This is the most mysterious and most famous prison in Russia. Do not renounce it, says popular wisdom. And even more so do not try to solve its old and new secrets - you will be more whole.
Today every curious person can learn everything about Butyrka. Well, almost everything. For example, the fact that it was built in Catherine's times on the territory of the farm of the same name. In the country, the loving queen believed, it was restless and there were not enough jails.
Then it never occurred to anyone that in the twentieth century Butyrka would be in the very center of Moscow - at the intersection of Tverskaya and Novoslobodskaya. However, it does not spoil the cityscape at all. The building itself was designed by none other than the great architect Matvey Kazakov, who presented us with the Senate Palace in the Kremlin, Tsaritsyno, and the Petrovsky Travel Palace. Therefore, a plaque hangs on the wall of the famous prison: "An architectural monument of the 18th century, protected by the state."
Four famous Butyrka towers still bear old names - "Pugachevskaya", "Police", "Severnaya" and "Sentry". And they are built like the labyrinth of the Minotaur: if you do not know the rules, you will walk in circles until you are mad.
BLOOD STORY
The first famous resident of the prison was the main "villain" of Catherine's era - Emelka Pugachev, who remained there until his execution in January 1775. It was after his case that the nickname "Katka-na Prison" was firmly stuck to Butyrka. And then who just did not sit there! Terrorist and poet Ivan Kalyaev, psychopath-revolutionary Lieutenant Schmidt (Ostap Bender could not remember his name, but the hero's name was Nikolai), Vladimir Mayakovsky, as well as Nestor Makhno and Felix Dzerzhinsky - then still associates who later found themselves on opposite sides of the barricades.
In the years when, according to the opinion of the leader of the peoples, the class struggle began to flare up as socialism was being built, Butyrka's cellars and cells literally cracked from overpopulation. Although the "enemies" were released rather quickly - no prison in the USSR had so many executions … When Alexander Solzhenitsyn got into this prison, he began to write a novel, which he later destroyed.
Promotional video:
As his wife recalls, the story was too incomprehensible to the reader. It is difficult to describe the sensations of Butyrka in the cell in normal human language. “He would simply be recognized as crazy,” Solzhenitsyna explained the writer's decision. In a word, the past of these torture chambers is rich and sinister. However, their most terrible secrets are revealed only from within. I don't know, for better or for worse, but I happened to get acquainted with them, as they say, first-hand.
Brother for Brother
It so happened that in the dashing 90s, my cousin Kostya was under investigation. And even went to jail. Although he is to me, as the French say, only a cousin, I have always considered him a brother. All childhood we were together: in the summer in the village with my grandmother, in the winter we went to visit each other. They shared their boyish secrets, fished, drove bicycles, played potatoes and bouncers with village girls. Later they simultaneously entered institutes, almost simultaneously got married and had children.
But if I continued to desperately cling to an unnecessary career as a medical scientific worker, Kostik went into business. And what kind of business was there without crime in those years? In addition, he began to drink too much; in short, Kostya ended up behind bars due to stupidity and a fatal coincidence: he went to negotiate with a careless companion, having a barrel in his pocket. Moreover, he told the taxi driver that, they say, "right now the fraera will shake." There he was taken with a "trellis" at the ready. They sewed an armed robbery, and even drunk. Drawn by a lot. Of course, my relatives and my lawyer tried to free the poor fellow. And I went to see him, then I met Butyrka, where my brother was awaiting trial.
THERE SPIRITS WALK …
To be honest, the prison complex itself did not make much of an impression on me: Vladimirsky Central and St. Petersburg's "Crosses" look more imposing, downright suppressing with a gloomy solemn look. I was told that "White Swan" and "Black Dolphin" are generally a terrifying sight, not for the faint of heart. Butyrka in this sense is not particularly different. At the same time, it is also a great exaggeration to say that crossing the threshold and filling out the documents necessary for the visit is a joy.
My brother Kostya, contrary to expectations, looked good. I did not see any bruises on him or teeth knocked out with urchins. Is that a little thinner. And longing splashed in his eyes.
- Bone, how are you? I asked awkwardly.
