2017 marks the 100th anniversary of the disappearance of three echelons of values, which, according to the international treasures club "Treasures around us" (France, the city of Paris), are now estimated at 10-12 billion euros.
As a child, almost every one of us, after reading adventure books, wanted to find a treasure. Some even dug something somewhere. However, with age, dreams of hidden somewhere innumerable treasures gradually fade into the background, being replaced by more pressing and more mundane goals. Therefore, many consider professional treasure hunters (they are also called "black archaeologists") as people who did not finish playing Treasure Island in childhood. But in vain!
In Russia, unfortunately, there is no exact data on the number of treasure hunters. However, there is an official organization of treasure hunters - the Krasnodar regional public fund "Russian treasure hunter Yuri Kharchuk", headed, of course, by Yuri Kharchuk - a man well-known both in Russia and abroad.
Today, the organization includes 57 branches not only in Russia, but also in Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus … And despite the fact that the village of Leningradskaya Krasnodar Territory, where the headquarters of the Krasnodar Regional Public Fund "Russian treasure hunter Yuri Kharchuk" is located, is marked on the map as a tiny dot, at the moment it can rightfully be called the capital of modern Russian treasure hunting.
The Armavir local branch of the Russian Geographical Society (RGO) has long been friends and closely communicates with Yuri Ivanovich Kharchuk. Having come to visit him in the village of Leningradskaya, Yuri Ivanovich told us a very interesting story, with which we are happy to share with the readers of the site "https://salik.biz/". So, the word to Yu. I. Kharchuk:
Treasures in the Kuban
“We have found documents in the archives of St. Petersburg that indicate that in 1917 a train of 22 wagons with gold, silver, and other various values, as well as pieces of equipment and copper, was sent from Petrograd to the old merchant city of Yeisk on the Azov coast from Petrograd. silver and gold plates for minting coins in the south of Russia.
Promotional video:
The famous Armavir ruble and other coins in Armavir were made with this equipment. The deposits of the Petrograd loan treasury are simply a state-scale pawnshop, where, under the Provisional Government under the leadership of A. F. Kerensky, private deposits in gold and silver coins, jewelry and collections of various antiques of the richest people of Petrograd and the Romanov family, as well as foreign embassies were kept.
In October 1917, it was decided to evacuate the treasures from Petrograd to Moscow (90-95 percent) and Yeisk. Three echelons were sent. In one of them, according to the documents, there were 710 boxes of silver and 580 boxes of things for a total of more than four million rubles.
In those days, values were underestimated many times (as now, in order not to pay insurance fees) - the Russian mentality.
There were rumors about the Yusupovs' values. They were really kept in this savings and loan treasury and disappeared. Here - and this is a documented fact - and the most ancient (XII century) robe from the Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God. This is one of the shrines of Russia of that period.
All of this was guarded by an armed border guard corps. The border guards were under Kerensky A. F. to the Ministry of Finance of the Provisional Government. The savings and loan bank in Yeisk was not only hidden. She worked. More than 110 people were transferred to Yeisk, who provided the work of the treasury. She was housed in the city public bank. Now it is the Yeisk administration.
But the bank premises did not fit all the valuables. And then an agreement was concluded with a local merchant who owned the building opposite. The loan treasury occupied the entire basement and first floor of the huge mansion. Now this building is gone. A hotel and a shopping complex were built on this site.
Countless treasures were in Yeisk for about eight months. In the spring of 1918, the values were going to be divided by a revolutionary method. I had to transport them quickly.
According to our information, at night the most expensive things were loaded into the train, which was constantly under steam, and taken to the Tikhoretskaya station, and then to Yekaterinodar. On the way, some of the valuables were plundered near the village of Shcherbinovskaya. Part was hidden 12 kilometers from the village of Novoshcherbinovskaya.
From 1995 to 2006, until his death, the former director of the station of young technicians of the village of Leningradskaya, Alexander Grigorievich Filobok, dealt with this issue. He searched the basements and caches of the village of Novoshcherbinovskaya. In 2001, one of the farmers of the Shcherbinovsky district brought ten photographs from a family album of the 1940-1980s, where his grandfather and father were captured in the forge from different angles, including near the press. He brought and showed the press in good condition, on the side was the abbreviation SMD (St. Petersburg Mint).
