Old abandoned cemeteries. Looking for an ancient village from space

About one small old cemetery, located in the forest near the picturesque Yulovo Lake in the Karsunsky district of the Ulyanovsk region, my friends told me.
“The cemetery is interesting because there is a grave of a grandmother on hooves, who steals children at night,” they told me, and armed with a navigator, I headed to the place.

On a beautiful hot day, we got to the lake, drove along the edge, got scared of a hole with water, left the car and went further into the forest on foot. Thanks to the exact coordinates that I was provided with good people We almost immediately found the place we needed.
The cemetery turned out to be quite small - 8-9 obvious graves remained from it, some crosses were lying in the grass.

As former leaders and vacationers of the nearby camp told me, children were taken to the old cemetery in order to scare them with a terrible grandmother on hooves, showing her grave. Why scared? So that the children do not leave the camp at night. I can assume that this particular burial was shown with a photograph of the granny, who, perhaps, lived an ordinary, righteous life and did not expect that after her death she would become a folklore character, by no means positive.

By the way, they say that Yulovo - anomalous zone. And I agree with this! The first anomaly is that I did not get a single photo with this tombstone in focus.
And the second anomaly, more terrible, is mosquitoes! That's who you should be afraid of, they will gobble up in a few seconds, if you do not brush them off.

Several crosses can be found on the ground, very soon they will disappear.

Three burials behind one fence.

One and only iron obelisk, the photo has not been preserved.

A tree fell on one burial, broke the wooden fence and the tombstone. Nature takes over.

What the cemetery refers to is unknown, most likely to the village that once was here.

No hoof marks were found on the ground (perhaps they looked badly?), but the feeling of slight anxiety did not let go. Although it is not known who is more terrible to meet - a grandmother-on-hooves or a living stranger.

In loss reports 42nd Rifle Corps of the Red Army , which held back the offensive in 1941 Wehrmacht on the city of Kandalaksha, there are indications of burial places of Soviet soldiers "in the Alakurtti area", "near the Alakurtti railway station", "in Alakurtti", "on the banks of Tuntsayoki". To date, in the immediate vicinity of the village of Alakurtti, only one municipal and one military memorial cemetery. All of them are located on the right bank of the Tuntsajoki River. At the same time, the military memorial on the right bank of the river. Tuntsayoki was opened May 9, 1961 on the site of the reburials of the remains of Soviet soldiers carried out here.

This article will focus on a little-known abandoned cemetery located on the eastern outskirts of the village of Alakurtti.

NOBODY IS FORGOTTEN!

In the 50s, in the process of logging work carried out in the places of hostilities, the remains of Soviet soldiers were discovered. Their burial was carried out on the high bank of the river. Tuntsayoki near the road bridge. At that time, at the initiative of the CPSU, huge memorial complexes were erected throughout the country. In order to keep up with the party trends of that time and in the village. Alakurtti, on the site of the mass burial of the remains of Soviet soldiers, a military memorial was opened.

Military memorial in the village. Alakurtti has repeatedly undergone reconstruction. With every change of the memorial there was a loss historical information about the soldiers buried here and about the place of their initial burial. As a result, it became impossible to establish the number of soldiers buried at the memorial. Modern look memorial cemetery is shown in the photo below.

The document of 1960 indicates that Shumilova V.V. together with ten soldiers of the 2/273th page of the regiment were buried "on a mass grave" in the village. Alakurtti. From this fact, we can conclude that on the right bank of the river. Tuntsayoki by 1960, the reburial of the remains of Soviet soldiers was already being carried out. It is possible that the remains of soldiers were transferred here from other military graves located near the Alakurtti-Kairala road. Hero's Tomb Soviet Union, deputy political instructor Danilov N.F. was transferred from the tract Nenepalo. How it was possible to find his grave, located far from the roads, among the swamps, remains a mystery to me.
In fairness, it can be noted that the graves of the Heroes of the Soviet Union Kuznetsov A.K. and Gryaznova A.M. none of the memorials. On the memorial there are plates perpetuating the memory of them. Although for the majority of the villagers, the installed commemorative plates are a sign of burial.
The bodies of both Major Kuznetsov (chief of staff of the 273rd regiment of the regiment) and corporal Gryaznov (commander of the T-37 tank) were left on the battlefield, on the territory captured by the enemy. It is possible that the grave of Danilov N.F. according to the testimony of veterans, they were specifically looking for a landmark burial at the memorial being opened in Alakurtti.
Commemorative plates on the modern Alakurta memorial are located without any chronological sequence. True, in the first row of the memorial, in front of the grave of Danilov N.F. a plate was installed indicating 24 unknown warriors. The date of their burial is not specified. I can assume that it is here that the remains of those soldiers who were reburied at the memorial until 1961 are buried. There is no information about this slab, which means that the memory of the soldiers buried under it is forever forgotten.

