Tomsk dungeons. Tomsk: an underground city from legends. Who built the catacomb cities and why?

Many legends envelop the city of Tomsk. One of them says that under the city there are mysterious underground catacombs, stretching under the historical part of the city and popularly called the “Tomsk metro”.
The fact that there are mysterious dungeons under the city has been rumored among Tomsk residents at least since the mid-18th century. Old-timers of the city claim that the underground tunnels stretch for tens of kilometers, the walls are reinforced with bricks, and that there is even a tunnel under the riverbed of the Tom River, through which three horses can pass.
During the period from the beginning of the 19th to the 20th centuries, newspapers recorded many cases of discovery of dungeons. For example, in May 1898, on Pochtamtskaya Street near the bishop’s house, two young ladies fell into an underground passage. In Belozersky Lane, 2, in 1900, two underground passages were discovered on both sides. In the estate on Shishkova Street, 1, an underground passage to the river was discovered, closed with a forged iron door. A tarred cloud was even found near the exit to Ushayka.
Even 120 years ago, the famous Tomsk archaeologist Kuznetsov discovered a stone underground passage from the Alekseevsky Monastery, on Yurtochnaya Mountain, along Orlovsky Lane to the Igumenka River. Apparently, he performed the fortification functions of “care”, that is, salvation in the event of a siege of the monastery. Archaeological excavations at Resurrection Mountain discovered an underground tunnel that stretches to White Lake. With wooden walls, covered with silt from ancient times. Without a doubt, this is also “care.”
Already in Soviet times, many citizens remembered the incident when a trolleybus fell into the ground near the building of the Scientific Library of TSU. When the vehicle was removed, there was a huge hole in the ground. There is a story that during the construction of the Great Concert Hall on Lenin Square, after the eight-meter piles were driven into the ground, they literally “flew” down five or six meters.
Another evidence of the existence of Tomsk dungeons is a story about renovation work in the building of the former exchange on Lenin Square, next to the Epiphany Cathedral. At one point, the builders' crowbar fell into the ground. It was discovered that there are two rooms underground, from which three narrow passages go in different directions. One underground gallery leads towards the Tom River, another - along Lenin Avenue, the third - to Resurrection Mountain.
All these scattered, often undocumented cases still give rise to a lot of rumors and arguments about who built such huge dungeons. According to one version, this was the work of wealthy Tomsk merchants, who, for safety, acquired their own bunkers for storing and transporting trade goods. According to another, dashing robbers tried to cover up their dark deeds - “bombing” shops and banks, then hiding from the police or organizing prison escapes. In the 18th-19th centuries, there was gold in the Tomsk province, and Tomsk was one of the largest transport hubs on the way from Russia to the Middle Kingdom.
The most fantastic version of the origin of the Tomsk dungeons is the assertion that an underground city developed near Tomsk, with an area larger than modern Tomsk, created thousands of years ago. The name of this city is Grustina or Graciona.
Even the first Siberian settlers noted the unnaturalness of the Tomsk landscape - endless “hillocks and holes.” Similar records can be found in the writings of the head of the Tomsk Cossacks, Gavrila Pisemsky, and the academician and famous traveler Peter Simon Pallas.
Over the four centuries of Tomsk’s existence, signs of people’s former habitation here have been noted more than once. This is, firstly, improved vegetation - birch, hawthorn, hemp; secondly, archaeological sites of the Paleolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, Iron, Early, Developed and Late Middle Ages.
In addition, the laying of various communications during the construction of the fort led to the discovery of a huge number of human burials. On the territory of the Cossack Tomsk fortress alone, 350 coffin blocks were discovered. The discovered burials did not correspond to Christian customs.
In 1908, “in Tomsk, on the steep bank of the Tom River, a cave was found in which a perfectly preserved skeleton of a Mongol, dressed in wooden battle armor and a low horsehide helmet, was discovered. Near the skeleton lie a short spear, a bow and an ax. The find was transferred to Tomsk University” (“Petersburg leaflet” N277, 1908). Judging by the nature of the equipment, the warrior belonged to the Hunnic era, and this is a thousand years before the founding of Tomsk.
These scattered finds and evidence allow us to make bold guesses that it was on the site of Tomsk that the mysterious city of Grustina, marked on many medieval maps, was located. The city was built with massive underground communications by the legendary ruler Fragracion and was devastated by Iranian troops.
It is with Sadness that the location of the mysterious third Rus', Artania, is associated.
Today, you can get in touch with the myth about the Tomsk dungeons, which has haunted every generation, on an excursion to the Karim-Bai mansion. The merchant Karim Khamitov was a famous horse breeder in Tomsk and surprised his subordinates with lightning-fast movements between his stud farm in the village of Kashtanchikovo, ten kilometers from Tomsk, and his luxurious mansion in the Tatarskaya Sloboda. It was rumored that from the basement of the mansion there was a huge tunnel running under Tomya, along which three horses were calmly riding.
Under the building of the mansion, extensive basements have been preserved to this day. The length of the basement corridors is 75 meters: real catacombs with walls made of stone, with arched ceiling vaults, with a chaotic layout reminiscent of a labyrinth. At one time, each of the underground rooms had its own purpose: a kitchen with a large oven, an icehouse, a cellar, but nevertheless this dungeon still has many unsolved mysteries.
Tourist portal of the Tomsk region / travel-tomsk.ru

