Mologa

Mologa 

a city that was located at the confluence of the Mologa and Volga rivers, on the right bank of the Mologa and the left bank of the Volga.

The date of Mologa’s origin is unknown. In the early 13th century it became part of the Rostov Principality and later of the Yaroslavl Principality. In 1321 it was made the center of an independent principality, and under Ivan III Vasil’evich it entered the unified Russian state. In the late 15th century, a trade fair was transferred to Mologa from Kholopii Gorodok, located 55 km to the north, and Mologa subsequently became one of Russia’s most important centers for trade with Asia.

There was a fortress in the city in the 16th century according to the German diplomat and traveler S. Herberstein. After the Polish-Swedish intervention in the 17th century, Mologa was made a trade sloboda (tax-exempt settlement), and in 1777 it became an administrative center of a district of the Yaroslavl Namestnichestvo (vicegerency). In the 19th and early 20th centuries it was a major transshipping point on the Volga, since the Tikhvin canal system connecting the Volga and the Baltic Sea began there. When the Rybinsk Hydroelectric Power Plant and the Rybinsk Reservoir were constructed in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, the residents of Mologa were evacuated, and the site of the city was flooded.

REFERENCES

Golovshchikov, K. D. Gorod Mologa (laroslavskoi gubernii) i ego istoricheskoe proshloe. Yaroslavl, 1889.
Sakharov, A. M. Goroda Severo-Vostochnoi Rusi XIV-XV vv. Moscow, 1959. Pages 54–55.

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Mologa 

a river in Kalinin, Novgorod, and Vologda oblasts, RSFSR; a left tributary of the Volga, falling into the Ves’egonsk stretch of Rybinsk Reservoir. Length, 456 km; basin area, 29,700 sq km (not including Lake Meglino, which has an area of 192 sq km and empties principally into the Msta River). The Mologa River flows through a marshy plain, forming large loops; in its upper course it passes through Lake Verestovo (area, 23.1 sq km). The river is fed by mixed sources, predominantly by snow. The mean flow rate 58 km from the mouth is 172 cu m per sec. The Mologa River freezes in late October or early December and thaws in April or early May. It is navigable from the mouth of the left tributary of the Chagodoshcha River, with which the Mologa enters the Tikhvin Waterway System. The cities of Bezhetsk, Pestovo, and Ustiuzhna are on the Mologa River.