Olympic bow. How did you manage to save old cemetery in the very center of the Sochi Olympic Park
Two weeks ago, hundreds of journalists from all over the world visited the Sochi Games venues. Participants in the world Olympic briefing did not hide their amazement at the pace of construction sports facilities. But they were no less struck by the small cemetery in the Imereti Valley - a stone's throw from the skating palace and the Shayba hockey arena...Two weeks ago, hundreds of journalists from all over the world visited the Sochi Games venues. Participants in the world Olympic briefing did not hide their amazement at the pace of construction of sports facilities. But they were no less struck by the small cemetery in the Imereti Valley - a stone's throw from the skating palace and the Shayba hockey arena...
DECEMBRIST-PARAMETER
Adler is not overly concerned with historical heritage. Guests of the upcoming Olympics will only be able to walk around Bestuzhev Square - touch an old cannon, take a photo of the monument to the Decembrist officer Alexander Bestuzhev. Exiled to Siberia after the events on Senate Square, the brave staff captain begged to serve in the Caucasian War. And he died heroically in Adler on June 7, 1837 - as part of the Black Sea battalion during the landing from the frigate Anna. In 1913, at the site of the death of Iskander-bek (as the sailors nicknamed their comrade), the townspeople laid out a park by the sea, and in 1957 they erected a monument...
That's all that remains of old Adler. But in 1839 it was a city of twenty forts and fortresses. The only memory of this - a piece of stone wall on Karl Marx Street - is now propped up by a cell phone store. The royal hunting palace of Nicholas II in Krasnaya Polyana has also sunk into oblivion, along with the dachas of opera singers Fyodor Chaliapin and Leonid Sobinov.
And only the cemetery of the Old Believers survived the change of centuries...
“WE BURY ACCORDING TO ALL CUSTOMS...”
Four years ago, during the visit of the IOC commission, a meeting of Old Believers at the cemetery caused a lot of noise. People stood between the grave fences, holding SOS posters in their hands. On the contrary - officials and riot police...
“Seeing our posters, one of the city administration officials shouted: they say, now we’ll open fire to kill!” – recalls community leader Dmitry Drofichev. - The disobedient ones were thrown to the ground. The graves were trampled. The police forced the Cossacks onto the bus, where they forced them to write explanatory notes.…
– What about the IOC commission?
- What do you! We were not allowed to see her.
As a result, the Old Believers village of Morlinsky was moved a kilometer higher from the sea. But it was not possible to raze the cemetery to the ground: the people blocked the road for the bulldozers with their breasts.
In the village of Nekrasovka, where 112 families have moved, I meet new resident Lyubov Markovna Logaryova. She flatly forbids taking photographs of herself, saying that this is worldly fun. Old Believers, by the way, immediately warn: you don’t need to shake hands with them, touch things, dishes...
– Are people happy with the new houses?
- Yes, what kind! The plots are tiny, there is no place to plant a garden - the interlocutor is not inclined to compromise.
- It’s great that you defended the cemetery...
- Yes. We bury as before, according to all customs,” the interlocutor softens a little. – It’s bad that there is no church, we pray at home (a new Old Believer church in Nekrasovka has been built since 2011, and the old wooden one in Adler burned down in 1932. – Ed.)…
“THEY CALLED NICHOLAS II...”
“You can understand the Old Believers, their great-grandfathers were the first settlers here: they drained the swamps, died of malaria, built houses, planted gardens,” says Margarita Kuzina, senior researcher at the local history museum of the Adler district of Sochi. This woman, who receives a measly six thousand rubles a month for her work, knows everything about Adler and the Adler people. It was the Old Believers who came to her for help when they defended the cemetery.
“The first graves appeared on it in 1911, when 160 families of Old Believers arrived here from Turkey,” says Kuzina. – Descendants of the Don Cossacks and opponents of church reform of the 17th century. Nicholas II personally called them to their homeland. And before that, as the founder of the community, Foma Drofichev, said, he and his ancestors in Romania and Turkey were engaged in fishing and farming. And during the Russian-Turkish wars they refused to fight for the Sultan against Russia. The Turks and Circassians began to push them out. And after the end of the Caucasian War, the tsarist government carried out the resettlement of Russians to the Black Sea lands liberated from the Ottomans. Foma and 60 other families from the city of Banderma were taken by ship through Batumi to Sochi. So the Cossacks settled the Imereti Valley.
