According to legend, this land belonged to pagan priests. Human sacrifices were made here, holidays were held, and magicians and sorcerers were buried. In the center of the hill stood a black oak ritual pillar. The pagans carried newborns and the dead around it. The first - at sunrise, the second - at sunset. Before the battle, the warriors danced in circles and left their weapons on the full moon. It was believed that after this it remained sharp for a long time, and brought good luck in battle.
This is how our great-grandfathers lived on Borovitsky Hill even after the baptism of Rus'. Yuri Dolgoruky put an end to the pagan temple. There was a fierce struggle - pagan Slavs against Christian Slavs. Dolgoruky won. According to legend, when dying, the priest placed a curse on his possessions. The proud and arrogant prince probably only grinned, but his descendants had a hard time: many times the Kremlin burned, was captured, they built here to destroy, and how many turmoils, conspiracies they experienced, vaguely, muddiedly...
Perhaps Peter I fled from Moscow and the hated Kremlin not only out of fear of the Streltsy? Anxious, nervous - he imagined murders, tortured boyars, poisoned queens, the ghosts of past troubles bothered him. The new Russia that Peter built years later, in his personal opinion, needed a new capital - and so it happened. And for some time the ghosts of the Kremlin unrest retreated. But only two centuries have passed, and again Moscow is the capital.
The Kremlin is unique not only for its secrets, which multiply every year, but also for its high historical density. Each brick is a clot of history, multifaceted and dangerous. For eight centuries they built, rebuilt and destroyed. Dozens of talented architects and artists have written their names in the Kremlin’s urban planning chronicle. All our kings and emperors passed through the Kremlin chambers and towers. Here they atone for criminal sins and ascend to the kingdom.
Could it have been different? After the victory of Yuri Dolgoruky, Witch Mountain was renamed Borovitsky Hill. By official version, on the site of the Kremlin there was once a rustling forest. According to the unofficial version, there is another meaning in the name - “hog”... Last greetings from a pagan priest?
There are many ancient Kremlins preserved in Russia - Novgorod, Pskov, Nizhny Novgorod, Tula, Kolomensky, Astrakhan, Smolensk, but it was the Moscow Kremlin that served as a model. An outstanding architectural ensemble, in which there is a rare combination of unity, completeness and picturesqueness.
Until now, scientists have not established the exact origin of the word “Kremlin”. It is first found in the Tver chronicle in 1315. By that time, the wooden fortress had already existed for two hundred years. History knows many examples when powerful cities, the capitals of empires, were erased from the face of the earth and from human memory, and small, provincial towns rose and turned into world centers. Such an amazing fate awaited Moscow.
The city was first mentioned in the chronicle in 1147, but how long it had existed by that time is unknown. In 1156, Andrei Bogolyubsky built a wooden fortress on Borovitsky Hill at the mouth of the Neglinnaya River with a total length of 850 meters and an area of three hectares; it united the existing buildings of the small town of Moscow. Years later, he began the unification of the Russian principalities.
From the very beginning, the Kremlin and Moscow became inseparable from each other. It was then that the Kremlin received the shape of a triangle, located between the current Borovitsky, Trinity and Tainitsky gates. On the floor side, wooden fortifications were protected by a rampart and a moat. For that time, it was distinguished by a rare method of strengthening the sole of the shaft on the inner and outer sides.
For many years, the Kremlin disappeared from the sight of chronicles, until in the 13th century, Prince Daniil the Younger, the son of Alexander Nevsky, moved to Moscow and founded a dynasty. A provincial town lost in the forests gave its name to the principality, and soon the battle for supremacy began. History knows many cases when cities that were attacked turned into ruins and were not restored. Such a disaster could happen to Moscow.
In 1238, Batu Khan burned the Kremlin to the ground and ravaged the city. But Moscow has not lost its importance. Moreover, Ivan Kalita decided to rebuild the Kremlin. Realizing that wooden buildings are the main problem, he was the first to build stone churches - the Assumption Cathedral (the main temple of the principality) and the Archangel Cathedral.
The white stone churches of the 14th century determined the composition of the Kremlin center, which has survived to this day. The Kremlin becomes the official residence of the Grand Dukes and Moscow Metropolitans. In 1367, Ivan Kalita's grandson Dmitry Donskoy began building the white stone walls and towers of the Kremlin. This is where the famous poetic name of Moscow begins - white stone. Stone town planning has fully justified itself.
The Kremlin withstood the Lithuanian army of Prince Olgerd in 1368, in 1408 - Khan Edigei, in 1438 - Khan Ulu-Mukhamed. Under Ivan III, Moscow rose above other cities and became the capital of the united Russian principalities. The Kremlin now had special requirements; from now on it not only performed defensive, spiritual, state functions, but also sacred ones. It was with Ivan III that the mysteries of the Kremlin began. More precisely, they existed before, but numerous fires (was the curse of a pagan priest really in effect?) destroyed traces and evidence.
Pskov masters began the next grandiose construction of the Kremlin. But the walls of the Assumption Cathedral, raised to the two-meter mark, unexpectedly collapsed. What happened to the masters is unknown, but the damned ancient pagan temple demanded human blood. It was after this incident that Ivan III gave the order to the ambassadors to search for skilled craftsmen in Europe. And they were found.
It is still unclear what they were promised for their consent. After all, neither Aristotle Fioravanti nor Pietro Antonio Solari not only knew Russian, but also had no idea where they were going.
Then they were joined by Marco Ruffo, Aleviz Novy, Bon Frezin. Such a cohort of Italians worked on the centuries-old symbol of Russia.
Aristotle Fioravanti. Imaginary portrait by Lotto
The fate of these people was terrible. Neither Aristotle nor Solari, despite the honor and respect that surrounded them, were able to get out of Russia alive. Just to get out. It is known that Aristotle tried to escape (namely, escape) from Moscow. What scared him so much? Was it just the execution of a German doctor that he witnessed? What made him fear for his life? What secrets of the Kremlin did he carry within himself?
And why did the tsar not let him out of Russia? Aristotle visited Solovki, took part in the campaign against Tver with the rank of artillery chief, and then disappeared. And no one else knows anything about him. Aristotle and Solari are the main architects of the Moscow Kremlin. Their contribution to the Russian pearl is unique and has not yet been surpassed by anyone.
What tasks did Ivan III set for architects? Apparently, they were so complex that only foreign masters could handle them.
Architects Pietro Antonio Solari and Marco Ruffo. Fragment of a miniature of the Facial Chronicle vault (1568-1576)
But why are ours worse? What could the Italians do? It is known that Aristotle was invited not as an architect, but as an engineer capable of technical miracles.
In his native Bologna, he moved the bell tower of St. Mark, and in the city of Cento he straightened the lopsided tower. What engineering miracle was he supposed to perform with the Kremlin? And judging by the mysterious, unclear death, he did.
On the inside of the Spasskaya Tower is carved the name of the designer of all the towers and walls of the Kremlin, Pietro Antonio Solari, who, by the way, was a remarkable student of Leonardo da Vinci.
He implemented much of what he learned from the Italian genius in the Kremlin. For example, in the upper part of the Kremlin wall, stretching along the Moscow River, seemingly meaningless holes were discovered, located just below the battlements. Exactly the same ones are found in Leonardo’s drawings.
Poles are inserted into them, connected on the outside with bound logs, and resting on the inside against a system of levers. When storming the walls, the defenders pressed levers - and horizontal logs overturned the attackers' ladders.
Another sign of da Vinci’s “hand” in the design of the Kremlin (not only, by the way, the Moscow Kremlin, but also Nizhny Novgorod, Kolomenskoye and the Oreshek fortress) was found by the architect-restorer Svyatoslav Agafonov. Casemates recessed into the thickness of the corner towers are found both in these fortifications and in the albums of the famous architect.
And they are embodied with such precision that the drawings can be considered projects. Isn't it amazing? Albeit indirectly, Leonardo da Vinci may well be related to the Kremlin.
However, this assumption still requires additional research.
Drawing by Leonardo da Vinci. This idea of Leonardo is embodied in several Kremlins in our country
And yet, historians are inclined to think that the author of the entire ensemble of the Moscow Kremlin is Aristotle Fioravanti. In the Kremlin, dilapidated buildings were thoroughly repaired and rebuilt, and stone palace buildings - towers - were erected on the site of old palaces.
The Assumption and Annunciation Cathedrals, the Chamber of Facets, and the princely tomb - the Archangel Cathedral - were built. The most beautiful and slender tower of the Kremlin, 71 meters high, Spasskaya, appeared.
Its gates, the main ones in the Kremlin, were especially elegantly decorated, and a chiming clock was installed on the tower. New walls and towers, taller and thicker than the previous ones, were faced with red brick. After another fire in 1493, Ivan III ordered the clearing of a protective strip two hundred and forty meters wide in front of the Kremlin.
The place was nicknamed “Fire”, now it is Red Square. Konyushennaya (Armory), Komendantskaya, Granaya (Middle Arsenalnaya), Taynitskaya (received its name from a secret passage dug towards the river), Sviblova, Sobakina (Corner Arsenalnaya) towers were erected.
Under Ivan III, the Moscow Kremlin became red brick, acquired its current appearance and reached its modern size. The area is almost twenty-eight hectares, along the entire perimeter of the Kremlin there are eighteen towers built into the fortress walls, one remote - Kutafya and one small wall-mounted - Tsarskaya.
