- Part I-1 -
“Who controls the past controls the future, and he who controls the present controls the past."
The motto of the ruling elite
George Orwell.
In historical paintings by artists: more fiction or reality?
Let's continue to peer at A. Zubov's engravings, but so as not to be reproached for giving a one-sided alternative view, altering the artist's vision, let's see what traditional viewers of old engravings write.
Looking at the image on the engraving, one can doubt that Peter I founded the city on a deserted place, since the city is full of buildings, or, to assume that at the beginning of the 18th century, the speed of construction of buildings was so high that it could not even be surpassed by the builders of St. 21st century.
Western historians cannot in any way determine the specialists: either they have bastard, wretched Petrine Russia, or the land of miraculous masters who know how to build multi-tiered buildings in such a short time.
Another engraving by A. Zubov - Menshikov's palace, 1716.
For eleven years they built up the embankment of Vasilievsky Island, and if you look closely, then the entire Petrograd side. Naturally, the apologists of the city's 300-year-old antiquity will argue that wooden houses are drawn on the engraving, and a wooden house is being built in one summer, and in ten years with that, you can build a whole city if you drive tens of thousands of builders, not peasants, but those who knew how to build multi-storey wooden houses.
And these woodcutters build an architectural miracle - the building of 12 colleges.
Standing on a foundation made of industrially manufactured concrete blocks.
The bottom gray layer is concrete blocks of the same type as in the photo below.
Questions not only to builders, but also to historians - where are these concrete factories? Who heard anything about them or are there any documents about such industries in the north-west of the Russian Empire in the 18th century?
But historians and specialists repeat the same phrase
“Finally, the final, fourth stage, the use of concrete lasted less than a hundred years and ended at the beginning of the 4th century AD. e."
It is not true, yours, gentlemen-historians: walk around St. Petersburg and peer at the foundations of buildings, and you, suddenly, find out that concrete until the 14th century was used quite widely in the city, which began to be called St. Petersburg in the 17th century.
House in courtyards, not on the main line, not renovated yet. It has the same foundation.
In all guidebooks, tourist guides, it is written that the building of 12 colleges was erected by the architect Dominico Trezzini. In 1722, the construction of a three-story building began, the work continued for exactly 20 years.
It is known how many foreign architects took part in the restoration, I emphasize, namely, the restoration of the city, and not construction from scratch. I can assume that the city was rebuilt according to the drawings and documentation to which these architects had access. This means that perhaps there are archives with architectural designs of buildings up to the 14th century, which are still kept in the Vatican or other libraries.
A. Zubov's engravings, which date from 1714-1716, depict St. Petersburg with multi-storey buildings, lined with embankments and canals.
In the drawings of other artists a century later, the city has not changed much.
For those who do not remember what it was called earlier, the Petrogradskaya Side, an old map will unobtrusively refresh your memory with the Tartar origins of St. Petersburg. It turns out that the Petrograd side is the Tartartarskaya Sloboda
And, if this was a common name for a city district, reflected even on maps, then why was it not preserved in time?
Another engraving by A. F. Zubova, which deserves attention, but is usually hushed up by connoisseurs of the history of St. Petersburg.
ADMIRALTY, 1716, engraving by A. Zubov.
Historical reference:
Construction began in 1704 according to the drawings of Peter the Great on an island between the Neva Moika (the island was named Admiralty). The Admiralty was conceived as the main shipyard of Russia on the Baltic Sea and was the center for the construction of ships. The premises of the Admiralty were ship workshops.
The shipyard was built with the letter "P", the main facade was 425 meters long, the side walls were 213 meters. The Admiralty also performed a defensive function: it was a fortress enclosed by an earthen rampart with 5 earthen bastions and a deep ditch. 2 channels were dug around the perimeter from 2 sides. For the view of the enemy, a forest was cut down around the building. This is how the Admiralty Meadow appears. The first ship from the Admiralty shipyard was launched on April 29, 1706.
Building 1711
In 1711 the first restructuring of the Admiralty was carried out. In 1719, the idea of a vertical dominant was realized: a metal spire with a boat was installed above the gate, erected by the Dutch master Harman van Bolos [6]:
In 1711, a tower with a spire with a boat was built in the center of the main facade. There was a gilded ball under the boat, inside
In some historical reference books, publications of which there are many, it is said that in 1711 a wooden spire was built on the top of which the ship froze.