After the end of the war, in the territory of the present municipalities SP Alakurtti and SP Zarechensk, as well as in the Republic of Karelia, near Kestenga and Sofporog, several memorial military cemeteries were created. The remains of Soviet soldiers found in the Alakurtti region during logging and exhumed from the surrounding wartime burials were brought to these cemeteries, for no clear reason.
From the "Verman Frontier" to Kuolajärvi, such memorials are located at km 88 and 102 of the old road, as well as in Kairala, Alakurtti and near the Kuolajärvi checkpoint. At present, the remains of Soviet soldiers exhumed by search teams are buried only in Alakurtti. There is no reliable information about all these burials. The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the authorities and society as a whole are indifferent to such facts. And this is a key sign of the absence of Culture in Russia.

ALACURTTI RAILWAY STATION

The Alakurtti station was put into operation in 1940 and was located in close proximity to the field military airfield under construction at the Kaitakangas tract. According to some reports, by the beginning of the war, the construction of the airfield had not yet been completed, and only U-2 and I-15 bis light aircraft could be based on it.
The railway and motor roads then passed along the southern border of the airfield, north of the current railway track. At the end of the 1940s, for basing a squadron of MIG-15 fighters at the airfield, the runway was lengthened due to the transfer of the railway bed. The station building was built closer to the administrative center of the village. The fighter air division was then headed by Stepan Anastasovich Mikoyan.

Just before the start of the war, the 1st Panzer Division of the Red Army (1TD) was sent to Kandalaksha from near Pskov. After unloading at st. Alakurtti, the main parts of this division were stationed on the right bank of the river. Tuntsayoki. In the same area, only on the left bank of the river, downstream, was the headquarters of the 42nd Rifle Corps.
June 22, 1941 Germany, without declaring war, launched a military invasion of the territory of the USSR. In the Arctic, in the Kandalaksha direction, the enemy still continued to concentrate units 36th Mountain Infantry Corps close to the Soviet border. Finland did not declare war on the USSR, but provided its territory to the German Army "Norway" (since 1942 - Army "Lapland") for the invasion of the Soviet Arctic.

Before July 1st the Germans limited themselves to throwing sabotage groups into the rear of the Soviet rifle corps and attacking border outposts. Enemy aviation freely bombed our outposts and railway stations in Kuolajärvi, Kairala and Alakurtti, where personnel and equipment of units were unloaded 42nd Rifle Corps of the 14th Army of the Northern Front .

When the 1st Mechanized Regiment of the 1TD arrived from Kandalaksha and unloaded at st. Alakurtti, the air raids didn't stop all day. Telephone operator of the regiment Hadegadli died in a direct hit by a bomb from a "Junkers" in a wooden station building st. Alakurtti. The telephone operator who worked there PetrenkoO.S. was injured, but continued to work until the shift arrived. And yet, the unloading went well - not a single tank, not a single armored vehicle was damaged.
July 8, 1941 in one of the next raids by enemy aircraft with fragments of an air bomb near the switchman Zharkova Anna Petrovna both legs were injured. To withdraw loaded trains from under fire, it was necessary to switch arrows to local dead-end branches. Despite the pain and explosions of air bombs, Anna Petrovna continued to fulfill her duties. For his feat Zharkov A.P. was awarded the medal "For Military Merit". In 2015, on the building of st. Alakurtti in her honor a memorial plate was opened.

On the same day, when a train with ammunition arrived in Alakurtti, an enemy air raid began. The station was filled with trains, and the station - with wounded Red Army soldiers. The roar of anti-aircraft guns, bomb explosions, machine gun fire. Many wounded died in the station from a direct hit, special tracks were put out of action. The dead were buried somewhere near the station.

