Zilupe

It was founded in 1900 as a village at the Rosenovskaya station on the Moscow-Vindava line . The name is due to the fact that the station complex was built on land alienated from Baron Rosen ^[4] .

The oldest building of the city is located on the street. Brivibas, 18. First there was a post office, later (since 1900) a railway school, then a music school. In 1912, a wooden building was built for the primary school. After gaining independence of Latvia, in 1920, the name of the settlement was Latvianized and Rosenovo was renamed Zilupe. Here were a garrison of border guards, customs, a company of soldiers of the 9th Rezekne Regiment. In 1925, a new stone building was erected for the school - Janis Rainis participated in the opening. ^[five]

In 1931, Zilupe received the status of a city, and in 1938 - a coat of arms, which reflected the idea of ​​a border city: a shield of gold and red, and with keys on it.

Residents at that time were mainly engaged in trade, agriculture and small craftsmanship. There was a roller mill, a sawmill, a power station, and a wool processing workshop. Travelers were taken by a hotel and a pub, teahouses, a buffet functioned at the station. One of the objects of tourism was the gate on the border of Latvia and the USSR .

In Soviet times, the city was known for the production of metal products (children sledges and consumer goods), which were produced in the local workshop of the Ludzensky Metallist plant. There were sewing and knitting workshops, a bakery in the city.

In 1949-1959, Zilupe was a district center; later, until July 1, 2009, the city was part of the Ludza district .

After the restoration of independence of Latvia, Zilupe became a border city, and the nearest border crossing Terekhovo became the main border transit from Europe to Russia and Central Asian countries ^[6] . This allowed developing in the region entrepreneurship related to the transit business. A large transit flow created an increased burden on the infrastructure of the region, the queues at the border reached 15 kilometers. This led to strikes by drivers who blocked the highway with the requirement to listen to their needs ^[7] .

After the economic crisis of 2008 , despite high unemployment, the city was completely put in order, the streets and urban facilities were repaired ^[5] . Already in 2008, a kindergarten was overhauled, which immediately attracted children there, whose number grew from 20 to more than 100 ^[8] . Thanks to the efforts of the local government, residents can receive medical care on the spot; the city has a strong secondary school with a program for national minorities and the teaching of some of the subjects in Russian. ^[9] In Zilupe there is a new stadium, a school of music and art, and a renovated library ^[10] .

Zilupe carried out the reconstruction of heating systems on their own, combining them together and heating them with “biofuel” - firewood. Thanks to this, the city holds the lowest heating tariff in the country ^[11] . A boarding house for the elderly has been created, as the population is aging, and young people are leaving and they don’t take the elderly with them ^[11] .

Zilupe attracts European funding for the development of infrastructure and socio-cultural facilities, investing in them and its small funds ^[12] .

City Guide

For many years Oleg Petrovich Agafonov has been at the head of the city, elected by a large margin since 2005, when the Party of Popular Accord , to which he belonged, received more than half of the votes (668), and he personally had 417 “pluses” - signs of support ^[13] .

Agafonov was periodically accused of insufficient knowledge of the Latvian language , the test was conducted by the State Language Center, which obliged the mayor of Zilupe to take courses and pass exams in Latvian ^[14] . Oleg Petrovich himself pointed out that 90% of the population of his land speak Russian, and if he will speak to him in Latvian, they might not understand him.

Since 1903, Jews were allowed to settle here ^[15] . By 1914, there were about 1,000 Jewish families in the Rosenovo village. In 1912, a synagogue was built here. In 1923, a Jewish primary school was opened. In 1930, about 500 Jews lived in the village; they made up 70% of the population. In 1931, the Rosenovsky village was merged with nearby settlements, forming the city of Zilupe. After this, the proportion of Jews decreased, in 1935 there were 471 people (30% of the population) ^[16] .

At the moment, the city is dominated by Russian and Russian-speaking population. In recent decades, the population has been declining due to natural decline and migration outflow.

• 2001-1965 people
• 2002-1956 people
• 2004-1890 people

Ethnic composition as of 2001: ^[17]

• Russian 60% (1179)
• Latvians 18% (254)
• Belarusians 12% (236)
• Other 10% (118)

Ethnic composition as of 2008: ^[18]

Ethnic composition according to the 2011 census: ^[19]

Roads

Going around Zilupe, a few hundred meters from the city border, passes the A12 Jekabpils - Rezekne - Ludza - Russian border (border crossing Terekhovo , located in the village of the same name), which is part of the European route E 22 .
The regional highway P52 Zilupe - Škiaunė - Ezernieki approaches Zilupe.
Among the local roads, the roads V510 Zilupe - Dilany - Krivanda are worth mentioning and V538 Zilupe - Pasien .

Bus Service

Zilupe does not have a direct bus connection with Riga. There is only 1 bus route Terehovo - Rezekne - Terehovo, running once a day.

Rail service

Zilupe Station is the terminal station for the Riga – Zilupe daily passenger route and the border station for passing international Riga – Moscow trains.

In the pre-war period, Catholic, Evangelical Lutheran and Orthodox parishes operated in Zilupe. An architectural monument of the early 19th century is the Savelinka Catholic Chapel with three decorative altars ^[5] .

Holy Cross Exaltation Church

After part of the Vitebsk province became part of the Republic of Latvia in 1920, the Orthodox community found a temporary shelter in the village of Zabolotsky, in the house of the peasant Peter Timofeev. There they equipped a temporary church consecrated in the name of the Cross of the Lord . The Orthodox community allocated a place for the construction of a larger church in the village of Rosenovo (the so-called Zilupe until 1931), where a local resident Timofey Zakharenko presented the community with a plot of land with an area of ​​more than 2300 m². Probably, the building of Peter Timofeev was moved there, suggesting at the first opportunity to replace it with a new one - a stone church. Funds were raised for its construction, but with the advent of Soviet power this idea could not be realized.

The church in the old building worked continuously until 2004, when it died in a fire. In its place, a new temple was erected, which was consecrated on October 19, 2008 ^[20] .

Opolevsky source

In the village of Opole, five kilometers from Zilupe, there is a spring from which, presumably in 1901, Dementy Kazakov, blind from birth, was miraculously healed. According to legend, he did this, seeing in a dream the Mother of God herself, who commanded him to rinse his eyes with healing water in Opole. In memory of this, Dementy placed at the source a large worship cross with the icon of the Mother of God, and in 1937 parishioners of the Holy Cross Exaltation Church addressed the rector of Fr. Vladimir Antipov with a request to make a blessing of water at the source. At the suggestion of Father Vladimir, a chapel was placed at the source, to which, on the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the first religious procession took place with the participation of about one and a half thousand people.

In 1940, a religious procession in Opole was banned by the new government, although a prayer service at the source was still performed. In the 1960s, the local collective farm chairman decided to remove the chapel and did it himself, since all the tractor drivers refused this.

In 1994, with the blessing of Metropolitan Alexander , work began on the restoration of the Opole chapel. On September 21, 2000, on the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, with the blessing of the Metropolitan, the first procession to the source after the ban was held. Currently, the chapel above the spring is being built on a concrete foundation, with baths so that pilgrims can perform not only dousing, but also bathing in it ^[21] .

• Official page of Zilupe with some information in Russian
• Official site of the Zilupsk region (Latvian)
• Information about Zilupe on the tourist portal mesta.lv (Russian)
• Information about Zilupe in the toponymic database (Latvian)