The knowledgeable reader has an idea about underground Moscow from the descriptions of the writer VA Gilyarovsky. About underground Petersburg - from the novel by V. V. Krestovsky "Petersburg Slums". And even provincial Tomsk, judging by the criminal novel-chronicle "Tomsk Slums", boasts underground galleries. The Tomsk novel describes how a rider on a horse could freely pass and hide in the dungeon under the coastal support of the Batenkov Bridge over the Ushaina River. There is information about the underground roads of Tomsk, where the oncoming troika of horses could have easily dispersed. Another large Siberian city, Novonikolaevsk (founded in 1903, renamed Novosibirsk in 1925) was no exception. In its dungeons, criminals were hiding, and death sentences were carried out there.
Resourceful clients
In the archives of modern Novosibirsk, there is a mention of the very first underground passage, long forgotten and buried. It was located in the center of Novonikolaevsk - in the area of the current Kommunisticheskaya street. An old wooden mansion with side brickwork and an openwork arch still stands there. The building used to be a brothel with a buffet downstairs and rooms upstairs. Covered chalets with riders eager for fun and carnal pleasures drove through the arch into the courtyard, from where guests infiltrated the rooms unnoticed. And at the time of the raid, which was from time to time arranged by the police, clients fled with a short secret underground passage laid under the street. After that, the fugitives sometimes joined the crowd of onlookers and wondered who they were catching.
Military airfield and the kingdom of plague
Much more tragic were the circumstances associated with another underground passage connecting the local prison with the bank of the Kamenka River. Novonikolaevsky Central is known for the fact that not a single escape was made from it in pre-Soviet times. Under Soviet rule, the prison was refurbished, completed and turned into the Novosibirsk Command River School named after SI. Dezhnev. Nearby was the prison administration - a red brick building, now a monument of urban architecture.
In Novosibirsk, interest in underground passages increases from time to time, usually when the round date of the city's foundation approaches. Local newspapers hold contests for knowledge of urban history. Guides from local travel agencies lead excursions around the center of Novosibirsk, telling about the disguised passages with which the Novonikolaevsk bandits ran away from the chase, and the underground rooms where they put the loot. But the most incredible fact that shocks the tourists is this: it turns out that during the war, under the building of the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theater, a military airfield was equipped, from which a plane with bombs could take off …
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And from time to time hordes of rats appeared from the city dungeons - the harbingers of the plague. Once the Pasyuk attacked the building of the mentioned river school. It turned out that the "plague" came from the basements that were previously an integral part of the Novonikolaevsk prison. And underground galleries are closely connected with the basements, going into the city center to the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral and towards the Kamenka river.
Ends in water
Perhaps this place of imprisonment was one of the most original in tsarist Russia for the execution of a death sentence. From the center, the suicide bombers were taken to execution along an underground passage to the bank of the Kamenka River, where they were shot in the back of the head.
In the pre-revolutionary years, the Bolsheviks turned the public funerals of their comrades who were killed by the bullets of the secret police into rallies, which the police could not disperse. So, in January 1908, during the funeral of a bank employee, a member of the local Ob group of the RSDLP, wreaths with red ribbons from party comrades appeared at the coffin of the deceased, speeches were made calling the people to the revolutionary struggle. Therefore, they decided to kill the Bolsheviks quietly and bury them also in a quiet way, not allowing the enemies of tsarism to excite the people. Convicted Social Democrats and Social Revolutionaries were taken out of prison by underground passage, killed, and then hid in the water in the truest sense of the word. It should be noted that the Kamenka in this place had a fast current and a depth of up to 50 meters. No body, no funeral. No funeral - no rally! The order is respected.
Brutal reprisal
Militants of the RSDLP ambushed the executioners to beat off the suicide bombers at the exit from the dungeon. Once they entered a shootout with a prison escort and fought off their comrades with losses on their side. Another time, the jailers took up and dealt with on the bank of the Kamenka not only the prisoners, but also the attackers.
There was such a case. The executioners shot the Bolsheviks Adolf Klepper and Vasily Shamshin. But the other three suicide bombers managed to escape. Among these three lucky ones was the brother of the executed - Grigory Shamshin. In the archives of the local cell of the RSDLP, information has been preserved about how Grigory jumped into the first courtyard that came across, rushed into the pigsty, where he buried himself in a heap of manure. The pursuers thrust bayonets into the manure, but the fugitive was not found.
Until the arrival of the Red Army, parties of prisoners were shot without trial in the underground passage leading from the prison to the river bank. At the moment when the Reds occupied the city, the remaining prisoners were finished off in the cells. Photos of the brutal massacre then went around the world press. About ten streets of Novosibirsk were named after the victims.
Modes of Tsar Berendey
Another prison underground passage led allegedly from the former police station to the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, located next to the railway bridge across the Ob. In 1908, on February 21, a branch of the monarchist "Union of the Russian People" was opened in Novonikolaevsk, headed by Hieromonk Ignatius, who held meetings of pogromists in a nearby parish school. Of course, the Black Hundreds needed secret communications with the secret police. Maybe they took part in the torture and execution of prisoners …
It must be said that the metro builders who led the tunnel under the city did not find any underground communications, although the metro line and the underground passage to the cathedral, information about which is in the archive, lie on intersecting routes. “The bones of prehistoric animals were found, the passages of King Berendey were not,” the head of the tunnel detachment Koshelev answered with humor to the question of the author of these lines.
And yet, these moves did exist! When they began to build a dwelling house and garages for the urban elite next to the river school, underground galleries were opened. The cadets of the school even threw stones into the holes formed in the ground. They listened when the pebble reached the bottom of the hole, in order to understand if it was deep. Individual daredevils descended into the darkness and returned from there, holding human skulls in their hands. These findings were immediately reported to the headquarters of civil defense, but from there the answer followed - to fill everything out of harm's way.
Apparently, at first the revolutionaries were shot in the courtyard of the prison and secretly buried there. And when there was not enough space, the executioners came up with the idea of taking their victims through an underground passage to the river.
Alexander Agalakov. Secrets of the XX century magazine