Abandoned villages of the Khabarovsk Territory. We are identifying abandoned villages. Reasons that lead to the desertion of villages

A farmer from the Amur region, Vadim Ostroverkh, registered a plot of land for himself where there are no people, communications or electricity. However, quite quickly, an attempt to escape from worries and bustle grew into a lofty goal: Vadim Ostroverkh, together with like-minded people, is reviving the abandoned village of Old Believers.

Vadim Ostroverkh lives in the village of Arkhara. He has been a farmer since 2007, growing soybeans and buckwheat. Vadim and his friends love active holidays, and during their trips they often passed through Tatakan. This village was founded by Old Believers, but in the 1970s it was abandoned and disappeared from the map. The place is surrounded by greenery, and Vadim has often thought about how nice it would be to have a small house there. And so it happened: the farmer became one of the first owners of the “Far Eastern hectare” and built housing on it last year. There is also a bathhouse on the site, and next year a garage and sheds will appear, Vadim expects. Besides him, 12 more people took plots in the old village. They all live in the same area and are well known to the farmer. Many hectare owners are already importing materials and carrying out construction. In addition, there are new applications for plots, so Tatakan will soon be revived. The settlement is located 50 kilometers from Arkhara, and Vadim and his future neighbors regularly “escape” there for a few days from worries and bustle.

“There is nature, taiga, a river nearby. The air is clean and the snow is edible. There is no connection, otherwise the phone rings and rings every day! We come for a day, two, sometimes a week, relax, catch fish,” says Vadim with delight.

In summer you can get to Tatakan by motor boat, in winter - on the ice on the river or through the hills on motorcycles and ATVs. Vadim Ostroverkh says that they go to their hectares constantly, at any time of the year.

The farmer admits that in a few years he will use the plot for more than just recreation. “Maybe I’ll set up an apiary or get a goat, milk it and make mozzarella cheese. Import substitution! Besides, China is nearby,” reflects Ostroverkh.

True, there is no electricity in Tatakana now. Land owners bring generators here. According to Vadim, he has a TV and a satellite dish in his house. According to the law, the authorities will have to provide the village with electricity when at least 20 hectares are registered in it. The new owners are confident that there is very little time left to wait.

The abandoned village has not appeared on maps for many years. The first thing they did was build a church on the vacant lot. Settlers have appeared in the houses, and dozens of those who are tired of the bustle and stuffy offices come from the city to relax in nature.

Report by Andrey Bernikov.

From a hill he looked at the outskirts of the neighboring country as a boy. And now, many years later, Alexander Kovalev comes here every day to build a chapel - a monument to his native village. This is the first structure to appear in these places over the past quarter century. Kovalev builds his temple according to his own design, from the remains of village stoves.

Alexander Kovalev: “The church consists of about thirty stoves of village houses and carries the energy of these houses. We also made the foundation, it’s like a bunker now, it can stand for millions of years.”

More than 300 families once lived here. In the difficult 90s, all the youth left the village; people left to work and did not return. Now Alexander Kovalev is officially the only resident of the ghost village, which has no shops, no libraries, or even an administration.

The small abandoned house once housed the village council of Shchebenchikha. What remains of the village school is a destroyed building. And on the vacant lot there were more than a dozen farmsteads of local residents. However, over the past two decades, the village has lost not only its houses and their inhabitants, the very word Shchebenchikha has even disappeared from geographical maps.

For two years now, since the foundation of the temple, Kovalev has been obsessed with the idea of ​​attracting new residents here, those who want and are ready to work on the land. At first, Kovalev traveled a lot to the surrounding villages, calling people, but he found volunteers only this year in Khabarovsk, among the local homeless. Now there are five of them in the village. They live as a commune, put the few remaining houses in order, and help restore the destroyed village economy. Konstantin Kochetkov says that it was here that he found not only housing, but also the meaning of life.

Konstantin Kochetkov: “Here there is an opportunity to reflect on the life we ​​have lived and plan for the future.”

