This is a material from sovsport.ru, dated 2012 and dedicated to the Old Believers cemetery, which is located almost in the center of the Olympic Park. The existence of the graveyard was discovered only during topographical work when marking the territory; it was not on maps of the area.
The cemetery is operational, it arose without permission from the authorities near the Old Believer village, which was moved to another place. People, members of the community, opposed the demolition of the unauthorized graveyard, and they managed to defend their cemetery. As a result, a fence was built so that tourists and fans walking along the colorful bridges would not see the graveyard.
Photos from the blog ammo1.livejournal.com were used as illustrations for the material.
“Two weeks ago, hundreds of journalists from all over the world visited the sites of the Sochi Games. Participants in the world Olympic briefing did not hide their amazement at the pace of construction sports facilities. But they were no less struck by the small cemetery in the Imereti Valley - two steps from the skating palace and the Shaiba hockey arena...
DECEMBRIST-PARAMETER
Adler is not overly concerned with historical heritage. Guests of the upcoming Olympics will only be able to walk around Bestuzhev Square - touch an old cannon, take a photo of the monument to the Decembrist officer Alexander Bestuzhev. Exiled to Siberia after the events on Senate Square, the brave staff captain begged to serve in the Caucasian War. And he died heroically in Adler on June 7, 1837 - as part of the Black Sea battalion during the landing from the frigate Anna. In 1913, at the site of the death of Iskander-bek (as the sailors nicknamed their comrade), the townspeople laid out a park by the sea, and in 1957 they erected a monument...
That's all that remains of old Adler. But in 1839 it was a city of twenty forts and fortresses. The only memory of this - a piece of stone wall on Karl Marx Street - is now propped up by a cell phone store. The royal hunting palace of Nicholas II in Krasnaya Polyana has also sunk into oblivion, along with the dachas of opera singers Fyodor Chaliapin and Leonid Sobinov.
And only the cemetery of the Old Believers survived the change of centuries...
“WE BURY ACCORDING TO ALL CUSTOMS...”
Four years ago, during the visit of the IOC commission, a meeting of Old Believers at the cemetery caused a lot of noise. People stood between the grave fences, holding SOS posters in their hands. On the contrary - officials and riot police...
“Seeing our posters, one of the city administration officials shouted: they say, now we’ll open fire to kill!” – recalls community leader Dmitry Drofichev. - The disobedient ones were thrown to the ground. The graves were trampled. The police forced the Cossacks onto the bus, where they forced them to write explanatory notes.…
– What about the IOC commission?
- What do you! We were not allowed to see her.
As a result, the Old Believers village of Morlinsky was moved a kilometer higher from the sea. But it was not possible to raze the cemetery to the ground: the people blocked the road for the bulldozers with their breasts.
In the village of Nekrasovka, where 112 families have moved, I meet new resident Lyubov Markovna Logaryova. She flatly forbids taking photographs of herself, saying that this is worldly fun. Old Believers, by the way, immediately warn: you don’t need to shake hands with them, touch things, dishes...
– Are people happy with the new houses?
- Yes, what kind! The plots are tiny, there is no place to plant a garden - the interlocutor is not inclined to compromise.
- It’s great that you defended the cemetery...
- Yes. We bury as before, according to all customs,” the interlocutor softens a little. – It’s bad that there is no church, we pray at home (a new Old Believer church in Nekrasovka has been built since 2011, and the old wooden one in Adler burned down in 1932. – Ed.)…
“THEY CALLED NICHOLAS II...”
“You can understand the Old Believers, their great-grandfathers were the first settlers here: they drained the swamps, died of malaria, built houses, planted gardens,” says Margarita Kuzina, senior researcher at the local history museum of the Adler district of Sochi. This woman, who receives a measly six thousand rubles a month for her work, knows everything about Adler and the Adler people. It was the Old Believers who came to her for help when they defended the cemetery.
“The first graves appeared on it in 1911, when 160 families of Old Believers arrived here from Turkey,” says Kuzina. – Descendants of the Don Cossacks and opponents of church reform of the 17th century. Nicholas II personally called them to their homeland. And before that, as the founder of the community, Foma Drofichev, said, he and his ancestors in Romania and Turkey were engaged in fishing and farming. And during the Russian-Turkish wars they refused to fight for the Sultan against Russia. The Turks and Circassians began to push them out. And after the end of the Caucasian War, the tsarist government carried out the resettlement of Russians to the Black Sea lands liberated from the Ottomans. Foma and 60 other families from the city of Banderma were taken by ship through Batumi to Sochi. So the Cossacks settled the Imereti Valley.
