Around Satpaev Street
Broad and busy Satpaev Street, which runs north-south through the centre of town, is Pavlodar's main thoroughfare, though it is lined with some undistinguished Soviet-era concrete blocks. At the northern end of the street, where it runs into Toraigyrov Street, stands a statue, erected in 2000, of the Kazakh poet, teacher and patriot Sultanmakhmut Toraigyrov, a native of the region. He is depicted standing next to a tree offering the flimsiest of shade. Toraigyrov died in 1920 at the age of just 27; he gives his name to a university and library in the city. His highest goal in life was to grant all children of Kazakhstan a superior education. He was also an ardent believer in Soviet power, but he died in 1920 - too early to experience the warping of that power. In the ugly curved apartment block behind the statue is the Pavlodar Regional Art Museum. It is given over to temporary exhibitions of modern work by artists from the Pavlodar region in large, brightly lit rooms.
A small wooden house at 200 Lenin Street houses a small museum dedicated to the committed local historian and photographer Dimitry Bagayev and has some of his work on display.
Two long blocks to the south you pass the post office on your right, beneath a concrete clock tower: a local landmark, just not a very attractive one. A little further on, across the junction with Kairbaev Street, stands a long, grey, four storey building on your left housing the regional administration. Behind this building is a birch-filled park in which stands a war memorial, its three concrete needles tapering skywards. In front of the regional administration is another stretch of park, in which fountains play, running to a monumental flight of steps leading down to the promenade along the Irtysh River embankment.
Back on Satpaev Street, head a block further south, turning left onto Estaya Street, and then left again onto Margulan Street. On your right, incongruously sited immediately beyond an ugly Soviet-period apartment block, is a beautiful single-storey wooden building of the Tsarist era, with ornate decoration covering all available exterior surface space and a decorative railing around the roof. The building was pressed into action by the Bolsheviks. A plaque records that the Revolutionary Committee of the Pavlodar Uyezd was based here in 1919-20. Another announces that Terenty Deribas, revolutionary and member of the Cheka secret service organisation, the head of the Revolutionary Committee of Pavlodar City, worked in the building between April and August 1920. A silhouette depicts an earnest, bespectacled revolutionary in peaked cap and a beard evidently inspired by Lenin. The building now houses the Bukhar Zhirau Museum of Literature and Art. This offers somewhat dry displays, with descriptions in Russian and Kazakh, about the main literary figures from the region. Bukhar Zhirau, poet and adviser to Ablai Khan in the 18th century, who was born in the Bayanaul area, is featured prominently, as is another native of Bayanaul District, the historian and poet Mashhur Zhusup Kopeev, who died in 1931 at the age of 73. The lavish modern mosque in Pavlodar is named in his honour. The 'Museum of Literature and Art' sign on the ground floor of the neighbouring apartment block refers to the offices of the museum administration rather than anything to be visited.
Continuing southwards along Satpaev Street, there is a synagogue on your right at the next intersection with Isinaliev Street. Turn left down the latter, and after two blocks you arrive at the entrance to the Town Park of Culture and Rest. Just inside the entrance is a stone erected in 1991 to mark those buried in the old city cemetery. Just like the plot from a horror movie, the grounds of the cemetery have now been turned into a place of amusement, with a big wheel, some basic cafes, and pop music wafting around the trees. There is also a monument of revolutionaries pictured in winter gear of fur hats, overcoats and tall boots, honouring those who fell during the establishment of Soviet power in Pavlodar.
A further block to the south on Satpaev Street, at the corner with Lunacharsky Street, you reach on your left a graceful mosque sited within a railed enclosure. The octagonal turquoise cone which tops the minaret is a local landmark: the body of the mosque behind it is topped by a flattish turquoise dome. The interior has been sumptuously renovated, with beautiful golden calligraphic designs against a turquoise background, to particularly stunning effect around the mihrab. The graceful arched windows and doorways and luxuriant chandeliers complete the effect. The mosque was built in 1905, commissioned by a Tatar named Ramazanov. The main entrance is on Margulan Street, which runs parallel to Satpaev Street to the east.