“In those days, the seashore was covered with impenetrable forest and boxwood,” local historian Irina Golovina takes the floor. – The emperor gave everyone a loan for the construction of roads and houses, and gave the men a deferment from the army for 20 years. All current Old Believers are descendants of those settlers. Even the revolution and collectivization did not break their faith. The collective farm of Old Believers named after the VII Congress of Soviets supplied vegetables and herbs to the Kremlin table! And to the Great Patriotic War The Cossacks were the first to go to the front. It was they who stopped the Germans at the Caucasian Pseashkho pass.
– Did you consult the Old Believers about the cemetery?
“You can say so,” Kuzina answers. – When the Olympic construction began, they came to me and said: there is a deed of gift for the land, including the cemetery one, which was issued by Nicholas II in 1911. But we didn’t have such documents. I advised them to go to the Sochi archive, but they simply laughed at them. As we found out, most likely, the emperor’s deed of gift was lost during the war. When the Germans approached the mountain passes in 1942, local officials conserved all archival documents. They hastily packed them into ordinary bags and buried them. Almost everything has rotted - the climate here is humid. But, fortunately, the local authorities came to their senses and did not demolish the cemetery.
“TWO FEELINGS ARE WONDERFULLY CLOSE TO US...”
You can get to the historical churchyard only with a special pass, which is issued at Olympstroy. At the appointed hour I stand at checkpoint No. 2 Olympic Park. Here a magnetic card and an escort from the construction department are waiting for me.
“It’s easier for relatives to get to the graves,” he explains. “They’re on the security list.” It is enough to present your passport.
...The cemetery is like a dusty oasis in the desert. The graves are shrouded in palm branches and covered with tree crowns. Literally across the road is the Fisht stadium, the Palace figure skating...
The cemetery area is tiny, about 25 meters long and wide. The graves of the Old Believers are easy to identify - they are the most abandoned. Faded wooden crosses on a grassy hillock, no nameplates...
“Old Believers don’t look after their graves,” my aunt, Adler resident Victoria Boldyskul, told me before the trip. On her husband’s side, relatives are buried in Imereti land. “They still have a tradition from the Turks: they buried it, the grass sprouted, and that’s it.”
We walk slowly along the graves. I read the names, dates on monuments...
“In fact, in Soviet times, the cemetery ceased to be an Old Believer cemetery,” explains the guide. – Adler migrants were buried here, and in addition to Old Believers, these were Moldovans, Armenians, Orthodox Russians, and even Muslims. Who's not here...
It's time for us to leave. From an island of eternal silence and sadness into the world of a huge construction site thundering around the clock.
“It’s still great that the cemetery was preserved,” says my guide. – This is a connection of times. Those who lie in this land built the city. And their descendants are building the first in our history Winter Olympics.
And I think that it’s not about the Olympics at all. It was impossible to do otherwise in the country that gave the world Pushkin. “Two feelings are wonderfully close to us, in them the heart finds food: love for the native ashes, love for the tombs of our fathers...”
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Now it’s hard to imagine that on the site of the Olympic Park there were vegetable beds and Sochi summer residents admired the Black Sea sunsets. Now that we see the final result and can root for our athletes, it is especially interesting to see how it all was created. Did you know that in the very heart of the Olympics in Sochi, very close to the main Olympic torch, there is an ancient Old Believer cemetery?
When the National Olympic Committee chose Sochi as the capital of the 2014 Olympics in 2007, the small seaside resort had no large construction structures, only small houses and problems with transport accessibility. Seven years and 51 billion dollars - the total cost of the Olympic Games in Sochi, turned a quiet place into a modern one sports center country: a new railway system, a lot of sports facilities equipped with the latest technology.
New Zealand snowboarders pose on the Olympic rings in the Olympic Village
Inside view of the Bolshoi under construction Ice Palace in the Sochi Olympic Park
Exterior view of the Great Ice Palace under construction
A volunteer walks around the Big Ice Palace
On the site of the future Olympic Park there are still strawberry beds
October 2010. Construction of Olympic facilities
February 2012
Almost everything is ready. December 2013. Two months before opening
During the construction of Olympic facilities in the center of Sochi, a three-story building tilted. It's all because of the collapse of the road due to construction work.