“In those days, the seashore was covered with impenetrable forest and boxwood,” local historian Irina Golovina takes the floor. – The emperor gave everyone a loan for the construction of roads and houses, and gave the men a deferment from the army for 20 years. All current Old Believers are descendants of those settlers. Even the revolution and collectivization did not break their faith. The collective farm of Old Believers named after the VII Congress of Soviets supplied vegetables and herbs to the Kremlin table! And during the Great Patriotic War, the Cossacks were the first to go to the front. It was they who stopped the Germans at the Caucasian Pseashkho pass.
– Did you consult the Old Believers about the cemetery?
“You can say so,” Kuzina answers. – When the Olympic construction began, they came to me and said: there is a deed of gift for the land, including the cemetery one, which was issued by Nicholas II in 1911. But we didn’t have such documents. I advised them to go to the Sochi archive, but they simply laughed at them. As we found out, most likely, the emperor’s deed of gift was lost during the war. When the Germans approached the mountain passes in 1942, local officials conserved all archival documents. They hastily packed them into ordinary bags and buried them. Almost everything has rotted - the climate here is humid. But, fortunately, the local authorities came to their senses and did not demolish the cemetery.
“TWO FEELINGS ARE WONDERFULLY CLOSE TO US...”
You can get to the historical churchyard only with a special pass, which is issued at Olympstroy. At the appointed hour I stand at checkpoint No. 2 of the Olympic Park. Here a magnetic card and an escort from the construction department are waiting for me.
“It’s easier for relatives to get to the graves,” he explains. “They’re on the security list.” It is enough to present your passport.
...The cemetery is like a dusty oasis in the desert. The graves are shrouded in palm branches and covered with tree crowns. Literally across the road is the Fisht stadium, the Figure Skating Palace...
The cemetery area is tiny, about 25 meters long and wide. The graves of the Old Believers are easy to identify - they are the most abandoned. Faded wooden crosses on a grassy hillock, no nameplates...
“Old Believers don’t look after their graves,” my aunt, Adler resident Victoria Boldyskul, told me before the trip. On her husband’s side, relatives are buried in Imereti land. “They still have a tradition from the Turks: they buried it, the grass sprouted, and that’s it.”
We walk slowly along the graves. I read the names, dates on monuments...
“In fact, in Soviet times, the cemetery ceased to be an Old Believer cemetery,” explains the guide. – Adler migrants were buried here, and in addition to Old Believers, these were Moldovans, Armenians, Orthodox Russians, and even Muslims. Who's not here...
It's time for us to leave. From an island of eternal silence and sadness into the world of a huge, rumbling construction site around the clock.
“It’s still great that the cemetery was preserved,” says my guide. – This is a connection of times. Those who lie in this land built the city. And their descendants are building the first Winter Olympics in our history.
And I think that it’s not about the Olympics at all. It was impossible to do otherwise in the country that gave the world Pushkin. “Two feelings are wonderfully close to us, in them the heart finds food: love for the native ashes, love for the tombs of our fathers...”
Sochi Old Believers are concerned about the status of the cemetery where their ancestors are buried.
The Old Believers of Sochi are asking the city authorities to change the status of the cemetery located in the center of the Olympic Park, where the burials of their ancestors are located.
“Now a very bad situation is developing at the Old Believer cemetery. We are concerned about what is happening there. They are installing some fences for family burials, they are offering to buy some plots for very large sums,” Artem Efimov, chairman of the local religious organization “Community of the Ancient Orthodox Church,” told Interfax.
Efimov said that during preparations for the 2014 Olympics, they wanted to move the cemetery to another location, but the Old Believers community protested, and the cemetery was left in the center of the Olympic Park, surrounded by a fence and green spaces.
“If the cemetery is sold for family burials, then our people will not be able to buy them, because they do not have these amounts. Therefore, we ask the authorities to change the status of the cemetery from urban to religious,” added Efimov.
The new status will allow burials in the cemetery not only for the descendants of Old Believers. But also to the residents of the Rossiya state farm, whose ancestors once populated the Imeretinsk lowland and bay. The solution to this issue will be dealt with by the board of trustees, consisting of members of the Old Believers community and the TOS “Sovkhoz Russia”. The Old Believers community in Sochi today numbers about 200 people.
