Lodenoye Pole

Lodeynoye Pole stands on the Svir, the river joining Lake Onega to Lake Ladoga. Before the town arose, villages of the old Pirkin pogost occupied the riverbank, and pine forests grew nearby. The name recalls the boats built on this stretch of water, but it was war on the Baltic that turned the shore into a major shipbuilding site.

In 1702 Peter I ordered the Olonets shipyard established near the villages of Meshkovichi and Mokrishvitsy. Workers and craftsmen were brought from the northern districts to build vessels for the Great Northern War. In August 1703 the 28-gun frigate Shtandart was launched here, one of the first ships of Russia’s Baltic Fleet. A wooden church of Saints Peter and Paul served the growing settlement beside the yard. Shipbuilding continued after the war, producing vessels of many kinds for the fleet. Catherine II made the settlement and neighbouring villages a town in 1785, with Lodeynoye Pole as the centre of an uyezd. The yard closed in 1829, but its ships had carried the name of this wooded reach of the Svir into the history of the Baltic fleet.