Underground cities are known in Asia Minor, Georgia, Kerch, Crimea, Odessa, Kyiv and other places. There have been legends about underground passages near Tomsk for a long time. Tomsk residents knew that mysterious dungeons existed under the city at least as far back as the mid-18th century. Cities, like people, having their own traditions and their own character, keep “secrets covered in darkness” in their storerooms. This is especially true for historical cities (not only in status, but also in essence), whose age is estimated at hundreds of years. Take my word for it, ancient Tomsk in this matter could give a head start to Moscow with its terrible secrets of Khitrovka or the disappeared library of Ivan the Terrible, Odessa with the labyrinths of catacombs and even London with medieval castles inhabited by ghosts... Not only wooden architecture can give a unique atmosphere to our city, but also what is hidden underground. And since there is no metro in Siberian Athens, it becomes clear that we are talking about Tomsk slums... Since time immemorial, there has been either a legend or a true story among Tomsk residents about mysterious dungeons that permeate the historical part of our city up and down. According to some versions, this was the work of wealthy Tomsk merchants, who acquired their own bunkers for safety. According to others, dashing robbers tried their best to cover up their dark deeds - “bomb” shops and banks, then hide from the police. In the 18th-19th centuries, there was gold in the Tomsk province, and our city was the largest transport hub on the way from Russia to the Middle Kingdom.

SIBERIAN HOMELAND? One of the main researchers of the Tomsk dungeons, Nikolai Novgorodov, says that back in the early 70s, when he arrived in Tomsk, he immediately encountered interesting stories about the city catacombs. Old-timers said that they stretched for tens of kilometers, the walls were reinforced with bricks, and that there was even a tunnel under the riverbed of the Tom River, through which three horses could pass. In those years, Novgorodov himself witnessed an emergency: a trolleybus fell into the ground near the building of the TSU Scientific Library. When the vehicle was removed, there was a huge hole in the ground. Much later I heard the stories of the people who built the Great Concert Hall on Lenin Square. After the eight-meter piles were driven into the ground, they literally “flew” down five or six meters.

A couple of years ago, he published the monograph “The Siberian Ancestral Homeland,” where he devoted an entire chapter to the mysterious Tomsk catacombs. Provided an overview of the local press of the 19th-20th centuries. Over a period of more than a century, newspapers recorded many cases of discovery of dungeons. For example, in May 1898, on Pochtamtskaya Street near the bishop’s house, two young ladies fell into an underground passage. In Belozersky Lane, 2, in 1900, two underground passages were discovered on both sides. It was alleged that with the help of underground passages, thieves evaded pursuit, robbed shops, and organized prison escapes (on what is now Arkady Ivanov Street). In the estate on Shishkova Street, 1, an underground passage to the river was discovered, closed with a forged iron door. A tarred cloud was even found near the exit to Ushayka. Even 120 years ago, the famous Tomsk archaeologist Kuznetsov discovered a stone underground passage from the Alekseevsky Monastery, on Yurtochnaya Mountain, along Orlovsky Lane to the Igumenka River. Apparently, he performed the fortification functions of “care”, that is, salvation in the event of a siege of the monastery. The dungeon opener was trying to get money for further research. Alas, unsuccessfully... In a word, a great many eyewitness stories about the Tomsk subway have accumulated.