As a result of the air raid, 10 wagons were broken and 4 tracks were destroyed.

July 21, 1941 during the next raid of enemy aircraft on st. Alakurtti and the Head Artillery Depot, the Red Army guard Ignatiev V.E. remained at his post and was killed by an air bomb explosion. He was posthumously awarded the Medal for Courage.

August 24, 1941, with the threat of encirclement, the headquarters of the 42nd Rifle Corps ordered its units to withdraw from the "Kairal line" to Alakurtti and to the Voita station. At the Alakurtti railway station, cargo was loaded into trains and dispatched continuously.

August 28, 1941 German-Finnish units approached the bridgehead positions near the Tuntsayoki River, defended by units of the 42nd Rifle Corps of the Red Army. The command of the Soviet corps did not hope to throw the enemy back from Alakurtti and already August 29 platoon of sappers 6 ovzhb was instructed to mine and blow up all infrastructure facilities of the railway station. Under the leadership of Sergeant Kiselev F.G., a water pumping station, a water tower were blown up and the station building was burned down.

MILITARY BURIALS IN ALAKURTTI

As the front line moved eastward (at the end of August 1941), Soviet soldiers who fell and died of wounds were buried along the road to Alakurtti and Kandalaksha.
During the battles at the bridgehead positions near Alakurtti itself (August 28-30, 1941), the loss reports already indicate burial sites located on the eastern bank of the river. Tuntsayoki and at Alakurtti station. Obviously, they were buried somewhere east of the station.

In the rearguard action (in the evening of August 30), covering the withdrawal of the 1st battalion of the 273rd rifle regiment of Art. Lieutenant Geraskin, the border guards of the 101st Infantry Regiment of the NKVD were pressed against the Tuntsayoki River, and under machine-gun and mortar fire from the Germans, they swam to the opposite bank. According to the recollections of veterans, no one covered the departure of the border guards. In that battle near the railway bridge, about 100 border guards were killed and drowned while crossing. So far, no monument or memorial sign has been erected in this place.
From the memoirs of the political instructor of the 2nd battalion of the 101st border regiment Areshin, it is known that only he, with a small group of border guards, managed to cross to the left bank of the river. Tuntsayoki. Already behind him there was an explosion and the construction of the bridge collapsed into the river. During the explosion of bridges, two sappers of the 1st motorized infantry regiment went missing.

In the early 90s, the Head of the Village Council S.M. Olenich invited divers to Alakurtti to search the local lakes for planes that had crashed during the war. Then, at the bottom of Tuntsayoki, the truss from the railway bridge was mistaken for a fragment of an airplane. After examining the bottom of the river near the bridge, the divers recovered a lot of weapons that could only belong to the Soviet border guards. No one deigned to publish the results of this event and make a report. This fact I know from a letter of thanks from S.M. Olenich written at the request of the divers themselves.

In 1941-44, the Alakurtti area was under German occupation, and probably, memorial signs (stars) on the graves Soviet soldiers were dumped or destroyed.

After a topographic survey was carried out in these places in 1953, a 1:50,000 scale map appeared. On this map, on the outskirts of the village of Alakurtti, you can see a rural cemetery, a mass grave and two memorial signs.

Rural municipal cemetery, located on the right bank of the river. Tuntsayoki, on the first kilometer of the Alakurtti-Kuolajärvi road, has been known to me since 1969. Judging by the map, this cemetery existed until 1953, and may have been organized as early as 1945 when the Alakurta military garrison was stationed here.
One of my acquaintances, a resident of Alakurtti, said that once, during the funeral of his relative at this cemetery, the burial place of a soldier was accidentally opened. A red pillow lay under the head of the deceased, which indicates a post-war burial.

A mass grave is indicated in the lower right corner of this map. The very indication that this grave is a mass grave indicates that the burial refers to the autumn offensive of 1944 of the 19th Army of the Karelian Front. To date, this burial no longer exists.

In the "Burial Book" of the Military Medical Museum armed forces USSR there is an indication of this burial, located 4 km of the Tuntsayoki River southeast of the village. Alakurtti. This is a sand and gravel pit.

