Meeting with local historians of local lore, you sometimes wonder that filmmakers do not shoot films on the history of Altai. More than once, "AP" has found exciting legends for its readers in a real treasury - ancient Biysk. Today we will tell you about the ghost of the White Lady.
Under a false name
Anatoly Tsapko, head of the historical department of the Biysk Museum of Local Lore named after Bianki, who has been working there for twenty years, believes that not all the secrets of the city, which owes much to its merchants, have been revealed.
At the beginning of the 20th century, about three hundred townspeople of different classes were engaged in trade. In addition to trade certificates, redeemed in the city government, merchants also paid to the treasury for the right to be called guild certificates. The question was not only about the image. Serious businessmen enjoyed privileges, in particular, they were not drafted into the army.
Among the merchant mansions of Biysk, no two are alike. Everyone chose projects for himself, so that no one would have this. Thus, the city estate of the Assanovs, which now houses the historical department of the local history museum, is an architectural monument of federal significance and a magnificent example of the Art Nouveau style. It was rebuilt in 1914 by the architect Lygin, a full member of the Imperial St. Petersburg Society of Architects, the best architect in pre-revolutionary Siberia. The millionaire Assanov did not save on construction. In addition to the mansion, the complex, fenced with openwork gratings, included a stable, outbuildings, a garden with a gazebo.
After the revolution, the new mansion was nationalized as soon as the owners had time to settle it. Nikolai Assanov died in prison in 1921. His son Ivan was shot in the 20th in Rubtsovsk. Daughter Lyudmila in 1919 married a Kolchak officer and went with him, according to one version, to the Far East, according to another - to the Urals, where soon - and here again the opinions of researchers diverge - she died of typhus in the arms of her father who found her or managed to return to Biysk and lived there for a long time under an assumed name.
Maria Andreevna, the wife of Nikolai Ivanovich, nee Krichevtseva, a representative of another well-known merchant family, had a terrible fate - to survive her children and husband much. The woman's earthly journey ended in 1959, when she was 84 years old. For a long time no one knew where the merchant's grave was. Fortunately, a long-liver was found who showed the place of Mary's burial, told about her life after the revolution. They say that the merchant's wife often went to her former house, when the party committee was located in it, scolded the officials for not taking care of the building, and she was right. Neither the Biysk Cheka, nor the party structures that occupied one mansion after another until 1990, when the historical department of the local history museum was located in the Assanovs' house, preserved its former splendor.
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The philanthropist, who repeatedly donated large sums to charitable institutions and in favor of the wounded soldiers of the Russo-Japanese and World War I, under Soviet rule, removed corners from her former employees. Remembering the merchant's kindness, they treated her well. According to Anatoly Tsapko, soon a tombstone and a fence made at the expense of sponsors will be installed on the grave of Maria Andreevna Krichevtseva-Assanova.
Tragedy and mysticism
The Assanovs' tragedy is written in mystical colors. From time to time, museum staff become eyewitnesses to visits by ghosts, non-scientific entities. According to Anatoly Tsapko, he himself saw them several times.
The first meeting happened ten years ago. Anatoly Ivanovich was going to go home after a working day. Making sure out of habit that there was no one in the museum, he was already setting the building on the alarm, when suddenly a woman emerged from the darkness and touched him on the shoulder: "You have a girl in a white dress knocking on the window on the second floor." Perplexed - after all, he had just checked everything - the historian again walked around the deserted halls. There was, of course, no one there. And in the morning, having reviewed the archival photos of representatives of the Assanov family, he gasped. The merchant's daughter Lyudmila wears a white dress on each of them.
The second meeting took place during the night watch. The door to the second floor hall, securely bolted, suddenly opened by itself with a terrible creak, "from which the hair stood on end," according to the interlocutor. For several minutes he could not move from his place because of the feeling of something otherworldly nearby.
Once Tsapko received a call at seven in the morning from the security console, informed that an alarm had worked in the museum. Scientist Tsapko hurried to work, entered the building first, when there was still no one there. On the stairs leading to the second floor, I found a fishing line, torn off as if someone had walked here. Some museums keep cats as rat-catchers, a furry "hunter" could do it, but there are no animals there. None.
It's a shame for the state
Visit Assan's mansion Feel the full spectrum of strange sensations. From the joy of spinning a waltz in the spacious hall, where, probably, wonderful Christmas balls were held, to fear and damp cold - when you go down to the basement.
Before the revolution, in a basement with high vaulted ceilings, the Assanovs kept a boiler room, a kitchen, and a glacier for storing meat. It was the first house in Altai equipped with a hot-air heating system. Hot air from the basement rose through the ceramic pipes inside the wall and warmed the entire building.
During the repressions, prisoners from all over the district were taken to this basement, 30-40 people from each village. And the new authorities turned the "refrigerator" into a "torture" one. “We call this room among ourselves, since we assume that the arrested here gave evidence. You see what powerful nails are driven into the wall,”the historian emphasizes that this is only a version. As well as much, however, in the secrets of Assan's mansion.
As always, it's a shame for the state. You watch another historical series and you are amazed: both the news feed is weak, and the factual basis is none. Why is the history of Altai, surprisingly cinematic, not attractive to Russian directors? After all, if such a film was shot, we would see the White Lady walking through the halls of the family mansion. Tobacco plantations on Bolotnaya street (modern Mukhachev). Wooden platbands, and to this day are as strong as steel. Merchant Assanov, philanthropist, organizer and trustee of temples and schools. Maria Krichevtseva - Assanova, going out through the family secret underground passage to the bank of Biya, to drink coffee with cream in the fresh air …
POPOVA Tamara