ARMED WITH GEORADAR Today, slum researchers are using special equipment developed at the Radar Design Bureau at TUSUR for help. These are so-called georadars, which use electromagnetic waves to “transparent” the earth’s thickness. One of the practical applications of these devices is the search for underground passages and hidden rooms. ...During renovation work in the former stock exchange building on Lenin Square, next to the Epiphany Cathedral, the builders' crowbar fell through. Radar employees went to the scene. It was discovered that there are two rooms underground, from which three narrow passages go in different directions. One underground gallery leads towards the Tom River, another - along Lenin Avenue, the third - to Resurrection Mountain. In the city House of Scientists, enthusiasts hold seminars “Tomsk Catacombs – Myth or Reality?”, organized by the regional public organization “Hyperborea - the Siberian ancestral home”. At one of the events, local historian Gennady Skvortsov gave an interesting report. He said that archaeological excavations at Resurrection Mountain discovered an underground tunnel that stretches to White Lake. With wooden walls, covered with silt from ancient times. Without a doubt, this is also “care.” ...So who is the creator of underground Siberian Athens? There is a hypothesis that the age of the Tomsk catacombs is several thousand years. Consequently, they could have been dug not only by monks, merchants or robbers. As Nikolai Novgorodov suggests, the only option is the underground communications of the ancient city that stood on the site of present-day Tomsk. According to the scientist, it was even marked on ancient maps. His name is Graciona, or Grustina. The question of who is the author of the mysterious dungeons remains open. For the simple reason that the slums are tightly closed from prying eyes. The main problem in studying the Tomsk subway is the unspoken taboo on all kinds of research. Since the 1970s, “comrades in civilian clothes” began to fill up and wall up the doors to the dungeons. Alas, the mystery is still a mystery. Although it wouldn’t hurt to really take it seriously and figure out where the truth is, where it’s fiction, and where it’s just a joke or speculation.

The local Turks had no legends. They always spoke of an almost exact tradition.

The legend about Tom was already imagined by the Russians. The fact is that in all languages ​​there is no name Tom, but there is Tomar - the creator. And it sounds abbreviated as Toma, and mar means house.

Historically, Tomsk began on Voskresenskaya Mountain 400 years ago. 300 years ago the construction of Rosa-Luxemburg Street and Karl Marx Street began. 200 years ago the city crossed the Ushaika River, and 100 years ago it expanded into the Camp Garden. There are also funny legends about Tomsk. One of these legends is the city under the city.