And recently, young people have also flocked to the village. All volunteers - city residents admit that until now they had no idea about the pros and cons of village life. But now many of them are thinking about the possibility of living here permanently.

Anna Dichenko: “I’m an accountant by training, you don’t see anything except 4 walls, and when you get here you get so many impressions: geese, cows, nature...”

Alexander Mishchenko: “We worked for two days, we were tired, I thought everything, my strength was gone, but I lay on the grass for two hours, breathed fresh air, and that’s it, my strength returned, and in the city I would have rested for 2 days.”

Kovalev believes that in a few years the first wedding will be played in Shchebenchikha, and has already planned how to celebrate this event - he will erect a stele at the entrance to the village, on which he will mark the name of each new resident of the revived village.

Khabarovsk region rich in anomalous zones. Some are the creation of human hands (even if not literally, but figuratively). The appearance of others is more difficult to explain.

The missing boy

Khabarovsk

On September 24, 1992, 7-year-old Sasha B disappeared in the geologists' village near Khabarovsk. At about 8 o'clock in the evening he went for a walk - and was never seen again. The police found no traces.

Then the inconsolable parents turned to parapsychologists. They established that in the village where B.’s family lived, there was an anomalous zone with characteristic features: for example, the passage of time here noticeably changed...

According to experts, the zone became active once every 12-13 years and then remained in this state for about three years. It turned out that the epicenter of the zone was located in a cave on the river bank, and children especially loved to play in this place. In 1968 and 1980, children had already disappeared in these areas. As in the case of Sasha, none of them were found. According to researchers, those who disappeared could have ended up in some other dimension.

Taiga riddles

In 2005, near the city of Vyazemsky, Khabarovsk Territory, on a forest area of ​​three square kilometers, trees were broken by an unknown force.

Those of them that remained standing had their tops cut off, while the rest were uprooted and thrown to the ground. In addition, the trunks of the fallen trees twisted counterclockwise. There were corpses of animals and birds lying around...

A commission consisting of various specialists visited the scene of the incident. Preliminary examinations showed that samples of soil, water and wood in the disaster area did not have any deviations from the norm. Radiation and chemical background levels also did not exceed the norm.

Everything indicates that a powerful tornado swept through here. However, according to the press secretary of the Ministry of Emergency Situations center Natalya Lukash, such natural phenomena have never been recorded in these parts before.

By the way, according to rumors, there was a giant radio wave emitter in the taiga near Khabarovsk. About 500 rusted antennas today surround the building, crammed with various electronics.

However, employees of the Ministry of Radio Industry stated that a facility code-named “Circle” was located here, intended for missile defense, but then closed for various reasons.

The Horrors of Crow's Nest

In Khabarovsk itself there is a mysterious dilapidated building, about which there are many legends. They call it differently: “Crow’s Nest”, Architect’s House, Infidel Tower...

The origin and purpose of the building, located at the highest point of the city, are controversial: no one really knows its history. They also say that there are ghosts there.

The three-story red brick building on the right bank of the Amur began to be built in the late 30s of the last century, but the construction was not completed. Some believe that the structure was supposed to serve as a water tower, some as a compressor station that ventilated the railway tunnel under the Amur, and some as an installation for jamming radio waves.

According to legend, the architect who designed the tower was shot, apparently for some shortcomings, right within the walls of the “unfinished building.” According to one version, his corpse was walled up in the wall of the tower. Since then, his spirit has lived here, taking revenge on everyone who comes here. Every year a special ritual can be performed that makes the ghost of the architect visible...

Hence one of the names - the Architect's House. And "Crow's Nest" is nothing more than an allegory. The fact is that crows build their nests not for a while, but for many years. This is a hint that the construction had to be carried out extensively. But it didn't work out...

