It used to be on the site of the Olympic Park. How we managed to preserve an ancient cemetery in the very center of the Sochi Olympic Park. “Nicholas II called them...”

Sochi Old Believers appealed to the city authorities with a request to change the status of the cemetery located on the territory Imereti Lowland Olympic Park V Adler district resort town, with urban on religious. This is due to changes in the regulations for reserving places in cemeteries for family burials.

They are installing some kind of fences for family burials, and they are offering to buy some plots for very large sums. If the cemetery is sold for family burials, then our people will not be able to buy them, because they do not have these amounts. “We are not against family burials, but against the sale of the cemetery,” said the chairman of the local religious organization “ Community treelnon-Orthodox churches» priestArtem th Efimov .

Director of Sochi Municipal Unitary Enterprise " Ritual services to the population» Alexander Mamulay reported that at the Old Believer cemetery in the Olympic Park there are a lot of unauthorized areas seized for family burials.

That is, a person held the burial of his relative and, instead of the required 4 m², fenced off 20 m². But the status has nothing to do with unauthorized territories. The Old Believers do not want to pay money and have fenced off the areas where their relatives are buried. In addition to the Old Believers, residents of the state farm are also buried there." Russia" And if we give the cemetery the status of Old Believers, then residents of nearby villages will not be able to bury their relatives there,” he said.

According to him, the Sochi authorities are forced to go to court and, based on its decision, dismantle the occupied lands in all Sochi cemeteries, including the cemetery where the ancestors of the Old Believers are buried.

I am ready to support any decision of the Old Believers community. Either religious status, or the status of a cemetery closed to free burial, but we must work this out,” noted A. Mamulay.

He recalled that burial on the territory of Sochi is regulated 131 Rby the decision of the Sochi city meeting, approved in 2011. The Sochi administration has approved a list of city cemeteries where family or clan burials are allowed. A one-time fee is charged for reserving a site in the city budget. For rural districts the fee is 8.5 thousand rubles per 1 sq.m., in the rest of Sochi - 14 thousand rubles. for 1 sq.m. The list covered by the innovation includes nine cemeteries, including the cemetery of the Old Believers in the Imereti Lowland.

Do you understand the meaning of an Old Believer cemetery? We have a small piece of land that will last for a thousand years. Because Old Believer cemeteries do not grow - wooden crosses are erected, and after time (after 25-35 years), when the cross rots and falls, and there is no longer a coffin or body there, we bury another person in this place. And if this cemetery were left alone, it would last for hundreds of years, which is why the question of a new cemetery is not raised. It doesn’t grow anywhere within its borders; we don’t even have fences, because we don’t worship the dead. We began to erect fences when others began to be buried with the graves of our people. And so, there should be a chapel and graves in the cemetery, there should be cleanliness and order,” said Priest Artemy Efimov.

The cemetery is located next to the Olympic venues: stadiums, ice arenas and other structures. During preparations for the Olympic Games, the organizers planned to demolish the cemetery. However, the local community protested, and the object was left on the territory of the Olympic Park, surrounded by a fence.

We stood here with our chests. There were even clashes between people and the police... 10 years have passed and now city hall officials remembered that there was a cemetery here and transferred it to a municipal cemetery. It has never been and never will be urban. The city did not establish this cemetery. It was founded by Old Believers. Their graves are the first and oldest here. “We take care of them ourselves,” said a member of the Old Believer community Dmitry Drofichev.

Let us recall that the settlement of Old Believers in the area of ​​Imereti Bay arose at the beginning of the 20th century. It was founded by families of Old Believers who returned to Russia from Ottoman Empire after the publication of a decree on religious tolerance in 1905.

In particular, we are publishing a unique history of the Old Believer settlement in Nizhneimereti Bay, recorded from the words of old-timers, as well as a rare recording of the dispersal of the meeting, which made it possible to preserve the graves of the ancestors of local residents from desecration.
In addition to the article, we provide a link to the story of why Orthodox Russian people ended up in Turkey in the 17th century and how 300 years later they returned to Sochi to settle in the unsuitable Imeretian Bay.

In addition to the community in Sochi, our site also spoke in detail about another one active - in the village of Mama Russkaya (Kurortnoye), also founded by returning Old Believers a hundred years ago.

In all the photographs of the said blogger in the main Sochi Olympic Park there is an unknown object inscribed in a circle of densely planted trees.

It turned out that a hundred steps from the Fisht stadium and the Olympic torch there is... an active Old Believers cemetery.

“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.…

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.” Newspaper "Soviet sport"

To prevent spectators walking along the colorful bridges from noticing the cemetery, the designers installed three huge red screens.

As a result, all guests of the Olympics saw these screens and the top of the Olympic torch:

This is how it all looks from the sea.

