Kievan Rus owed its greatness to Yaroslav the Wise. This outstanding prince ruled the state for almost 40 years and made Russia one of the most powerful and influential countries in Europe. The remains of the prince lay in a sarcophagus in Kiev until the middle of the 20th century, after which they mysteriously disappeared. Where did they disappear and who was involved in the loud disappearance?
Newspapers instead of the prince
In the XX century, the burial of Yaroslav the Wise was opened several times. The first took place in 1936, the second and third in 1939 and 1964. During the first autopsy, in addition to male bones, fragments of the skeleton of a woman and a child were also found in the sarcophagus.
The authenticity of the remains of Yaroslav the Wise did not cause doubts among scientists: they established that the skeleton belonged to a lame man who died at the age of about 70 years. The female remains, the researchers noted, probably belonged to his wife Ingigerde. But then it was not possible to establish the identity of children's bones.
A real sensation awaited scientists during the fourth autopsy, which took place in 2009. Imagine the surprise of the researchers when they found in the sarcophagus Soviet newspapers of 1964 that had turned yellow from time to time.
But scientists were expecting another, much more unpleasant surprise: a genetic examination found that only female bones were in the sarcophagus, and that belonged to people who lived a thousand years apart. One skeleton is Old Russian, the other is probably Scythian.
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Archbishop scam
Where did the remains go and who stole them? Scientists puzzled over this issue for a long time until they remembered that during perestroika, one of the former employees of the local historical museum, who later emigrated to the United States, visited Kiev. Her name was Nina Bulavitskaya. She said that the remains of the Wise were taken away from Kiev in the fall of 1943, when German troops were leaving the city.
Together with the Nazis, some representatives of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church also left Kiev. One of them, Archbishop Nikanor, took the relics of Yaroslav the Wise from the St. Sophia Cathedral. In addition to the remains, he took with him the miraculous icon of St. Nicholas the Wise. This version is the most common.
But then the testimony of the witnesses diverges. According to some reports, Paul von Denbach, a colonel of the German gendarmerie, was among Nikanor's accomplices. Allegedly, he needed to deliver a box with the remains of the Wise and the miraculous icon to the train leaving Kiev. But the colonel was late, and the column left the city without the relics of the prince.
Way to the West
Others argued that the accomplices had agreed to leave Kiev in different ways, and the colonel would have given the relics to the archbishop already in Warsaw. However, Nikanor did not appear at the appointed time, after which the confused von Denbach handed them over to the Archbishop of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Pallady.
He, with the approach of Soviet troops, left for Germany, and after the war he moved to the United States, where he handed over the relics to the Ukrainian priest in New York, Ivan Tkachuk. He allegedly dies in 1990, at the same time traces of the prince's remains are completely lost.
However, most researchers still believe that Tkachuk was not involved in the disappearance of the relics of the Wise, and the remains themselves are still kept in the Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn, New York.
By the way, there have already been numerous requests from Kiev to clarify the fate of the relics. But the primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the United States, Metropolitan Anthony, even stated that there were no remains of the prince on the territory of the United States.
Still in Kiev
But it is likely that the remains of the prince did not leave the Ukrainian capital. At least some of them. Several years ago, the bones of the wife of Yaroslav the Wise were scanned on a tomograph in the city radiological center.
Researchers tried to make a 3D model of the prince's wife and concluded that some of the bones belonged to a man. Most likely, part of the remains of the Wise could be lost among the fragments of Ingigerda's skeletons.
Ivan Proshkin