The name of the Chernigov Colonel Vasily Dunin-Borkovsky is associated with a terrible, either a legend, or a reality … Ethnographers recorded it back in the 19th century. The same legend is found in the book "Customs, beliefs, cuisine and drinks of Little Russians", published in 1860 in Kiev.
The ancestor of the surname Vasily Dunin-Borkovsky was a certain knight Pyotr Vlost. He lived in the XII century under King Boleslav III Kryvoust, and the village of Skshino was granted to him. near Radom, Poland. There, nearby, is the village of Borkovice, where some of his descendants eventually moved.
Tradition says that Peter Vlost was a warlock who tried to study and practice alchemy. When nothing came of his "science" and he could not get gold from lead, he contacted the forces of evil and in his thirst for profit "bargained" to the point that he became a vampire during his lifetime, and after death did not find rest. This was the payment for the greed and betrayal of the faith. His descendant, Peter Dunin, in 1360 founded a church in their ancestral village to atone for sins. This temple is still standing, but it seems that even such an attempt to appease the higher powers did not save the family.
One of the representatives of the family, Kasper-Anzhey Dunin, moved to the Chernigov region from Poland in the 17th century. The fact is that in 1638, for his valiant participation in the Smolensk war against Muscovy, the king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Vladislav IV granted Kasper-Anzhey the village of Borkovka in the Chernigov voivodeship. Since then, his descendants began to bear the surname Dunin-Borkovskiy.
Servant of all masters
About the young years of our character - Vasily Dunin-Borkovsky - nothing is known. However, there is information that his father was killed in 1649 during the uprising of Bohdan Khmelnitsky, and his mother Tatyana and sister Katerina, Catholic who tried to hide in Nizhyn, were executed by the rebellious Cossacks.
Vasily Dunin-Borkovsky understood that times were changing. In order not to lose his ancestral lands, he converted to Orthodoxy and even enrolled in the Zaporozhian Army. Indeed, in 1667, Muscovy and Poland concluded "eternal peace", dividing the Ukrainian lands among themselves. The cunning Borkovsky was making a career: he headed one of the hundreds of the Chernigov regiment - a prominent post. And after the arrest and exile to Siberia of the Chernigov colonel Vasil Mnogogreshny in 1672, his place was taken by the dodger Vasily. The colonel was a very significant position at that time, the owner of which held military and secular power in his hands over a large territory of the regiment, that is, the whole region.
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From the new hetman, Samoilovich, Vasily received several more villages …
Obviously, Colonel Dunin-Borkovsky knew how to serve any government, different forces - earthly and heavenly. He received letters confirming his nobility and ownership of his lands and his father's estate, both from Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, and from Peter Alexeevich, the first Russian emperor.
Dunin-Borkovsky died on March 4, 1702. He was buried in the Assumption Cathedral of the Yeletsky Monastery in Chernigov. A portrait of Vasily and a slab with an epitaph written by Archbishop John Maksimovich were embedded in the wall of the cathedral. And then everyone discovered what the colonel's subjects were afraid to speak aloud.
Night fishing
By order of Dunin-Borkovsky, shortly before his death, on the wall of the Trinity-Ilyinsky Monastery, his afterlife journey was depicted. The people were horrified, but no one dared to contradict the will of the colonel. The “traveler” to the afterlife was portrayed so reliably that everyone recognized the true face of the colonel. It also became known that Dunin-Borkovsky did not confess and did not receive communion before his death and ordered not to invite a priest to his funeral.
The people murmured. Eyewitnesses, emboldened, began to tell that Dunin-Borkovsky "ate something on Good Friday, pulled the daughters and wives of his villagers, tyrannized the peasants themselves, dressed them in bear fur and poisoned them with dogs." The servants reported about a secret room in Vasily's chambers, where he was engaged in some strange experiments. Inhuman screams were often heard from the forbidden chambers. But, except for the colonel, no one entered there. Well be surprised, we add, because Dunin-Borkovsky was a warlock, alchemist and sorcerer, like his distant ancestor.
Six months after the death of the colonel, a series of strange deaths began in the vicinity of Chernigov. On this occasion, an investigation was even carried out, which established that in a year thirty people were missing and about twenty died "a German death." The people had no doubt that the fault was Dunin-Borkovsky, who after his death became a ghoul and drank the blood of villagers. How else to explain the mysterious death and disappearance of people? Kobzari (Ukrainian singers) at the bazaars then sang:
Seems people, sho Colonel Blukay nights. That is your suffering soul. Calm shukae.
Rumors began to spread that every night a carriage pulled by six black horses drove out of Vasily's grave and rushed to the Dunin family estate, which was located on the Black Steep above the Desna. There, the dead man walked around his estate, causing terror to the servants and household members. Before the first roosters, he stopped near the old well and pointed at it with his finger, and after crowing he disappeared. Finally, Dunin-Borkovsky's relatives and residents of Chernigov turned to the church for help.
When late at night the ghost carriage again rushed to the Black Steep, a procession of priests and laity led by Archbishop John Maksimovich came out to meet it. They met in the middle of the bridge over the Strizhen River. The archbishop raised the cross, and the colonel's ghost fell into the river. And the carriage floated through the gray fog over the river and soon disappeared into the air.
The end or …
The next morning, Basil's tomb in the cathedral was opened. Dunin-Borkovsky lay in the sarcophagus as if he were alive: ruddy and with a smoking pipe in his teeth. Archbishop John Maksimovich ordered to drive an aspen stake into the colonel's chest. After that, the coffin with the body was taken out of the church and buried in the Borkovsky family estate on the banks of the Desna. That same night, a storm of unprecedented strength burst over the city, and the river overflowed its banks, flooding the colonel's new grave.
Everything in the city and the surrounding area seemed to have calmed down. However, this is what is strange: the slab at the burial place of Dunin-Borkovsky, 15 years after his death, for some reason was replaced with another. Perhaps someone damaged it, or the reason is in the text of the first epitaph, in which Hetman Ivan Mazepa was mentioned … Who knows?
Ancestral tomb of the Dunin-Borkovsky
Chernihiv newspapers of the late 19th century showed a keen interest in the legend about the ghoul colonel. Journalists, hiding under pseudonyms, talked about Vasily, published folk tales on this topic. In the 20th century, everything seemed to be forgotten. True, it is worth remembering that since the 1990s, people in the Chernihiv region began to mysteriously disappear again …
Taras Bushmenko