One gets the impression that in order to substantiate what A Zubov saw, historians had to come up with a wooden architecture from Peter and Petersburg. There is no other way to explain how architectural visions from the future can appear before the eyes of an artist.
By order of Peter I, in the spring of 1719, the expansion and stone construction of the "workshops of the chambers" was carried out.
Already during this period in the center of the buildings appeared a hut with a wooden top tower with a pointed spire. (To date, no plans have been found for this tower and its exact location has not been established.)
The original ship stood on the spire until 1815, when during the repair it was replaced with a new one, while the original van Bolos ship was lost. The second boat stood for 71 years: in 1886, during the next repair of the spire, it was removed and replaced with an exact copy; the original, weighing 65 kg, length 192 cm and height 158 cm, was put on display at the Maritime Museum located here.
The Admiralty building made an impression on the people of that era:
On the Admiralty, a beautiful and huge building at the end of this road, there is a beautiful and rather tall spitz, which goes directly opposite the avenue
- Friedrich Wilhelm von Berchholz, chamber junker in the retinue of the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp. Diary entry dated June 23 (July 4) 1721
Engravings, paintings - all these are artistic images and they cannot shake the opinion of those who know from childhood that St. Petersburg was built from scratch by Tsar Peter I, that apart from the swamp and the forest along the banks of the Neva, in front of Peter's eyes there were no other landscape elements connected with the residence of a person, although the fortress Nyenskans, as it were, was already. However, as well as the ruins of star fortresses, one of which was located almost opposite the beginning of the Malaya Neva River (on the left bank of the Bolshaya Neva, where the Admiralite is now) and the ruins of a fortress on Zaych Island now - the world famous star (in every sense) Peter and Paul Fortress.
If a thought inspired from childhood cannot cause a vibration in the brain of a young man, then adult uncles and aunts should at least pay attention to the discrepancy between the picture they hold in their head with the pictures painted by witnesses of that era.
Another drawing of the view of the Peter and Paul Fortress by an unknown author, taken from the album Nouvelle collection de quarante-six vues de Saint-Pétersbourg et de ses environs, dessinés d'après nature / dessinée. (Link)
It looks as our contemporaries see it in the 21st century.
The approach of an engineer and a specialist with a humanitarian education to the description of historical realities is sharply different.
The first thing that comes to mind of an engineer considering the drawings of the Peter and Paul Fortress: where did the builders of St. Petersburg get so many granite blocks for facing the fortress (and do not forget about the apparel of the embankments of the Neva, rivers and canals), which means that the engineer assumes that there should be industrial enterprises for the production of building materials. This means that there must be careers, roads, transport, that is, what is included in the modern concept of logistics. There must be funding, private firms or sovereigns who were supposed to survive and increase their power, becoming powerful and known throughout the world in a hundred years. But where are these factories, factories, workshops, the history of which has at least the necessary 200 years? I ask historians and archaeologists who don’t even think about logistics and industry,that it should be with such an accelerated and voluminous construction, which was carried out from the 18th to the 19th century. Accounting records and financial records must be preserved. But where is all this ??? Try to find on the Internet at least one mention of factories founded at the beginning of the 18th century for the production of granite cladding of the embankments of rivers and streams that spread across St. Petersburg.
Let's return to A. Zubov's engravings.
So, we carefully look at the view that opened up to the artist, looking from the Neva to the shore, in the place from which the Fontanka begins to run and where the Summer Garden of Peter I.
Engraving by A. Zubov "Summer Garden", 1716.
For those who do not scrutinize the details, there is an enlarged fragment in which the embankment faced in stone is clearly visible. And, as everyone knows, not just - "in stone", but in granite.
And what will historians not come up with, allegedly eyewitnesses of that time, who claim that the first embankments were wooden and painted like "brick". And after all, simpletons, from students to academicians, believe that yes, Peter I erected the wooden upholstery of the Neva River.