One of the former tenants of the facility, entrepreneur Vladimir Oleynikov, planned to open a restaurant here in the early 1990s and even began to reconstruct the building. Oleinikov claims that the tower was built for the needs of the NKVD: they were supposedly going to conduct experiments with chemical weapons, which were stored in huge basements under the building. Oddly enough, this version is indirectly confirmed - near the tower there are holes in the dungeon, filled with concrete.

According to Oleynikov, in the underground tunnels there is some equipment and many barrels of unknown purpose. However, the basements were almost completely flooded, which forced the entrepreneur to abandon the restaurant venture.

Here is a comment from local historian Anatoly Zhukov:

After conducting research, I found out: the construction of the tower was carried out from 1936 to 1939 by military construction units. The tower is an engineering and technical facility for servicing the tunnel under the Amur. There should have been a water boiler there to pump water out of the tunnel. Construction was suspended when intelligence learned that in a neighboring state (at that time Japanese Manchukuo, now the territory of Chinese Manchuria) the tower was being marked as a landmark for bombing a railway bridge. The object was planned to be dismantled, but the war began, and the tower was forgotten. Until the early 1960s, the building was mothballed, then the townspeople began to slowly dismantle it into bricks.

And for some reason, a member of the Chinese search expedition, Hu Tsang, is convinced that it was under this tower that the great Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan was buried. Hu Tsang believes that once upon a time there was a temple on this site, erected over a burial... Although there is no information that Genghis Khan visited these parts.

Residence of informals

The dilapidated building began to be called the Infidel Tower in 2006, when participants in the popular role-playing game Encounter became interested in it. The leader of one of the teams had the nickname Infidel, and the tower was named after him. The name has taken root among informals.

For some reason, the tower attracts occultists of all stripes. According to unverified information, one day several people were found hanged inside the building - apparently, it was some kind of sect that committed group suicide. Sometimes in the tower they find pictograms drawn on the floor, traces of blood and other ritual paraphernalia.

Rumor has it that there were other deaths. On the walls of the tower you can read the inscriptions: “Run”, “Everyone will die”... Maybe the spirit of the executed architect is really making itself felt?

There is a sense of unreasonable fear there,” says local digger Alexey. “I saw with my own eyes the cemented entrances to the tunnel, which I was told about as a child, as if a girl had long ago gotten lost and died there. Then I heard that a schoolboy died in the ruins. My friend’s son hanged himself there. A few years ago, the news showed that a woman was killed in the tower. They say that at night you can see angry ghosts of the dead there, who are even capable of pushing you down the stairs directly onto the fittings sticking out of the walls.

Journalist Sergei Kirnos, who one night visited the Infidel Tower with local “ghost hunters” on an excursion, recalls:

As soon as we began to explore the inside of the tower, strange things began to happen to the equipment: the camera caught focus in the dark, although there was nothing there. I changed the lens, but everything remained the same. The same thing happened with my comrades: the equipment didn’t really listen. When we began to look for a way out, the cameras started working again. We tried to take a few shots of the tower's interior, but the focus still lived its own life, moving from corner to corner...

Now the tower seems to be designated for demolition. But so far no one is touching her.

Restless Souls

However, there are other “anomalous” objects in Khabarovsk. For example, house No. 22 on Muravyov-Amursky Street was built in 1902.

Its first owner was I. Grzhibovsky, who opened a café, a wine shop and a ready-made dress shop on the ground floor of the building. The European Hotel was located on the second floor, and a secret brothel was located on the mezzanine. They say that sometimes at night you can hear noise and laughter coming from above...

Some kind of gray shadow flickers from time to time in the unfinished house of the Pistons, located in Cloud Lane. Another destroyed building, seemingly for military purposes, can be seen behind the tree trunks in the area of ​​the “School N951” stop. According to local residents, those who approach the ruins feel uneasy, as if an unknown force is pushing them out of here...

In the house of the Commune (Muravyova-Amursky Street, 25) heavy sighs are heard at night. They say that the architect who designed this building was shot in the same way as the designer of the Crow's Nest. So his soul cannot find peace.