In November 1944, two officers were buried in this sand pit:

2). On November 19, 1944, St. lieutenant of the reserve officers of the 19th Army Yakovlev Viktor Fedorovich (born 1922). Died as a result of murder. Was picked up on the road.

According to information from "DB Memorial" Tretyak Ya.I. and Yakovlev V.F. appear reburied at the military memorial cemetery at the 14th km of the road to the village of Zarechensk.

Once, in conversations with the inhabitants of Alakurtti, one of them told me a story.

No one remembers what year it was, but during the digging of a foundation pit near the road, human bones fell from the bucket of an excavator. In order not to delay work, the pit was quietly filled up, and a new hole was dug somewhere nearby. Where exactly this happened was not specified, but it was indicated in the direction of the entrance to the village from the direction of Kandalaksha.

On the above topographic map of 1953, at the entrance to the village near the Alakurtti-Kandalaksha road, a memorial sign is indicated. Since the topographers did not provide any additional information, it can be concluded that this place is associated with the hostilities of 1941. The commemorative sign, obviously, was put up after the war at the request of the veterans who fought in these places.

Today, on the site of this commemorative sign, there is a gas station, next to it, containers with fuel are buried in the sand. By analogy with other military burials that were organized in the rear of our troops along the main roads with sandy soil on the side of the road, this place was suitable for burial by all criteria. Apparently, there was no exhumation from this burial, otherwise the second slab would have stood on the military memorial on the right bank of the Tuntsajoki with the date of reburial missing. However, we can do anything...

At the entrance to the village of Alakurtti, where today the gas station is located, a memorial sign was once installed. Perhaps it was here that the burial of Soviet soldiers who died in July-August 1941 was located. Unknown cemetery behind the railway, perhaps, is the burial place of employees and military personnel who died during air raids on st. Alakurtti.

Once I heard from the Head of the MO JV Alakurtti about a little-known abandoned cemetery, located somewhere behind the railway crossing in front of Alakurtti. A.O. Vladimirov also said that, according to local residents, next to this cemetery there was once a farm and the cemetery supposedly belonged to it. Destroyed shacks, either left over from the Germans, or built in the first post-war years I saw at the airfield back in the early 70s. But it is unlikely that near the railway, at the entrance to the closed military camp, the authorities would allow organizing any kind of cemetery. Moreover, on the first kilometer of the road Alakurtti - Kuolajärvi then there was already a rural cemetery. At that time, the main transport link between Alakurtti and Kandalaksha was the railway.
But during the fighting in August 1941, on the eastern outskirts of Art. Alakurtti could well create burial points. A divisional or regimental burial point was usually organized next to the main communications, a few kilometers from the front line. Those who died during air raids on a railway station or on an airfield could be buried in a separate cemetery, also somewhere on the eastern outskirts near the railway and highways.

If you look again at the map of 1953, then above the gas station, behind the railway, there is another memorial sign. At the beginning of the war, a railway and a highway passed near the indicated place.
Due to the obvious coincidence of the location, it can be concluded that the second memorial on the map of 1953 marks exactly the indicated A.O. Vladimirov abandoned cemetery. Topographers were sure of the military origin of the burial, otherwise they would have marked it as a civil cemetery.

Three years later, I accidentally stumbled upon this cemetery.

Abandoned cemetery on the outskirts of Alakurtti

In a small area, fenced with a fence that collapsed in some places, I counted five monuments (there may be more graves). Here I saw not so long ago installed Orthodox cross. Similar crosses are installed in the places of battles and burial places of Soviet soldiers throughout the territory of the Alakurtti SP.

Inspection of the cemetery showed the following.

1. Three distant graves are the oldest and most massive. It may very well be that they date back to 1939-41. Between graves 3, 4, 5 there may be other graves, since the monuments are not located in a row.

2. Two monuments on foreground have a better condition of the wood, possibly due to better painting and later origin.

3. There are no inscriptions on any of the monuments. There is no tablet in the niche of the wooden wall of the right monument No. 5. It is obvious that the plate was made of metal. A star crowned a pointed pin.
4. Traces of red paint have been preserved on monument No. 3, which corresponds to a military burial. A frame for a photograph or picture may indicate an individual grave (perhaps an officer).