It should be noted: the very fact that the cemetery has survived is certainly good news. Moreover, this is almost unthinkable if you compare the scale of the construction and the interests of a handful of people at the epicenter of the construction of the century.

However, dry newspaper lines do not fully reflect the dedication of local residents that allowed the cemetery to remain in its place.

Below is a video recording of the police’s attempt to “recapture” the cemetery before the arrival of the IOC delegation. We apologize for the abundance of profanity, but the emotions in this case are understandable. ( for viewing 16+)

source: http://youtu.be/WCIffrDPyUM

However, the conclusion is very positive. Despite the arbitrariness and lawlessness that is shouted about on every corner, we see an example of how ordinary people, thanks to their determination and God’s help, were able to defend the right to rest in peace the ashes of the ancestors who founded these places. They lost their homes and property, but fulfilled their Christian duty.

Here is an excerpt from an appeal from local residents to all authorities in 2008, when an Old Believer village was still located on the site of the stadiums:

RESOLUTION

following the results of a meeting held by residents of the Lower Imeretinsk Valley in Sochi on May 4, 2008, on the issue of seizure of land and demolition of privately owned households for the needs of the 2014 Olympics.

To the President Russian Federation D. A. Medvedev
To the Chairman of the State Duma of the Russian Federation B.V. Gryzlov
Public Chamber of the Russian Federation
Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation V.P. Lukin
Governor of the Krasnodar Territory A. N. Tkachev

We, the undersigned residents of the Lower Imereti Valley of Sochi, declare that:

We will never leave our land, which our grandfathers and great-grandfathers gave us. We sacredly preserve their memory, and we will protect their Gift from any attacks!

we are against the construction of entertainment and sports facilities around our Cemetery and in its immediate vicinity. Do not desecrate the graves of our ancestors!

we are against multi-storey buildings in the Lower Imereti Valley (state farm “Russia”), behind which you will not see either our sea or mountains;

We invite residents of Sochi, whose interests will be affected by voluntary or forced relocation, to unite and cooperate with us, as well as all Sochi residents who are not indifferent to the fate of our valley and the city of Sochi as a whole!

Our activities are aimed only at protecting our property. – if a decision is made to confiscate land owned or possessed by a citizen, we will undertake mass protests and civil disobedience, which will be notified to various media, the world community, and human rights organizations.

And this is what it looks like Olympic Park from the cemetery. These photographs of Mikhail Mordasov from portal of the South were made in May 2013, when local residents celebrated Radonitsa.

In appearance, these are, of course, not Old Believers, since, as stated below, in modern times residents of surrounding villages also began to be buried in the cemetery. And Old Believers are prohibited from “celebrating” Radonitsa with alcohol by the canons of the Orthodox Church, which they observe more strictly than others. However, these photographs add color to the article, because now the cemetery is separated from the surrounding objects by a high concrete fence and trees.

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.

How did it end up 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. © 2014, Alexey Nadezhin (part of the text and photographs)

Historical information about the founding of Imereti Bay by Old Believers

Addendum to the resolution following the rally in 2008

The history of the village of Nizhneimeretinskaya Bay, recorded from the words of the old-timers of the settlement.

The village of Nizhneimeretinskaya Bay was created in 1911 by Christian Old Believers. All of them come from the lower reaches of the Don and are descendants of the Don Cossacks. Nowadays this is the city of Novocherkassk and the village of Starocherkasskaya.

In the seventeenth century there was a schism in the Christian Church, resulting in the emergence of Christians of the old faith and the new faith. Christians of the new faith began to shave their beards, smoke, be baptized in a new way, and much more, but the Old Believers did not obey the new rules and remained faithful to the faith with which Rus' was baptized a thousand years ago.

Persecution and oppression of the Old Believers by the authorities began. The Old Believers did not want to betray their faith and began to leave the lower reaches of the Don under the leadership of Nekrasov; later they were called “Nekrasovites”. Some of them went to Siberia, the other part to Kuban, Romania, Bulgaria, and our ancestors went to Turkey. They lived in large settlements in Turkey, had their own churches, observed Old Believer customs and strictly carried out their faith, to which our ancestors were always faithful. As time passed, the Turks began to set borders and tried to make us Turkish subjects. Our parents could not change their faith and citizenship, so in 1909. 3-5 walkers were sent from each village from Turkey to Russia, to Tsar Nicholas P. The Russian Tsar received this delegation favorably. He helped Russian citizens return to Russia; for this purpose, ships were provided free of charge for the relocation of Old Believers Christians to Russia. We met the migrants in the Novorossiysk port with an orchestra, bread and salt, with love and joy, as people by the will of fate, abandoned to a foreign land.

