In the Arkhangelsk region, it is sometimes difficult to determine the name of the place you are in. There is one name on the map, another in the guidebook, the natives call their village by a third name, and the post office is written by a fourth. The fact is that the settlements here are located in bushes, which are designated either by a common name or by the name of one of the villages of the bush, without a system. Perhaps the authorities, out of great intelligence, deliberately support this confusion - after all, the Plesetsk military cosmodrome is nearby. But the locals are also good. When you ask them, one says one thing, another says another, and someone else will come up and remember: Kaganovich State Farm!
Oshevensk consists of Pogost, Shiryaikha, Niz, Bolshoi and Maly Khaluyev, and Gari. And it is called after the monastery, which, in turn, is called after the nickname of the father of its founder. The father's name was Nikifor Osheven. He was from the Belozersky peasants and lived on Veshchozero. His wife Photinia regularly gave birth to children, but suddenly stopped. Nikifor reproached her: “You, woman, have some kind of vice or sin.” The poor thing suffered and prayed. Once I fell into a trance and saw the Mother of God with Kirill Belozersky. They promised to help. But Photinia misunderstood something and began to refrain from intimacy with her husband. However, in 1427 she gave birth to a boy who was named Alexei. He turned out to have a knack for learning, but was slightly out of this world: he saw visions, prayed a lot, fasted, wanted to go to a monastery. Having reached the age of eighteen, he went on a pilgrimage and never returned. Became a novice.
Meanwhile, Nikifor decided to move to the north. He lived in Kargopol for a year, and then went further down the Onega and settled about forty kilometers from Kargopol, in Volosovo. I am a place with this name: Volosovo, Vladimir region, where the Nikolo-Volosov Monastery operates. In general, there are quite a few places in Russia with the base “hair” in the name. Such toponyms usually indicate places of cult of the Serpent-Hair, which in Orthodox dual faith is encrypted under the name Nikola. Naturally, in Volosovo on Onega there was a church dedicated to St. Nicholas.
One day Osheven went hunting on the Churiega River, which flows north parallel to Onega, and found a place that he liked so much that he went to Novgorod, to the boyar who owned this land, and asked for a paper for the right to “gather settlements” on Churiega. The settlement began to be called Oshevneva.
While the father developed this activity, the son labored in Kirillov. In 1452 he became a monk with the name Alexander. He worked in a bakery (he could easily knead the dough shoulder to shoulder with). Alexander, of course, heard that his father had moved to a new place and asked to visit the old man, but the abbot did not let him in. In the Life, the desire to see relatives is somehow strangely intertwined with the desire to go into hermitage (which the abbot has already categorically forbidden). Well, it’s true: either you go into the desert wilderness, or you settle next to your dad, mom and a whole brood of relatives who are already working in advance to organize a desert for you to live in...
Still, after some time, the abbot allowed Alexander to go to his father. The road is well-known: past my native Veshchozero - to Lake Vozhe, then along Svidi to Lake Lache, and then down along Onega... Here I am, dad! Osheven told his son that he had found an excellent place for a monastery on Churiega. At first Alexander didn’t even want to look at it, but then he went with his brother and saw that the place was suitable: “There were swamps and impenetrable wilds all around.” Wait, what about the settlement under construction? There's something wrong here. Oshevensk was not such a wilderness, located not far from Onega, a busy transport artery. "Swamps and wilds"? No, the appeal of this place lies elsewhere.
When I first visited the Oshevensky Monastery four years ago, I was shocked by the silence of this place. In the monastery fence there was virgin grass, not trampled anywhere. It seemed as if people never came here at all (although village houses could be seen across the river). I wandered among this silence, along the uncrumpled grass, and I had a nagging feeling that someone was walking nearby or watching from everywhere. Gradually, this sensation of an invisible presence concentrated on a rickety log house above an abandoned well. It lived there. Later, in Pogost, one granny said that people don’t look into the monastery unless absolutely necessary, the place is unclean. I clicked the bottom of the well with a flash. After development, coins were found on the film. Offerings to the genius of the place.
This year I no longer felt that anxiety of the presence of God. The monastery is being repaired, workers, priests, and tourists walk on the crumpled grass. The well was rebuilt and padlocked. This, as they explained to me, is from Satanists, who, you never know, can throw anything in there. It's clear! Either clinical paranoia, or the priests simply locked themselves away from God, who lives in the depths of the well.
Judging by the Life, Alexander did not intend to found a monastery on Churiega. But when he got there, he set up the cross and prayed. And then he fell asleep and heard: “I have prepared a place for you where you came on your own, without being called.” How do you mean “himself”? Alexander's father prepared a place for him. And not some heavenly one, but an earthly one, Nikifor. Here the hagiographer (the Life was written by the Osheven monk Theodosius in 1567) is clearly confused and lets slip (according to Freud). This is because it tries to superimpose the cliché used to describe hermitism onto something else. For what? I won’t go on and on about how Alexander persuaded the Abbot of Kirillov, how he traveled to Novgorod for permission to create a monastery. But it’s interesting: without having yet received any permits, the monk ordered his father to prepare wood for the church, and a little later he hired workers to build a cell. Has anyone ever heard of a hermit hiring workers and making his father a foreman? No, this is not a hermitage, but rather a well-organized missionary operation. The monk had to suppress the filthiness of the natives who burned incense to their gods.
