Underground passages have long become one of the most popular legends in Vyatka. The myths about “a city under a city” have been stirring the minds of Kirov residents for several decades. At the end of May, during excavations, CPC discovered underground rooms that, according to archaeologists, could have been used both as transitions between houses and as storage facilities. And although they cannot be fully called underground passages, they once again reminded the residents of Kirov of a beautiful legend. Svoykirovsky was figuring out whether there was in reality a unique system of secret communications, or whether it was just legends.
Attempts to research and obstacles by special services
The topic of underground passages was studied by two prominent scientists of pre-revolutionary Russia - an archaeologist, founder of the Vyatka public museum Pyotr Alabin and a publicist, teacher and writer Matvey Peskovsky. Both of them were not natives of Vyatka, but while in the city on business, they collected materials about the dungeons, talked on this topic with the old-timers and were convinced that the passages really exist, and since ancient times.
So, Pyotr Alabin in the middle of the 19th century stated that from the Razderikhinsky ravine there was a passage to the right bank of the Vyatka, where the Alexander Garden, a women's monastery and other buildings are now located. As old residents of Vyatka told, he was known to their fathers back in the 1850s. Under this bank, from the side of the river, a passage was opened in which traces of decayed gunpowder and several stone cannonballs were found.
According to Matvey Peskovsky, in many Vyatka cities there was a whole system of underground passages.
However, all the information and legends about the underground passages of Vyatka, collected before 1917, did not receive further serious study and development. It was only in the 1970s that a group of enthusiastic researchers emerged, mostly young speleologists. It included Anatoly Fokin, who is still - for about 50 years - looking for the underground passages of the old Vyatka.
In 2000, Fokin published the book "Vyatka: Gold and Diamonds, Underground Passages and Treasures, Traditions and Legends", in which he put forward a hypothesis about the existence of a "city under the city", relying on his own research and numerous memories of Kirov residents.
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People talked a lot and willingly about their underground travels, but it was much more difficult to conduct archaeological excavations or other research. According to Fokin, the secret services did not allow the search for the dungeons, so the research had to be conducted almost illegally. This led him to the conclusion that the authorities are hiding the secrets of the Vyatka catacombs, or at least do not allow them to be studied.
According to the local historian, these were not just underground passages, but a whole system that unites them. All of them were concentrated in the old part of Vyatka, connected monasteries and churches, led people out under the river in Makarya, some communications led to a mysterious underground lake. Supporters of the Fokin movement consider the Bishops' House (Moskovskaya St., 2a) to be a kind of center from which these underground passages diverged.
Bishop's house. Photo: Stanislav Suvorov.
Old Timers Testimonies
One of the main arguments of the supporters of the underground city is the numerous memories of those who visited the undergrounds in different periods of the 20th century. For example, here is the monologue of one of the residents of Kirov A. M. Mormil about the underground journey, given in the book of Fokine:
One of the few indisputable arguments in favor of the existence of dungeons is the existence of the so-called warm passage - a brick-lined passage between the bishop's house and the Trinity Cathedral. Archaeologists believe that over time, this transition deepened more and more, the cultural layer grew, and the surface of the earth gradually hid it in itself, and later it naturally turned into an underground passage. Its existence was confirmed by the research of Leonid Makarov in 1983.
In the center of the picture - Trinity Cathedral (blown up in the 1930s, on its territory the memorial complex "Eternal Flame"), on the right - - the building of the spiritual consistory (Dinamovskiy proezd, 18), on the left - the house of the ministers of the Trinity Cathedral (Dinamovsky proezd, 14). 1900 - 1910
Another proof of the existence of the catacombs is the presence of a "cave temple" - this is the name of the lower aisle of the Trinity Cathedral in the name of All Saints of Kiev. In the 1930s, it was covered with the rubble of a blown up church. Pensioner I. Zamyatin in 1979, in an interview with Anatoly Fokin, recalled him this way:
Fokin believes that the "cave church" is still intact underground.
Is it just drainage?
However, some members of the Vyatka local lore community are skeptical about childhood memories. So, at the debates in the Khlynov History Museum in the summer of 2019, director Alexei Fominykh shared his opinion that children who had been in underground passages in the 1920s and 1930s could embellish or distort reality, and such evidence cannot be considered reliable.
Kirov archaeologists remain one of the main skeptics of the theory of underground passages. Local historian Alexei Fominykh believes that it is very difficult to build an underground passage in the local soil - clayey, saturated with moisture, with a high content of limestone rocks. In his opinion, most of the stories are just a beautiful myth.
Archaeological excavations in recent years also do not confirm the presence of a network of underground passages, as stated in the summer of 2019 by the director of the research and production center for the protection of cultural heritage of the Kirov region, Andrey Kryazhevskikh. Although in 2013 the territory adjacent to the Bishop's House was explored, and in the summer of 2019, excavations were carried out at the place where the Cathedral was located until the mid-1930s. According to the Kryazhevskys, those structures that are taken for underground passages are nothing more than drainage systems, old basements or underground cavities.
Representatives of the Vyatka diocese have also repeatedly expressed skepticism about the research of Anatoly Fokin, who put forward the hypothesis that most of the underground passages are connected with the temple buildings.
The expediency of building such undergrounds also raises questions. In the pre-revolutionary period, Vyatka did not have sufficient financial, technical and other resources to dig a whole network of underground passages. Why create a city underground, spending a huge amount of energy on it? Isn't it more logical to deal with the real problems of the urban economy, of which there were many in Vyatka?
Anatoly Fokin believes that the underground passages were primarily intended in case of a sudden attack by enemies. According to another version, passages were laid between churches and monasteries, including in order to hide treasures, icons and luxury goods there. Another hypothesis of the supporters of the theory concerns urban infrastructure: local historians believe that in the winter it was easier to move underground than to clear the sidewalks of the abundant snow.
The well-known publicist Yevgeny Pyatunin believes that it makes no sense to ask why these moves were needed. In his opinion, this is the same irrational part of our past as the Egyptian pyramids, sculptures on Easter Island or Stonehenge. For what exactly they are made, we do not know and will hardly ever understand, but it is impossible to pass by their existence.