Records of the South Urals. Is the geoglyph a complete swindle? How to come to Berdyaush and find yourself in another dimension? And who sees Switzerland from the window of the Zlatoust tram? Is Pencil the oldest mountain on Earth? Riddles, secrets and hoaxes of the Southern Urals - in the new documentary film by Yana Skonechnaya under the heading "Ural Special Correspondent".
The news that Herbert Clark Hoover became president in faraway America in 1929 was greeted with enthusiasm in the Ural countryside. The people of Kyshtym were happy for "their" man. The way the staff of the Kyshtym library obtained these photographs of several pages from the memoirs of the 31st president of America is almost a detective story. They began their investigation at the beginning of the two thousandth. We decided to find out if Hoover is really connected with Kyshtym? I had to look for acquaintances overseas, and then translate the information I had obtained with difficulty. The memoirs confirmed the librarians' guess.
Lyudmila Koneva, employee of the library named after Shveikin in Kyshtym: The most interesting place for me was the Kyshtym estate, located near the Ural Mountains near Yekaterinburg. The property belonged to a distant branch of the Romanov family, headed by Baron Zakamelsky. The family was quite wealthy and lived off their own income for several generations, but due to the fact that the representatives of the previous generation wasted money, the family went into debt.
Kyshtym of the beginning of the 20th century met an American with a dense forest, 150 acres of territory and a population of 100,000 - mostly peasants and workers. Here he will work for six years - intermittently, on short visits. It is believed that Hoover worked as a mining engineer. However, the memoirs say he was invited to serve as an anti-crisis manager for two failing mining companies. A little later, he will create his own joint stock company here. But after the revolution and nationalization, Hoover will have to part with his “favorite Kyshtym factories”.
Around the same time, when the future American president launches his plant in Kyshtym, a facility is being built 150 kilometers away, which still surprises with its uniqueness and has no analogues in the world. The Porogi hydroelectric power plant, not far from Satka, was erected to supply electricity to Russia's first electric smelting plant - its now abandoned workshop still stands next to the hydroelectric power plant. Which, by the way, is considered a miracle of engineering. That there is only one dam laying - it was fastened without mortar, like parquet is now being laid. And all the technical achievements of that time were used as an engineering filling: German and Swiss turbines, lifting mechanisms from France.
Alexander Danilov, chief engineer of the Porogi tract hydroelectric power station: Nothing has changed, as it was brought there 100 years ago, it still works.
One of the turbines is now producing electricity to illuminate the nearby village of Porogi. This was the case 100 years ago. When even some of the palaces of St. Petersburg were lit with gas burners, candles and kerosene stoves, electric incandescent lamps burned in peasant houses and workers' barracks in the Urals.
The mining zone of the Chelyabinsk region is generally rich in unique and strange objects. For many years, tourists have been surprised by the ice fountain in the Zyuratkul National Park. This is a geyser where the water is not hot, but cold. Even in winter, it does not freeze completely, but breaks through the ice. It turns out a bizarre icicle that grows from the bottom up and reaches the height of a five-story building. However, this is not a miracle of nature, but quite man-made. Forty years ago, they were looking for iron ore, and stumbled upon an underground river. After a few years, the stream that escaped from the well was curbed with a metal plug with holes - and a fountain turned out.
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If in the summer you stand in a certain place on the Zyuratkul mountain, then in front of the lake of the same name you can see strange smooth lines. True, no one paid attention to them until 2011. And he certainly did not assume that it might be a global artifact. True, only local scientists studied the geoglyph. And after a couple of years, they solemnly declared: the famous drawings in the Nazca desert (huge animals and insects, which are 2 thousand years old) are just a remake in comparison with the Zyuratkul elk. The age of the geoglyph was estimated in different ways. Scientists agreed that he is the most ancient on the globe. And his find is a sensation on a planetary scale. The news was picked up by the press around the world. Here, for example, is an article from the English Daily Mail for November 2014. The headline reads: “The world's oldest geoglyph was created by children. A huge image of a moose,visible from space, built 6 thousand years ago with tiny tools. However, skeptics also appeared. The Satka skiers declared that they were the authors of the gigantic picture. They say that the geoglyph is nothing but the ski track they laid out. Some experts from the Samara Rocket and Space Center also expressed doubts. According to them, they found aerial photographs of the area near Satka in the 1950s, and allegedly no elk could be seen there.