Which gods? When Alexander first came to the site of the future monastery, he prayed that God would “bless the place of the future monastery and help create it in the name of St. Nicholas.” From here it is clear what kind of entity lives in this place: the Hair Serpent. This spirit of swampy shores and lowlands with springs is usually renamed Nikola. And thus they conjure. Next is the painful immune process of fusion of the local spirit with the attributes of a Christian saint. The spirit does not want to take an alien form, it sends illnesses and fears to the one who is trying to remake it, the alien people. Alexander, for example, managed to quarrel even with his brothers. Other relatives simply fled from his sermons.
The Life says that demons threatened the saint: “Get away from this place, otherwise you will die painfully here!” And he “burned” them (him, the Snake-Hair) with the power of prayer. Didn't finish it. And I couldn’t finish the fire. The essence of a deity never changes; only the external form can change. Under the guise of a Byzantine bishop, Orthodox double-believers continue to pray to their Volos. Nikola of the Russian North is generally the most perfect Serpent, a guardian of the people. When the priests were driven out, he returned to his primitive state. I felt the presence of this very spirit while wandering around the deserted monastery.
But if God does not change, then man may well. As a result of the fight against Volos, Alexander turned from a banal missionary into a local deity. Here is a story that is not in his Life: he once walked past the village of Khalui and asked for a drink, but the locals did not give him one. According to another version, the monk initially wanted to create his monastery in Halui, but was expelled from there. One way or another, the saint became so angry that he cursed the Khaluyans: “You will live near the water, but without water.” And indeed, the Khalui River goes underground at one end of the village, and comes out at the other, about one and a half kilometers from the place of departure.
Before leaving, the river splits into two branches. The water on the left reaches a dead end with a steep bank and disappears into this funnel. An alarming sign of hopelessness. There is a cross at the top, hung with offerings. The right sleeve has a different character: the water flows and flows in it and suddenly - everything is just foam. Next is a dry rocky riverbed. If you walk along it a little, you will find another, third, place where the river leaves (or reaches) in flood. There is no failure there. Yes, I don’t think there are any sinkholes there at all; water, most likely, just seeps underground. My dog Osman decided to swim in the place where the arms divide, stood at the bottom and suddenly began to sink into the sand...
In short: the place is very suitable for being the entrance to the kingdom of the dead; as is known, it passes through the waters. I tried to find out what the locals think about traveling to the next world. But our guide Viktor Gorlov did not want to talk about it. Or - I couldn’t. Because he was drunk as hell. However, he managed to tell about a blind boy who kept going to this place and whittling something. And as I planed, I began to see clearly. Gorlov did not explain how this process is connected with Alexander, but the fact is that the blind man eventually built a small chapel in the name of the monk and then finally regained his sight. The chapel stood for a long time on the approach to the wonderful place. And in Soviet times, some hunter dismantled it and built a winter quarters out of logs. In which there was a poltergeist: objects were flying and trying to hit the owner in the forehead. He gave the winter quarters to livestock. She died. I gave it to the collective farm for firewood. Where is that collective farm? And the hunter was completely rotten, starting from his feet.
The severity of this punishment makes one wonder about the mystical nature of Alexander. How do people revere him? Something is clarified by the legend that was not included in the Life that the saint expelled snakes from the Karogopol land. On the first Sunday of Peter's Lent, crowds of people gathered at the Oshevensky Monastery to honor the saint as a serpent fighter. Personally, I doubt that it was Alexander who accomplished this feat. Of course, he suppressed the cult of the Snake-Hair, now locked in the well, and therefore can be considered a serpent fighter. But still, it is necessary to distinguish a real historical person (a missionary, the creator of a monastery on a family contract) from the divine Serpent Fighter. The place of power of the latter is also located in Oshevensk, but four and a half kilometers northwest of the monastery.
From space it is clearly visible that Oshevensk stretches along Churiega. Directly opposite the monastery is the village of Pogost with the Epiphany Church. Further to the north are Shiryaikha (not far from it there is a sacred grove with a lake and a stone with the footprint of a saint) and Niz with the St. George Chapel. Its threshold is a large, flat-topped boulder. Boulders are generally associated with the cult of St. Nicholas the Hair, and the stone as the threshold of the chapel is a clear symbol of the victory over the Serpent.
