In Irkutsk, a new excursion route has appeared, dedicated to the history of one of the oldest and most mysterious cemeteries in the city, on the site of which the Central Park of Culture and Rest was located until recently. On the Mount of Jerusalem, political exiles, representatives of the clergy, the scientific community, merchants and all strata of the population found their last refuge. More than 100 thousand people are buried on the territory of 20 hectares.
What secrets are hidden in the very center of the city? When and under what circumstances did the Jerusalem necropolis appear, and how did it become a place of entertainment? The Altair correspondent met with the author of a new cultural program, head of the exposition department of the regional museum of local lore "Window to Asia" Sergei Norvaishas and set off on a retrospective journey across the sorrowful land.
Plague Born
The history of the Jerusalem necropolis begins in 1772. In those days, the functions of the civil registry office were assigned to the church. Each newborn was assigned to the parish of a temple and entered in a special register - the "metric book". Information about the most important events in the life of parishioners was also entered there: marriages and, of course, deaths. The deceased were buried in consecrated ground, that is, in the church fence. In Irkutsk at that time, there were own cemeteries at the Spasskaya, Tikhvin and Holy Cross Churches.
But such territories were very quickly "saturated" with the dead. "Popular" churchyards housed several "floors" of burials in the very center of the city. Unsanitary conditions contributed to outbreaks and the spread of infections, as was the case in European Russia, where plague raged in the 18th century. In 1771, a decree was issued by the Governing Senate prohibiting burials at churches in all cities of the empire. The decree ordered that all burials be made in special places outside the city. In Irkutsk, the area behind the Church of the Exaltation of the Cross was allocated for a new churchyard. This is how the Jerusalem cemetery arose.
- If you take a close look at the maps, you can see that there were practically no borders separating the Jerusalem cemetery from the Exaltation of the Cross. The Musical Theater and the entire surrounding area are also located on the ground of former burials. However, it was only 20 years after its foundation that the cemetery received its modern borders and regular leadership. It had its own artel of workers who dug graves, as well as the headman, who collected money and then handed it over to the council. Subsequently, the funds were used to improve the cemetery. There was also a trustee who supervised the work of the mournful place, - says Sergey Norvaishas.
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Second temple
It is noteworthy that in Irkutsk happened, so to speak, a remake of the story of the Temple of Solomon, which has become a symbol of Freemasonry. Or it may be that you can find biblical allusions in anything. In any case, the Entrance-Jerusalem Temple, which has survived to this day, was not the first ritual building during the buffet. A small stone church in the name of the Lord's Entry into Jerusalem was built in 1795, it was located in the current center of the park. Due to engineering violations during construction, by the middle of the 19th century, the church was significantly dilapidated and partially destroyed by an earthquake, after which it was dismantled, and a chapel was installed in its place at the expense of the city bourgeois woman - Mrs. Kachalova.
The Second Entry into Jerusalem Temple was founded for service in 1835, at the highest point of the city. All Irkutsk churches and monasteries were visible from its bell tower. The church had an interesting peculiarity: there were no registers of births, no baptism and wedding ceremonies were held, only a burial ceremony took place. Moreover, before the burial, the authorities of the parish church, to which the deceased was assigned, had to inform the rector of the Church of the Entry into Jerusalem that the deceased had already been included in their metric. Only after such a bureaucratic procedure was the funeral service possible. In addition to the Orthodox, there were Catholic, Lutheran, old Jewish and new Jewish cemeteries on the Jerusalem churchyard.
"Stars" and strangers
Now the organization "Irkutsk Necropolis" has identified the identity of slightly more than two thousand buried, this is less than two percent of the total. Among the most famous are the names of architects Anton Losev, Vladislav Kudelsky and Alexander Razgildeev, the Decembrists Joseph Poggio and Pavel Vygodovsky, the author of the Irkutsk chronicle Pyotr Pezhemsky, publicist Mikhail Zagoskin, artist Maxim Zyazin, associate of Kolchak on polar expeditions and military traveler Frogographer. But now it is almost impossible to establish the places of their real burials.
- The exact number of monuments has not yet been taken into account, they are scattered throughout the territory. While walking, you can stumble upon a huge number of gravestones: grave structures, substrates for monuments, slabs. And very few monuments have survived at their original location. It is only thanks to a happy coincidence that the monument to Mikhail Vasilyevich Zagoskin has survived on the historical site. When all the cemetery structures were dismantled in the forties of the last century, the workers simply did not bother - the monument was too massive, and they decided not to touch it, ” explained an employee of the local history museum.
Partisans and polar explorers
According to Sergei Norvaishas, the so-called communist platform at the monument to the Fighters of the Revolution attracts much attention of the guests of the excursion. There are more tombstones here, the names on them are recognizable. The heroes of the Civil War, the leaders of the Red partisans Nestor Kalandarishvili and Nikolai Burlov, as well as the Chekist Konstantin Tanaisov are buried in this place. There is also a mass grave of 145 victims of street battles in Irkutsk in 1919-1920, which put an end to Kolchak's rule in the city. A total of 18 tombstones were installed, and in 1940 a monument to the "Fighters of the Revolution" appeared, which has now been removed for reconstruction. It will be recreated as it was.
The grave of polar aviators is very popular: the Finnish sailor Otto Arturovich Kalvits and the Hungarian revolutionary, flight mechanic Franz Frantsevich Leonhardt, participants in the Civil War and the first Irkutsk voluntary society Dobrolet. They were the organizers and pioneers of extreme winter flights to Bodaibo, Yakutsk, as well as an air expedition to Wrangel Island. Their plane crashed in 1930 in a blizzard. The families of the victims insisted on the burial of the aviators in Irkutsk. A monument was erected over their grave - a tetrahedral truncated pyramid, turning into a pylon, on which a propeller is fixed.