May 2011. Rosa Khutor. View from Krasnaya Polyana
View of Rosa Khutor in February 2017
The photograph from above shows that near the Olympic torch there is an incomprehensible fenced circle, and near it there are red screens. This is a preserved cemetery of the Old Believers, which was located in the village where the main Olympic stadiums are now built. The cemetery was discovered when they began to make markings for construction on the site. Since the cemetery itself formed spontaneously, it was not marked on the city plans. “Olympstroy” had every right to raze it to the ground, but local residents, who were already forced to move from their homes, stood up to defend their cemetery. As a result, they managed to defend the cemetery. The city mayor announced. that, most likely, a chapel will be built on the site of the cemetery. Until the issue is finally resolved, the cemetery has been closed with red structures acting as a screen, and it is not visible to passers-by. You can't even see it from the colorful bridges. The cemetery can only be recognized from above.
Ice Sports Palace. May 2011.
Ice Sports Palace. February 2012.
It's August 2013.
February 2014. Even during the Olympics, construction is still ongoing.
What do you think was closely guarded by an entire squad of riot police during the 2014 Sochi Olympics? Cemetery in the center of the Olympic Park!
The first time I saw this amazing cemetery was while flying around Sochi by helicopter in 2013. Pay attention to the fenced circle of forest on the left in the photo - this is the cemetery.
The cemetery is surrounded by a three-meter concrete fence and was carefully guarded during the Olympics; it was impossible to get inside even with a special pass. Now it is open to everyone, but the entrance is made so cleverly that not everyone will figure out how to get there!
Initially, they wanted to demolish the cemetery, but local residents did not allow it. It's even on YouTube video of mass clashes between local residents and police. After the visit of the IOC delegation, it was decided to preserve the cemetery.
They write on the Internet that this is a cemetery of Old Believers. I walked around the graves and didn’t notice any Old Believers. But there are a lot of fresh graves, which is probably why the locals managed to defend it.
Judging by wrenches and car parts on the fence, here lies the body of an automobile master.
Citizens restore order
Someone remembers over a glass of “water”
This is such an amazing place
Surprisingly, but true, entertainment and sports facilities were built around the cemetery. On the other hand, the authorities listened to the opinions of the residents and made concessions...
Now I will greatly surprise you.
All my photographs of the Olympic Park in the coastal cluster of Sochi contain an object whose purpose I did not know.
In the very center of the Olympic Park, next to the Fisht stadium and the Olympic torch, there is an active Old Believers cemetery.
From the newspaper " Soviet sport"(http://www.sovsport.ru/gazeta/article-item/571128):
“Four years ago, during the visit of the IOC commission, a meeting of Old Believers at the cemetery caused a lot of noise. People stood between the grave fences, holding “SOS” posters in their hands. Opposite were officials and riot police...
“Seeing our posters, one of the city administration officials shouted: they say, now we’ll open fire to kill!” – recalls community leader Dmitry Drofichev. - The disobedient ones were thrown to the ground. The graves were trampled. The police forced the Cossacks onto the bus, where they forced them to write explanatory notes.…
As a result, the Old Believers village of Morlinsky was moved a kilometer higher from the sea. But it was not possible to raze the cemetery to the ground: the people blocked the road for the bulldozers with their breasts."
To prevent spectators walking across the colorful bridges from seeing the cemetery, three huge red screens were built.
As a result, spectators walking across the bridge see these screens and the top of the Olympic torch.
This is how it all looks from the sea.
And this is what it looks like Olympic Park from the cemetery. These photographs of Mikhail Mordasov from the portal of the South (http://www.yuga.ru/photo/polosa/2022.html) were taken in May, when the Old Believers celebrated Radonitsa.
Upd.: On Facebook Anton Kochura commented on my post: “Well, now, although it’s belated, both the Olympic builder and the Sochi resident came into the comment with a close-up look.
1. How it got there. There, in Imeretinka, there was a village of Old Believers, approximately on the site of the current "Fisht", by the way, the Old Believers themselves are one of those who moved to a new place in a comfortable village without screaming "give me 100 million for my chicken coop." When they started marking the geological basis for construction, they saw this cemetery, which appeared by itself near the village and was simply not marked on the city plans of the territories. And, in general, “Olympstroy” had every right, as an “illegal construction,” to level it all with a bulldozer, and from the point of view of the law and the PZZ it would be right and clean.