It is assumed that there are many underground passages and labyrinths near Tomsk. Some of these assumptions are confirmed by eyewitnesses. But there are no reliable facts, just as there is no understanding of who would need the construction of underground passages and why. People who know, for example, the famous journalist E. Stoilov, V. Slavnin, claim that there are no catacombs, but there are simple “runaways” 20-40 meters long. They were dug for a practical purpose: to quietly hide from a house, monastery, etc., in case of danger. But it is impossible to rebuild real branched multi-pass catacombs in Tomsk due to the abundance of springs that water the clay groups. And most importantly, there was absolutely no need to dig them. In fact, why do the crazy merchants, who are the source of many rumors, need these childish games? Traveling across the river with girls? Nonsense. The overwhelming majority of Russian merchants were “hard-headed” people, they knew how to count a penny and didn’t bother with nonsense. But maybe, using the passages, it was convenient for the robbers to rob the merchants themselves? Even more nonsense. Neither merchants nor murderers from dark inns will waste time and effort digging underground passages. Both those and others could use ready-made ones. But who dug it all up and when in the end? And most importantly - why? We invite readers to draw their own conclusions. Let's start with the dungeon rumors we've collected. So, rumors and eyewitness accounts. For example, local historian T. Skvortsov heard that under Lenin Avenue from the Post Office to the Camp Garden there is an underground passage of enormous size and length with branches. It was also jokingly called the “Tomsk metro”. Indirect confirmation of its existence is the fact that in the 50s a section of the road near the monument to Vakhrushev (opposite TEMZ) collapsed. By the way, there are many rumors about dungeons associated with the Camp Garden. There seemed to be an artillery unit there in the 1920s. The son of the “gunners” commander allegedly once went into the dungeon and did not return. The parent, out of grief, blew up the entrance, which is why the slope began to flood and began to float. The existence of an underground passage under Tom is associated with the name of the horse breeder Karymbay Khamitov, whose factory was located in Kaftanchikovo. Local residents recall that this man, living permanently in Tomsk, suddenly appeared in Kaftanchikovo even during ice drift. It was as if the cheerful and daring Karymbay could easily drive around Tom in a troika. The descendants of this man, by the way, still live in Zaistochye and, perhaps, could shed light on this very dark matter. According to rumors, you can get to the Camp Garden through a door in the billiard room of the House of Scientists. It has long been rumored that it was possible to go underground from this house into the basement of the SFTI. However, the institute's exit is walled up. An underground passage leads from the Epiphany Cathedral towards Lenin Square. When the "elastic" (rubber shoe factory) moved, firefighters crawled around the abandoned building and found an entrance, which they followed to the middle of the square. The firefighters on duty told Skvortsov about this. At the end of the last century, archaeologist Kuznetsov, in the area of ​​the Oryol hillock east of the Alekseevsky Monastery, discovered an entrance to a dungeon, from which a rumble was allegedly heard from time to time and the earth almost shook. Kuznetsov compares the impression he received: as if a heavy horse-drawn carriage was driving along the paving stones. This is known from the publications of the archaeologist himself. In general, many legends are associated with the Alekseevsky Monastery. For example, it is as if the monks themselves dug passages and made niches in them, like those in the Kiev Pechersk Lavra. They buried their dead in them and for some reason built “escape houses.” When construction work began in this place in 1984 and part of the underground structures were opened, the coffin with the body of a soldier brought from near Warsaw after the Napoleonic invasion was turned out by an excavator. This curious detail has been preserved: the lid of the coffin had a glass window where the face of the dead man was located. An underground passage also runs from the territory of the convent, the buildings of which were given over to TPI dormitories in the 20s. The passage runs to the southeast, and local boys allegedly ran along it more often than along the street. It was there that mysterious iron men-at-arms were found, waving rusty swords. Tomsk resident Sergei Mironov recalls that a quarter of a century ago, the father of his classmate was digging a cellar on Studencheskaya Street and fell into a dungeon. The police arrived and the entrance was concreted. Grigory Dobler says: “In the 60s, the building of the Gromovskaya bathhouse suddenly cracked. It began to fall into an underground passage that went in the direction of the Moscow highway. I looked into it myself. I remember that the passage was very large (three could pass through) and the vaults lined with bricks." The same source told about the underground passage from the current city hall to the House of Officers, where Gokhran treasures were kept during the war. Tomsk resident Alexander Loktyushin also personally looked into the underground passage on Lenin Avenue, where a trolleybus fell through in 1971. Here, too, everything was lined with brick. An employee of A. Loktyushin, who lived in Pesochny Lane, said that about 15 years ago his neighbor, while digging a cellar, came across brickwork at a depth of 2.5 meters. Having broken through it with a crowbar, I discovered a passage going towards the mouth of the Ushaika. The wingless neighbor did not come up with anything better than to bring two dump trucks of slag and fill up the valuable find, where he eventually built his pathetic cellar. Tomsk resident Sergei Samoilenko recalls: “While studying at the history department, various stories were told about people who supposedly still live and are even born in the catacombs under the city. I heard that under the store “1000 little things” there are several underground floors of passages, the bottom of which passes under Ushayka. It’s as if the civil defense kept their warehouses there.” By the way, they say that when 1000 Little Things was still a department store, it was robbed once. And the thieves passed through the underground passage. Our fellow countryman Viktor Popov himself saw the brick-lined underground passage leading from the Kukhterinsky church inside the house (in the courtyard of the city hall). The same source reported about an underground passage found in Memorial Square. The entrance to the dungeon leading towards the mouth of the Ushaika was discovered in the basement of the old regional committee building after high-ranking party members moved to another place. And again the Alekseevsky Monastery: in the building of the pedagogical school on Krylova, 12, they opened underground passages with niches in which there were coffins. I probably haven’t forgotten the TV show about a deep well on Swedish Hill, discovered several years ago during the construction of a cottage. The thrown stone reached the bottom only after 10-12 seconds. As is usual in Rus', there were smart people who hastened to fill up the unique well. This required eight Kamaz trucks. Considering that the body of the KamAZ truck contains eight cubic meters of soil, and the cross-section of the well is one meter, there is reason to assume that the depth of the underground structure is at least 60 meters. I can’t even believe that there were people who decided to fill up such a unique thing. How lazy and incurious we are: cellars and cottages are more important to us than all the secrets of the universe. What we talked about today is only a small part of a phenomenon, the scale of which, if not amazing, is certainly intriguing. It is very likely that there is an entire underground city near Tomsk, the boundaries of which are much wider than the boundaries of historical Tomsk. And of course, neither the “runaways”, nor the burial places, nor the merchants with girls and evil robbers explain the phenomenon, but only conceptually shorten it.