The total length of the walls is 2235 meters, height from five to nineteen meters, thickness from three and a half to six and a half meters. The Trinity Bridge is a brilliant structure from a technical point of view. It is based on the principle of ancient Roman two-tier aqueducts.
The foundation goes into the ground to a depth of 11 meters and has stood on marshy soil for five centuries, but the brick remains dry and strong. Why? During the restoration of the Kremlin before the Moscow Olympics (1980), hollow cells were discovered in the lower tier of the bridge, penetrating the entire structure.
Now that they are cleaned, if you look closely you can see small round holes on the sides of the bridge. This is part of the ventilation draft system, which guarantees the masonry dryness and safety. It was invented in Russia and was used in many northern monasteries. But the use of ventilation in engineering structures began precisely with the Moscow Kremlin.
In an amazing way, the Kremlin embodied the idea of “Moscow is the third Rome.” In 1508, Prince Vasily Ivanovich, the son of Ivan III, ordered to dig a ditch from the side of Red Square from Neglinnaya to the Moscow River, thirty-two meters wide and ten meters deep. Thus, the Kremlin turned into an inaccessible island.
One involuntarily recalls a medieval engraving - three elephants surrounded by the world's oceans and holding the earth's firmament on them. The analogy with the Kremlin suggests itself. Center of world order and spiritual power. Interesting coincidence... Or maybe intentional?
Several more times the Kremlin burned, was rebuilt, fell into decay, and was rebuilt again. No matter how strange it may seem, most of the palaces and towers were destroyed by the Russian tsars of the Romanov dynasty, who, as it seemed to them, settled for a long time in this mysterious, sacred and mystical place- in the Kremlin, created by the Rurik dynasty. The heyday of Kremlin construction coincided with the last Rurikovichs. Perhaps this means something that we have not yet figured out, like many things in history, be it a random coincidence or an insignificant detail.
To this day, the secret of Ivan III, embodied by Italian architects in the Kremlin, has not been revealed. Only echoes reach us - strange, amazing. In 1894, archaeologist Prince N.S. Shcherbatov, while searching for the library of Ivan the Terrible in the Kremlin, examined the first floor of the Alarm Tower and found in it the entrance to a walled-up gallery running along the Kremlin wall. The vaulted tunnel, about a meter wide, soon ran into an obstacle, and Prince Shcherbatov decided to explore the neighboring Konstantin-Eleninsky tower.
Alarm tower
There, too, an entrance to a tunnel was discovered, although it was located below the first one. As it turned out, the first of the found dungeons was used in ancient times as a close-combat gallery, that is, it served for shelling the enemy during a close siege, and the second was used for secret communication between neighboring towers (in ancient times, as historians say, internal passages connected all the Kremlin towers).
In addition, the researcher managed to discover a secret passage connecting the Nikolskaya Tower with the Corner Arsenalnaya. And get into the tunnel running under the Borovitsky Gate (underground chambers covered with earth up to the very six-meter arches were also discovered there), and also explore the hidden chambers located near the Trinity Tower at a nine-meter depth. Shcherbatov's photographs of the Kremlin dungeons he discovered, along with their descriptions, disappeared without a trace in the 1920s. According to rumors, the Cheka were requisitioned.
The architect I.E., who examined the Kremlin in 1918 Bondarenko reported that in the Beklemishevskaya tower there was a “cache”: rumor dungeons (rumors were passages that could be used to observe the enemy and surprise military landings) and underground galleries. (The dungeon of the Beklemishevskaya tower, along with the hearing, was already used as a place of torture and imprisonment of prisoners in 1525.) For daring speeches and complaints about Grand Duke Vasily III, the tongue of boyar Ivan Nikitich Bersen-Beklemishev was cut out here.
Beklemishevskaya (Moskvoretskaya) tower of the Moscow Kremlin
And Tsar Ivan the Terrible, accusing Prince Andrei Fedorovich Khovansky of treason, ordered him to be “tortured and executed by trade execution and imprisoned in the Beklemishevskaya strelnitsa.”
In 1929, while clearing debris from the underground part of the Senate Tower, a dungeon more than six meters deep was discovered underneath it. A version was put forward: the Senate Tower is a hatch into the underground Kremlin. However, something else is more likely - initially the tower dungeon had two or three tiers with wooden platforms; over time they rotted and fell down, thereby forming a “mysterious” well.
In 1930, when laying drains from the Kremlin on Red Square, an underground passage the size of a man was discovered (and very soon covered with earth) - it was located just to the right of the Spasskaya Tower at a depth of four meters and went towards the Execution Ground.
In 1933-1934, Ignatius Stelletsky, while examining the Corner and Middle Arsenal towers, discovered more than one underground cache here. There were secret passages inside the walls, and underground passages(one managed to be cleared completely). In addition, Stelletsky reported to the NKVD about the existence of a secret passage from the Spasskaya Tower to St. Basil's Cathedral, “near which there is a descent into a large tunnel under Red Square of a very mysterious purpose.” During the excavation work that was carried out near the Alarm Tower in 1972, a piece of an underground passage appeared at a depth of four meters.
In 1973, when laying a pit in the Kremlin near the Alarm Tower, the vault of an underground gallery was discovered at a depth of four meters. It was adjacent to the foundation of the Alarm Tower, that is, it ran parallel to the Kremlin wall towards the Spasskaya Tower. However, it was not possible to clear the gallery completely and find out where the tunnel began and ended.
Not far from Srednyaya Arsenal Tower During restoration work in the 1970s, a passage into the wall was opened, turning towards the Corner Arsenal Tower. Kremlin archaeologists were unable to penetrate far through it - it was blocked with bricks. None of the dungeons discovered in the Kremlin both before and after the revolution have been fully explored. Most of them - after inspection by representatives of the special services - were permanently sealed or covered with earth or even filled with concrete.
And here is an excerpt from the “Government Bulletin” dated February 24, 1912: “Ancient underground passages in Moscow form a whole network, little explored yet. So far, underground passages have been discovered between the Novodevichy Convent and the Albert Gunther manufacturing factory, under the Donskoy Monastery, Golitsyn Hospital and Neskuchny Garden.
The underground passage under the Borovitskaya Tower has been well explored, in which two niches were found that open tunnels to the center of the Kremlin and under Ilyinka. The Taynitskaya, Arsenalnaya and Sukhareva towers also have underground passages. Other underground passages were discovered, apparently standing separately from the general network.”
They also wrote the following: “The Moscow Kremlin...is an outstanding monument of military architecture of the late 15th century. and yet remains almost unstudied to this day. This instruction concerns especially the underground part of the Kremlin, which is of enormous interest... Prince Shcherbatov’s research shows the extreme complexity of the Kremlin’s underground structures, the great difficulty of not only accurate research, but also simple penetration into them. Most of the passages are walled up, some are cut by the foundations of later buildings...”
“For many centuries there has been a belief that an underground city is hidden under the Kremlin. Treasures in the form of gold and silver from the times of Novgorod, which cannot be assessed, the library of Grozny, valuable paintings and historical relics, pearls and precious stones in huge quantities... Only Peter I managed to put his hand into this secret safe.”
An underground city... galleries, chambers, wells, hiding places... Peter I... But how, how was all this realized? Now, for such purposes, special equipment and tunneling machines are needed, but Aristotle and Solari had none of the above! They didn’t really speak Russian either. How negligibly little we know about our own ancestors, their ideas and attitude, their ability to realize the most daring plans!
With unique Russian slowness, the Kremlin is revealing centuries-old secrets. Until now, historians make unique finds and discoveries. Cannonballs and arrows are so commonplace here that sometimes archaeologists get bored. But recently a silver mug was found, in which two coins with a crucifix were minted, and on the handle was engraved a dragon, bursting not with flames, but with flowers!
Or birch bark letters so rare for Moscow. And absolutely amazing finds - the icon of Jesus Christ above the Spassky Gate and St. Nicholas the Pleasant - above the Nikolsky Gate, which were considered hopelessly lost since 1917. But how many times did each of us look at the gates, above which were plastered squares three meters high!
Three attempts to explore the underground Kremlin
An archaeologist would render a considerable service to the Fatherland and history,
if I decided to explore the underground passages of the Moscow Kremlin.
P. P. Svinin
Over the 500 years of the existence of the Moscow Kremlin, built by Italian architects, researchers have made only three attempts to penetrate its hiding places. The story will be about them.
In the fall of 1718, at the door of the Preobrazhensky Prikaz, Konon Osipov, the sexton of the Church of John the Baptist on Presnya, shouted “the sovereign’s word and deed.” He reported to the head of the order, Prince Ivan Fedorovich Romodanovsky, that in 1682 Tsarevna Sofya Alekseevna sent the clerk of the Great Treasury, Vasily Makaryev, to the underground Kremlin, who is no longer alive. For what purpose the clerk was sent, he, Konon, does not know, but Vasily Makaryev walked through the underground passage from the Tainitskaya tower to the Sobakina tower through the entire Kremlin. On the way, the clerk saw two chambers filled with chests right up to the vaults. And how the clerk informed Princess Sofya Alekseevna about this, she ordered not to go to that hiding place until the sovereign’s decree. Konon Osipov asked the prince for permission to look for those chambers with chests.
Without thinking twice, Prince Romodanovsky ordered the clerks to inspect the cache with the sexton. The clerks, Vasily Nesterov and Yakov Bylinsky. They pushed the dirty work onto clerk Pyotr Chicherin.