Irina SHLIONSKAYA

Legends

Khabarovsk. Treasure Street
SmartNews collected legends of the Khabarovsk Territory

Almost every city in our large country is fraught with legends and traditions that local residents have been passing on to each other by word of mouth for dozens, or even hundreds, of years. They are told to children and grandchildren, travelers, guests, collected in collections, and songs written about them. We have collected the most interesting and meaningful legends of Russian regions, on the basis of which we can create an alternative history of the country.

The Khabarovsk Territory has seen a lot in its short history. Peoples and nationalities assimilated here, the elements raged, and even war affected the region. All this left special traces in the memory of local residents - rumors, memories, legends. SmartNews has selected the most interesting of them. underground city

According to one of the urban legends, a whole network of tunnels with streets and buildings hidden from the eyes of citizens runs under Khabarovsk. Daredevils claim that there is a whole city underground, and extreme people dream of finding the entrance to the dungeon and visiting it.

— There are versions that in the old part of the city there should be underground passages between individual buildings. Khabarovsk has a “military” bone; it was built as a defensive, strategic city, and the “subway” should exist. It has not yet been possible to open it, although there are addresses and assurances from experts. And I am sure that we have underground passages. In the basement of our museum, archaeologists noticed two walled vaults: one was clear to us - it led into the courtyard of the building, but why was the side one needed, towards Amursky Boulevard?
Nikolay Ruban, director of the KhKM named after. Grodekova, toz.khv.ru

Other connoisseurs of archaeological mysteries even talk about a three-level tunnel system.

— I discovered three levels of tunnels under the city, and put them on my dungeon map. Some passages have been untouched since pre-revolutionary times, and, as a rule, connected several buildings with underground labyrinths. Other tunnels are pre-war. I found that secret underground chemical production plants operated near Khabarovsk during the Great Patriotic War. I even visited one of them and saw the mothballed equipment with my own eyes. But the third moves are the most mysterious and deep. Few people know about them, and few have been there.
Mikhail Efimenko, archaeologist-researcher, debri-dv.ru

The first mentions of this in the media appeared more than ten years ago. There are places in Khabarovsk where the snow melts unusually quickly. The satellite also records rectangular shapes underground, especially a lot of them under the surface of the water in the backwater area (Southern District of Khabarovsk).

- This is a very old urban legend. It is believed that we have underground tunnels. They begin near Khabarovsk and go to the Amur. Satellite photographs show that under the river there are huge voids of regular geometric shape. It is believed that thanks to them the White Guards left the city unnoticed during the Civil War.
Anatoly Matvienko, digger, Khabarovsk

Treasure Street

The surrounding area of ​​the house at Komsomolskaya, 55 is a green oasis among the gray buildings of the big city. Nearby there are buildings with a rich history. They were built at the beginning of the twentieth century. They survived the revolution and the Great Patriotic War. Therefore, it is not surprising that these houses have acquired legends. One of them, in the best traditions of Robert Louis Stevenson’s book “Treasure Island,” says that in 1919, a Chinese man buried a treasure there, between the trees. Later, this man mysteriously disappeared. But for almost a hundred years, foreigners have been coming to this place and digging up the soil year after year. Each of them believes that he will be lucky.

— Between the houses Komsomolskaya, 55, and Turgeneva, 54, there is a fairly large empty area. This is understandable, because there is a whole block between them. This is where foreigners come every year. They even bring shovels with them. They say they are looking for treasure. Its owner was a Chinese man who hid it in the area, but was killed that same year. Thus, he took the secret of the place to the grave.
Darina Romanova, resident of Khabarovsk

Gift from heaven

A sacred mountain, a powerful sacred place, the only deposit in the world where platinum is found in crystalline form - this is all about the Conder ridge. It is located a thousand kilometers north of Khabarovsk, in the Ayano-Maisky district. From satellite photographs this place resembles a crater. This is due to the fact that Conder has a ring shape, its diameter is almost 8 kilometers. Despite the fact that this ridge has been studied for decades, scientists do not have a clear opinion about the origin of Conder.