What is the West Siberian city of Tomsk famous for? It has 9 universities, 15 research institutes, a special economic zone and 6 business incubators. But it may very well be that this is not the most interesting thing...

There have long been rumors among the residents of Tomsk that there are countless underground passages located under the city, including under the Tomyu River. Rumor claims that the size of these dungeons significantly exceeds the size of modern Tomsk itself. During the existence of the city, there were an innumerable number of cases of discovery of underground passages. The vast majority of this evidence was preserved in the form of rumors, but many were reflected in newspapers - both in the 19th century and at the end of the 20th century.

Sometimes, due to these dungeons, soil subsidence occurred in the city. In May 1898, on Pochtamtskaya Street near the bishop’s house, two young ladies fell into a mysterious hole. Later, on Lenin Avenue (formerly Pochtamtskaya), soil subsidence occurred at least three more times: near the House of Culture of the plant named after. Vakhrushev, near the TSU library and near the local history museum (former house of the bishop).

The soil also subsided repeatedly in the courtyard of the estate on Shishkova Street, 1. In the 1990s, gravel from two KamAZ trucks was poured into the sinkhole. On Oktyabrskaya Street near house 33, a loaded dump truck once fell through the road. A clergyman, later a prosecutor, lived in this house. The prosecutor's son got into the habit of going into the dungeons through the entrance to the basement of the house.

By the time the reporter arrived, the basement was filled with floorboards. Another time, near the Southern crossing, an excavator operator fell into a dungeon. While digging a trench, he noticed a hole that had opened in the ground and jumped down there to be curious. In an underground passage he discovered a chest with ancient icons and books.

"TOMSKY METRO"

There is a widespread opinion in the city that the size of the underground passages is so large that three horses could freely ride into them, or even separate. “Tomsk Provincial Gazette” wrote at the end of the 19th century that a giant underground passage called the “Tomsk Metro” can be traced from the post office to the Camp Garden. In Belozersky Lane, 2, in 1900, two underground passages were discovered on both sides, through which criminals escaped.

It was alleged that thieves used underground passages to rob stores and organize prison escapes. True, in some prison places, the discovered passages led not to the prisoners’ cells, but to the guards’ house, and from it to the governor’s palace, the current House of Scientists.

In our time, many researchers looked into underground passages and noted the presence of brick vaults in them. Tomsk journalist Eduard Stoilov descended into the building of the regional court and walked along it for several tens of meters. The passage was lined with bricks along its entire length. In 1964, Galina Ivanovna Zhidenova walked through the dungeons from the building of the college of culture (Tomsk Cultural and Educational School) to the sports hall of the road technical school - this is three hundred meters!

Tomsk dowsers also confirmed the presence of catacombs. An underground passage was discovered on Resurrection Mountain, starting from the north side of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ and leading in the direction of Solyanaya Square. Its length was about 400 m. It lies at a depth of 3 m to 10 m and has branches of a closed chamber type. They also discovered a network of underground passages in the area of ​​Revolution Square (now Cathedral Square). However, these passages, apparently, are not in the best condition - there are rubble.

So the existence of dungeons near Tomsk is beyond doubt. But who built them? The versions offered, as a rule, are not entirely serious. For example, Tomsk merchants built dungeons in order to bring a bottle of wine from the cellar or to appear at a Public Meeting without a crew and without getting dirty at all; also - to ride underground with the girls to ride in the meadows across the river.

But Siberian merchants were serious people and did not invest money in stupid things. To store goods, they could indeed dig dungeons, but for these purposes, basements are made under buildings, and not kilometer-long passages.

Second version- robber. Allegedly, robbers dug these passages to hide in them from pursuit and hide their treasures. The robbers, of course, had to hide somewhere, but they were hardly capable of such serious creative work as the construction of long, brick-lined underground passages.