By the end of the 19th century, the city authorities raised the issue of closing the cemetery due to its apparent "overpopulation". The burials were located in four tiers, the ancestors of the Irkutsk people crowded literally on every square meter of land. But the scientific circles of the city proved that it is still possible to bury there: the special composition of the local soil helped the bodies quickly mineralize, the organic matter decomposed after a short time. Now it is difficult to say for sure what was the decisive argument: the authority of scientists or practical considerations, but the cemetery lasted until 1932 - for 160 years.
Dancing on the bones
In the 1950s, the Irkutsk City Council decided to create a recreation area in the region of Jerusalem Mountain. Out of habit, the Soviet government radically changed the concept of the area, and in 1957 the Park of Culture and Rest was opened in honor of the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution: with a dance floor, a parachute tower, chess and checkers clubs, and attractions. For 50 years, this territory turned into a pleasure enclave.
- The cemetery was treated very unkindly. Tombstones, structures, enclosures were methodically destroyed. Someone took it to their home for building materials, the statues were placed on trucks, taken to the ice of the Angara, then they waited until spring came, and everything sank to the bottom. Initially, there was a list of monuments of architectural and historical interest that should have been preserved, for example, a monument to the Decembrist Joseph Poggio. But it was destroyed in a fit of destructive inspiration, and it has not yet been possible to establish a specific burial place. The current design of the sculptor Andreev was created only at the end of the 1950s, the historian said.
Tales from the crypt
Like any location overflowing with the dead, Mount Jerusalem is reputed to be a place of paranormal activity. In the early 2000s, representatives of the non-academic organization for the study of anomalous phenomena "Cosmopoisk" visited here. The activists conducted "deep scientific research" and found some "deviations of electromagnetic radiation" and other evidence of a poltergeist on the local land. Here, in the Temple of Entry into Jerusalem, perhaps the most famous Irkutsk urban legend - "About the boarded-up church" begins.
The legend begins with a story about a bad sign: when the construction of the temple was coming to an end, the main dome collapsed. Nobody was hurt, but the sediment remained. The dome was restored and construction was completed in a few years. This story is a true fact. But further events, as they say, are not documented. Even before the revolution of 1917, when the temple was in operation, a young girl committed suicide under the restored dome. Soon the building was closed for restoration. Several years passed, the temple started working again, but some time later, at the same place, a similar story happened to a young man. It is difficult to say for this reason, but after this incident the services in the church stopped again. In Soviet times, the walls of the old church first housed a police warehouse, then a student dormitory, and then a ski lodge. But people did not take root here, rumors spread around the city about an ominous place full of ghosts of suicides. The building was abandoned. As soon as they got out the boards, they decided to board up the doors and windows, and the darkness reigned forever in it.
But students are restless people. A certain brave guy had a bet with his friends that he would spend the night in a damn old house. In order not to get bored, he took his girlfriend with him. The first thing they found, climbing through the window, was a real grand piano, which gave the gloomy devastation and desolation an atmosphere of surrealism. The girl, apparently deciding to add a noble gray hair to the guy's hair, played a terrible, but cute melody on the piano. These sounds were the last that were heard by the accompanying couple of students who remained outside. In order not to disturb the young, the friends went home.
No one knows what happened at night, but in the morning the brave couple did not return home, and did not return the next day. They called the fire brigade, broke down the windows. At the place where two suicides had once occurred, the lifeless body of a young girl was found. And in the corner, at the same piano, they found a kid. The girl died of a ruptured heart, the guy's lower body was paralyzed, he became dumb and soon lost his mind. The details of the incident are still unknown, but it is believed that eerie piano sounds can still be heard in the vicinity.
Sergei Norvaishas refers to the legend with a certain amount of irony. Much more mysterious is another incident, little known to a wide circle of Irkutsk residents. In the 1950s, long before the appearance of the now almost relocated zoo, there was a menagerie in the Central Park of Culture and Leisure, where mainly taiga animals were kept. And then one day, and this fact is indicated by documentary evidence, one dark night … an elk disappeared from the menagerie. The mysterious disappearance has long agitated the minds of contemporaries. The police turned out to be powerless, the investigation of the disappearance came to a standstill. Wouldn't a hare or a gopher be gone, but a whole moose? A very suspicious case.
Renaissance
After the closure of the Central Park of Culture and Leisure on Mount Jerusalem, an “exclusion zone” was actually formed, a place where marginal elements hang out. The city center has turned into a criminal wasteland. But in March 2018, the majority of Irkutsk residents voted for the revival of the park as part of the "Formation of a Comfortable Urban Environment" program. In July 2017, the improvement of the stairs connecting the complex and the historical part of the city began. The builders completely renovated the staircase, laid granite tiles, repaired and equipped the fountain and observation deck. Flowerbeds were laid out around the fountain, bushes and trees were planted, benches and lanterns were installed.
In 2018, an alley was opened on the territory of the park, along which stands with information about prominent Irkutsk residents buried in the Jerusalem cemetery were placed. This year, the second stage of work began. To eliminate historical illiteracy, memorial signs will be installed in the Lutheran, Catholic, Orthodox sections of the cemetery. It is planned to expand the entrance area, reconstruct the main entrance and install a glass dome over it. On the territory of the memorial there are recreation areas, paths for walking, connecting the entrances along the Baikalskaya Street and the central square. Work on the site is being carried out under the supervision of archaeologists.
- Mount Jerusalem is part of our history. The history of the city is, first of all, the people who glorified it. It would be no sin to mention where these people rest now. More than 100 thousand Irkutsk residents are buried here. It would be unfair to consign them to oblivion, - the guide concludes.
Vadim Melnikov / IA Altair
Photo by the author