But let’s move on: across the river, in the above-mentioned village of Bolshoy Khaluy, there is also a chapel. If I say that it is dedicated to Ilya, everything will become completely clear. For Elijah (him and the Jewish prophet who lived 900 BC) is the Thunderer, who, like George, fights the Serpent. But only George is a military god, the patron of the squad and the prince who robs the people. And Ilya is the people's god, the god of thunderstorms who sends rain. They especially pray to him when there is great dryness, when the earth desperately needs rain. His lightning is as desirable to the Earth as is desirable. The serpent is literally earthly lust, a target that the Thunderer must hit with his sexual perun. And then the Earth will bloom.
Dry ascetics do not understand this. And they get angry: Ilya, they say, fights with evil spirits. Yes, it's amazing! To the pleasure of both the Earth and the Serpent living in her hospitable bosom. The Thunderer has a goal: to eat, eat and eat her mother's soul. The serpent and lightning (which is male at least) strive towards each other in order to defuse the field tension between heaven and earth; they complement each other as elements of a single process. And to those who do not see this unity, it seems that some kind of struggle is going on. So naive children, spying on their parents, think that dad is an aggressor.
A river that goes underground and returns is a better symbol for the cosmic thirst for intercourse. Such obvious signs are not very common in nature, so in Halui there was undoubtedly a sanctuary where, to the best of their ability, people repeated the exploits of the Thunderer. Victims? They went into the funnel of the left sleeve, which, one can assume, was specially constructed by people (or rather, modified) for sacred purposes.
Overall the place is very convenient. Where the river goes underground, the dry bed of the Haluy makes a sharp bend, forming along the top. Alexander might have wanted to build a monastery here, but who would let a monk into such a treasured place? I don’t even know how he was allowed to go there, where the monastery was built, because the sanctuary of the Thunderer on Halui and the sanctuary of the Serpent on Churieg clearly complement each other. Well, nothing, but churches were built in which the Russian spirit expressed itself fully. This spirit has a tinned stomach; it was able to digest both the Jewish god and his servants. All that remained were names, shells. Here is Alexander Oshevensky - one of the names (the other is Ilya) of Perun-Gromovnik. The natives worship not the missionary, but the stern lightning thrower.
By the way, I first heard the story of how Alexander cursed the inhabitants of Haluy in the bell tower of the Church of the Epiphany in Pogost, from a handsome senior member of the space forces. Maly came to Oshevensk for a friend’s wedding and fell under the stupefying propaganda of Father Victor (Pantin), a former St. Petersburg specialist on Leskov, and now an Osheven priest who also looks after the monastery. The priest entrusted the space elder with the key to the bell tower, and he took everyone there, asking if they had a cross on them? Everyone I saw there answered honestly: no. Nothing, the kind guardian of the bell tower allowed everyone to climb onto his wooden spaceship, talked with everyone, taught everyone. Being a complete neophyte, he sees the solution to our problems in praying to the Jewish God and, thus, being a patriot of Russia.
Oh, the retired philologists of the Russian Georgies will drive them to impotence. How is it with Leskov? “They’re not good to shoot”?
MAP OF OLEG DAVYDOV'S PLACES OF POWER - ARCHIVE OF PLACES OF POWER -
In the east of the Leningrad region there is an amazing river Ragusha. It originates in the Novgorod region. An unremarkable forest river flows among forests and swamps. However, a few kilometers before the mouth, its character changes. Ragusha begins to rapidly dig into the ground, forming a deep canyon. In time immemorial, the limestones composing the river bed cracked, and water ran through the cracks, dissolving the stone. Karst processes began. The underground watercourses became larger and larger, and finally, part of Ragushi flowed underground. In the spring, during high water, there is a lot of water in the river, and the ground channel is completely flooded. Water flows both above and below the ground. In summer and autumn, the water level drops and the entire river goes into the absorbing pores, so that after passing through unknown karst channels underground for several kilometers, it appears again in the white world.
Over the past fifteen years, the Ragusha River has become more accessible in all respects. Websites dedicated to Ragusha, articles, chapters in books and guidebooks have appeared. The path from St. Petersburg to the Boksitogorsk region has also become simpler. The Murmansk highway has been patched up and in some places reconstructed. It’s nice to drive, if not for one thing - narrow bottlenecks left in the unfinished highway since the 90s create huge traffic jams. Near the village of Issad, the bridge over the Volkhov River and the junctions around it are being reconstructed. There are traffic jams, but not that big. But further, after turning onto the Vologda Highway, a luxurious, recently overhauled European-looking road begins. Markings, bumpers, sidewalks and fences. In some settlements, noise barriers have been installed. The asphalt is perfectly smooth. And so on all the way to the village of Dymi and even somewhere further.
Now, reading your old report about a trip to those parts in 2000, you inevitably remember how, having turned off the Vologda highway in the village of Dymi, we found ourselves in a continuous kingdom of holes, craters and potholes on a ten-kilometer stretch of the road leading to Boksitogorsk. Local residents did not travel here. All transport took a longer, but more decent road through the villages of Batkovo and Nizhnitsa. Now the road from the village of Dymi to the city of Boksitogorsk has been completely repaired.