Konon Osipov began his search from the Tainitskaya tower, where he found the entrance to the underground gallery, and then this is what happened: “[...] and this clerk examined that exit and informed them, the clerks, that there was such an exit, only it was blocked with earth. And they gave him a captain to clear the land and 10 soldiers; and they dug out this hiding place, and cleaned out two staircases, and the earth began to fall from above, and this captain saw that the course was going straight, and sent a letter to the clerks to give such people to put boards under it so that people would not be covered with earth. And the clerks did not let the people go and did not order them to go further; it was not explored at that time.”
In December 1724, Konon Osipov, who had not given up hope of penetrating the underground chambers with mysterious chests, submitted a “reproach” to the Fiscal Affairs Commission:
“There is a hiding place in Moscow, under the Kremlin city, and in that hiding place there are two chambers, full of chests stacked to the straps ( vaults- T.B.). And those chambers are behind the great fortification, those chambers have iron doors, openings across the chapel, great hanging locks, seals on lead wires, and those chambers each have one window, and in them there are bars without shutters ( shutters- T.B.). And now that hiding place is filled with earth due to ignorance, just as a ditch was built for the Tsehgauzny courtyard ( Arsenal.- T.B.), and with that ditch they found that hiding place, on the vaults, and they broke through those vaults, and having broken through, they covered them tightly with earth. [...] And now whether there is anything in those chambers or not, he doesn’t know.”
From the Fiscal Affairs Commission, the report of sexton Konon Osipov reached the Senate, the latter reported it to the emperor. Peter I wrote on the report: “To examine completely,” and the paper was sent to the Moscow vice-governor. Having received the order, he threw up his hands, but gave Osipov the prisoners to clear the cache and assigned an architect to him to supervise the work.
Having found the passage at the Tainitskaya Tower badly destroyed, Konon decided to try his luck in the Dog Tower. But here the sexton faced failure at every turn. Firstly, the descent into the dungeon was blocked by an Arsenal pillar. They had to break a hole in the wall of the secret staircase that led down from the first floor, this, of course, caused the displeasure of the architect. Secondly, the entire dungeon, like the beginning of the passage along which clerk Makaryev had previously walked, was flooded with water from the spring. At the same time, the 4-meter walls of the tower were undermined by almost a meter. The prisoners bailed out water, repaired the walls, and only after constructing a well frame was Osipov able to work on the hiding place. At that time it was only possible to walk through the secret passage for 5 meters, then the Arsenal pillar stood. The sexton was going to make a narrow gap in the walling right next to the Kremlin wall. Behind the arsenal pillar, the cache should be covered with earth, and then the path along it should be clear, the sexton believed. But the architect, fearing damage to the Kremlin wall, ordered a hole to be made in the middle of the pillar. Having completed this work, Konon reached the mainland. There was no move behind the bookmark.
“And that punching through the middle was six months or more, but that architect’s prohibition and vice-governor’s non-permission resulted in a considerable continuation, and I was blamed and denied,” complained the sexton.
Osipov addressed the government with a new “report” ten years later, in May 1734. He asked to give him “an imperative decree to find those mentioned chambers with the treasury, so that this interest would not be wasted in vain, because he, the sexton, is already old.” Osipov was going to start the work “soon, so that the earth would not be filled with warmth, and to give him 20 people from the Raskolnichy Commission of Prisoners for this work without fail.” The Senate demanded that the sexton indicate “in which exact places those luggages are located.”
Over the course of ten years, Konon Osipov more than once tried to imagine how the underground passage went from Tainitskaya to the Dog Tower and where it could be intercepted, so he decided to search for the cache in several places at once: at the Tainitsky Gate, in the Tainitsky Garden near Rentarei (treasury), behind the Archangel Cathedral, opposite the bell tower of Ivan the Great. Fearing the intervention of the architect, Osipov writes: “And if I cause any waste to the city walls, I will be guilty of death.”
The sexton's excavations in the indicated places did not yield any results; only stone cellars were found behind the Archangel Cathedral. “Sexton Osipov was looking for luggage in the Kremlin-city,” Secretary Semyon Molchanov reported to the Senate, “and on his instructions from the Provincial Chancellery, recruits dug ditches... and there was a lot of that work, but he just didn’t find any luggage.”
It would seem that the story should have ended, but in 1736 the restless sexton again sent a report to the Senate with the same request. The search for the cache did not take place, as I. Ya. Stelletsky believed, due to the death of Konon Osipov.
The sexton’s “reports,” published in 1894 by I. E. Zabelin, evoked many responses from historians. Zabelin himself was inclined to believe that the archives of Tsar Ivan the Terrible were kept in the chests. A.I. Sobolevsky expressed a version about the location of the library of Moscow sovereigns in the underground chambers. S. A. Belokurov stated that there could be neither an archive nor a library there. A.N. Zertsalov believed that the sexton, who owed the treasury money for the copper stolen from him (he was engaged in the manufacture of grenadier pipes), was simply fooling the government, trying to avoid punishment. Academician A.I. Sobolevsky spoke in defense of the sexton Konon Osipov: “The sexton did not find the treasure he was looking for. It does not follow from this that he did not exist at the time of the search. The fact that Tsar Peter, who was well acquainted with the Kremlin palace and its services, did not make any comments and did not express the slightest skepticism about the sexton’s report, confirms that during his reign no chests were removed from the underground chambers and were not transferred to another place. Everything we know about the history of the Kremlin and its palaces in the 18th century leaves no doubt that after Peter there was no one to empty these chambers. So, they and their chests must still exist in one form or another, covered with earth or completely unharmed, and it depends on our energy and art to find them. We think that the results of these searches, no matter how insignificant they may be, will still be more valuable than the results of our annual excavations of mounds and burial grounds, and will not require greater costs than these latter.”
Three years later (in 1897), as if continuing the discussion, Sobolevsky points to one circumstance that testifies to Osipov’s veracity. Konon’s “report”, which reached Peter I, could not escape the tsar’s chief secretary Alexei Vasilyevich Makarov, who, as the academician established, was the son of the clerk of the Order of the Great Treasury Vasily Vasilyevich Makaryev (when Alexei was a simple clerk, he bore the surname Makaryev). If the sexton's story about the journey of clerk Makaryev had been a fiction, the chief secretary would not have been slow to warn Peter. Consequently, Makarov heard something about his father’s acquaintance with the underground secrets of the Kremlin.
In 1894, an archaeologist was found in Moscow who decided to find the chambers with chests. This was an official of special assignments under the august patron of the Imperial Historical Museum, Prince Nikolai Sergeevich Shcherbatov. Work to survey the Kremlin's underground structures was carried out from May to September 1894 with the special support of the Moscow Governor-General, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. Excavations proceeded slowly because all the chambers and secret passages were filled with earth and clay. Shcherbatov was never able to complete his research. Because of death Alexandra III and the coronation of Nicholas II, excavations were postponed indefinitely, and then the treasury did not have funds...
The excavations of N. S. Shcherbatov made it possible for the first time to gain insight into the structure of the Kremlin’s military caches. The material collected by an archaeologist over several months would be enough for others to fill volumes of scientific works. Nikolai Sergeevich published only two in the journal “Archaeological News and Notes...” short messages. Undoubtedly, he hoped for the completion of the work. In 1913, Shcherbatov turned to the Russian Military Historical Society with a proposal to continue studying the Kremlin’s caches. The society welcomed the archaeologist's initiative, but things did not go further than that. The excavations of N. S. Shcherbatov were remembered in 1914, when on April 25, at a meeting of the “Old Moscow” commission, the article “Exploration of the hidden palace of Ivan the Terrible under the Kremlin” from the American newspaper “Denver Port”, published in the state of Colorado, was read out. Here is what is written in the protocol of the commission: “The article talks about the subsequent order to carry out excavations in the Kremlin in order to find underground structures and the library of Grozny. Then mention is made of the purchase by a professor of theology from St. Petersburg University on a market in Moscow of a book - a copy of the Gospel, a very ancient one, found along with underground books by one of the workers during underground excavations near the Kremlin.” But “excavations near the Kremlin” were carried out only by Shcherbatov (at the Nikolskaya, Troitskaya, Borovitskaya and Vodovzvodnaya towers). No one knew whether this was a newspaper “duck” or whether the books were actually found and hidden by the workers.
Fate destined the next explorer of the underground Kremlin to be Ignatius Yakovlevich Stelletsky, who in 1908 decided to find the legendary library of Ivan the Terrible, which, in his opinion, was kept underground, in a cache built by Aristotle Fioravanti, based on the testimony of Pastor Johann Wetterman and the reports of sexton Konon Osipov, Stelletsky I tried to imagine where the secret storage facility for the sovereign's liberation was built and how it could be penetrated.
“From the royal chambers, somewhere from the basement, there was a descent into the dungeon, into the royal treasury. Soon after the tornado of Grozny, the entrance hatch to the dungeon was apparently sealed up, lost and forgotten forever. [...] From the towers the passage led to the royal treasury - a large underground chamber into which the tunnel between the Annunciation, Archangel and Assumption Cathedrals expanded. The chamber was filled with boxes of books, and there was a lower room underneath, as indicated by the archival terminology “with two vaults” and the fact of the existence of double chambers under the Kremlin, for example, under the Trinity Tower, where an underground passage under the Kremlin leads from the lower tier. [...] From the library chamber the passage went in two opposite ends: to the Tainitskaya and Sobakina towers. At the latter, the exit led to the old Tochelny Row, on the banks of the Neglinka, having, in addition, a branch under the Nikolskaya Tower and heading from here under the Historical Museum to Kitai-Gorod,” I. Ya. Stelletsky reported at a meeting of the “Old Moscow” commission.
