From the prophets and foretellers, many have heard about the Bulgarian Vanga, the mystical Rasputin, and if we touch upon the darker ages, then Nostradamus or, if in Russia, Basil the Blessed. Many articles have been written about these individuals. Meanwhile, dozens of people were lost in history, who also possessed superpowers and could see the Future and predict events. But they were much less fortunate.
Information about two such Russian prophets came down to us literally in a few paragraphs, and this is due to the fact that these people came to the eyes of those in power and their fate in the end was most likely tragic.
Login Kochkarev
In January 1789, an unknown person appeared in Moscow. He wore a monastic dress, was called Login Trifonov Kochkarev, a native of Circassian. Was 60 years old, was "strong in appearance, dark complexion and black hair."
Passing the house of the merchant Akhlopkov in Zamoskvorechye, he stopped and threw several handfuls of snow at the windows.
“In this house,” he pointed to Akhlopkov’s house, “there will be a fire.
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Kochkarev was arrested as "an idle and hesitant man, spreading rumors." And a day later Akhlopkov's house “from an unknown reason” burned down to the ground. However, was the reason really so unknown? Wasn't the house burnt down because the seer by his prediction "brought" misfortune?
The incident was reported to the Governor-General of Moscow, P. D. Eropkin. The general wished to personally interrogate Kochkarev.
- Who are you? the Governor-General asked the prisoner sternly.
“The Wanderer of God,” the prisoner answered.
- How did you know that the house will burn down?
“I don’t know myself,” said Kochkarev. - It seemed to me that the house was already on fire.
- Can you tell me what awaits me these days? - got interested in Eropkin.
“Great joy awaits you,” answered Kochkarev. - And no longer than tomorrow.
Indeed, the next day Yeropkin received the highest gift - a gold snuff-box with a portrait of the Empress, showered with precious stones. And again it could not be said that this was only foresight? And if a "tip", then this strange person, having predicted, can cause an event, and much less joyful. The house of the merchant Akhlopkov burned down.
To avoid misfortune and further divination, the "wanderer of God" was imprisoned by the general. And not just in a dungeon, but in a secret cell.
Be that as it may, this event seemed to the Governor-General sufficiently significant and alarming to hasten to report it to Petersburg, to the Empress Catherine I.
“A man appeared here,” wrote Yeropkin, “in monastic attire, calling himself … Kochkarev. This man exactly predicted the mercy of Your Majesty expressed to me, and to many other Moscow people of different ranks he explained their fate in detail and very accurately, and some of the events predicted by him have already taken place. " The empress received an immediate reply to this report: "Send this man to us with the return courier."
Directly from the secret chamber, the soothsayer was escorted to the carriage, which proceeded to the capital. In addition to his involuntary companion, Kochkarev, the courier delivered another letter from the general to the palace. What he wrote could not be ignored by the empress:
“… this man, with all his insight and wondrous gift of divination of the future, can create harmful consequences, for he predicted that in 1812 Russia will be invaded by untold enemy forces and will take Moscow, from which there will be no stone unturned. From this prediction, great confusion can occur in the minds."
Information about the future fate of the soothsayer is fragmentary and scanty. It is only known that in St. Petersburg he was subjected to "deliberate" observation by local doctors and scientists. As far as can be judged, the empress herself also showed interest in this person.
“Peter Dmitrievich! - wrote the Empress to Yeropkin. - The Kochkarev you sent is an extraordinary person. He also predicted to us that in 1812 there would be a war with the destruction of Moscow and that this war would end in our victory. He predicts a war at the beginning of the 20th century, with many nations …"
As you can see, Login Kochkarev was right, his predictions came true. But what happened to him is unknown.
Dmitry Silin
In all ages, the attitude to prophecy on the part of rulers and rulers was ambivalent. On the one hand, they would like to look behind the curtain of time, but on the other hand, they were afraid to cause the misfortune lurking there and awaiting them. That is why those of the seers who did decide to do this had to be willing to pay for their insolence.
The names of those of them who decided to devote their prophetic gift to the vanity of the confrontation between the rulers and their favorites, we find today in criminal records, court books and "search cases" of those years. It was they, the "search cases", who kept the name of "the sorcerer Dmitry Silin", who lived during the childhood of Peter I.
Monk Sylvester Medvedev hid Dmitry Silin in his cell for three years.
That monk himself was a man famous for his learning in his day. He kept the sorcerer with him so that he would give him, as we would say now, political forecasts.
“And Sylvester Medvedev,” reads the “search case”, “told him to look in the sun:“What will Prince Golitsyn be like and will he be a tsar in Moscow, and he, Sylvester, a patriarch?” - And he, Silin, according to those Sylvester's words, went to the Ivanovskaya bell tower of the Great twice and looked into the sun.
And in the sun he saw: on the great sovereigns crowns, as usual, on their heads, but for Prince Vasily Golitsyn, the crown hung around the breasts and back and from the side, and he, the prince, stood dark and walked with a wheel; and Princess Sofia Alekseevna was sad and confused; and Sylvester is dark; and Fyodor Shaklovitoy stood hanging his head, and it meant to him that there would be a speedy death, and Golitsyn was the same …"
Then Sylvester Medvedev told Silin to look into the sun and guess:
"Will Prince Vasily Golitsyn be happy in the campaign against the Crimean Tatars or not?" - And Silin looked into the sun with prayer: my God and the gracious, the Mother of God, the Mother of God, and the Life-Giving Trinity, and Michael the Archangel, and all the power of heaven, show me what I have in mind: what will be over Prince Vasily Golitsyn - will he be any good or not? - And in the sun it was indicated that Prince Vasilya will not be happy in that, only he will spend the state treasury and wear people out."
Sylvester Medvedev allegedly sent Silin to Prince Vasily Golitsyn. Here is what Silin told about this visit during interrogation on the same "case":
“I’ve come to Prince Vasily, and the prince asked: will he be a great man in Moscow? And I told him: whatever I have started, there will be no sales person for that - nothing will come of it."
The old sheets of the "search case", the clerk's script of the old letter keep these speeches, recorded under torture. Then, on March 7, 1691, Prince Vasily Golitsyn himself had to answer the question point "about fortune telling and divination by Mitka Silin." Moreover, it was told him, the prince, that in case of denial, they would torture him, the prince.
And although as time went on, morals became softer, prediction, when it concerned rulers and authorities, remained a dangerous business.