From the turn in the village of Selkhoztekhnika onto the road leading to Ragush, and to the village of Kolbeki, in 2000 there was a terrifying-looking asphalt, and then the grader began. Now the asphalt has reached the village of Mozolevo. The old section from the village of Selkhoztekhnika to the village of Kolbeki has been repaired, the holes have been patched with “hole” repairs. Further to Mozolevo the asphalt is completely new. The grader is also in decent condition.
At Ragushi itself, improvements are also visible. To the left of the road, about a kilometer before reaching the bridge over the river, there is a wooden arch with the inscription “Ragusha”. If you go through it, then after a couple of tens of meters you will find yourself in a landscaped clearing. There are a couple of gazebos, a fireplace, a barbecue, a toilet and a garbage dump, disguised as a village well.
Behind the bridge, deep in the forest, there is another equipped parking lot. Previously, an environmental expedition from Boksitogorsk was based on it. This year the parking lot is empty. On the other side of Ragushi there are several more unequipped parking lots. On one of them these days there was some kind of children's camp.
On our first night at the environmentalists' camp, we were disturbed by the sound of an engine on the road next to us, followed by the crackling of breaking branches and the sound of an axe. We went out to look, reached the nearest turn, but did not find anyone. We returned back, and a few minutes later a man came to us. It turns out that they were stuck a little further, on the approaches to the camp. I had to start the car and tow them out. These were one of the organizers and founders of our camp. We got into a conversation with one of them, counselor Mikhail. He said that there is no camp this year. They didn’t allocate money, or rather, they didn’t win any tender. What kind of tender might be needed to take children out into nature remains a mystery to us. Those who arrived complained that it seemed that their lovingly equipped camp had come to an end, and soon desolation would reign here. And desolation has already begun to penetrate here. Not far from the clearing there is another parking lot, hidden in the forest. A canopy and benches were also built on it. The canopy has now collapsed and partially collapsed. To our amazement, a gray fluffy cat was sitting on one of the benches. We don’t know how he got into this wilderness, but the cat himself did not want to communicate with us and disappeared into the forest. Then we saw him again, early in the morning he walked along the edge of the expedition clearing and again went into his forest.
From those who arrived, we tried to find out the details that interested us about the surrounding rivers and the Yartsevsky mine. These rivers are interesting because on the maps part of their channels are indicated by dotted lines, just like the channel of Ragushi. There is an assumption that other rivers may go underground in these places. Neither the counselor Mikhail nor his companion knew anything about these rivers. The Yartsevsky mine was better known. We were interested in the picturesque views and the fact that this is one of the two unflooded mines in Boksitogorsk. All the rest are flooded with water. Mikhail said that the short road from Mozolevo to the mine is so broken that it’s impossible to travel even on an ATV; it’s easier to take another road, along the embankment of an old narrow-gauge railway. The information turned out to be useful.
We made our first hike through the Ragushi Canyon immediately after dinner. June, white nights, you can walk until midnight. A wooden staircase leads from our camp into the canyon. Having gone down it, we saw a river murmuring among the stones. According to my recollections, in 2000 the water in the riverbed ended somewhere here. But now the water is there and is not going to disappear. Let's go downstream. On the sandy shores you can see holes with traces of watercourses. These are dried up ponoras. Through them, water, at a higher level, goes underground. There are mint thickets along the shores and on the sandy islands, and even in the air there is its aroma in some places. Even further down the river to the right there is a labyrinth of now dry ravines. When the water is high, part of the stream goes into these ravines and there goes underground through numerous holes. Along the coastal slopes you can clearly see where the water rises.
Down a little, and the water in Ragush ends. The last ponor on the right takes all the remaining water. Forward, another couple of meters, only a small standing puddle stretches. And along it grow ferns taller than human height, and one can imagine that we are in prehistoric times.
This ended our evening walk. We returned to camp and tried to sleep to the sound of mosquitoes.
The next day the weather improved. The sun came out and a warm breeze blew, driving away mosquitoes and midges. Today we explore the main part of the Ragushi Canyon. Its height reaches, according to various sources, from 50 to 80, and even up to 100 m. Below the road bridge, the canyon is almost overgrown. Only a small path winds along the bottom. It is obvious that there is not much traffic here. Most tourists prefer to walk on horseback, on well-trodden paths, and only go down when necessary. In doing so, they lose a lot. Raguša is interesting not only near the Vaucluses or waterfalls, but also in other places (Vaucluse is a source, an outlet of karst waters).
At first, the dry bed consists of deposits of limestone fragments of various sizes. Further on, the banks shrink, the trees lean toward the dry river and almost block the sky with their branches. The bottom is cleared of debris in places and a layer of limestone of the Carboniferous geological period, green from dampness and eternal shadow, appears. Yellowish cliffs begin to rise to the right and left. Small standing puddles appear at the bottom. The air becomes noticeably moist.