Third version- “runaways”. It was developed by Eduard Stoilov, who devoted many articles to Tomsk dungeons. The essence of the hypothesis is that Siberian life was indeed full of dangers. Merchants were afraid of robbers, and they were afraid of the police. Both of them, they say, considered it necessary, just in case, to have an underground passage about fifty meters long to the nearest ravine.

CITY OF KING FRANGRACION

But Tomsk geologist and researcher-enthusiast Nikolai Sergeevich Novgorodov believes that near Tomsk there is an underground city much more ancient than Tomsk itself. He substantiates this conclusion with three arguments. Firstly, rumor estimates that the area of ​​the underground network of passages is larger than the area of ​​the modern city. Extensive underground passages were discovered even in Yurga, 100 km south of Tomsk, as well as in the area of ​​the village of Gar, Asinovsky district, 70 km to the north.

The second argument is the amount of work. The volume of soil extracted from the earth during the construction of dungeons amounts to hundreds of thousands of cubic meters, which corresponds to many tens of linear kilometers of underground passages. These volumes can be judged by the sizes of the so-called mounds: Mukhin, Orlovsky, Zatorny, Kononovsky and others.

The soil of these mounds is saturated with brick chips and lime particles, which reveals them as dumps of mining operations, accompanied by the construction of brick vaults. Moreover, each of the mounds is associated with legends about the existence of underground entrances underneath them. Judging by the volume of the mounds, the length of underground structures near Tomsk is hundreds of kilometers. Neither merchants nor robbers were capable of such volumes of secret work.

Finally, these underground structures are older than Tomsk. This is confirmed by interesting findings. So, in 1908, on the steep bank of the Tom River, a cave was found, and in it was a perfectly preserved skeleton of a “Mongol”, dressed in wooden battle armor and a low horse-hide helmet. Near the skeleton lay a short spear, a bow and an ax. Local scientists then suggested that the warrior lived in the 14th century, judging by his armor. The warrior was discovered in an artificial cave (because no natural karst formations have been recorded in Tomsk) and buried more than two centuries before the Cossacks who founded Tomsk came to these places!

Back in 1719, John Bell of Antermonsky, who was seconded by Peter I to the diplomatic mission to China under the Life Guards of Captain L.V. Izmailov, encountered even more curious evidence. Catching up with the embassy, ​​John Bell did not abandon his interest in the history of the lands through which he passed, in the mounds.

In Tomsk, he had a meeting with a certain “Bugrovchik”, who said that “one day he unexpectedly came across a vaulted crypt, where they found the remains of a man with a bow, arrows and a spear and other weapons lying on a silver slab. When they touched the body, it crumbled into dust. The value of the plate and weapons was very significant.”

The fact that the buried warrior crumbled into dust when exposed to air is very reminiscent of similar cases in Etruscan crypts, where the age of the burials is tens of centuries.

In fact, it is generally accepted that before Ermak’s campaign, Siberia was almost in the Stone Age. But it is not so. On Western European medieval maps, for example, somewhere in the area of ​​modern Tomsk you can see the city of Grustina (Gracion), in which Russians and Tatars lived together. Novgorodov, trying to figure out when and who built Graciona, may have found the answer to this question in ancient Iranian myths and legends.

The Iranians associated the name of the Turanian king Frangrasion, nicknamed the Terrible, with the construction of this ancient city. Moreover, following the model of the Golden Age king Yima, he initially built this city as an underground one, to make it easier to shelter from the cold. So it is possible that modern Tomsk stands on the site of this semi-legendary city. Or, more accurately, above it.

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The city from the other side / Tomsk dungeons
"Russian Planet" studied the underground of Tomsk together with geologists, historians and local historians / Article 2014

In Tomsk there is a lot of talk about underground passages, merchant bunkers and bandit holes. On this topic: Makedonsky was definitely in Tomsk

Plan from an article by archaeologist Kuznetsov from the newspaper “Sibirsky Vestnik” dated November 6, 1888

The RP correspondent, together with scientists, figured out how true they are and what is still located under the city streets.“There is no doubt about the existence of underground passages near Tomsk,” says the local historian Gennady Skvortsov. “But so far there is no common understanding of who made them, whether they are a single system connected to each other, or whether they are just underground storage facilities and “escapes” - short passages of 20–50 meters to quickly get from the house to the nearest log.