“This is a very important cultural component for us. Our parents settled the bay and are buried there. This is the only place that remains of the old bay. It is located on the territory of the Olympic Park. We are not against family burials, but against the sale of the cemetery,” Efimov emphasized.
In turn, the director of the Municipal Unitary Enterprise “Ritual Services of Sochi” Alexander Mamulay noted that in all city cemeteries there is a lot of seized land for family burials.
“We met with Old Believers and talked. The conversation is not about providing land for future burials. There are a lot of unauthorized territories there. That is, a person held the burial of his relative and, instead of the required 4 sq. m. m fenced 20 sq. m,” said Mamulay.
In this regard, the Sochi authorities go to court and, by its decision, dismantle the seized lands in all Sochi cemeteries, including the Old Believers cemetery in Adler.
“I am ready to support any decision of the Old Believers community. Either religious status, or the status of a cemetery closed to free burial, but we must work this out,” added the director of the municipal unitary enterprise.
“The Old Believers do not want to pay money and have fenced off the areas where their relatives are buried. In addition to the Old Believers, residents of the Rossiya state farm are also buried there. And if we give the cemetery the status of Old Believers, then residents of nearby villages will not be able to bury their relatives there,” Mamulay noted.
Let us recall that in August the Sochi administration approved a list of city cemeteries where family or family burials can be carried out. The one-time fee for reserving a plot for rural districts is 8.5 thousand rubles per 1 sq. m. m, in the rest of Sochi - 14 thousand rubles. for 1 sq. m. The list includes nine cemeteries, including the cemetery in the Olympic Park.
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Now I will greatly surprise you.
All my photographs of the Olympic Park in the coastal cluster of Sochi contain an object whose purpose I did not know.
In the very center of the Olympic Park, next to the Fisht stadium and the Olympic torch, there is an active Old Believers cemetery.
From the newspaper " Soviet sport"(http://www.sovsport.ru/gazeta/article-item/571128):
“Four years ago, during the visit of the IOC commission, a meeting of Old Believers at the cemetery caused a lot of noise. People stood between the grave fences, holding “SOS” posters in their hands. Opposite were officials and riot police...
“Seeing our posters, one of the city administration officials shouted: they say, now we’ll open fire to kill!” – recalls community leader Dmitry Drofichev. - The disobedient ones were thrown to the ground. The graves were trampled. The police forced the Cossacks onto the bus, where they forced them to write explanatory notes.…
As a result, the Old Believers village of Morlinsky was moved a kilometer higher from the sea. But it was not possible to raze the cemetery to the ground: the people blocked the road for the bulldozers with their breasts."
To prevent spectators walking across the colorful bridges from seeing the cemetery, three huge red screens were built.
As a result, spectators walking across the bridge see these screens and the top of the Olympic torch.
This is how it all looks from the sea.
And this is what it looks like Olympic Park from the cemetery. These photographs of Mikhail Mordasov from the portal of the South (http://www.yuga.ru/photo/polosa/2022.html) were taken in May, when the Old Believers celebrated Radonitsa.
Upd.: On Facebook Anton Kochura commented on my post: “Well, now, although it’s belated, both the Olympic builder and the Sochi resident came into the comment with a close-up look.
1. How it got there. There, in Imeretinka, there was a village of Old Believers, approximately on the site of the current “Fisht”. By the way, the Old Believers themselves are one of those who moved to a new place in a comfortable village without screaming “give me 100 million for my chicken coop.” When they started marking the geological basis for construction, they saw this cemetery, which appeared by itself near the village and was simply not marked on the city plans of the territories. And, in general, “Olympstroy” had every right, as an “illegal construction,” to level it all with a bulldozer, and from the point of view of the law and the PZZ it would be right and clean.
2. “Move half a meter.” This, comrade, is not just difficult, but practically impossible, firstly, the soils in Imeretinka are really swampy, however, swampy not so much in the philistine sense as in the construction sense, here in Sochi 90% of everything is built on weak soils on pile fields with 15-20 meters of drilling minimum to the rocky base, and specifically for large Olympic objects, areas with local elevation of rocky foundations were specially selected, under the same “Fisht”, if I’m not mistaken (I had almost no direct connection with construction in Imeretinka), about 30,000 piles up to 30-40 meters deep.”
© 2014, Alexey Nadezhin
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What do you think was closely guarded by an entire squad of riot police during the 2014 Sochi Olympics? Cemetery located right in the center Olympic Park!