For the press and photos, the farmer asked first $ 20,000, then $ 10 (which was very expensive at the time). This is A. G. Philobok spoke before his death. He said that there was a lot of this equipment lying around in the Shcherbinovsky district. In the Civil War (in 1918), it was thrown out of the carriages as being of no value. Now, in 2017, we regret not purchasing it. The farmer also said: his grandfather and father said that a lot of equipment came to the blacksmiths from the nearby districts - Starominsky, Kanevsky, Tikhoretsky, and also Leningradsky (a lot - in the Bely farm). And so on throughout the Krasnodar Territory (to the cities of Sochi, Tuapse, Labinsk, Apsheronsk, the village of Mostovsky).
In the 1960s-1980s, they bought something and took it to Primorsko-Akhtarsk to the shipyard. High-quality equipment came in handy for the manufacture of small boats at the Primorsko-Akhtarskaya shipyard.
Pigeon Angel
Who does not know - this is a statue weighing more than three pounds (48 kg) of pure gold, decorated with diamonds, emeralds, rubies, black pearls and other precious stones. It was made in the 17th century in Nepal by one of the religious cults. In the 19th century, the statue came to Afghanistan, and then to Iran. In 1915, the Turks captured a baggage train with valuables from the Persians, where a statue resembling a deity was discovered as a trophy. It was the Dove Angel statue.
In the same year, one of the Cossack officers brought this statue with other valuables to the Kuban, where he hid everything in a safe place. This place is the Bely farm, which is nine kilometers from the village of Umanskaya (after 1934 it was renamed into the village of Leningradskaya). After being wounded, he stayed here with his family for two months and at the beginning of 1916, together with a military unit, was transferred from the Caucasus to the Western Front. Exactly one year later, in 1917, a funeral came to him, in which it was indicated that he had died in a battle with the Germans on the territory of Western Belarus.
Residents of the village of Leningradskaya (Umanskaya) told about one treasure-werewolf - "the farm boyaryna Galka". Among the older generation, there is an opinion and there are rumors that the restless soul of the farm boyar girl Galka periodically infiltrates other people, especially negligent officials of any status, both in the 20th century and in the 21st century.
It all started back in 1934. In those years, from 1929 to 1934, being at party work, a woman of Balzac's age during the years of repression - dispossession in the village of Umanskaya - exchanged values for food and managed to exchange a large barn of food for jewelry. Wedding rings, gold and silver watches, icon frames, rings, coins, as well as part of the famous "Gold of the Kuban Rada" hoard, which is estimated today from 150 to 200 million US dollars, including the statue of the "Pigeon Angel".
In 1918, this official buried a very large fortune in one of the groves. And at the end of 1934, in one of the cellars of her native village, she herself was buried alive with treasures. Until 1934, all buildings in Leningradskaya were connected by underground passages with various holes and caches in the ground. Buildings and partly passages in the center of the rural settlement have survived to this day (buildings of the current registry office, gymnasium, museum of local lore, passport office, prosecutor's office, music, sports and art schools, a cinema, the old building of the pedagogical school and the former branch of the Kuban University). Under these buildings, you can hear the groans of the restless “farm boyaryn Galka”, who was buried alive in the basements of these buildings. According to legend, on the territory of the grove, three kilometers from the village, lies a treasure,who guards the statue of the "Pigeon Angel".
Treasure hunters at all times noticed that unusual visions constantly appeared at the burial place of treasures, a fire lit up or firebirds appeared or, as in the territory of the Leningrad region, a kind werewolf Anastasia Umanskaya-Ozarennaya. Sometimes in basements, caches, dungeons, underground passages, you can see lights at night. Since ancient times, treasure hunters all over the world have said that this supposedly treasure comes out of the ground to dry out. Any modern treasure hunter knows what swamp fires are, but there is also a part of the truth in these legends. Robbers of all times and peoples, hiding the stolen goods, often lowered them into the pits, where they buried the killed horses. Also in such graves came across human skeletons. In wartime, especially in the years of collectivization and dispossession, treasures were also hidden in graves.
Before the metal detector was invented, a wax candle was considered the main tool for finding treasure. In the famous treatise of Papus on the practical use of magic, the following recommendation is given: “At the supposed burial place of the treasure, light a candle installed in a walnut candlestick. The closer the treasure is, the stronger the flame will flicker. And where it goes out, there you have to dig. But if there is no firm intention to give a tenth part to the poor, the treasure will hide in the ground so deep that no strength will be enough to open it …
Part of the loaned Petrograd treasury in the hungry 1930s - 1940s of the XX century fell into the hands of such werewolves as the farm boyaryn Galka. And there were a lot of them at that difficult time."
Member of the Russian Geographical Society (RGO) of the city of Armavir, Sergey Frolov