- This is an amazing place. Even the vegetation there is richer than in the surrounding area, and the berries are much larger. The Evenks and Yakuts call the ridge Urgula, for them it is a holy place. Due to the fact that Conder resembles a lunar crater, there is a legend that it was formed by a meteorite fall.
Semyon Zimin, traveler, Khabarovsk region

Conder Massif from satellite

Cemetery under the square

Lenin Square is a favorite vacation spot for Khabarovsk residents. It is popular at any time of the year. In winter, international ice sculpture competitions are held here; in summer, thousands of citizens walk around the square. But she wasn't always like this. Previously, there was a cemetery on this site.

Initially, the place where the most significant square of the city is now located was the outskirts. Moreover, in this area there was a dense wall of forest - taiga. That is why in those days they decided to place a city cemetery here, away from prying eyes.

“For the first decades, this territory was not just a remote outskirts, but simply a section of the Far Eastern taiga. After some time, the cemetery was moved here (the first residents were buried near the Innocent Church). But already on the city plan, dated 1884 (the population by that time exceeded 4 thousand people), a chapel is marked as a symbol on the site of Lenin Square. In the 80s of the 19th century, the cemetery was moved even further - to an area located east of the modern Far Eastern State Transport University and stretching to the bus station. Now, on the site of the old graves, towers of student dormitories and small-family residential buildings for the teaching staff of Far Eastern State University of Pedagogical University rise.
dkphoto, post in LiveJournal

Infidel Tower

Mostovaya, 2b - it is at this address that the most mysterious building in Khabarovsk is located, called the “Crow’s Nest”, “House of the Architect” and “Infidel Tower”. SmartNews already wrote about this place. The building stands on the highest point of the city, away from the bustle of people. It occupies five floors and two compartments. From its roof there is a view of the bridge, familiar to all Russians from the 5,000 ruble banknote. One of the compartments contains two monolithic round tanks. Nearby there are two more massive concrete “pans”, tightly closed with stone lids.

This building is very mysterious. After all, it is unknown who built it, what its purpose was, and legends have shrouded this place in a thick veil of fear. Some consider the tower to be a water tower, others - a compressor station for forced ventilation of the tunnel, but there are also more dangerous assumptions. According to Vladimir Oleynikov (the owner of this building from 1992 to 2007), there are rooms under the building that are larger in volume than those outside.

But there is no way to inspect them, since they are flooded with water and the entrances are walled up. In his opinion, the building was intended for the production and storage of bacteriological weapons. This statement is also supported by the presence of some similar storage facilities at the KAF base. In addition, construction documents for the tower are either classified or destroyed.

— Construction was carried out in complete secrecy by the NKVD troops at the end of the 30s of the last century. Construction was not completed. It is noteworthy that at the same time a tunnel was being built under the Amur. This is the only such structure on Russian Railways. The need to build a tunnel was due to the vulnerability of the bridge and the threat of war with Japan that arose in 1931. The tower was built in parallel with the construction of the tunnel. They say that its purpose is a compressor station for forced ventilation of the tunnel. In those years, the traction force of the railway rolling stock was steam locomotives, and they really needed air to power the combustion process in the boilers. But, as it turned out, they built it in vain: the tunnel had enough ordinary ventilation. Therefore, construction was stopped and the building was abandoned.
napev, post in LiveJournal

Another interesting detail was a magazine entitled “Book No. 9 - technical working draft” with the title: “USSR Ministry of Defense, Military Unit 54240”, discovered in one of the tanks. Some of it is secret and there is practically no information about it.

According to the tower design, dated January 1977, it was planned to place short-wave HF radio transmitters “Vyaz-M2” (type “Communication Organization”, power - 5 kW) in this building. The gigantic power of a dozen Vyaz-M2 transmitters would be enough to jam the signals of enemy radio stations.