Gennady Skvortsov has been collecting various evidence of the existence of Tomsk dungeons for a long time: from newspaper clippings to eyewitness accounts.

“Here is an article by archaeologist Kuznetsov from the newspaper “Sibirsky Vestnik” dated November 6, 1888,” the local historian shows a scanned copy and reads out, “On the morning of November 2, in the courtyard of the head of the treasury chamber, V.B. Orlova, that at the end of Novaya Street (Orlovsky Lane - RP note), while digging a retreat pit, workers stumbled upon a brick vault at a yard depth.”

Archaeologists cleared a passage several meters long from the vault. Kuznetsov wrote that the earth was very loose and had been filled up recently, and Count Orlov had more than once heard a roar at night resonating from the voids. Kuznetsov also attached his own diagram of the underground passage to the article.

“There is other evidence of that time: at the beginning of the 20th century, the magazine “Siberian Echoes” published Valentin Kuritsyn’s novel “Tomsk Slums” about the merchant Egorov and his gang of bandits,” continues the interlocutor of “Russian Planet”. - Kuritsyn talked with Egorov’s former servant, grandmother Gyngazova, who confirmed the fact of the underground passage where the merchant and his comrades were hiding from the police pursuit. In one of the issues of the magazine there was also a diagram showing the underground passages of Tomsk, including the tunnel connecting the Camp Garden with the Main Post Office.

Skvortsov also cites modern evidence: in 1981, in the area of ​​the Scientific Library of TSU, a trolleybus went underground and fell into a tunnel. In the summer of 2009, a hole also formed near the Central Department Store. An underground structure with concreted walls at a depth of 13 m was discovered in it. It was one of the underground wine warehouses of the merchant of the first guild, Ivan Smirnov. According to eyewitnesses, in the 1920s, security officers used these premises as cameras.

– I spoke with the grandson of Ivan Seleznev, who was a street child in the 1920s and 30s. His grandfather told him that he often ran away from the orphanage. During one of my escapes I came across a dungeon at the gates of the Znamenskaya Church. The underground passage was so long that you could enter it near the church itself and exit at Lenin Square. There the boy began to hide from the caretakers of the orphanage. He found the second entrance at the “1000 Little Things” store, and inside the dungeon was quite wide and spacious. It was decorated with ancient brickwork, and its upper part resembled a half-vault,” says Skvortsov.

Many years ago, he had a chance to talk with another eyewitness - Anna Sazonova, also a street child during the Civil War. She said that while hiding from the caretakers of the shelter in the University Grove, she saw a secret passage near the Medichka River. She followed an underground passage to an abandoned food warehouse and used this shelter for many years.

There was also an underground passage at the Diocesan Administration of Tomsk, in which the NKVD prison was later opened - its employees led prisoners along it. Now the Museum of Political Repression is located here, and its director, Vasily Khanevich, dreams of opening this passage to visitors. Now it is a small grotto of about 2 m2, which the museum staff reinforced with wooden beams.

Underground passage under the NKVD prison

“We learned about it from the words of eyewitnesses: people remembered some kind of long, narrow, dark passage, after passing through which they found themselves in cells,” says Vasily Khanevich. - But now the underground passage is filled with slag from GRES-2. To restore it, you need to open up the soil in the adjacent park, preventing the possibility of collapse. We would like to strengthen and restore the passage walls. We hope that, thanks to the help of TSASU, such a project will be created and launched soon. As you know, there are many legends, but I want to restore historical realities.

According to the hypothesis of a geologist and local historian Nikolai Novgorodov, Tomsk catacombs - communications of an ancient city that existed several thousand years ago. It was called Graciona, or Grustina, and was even marked on ancient maps.

Nikolai Novgorodov found in the archives of TSU, access to which was opened in the late 1980s, ancient European maps with the designation of Grustina. He not only studied the archives and works of various scientists, but also looked for evidence of its existence himself - he went on expeditions around the Tomsk region together with the Kedr children's tourist club. Sadness could end up in Krasny Yar or north of the mouth of the Tom.