Another turn, and the sound of water can be clearly heard. The Ragusha River appears again. This happens most effectively on the left bank. Here, under the green canopy of trees, there are two powerful vaucluses. The water flowing through them immediately forms a powerful stream, which after ten meters flows into the main channel. A path goes up from the Vaucluses. This is the easiest way here - go on horseback through the equipped parking area, turn right onto the old road, and then go down along a clearly visible path. There is no need to break your legs on the rubble of limestone and feed the evil insects that have found shelter in the shady canyon.
Then you have to walk along the shore. Ragusha turned from a dry riverbed into a rocky, rapids river. The riverbed, walking along its bed, presses first to one bank, then to the other. When there is little water, you can move from shore to shore. But today the level is such that you can’t cross everywhere even in rubber boots. You have to rise from the water and follow a clearly visible path along the left bank.
After some time, the cliffs again begin to approach close to the river. The floodplain terrace disappears, and the path begins to climb steeply. You have to hold on to tree trunks and bush branches with your hands.
Having climbed up, the path departs a little from the river and presses against a forested cliff that goes somewhere upward. There is a stone wall between the cliff and the river. This part of the coastal cliff broke away from the main massif in ancient times. Geologists call such a fault a coastal resistance crack. Temperature changes and bad weather partially destroyed the broken blocks, and they began to resemble ancient fortress walls. The trail passes between these natural ruins and then plunges steeply downwards, again onto the floodplain terrace. The bank of the canyon on the left bank goes to the side, disappears behind the trees, and then, after a hundred meters, having made a semicircle, it returns again almost to the path itself. Soon streams appear, running down from somewhere above and flowing into Ragusha. A little more and the trees are thinning out. On the left, the most famous cliff on Ragush opens into view. Its height is impressive. Springs flowing somewhere above fall from the ledges in waterfalls and cascades, crushing into small drops into a water cloud sparkling in the sun. Caps of green moss, also covered with droplets of water, grow on wet shiny stones. The largest waterfall we saw consisted of two steps and was 30 meters high.
We take pictures of the waterfalls, climb out to the very top of the canyon, and from the top we go to the camp. Returning to the camp, we had a leisurely lunch, turned camp and went to look for the abandoned Yartsevo bauxite mine.
In Mozolevo, before the concrete bridge, a dirt road goes to the right and sharply upward. Having climbed a high embankment, she walks straight along it. The width of this road is such that two cars cannot pass each other. We peer ahead anxiously and, as luck would have it, we notice a car coming towards us. We were lucky, the oncoming car found some small widening and let us through. Let's move on. Suddenly the thickets to the right and left disappeared, and we found ourselves on an open, high embankment. But this is not an embankment, this is a bridge across the Volozhba. There are no guards on it, the width is slightly greater than the width of the car, very impressive. A high embankment stretched behind the bridge again. In one place it was blocked by a large pit with deep ruts, slush and strewn branches and sticks. Apparently, more than one car got stuck here. But people somehow drive through it. The “six” we met is an example of this. We also drove through, fortunately the Niva has more means to overcome such places. The further road presents no difficulties. Small holes, a little water, forgotten cross sleepers, that's basically it. We quickly reached the main, now abandoned road that once ran from Boksitogorsk to the mines. In addition to Yartsevsky, on our way we should also have come across mine No. 7 and mine No. 10. However, judging by the map, they are flooded.
The road was full of variety. It either expanded, and the evening Sun flooded it, then it narrowed to the width of a car, and the green branches hid it from daylight. In some places, the roadside forest, in the struggle for a ray of sunlight, grew to a decent height and the road became like a tall and narrow tunnel. The road itself is mostly rocky. In some places it is painted red with bauxite. There are not many holes and puddles and they are easy to drive through.
Mine No. 7 with its edge goes directly to the road. It is flooded and is of interest to fishermen. On its bank stood a Niva-Chevrolet and some waders. The fishermen themselves were not visible. After taking a few pictures, we moved on. Mine No. 10 is located to the side, on the left. There is some kind of half-overgrown road leading to it. Judging by the fresh tracks, fishermen also go there.
Another kilometer, and the same short road from Mozolevo adjoined on the right. On the ground, however, it looked the other way around. From somewhere out of the bushes our road merged into the much more traveled road from Mozolev. Deciding to try and take a shortcut back, we moved on. The road left the forest and became even more picturesque. To the right, through the roadside bushes, views of the Volozhba valley began to appear. To the left, overgrown fields went up somewhere. The map suggested the names of former villages and current tracts. I really wanted to go there and enjoy the views from the very top. However, there were no roads or just exits.
Finally the road came to a fork in the road. The most well-trodden one turned right and went down. Something overgrown with barely noticeable old traces continued straight ahead. We turned right and realized that the well-worn road simply descended to the bottom of the valley and then continued along it. We returned to the fork and drove forward. This road began to climb upward and, in the end, we got out of the valley to the very top. Another failure. There is no mine. You feel that he is somewhere nearby, literally under your feet, but nothing is visible through the trees covering the slope.