The Old Believers were allowed by Tsar Nicholas II to choose free plots of land. Each family was entitled to 50 acres of land as their own, and was also given the right to cultivate the adjacent lands. The king gave us land for eternity. As a result, the Old Believers founded the following villages on the Caucasus coast: Nizhneimeretinskaya Bay, Golovinka, Solokhaul, Babuk. On the territory of Georgia there are the villages of Ureki, Grigoletti, Karaki, Moltakva. In the Republic of Dagestan, in the region of the city of Kizlyar, there are also several settlements of Old Believers. On the territory of the city of Primorsk - Akhtarsk, the villages of Nekrasovka and Novopokrovka were formed. In Novopokrovka today there are our parish and church, which 10 years ago was rebuilt for gatherings of Old Believers parishioners.

Today, the only settlement of Old Believers remains on the Caucasus coast. This is the village of Nizhneimeretinskaya Bay. During the tenure of Nicholas II, the royal regiment was withdrawn from Imereti (the territory of Georgia); this regiment was based in the lowland, which later became known as the “Lower Imereti Bay”.

Nizhneimereti Bay was chosen by a group of Old Believers in 1911 and populated. There were impassable forests, swamps and swamps here; our ancestors uprooted and drained them, they created this land with their own hands. Three years later, after settling on the Lower Imeretinskaya Bay, half of the settlers died of malaria and fever. We survived the 1917 revolution, the NEP and Collectivization. The Bukh residents created their own collective farm, “Collective Farm named after the Seventh Congress of Soviets,” and became fully involved in it. When the collective farm was created, cows, horses, equipment and much more were given from personal farms. By decree of V.I. Lenin, each family of a collective farmer was given 36 acres of land for lifelong ownership with the right of inheritance; in those days there was no private ownership of land.

The collective farm was the best in the Adler region, it exhibited its achievements in animal husbandry and vegetable growing at the VDNKh exhibition in Moscow, in those days the collective farm was a millionaire. People worked selflessly for the good of their Motherland, despite the fact that, on the orders of I.V. Stalin, our church was burned and has not yet been restored.

All that remains is the cemetery where our ancestors are buried. It operates to this day; people are buried there not only from our village, but also from nearby villages.

During the Great Patriotic War, the entire male population from our village was drafted, 80% of whom did not return from the front; they died defending their Motherland and land from the Nazis.

Our women built defensive fortifications in the Krasnaya Polyana area, continued to work on this land and donated the entire harvest to the needs of the front. After the war, despite hunger and hardship, the collective farm was completely restored and was again at the forefront.

In the 1950s, collective farms were enlarged and they were transferred to the status of state farms. The state farm began to be called “Russia”. Today, the Rossiya state farm is bankrupt, its lands are being sold for a lot of money. Throughout the Krasnodar Territory and Russia, shares of land were allocated to workers of collective and state farms, but not a single person was allocated a single square meter of land from the Rossiya state farm.

Today, we, former employees of the “Collective Farm named after the Seventh Congress of Soviets” and the “Russia” State Farm, do not lay claim to these shares of land entitled to us by law.

But we believe that we have every right to the plots of land on which our houses are located today, both by law and before God and people!!!

Currently, about 400 indigenous Old Believers, more than 100 households, live in Nizhneimeretinskaya Bay.

We, residents of Nizhneimereti Bay, are not against the Olympics, but we are categorically against our relocation anywhere from our land, watered with the sweat and blood of our fathers and grandfathers!!!

There is enough free land around us for any construction!

Leave us our “LITTLE MOTHERLAND”!!!

The history of Nizhneimereti Bay is recorded from the words of the old residents of the village, Christian Old Believers:
Kubantsev Ivan Filimonovich (born 1937)
Petukhov Mikhail Ivanovich (born 1925)
Ikonnikov Pyotr Filaretovich (born 1935)
Droficheva Evdokia Fominishna (born 1927)
Krasnova Evdokia Filaretovna (born 1925)
Krivorog Tatyana Merkulovna (born 1908)
Source of resolution – http://kprf.ru/

Old Believer communities in the Sochi region

There are several reports online about modern life resettled Old Believers. I am glad that they still do not forget about God.

In Sochi, Old Believers began construction of the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The village of Nekrasovskoye. Photo by Alexander Valov. News agency “Living Kuban”

In the village of Nekrasovskoye near Sochi, local Old Believers began construction of the Church of the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

It was built with donations from villagers. The “Olympic” builders also help the believers - they supply the Old Believers with materials free of charge.

Next to the church they plan to build a cultural and historical center, which will house exhibition halls, workshops, a Sunday school and temporary groups for children, Vesti reports. Sochi".

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; there was not even a hint of sports palaces and other buildings.

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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, still the same Bolshoi Ice Palace with already visible outlines.

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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 automobile 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. He survived the Olympic race and 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.