6. Perhaps some of their fragments are missing from the monuments. Only monument No. 4, painted blue, looks intact. Its shape and color suggest that a pilot was buried here.
During the time of basing at the Alakurtti airfield, the MIG-15 fighters had one accident. The pilot who died then could be buried in this cemetery. As you can see in the photograph, the monument has retained the fresh color of blue paint, i.e. followed him longer than the others.
7. All monuments are made in the form of pyramids, which is typical for military burials. Soviet period. There is no cross on any of the graves. There are no stars on the monuments.

It can be assumed that the stars from the monuments were removed by the Germans during the occupation, and the tablets from the monuments could be removed, or the inscriptions on them wiped out, at the direction of a special department to hide information about our losses. Or maybe, with the beginning of the orgy of creating fraternal military memorials, the stars were removed from the monuments by a person who did not want the destruction of this cemetery. If exhumation had been carried out here, fragments from other monuments would have been lying around on the site and mossy earthen hills would have been observed.

8. The upper photo shows that the fence of the nearest (oldest) grave has a different shape than the general fence of the cemetery. A fragment of such a fence lies in the moss on a nearby grave. Therefore, initially, the general high fence the three oldest graves were fenced off. Fragments from this fence lined the grave nearest to us, and therefore there is no entrance in the fence. Everything suggests that this grave was once treated with more reverence than others.

It is possible that it was here that the military and employees who died during German air raids on the railway station and Alakurtti airfield were buried.

For comparison, I will give one example. Near the checkpoint in Kuolajärvi, next to the road, there is a cemetery. On one of the monuments painted with white paint and crowned with a star, I managed to find the date of death of the deceased - 1962 (the father and son drowned in the river). The cemetery in Kuolajärvi looks like this.

And this is what the monuments looked like on the graves of Soviet soldiers on other fronts and sectors of the Second World War.

Judging by the shape of the monuments on the graves of Soviet soldiers on different fronts of the Second World War, we can conclude that they all had a typical shape and an abandoned burial place on the eastern outskirts of the village of Alakurtti may well be a military burial place in July - August 1941.

LOCATION OF MILITARY BURIALS 1941-44

According to the author, those who were once located near the village are shown. Alakurtti military graves.

On the satellite image, the author indicates the probable location of the German and Soviet burials of 1941-44 near Alakurtti. German military cemeteries have long been transferred to a single memorial Complex in Kuolajärvi. But nothing is really known about the Soviet burials of 1941.
Unfortunately, many relatives of the soldiers who fell in the Alakurtti region.

This is the Nikolskoye cemetery in the city of Sergiev Posad, Moscow Region. It's abandoned. It is located at the very end of Vorobyovskaya street. Right here:

This oldest cemetery suburban city. Founded during the Time of Troubles, when the Poles besieged the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. They say that monks and defenders of the monastery were buried there. But this version is unbelievable. It is too far from the main monastery of Russia. It was founded, apparently, by the besiegers, and many members of that international crowd that Tsarevich Vladislav IV Sigismundovich overtook to Rus' found their eternal rest. But then Russian people began to be buried abundantly in the cemetery. And he has a good place: on a hill, from everywhere you can see - a real Russian churchyard. In 1812, heroes who died from wounds were buried in abundance Patriotic War, in 1941-1945 they plentifully buried those who died from wounds in the Great Patriotic War. And in 1952, when Stalin was still alive, it was closed.

And eternity finally settled in the cemetery. Eternity is emptiness, non-existence. Death itself is not eternity, as long as you are remembered, but your personality somehow participates in life. But when you are forgotten, eternity begins. It is not in vain that priests sing about eternal memory, insuring themselves against the absence of an afterlife.

No, nothing is worse than abandoned cemeteries. But, there is nothing life-affirming them. Are cemeteries sacrilegious? Seriously? This is a debatable issue. In any case, half of the abandoned Nikolsky is built up.

But on the one that is not completed, you can see below:

03. Surprisingly, I visited this cemetery for the first time only in March 2014, although it is located under the windows of my own aunt’s apartment, and I have been walking around the bush for about seven years, probably.

04. Today an abandoned cemetery in equally serves as a landfill and a park.

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06. But someone is still remembered in this cemetery. In 2007, it seems, I watched from the window of my aunt's apartment how some grandmother brought flowers to the grave.