The archaeologist managed to get into the Kremlin dungeons in 1911. Even a superficial examination of the Corner Arsenal Tower showed that excavations should begin from here; the path along which clerk Makaryev walked in the 17th century will certainly lead to an Aristotelian book safe.
The following year, 1912, Stelletsky participated in the creation of the Museum of the Patriotic War of 1812 in the Arsenal. While exploring the basements of the Arsenal, where excavation work was being carried out at that time, at a depth of one meter, he discovered a brick vault of a secret passage. But, unfortunately, Ignatius Yakovlevich did not have permission to open the cache. Taking advantage of the approaching 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty, the archaeologist submits a petition addressed to Emperor Nicholas II and asks for permission to search for the royal liberation in the Kremlin. The answer came a year later from the Imperial Archaeological Commission: “[...] The commission has the honor to notify you, dear sir, that the project of searching for the library of Ivan the Terrible using funds from the State Treasury cannot be given any further progress until you present any precise provisions about the place where the said library could be preserved.”
In 1914, with the help of the Moscow Archive of the Ministry of Justice, Stelletsky received permission from the palace administration to inspect the dungeons of the Corner Arsenal and Tainitskaya towers. On July 26 he starts work, and five days later the First World War begins. The property of the royal palaces was evacuated from the western regions to the Kremlin, and Stelletsky was forced to stop his research.
In 1924, Ignatius Yakovlevich met with N.S. Shcherbatov (the latter served as commandant in the former house of the Archaeological Society). But Stelletsky was unable to obtain from him photographs of the Kremlin dungeons, as well as records of excavations - immediately after the October Revolution, they were borrowed “on parole” by the Cheka. In the summer of the same year Historical Museum Two debates took place at which the same question was discussed: is it necessary to look for the library of Ivan the Terrible? The issue of searching for liberea remained unresolved, but the majority of those present voted for the exploration of the underground Kremlin (A.I. Sobolevsky, N.P. Likhachev, P.N. Miller, A.V. Shchusev and others). At the same time, N.D. Vinogradov expressed confidence that the underground passages of the Moscow Kremlin are in excellent condition: “The study of the underground Kremlin seems appropriate, especially since, as has been established, under a layer of water there is dry sand, without water, which is where underground passages were laid under a layer of clay that did not allow water to pass through.”
But it’s one thing to make a decision, another thing to get permission from the authorities to work in the Kremlin. Believing that a drop wears away a stone, Ignatius Yakovlevich year after year wrote appeals to the Moscow Council and the People's Commissariat for Education. The Central Executive Committee, the Council of People's Commissars and, finally, in 1933, submitted a memo to I.V. Stalin. And the archaeologist was allowed to begin excavations. Let us add that Stelletsky asked permission not to explore the underground Kremlin, but specifically to search for the library of Ivan the Terrible.
Stelletsky was sure: Stalin was personally interested in discovering the royal library. But things were different.
The underground passages were already occupied by the new owners of the Kremlin in 1918. In April, a month after the Soviet government moved to Moscow, V.I. Lenin gave orders to the Kremlin commandant P.D. Malkov to examine the dungeons and underground passages. Then, in order to search for hiding places, the architect I. E. Bondarenko examined the walls and towers. He conscientiously described the existing hiding places and indicated that they were all walled up and covered.
In 1920, R. A. Peterson became commandant of the Moscow Kremlin. He, like Malkov, was also worried about the existence of some unknown passages under the government residence. He turned to historians for information, they answered: over the centuries the soil has been dug up, hiding places have been cut, and it is impossible to penetrate them into the Kremlin.
At the end of the 1920s, Peterson’s attention was attracted by the speeches of I. Ya. Stelletsky at the Polytechnic Museum and in the press, dedicated to underground Moscow. The commandant began to get acquainted with the archaeologist's articles before their publication, and sometimes prevented the publication of this or that material. As he later explained to Stelletsky: “Because, you understand, the commandant is obliged to guard the Kremlin, someone will get close and blow it up...”
It was these fears that forced R. A. Peterson in 1929 to launch activities to fill the well in the Tainitskaya Tower, wall up the lower chambers in the Trinity Tower, etc. In the same year, when on the site of the destroyed Chudov Monastery they began to build a school for red commanders, by order The commandant, in search of passages, dug a trench from Spasskaya to Nikolskaya Tower. No hiding places were found here. Then Peterson decided to build a trench from Vodovzvodnaya to the Beklemishevskaya tower, but then A.S. Enukidze intervened, believing that there were already enough “ditches” in the Kremlin.
Along with the underground passages, the commandant was very worried about the frequent failures in the Kremlin. Peterson was also concerned about the condition of the Arsenal: not only were there numerous cracks in its walls, but suddenly in one of the rooms on the first floor the floor came off the wall and dropped almost a meter. There was some kind of emptiness underneath him.
At the end of October 1933, in the courtyard of the government building, during morning exercises, one of the Red Army soldiers fell to a depth of 6 meters. Peterson ordered water to be poured into the hole. It rained for half a day, but the “well” turned out to have no bottom, the water went to God knows where. Perhaps this failure was the last straw that broke R. A. Peterson’s patience. After consulting with Yenukidze and receiving his go-ahead, Peterson invited Stelletsky (whose report from Stalin’s secretariat reached Yenukidze) to the Kremlin, hoping that he would be able to find out the reasons for the failures and cracks in the walls of the Arsenal, and at the same time find and explore the mysterious underground passages.
Ignatius Yakovlevich developed a plan for searching the library, which included excavations in the Corner Arsenal Tower, in the Tainitskaya and Trinity towers, in the Assumption Cathedral and on Red Square. The commandant approved the plan, and Stelletsky began work.
Excavations in the Corner Arsenal Tower began on December 1, 1933. Since all the entrances to the dungeon were walled up, we had to go down through a gap built by Konon Osipov in the 18th century. The entire dungeon was filled with mountains of earth and garbage, among which a dilapidated well frame was barely visible. There was water at the bottom of the underground passage, cluttered with boards.
The very first days of work led to discoveries. All historians who wrote about the Corner Arsenal Tower and the secret passage from it claimed that the hiding place was cut by the Arsenal pillar. Having begun to break through the walling of the cache, Stelletsky saw that its brick vault went intact beyond the filling. It turned out that the beginning of the passage was laid with white stone blocks on a strong mortar, and they walled it up not from the side of the dungeon, but from the opposite side.
While the workers were breaking through the walling of the passage, Stelletsky tried to figure out what was behind the other wallings found in the tower.
“If you approach the matter in a strictly scientific way,” he wrote in his diary, “you certainly need to unmock everything and everyone. When it was built, it made direct sense; Then it turned out to be unnecessary or undesirable, and it was walled up. If the simplest window is walled up, we will at least know that it is a window. What if there are mysterious steps or some other devilry? After all, I’m dealing with the Middle Ages, in which there were more than enough secrets! Who can guarantee that Ivan the Terrible himself did not close all these holes 70 years after the construction of the tower, so that they began to clear it. The work proceeded slowly, since a narrow gap in the walling made it possible to remove the earth only into the transfer. Dissatisfied with the pace of work and wanting to speed up the clearing, Stelletsky worked alone when his assistants left for lunch. Once he was almost buried under huge layers of soil that collapsed from above.
By February 27, the room with the arched vault was cleared of dirt. It turned out that under the Kremlin wall there is a unloading arch measuring 7.3x5.18x1.87 meters. In front of the arch from the side of the Alexander Garden there was a powerful 5-meter backfill made of white stone and brick. According to Stelletsky, in ancient times this volume could have been used as a secret storage facility.
By March 3, all the land that filled the course had been selected, but sand followed. At the same time, the flat ceiling of the secret passage was excavated. One wall of the hiding place was the Kremlin wall, and the other - the eastern one - there was no wall at all. The archaeologist came to the conclusion that it was broken down in this place during the construction of the Arsenal. It turned out that the ceiling of the hiding place seemed to be hanging in the air. Ignatius Yakovlevich asked Peterson to take care of the construction of the missing part of the wall: “The Italian ceiling, of course, is powerful, but time is stronger, and one day it will collapse, and then the wall ( Arsenal.- T.B.) will settle on the washed away sand much deeper than it has now settled in the Middle Arsenal Tower.” The wall was never built.
A week later, they opened the exit to the Alexander Garden from the dungeon of the Corner Arsenal Tower and began to remove the accumulated garbage and soil: Ignatius Yakovlevich at this time continued to dig out a secret passage alone, making his way along the Kremlin wall. After walking a few meters, he came across a block of stone hanging from the ceiling. It was covering a large hole. The solution came immediately: this is the same gap made during the construction of the Arsenal, through which the cache was filled with earth and sand. It seemed that the part of the cache where it was free of sand was within easy reach. But unexpectedly, R. A. Peterson forbade digging the underground passage and ordered Stelletsky to clear the dungeon of the Corner Arsenal Tower to its ancient bottom. When starting this work, Ignatius Yakovlevich advised to enclose the spring in a concrete ring, fearing that the water would break through the well frame, installed at the beginning of the 19th century. But no one paid attention to the archaeologist's warning. And on March 24, the dungeon of the tower was flooded with water. It came not only from the well, but also spouted in fountains everywhere (including in the underground passage). It was necessary to pump out the water, but it took almost two weeks to find the pump. When the pump was finally found and installed, the water disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared. Stelletsky could not understand how the builder of the Corner Arsenal Tower, Pietro Antonio Solari, managed to cope with the capricious source. The answer had to be somewhere at the bottom of the well.
