In 1608, Zaraisk was seized by Polish forces, and costly attempts by Russian patriots to retake the town succeeded only in June 1609. In 1610, command of the Zaraisk kremlin was given to Prince Dmitry Pozharsky (1578-1642) and in early 1611 he and his Zaraisk troops marched on Polish-occupied Moscow as part of the First People’s Army. Wounded in the struggle, Pozharsky withdrew to his estate until news came of a second People’s Army, led by Kuzma Minin. With Minin’s proclamation of support, Pozharsky took command of the new army and in August 1612 expelled Polish forces from Moscow, thus clearing the way for the young Michael Romanov to assume power.
With the country’s recovery, Zaraisk continued to serve as a fortress, repulsing its last raid from the Crimea in 1673. In 1681 the Cathedral of St. Nicholas was rebuilt in the kremlin and is now the town’s oldest church. The fortress also contains the Cathedral of the Decapitation of John the Baptist, reconstructed to a design by Constantine Bykovsky in 1901-04.
The modest growth of Zaraisk in the 18th and 19th centuries is reflected in surviving monuments such as the Church of the Annunciation and the Church of Elijah the Prophet, as well as merchant houses and a complex of neoclassical trading rows.
During the early 19th century, Zaraisk became a local center for the grain trade, but major road development passed the town by. A monumental brick water tower, completed in 1914, testifies to economic growth just before World War I.
In the history of 19th-century Russian culture, Zaraisk is best known for its association with the childhood of Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881). In 1831, his father, Mikhail Andreevich Dostoevsky, purchased an estate at the nearby village of Darovoye. The road to Darovoye passed by the Zaraisk kremlin, and near the main kremlin gate tower there was a station from which coaches left for Moscow. Every summer Dostoevsky’s mother would walk with her children from Darovoye to Zaraisk to post letters to her husband, who was still at work in Moscow.
Zaraisk has a street named after the great writer, and the remains of his mother, Maria, rest in a tomb within the Cathedral of John the Baptist in the Zaraisk kremlin.
There is also an indirect reference to Zaraisk in Crime and Punishment.
At the turn of the 20th century, Zaraisk nurtured another artist, Anna Golubkina (1864-1927), the first Russian woman to achieve major fame as a sculptor. Born in Zaraisk to a family of Orthodox dissenters known as Old Believers, Golubkina was largely educated at home.
With the encouragement of a Zaraisk teacher, Golubkina left in 1889 for study in Moscow. Her studies subsequently took her to St. Petersburg and Paris, where she worked as an assistant to Auguste Rodin in 1897-1900. Returning to Moscow in 1901, Golubkina received several commissions, including the dramatic frieze “The Wave” over the main entrance to the Moscow Art Theater, designed by noted architect Fyodor Shekhtel.
After the 1917 revolution, Golubkina continued to work as a sculptor and teacher in Moscow, but her health deteriorated. Seriously ill, she returned in the summer of 1927 to the family house in Zaraisk, where she spent her final days. In 1974 this early 19th-century house was converted to a museum that not only commemorates her work but also provides a view of a cozy pre-Soviet domestic setting.
Today Zaraisk is a regional center confronted with the challenge of preserving its valuable architectural heritage in difficult economic conditions. Rich in associations with history and culture, Zaraisk forms an essential part of Russia’s’ cultural memory.