The FSB building in the center of Moscow has long been overgrown with rumors, legends and myths. Over time, it even became difficult to separate the truth from fiction, and the stories of other witnesses about the shadows of tortured prisoners walking through multi-storey dungeons are more reminiscent of scenarios for horror films than real events.
For example, it was said that Nikolai Yezhov, hearing suspicious rustles, fired a revolver into the dark corners of the office. When he was arrested, they found bullet holes in the floor and walls. Heinrich Yagoda was an enemy of superstition, but he, secretly from his subordinates, sprinkled the poison he personally made on the floor and on the walls of the offices.
Lavrenty Beria showed himself to be an unbending atheist. Mysterious groans, sighs and rustles did not bother the People's Commissar. In such cases, he recited poetry or sang loudly.
The evil spirits have established familiar relations with General Viktor Avakumov. He liked to drink at night in his office and always left an unfinished bottle of vodka or cognac in the closet. In the morning, of course, the bottle was empty …
I must say that the place where the profitable insurance company "Russia" was built at the end of the 19th century, into which the Cheka entered after 1918, from time immemorial did not have the best reputation, and now it continues to keep its secrets. Although this may be for the best.
The area between Lubyanskaya Square and the Sretensky Gate has been known since the 12th century under the name of Kuchkova Polye and is associated with the name of the rebellious boyar Kuchka, who met Grand Duke Yuri Dolgoruky "extremely proud and unfriendly", for which he was put to death.
So the first mention of Moscow followed the execution, and the boyar's severed head fell on the site of the future capital. Old-timers assure: the shadow of a proud boyar still wanders the streets and lanes of Lubyanka. From time to time, strange "fireballs flying straight out of the ground" are observed here. Since then, the place has been ominous and intimidating.
Historians never tire of arguing about why this place was named Lubyanka. According to one version, in order to suppress the too independent spirit of the Novgorodians, who were not particularly happy with the forcible annexation of Novgorod to Moscow, Ivan III overpowered three hundred noble Novgorod families here. It was they who named this place Lubyanka in honor of Lubyanitsa Street, which was in their hometown.
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At the beginning of the 16th century, the Varsonofievsky Monastery was built here, at which there was a "wretched" cemetery, where the rootless, beggars and suicides were buried. In the basement of the "dead" shed, a deep hole with ice was arranged, where the bodies of the unknown dead were placed. Twice a year a priest came, served a panikhida for all the dead, and they were buried together in a common grave.
In the Time of Troubles, here twice the militia of Prince Pozharsky utterly defeated the Polish invaders. In 1662 Lubyanka became the epicenter of the Copper Riot. The uprising was brutally suppressed, and 30 instigators of the riot were executed at Lubyanskaya Square - retribution overtook the rioters in the same place where they were guilty. Blood was shed again at this place.
In the 18th century, these places were the possessions of Darya Saltykova - Saltychikha, as they called it, "a torturer and murderer" who tortured up to 150 serfs … "A freak of the human race," wrote Catherine the Great at the verdict of Saltychikha.
After the trial and imprisonment of Saltychikha in the Ivanovsky monastery, this blood-soaked property roamed from hand to hand until it passed to Dr. Haas, who was famous for his mercy to the poor. For a quarter of a century, the holy doctor "bleached" this land, atoning for someone else's crime.
At the corner of Myasnitskaya and Lubyanka, there was a terrible brainchild of Peter I - the Secret Chancellery. In 1762, the reigning Catherine II established the Secret Expedition, which was located here at the beginning of Myasnitskaya.
Foreman Stepan Ivanovich Sheshkovsky was appointed chief secretary of the Secret Expedition. They feared and fiercely hated him, calling him "omnipresent" behind his back. He created such a network of agents that he could report to Catherine at any hour about the actions and plans of her subjects. By dark secret passages, the chief secretary was escorted to the empress's personal apartments, where she listened to his report. Sheshkovsky created his own biased interrogation system.
Not long before the revolution, the famous archaeologist Stelletsky carried out excavations in the basement of the Grebnevskaya Mother of God Church, which stood on Lubyanskaya Square, and discovered there an underground gallery and white-stone secret passages. Walled up brick crypts, coffins, women's wigs, a silk shroud, shoes and a gold cross were found under the stone floors. Under the upper row of burials from the 18th century. discovered two more levels of graves (XVII and XVI centuries).
An underground passage clogged with earth led him to one of the prisons of the Secret Order, where dungeons and torture rooms with rings and hooks were discovered. rings, hooks. When tortured in these dungeons with passion, the screams of the unfortunates reached the Kremlin.
At night, Muscovites saw some kind of glowing glare on the walls of the building. The connoisseurs explained that it was the spirits of the dungeon, unable to withstand the sufferings of the people, and were coming out. It was rumored that at night one could see the ghosts of tortured and secretly buried prisoners.
The temple was demolished in 1935, and mine No. 14 of Mosmetrostroy passed through its undergrounds and passed through the underground of the church. Underground passages to the basements at Lubyanka were discovered. During the construction of the KGB underground garage, not far from the place where the church stood, they found two secret passages lined with white stone, stone bags and torture chambers. In the 1980s, a huge building for the KGB Computing Center was built on the site of the temple.
In the famous house on Lubyanka, inexplicable strange phenomena are still observed today: either incomprehensible shadows crawl along the walls, then the phone rings in a wrong voice, or business papers unexpectedly end up in the wrong folder. Retired employees secretly tell how some of their former colleagues secretly sprayed their office "on four corners" with alcoholic drinks or holy water: just in case.