- Yes, everything is fine. Only scary. It's very scary here, Misha!
Why didn't I think then! First of all, that our hapless businessman is sitting in the same cell with bandits and thugs of all sorts, and even sadistic cops are exasperated over him.
- What, Kost, how can I help? - I ask.
- Nothing, bro. It is she - Butyrka. Her perfume. They crush. Hurry up and get out of here.
To be honest, I myself felt a kind of strange feeling, passing through the endless corridors of the old prison. It seemed as if someone was watching me, even watching. Someone invisible but omnipresent. Almighty and incomprehensible. It was then that for the first time I thought: what kind of prison is this - Butyrka?
VOICES AND DREAMS
I often visited my brother, tried to support as best I could. It should be noted that he stood firm - he did not complain, did not become limp, did not ask for too much. And I was more and more interested in this strange place, especially after one incident. Once, after another meeting with my brother, I went outside the Butyrka gate and suddenly felt a heavy look on me. Looking up, I saw a few steps away a young but heavily shabby woman, silently staring at me. I don't know why, but I went up to her.
- Have a drink? - asked the stranger in a hoarse voice. As if hypnotized, I went with her to the nearest stall and bought a bottle of vodka.
-You have who there? Wife? Friend? -She nodded towards the prison and took a sip.
- Brother! - I answered.
- Clear. And I just live nearby. Although you can't call it life. Pavel and I just got married and moved to a one-room apartment inherited from my grandmother. There are our windows.”She pointed to a gray building across the road. - And, you know, hell started right away: voices at night, terrible dreams, headaches, hallucinations. Unbearable! I even went to a gypsy woman, to a fortune teller. And she says: leave your house, few can resist Butyrka. The prison will suck your whole soul out, leave it with pacifiers, rubber dolls. And it will be too late. She said so. Pavel really left. He left. And I stayed. It was a pity to leave the apartment. I began to suppress the pain and horror with booze, and now I can't sleep without this booze. By the way, our neighbor also suffered, and then stepped out of the window …
- Maybe you should leave too?
- No, Butyrka won't let me go. Listen, buy some more vodka, can you?
I bought.
WHOLESALE, ABOUT AND … GOOD LUCK
Butyrka's imperceptible fears seized me more and more, and my brother's words about invisible prisoners that could not leave the gloomy corridors of the prison did not leave my head. Our meetings were short-lived, and for a long time I did not dare to question leisurely. Indeed, he still lacked to entertain a curious relative with free will tales about his prison. But one day he still could not restrain himself, asked what he meant when he spoke about the ghosts of the old prison. And Kostya began to speak - as if he was just waiting for a signal to speak out, to share with someone the horror of the accursed prison.
He began with the fact that, according to rumors, for a long time there was a bad name about the Butyrka lands. Local residents tried to bypass them. They believed that they were marked by a curse and could radically change their lives, of course, not for the better. Orthodox peasants from neighboring villages, and Muslim Tatars from the village of Cherkizovo, and the pagan Cheremis, who served as grooms and cabbies in Kitay-gorod, also avoided a lost place. They all refused to take anyone there. And then a prison was built here.
CATS (CAT-Native Prisoner)
From that moment on, they began to take prisoners to Butyrka, who had to suffer not only because of captivity and prison rules. The prison had its own spirit, its own appetites. Perhaps that is why in the thirties of the last century it became not only a place of mass imprisonment of enemies of the people, but also a giant frontal place. Nobody knows how much blood of the enemies of the people has been shed here. Rumor has it that it was slippery to walk along the corridors. And also some mysterious experiments were carried out. It seems that experiments on crossing monkeys and people … Isn't that why the local ghosts squeal so monstrously in the night?
Many of the local prisoners not only heard strange groans and screams at night, but also felt heavy breathing in the surrounding void and turned around to echoing footsteps behind their backs. There were also those who assured that they had miraculously escaped from the grasping hands of invisible villains. By the way, if an excessively brave prisoner is trying to ridicule the one who talks about the ghostly inhabitants of Butyrka, you will not envy him. This is not a joke here.