Excavations in the underground of the Corner Arsenal Tower led to another discovery: the spring in it was initially enclosed not in a well, as all researchers and historians assured, but in a cistern. Its bottom lay at a depth of 7 meters from the surface of the earth, and its diameter reached 5 meters. “The cistern descended from the walls of the tower in concentric circles and ended in a small round bottom, lined with stone, with access to spring water. At a certain water level in the cistern, drainage systems were installed; for them, an underground passage was used along the Kremlin wall to the Royal and Patriarchal Chambers,” the archaeologist wrote in a memo to Peterson. Stelletsky believed that after the construction of the Arsenal, when the channel in the underground passage was destroyed and the passage itself was walled up, the water began to rise higher and higher in the cistern until it flooded the dungeon. During the reign of Empress Anna Ivanovna, the walls, washed away by almost a meter of water, were repaired, the lower part of the cistern was covered 1.5 meters with construction waste, on which a well frame was built. At the beginning of the 19th century, the log house received new crowns, and the dungeon of the tower was filled up, but with earth.
Examining the Middle Arsenal Tower again, the archaeologist came to the conclusion that the underground passage, before reaching this tower, should turn to the Kremlin and go under the Assumption Cathedral, and from it to the Tainitskaya Tower. Stelletsky eagerly awaited the continuation of excavations in the underground passage, but, judging by his diary entries, the whole summer was spent clearing the dungeon of the Corner Arsenal Tower, and in September no work was carried out here at all. By October, the dungeon was excavated in some places to the ancient bottom, lined with brick. At a height of one meter from the floor, two embrasures of the lower battle were found. These holes were torn apart by half their length. From the side of the Alexander Garden they were once covered with earth. Stelletsky believed that in ancient times “from the base of the Kremlin wall the bank ran steeply down to Neglinnaya, leaving a massive iron door to the tower that led out to the cliff. In the cliff (coastal slope) two embrasures of the lower battlement came out from the tower dungeon with a tank. Apparently the holes were torn apart by the use of howitzers.”
On October 3, 1934, a meeting of a special commission was held in the Kremlin, which was supposed to decide the fate of Stelletsky’s excavations. It included Deputy Commandant F. I. Tyuryakov, Director of the Armory Chamber V. K. Klein, architects A. V. Shchusev and N. D. Vinogradov, as well as hydrologist from Metrostroy G. G. Salopov.
Tyuryakov was primarily interested in the reason for the appearance of cracks in the walls of the Arsenal. Stelletsky’s explanations were as follows: “Making its way under the stones and sand with which the cache was laid and filled, water, for unknown reasons, escaped from the underground vice in the area of the Middle Arsenal Tower, rising to a height of up to 6 meters, judging by the fact that here it was discovered by excavations at depth only 6 meters from the surface of the Kremlin. Having washed away the soil under the foundations of the tower and the Arsenal, the water caused the latter to settle by 30-40 centimeters, which was the cause of the cracks in the western walls of the Arsenal.”
After listening to the archaeologist’s report and examining the cache, the commission members decided to continue clearing the underground passage. But at the beginning of November, the dungeon of the tower was hastily cleared of the remaining debris and the exit to the Alexander Garden was walled up. Stelletsky hoped to continue work after the October holidays, but he was offered to go on vacation.
“November 13th is the date! - Ignatius Yakovlevich writes in his diary. - Round year! What would I have done in that short period if it were not for the performers - deaf adversaries? I could complete this work in four months. What else could I do in eight months according to my taste? Like a grinder beetle, he would scour the Kremlin and, of course, would find the “lost treasure of Russia.”
But even if I didn’t find it! They didn't let me find it! But I showed the right path to it. Whether it’s me or someone else, it doesn’t matter: as long as they find it. What is mine - my priority - is inseparable from me. A tower ( Corner.- T.B.) The Arsenalnaya, which I turned into the key to the library, is now the “Stelletsky Tower” ... "
Returning to Moscow in February 1935, Ignatius Yakovlevich writes a memo to R. A. Peterson and asks for permission to excavate in the following place: “In the Assumption Cathedral, I topographically know the location of the hatch leading to the Aristotelian cache at the point of its confluence with Alevizovsky,” If for some reason it is impossible to carry out work in the Corner Arsenal Tower, then we must try to penetrate into the underground Kremlin in another way, Stelletsky believed,
Trying to find out the fate of the secret passage from the Corner Arsenal Tower - whether it was walled up or not - the archaeologist met with the chief engineer of the civil department of the Kremlin commandant's office, V. N. Palibin. From him he learned that the spring, left unattended, cruelly repaid for such obvious neglect of him. The tower dungeon and secret passage were once again flooded with water...
There is reason to believe that Stelletsky again contacted Stalin at the end of the war. And, probably, he received an answer from his secretariat, since in an address to the Academy of Sciences in 1945, Ignatius Yakovlevich wrote: “But after the war, after the victory, the treasured treasure will be found! This is guaranteed by the word of the Great Stalin.”
In 1945, Stelletsky began work on a documentary history of the library of Ivan the Terrible. Despite the prohibition to tell anything about the “special purpose” work (i.e., about the excavations in the Corner Arsenal Tower), the archaeologist describes them in detail in the third volume of his work, believing that his experience will serve future seekers of liberea.
Stelletsky’s research was remembered during the Khrushchev Thaw. In 1962, with the support of the editor-in-chief of Izvestia A. I. Adzhubey, chapters from the book by Ignatius Yakovlevich appeared in the newspaper Nedelya. These publications caused a stream of letters from readers, which repeated the same question: will the search for the library continue? A year later, a public commission was created in Moscow to search for the library of Ivan the Terrible. It included historians, archaeologists, architects, archivists: S. O. Schmidt, M. R. Rabinovich, A. G. Veksler, V. N. Fedorov, N. Chernikov and others. It was headed by Academician M. N. Tikhomirov. In the same year, the Directorate of Moscow Kremlin Museums held two meetings of the commission, which determined the directions of its activities. It was planned to conduct archival research, study the topography of the Kremlin and carry out archaeological excavations (including in the Corner Arsenal Tower). Probably, with the help of A. I. Adzhubey, N. S. Khrushchev’s son-in-law, it would have been possible to gain access to the underground Kremlin. However, with the coming to power of L. I. Brezhnev, the Kremlin again slammed its gates in front of scientists. Having received no support from the country's leadership, the commission soon ceased to exist. Immediately after this, M. M. Isaevich, Stelletsky’s widow, was approached by several private individuals who wanted to receive diary entries about excavations in the Kremlin and the third volume of the documentary history of the Grozny library. The first two volumes ended up in RGALI, the fate of the third volume is unknown. In letters to a family friend, Isaevich mentioned a mysterious tenant who settled with her after much persuasion, and one fine day did not return home. It is possible that the manuscript of the third volume disappeared along with the guest; it is possible that he was an employee of the secret services. According to Doctor of Historical Sciences A. A. Amosov, in the 1970s, at any lecture where the discussion was about the Grozny library and its search in the Kremlin dungeons, people from the KGB were certainly present, pestering him with questions, trying to find out how the speaker knew about the Kremlin's hiding places and what exactly is known.
The last research in the Corner Arsenal Tower was carried out by Kremlin archaeologists in 1975.
Then the Solari tank was finally cleared to the bottom. The reservoir was a polyhedron with a diameter of 5.51 meters. Its upper part was lined with brick, the lower part with white stone. Judging by the bricks of the outer lining, the tank received it in the 16th century. When clearing the reservoir, two helmets, stirrups and fragments of chain mail were found at a depth of 4 and 5 meters. Archaeologists believe that the helmets and stirrups, wrapped in chain mail, were deliberately buried in the cistern. The helmets date back to the end of the 15th - beginning of the 16th century. One of them, inlaid with silver, clearly belonged to a noble person.
Stone cores were discovered at a depth of 6.5 meters, but the most interesting find awaited archaeologists at the bottom of the cistern. “At a distance of 88 centimeters from the bottom of the well,” the report stated, “in its white stone wall there is a drain with an arched end made of brick measuring 22x14.5x7 centimeters. The height of the opening is 1.09 meters, the width at the base is 80 centimeters. The drainage system went towards the bed of the Neglinnaya River; it was cleared at a distance of 7 meters. It contained a wooden beam with a diameter of 0.4 meters. The spillway channel was blocked by an iron grate, its bottom was lined with oak blocks. At the entrance to the spillway, a wooden gutter about 2 meters long was found, apparently serving as a drainage channel.”
In ancient times, the canal to Neglinnaya should have had a valve that made it possible to regulate the water level in the tank. If water flowed normally from the spring, the valve was closed. In case of excessive activity of the spring, it was opened, and part of the water from the tank went into the river. The water level was controlled using a white stone bowl embedded in the wall of the reservoir (it was also discovered by archaeologists in 1975). After clearing the drainage route of debris and dirt, the water began to flow towards Neglinnaya.
With the kind help of the commandant's office of the Moscow Kremlin, the author of the book managed to visit the dungeon of the Corner Arsenal Tower more than once. From the first floor you go down a steep staircase leading to a small platform, then, turning right, through a short passage you find yourself in a wide tunnel (in fact, this is the beginning of the hiding place). On the right hand in the tunnel there is another staircase leading to the well. Currently, the reservoir is a large concrete ring lying almost in the center of the tower dungeon. The water in the well is so clear that you can see the arch of an ancient drain through it. The canal, built by Pietro Antonio Solari several centuries ago, still serves well today. White stone bowl, ancient guard water level, is located at the junction of the Solari tank and the new concrete ring.
