultural region, and its factories and food-processing businesses provide much of the local employment.
When I visited Efremov in 2019 while reporting for MK in Tula, I found a town that defied a simple description. Residents spoke of young people leaving, a shortage of doctors, housing problems, and everyday frustrations. At the same time, new parks and sports facilities were opening, public spaces were being improved, and the town remained visibly cared for in many places.
The Krasivaya Mecha runs alongside everyday life. Residents are deeply attached to the river and the surrounding countryside. Perhaps the best way to understand Efremov is not through a single image of the “Russian provinces” but through the coexistence of old and new, prosperity and neglect, and urban life and the agricultural landscape.
This photo essay grew out of my 2019 reporting from Efremov, originally published by MK in Tula as “Why Does Efremov Need a Dekrottuar, and Why Are Local Deputies Compared to the Olympic Bear?” (in Russian).
Efremov’s local history museum occupies one of the town center’s old brick buildings. Its elaborate brickwork is part of a pre-revolutionary streetscape that endures amid later Soviet buildings and newer commercial signs. The museum itself preserves the history of a town shaped over centuries by the surrounding countryside, trade, industry, and the people who lived here.
Efremov, 2019. Photo: Angelika Minaeva.
A monument to Vladimir Lenin stands in a green public space in Efremov. Statues like this are a familiar sight in provincial towns across the Tula Region, where Lenin still occupies squares, parks, and spaces near public buildings decades after the Soviet Union’s dissolution. In Efremov, the monument feels less like an exceptional landmark and more like an ordinary part of the townscape. Efremov, 2019. Photo: Angelika Minaeva.
Efremov’s ambulance station, part of the district hospital complex. The modest entrance, aging brickwork, barred windows, and laundry drying outside give the building an unmistakable institutional texture that is also part of everyday life. In 2019, healthcare was one of the concerns residents raised with me: the district hospital served both Efremov and the surrounding rural area while continuing to struggle with shortages of medical specialists. Efremov, 2019. Photo: Angelika Minaeva.
The surgical wing of Efremov’s district hospital. Local officials told me they were trying to attract doctors with housing and other incentives, but some specialists were still hard to recruit. For residents of the surrounding villages as well as the town itself, this hospital remained an essential part of everyday life. Efremov, 2019. Photo: Angelika Minaeva.
A very different Efremov lies just a short distance away. The town’s modern sports complex reflects the newer public infrastructure that was emerging when I visited in 2019. Local authorities were investing in parks, sports facilities, and public spaces — one reason Efremov could not be reduced to a simple story of provincial decline. Efremov, 2019. Photo: Angelika Minaeva.
On a hot summer day, the Krasivaya Mecha becomes part of the town’s social life. Families gather at the public beach, children swim, and neighbors meet along the riverbank. Residents speak of the river with particular affection; for them, it is not simply part of the landscape but one of the places around which everyday life in Efremov unfolds.
Efremov, 2019. Photo: Angelika Minaeva.
Not every part of the town matched its newly landscaped public spaces. Behind an apartment building, residents searched through waste containers beside a pile of cut branches. Scenes like this coexisted with renovated parks and new facilities — another reminder that everyday life in Efremov was more complicated than either a story of improvement or one of decline. Efremov, 2019. Photo: Angelika Minaeva.
A detail that immediately reveals Efremov’s connection to the countryside: a dekrottuar, a metal platform once used to scrape soil from shoes before entering public buildings. Such devices were common in agricultural districts, where black earth could arrive in town on everyone’s boots. When I photographed this one, however, there was not a trace of mud on it.
Efremov, 2019. Photo: Angelika Minaeva.
A Soviet apartment building features an agricultural mosaic on its end wall: grain, livestock, and imagery of productive labor. Below it are a pharmacy, mobile-phone shops, and everyday neighborhood businesses. On a single façade, Soviet ideas about the agricultural region meet the commercial life of contemporary Efremov. Efremov, 2019. Photo: Angelika Minaeva.
Efremov is not frozen in its Soviet past. Renovated housing and landscaped green spaces sit alongside older neighborhoods, while new trees and paths reshape parts of the town. In 2019, residents could point to both things they wanted changed and visible improvements made in recent years. Efremov, 2019. Photo: Angelika Minaeva.
The Krasivaya Mecha River, seen from above Efremov. Beyond the river, the town quickly gives way to fields and open countryside. Residents are deeply attached to this landscape, and the river remains one of the place’s defining features. Beyond the factories, apartment blocks, hospital buildings, monuments, shops, and newly landscaped spaces, the Krasivaya Mecha offers another way of seeing Efremov: as a provincial town still inseparable from the land and water around it. Efremov, 2019. Photo: Angelika Minaeva.