Korcheva

Korcheva Корчева
Town
Korcheva in the early 20th century
Coat of arms
Korcheva Show map of Tver Oblast Korcheva Show map of Russia
Coordinates: 56°47′20″N 36°50′24″E / 56.78889°N 36.84000°E / 56.78889; 36.84000
Country	Russia
Region	Tver Oblast
District	Konakovsky
Town status since	1781
Abandoned	1937

Korcheva (Russian: Корчева́) was a town in central Russia, on the territory of the modern Konakovsky District, Tver Oblast, on the Volga River, with a population of a few thousand people. It was first mentioned in the 1540s as a selo.^[3] Korcheva received town status in 1781 by the order of the empress Catherine II. Korcheva was the administrative center of Korchevskoy Uyezd, one of the uyezds of Tver Viceroyalty and subsequently, from 1803, of Tver Governorate. The town was prosperous until it was bypassed by the railroads in the latter half of the nineteenth century.^[4]

As the Ivankovo Reservoir and the Moscow Canal were constructed during the stalinist development of the Soviet Union, the town was abandoned and destroyed in 1936, and mostly submerged under the waters of the reservoir the next year. Most of the population was resettled into the nearby town of Konakovo. One can still find the only surviving house (which belonged to merchant Rozhdestvensky), a cemetery, and a foundation of the ruined Kazanskaya church at an impracticable bank of the reservoir.^[3]