07. This is the Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit. They restored it before my very eyes. Before the revolution, it was a cemetery church, but then it was destroyed. And it was built in memory of the soldiers of the Patriotic War of 1812 buried at Nikolsky.

08. It is very important to understand that the grave mound disappears quickly enough. This is very important to understand.

09. Tombstones break quickly without proper care.

10. Pay attention to the old artificial flower. Not so long ago this man was still remembered.

11. These trees were planted by people who had already died. And there are people under them who have never seen them.

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14. We must understand that what we see in this cemetery is the highest, latest episode of its history. Most of the 19th, all of the 18th and 17th centuries have completely disappeared.

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26. Strange feeling. It is even joyful to see a well-groomed grave of an infinitely long dead person in this cemetery. Heroic, apparently, the man was, he endured recent wars Russian Empire.

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This is the view that opened up at the thermal power plant from the path along which we walked

Seeing a gentle place on the top of the slope from where I could look around, I climbed there. Having torn off my knee, I nevertheless reached my goal. I was very surprised that the whole slope is covered with small shells, like from snails, looking very, very old. The river flows far below, it cannot rise to such a height, but the shells are either of river or marine origin. Thoughts about some ancient ocean that stretched a million years ago on the territory of European Russia seem very fantastic, but I can’t think of other reasons for the appearance of these shells.

In the photo - SlimShaggy. On the right - the road from the dam to the street. Energetikov, behind it - a ravine with the Zhuravlevsky stream

Industrial landscapes - a plant in the rays of sunset...

And finally we reached Energetikov Street. And then they saw a gravestone with scraped off inscriptions, which lay almost on the side of the road. People calmly walked by, mothers walked with strollers ... Apparently, a tombstone near the road is quite a normal phenomenon.
Having reached the very end of the ravine (that is, almost to Moskovskaya Street), we went down.

To be honest, it was creepy below ... From all sides in the evening twilight one could see dug out monuments, opened graves (as the cemetery was closed, many marauders appeared who heard that Jews, along with the dead, buried valuable things), gravestones sticking out of the ground. The picture ended with the gloomy songs of Aria, coming from somewhere in the garages located nearby. Nearby, in the same ravine, there is a swamp, and a little to the right - the same Zhuravlevsky stream (when I saw that it was floating in its waters, I was glad that I did not drink anything from it).

A lot of excavated graves - the results of the actions of marauders

A very creepy sight - it seems that every night the dead rise from their graves

Some monuments still have inscriptions

There are also Soviet-style monuments

I can assume that there should have been a red star at the top

It looks like it was made with love.

On some of the monuments, half of the inscriptions are made in Hebrew (it seems ...)

Creepy mystical pictures

Apparently this place is loved not only by Satanists, but also by skins.

Some monuments are simply works of art!

When you look - already goosebumps run through

And here is the table in the middle of the cemetery. All sorts of thoughts about sacrifices come to mind ... Brrr ... What a horror ...

Some of the monuments are just dumped in a heap

And a tree fell on this one... And garbage everywhere, plastic and glass bottles, cigarette butts... And even a printer cartridge!

Rarely on which graves fences have been preserved

And those that have survived are hardly distinguishable among the windbreak

Sometimes graves can be seen in unexpected places - who is peeking out from behind a tree?

Particularly noteworthy is the collector, which goes under railway. He is tall enough for me to stand there in full height. Pebbles were thrown at the bottom, along which we were able to go 20 meters deep into this collector, illuminating the path with my cell phones. I really want to go back there, go to the end, but this must be done in a very short time, since the cemetery is going to be restored, and the entrance to the collector is located on its territory.

By the time we got outside, it was already getting dark. I became quite frightened (Kipelov was still tearing himself up somewhere in the garages) and we hurried upstairs to the city. Already on the way back we saw a bone, I hope not a human one. In general, there was a feeling that this place was a gathering of some local Satanists - a small table in the middle of the cemetery, bird feathers on the ground, bottles with an incomprehensible liquid near the tombstones...

In general, I really liked the trip. I would like to go somewhere else, to see more interesting and unusual places, of which we have enough in the city - take at least the catacombs in the Luzhkov region, or underground manholes in the Botany region, or a strange manhole near monastery(although for him you need to significantly lose weight - but this is feasible if you continue to climb and explore everywhere as well).