Two walls of the lower battlement and the exit to the Alexander Garden are hidden under a thick layer of plaster covering the walls of the dungeon. Two sections of the underground passage and a vaulted dungeon have been preserved from what Stelletsky excavated in 1933-1934. The first section, 0.6 meters wide and 0.95 meters long, serves as a direct continuation of the wide tunnel leading from the well to the Kremlin. Then the passage turns to the right and along the Kremlin wall stretches for 5.58 meters towards the Middle Arsenal Tower. This part of the cache, if readers remember, was walled up with white stone during the construction of the Arsenal. The walls of the passage built by Stelletsky in this walling were subsequently plastered. At the end of the hiding place, in its right wall, there is a narrow entrance to a large room with an arched vault, the floor of which is made of brick. This is the unloading arch, cleared by Stelletsky. The continuation of the underground passage has been walled up since time immemorial, and no one knows what is behind the wall. The entrances to the inner-wall galleries in the sections of the Kremlin walls from the Nikolskaya to the Trinity towers were also laid out. In the 1960s, the lower chambers of hearings under the Trinity Tower were unwalled, cleared of earth and repaired.
“EAST OF THE KREMLIN” In April 1936, the districts of Moscow were again disaggregated. One of the new ones was Molotovsky. Some of the former Baumanites were sent to work in his party and Soviet organizations and institutions, including me - first as chairman of the district executive committee
From the book The Trojan War in the Middle Ages. Analysis of responses to our research [with illustrations] author Nosovsky Gleb VladimirovichChapter 2 Responses to our research on chronology and to the research of N. A. Morozov. Our answers to some of them (G.V. Nosovsky, A.T. Fomenko) 1. Introduction We are often asked: how does the scientific community react to your work? Do historians know about your work? What
From the book Everyday Life of the Kremlin under Presidents author Shevchenko Vladimir NikolaevichRESIDENTS OF THE KREMLIN Unlike the Tower of London, the Escurial of Madrid, the palaces of Versailles and Fontainebleau in France, a huge number of medieval fortresses in Western Europe, long ago turned into museum complexes, the Moscow Kremlin has remained the main
From the book The Path of the Phoenix [Secrets of a Forgotten Civilization] by Alford AlanCaves of the Underworld Egyptologists did not pay attention to the vivid description of the underground Duat, because they believed that the Sun, by definition, could not travel through underground world. They had to settle on the fact that the 12 branches of the dark world supposedly symbolize
From the book 100 Great Castles author Ionina NadezhdaGarrison of the underground Adzhimushkay In May 1942, a strike group of fascist German troops under the command of Field Marshal E. Manstein managed to break through the Crimean Front, and Soviet troops, under continuous enemy bombing, had to evacuate
From the book History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages author Gregorovius Ferdinand From the book Treasures of the Patriotic War authorThe last gold of the Kremlin Since it is extremely important for us, as current or future search engines, to calculate the specific point at which the 2nd golden convoy was hidden, then, first of all, we need to clearly determine the location of this convoy, the speed of its advance and
From the book Special Services of the First Years of the USSR. 1923–1939: Towards the Great Terror author Simbirtsev IgorUnder the strict control of the Kremlin, Stalin from the very beginning of his rule in the young Soviet Union, while Lenin was still alive, but already completely helpless, paid a lot of attention to the role of the GPU in the power mechanism he created. He just needs to tie the GPU to his
From the book Historical Ethnology author Lurie Svetlana VladimirovnaThe first attempts to study the psychological characteristics of various
From the book In Search of Bonaparte's Treasures. Russian treasures of the French emperor author Kosarev Alexander GrigorievichThe last gold of the Kremlin Since it is important for us to calculate the specific point where the “2nd golden convoy” was hidden, we need to clearly determine its location, the speed of its advance and take a closer look at those who accompanied it. No less important are the events that
From the book Nazism. From triumph to scaffold by Bacho JanosThe Mystery of the Underground Corridor “JACKSON: You probably know that Karl Ernst, in the presence of several people, spoke out to the effect that you and Goebbels were planning to set fire to the Reichstag and that you delivered an incendiary mixture of kerosene and phosphorus, which you had prepared,
author Mashtakova ClaraCATHEDRAL SQUARE OF THE KREMLIN ...It was called Tsarskaya, and sometimes Red. I. Kondratyev In the distant twilight of the Middle Ages, the crown of the Kremlin shone - Cathedral Square, created more than six centuries ago by brilliant architects. The architectural ensemble of Cathedral Square changed
From the book Legends were of the Kremlin. Notes author Mashtakova ClaraGUESTS OF THE KREMLIN At the end of the summer of 1956, after restoration work was completed, the Archangel Cathedral, built at the beginning of the 16th century, was inaugurated. by Italian architect Aleviz Novy on site ancient temple, built under Ivan Kalita in 1333. To the amazed gaze
From the book Stories about Moscow and Muscovites at all times author Repin Leonid Borisovich From the book The Trojan War in the Middle Ages. [Analysis of responses to our research.] author Fomenko Anatoly TimofeevichChapter 2 Responses to our research on chronology and to the research of N.A. Morozova Our answers to some of them (G.V. Nosovsky, A.T. Fomenko) 1. Introduction We are often asked: how does the scientific community react to your work? Do historians know about your work? What are they
The Kremlin dungeons, striking the imagination not only with their size, but also with the many secrets they keep, became the legacy of the last princes Ivan III, his son Vasily III and, finally, the first Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible. They housed royal treasuries, gunpowder warehouses, and gloomy dungeons, not inferior to those created in the castles of medieval Europe.
Secrets hidden in dungeons
Over the past three centuries, attempts have been made repeatedly to penetrate the secrets of the dungeons lying in the very center of the capital. The reason was sometimes not only curiosity, but also purely mercantile interest. Legend has it that the dungeons of the Moscow Kremlin hide in their secret rooms chests full of gold that belonged to the treasury or were the personal reserves of its rulers.
But not only the “despicable metal” has always attracted researchers of underground labyrinths; there is reason to believe that the greatest historical and spiritual value of antiquity is hidden in them and has been waiting for its owners for many years - the library of Ivan the Terrible. Containing several thousand valuable scrolls and folios, it once belonged to the emperors of Byzantium, and in the 11th century to the Great Prince of Kyiv Yaroslav the Wise. It is generally accepted that Ivan the Terrible, shortly before his death, ordered this treasure to be hidden in the depths of the dungeons.
Sexton speleologist
The first known attempt to lift the veil of the unknown was made in 1718 by the sexton of the Presnya Church of John the Baptist, Konon Osipov. The impetus for this was the story he had previously heard from the clerk of the State Prikaz, Vasily Makariev, who, fulfilling the orders of Princess Sophia, had previously descended into the Kremlin dungeons near the Tainitskaya tower and saw there vast rooms filled with chests darkened by time. The clerk himself had already died by that time.
In the Tainitskaya Tower itself, Osipov managed to find the entrance to the gallery, littered with earth. It was possible to move along it only after first excavating a passage. But as soon as he and the soldiers assigned to help him went a few meters deeper, the gallery’s arch sank, threatening to collapse at any moment. Not wanting to risk either his life or the lives of the soldiers, the sexton abandoned his plan.
Subsequent attempts
He had to resume the expedition six years later, but not at his own request, but on the orders of Peter I. The Emperor, as you know, did not like to joke, and, having refused, the ill-fated sexton could have lost his life without going down to the Kremlin dungeons. This time, it was not soldiers who were assigned to help him, but convicted criminals: they would die under the rubble, and that’s fine. However, he still did not dare to repeat the attempt in the Tainitskaya Tower.
This time Osipov started from the Arsenal corner tower and soon managed to discover the entrance to the dungeon there. But it was impossible to move along it because of the spring water with which it was completely flooded. I had to return again with nothing. The sexton made his last attempt ten years later. He tried to repeat the route taken at one time by the state clerk Makariev, but here, too, the dungeons of the Moscow Kremlin turned out to be impregnable.
Research of Prince Shcherbakov
Over the next one hundred and sixty years, no expeditions to the underground were undertaken. In any case, there is no information about them. The story told above was continued only at the end of the 19th century, when Prince Nikolai Shcherbakov, a scientist who was then serving as an official on special assignments, became interested in the secrets hidden under the walls of the Kremlin.
At the base, he discovered a walled-up entrance to a gallery leading to the adjacent Konstantino-Eleninskaya tower. Having dismantled the masonry, the prince found himself in a vaulted underground corridor and, moving along it, discovered a room in which dozens were stored. Subsequently, to this secret arsenal, the prince discovered another passage leading from the same Alarm Tower, but from the other side.
Discoveries made by the prince
The prince tried to explore, and in which the sexton Osipov had failed before him, but, like him, he retreated, not risking entrusting his life to the dilapidated vaults, ready to collapse at any moment. Later, under it, it was possible to excavate a chapel leading to the Imperial Square of the Kremlin, as well as a number of rooms that had a fortification purpose.
With the help of photographic technology, which was imperfect at that time, the prince captured the entire dungeon he had studied under the Kremlin. The photos were then kept in his personal collection until the revolution.