The first time I saw this amazing cemetery was while flying around Sochi by helicopter in 2013. Pay attention to the fenced circle of forest on the left in the photo - this is the cemetery.
The cemetery is surrounded by a three-meter concrete fence and was carefully guarded during the Olympics; it was impossible to get inside even with a special pass. Now it is open to everyone, but the entrance is made so cleverly that not everyone will figure out how to get there!
Initially, they wanted to demolish the cemetery, but local residents did not allow it. It's even on YouTube video of mass clashes between local residents and police. After the visit of the IOC delegation, it was decided to preserve the cemetery.
They write on the Internet that this is a cemetery of Old Believers. I walked around the graves and didn’t notice any Old Believers. But there are a lot of fresh graves, which is probably why the locals managed to defend it.
Judging by the wrenches and car parts on the fence, the body of an automotive master rests here.
Citizens restore order
Someone remembers over a glass of “water”
This is such an amazing place
Surprising but true - entertainment facilities sporting purposes built around the cemetery.
On the other hand, the authorities listened to the opinions of the residents and made concessions...
Tomorrow it will be two years since the Olympic Games opened in Sochi, and I continue to reminisce. This photo was taken in April 2009. On it is the Imereti Lowland, the entire future Olympic Park. The landmark is a small grove on the right, this is the cemetery of the Old Believers, which was not touched during the construction process, only hidden behind a fence and a high hedge. Another landmark is a small hillock, a mound and a bald spot from a landslide nearby; they can be found in the second picture to help you orient yourself on the terrain. Less than FIVE years before the Olympics, grass grew at the site where it was held; there was not even a hint of sports palaces or other structures.
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This photo was taken at the end of May 2009. The circle outlined by the road and pillars is the outer contour of the future Big Ice Palace, the same one where yesterday hockey club Sochi beat Omsk Avangard. This grandiose structure was built, by the way, by Omsk residents, by the Mostovik company.
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A few more pictures from May 2009, the site for the future hockey palace, the Iceberg, Adler Arena, Medal Plaza will grow a little further. In the distance, Blinovo can be seen as a landmark.
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It is no secret that the design of Olympic facilities continued directly during construction. It was in this tent, before the modular administrative building was built, that the designers of Mostovik worked. We also had lunch here.
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And this is already September 2009, the same Big Ice Palace with its outlines already visible.
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And this is the future curling center, the Ice Cube. At first it was assumed that after Olympic Games it will be dismantled and moved to another city. But they didn't do it. Today the Ice Cube is one of the most used post-Olympic heritage sites.
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At the peak of the construction of facilities for the Sochi Olympics, more than 150 thousand attracted specialists worked in Sochi. A significant part of them were hard-working guys from the sunny republics, who were once part of the friendly Soviet family of peoples. These particular guys are from the Fergana Valley in Uzbekistan. They lived in these modular houses, in these rooms, throughout the years of Olympic construction. Whatever one may say, but also sports objects, and transport interchanges, and Rosa Khutor, and Gorki Gorod, and the entire infrastructure of the new Sochi were built by the hands of guest workers.
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2009, construction of a port at the mouth of the Mzymta River. Despite the construction around, people persistently rest on the then wild Imeretian beaches.
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Construction of a combined road and railway to Krasnaya Polyana. The most expensive object of the Sochi-2014 project. Somewhere in the depths of the mountain there is a giant super-mole working, gnawing into the thickness of the rock, creating tunnels for trains and cars.
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Construction of cottages for the resettlement of residents who were subject to demolition in the Imereti Lowland. As a result, the village turned out to be very good.
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A very old photograph, taken, if I’m not mistaken, in the fall of 2007: the people who started it all. Semyon Vainshtok, first head of the Olimpstroy state corporation. He did not do anything noticeable in this post; in 2008 he was removed and left the country. Governor of Kuban Alexander Tkachev. Withstood Olympic race, was subsequently appointed Minister of Agriculture. And Dmitry Kozak, the real leader of the Sochi-2014 project, personally responsible for it to Vladimir Putin. He carried everything on his shoulders, from beginning to end. He deservedly became an honorary citizen of the city of Sochi.
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This kind of Sochi Olympics was imagined at the very beginning, in 2007, when no bunnies and leopards had yet been created.
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And, as proof of involvement, I am on the Olympic sports ground, wearing a helmet with Olympstroy symbols, in 2009.
