What is the West Siberian city of Tomsk famous for? It has 9 universities, 15 research institutes, a special economic zone and 6 business incubators. But it may very well be that this is not the most interesting …
Leaky land
It has long been rumored among the residents of Tomsk that under the city there are a myriad of underground passages, including under the Tomya River. Rumor says that the size of these dungeons is much larger than the size of the most modern Tomsk. During the existence of the city, there have been an innumerable number of cases of discovering underground passages. The overwhelming majority of this evidence survived in the form of rumors, but many were reflected in newspapers - both in the 19th century and at the end of the 20th century.
Sometimes because of these dungeons in the city there was soil subsidence. In May 1898, two young ladies fell into a mysterious hole on Pochtamtskaya Street near the bishop's house. Later, on Lenin Avenue (formerly Pochtamtskaya), soil subsidence occurred at least three more times: near the House of Culture of the plant. Vakhrushev, near the TSU library and near the local history museum (the former house of the bishop).
Repeatedly the soil sagged in the yard of the estate on Shishkova Street, 1. In the 1990s, gravel from two KamAZ trucks was poured into the hole. On Oktyabrskaya Street, near house 33, a loaded dump truck once failed on the road. A clergyman, later a prosecutor, lived in this house. The prosecutor's son got into the habit of walking into the dungeons through the entrance to the basement of the house.
By the time the correspondent arrived, the basement was covered with floorboards. Another time, an excavator fell into the dungeon near the Southern Crossing. Digging a trench, he noticed a hole opened in the ground and jumped down to be curious. In the underground passage, he discovered a chest with old icons and books.
Promotional video:
TOMSK METRO
It is widely believed in the city that the size of the underground passages is so large that triplets of horses could freely enter or even leave them. At the end of the 19th century, Tomsk Provincial Gazette wrote that from the post office to the Camp Garden there was a giant underground passage called the Tomsk Metro. In 2 Belozersky Lane, in 1900, they discovered two underground passages on two sides, through which criminals were leaving.
It was alleged that thieves used underground tunnels to rob shops and organize prison breaks. True, in some places of the prison, the passages discovered did not lead to the cells of the prisoners, but to the house of the warders, and from it to the governor's palace, the present House of Scientists.
In our time, many researchers looked into underground passages and noted the presence of brick vaults in them. Tomsk journalist Eduard Stoilov walked down to the building of the regional court and walked along it for several tens of meters. The entire course was covered with bricks. Galina Ivanovna Zhidenova in 1964 walked through the dungeons from the building of the college of culture (Tomsk cultural and educational school) to the sports hall of the road technical school - this is three hundred meters!
Tomsk dowsers also confirmed the presence of the catacombs. An underground passage was discovered on Voskresenskaya Hill, starting from the northern side of the Church in the name of the Resurrection of Christ and leading in the direction of Salt Square. Its length was about 400 m. It lies at a depth of 3 m to 10 m and has closed chamber-type branches. They also discovered a network of underground passages in the area of Revolution Square (now Cathedral Square). However, these passages, apparently, are not in the best condition - there are blockages.
So the existence of dungeons near Tomsk is beyond doubt. But who built them? Versions, as a rule, are not quite serious. For example, the dungeons were built by Tomsk merchants to bring a bottle of wine from the cellar or to appear at the Public Meeting without a crew and without getting dirty in the mud; also - to ride underground with the girls to ride on the meadows beyond the river.
But Siberian merchants were serious people, they did not invest money in stupidity. To store goods, they really could dig dungeons, but for this purpose, basements are made under buildings, and not kilometer passages.
The second version is a robber. Allegedly, the robbers dug these passages in order to hide in them from the pursuit and hide their treasures. The robbers, of course, had to hide somewhere, but they were hardly capable of such serious creative work as the construction of long, brick-lined underground passages.
The third version is "runaways". It was developed by Eduard Stoilov, who devoted many articles to the Tomsk dungeons. The essence of the hypothesis is that Siberian life was indeed full of dangers. The merchants were afraid of robbers, those of the police. Both, they say, considered it necessary, just in case, to have an underground passage about fifty meters long to the nearest log.
CITY OF KING FRANGRASION
But the Tomsk geologist and enthusiast researcher Nikolai Sergeevich Novgorodov believes that an underground city is located near Tomsk, which is much more ancient than Tomsk itself. He substantiates this conclusion with three arguments. First, rumor has it that the area of the underground network of passages is larger than the area of a modern city. Extensive underground passages were found even in Yurga, 100 km south of Tomsk, as well as in the area of the village of Gar, Asinovsky district, 70 km to the north.
The second argument is the amount of work. The volume of soil extracted from the ground during the construction of undergrounds is hundreds of thousands of cubic meters, which corresponds to many tens of running kilometers of underground passages. These volumes can be judged by the size of the so-called mounds: Mukhin, Orlovsky, Zatorny, Kononovsky and others.
The soil of these hillocks is saturated with brick chips and lime particles, which gives out dumps of mining operations, accompanied by the arrangement of brick arches. At the same time, legends are associated with each of the mounds about the existence of entrances to the dungeon under them. Judging by the volume of the mounds, the length of underground structures near Tomsk is hundreds of kilometers. Neither merchants nor robbers could afford such volumes of secret work.
Finally, these underground structures are older than Tomsk. This is confirmed by curious findings. So, in 1908, on the steep bank of the Tom River, a cave was found, and in it was a perfectly preserved skeleton of a "Mongol", dressed in wooden combat armor and a low helmet made of horse skin. A short spear, bow and ax lay near the skeleton. Local scholars then suggested that the warrior lived in the XIV century, judging by his armor. The warrior was discovered in an artificial cave (because no natural karst formations were recorded in Tomsk) and was buried more than two centuries before the Cossacks who founded Tomsk arrived in these places!
Back in 1719, John Bell of Antermonsky, seconded by Peter I to the diplomatic mission to China of Life Guards Captain L. V. Izmailov, came across an even more curious testimony. Catching up with the embassy, John Bell did not abandon his interest in the history of the lands on which he passed, in the mounds.
In Tomsk, he had a meeting with a certain "bugrovik" who said that "one day he unexpectedly came across a vaulted crypt, where they found the remains of a man with a bow, arrows and spear and other weapons lying on a silver plate. When they touched the body, it crumbled into dust. The value of the stove and weaponry was very significant."
The fact that a buried warrior crumbled to dust when exposed to air is very much reminiscent of similar cases in Etruscan crypts, where the age of burials is tens of centuries.
In fact, it is generally accepted that before Yermak's campaign, Siberia was almost in the Stone Age. But it is not so. On Western European medieval maps, for example, somewhere in the area of modern Tomsk, you can see the city of Grustina (Gración), in which Russians and Tatars lived together. Novgorodov, trying to figure out when and who built Gración, may have found the answer to this question in ancient Iranian myths and legends.
The Iranians associated the name of the Turanian king Frangrasion, nicknamed Grozny, with the construction of this ancient city. Moreover, following the model of the king of the golden age Yima, he originally built this city as an underground one, so that it would be easier to hide from the cold. So it is possible that modern Tomsk stands on the site of this semi-legendary city. Or, more precisely, above him.
Valdis PEYPINSH