Need dictated by life
After the Bolsheviks came to power, the new owners, first of all, made sure that potential enemies could not use the Kremlin dungeons to carry out terrorist acts. For this purpose, on their orders, all photographs and plans taken by Prince Shcherbakov were confiscated and, apparently, destroyed, and most of the underground passages and premises were walled up.
However, in 1933, near the Armory, unexpectedly for everyone, a Red Army soldier from a security unit fell into the ground. This was evidence that the dungeon under the Kremlin requires detailed study, otherwise it may be fraught with the danger of collapse.
By the way, this case was not the first. Back in 1882, in the area between the Tsar Cannon and the wall of the Chudov Monastery, the soil unexpectedly collapsed, revealing a hitherto unknown underground chamber. In September 1933, a decision was made to carry out research work and the necessary preventive measures. The famous archaeologist Ignatius Stelletsky was entrusted with leading them.
Research results
Several lines of underground communications were discovered and studied, one of which had access directly to the Alexander Garden. However, the main interest for scientists was the entrance to the dungeons of the Arsenal corner tower. As it turned out during the work, the spring that flooded it was enclosed in a wide and deep well, equipped with a spillway. It was its clogging that caused the well to overflow and subsequent flooding of the entire room.
At that time, the work was not completed; it was completed only in 1975. After pumping out the water and clearing the way to the base of the well, scientists discovered two military helmets, fragments of chain mail and several stone cannonballs. All these finds were dated to the 14th century.
Random finds
But it was not only the scientists who studied the Kremlin dungeons who made various discoveries. There were also completely unexpected finds. For example, in 1930, during excavation work on Red Square, workers discovered an underground passage at a depth of five meters, in the depths of which they discovered several skeletons dressed in armor. The reason that forced these warriors to end their lives in the darkness of the dungeons will forever remain a mystery.
There is also a known case when a minor crack that appeared in 1960 on the wall of the mausoleum prompted a study of the soil on which it was built. As a result, at a depth of fifteen meters, an underground passage was discovered so spacious that an adult could walk along it at full height.
Death hidden in the dungeons
Almost a hundred years earlier (in 1840), while digging a foundation pit for the cathedral of the Annunciation Monastery, the builders were faced with a very ominous discovery: the earthen wall suddenly collapsed, and an underground passage filled with a pile of human remains opened in front of them. We will also never know what tragedy played out here that cost these people their lives.
But there are dungeons whose terrible purpose has become the property of history. It has been documented that at the corner facing Vasilyevsky Spusk, in the bowels of the earth, there were dungeons in which for centuries those upon whom the wrath of the sovereign fell suffered martyrdom. Here, by order of Ivan III, boyar I.N. lost his tongue for impudent speeches. Bersenyu-Beklemishev and here, after much torture, Prince A.F., accused of treason by Ivan the Terrible, died. Khovansky.
Legends and traditions of the underworld
The Kremlin dungeons, photos of which are presented in this article, contain many places associated with blood and torment. Is it any wonder that they are associated with the most incredible legends about people from the other world wandering in underground corridors and sometimes horrifying random witnesses.
Most often they mention the spirit of Ivan the Terrible, who was deprived of eternal peace for his atrocities and doomed to endless wanderings. A record of the meeting with him was preserved, made in May 1896 by Nicholas II personally, who was in the Moscow Kremlin on the occasion of the coronation. In those days, the blood-stained ghost of the tyrant king appeared to him and his wife Alexandra Feodorovna, which subsequently gave many reasons to see in this an omen the future collapse of the three-hundred-year-old dynasty.
Imposter Spirit
But it is not only the spirit of the formidable tsar that disturbs the Kremlin’s nightly peace. After the impostor, who went down in history under the name of False Dmitry I, was torn to pieces by an angry crowd in May 1606, his ghost began to appear from time to time between the battlements of the ancient walls. It is curious that the last time his appearance was noticed was on an August night in 1991, just before the start of the famous events.
A sentry who turned gray overnight
Mysticism and the Kremlin’s dungeons have long merged together. Evidence of this was a story that became widely known about forty years ago. One night, a young guard who was on duty in the old building near the Patriarchal Chambers, where in former times the apartment of the notorious People's Commissar of Internal Affairs N.I. was located, raised the alarm. Yezhova.
The team arrived a couple of minutes later and found their colleague sitting on the asphalt near the entrance in a state of deep shock. His hair was completely gray, and his face had changed so much that it was difficult to discern familiar features.
Coming from another world
Only a few days later, in a ward at a military hospital, the guard was able to give his first testimony. As it became known from his words, around midnight he clearly heard the sound of footsteps going down the stairs. Following this, the key jingled in the lock of the locked and sealed outer door below. Having no doubt that there had been an unauthorized entry into the facility he was protecting, the guard pressed the panic button, and, unfastening his holster as he went, he rushed after the intruder.
Jumping out into the street, he saw a few steps away from him a short figure in a long overcoat walking away. At his shout, the unknown person stopped and turned around. In the moonlight, standing in front of him was the bloody People's Commissar of the NKVD, well known from old photographs.
The young and strong nerves of the sentry could probably withstand such a striking resemblance to Yezhov. But when he began to slowly dissolve into the air and fall underground, the guy suffered a nervous shock. Three months later he was discharged.
Excursions into the world of the unknown
The secrets of the Moscow Kremlin, the dungeon and all the streets adjacent to it attract not only scientists, but also those who value our history. And there are many such people in the country. In addition, there are simply lovers of thrills and excess adrenaline in the blood. Their imagination is fueled by stories about what is hidden in the Kremlin dungeon, about those otherworldly forces that guard these treasures. They are not afraid of either fatigue or financial expenses.
These days they have the opportunity to personally visit the Kremlin dungeons. The excursion can be booked at any of the travel agencies specializing in this direction. Pre-staffed groups are led by professional diggers and spelestologists - specialists in the study of underground communications and artificial caves.
Delight and horror experienced in the dungeons
On websites owned by agencies, you can read the records of those who have already visited the dungeons of the Moscow Kremlin. Reviews are usually the most enthusiastic. Despite the fact that each agency organizes excursions in its own way and presents the material differently, in general, excursionists create an unforgettable impression that then remains in their memory for a long time.
The only thing that many people pay attention to is the fatigue-inducing physical activity associated with walking along underground labyrinths. But the pleasure gained from contact with the mysterious world is worth it.
In 1894, archaeologist Prince N.S. Shcherbatov, while searching for the library of Ivan the Terrible in the Kremlin, examined the first floor of the Alarm Tower and found in it the entrance to a walled-up gallery running along the Kremlin wall. The vaulted tunnel, about a meter wide, soon ran into an obstacle, and Prince Shcherbatov decided to explore the neighboring Konstantin-Eleninsky tower.
There, too, an entrance to a tunnel was discovered, although it was located below the first one. As it turned out, the first of the found dungeons in ancient times was used as a close-combat gallery, that is, it served for shelling the enemy during a close siege, and the second was for secret communication between neighboring towers (in ancient times, as historians say, intra-wall passages connected all the Kremlin towers).
In addition, the researcher managed to discover a secret passage connecting the Nikolskaya Tower with the Corner Arsenalnaya. And get into the tunnel running under the Borovitsky Gate (underground chambers covered with earth up to the 6-meter arches were also discovered there), and also explore the hidden chambers located near the Trinity Tower at a 9-meter depth. Shcherbatov's photographs of the Kremlin dungeons he discovered, along with their descriptions, disappeared without a trace in the 1920s. According to rumors, the Cheka were requisitioned.
The architect I.E., who examined the Kremlin in 1918 Bondarenko reported that in the Beklemishevskaya tower there was a “cache”: rumor dungeons (rumors were passages that could be used to observe the enemy and surprise military landings) and underground galleries.
(The dungeon of the Beklemishevskaya tower, along with the hearing, was already used as a place of torture and imprisonment of prisoners in 1525. For daring speeches and complaints about Grand Duke Vasily III, the tongue of boyar Ivan Nikitich Bersen-Beklemishev was cut out here.
And Tsar Ivan the Terrible, accusing Prince Andrei Fedorovich Khovansky of treason, ordered him to be “tortured and executed by trade execution and imprisoned in the Beklemishevskaya strelnitsa.”)
In 1929, while clearing debris from the underground part of the Senate Tower, a dungeon more than 6 meters deep was discovered underneath it. Stelletsky put forward a version: the Senate Tower is a hatch into the underground Kremlin. However, something else is more likely - initially the tower dungeon had two or three tiers with wooden platforms; over time they rotted and fell down, thereby forming a “mysterious” well.
In 1930, when laying drains from the Kremlin on Red Square, an underground passage as tall as a man was discovered (and very soon covered with earth) - it was located just to the right of the Spasskaya Tower at a depth of 4 meters and went towards the Execution Ground.
In 1933-1934. Ignatius Stelletsky, while examining the Corner and Middle Arsenal towers, discovered more than one underground cache here. There were secret passages inside the walls and underground passages (one was completely cleared). In addition, Stelletsky reported to the NKVD about the existence of a secret passage from the Spasskaya Tower to St. Basil's Cathedral, “near which there is a descent into a large tunnel under Red Square of a very mysterious purpose.”
During excavation work carried out near the Alarm Tower in 1972,
at a depth of 4 meters a piece of an underground passage appeared.
