Every city has old beliefs and legends: as a rule, they tell about different events, about the people who once inhabited it, about the unchanging treasures and secrets left over from time immemorial. In many cities of the Urals, one of the most mysterious legends, literally replete with white spots and different opinions, are stories about dungeons.
PUTSCH
On the busiest day of the putsch - August 20, 1991 - the reserve Russian government arrived in Yekaterinburg (then Sverdlovsk). It was assumed that if the "White House" was captured, the country's leadership would be conducted from the underground - a backup command post, which is located several tens of meters underground, an hour's drive from the city. The coup, fortunately, failed. Two days later, the government reserve left the underground residence. But the information leaked to the press about the secret residence added to the wave of rumors about the old and new undergrounds of the Sverdlovsk region. The systematic study of the underground cities of the Stone Belt began in the early 80s, when the Sverdlovsk Architectural Institute organized a research expedition "Terra-80", led by the teacher V. Slukin. Her routes passed through the Trans-Ural settlements,ancient mining towns of our and Perm regions. The results, discoveries, finds of the expedition formed the basis of the book by Vsevolod Mikhailovich Slukin "Secrets of the Ural underground". Yekaterinburg, like all the cities of the Stone Belt, in the past had an extensive network of underground passages and structures. The fabulously wealthy families of the Demidovs, Kharitonovs, Zotovs, Ryazanovs cast their coins in the dungeons, which were no different from the royal ones - except for the high content of precious metals - hiding a significant part of their wealth. Moreover, they are all Old Believers. In underground chapels, they were baptized with two fingers, and with untold sums of money they opened Old Believer schools and monasteries somewhere in the mountains. It did not cost the miners to build a passage even under the bottom of the river - molten lead was used as cement. So far, only a few of these moves have been found.
One of the most mysterious places in Yekaterinburg is Voznesenskaya Gorka. At its top there is a beautiful building - the Kharitonovsky House (now the Palace of Pioneers). From the very beginning, various rumors swirled around him. A high hill in old Yekaterinburg was empty for a long time. She liked one merchant, a trader of "drunken" goods, Lev Ivanovich Rastorguev. Historians still cannot figure out to whom Rastorguev entrusted the construction of his palace. It is only known that he was a convict exiled by Paul I to the Tobolsk prison. For a large bribe given by Rastorguev, he was transferred to Yekaterinburg, where, under the threat of being punished with 500 strikes of gauntlets, he had no right to even give his name. Rastorguev promised to arrange an escape when construction is over, but he did not keep his word. The architect hanged himself on the way back to Tobolsk in the Tyumen transit prison.
The house was built for twelve years (and together with the garden and services - all eighteen). In addition to the visible part, there were two floors underground, about which there was a thin glory. In their deep casemates, the cries of the "opposing forces" were muffled. The teachers of the Ural Old Believers came by underground routes to secret chapels, and with the same passages, through the far corners of the garden, unnoticed by anyone, they spread along the streets of Yekaterinburg. Even if they were found, the pursuit would have been in vain: the passages went in different directions: to the lake in the park, to the house of A. Zotov, Rastorguev's son-in-law, which stood on the site of the current agricultural academy.
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After the well-deserved finale of L. Rastorguev - for his cruelty he was exiled to an eternal settlement in Kexholm, where he died - the descendants did not live on Voznesenskaya Gorka. And how to live when screams and groans are heard at night, and the stench of cellars and dungeons is in the air.
The revolution and the imminent retreat of the White Army caused rumors of gold and gems buried in the basements of the house. They say that underground treasure hunters' artels still operate in Yekaterinburg. The basements of old houses, prepared for demolition, are dismantled on the very first night after the residents move out.
During the construction of the highway to K. Liebknecht, which cut the hill to the very foundation, they did not find anything similar to treasuries or underground galleries leading to the city pond, everywhere - a strong rock, untouched by man. The myth of the "gold content" of the hill was completely rejected. Except for the gold-bearing, its current filling is the storage of the Zoloto-Platinum-Bank JSCB.
Few of those who beat Voznesenskaya Gorka with their heels every day know that a powerful fortress, equipped with the latest technology, is hidden under their feet. A tiny gray one-story building without doors and windows behind a concrete fence is just the tip of an underground iceberg that hides three more levels.
The bunker was built in the early 50s, during the time of Marshal Zhukov, as a civil defense facility. And for about 40 years it was operated for its intended purpose: it received generals during staff exercises. Since 1994, it has been a bank vault packed in a monolithic concrete box that can withstand general destruction. This is how historical and modern "dungeons" get along well, even on the same hill.
But do not be disappointed, treasure seekers, they are still there. It is reliably known, for example, that Sysert contains a huge collection of Sevres and Saxon porcelain, Gardner dishes, unique sets with portraits of heroes of the war of 1812, a collection of expensive paintings, and a unique bureau made of Karelian birch. None of these items have yet surfaced.
On the plan, this building represents the letter "G": the vertical stick is the modern city council, the horizontal one is the local history museum. Wishing to correct the obvious architectural incompleteness, it was decided to "add" one more wing to the building of the City Council.
During the construction, a dungeon was discovered where the Demidov prison was once located. By all indications, the dungeon appeared during the construction of the plant. An underground gallery led from the prison to a dam, apparently serving a gloomy purpose - to get rid of victims, bodies were thrown into a pond.
Demidov torture chamber - a construction of the early 18th century - should not be lost. How dozens, hundreds of silent witnesses of our past disappeared without a trace or unrecognizably changed: the church of the same faith and the factory chapel of the 18th century - the companions of the harsh Nevyansk history, the blast furnaces - the beginning and pride of the Ural mining business - lost their appearance, fenced off into small cells and lockers.
By someone's order, already in our 40s, the entire archive of Demidov's times, which had been stored in the Nevyansk Tower for decades, was burned. Now we learn only scraps of the secrets of the first Demidov estate. The English traveler, painter and architect T. Atkinson, who visited Nevyansk in 1844, wrote in his diary: "Before, the tower once served as a prison for prisoners, and passages were laid to it under the ground."
In 1890, a gigantic fire destroyed not only the factory, but also the city. It burned so, eyewitnesses recalled, that the earth was sinking. One of the holes in the territory of the old factory opened an underground room in which smelting forges were found, The fact that in the Nevyansk undergrounds the smelting of precious metals was carried out was scientifically proven already in our years by S. Lyasik, Candidate of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences, having determined their content in the soot of tower chimneys and in clock bells. Demidov secretly smelted silver from copper ores rich in this metal.
The expedition of the Sverdlovsk Architectural Institute, having carried out geophysical research, opened a new chain of underground passages. They "connected the tower, the manor house, the factory office and the" copper "production.
The Demidovs have always been famous for their inventions. And their underground passages are simply stuffed with various traps and "tricks". For example, in one of the secret passages there was an iron plate that could be lifted up behind you like a bridge of old fortresses. Rising, the slab closed the passage, and below it opened a deep well. A person who was not familiar with her device could easily fall into a well in the dark.
Old Nevyansk, like many mining towns in the Urals, has a great future. Their appearance is constantly changing, but is it necessary for it to change beyond recognition? So that that fragile bridge, thrown into history, disappears? To preserve is the main task of everyone, to turn it into a museum-reserve, where each exhibit is active. And the legendary dungeons with their unraveled secrets will become an example of the construction talent and skill of the Ural craftsmen.
Author: P_S_T_R_V
