Alexei Groza came to Vladimirskoye three years ago to run a local cultural center dedicated almost exclusively to the Kitezh legend. What is important is that in all versions the city can be seen by those who believe and are pure of heart. Ivan Kupala, a mixture of the feast day of St. John the Baptist and the pagan holiday Kupala, is celebrated throughout the former Soviet Union. But elsewhere it usually coincides with the summer solstice, about two weeks earlier. Girls toss flowers into rivers, hoping that the boy downstream who picks it up is right for her.
People jump over campfires or into lakes and rivers to purify themselves.
Some revelers search the woods for a flowering fern or just for an excuse to get lost with a companion on a holiday that traces back to pagan fertility rites. There is a little bit of all of that at Svetloyar Lake. But Kitezh is the star. Some believers come early, crawling on their knees three times around the mile-wide lake as they pray. At the top of a hill sits a still-unfinished wooden Russian Orthodox church, built during the past couple of years.