Nikolai Antimonov, leading design engineer of the Progress rocket and space center (Samara): The geoglyphs of the Nazca plateau are really geoglyphs there, because they carry a semantic load, and so on, but here reality is presented as desired. Some kind of elk … First, the very route of passage was cut off and passed off as an elk. This is not a moose, but just traces of motor vehicles.
Chelyabinsk researchers could parry: where the designer could see such strange traces from the ATV? After all, the silhouette of a geoglyph is a kind of trench with a width of 4 to 7 meters, filled with stones of different sizes. However, there is still no consensus as to whether this is a genuine artifact and why it was built.
In the Chelyabinsk region there are not only the most ancient artifacts, but also a strange geographical record. True, it is not recorded in the Guinness Book of Records, but the locals know that there is not a single region on the planet where there are so many borrowed names of settlements. On the map of the south of the region, you can find about twenty "namesakes" of famous European cities: German Berlin, Kassel and Leipzig, French Paris, Arsi-Syur and Ferschampenoise, Bulgarian, once owned by the Turks, Varna and Turkish Chesma. These once Cossack settlements, which had only numbers, became "European" at the beginning of the 19th century. In honor of the battles won by the Russians, including the Nagaybak Cossacks, in Germany, France and Turkey.
Claude Hardy, former burgomaster of Ferschampenoise (France): There is a very large distance between us (more than 4 thousand kilometers), but we are happy that we have come here, our stay here is a kind of moment of truth.
They dreamed about it for 20 years. It was then that the idea of making friends between two Ferschampenoise - South Ural and French - first arose. And now the delegation from abroad is greeted by the students of the village school - in costumes from the era of Natasha Rostova. Overcoming difficulties in translation, residents of Nagaybak villages with European names and residents of settlements of the same name overseas these days recall the events of 1814 - on March 25, in the battle of Ferschampenoise between the Russians and the French, the troops of Alexander the First were defeated. However, the descendants of the French, who then lost, now speak with admiration about the valor of Russian soldiers and are not offended.
Although Zlatoust does not have a European name, the landscape here is quite Swiss. This is how the local nature made the tram a champion … The Zlatoust trains are considered the highest in Russia. And the views from their windows are somewhat similar to the spectacle from the windows of the Riffelalp tram in Switzerland - the highest in Europe. In Zlatoust there are 15 sections of the path, which are considered the most difficult. Where the tram climbs the slopes, descends into deep ravines, winds through the forest and squeezes between the village houses. And Taganay, Kosotur, Urenga and the Ai River flicker through the windows.
Yuri Okuntsov, senior researcher at the local history museum of the city of Zlatoust: In many cities, we had Czechoslovak cars, in Zlatoust they simply would not pull, because more powerful cars were needed. And we had Riga for a long time, and then they were replaced by Ust-Katavsky, which are able to overcome all these ascents.
Apparently, the romantic route is a feat for the exploits of a Zlatoust teenager. In 2011, the whole of Russia was amused by the news that a 14-year-old boy had stolen a tram. And this also became a kind of record. Like a spy, he studied theory on the Internet, and then followed the life of the depot for a long time. And one day, when the tram driver left for lunch, the guy carried out his plan. He drove around the city for 40 minutes, and did not forget to collect passengers at stops. The boy was sober. And he explained his deed with the cherished dream of driving the tram. In the wake of this story, Moscow directors later shot a feature film.
And this is a mysterious settlement: Berdyaush is located in the Chelyabinsk region, but lives in a different time. Exactly 120 minutes behind the capital of the South Urals.
- On our clock 7:57, and local time it is 9:57.
Here, absolutely everyone lives according to Moscow time. It would seem some kind of whim, but no - a necessity. The fact is that the entire population works on the railway, which, as you know, lives in Moscow.
- There were such situations that we will not correct each other: you come to the meeting, and it has already ended. And therefore, we immediately check all any events - by what time.
But, despite the confusion with time zones, residents of Berdyaush admit: there are pluses in their system. For example, they celebrate the New Year twice: first, the chimes strike in Ural time, and then in Moscow.