We went down the road a little, stopped and walked out into a small clearing. There was a magnificent view right in front of us. The clearing ended at our feet. A very steep, reddish slope went down. Bauxite gives it this color. Somewhere below, at the bottom of the valley, among abandoned fields, the Volozhba River meandered. The road we first turned onto was a barely noticeable thread of darkness. To the right, on the other side of the valley, one could see the village of Mozolevo. Somewhere almost opposite us there should be the mouth of Ragushi. The coastal thickets made it impossible to see him. Silence. Only birds and a light wind disturb it. Such silence can only be heard far from populated areas, far from roads, far from civilization.
The sun is sinking lower and lower. The calendar shows mid-June. White Nights. We decide to spend the night and return to the camp on Ragusha. We go down to the fork. About halfway along we notice a gap on the left. Apparently this is the road to the Yartsevsky mine that we did not find. We slow down and look. You can only move along that road on foot, it is so overgrown. Then, already at home, I managed to understand where I had to look for the way to the mine. It seems that at the fork, where the roads diverged up and down, there was also some kind of “middle” road. But it is so overgrown that it is impossible to find it without a thorough inspection of the area. We remembered the words of Misha’s companion, a counselor from the Ragush camp, that they drove into the mine from the other side, drove through it, drove along the old road from the mine, and, eventually getting out onto the well-worn road, determined where this very road to the mine begins.
We decide to take a short road to Mozolevo. She turned out to be quite decent. No, it is, of course, much more broken than the road along the old embankment. But you can still drive without a tractor. There are a lot of potholes, pits with stones, puddles and hogweed on both sides. The car shakes and bounces. We drive through many puddles directly; going around them on well-known detour tracks seems riskier to us.
There is a concrete bridge across the Volozhba River. It somehow does not correspond to the road we arrived on. Behind the bridge there are potholes and potholes again. Abandoned fields around. Right next to the exit to the grader there is a landfill.
We return to the camp on Ragush. Everything there is also quiet and deserted. We set up a tent and see that this silence is deceptive. Groups of people begin to walk back and forth along the edge of the camp. One trio carries a bottle of cognac in their hands. Apparently, cognac goes better in a unique place. By nightfall, the transit of vacationers through the clearing stopped. You can climb into the tent and sleep peacefully.
The next morning we break up our camp and get ready to head back. Such an early departure is due to the fact that I want to cross the Murmansk highway before traffic jams form. We don't have much time. However, we still decide to spend part of it exploring two nearby rivers. Some of their channels are also marked with a dotted line on the maps, just like the channel of Ragushi. First we go to the Ponyr River, which flows into Lake Voloshino.
The name Ponyr itself speaks for itself. It is noted on the map that at the intersection of the river along the road Polovnoye - Zubakino there should be a piece of dry riverbed. The ponyr near the bridge should flow along the bottom of a fairly deep ravine. And so it turned out. To the right and left of the road is an overgrown ravine with a dry bottom. On the left it is clayey and silty with a large number of sticks, branches and other plant debris carried by water. There is a rocky area on the right.
So, one issue is resolved. Ponyr also has a piece of dry riverbed, and the maps tell the truth. Of course, in order to say for sure that it flows underground, you need to at least find absorbing holes and make sure that the water goes underground and does not just dry up. There is neither time nor desire to make our way through the thickets of the ravine. We will have to leave the solution to this issue until better times. We get into the car and return to the crossroads in the village of Polovnoye. To complete the picture, it should be noted that the road to Ponyr is quite rough. There are a lot of holes of different sizes. Sometimes there are large stones. You have to drive the whole way in first gear.
At the crossroads in the village of Polovnoye we turn left and leave the outskirts. After a hundred meters, the map says that the Cherenka River is closest to the highway here. We leave the car and go south through a small field. The slopes of the steep and high banks of Cherenki are overgrown with trees and bushes. From above you can only see a small piece of the river. We have to go down. It immediately catches your eye that the bottom and shores of Cherenka are rocky, which means karst is possible. There is little water, no current at all. Forest debris floating on the surface of the water stands in one place. Downstream the riverbed is quite straight. As far as the eye can see, you can see that the character of the river does not change. There is some almost stagnant water, a bare, stone bank a meter high, then a steep overgrown slope.
We return through the field back to the car. We pass along the grader the village of Polovnoye and stop at the road bridge over the Cherenka River. We walk up to the railing and look. There is much more water in the area of the bridge. There is a current. There are rifts above and below the bridge. The water makes noise and sparkles in the sun. Below the bridge the current is calmer. At the turn, on the left bank there is a small stone cliff. Comparing the amount of water before and after the village, we can assume that part of it goes underground somewhere above where we were and returns back to the surface in the village area. Perhaps during the summer low-water period, when the water level becomes even lower, the riverbed in some area dries out completely. Those. it turns out to be an analogue of Ragushi. When there is a lot of water, it flows both above and below the ground. When there is not enough of it, only underground. To find out for sure, you need to walk along the riverbed and look for ponors and vaucluses. But a couple of hours won’t do it here, and there’s no time for more. We take a few final photos from the bridge and set off on our way back.
