Bezhetsk

a city in Kalinin Oblast, RSFSR. Situated on the Mologa River (in the Volga Basin) at its confluence with the Ostrechina River. Railroad station on the Rybinsk-Bologoe line. Population, 29,000 (1967). Bezhetsk is the center of an old flax-growing region. There is preliminary treatment of flax and production of agricultural machinery (flax pullers, flax threshers, flax-harvesting combines, and others) and technological equipment for tractor and agricultural plants in Bezhetsk. The city has plants for the production of building materials. There is a machine-building technicum and a medical school in Bezhetsk, as well as a museum of regional studies. In the city gardens there is a monument to the writer V. Ia. Shishkov, who was born in Bezhetsk.

The first reliable information about Bezhetsk dates to the 12th century, when the settlement belonged to Novgorod. In the beginning of the 15th century Bezhetsk became part of the Muscovite state. The bell tower of the Vvedenskaia Church (17th century), market stalls from the 18th-19th centuries, the Vozdvizhenskaia Church (1670), and the Preobrazhenskaia Church (1772) have been preserved.