The lumps of gold in the showcase of the Miass Museum are, of course, copies. Painted plaster. But in shape - the very nuggets for which the local mine became famous. The largest "big triangle" not only in Russia but also in the world is now kept in the Diamond Fund in Moscow. The Miass spool accidentally fell into the hands of a simple artisan Nikifor Syutkin, who was dismantling an old gold mining factory and came across a large cobblestone coated with clay and overgrown with quartz crystals. The noble metal gave away its great weight. 18-year-old Syutkin was awarded - according to the official version, generously. Two thousand rubles in silver - with this money one could buy a house and acquire an economy. But the guy seemed to skip the whole award.
Tatiana Soltovskaya, chief curator of the Miass Museum of Local Lore: There is an unofficial version that the descendants of those people who knew Syutkin himself told us. They say that he lived to a ripe old age, and when he was entitled to a reward, he was given very little, something about 6 rubles, was taken to a bathhouse and given clean ports.
In the land near Miass, according to geologists, there is still a lot of gold. True, it no longer lies underfoot, as before, but is hidden in the rocks, in the depths. And some are underwater. At least, those who are trying to find barrels of gold at the bottom of Lake Inyshko are sure of this. Turgoyak and Lake Inyshko are separated by a small isthmus only 300 meters wide, but despite the proximity, the reservoirs are completely different. If the water in Turgoyak is transparent, then here it is constantly cloudy due to the unusual structure of the bottom. It is assumed that Inyshko has several of them, the lowest is made of sand and silt, and above there are one or two more tiers of intertwined roots, silt and peat interlayer.
However, in order to find the cherished treasures that Emelyan Pugachev allegedly hid here, treasure hunters dived under the upper bottom. But they found nothing. And this is not surprising, local historians believe. They know that Pugachev has never been to Miass. When the popular uprising began under his leadership, the city had not even been founded yet.
Tatiana Soltovskaya, chief curator of the Miass Museum of Local Lore: With the beginning of the uprising, the first Bashkir troops of the Pugachevskies came here and destroyed buildings: a mill for grinding ore and barracks for workers, this was the end of the uprising for Miass.
And residents of the Plastovsky district are sure that in their area gold can not only be washed on the Kamenka River, where there were many mines, but also extracted from ash. True, only from the special one - which will turn out if you burn cones from the Sanarsky pine forest. Pine trees grow here on granite rocks rich in precious metal. But scientists talk about such gold mining only as a joke - to extract a few grams of gold, you need to burn several tens of tons of cones.
A kind of treasure is also being mined in the snow-white quarry of the village of Koelga. The capital's White House, a mosque in Kazan were built from this marble, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and many metro stations were faced. But this is not the field's record. This is the deepest marble quarry in Russia. It is believed that the local stone is not inferior to the famous Italian Carrara marble. Development here began a few years after the revolution and the blocks are still sawing.
Valery Busygin, Deputy General Director of JSC "Koelgamramor": If you noticed, there are small ledges above, and large ones below. Above - there was still a primitive mining technology. Now a new technology, diamond wire saws roll off a large block, and on the ground it is already cut into small blocks, pieces.
They are already accustomed to tourists, photographers and bloggers. Who constantly come here to capture the unusual snow-white stone cubes that make up the quarry.
But this small rock in the Kusinsky district attracts few tourists. Its height is not very prominent - only 600 meters. Nevertheless, Mount Pencil is the most ancient mountain on the planet, almost the same age as the Earth. It was once huge, but for more than 4 billion years it was exuded by water and wind.
Larisa Schepitova, ethnographer: The Pencil Mountain is so ancient that she saw the birth of our planet, she saw its flowering, all the metamorphoses that took place. Mount Pencil was built from the most ancient and rare mineral izrandite.
There is no mineral on the planet older than izrandite. And nowhere, except here - on a rock near the village of Aleksandrovka - he is no longer found. By the way, it was he who gave the name to the mountain itself. The Türkic expression Kara-tash - "black stone" - gradually turned into the name Pencil.
By the way, Chelyabinsk itself is a kind of record holder in terms of nature: it is the only megalopolis in Russia with a full-fledged forest in its center. Twelve square kilometers of the city's pine forest are almost entirely composed of relict pine trees. Boron appeared here, according to scientists, many millions of years ago. Then the local Turks named it Chelyabi-Karagai. Literally 30 years ago, moose and wolves were still found here. But now only hares, gophers and squirrels can be found among the pines.
It turns out that in order to see something special, it is not at all necessary to get on a plane and fly to the other side of the world. Unique spots are everywhere - you just have to look closely.