Clouds are no longer reflected in the waters of these rivers; neither trees nor grass grow along their banks. These water streams flow in dark dungeons, and above there is the usual life of the metropolis. But sometimes some of them show their character and break out, presenting unpleasant surprises to the big city.
The Moscow Kremlin, when viewed from above, has the shape of a triangle. With its walls it is inscribed in the cape formed by the Moscow River and its left tributary Neglinka. In ancient times, water under the walls was a blessing, an additional protection. But the city went beyond its river boundaries, and now excess “moisture” became a problem. Today's Moscow, which has covered almost 1000 km² of the Russian Plain with its numerous rivulets, streams and swamps with dense urban development and a road network, has sent most of them underground, into sewers. Today, about 150 watercourses in the city flow underground. If all the collectors are connected into a line, it will stretch from Moscow almost to Nizhny Novgorod.
What's wrong with the rivers?
Today, local historians can, sighing nostalgically, walk along the routes of former riverbeds and look for traces of former banks in the surrounding terrain, but the construction of sewers was a forced measure. Rivers were removed underground not only in Moscow, but also in many other large cities of the world. The Fleet River has disappeared in the depths of London, the Parisian Bièvre is hidden in the ground, and the streams of New York run in sewers. The reasons why water flows began to be removed underground are similar. Gullies and swampy banks hampered the development of cities, disrupting the connectivity of areas and preventing the development of territories. During floods and heavy rainfalls, even small rivers caused floods, flooding streets, houses and temples. But, perhaps, the main reason was that in those ancient times they did not care about the environment and any water flow in the middle of the city necessarily turned into a sewer, where sewage was drained and garbage was thrown out. Moscow rivers like Neglinka, Rachka, Sorochka, flowing in the very center of the city, became a big problem hundreds of years ago, and in the 18th century the authorities began to take decisive measures.
A rare case - the Filki River collector was built already in the USSR (1960s), but brick was chosen as a building material, rather than concrete, which was usual for that time. Another infrequently encountered feature is that heating network pipes are laid under the ceiling of the collector.
How are they hidden underground?
The construction of a river collector, like the construction of metro tunnels, can be done in two ways - open or closed. When constructing river collectors in Moscow, the open method is more often used, but in the old days this was the only method they used. A trench was dug next to the riverbed (or a natural ravine formed by the river was used), a collector was erected in it, water was redirected there, the collector and the old riverbed were covered with earth. The closed method involves the use of special machines - mining shields - and is rarely used. In the 19th century, river sewers were built mainly from red brick, and many of them are still in excellent condition and look impressive. However, there were exceptions - for example, the collector of the Yauza tributary of the Chernogryazka River is built of white stone and has an unusual oval cross-section. At the beginning of the 20th century, they experimented with concrete, but without iron reinforcement. The material turned out to be of poor quality, and many culverts built in those years collapsed. Almost all rivers taken underground during Soviet times flow in prefabricated reinforced concrete collectors of round or rectangular cross-section; brick sections are a rarity. Occasionally there are steel pipes and monolithic reinforced concrete. Plastic is now starting to become widespread.
What happened to Neglinka?
These days, Neglinka does not disturb the city, but this calm did not come easily or right away. It took almost two centuries to “pacify” the river, during which the collector was repeatedly completed and rebuilt, as a result of which one can see almost all the technologies that have been used in this area since the first half of the 19th century. Neglinka was first removed into the chimney in 1817-1819 during the reconstruction of Moscow after Napoleon's invasion. But even after the construction of the collector, the river continued to fill with sewage, garbage and even, probably, corpses of criminal origin, which caused horror to the brave reporter Gilyarovsky, who descended into the Moscow “cloaca” in the 1880s. At the turn of the last century, a city sewerage system appeared in Moscow, and the discharge of sewage into rivers for the most part ceased. But besides the impurities, there was another problem. The collector, built in the 19th century, had a small cross-section, and during heavy rainfall it was not enough to quickly pass through all the incoming water. After every heavy downpour, one could literally sail on a boat along Trubnaya Square. Gagarin had already flown, Leonov had gone into outer space, and the city was still suffering from violent floods: on June 25, 1965, Neglinka overflowed its underground banks and flooded Moscow from the Kremlin walls to Samotechnaya Street. It also did not help that in the first half of the 1960s, a new collector was built using a panel method from Teatralnaya Square, under which the river passes, to the Moscow River. It was laid not parallel to the old one, but along a completely different trajectory in the direction of Moskvoretskaya embankment.
Thus, the Neglinka had two mouths at a decent distance from each other. However, above Theater Square, the river was crowded into an old pipe. The situation was aggravated by the fact that during the existence of the collector, the area around was densely built up and covered with asphalt. If previously part of the rainwater, as happens in nature, was absorbed into the ground, now up to 80% of the runoff ends up in the storm drain.