2. “Move half a meter.” This, comrade, is not just difficult, but practically impossible, firstly, the soils in Imeretinka are really swampy, however, swampy not so much in the philistine sense as in the construction sense, here in Sochi 90% of everything is built on weak soils on pile fields with 15-20 meters of drilling minimum to the rocky base, and specifically for large Olympic objects, areas with local elevation of rocky bases were specially selected, under the same “Fisht” if I’m not mistaken ( direct relationship had almost no involvement in construction in Imeretinka) about 30,000 piles up to 30-40 meters deep.”
© 2014, Alexey Nadezhin
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Sochi Old Believers appealed to the city authorities with a request to change the status of the cemetery located on the territory Imereti Lowland Olympic Park V Adler district resort town, with urban on religious. This is due to changes in the regulations for reserving places in cemeteries for family burials.
They are installing some kind of fences for family burials, and they are offering to buy some plots for very large sums. If the cemetery is sold for family burials, then our people will not be able to buy them, because they do not have these amounts. “We are not against family burials, but against the sale of the cemetery,” said the chairman of the local religious organization “ Community treelnon-Orthodox churches» priestArtem th Efimov .
Director of Sochi Municipal Unitary Enterprise " Ritual services to the population» Alexander Mamulay reported that at the Old Believer cemetery in the Olympic Park there are a lot of unauthorized areas seized for family burials.
That is, a person held the burial of his relative and, instead of the required 4 m², fenced off 20 m². But the status has nothing to do with unauthorized territories. The Old Believers do not want to pay money and have fenced off the areas where their relatives are buried. In addition to the Old Believers, residents of the state farm are also buried there." Russia" And if we give the cemetery the status of Old Believers, then residents of nearby villages will not be able to bury their relatives there,” he said.
According to him, the Sochi authorities are forced to go to court and, based on its decision, dismantle the occupied lands in all Sochi cemeteries, including the cemetery where the ancestors of the Old Believers are buried.
I am ready to support any decision of the Old Believers community. Either religious status, or the status of a cemetery closed to free burial, but we must work this out,” noted A. Mamulay.
He recalled that burial on the territory of Sochi is regulated 131 Rby the decision of the Sochi city meeting, approved in 2011. The Sochi administration has approved a list of city cemeteries where family or clan burials are allowed. A one-time fee is charged for reserving a site in the city budget. For rural districts the fee is 8.5 thousand rubles per 1 sq.m., in the rest of Sochi - 14 thousand rubles. for 1 sq.m. The list covered by the innovation includes nine cemeteries, including the cemetery of the Old Believers in the Imereti Lowland.
Do you understand the meaning of an Old Believer cemetery? Our small piece of land will last for a thousand years. Because Old Believer cemeteries do not grow - wooden crosses are erected, and after time (after 25-35 years), when the cross rots and falls, and there is no longer a coffin or body there, we bury another person in this place. And if this cemetery were left alone, it would last for hundreds of years, which is why the question of a new cemetery is not raised. It doesn’t grow anywhere within its borders; we don’t even have fences, because we don’t worship the dead. We began to erect fences when others began to be buried with the graves of our people. And so, there should be a chapel and graves in the cemetery, there should be cleanliness and order,” said Priest Artemy Efimov.
The cemetery is located next to Olympic venues: stadiums, ice arenas and other structures. During preparation for Olympic Games the organizers were going to demolish the cemetery. However, the local community protested, and the object was left on the territory of the Olympic Park, surrounded by a fence.
We stood here with our chests. There were even clashes between people and the police... 10 years have passed and now city hall officials remembered that there was a cemetery here and transferred it to a municipal cemetery. It has never been and never will be urban. The city did not establish this cemetery. It was founded by Old Believers. Their graves are the first and oldest here. “We take care of them ourselves,” said a member of the Old Believer community Dmitry Drofichev.
Let us recall that the settlement of Old Believers in the area of Imereti Bay arose at the beginning of the 20th century. It was founded by families of Old Believers who returned to Russia from Ottoman Empire after the publication of a decree on religious tolerance in 1905.