In the sea. Mountains. Expanded clay"

On Monday, on ORT, a new television series was released - “The Sea. Mountains. Expanded clay." It was directed by Tigran Keosayan from the script of Margarita Simonyan... straight - "Armenfilm"))) The plot develops during the Sochi Olympic construction and, as I understand it, the authors are from the local Armenian diaspora.
The genre, as stated, is comedy, but here is the announcement from ORT http://www.1tv.ru/cinema/fi=8407
“In one of the coastal villages of Sochi called “Vesely”, Russian Old Believers live side by side with Circassians, Armenians, and Greeks. A measured life flows: the Old Believers pray and grow vegetables, the rest make money from tourists. The son of the owners of the khinkal restaurant, Armen, falls in love with an Old Believer girl, Seraphim ". Suddenly, the usual life of the village is disrupted by the news: the Olympics will be in Sochi. Olympic construction is coming to the village of Vesely. Local residents are hostile to the Olympics..."

Well what can I say? The film, of course, is not a masterpiece))), but it’s still nice that they don’t forget about us, the bearded ones))), it’s also nice that the Old Believers are presented as positive heroes, the filmmakers still make fun of the Armenians, they still have a feeling for the Old Believers respectful attitude... the only thing that could be corrected... it’s clear that the artists really don’t know how to make the sign of the cross, even though they clench their two fingers, but our fingers are always held vertically, and the sign itself is applied differently.. . heroine, constantly pray on your knees, it’s not that they don’t pray like that, but it’s also forbidden - like a Latin custom... in our country they make prostrations, but of course this is different... well, they could teach you how to use a ladder , the handymen would have been bought in our shop, and of course, there are no such prayers as they depicted...))) although of course all these are little things... they will do!)))

That’s just the heroine’s “grandfather”, Nikonenko with a glued-on beard... by the way, he looks very handsome.)))

A little historical background: The settlement "Nizhneimeretinskaya Bay" was created in 1911 by Christian Old Believers (Beglopopovtsy). All of them come from the lower reaches of the Don and are descendants of the Don Cossacks. Nowadays this is the city of Novocherkassk and the village of Starocherkasskaya. There were impenetrable forests, swamps and swamps; the settlers created this land with their own hands. Three years later, after settling on the Lower Imeretinskaya Bay, half of the settlers died of malaria and fever. During the USSR, the Bukh residents created their own collective farm, “Collective Farm named after the Seventh Congress of Soviets,” which, by the way, was advanced. Before the start of construction and resettlement, about 400 indigenous Old Believers, more than 100 households, lived in Nizhneimereti Bay. In the film, of course, it is too “colorful”, they depicted local residents, of course there are people who fully comply with all the rules both in everyday life and in clothing, but mostly these are old people, young people dress like this only for work.

Regarding the real events in the Imereti Lowland in the Sochi region, not everything was so comedic during construction. The entire village, no matter how hard the residents resisted, was demolished; only a piece of the cemetery was able to be defended; it is located right in the center of the Olympic Village. (in the form of a circle behind a fence)

Here in the video, you can see what a serious struggle it was... sorry, there was a lot of obscene language... although it was a non-standard situation, the Old Believers still shouldn’t swear.

By and large, some local residents may even have benefited from the shacks, they were moved to decent houses... but many still lived in beautiful houses.

But still, people weren’t completely thrown out onto the street, the only thing I understand is that the promised church, damn it, wasn’t built... we had to chip in ourselves. Here’s a report from RTR

Olympic bow. How we managed to preserve an ancient cemetery in the very center of Sochi Olympic Park

Two weeks ago, hundreds of journalists from all over the world visited the Sochi Games venues. Participants in the world Olympic briefing did not hide their amazement at the pace of construction of 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 Palace figure skating...

The cemetery area is tiny, about 25 meters long and wide. The graves of the Old Believers are easy to identify - they are the most abandoned. Faded wooden crosses on a grassy hillock, no nameplates...

“Old Believers don’t look after their graves,” my aunt, Adler resident Victoria Boldyskul, told me before the trip. On her husband’s side, relatives are buried in Imereti land. “They still have a tradition from the Turks: they buried it, the grass sprouted, and that’s it.”
We walk slowly along the graves. I read the names, dates on monuments...

“In fact, in Soviet times, the cemetery ceased to be an Old Believer cemetery,” explains the guide. – Adler migrants were buried here, and in addition to Old Believers, these were Moldovans, Armenians, Orthodox Russians, and even Muslims. Who's not here...

It's time for us to leave. From an island of eternal silence and sadness into the world of a huge, 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 in our history Winter Olympics.

And I think that it’s not about the Olympics at all. It was impossible to do otherwise in the country that gave the world Pushkin. “Two feelings are wonderfully close to us, in them the heart finds food: love for the native ashes, love for the tombs of our fathers...”

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