Although the spirits of the four towers themselves may well punish an overly arrogant prisoner. According to his brother, prisoner Sergei P., suspected of a series of robberies, was extremely skeptical of the dark spirits of the prison, where he had to await trial. But one day he himself was faced with something that turned his ideas about life and death.
Returning to the cell after a date, the prisoner became the object of persecution by an inmate from another era. The ghost grabbed him by the shoulders, whispered hellish threats, stabbed him with a knife. Frightened to death, he told the lepile-paramedic about his horror. He just laughed … A simple brother near Moscow Seryoga, finding himself in Butyrka, closed in on himself, stopped joking and bullying newcomers, was silent for a long time, not responding to external stimuli, and at night, on the contrary, screamed and groaned.
He told inmates that in one of the corridors of the prison he met an old convict in some ridiculous rags, thickly splattered with blood. Blood ran down both his hands and his face. The old man gazed into Seryoga's eyes and smiled bitterly, then sadly sung in a low voice a terrible "song" … about "organ transplantation." And suddenly he threatenedly demanded from the crazed guy … liver. The experienced "passenger" in the cell, after hearing this story, grinned.
“This is Mikhalych,” he said authoritatively, “he was slapped here back in the 30s, and his liver was tested. By transfer. Only then did the Chekists fail. And how many people were killed!..
- And what awaits me now? - Serega asked fearfully.
- Death with a scythe awaits you! - answered the authority. - Whoever saw Mikhalych is considered a dead man.
Soon Serega, out of the horror of waiting, opened his veins. He was pumped out, and what happened to him later, no one knows. Another prisoner was attacked right on a bunk - a prison bed, in the Pugachev tower. At night, he felt himself being strangled, and the strangler's hands seemed to come out of the wall. Fought back. Then he looked in the mirror - there were marks on his neck, sort of like bruises. Some of the brothers laughed, and the experienced ones said: he got off well - this is Golovkin, one of the main pedophiles in Russia.
RUN WHILE YOUNG
Is it possible to escape from Butyrka? Any employee will say no, but as Italians say, "time is an honest man." And this happened. The first fugitive was allegedly Iron Felix back in 1905, right on the eve of the first revolution. They fled in Soviet times, but they never talked about it. In July 1996, a woman ran away from Butyrka for the first time - Natalya Sorokozherdeva, 26 years old, went to the "jerk". Three days later, she was detained at the Dorogomilovsky market in Moscow when she was buying carrots. In September 2001, three especially dangerous criminals escaped from death row, digging with spoons on the cement floor to the collector, from which they got out into the street.
Two were detained in the Moscow region after three weeks, the third - only in April 2003. They say he still sits in Butyrka, because in a mystical way he senses if someone is going to leave the prison without proper permission. Zhanna Aguzarova, who ended up in the local cell in 84, also tried to escape from here. But it was not necessary: the future superstar of the sov-rock was already released.
CHILDREN OF THE UNDERGROUND
According to rumors, there are mysterious underground passages in Butyrka: Catherine allegedly traveled along them to the prison to look at Pugachev. Each is like a whole underground street, along which you can drive a carriage drawn by a train or a car. They say that Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin himself in December 1941, frightened of what is understandable, planned to wait out the dashing times for the country. My brother, Kostya, was frank: you just pay the money - and leave along the underground roads wherever your soul desires.
Only now the grandmas are very specific. Mainly because even corrupt jailers are scared to go there. The prisoners are sure: somewhere there the most terrible criminals are immured forever. For example, a bloody Russian maniac, a man whose name has become a household name, is Andrei Chikatilo. The incarcerated prisoners of “Severnaya” argue that there was no execution: this “specimen” turned out to be too important and interesting for psychiatrists.
Allegedly, he still willingly talks about his "exploits". They say that the screams of this monster mystically reach the farthest cells of the prison, driving the inmates crazy. Although, perhaps, they do not come from the dungeon, but from hell itself, where the maniac belongs. One way or another, the truth about what actually happened to Chikatilo is Butyrka's last secret. Although they do not like this word here: those who are within its walls prefer to say "extreme".
pS My brother received a suspended sentence and was released from Butyrka, but literally in six months he burned out from tuberculosis, which followed him from the old prison.
Mikhail MOLOTOV