The problem had to be solved radically. In the 1970s, a large collector was built using an open-cut method, starting almost from Suvorovskaya Square and ending near Teatralnaya. This typically Soviet structure has a rectangular cross-section and is made of concrete slabs. Nothing here resembles the brick vaults under which Gilyarovsky traveled. But there were no more serious floods on Neglinka.
The collector of the Chechera River, built in the 1930s, near the mouth. On the right is the underground mouth of the Chernogryazka River. The mouths of both rivers were artificially moved downstream of the Yauza, below the Syromyatnichesky hydroelectric complex (initially the rivers flowed into it separately). If this had not been done, the river collectors would have been flooded by the rising waters of the Yauza.
What is Khokhlovsky Pond?
However, it cannot be said that the problem of flooding is completely absent. You won’t find Khokhlovsky Pond on the map of Moscow—that’s what locals jokingly call the flooding zone that regularly occurs during heavy rainfalls in the area of Khokhlovsky Lane. This is the river Rachka, hidden underground in the 18th century, coming out of the collector. The old narrow sewer cannot cope with the powerful influx of water from the streets, and the recently built new section has not yet solved the problem. Flooding can be caused not only by the initially small cross-section of the collector, but also by its narrowing due to debris and sediment. Garbage enters rivers through drainage grates and wells, where “conscious” citizens dump it, granite chips and sand washed off the streets perfectly clog pipes; active construction has become a serious threat. A lot of clay and bentonite, a swelling material, is washed into the drainage from construction sites. This leads to sediment being deposited at the bottom, which also becomes hard as stone over time. One of the famous examples is the Tarakanovka River. Its collector for several kilometers is clogged with hardened sediment, in some places two-thirds of the cross-section. This is a consequence of the construction of the Alabyano-Baltic tunnel, from the construction site of which a lot of bentonite fell into the river.
Are the rivers underground clean?
Moscow uses a separate sewerage system. Storm sewerage is independent from fecal sewerage, and industrial and domestic wastewater does not flow through it. But you can’t call it completely clean either. This is not surprising - water from city streets cannot be clean by definition. In addition, despite the official ban on the drainage of industrial and household waste, there are illegal cuts into the drainage system, and in some places the smell of petroleum products can be felt, although in most sewers there are no unpleasant odors, contrary to popular belief among ordinary people. Emergency overflows have also been made between the sewerage system and underground rivers. If the sewer suddenly collapses, wastewater will flow into the river. This is bad, but better than flooding the city streets with them. Most of the water from underground rivers ends up in the Moscow River without treatment, but some of them still have treatment facilities.
Underground life and waterfalls
Eternal darkness and dirty water are not the best place for all kinds of living creatures, but there is life in the sewers. Tree roots and grass hang from the ceiling, mushrooms grow on the walls, here you can see spiders, cockroaches, woodlice, and sometimes mice and rats. There are underground rivers that connect to clean ponds in parks and are themselves clean, for example Setunka, Bitsa, Bibirevka. Sometimes fish swim into their collectors from ponds in search of warm water and food.
Waterfall in a storm sewer collector in Mitino. Water from a high elevation flows into the open river Skhodnya, overcoming several cascades similar to the one shown in the photo.
You can often find waterfalls underground, which are usually not found near lowland rivers. This is because steeply sloping sewers are more difficult to construct and operate. Instead, they build ordinary collectors with a slight slope and connect them with a “step”, which forms a waterfall. To prevent falling water from breaking concrete or brick, a water hole is built under the waterfall. There can be several cascades.
There are also other hydraulic structures - small dams that redirect water flows through different pipes, settling tanks, snow chambers left over from the times when snow was dumped into underground rivers. There are also unique structures, for example a two-story collector, where one river flows over another.
Is there anything good about underground rivers?
Of course there is. Firstly, as already mentioned, all storm sewers are based on them, and only where rivers are far away are separate systems built for drainage. Secondly, in the floodplains of rivers hidden underground, the soil is loose and unstable, and therefore these valleys are not built up without special need. That’s why we often see spacious boulevards in place of river beds, which are so good to stroll along. These are, for example, Tsvetnoy Boulevard and Samotechny Square along the Neglinka route or Zvezdny and Rocket Boulevards above the Kopytovka River. Thirdly, Muscovites owe many famous ponds and cascades of ponds to rivers that no longer exist on the surface. For example, the pond in the Moscow Zoo was originally filled with the waters of the hidden Presnya River, Sadki Pond is located on the Kolomenka River, and Kalitnikovsky Pond is on the Kalitnikovsky Stream. True, these days, as a rule, the bulk of the water from these rivers flows past the ponds through bypass collectors, so that the ponds do not overflow their banks and are not polluted by sewage.
The rivers that went underground left their memories in the form of street names, relief features, and even surviving bridges. An example is the Humpbacked Bridge, which was once used to cross Presnya. Isn’t it worth thinking about putting up memorial signs or information stands along the path of these rivers, telling city residents about the secret hydrography of the capital?