– Dungeons are spread wider than the city, therefore, they have nothing to do with its history. This indirectly confirms the presence of extensive underground passages in Yurga and in the area of ​​the village of Gar, Asinovsky district, 70 km from Tomsk, says Nikolai Novgorodov. - Another proof is the hilly terrain of the city, which is man-made. The soil of the so-called mounds - Mukhin, Orlovsky, Zagorny - is saturated with brick chips and lime, which reveals in them the dumps of mining operations, accompanied by the arrangement of brick vaults. Moreover, each hillock is associated with legends about the existence of an entrance to the dungeons underneath it. Judging by the volume of the hills, the length of underground structures near Tomsk is hundreds of kilometers. Neither merchants nor robbers were capable of such volumes of secret work.

In the 19th century, more than three hundred coffins-decks were found on Resurrection Mountain, and under the mountain, where Lenin Square is now located, a burial in stacks was discovered - the coffins stood on top of each other.

“In Orthodox Tomsk they could not allow burial in the form of mass graves, which means that this territory was inhabited long before the 17th century,” the scientist concludes.

In 1908, on the banks of the Tom River, a cave of a warrior in wooden armor covered with leather, which belonged to the Hunnic era, was discovered. There was another one and a half millennia before the formation of the Tomsk fort.

Nikolay Novgorodov

Novgorod associates the origin of Grustina with the ancient civilization of Hyperborea, which has not yet been recognized by academic science. Due to climate change, the people who inhabited it allegedly began to migrate from the coast of the Arctic Ocean in a southern direction, and long before Ermak came to Siberia, founding many cities, including Grustina.

– Grustina is certainly a Slavic city. This is indicated by its name. "Sadness" is a variant of the name of the Slavic goddess Gruzdina, keeper of the keys in Slavic mythology. Even the name symbolizes that the city has an entrance to the underworld. Residents needed dungeons to hide from enemies. These were hundreds of kilometers of passages so wide that three horses could ride along them. The Grustinians were, of course, a developed people, had a written language and successfully ran their households. They looked like Caucasians, were famous for their health and strength of body, like true Siberians, Novgorodov describes the ancient people.

He believes that numerous treasures may be hidden in the Tomsk dungeons. However, there is a different reason for exploring dungeons in the first place.

“The ancient books, which may be stored in well-ventilated catacombs, are much more important to us.” Maybe they are right under our feet. To restore Siberian history, it is extremely important to know who created these underground cities and for what purpose. And I don’t understand why the underground objects of Tomsk are not being studied with enviable persistence,” he says.

Novgorodov complains that there is no way to verify his assumptions: since the 60s, an unspoken taboo has been imposed on all dungeon exploration.

The Tomsk Territory Marketing Association believes that the story of Grustina deserves attention as an urban legend.

– Historical evidence is not important for us; we want to tell the legend of Grustina to Tomsk residents and guests of the city in popular language. It will help attract tourists to Tomsk and reveal the appearance of our city from a new side,” says Olga Kadashnikova, representative of the association.

The association plans to release a novel about underground Tomsk, where fiction will be intertwined with historical evidence.

– The plot of the novel is a story about a man who goes back in time and finds himself in Sadness, meets Sadness people, helps them, and ultimately finds his love. We will show historical facts through the life of an ancient settlement, based on Novgorodov’s research. After completing the book, we plan to make a cartoon based on it,” says Olga.

Elena Peretyagina, Chairman of the Committee for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Heritage Objects, says that the theory of the existence of the underground city of Grustina on the site of Tomsk is from the realm of science fiction.

“There are actually premises near Tomsk, but these are scattered dungeons, and not a city system,” she clarifies.

“The legend of the underground city has a prosaic basis,” says the archaeologist Maria Chernaya. - Dungeons were created, but in the form of separate premises for economic purposes - for example, storage and transportation of goods. Therefore, they have no historical value for scientists. Dungeon exploration is not carried out also because there are secrecy and safety requirements for townspeople.

It is obvious that the Tomsk dungeons - no matter in the form of Grustina or underground passages - are of interest to local historians, and not to academic science. Therefore, there is no clear answer to the question of who exactly built the Tomsk dungeons; there are only isolated, scattered facts and evidence collected by local historians.

The regional department of culture and tourism believes that the dungeons may be of interest to city guests: they are developing an extravagant tourist route through the Tomsk dungeons. The developers hope to receive funding for the project.

– Our idea is to open a museum of Tomsk dungeons in order to show real moves to everyone on the site of several objects. And in this sense, we are already actively working: we will unwall entrances, cut off welded doors, and, together with volunteers, clear away the rubble,” says a representative of the department Pavel Rachkovsky.