One of the most curious and still little-studied places in the Arkhangelsk region is the Chuprovo tract on the Verkhnaya Pinega, 6 km from Gorodetsk. The tract is a relatively vast area of forest in a pine forest on the right bank of the Pinega. Among the ancient pines, idols are crowded there. There are more than three hundred of them, the faces are carved on stumps about a meter high, as well as on some old living pines. All of them are turned in one direction, to the southeast.
According to research, idols are between 60 and 300 years old. They were quick to ascribe their authorship to the Samoyeds, who once brought herds of deer here to graze. However, unlike many other sanctuaries, this does not seem to exist! Local residents for the most part try not to talk about the tract and generally pretend that there has never been a trace of Chuprovo and his idols in these places. Although young people now often visit the tract.
So, the head of the local club, Ekaterina Mikhailovna Postnikova, loves to be here with her family to pick berries and look at unusual "faces" and pits. Old-timers, both Gorodets and Osanovs (Osanovo is the nearest village to Chuprovo, now uninhabited) cannot tell anything about this place. One gets the impression that they either really do not know about the sacred status of Chuprovo, or, on the contrary, they know too well what the matter is and what excessive talkativeness may be fraught with.
Maria Osipovna Kycheva, a displaced resident from Osanovo, told the researchers that in Chuprovo there were "scarecrows" - visions appeared, strange sounds were heard. Moreover, according to her own words) and according to the testimony of other people), such a "frightening" place in the district is far from unique! An amateur local historian from Gorodetsk, Valery Ivanovich Nikiforov, spoke directly about Chuprovo: “Our old women told us that we shouldn't go there. Danilov took the idol from there to Malye Korely, but it's not something to take to us, you can't go there. They say, that's why I lived a little. Well, they also said: you don't have to go there, you will get lost …"
True, the testimonies of today's mushroom pickers make it possible to assume that, obviously, it is still possible to go to Chuprovo if you treat the place with due respect.
There are also scholars who question the Komi-Izhma or Nenets ethnic origin of the Chuprovo idols. It is quite possible that this is the heritage of the beliefs of the ancient Chudi, whose settlement, according to legend, is hidden in the local forests.
The coordinates of the Chuprovo tract are 58 degrees 21 minutes 57 seconds north and 33 degrees 41 minutes 11 seconds east.
Evgeny Vukovoy
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