According to archaeologists, in the world during the entire existence of mankind, about 300 thousand tons of gold and more than 2.5 million tons of silver have been buried in the earth. Among the countries of the Commonwealth, Belarus holds the lead in the number of treasures found on its territory. What secrets does the Belarusian land keep, and is the treasure revealed to everyone?
Center of Grodno. Old quarter. The reconstruction of the old building is in full swing here. The current owner of the building, Oleg Razin, says: the house was built by a wealthy city dweller in 1894 and the only one of all the houses on the street survived a fire at the end of the 19th century.
“To date, we have already filled in new floors - before that they were wooden. By the way, pay attention to the thickness of the walls - 70 centimeters,”Razin said.
According to him, there used to be furnished apartments here, which were heated with stoves.
For the last 20 years, the building stood abandoned and gradually collapsed. Then the local authorities decided to put it up for auction. At that time, Oleg was just looking for premises for a future medical center. However, there were many who wanted to buy the building.
“We have firmly decided that we will buy this building. The price went up, but we stood by the end. As a result, our competitors, seeing such persistence, gave up. And when we were already leaving the auction, we even had a joke: since we wanted to buy this house so badly, God will definitely send us some kind of surprise,”Razin said.
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Then no one could even imagine that the joke would turn out to be prophetic.
An interesting fact: long before the auction, the building had repeatedly become a filming site. According to the plot of one of the films about the Great Patriotic War, a Jewish ghetto was placed in the house, and the Gestapo was located in the building opposite.
“In one of the episodes, a ghetto inmate grabs a machine gun, runs up to this floor and starts shooting the Nazis from the window. At this time, the German sniper is trying to "remove" the suddenly arisen firing point: he shoots and hits the wall, and gold begins to pour out of it. In fact, it was a treasure, so in a sense, history has repeated itself,”said Oleg Razin.
Now the find is kept in the Grodno Historical and Archaeological Museum. The experts even managed to establish the owner of the treasure. According to the chief custodian of the funds, Elena Zharina, the box belonged to the dentist.
The experts estimated the found treasure at $ 20 thousand. In the near future, all those involved in the find will receive the compensation required by law.
By law, the finder of the treasure receives half of its value. If several people found the treasure, then this 50% is divided among all. But only if the treasure was discovered by accident - for example, during the reconstruction of buildings or carrying out earthworks. But if the treasure was found by archaeologists or specialists of the Academy of Sciences in the process of research work, then in this case there is no question of compensation.
However, there are other nuances on which the payment of remuneration may depend. For example, the owner of the land or building must be aware that work is planned at his facility and agree to them.
According to the law, the finder of the treasure must notify the local authorities in writing - moreover, no later than two days after the discovery of the treasure. For concealment, administrative and even criminal liability is provided for.
August 4, 1988 Center of Minsk. Excavation work is going on in one of the streets. The excavator digs a trench.
“Around lunchtime, there was a call from the operative on duty - an urgent departure. I took the folder, went downstairs, asked what happened, and the officer on duty said: “It seems like the treasure was found,” Valery Meleshko recalled.
On that day, Meleshko was the duty investigator for the Moskovsky district of Minsk.
“I'm coming to the place. The pit has been dug, a hydraulic excavator is standing nearby, and around are workers and, of course, onlookers. I ask what happened. They say, they say, they found a box in a pit, and in a box - antiques,”the investigator recalled.
He looked into the pit and gasped. Cups, boxes, dishes, coins, awards …
Identified attesting witnesses. They began to extract. A little later it turned out that the weight of the silver find was 13 kilograms. The number of items is over 500.
“They collected it, loaded it into an UAZ and brought it to the regional department - right to the duty unit. And they began to decide what to do with this treasure,”the investigator recalled.
How to place such a voluminous treasure in a relatively small duty area? However, they found a way out - they were placed in a room for storing weapons.
“The Minsk treasure was kept in one of the safes for several days. I sealed this safe with my personal seal. And only I had the key to it,”said Valeriy Meleshko.
And then a flurry of calls began: the journalists found out about the find - they asked for an interview. However, the investigator and colleagues pestered.
“Almost the entire regional department came in full force - from the investigation, from the search, from the OBKhSS, the leadership of the regional department - show, show! Well, he showed it. Just took everything to its place, they come from the Department of Internal Affairs: "Show me!" Then from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, from the administration, the district committee: “Show me! Show me! " And instead of investigating criminal cases, I had to deal with this,”the investigator recalled.
The Minsk treasure was the last of the largest discovered in the USSR. An interesting fact: fifteen years before the discovery of the treasure, signalmen worked at the same place - they were extending a telephone line. But they were unlucky: the workers walked just a few centimeters from the treasure.
However, the large-scale find was of great historical and artistic value.
“The Leningrad Hermitage even aimed at him, but the treasure was defended and left within its borders,” stated Volozhinsky.
The treasure remained in Belarus thanks, among other things, to the investigator Valery Meleshko, who was in charge of this case.
“A man from the local history museum called me - most likely, it was the director. He said: "If we now inform Moscow that the treasure has been found, it will most likely leave Belarus." I say: “Well, how can I help you? We must also transmit information on the discovery of treasures along our line. And the man asked me to play for time,”Meleshko explained.
A few days later, according to the inventory, the treasure was handed over to the Belarusian museum workers. Today it is kept in the National Historical Museum of Belarus. But who owned the treasure and who hid it is still unknown.