By the middle of the 18th century, all the largest and most beautiful buildings of the capital were built along the banks of the Neva, while the Neva embankments themselves were still wooden. Therefore, first of all, the Commission began developing a project for facing the embankments of the Neva with stones. A special decree was issued, which said: "Here in St. Petersburg, against all our palaces, gardens and state houses, make the banks of stone." The overall management of these works fell on the shoulders of the architect J. Felten. In 1762, the construction of the Winter Palace was completed, and the first stone embankment was built here. Then construction continued upstream of the Neva.
“None of the cities in the world in the 18th and 19th centuries did not know such significant urban planning measures to strengthen the banks of rivers and canals as Petersburg. Along with the embankments of the Neva, the granite banks of the Yekaterininsky (now Griboyedov) and Kryukov canals, the Fontanka and Moika rivers are being erected, the walls of the Peter and Paul Fortress are being clad with granite, etc. 30 km of granite embankments.
To do this, it was necessary to clear river beds, dig new canals, strengthen the banks with hundreds of thousands of piles, lay tens of thousands of cubic meters of granite and even more rubble slabs. The volume of work is grandiose today! On page 27 of the above book, you can see a diagram of the coastal strengthening and driven piles in section.
If we consider that all the grandiose construction was carried out by hand, a picture of a truly titanic work in which the people acts as a creator appears. Thousands of serfs, released by the landlords "for rent", in incredibly difficult conditions of merciless exploitation by contractors erected the most complicated structures at that time. Engineers and craftsmen showed a lot of ingenuity and skill, especially in the construction of pile foundations of embankments. "Embankments of the Neva", V. I. Kochedamov.
V. Kochedymov calls a modest figure of the length of the faced embankments of St. Petersburg for a 25-year period - over 30 km, but in fact these embankments, in granite shoes - over 300 km.
And do not forget about Kronstadt and the forts, also covered with granite, and also, which does not fit into any legends about the construction of the Old Ladoga Canal allegedly begun under Peter I and its granite sluices, which were partially preserved.
Compare, as possible, a granite block of this size and such precision of manufacturing.
Lay using the primitive technology shown in the figure
with the help of a wheelbarrow and a whip of overseers.
An obvious artistic lie of a history expert, Academician Gerhard Friedrich Miller, for Russian repetitions-historians, fixed by the fantasies and hands of Russian artists!
I admit that the Old Ladoga canal could have been lined with granite for its entire length of 117 km, and granite blocks for St. Petersburg in Peter's and post-Peter's times were pulled out of the canal, and not from the quarries. A thought that is not as absurd as it seems to the adherents of official history.
Further, everything was dismantled for the needs of the city …, and what the canal-pearl of the Ladoga area of Tartary has become.
A simple calculation of the need for the extraction of granite for the facing of buildings, the Peter and Paul Fortress, the embankments of rivers and canals, the facing of Kronstadt and the locks of the Old Ladoga canal leads to a figure of 15-20 million tons of granite blocks, which must be mined in quarries, brought to cutting factories and executed all the necessary work to transform the muddy shores into granite beauty.
When the volume of granite blocks in millions of tons is mentioned, the construction of the Cheops pyramid comes to mind, into which, according to historical experts, somewhere about 6 million tons of stone blocks were laid. A grandiose structure, erected, according to the official history, by the slaves of ancient Egypt. And, of course, Egyptian historians refer to images of painted temple walls. True, no one cares whether these elements of building actions relate to the construction of the Cheops pyramid.
Without a shadow of doubt, statements wander from one Internet page to another that:
Over the past millennia, time and people have done great damage to the appearance of the pyramid. Facing slabs and pyramidons disappeared, walls were punched. And if time is running away from the pyramids, then they cannot get away from people. People are more gluttonous than time, they even bite off pieces of pyramids.
Peter I was not a pioneer in using the results of someone else's labor. For a mason in a royal dress, two problems were solved at once: the elimination of questions on the topic of who could lined the Old Ladoga canal with granite in the swampy wild, deserted places of Ladoga. Evidence of an old civilization is being destroyed and a source of excellent building material has been found to rebuild the city. The city founded by Peter I for the next generations of people.
This is what descendants have done at all times, using the developments of previous generations - it is easier to use old solid materials in construction than to organize new production of granite blocks. Why waste good things, Tsar Peter I was not the first to engage in falsification of history!
Continued: Part I-3
Damkin