In 1973, when laying a pit in the Kremlin near the Alarm Tower, the vault of an underground gallery was discovered at a depth of 4 meters. It was adjacent to the foundation of the Alarm Tower, that is, it ran parallel to the Kremlin wall towards the Spasskaya Tower. However, it was not possible to clear the gallery completely and find out where the tunnel began and ended.
Not far from the Middle Arsenal Tower, during restoration work in the 1970s, a passage into the wall was opened, turning towards the Corner Arsenal Tower. Kremlin archaeologists were unable to penetrate far through it - it was blocked with bricks.
No information has been found about the hiding places of the Commandant's Tower, but there are rumors that a pale, disheveled woman with a pistol in her hand lives there. Of course, this is the famous Fanny Kaplan, who was personally shot by the then Kremlin commandant Malkov, but you will learn about this and more in the next part...
None of the dungeons discovered in the Kremlin both before and after the revolution have been fully explored. most of them - after inspection by representatives of the special services - were permanently sealed or covered with earth or even filled with concrete.
For several centuries now, witnesses have regularly appeared who have seen a shadow flickering in the lower tiers of the bell tower of Ivan the Great and the footsteps of the ghost of Ivan the Terrible being heard. Even the memories of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II have been preserved that during his stay in the Kremlin on the eve of his coronation, the spirit of this tyrant appeared to him and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. (Subsequently, there were expert interpreters who claimed that such a visit from the ghost foreshadowed the future collapse of the great Romanov dynasty.)
Other phantoms have also chosen the Kremlin strongholds. Starting from the Time of Troubles, when the hated False Dmitry was killed in the Kremlin, Muscovites sometimes began to observe the blurred outlines of the figure of the Pretender, flashing in the twilight between the battlements of the walls. Once again, this ghost appeared to late revelers on an August night in 1991 - just before the coup attempt!
About 40 years ago, another “otherworldly” inhabitant was discovered in the main government residence of the country... One evening the watchman on duty in the old building next to the Patriarchal Chambers raised the alarm. This administrative building was used as housing for several years under Stalin. One of the apartments on the second floor was once occupied by the People's Commissar of the NKVD Yezhov... The duty officer's post was located right in the hallway of the former Yezhov "apartments". Closer to midnight, a security officer suddenly clearly heard someone's footsteps on the stairs leading down, then the jingling of a key in the lock... The front door creaked as it swung open, then it closed with a light thud - someone walked out of the building into the square . But who? The vigilant watchman pressed the panic button on the remote control and rushed after the unknown violator of the regime. I jumped out onto the porch - a few meters from the house one could see a small figure in a long overcoat and cap, well known from old photographs... The ghost of the notorious security officer suddenly turned and... slowly disappeared into the air, as if merging with the whitish walls of the Filaretovskaya belfry. The disembodied incarnation of Yezhov appeared several more times in the same area of the Kremlin - near the former place of residence of one of Stalin’s most terrible associates, but the ghost of the “great leader of all times and peoples” never appeared among the ghosts “registered” in the capital! But the phantom of Vladimir Ilyich, they say, was seen more than once in the corridors of old Kremlin palaces.
An incomprehensible phenomenon was noted on one summer night in 1950 not far from the Spassky Gate, near the Konstantin-Eleninskaya Tower, which was used in the 17th century as a prison and torture chamber. According to the stories of a Kremlin cadet on duty here, he suddenly discovered a dark spot on the masonry of the wall, which gradually expanded and seemed to flow down. The young security officer risked getting closer and even touched this “new formation.” He felt something sticky under his fingers. In the flashlight it looked like blood. The cadet did not immediately report this phenomenon to his superiors, deciding to check everything again in sunlight. However, by morning there was no trace of that terrible stain left on the tower.
Sexton's excavations
From time immemorial, the Moscow Kremlin was not only a symbol of sovereign power, but also a place about which legends were made. Not all of them arose out of nowhere. Many are based on real documents, reports and notes from service people. And hundreds of years of archeology have not given up hope of penetrating the secrets of the dungeons.
They tried to explore them three times, and each time the excavations were stopped from above.
The first attempt, in the fall of 1718, was made by the sexton of the Church of John the Baptist on Presnya, Konon Osipov. Referring to the words of the clerk of the Great Treasury Vasily Makariev, who in 1682, on the orders of Princess Sophia, went down into the secret passage leading from the Tainitskaya tower to the Sobakina (Corner Arsenal) and allegedly saw chambers filled with chests, the sexton asked Prince Romodanovsky for permission to look for them. Unfortunately, the clerk himself was no longer alive.
In the Tainitskaya Tower, the sexton found the entrance to a gallery that needed to be excavated, and they even gave him soldiers, but there was a danger of collapse, and the work was stopped. Six years later, Osipov returned to the search by decree of Peter I. The sexton was assigned prisoners for work, but the search was not crowned with success. In the Arsenalnaya corner, Osipov found the entrance to the dungeon, which was flooded with water from a spring. Five meters later he came across an Arsenal pillar, and breaking it in the middle, he ran into the rock.
Ten years later, he carried out excavations inside the Kremlin to “intercept” Makaryev’s move, but was again defeated.
Shcherbatov's attempt
The story continued in 1894. The case was picked up by the official of special assignments, Prince Nikolai Shcherbatov. In the Nabatnaya Tower, he found the entrance to a walled-up gallery leading to the Konstantin-Eleninskaya Tower. A counter vaulted corridor 62 meters long was found in the Konstantino-Eleninskaya Tower. At the end of the gallery, behind the brickwork, they found a cache of cannonballs. Later, Shcherbatov dismantled the floor in Nabatnaya and found a passage leading to this hiding place from the other side.
While exploring the Corner Arsenal Tower, Shcherbatov, like Osipov, was unable to penetrate further.
Then the prince decided to break through the underground gallery from the Alexander Garden. The passage went under the Trinity Tower and led to a small chamber with stone vaults, on the floor of which there was a hatch leading to the same room below. The upper chamber was connected by a corridor with another room. From the second chamber a low tunnel began, which went into the wall.
Under the Borovitskaya Tower, Shcherbatov found a chapel, a dungeon under a diversion arch, a passage that led to Imperial Square, a “foot battle” that made it possible to keep the space near the tower and the chamber under the ramp under fire.
After the revolution, the Bolsheviks came to power and immediately became concerned about the security of the citadel. They confiscated photographs of the passages from Shcherbatov, filled up the well in the Tainitskaya tower, and walled up the lower chambers in the Trinity. After a Red Army soldier fell underground in the courtyard of the government building in the fall of 1933, archaeologist Ignatius Stelletsky was invited to explore the underground. At one time, he put forward a version that the well of the Tainitskaya Tower was once dry, and there were passages coming from it.
His excavations of the “Osipovsky” passage under Corner Arsenalnaya led to discoveries. They found an unloading arch under the wall and opened an exit to the Alexander Garden, which was immediately walled up. But then Stelletsky ran into a boulder. He believed that the passage further was free of earth, but the scientist was prohibited from excavating and ordered to clear the dungeon of the Corner Arsenal to the bottom. It turned out that the spring, which kept flooding the dungeons, was enclosed in a stone well with a diameter of five meters and a depth of seven.
Unexpected finds
It was cleared to the bottom in 1975. Archaeologists found in it two military helmets, stirrups and fragments of chain mail from the late 15th century, and stone cannonballs. A spillway was installed at the bottom of the well, which was supposed to protect the container from overflowing. After it was cleared, the flooding problems stopped.
In addition to archaeologists, builders also made discoveries. In 1930, on Red Square, they found an underground passage in which several skeletons in armor were found. At a depth of five meters, it went from the Spasskaya Tower towards the Execution Place and had brick walls and a wrought iron vault. The passage was immediately covered with earth.
In 1960, having noticed a microscopic crack in the Lenin Mausoleum, architects began to find out the reason and found an underground passage under the mausoleum as tall as a man at a depth of 15 meters.
In June 1974, archaeologists discovered an internal passage near the Middle Arsenal Tower. Behind the walling, a staircase from the 15th century, covered with earth, opened up, which could lead to the treasured tunnels. A year earlier, a gallery was found near the Nabatnaya Tower, leading from the Nabatnaya Tower to the Spasskaya Tower, but the beginning and end of the gallery could not be found.
Underground roads
However, moves are not everything! After all, the Kremlin territory is large. On April 15, 1882, a cave-in opened in the middle of the road between the Tsar Cannon and the wall of the Chudov Monastery. Three policemen could walk along it abreast. One end of the tunnel rested against the wall of the Chudov Monastery, and the second was littered with stones.
When digging the foundation of the Annunciation Monastery in 1840, cellars and underground passages with piles of human remains were found. They talk about a whole road passing under the Annunciation Cathedral. Here in the cathedral, Prince Shcherbatov discovered a hiding place that could lead further down. The prince cleared the space under the floor of debris and reached the mosaic floor, which could easily have been a vault underground tunnel or structures. The mysterious iron door, supposedly located in the dungeons between the Annunciation and Archangel Cathedrals, also remains a mystery.
Kremlin - underground
Some particularly zealous researchers of underground Moscow assure us that the Kremlin was originally conceived as a huge underground structure, for which a pit was dug on the site of Borovitsky Hill, in which a whole system of tunnels, rooms and galleries was laid. And only after this the builders began creating the above-ground part of the Kremlin. Then, they say, the dungeon plans were lost or deliberately burned. If we take into account the depth of the cultural layer, which in some places reaches seven to eight meters inside the Kremlin, we can say with confidence that many finds were previously located on the surface of Borovitsky Hill.
True, this does not make the mysteries any less.