For the discovery of the treasure in Soviet times, the finder was entitled to 25% of the value of the find. In 1988, rumors spread around Minsk that the excavator operator Leonid Blatun, who dug the treasure, was given incredible monetary compensation. And allegedly for this money the worker bought a four-room apartment and a black Volga. However, the historian Vladimir Volozhinsky is skeptical: “I don’t really believe it, because for the eight thousand rubles received as a reward it would hardly have been possible at that time to buy a black Volga, which cost about 15 thousand, and even more so, four-room apartment.
Brest region, Kossovo. For several years now, the Puslovskys' palace has been under reconstruction. And here Leonid Chuiko works. In the fall of 2018, a worker laid communications near the palace and found an old chest.
A special commission established that the chest was made by a master from St. Petersburg. When the safe was opened, they found several coins of 1906 and two books. One of them has become completely unusable. The second was placed in a special freezer - the book is to be restored.
The experts of the National Library of Belarus are engaged in the revival of old books. The head of the restoration and conservation department, Zoya Kovalenko, is showing a ready-made tome.
First, the publication is checked for mold and mildew. This happens in the biolaboratory. Before our eyes, a specialist takes out "glasses" with samples from the refrigerator.
Microbiologists work in gloves and a mask. Some books are "treated" by hand, others - in a special cell.
“The work cycle lasts eight hours. We disinfect books with formalin vapors and then ventilate them,”the specialist explained.
The integrity of the sheets is restored using a special sheet-pouring machine - by the way, the only one in Belarus.
“This restoration is considered complex and requires so-called pulp. Pour this mass into a tank with water and mix. Then we turn on the pump, and the liquid from the reservoir is pumped into the bath, where the sheets to be restored are located,”said and showed the leading engineer Lyudmila Poltoran.
A little later, the water is drained from the bath, and the fiber settles exactly where the paper suffered the most. Excess moisture is removed on a vacuum table. Here the sheets are glued, reinforced with starch and sent for drying.
The book, which was restored before our eyes by a specialist, is from a rare fund of the National Library of Belarus. Year of publication - 1763. As for the books found in Kossovo during the restoration of the Puslovskys' palace, it is not yet clear what kind of books they are and what their content is. But Leonid Chuiko has an assumption:
“As far as I know, the palace was played at cards. Perhaps these are some kind of debt books."
The fact that one of the descendants of the old noble family of the Puslovskys was indeed an avid gambler is also confirmed by experts. The palace has changed its owners many times. He survived the First World War, and during the Second World War - in 1944 - he almost burned down.
“It burned for seven days, and, according to eyewitnesses, the smoke spread for another month,” said research assistant Olga Parkhuta.
Archaeological excavations on the territory of the palace began in 2006. This is how fragments of iron casting from the entrance gate, decorative elements from statues and fountains, and more were found.
“There were also found cutlery, medical vials, partly tiles. However, the reconstruction of the palace continues. And, possibly, there will be new finds,”noted Olga Parkhuta.
For many centuries Belarus has been the arena of military operations. From the impending danger, people tried to hide what they had of value. Or in peacetime they put it off for a rainy day. It is not often possible to find treasure hoards today - coin ones are much more common.
Viktor Kakareko - Chairman of the Belarusian Numismatic Society. She has been studying numismatics for almost 40 years. On the map he made, there is all the information about the treasures found on the territory of the Grodno region. From the 18th century to the present day. Places are marked with flags. And each has its own color.
“I marked the earlier ones in yellow. Then there are the red ones, well, and the later ones he marked in blue,”the numismatist explained.
“If this is a map of treasures found only in one Grodno region, then what can be found throughout Belarus?” - the journalist asked a rhetorical question, but received an answer.
He described museum numismatic collections and organized them into catalogs. And in the 2000s, he visited those places where coin treasures were accidentally found in the post-war period. I met people.
“An amazing thing: let's say they found a treasure in 1953. I come to those places, I find the person who found the cache. Yes, the person is already elderly, but he is alive and well and ready to tell his story. And then I go to another place where the treasure surfaced in the seventies. And there is no one who discovered it, no witnesses, no eyewitnesses. Everybody died. That's when you start to think: maybe there are treasures of some kind there? Here are some archaeologists who say that their health is poor because they dug graves.
According to the layman, the less common a coin is, the more expensive it is. But experts say that the value of a coin can be influenced even by such a factor as the desire of a potential collector to purchase such an item in his collection.
It's true. It is necessary that they want to buy this or that coin. And they always pay attention to its prestige”, stated Victor Kakareko.
It happens that treasures settle in private collections, but this kind of information is difficult to find. As for state funds, treasures get there in different ways: museum employees periodically go to excavations, and people bring something there, finding it at their summer cottage. Today, 118 treasures are kept in the funds of the National Historical Museum of Belarus.
One of the most famous treasures presented in the museum is Vishchinsky. It is also valuable because it consists not only of money, but also of objects.
“Means of payment are presented here in hryvnias of various types. But the most interesting thing is silver jewelry for women in large quantities. All of them are made at a high technological level,”Tolkacheva explained.
Often, treasures and places where they were found help historians determine trade routes. And even the historical events that took place there.
One of the largest coin hoards found on the territory of Belarus was discovered in the Smorgon region - silver Arab dirhams. Today they are also on display at the museum.
The treasures were put to the dead - for reckoning in the next world. They were sacrificed to the gods. They were accidentally lost and carefully buried. Over the past 200 years, more than a thousand different treasures have been found on the territory of Belarus. And this is more than in all European countries combined.
Author: Olga Alipova