Stone family

134 kilometers from Komsomolsk-on-Amur located“petrified family of the great shaman” - Amur Pillars. These are rocks located on the top of a hill in the middle of the taiga in the form of granite pillars. The most notable of them, the Shaman, from a distance resembles a bear standing on its hind legs and rises 50 meters above the cliff. There is also a Hunter, a Hunter's Dog and a Heart. Travelers notice the incredible beauty and amazing forms of the natural monument. The most famous legend that surrounds these boulders tells of a love story.

“In ancient times, the young daughter of the shaman Aji and the hunter fell in love with each other. But the father did not give his blessing, and the lovers ran away. The father, having learned about the escape, became angry and, taking the form of a bear, rushed in pursuit. When he overtook the couple, a fight began between the shaman and the hunter. Adzi, loving both and not wishing death to anyone, turned to the good spirits and stopped time. And so the shaman and the hunter with the dog were petrified. The blue hill next to the stones was named after Adzi.
Dmitry Sennikov, culturologist, Khabarovsk region

Khabarovsk cliff

Khabarovsk cliff counts calling card of the city. And it is not surprising that every visiting guest considers it his duty to visit this place. The cliff proudly rises above the Amur. It offers a panoramic view of the river, beach and hills. In the summer, many couples watch the sun go below the horizon from this place, plunging into the water. But for many years, one small sign attached to a cliff building has left visitors with very different feelings. The text said: “Here, on this spot, Austro-Hungarian musicians were shot in 1918.”

— According to legend, the Cossacks ordered 16 Austro-Hungarian musicians to play “God Save the Tsar!”, and they performed “The Internationale,” which aroused the wrath of the Cossacks, who shot them. In fact, the musicians were searched and weapons and ammunition were found on them. It was for this reason that they were killed in 1918, but not within the cliff walls. The execution of the musicians took place 30 meters from the monument, and the sign was simply hung on the nearest building, bestowing sad glory on the symbol of the city for a long time.
Alexey Shestakov, senior researcher at the research department of modern history of the KhKM named after. Grodekova

Masks on the stones

Petroglyphs are ancient carvings on large basalt rocks. They are located 60 kilometers from Khabarovsk, near the villages of Sikachi-Alyan and Malyshevo on the banks of the Amur. These petroglyphs are considered here almost the same age as the pyramids and were allegedly created more than 3 thousand years ago. Once there were about 300 drawings, but about 160 have survived. They depict the varied masks of ancient shamans with large eyes and rounded chins, called masks. There are several versions about the origin of the images.

— Once upon a time, according to legend, it was very hot here, since the earth had three suns. The stone boulders melted and the water began to boil. And all living creatures died from such a climate. Hunter Hado decided to change the situation and kill the sun. At night, taking a bow, he hid in a hole. The first sun came out, a well-aimed hunter shot at it and hit it. The next sun appeared, but he missed. The hunter killed the third. Since then there has been only one sun in the sky. While the stones were still warm and soft, a girl named Myamelzhi painted birds and animals on them.
Victor Marchenko, regional specialist

Turn your head

As soon as guests of the city get off the train, they are greeted by the monument to Erofei Khabarov. The majestic chieftain in a hat and fur coat has been standing here for decades. There is a legend that initially Erofey Khabarov stood facing the residents of the glorious city, but later the Khabarovsk administration wondered how he could stand with his back to the city’s guests, and turned him around. Since then, Erofey Khabarov has been welcoming visitors.

“When I was little, I heard a similar story. But later documents were found refuting Khabarov’s reversal. But the legend is remembered by many, and is remembered from time to time.
Svetlana Kolesova, resident of Khabarovsk

Turgenev Street

There are many stories associated with this very small section of Turgenev Street. Here are two houses - numbers 86 and 88 - that belonged to Bernard Lübben. He was engaged in the sale of high-quality beer, which was brewed at the factory by a master invited from the Czech Republic. But in 1919, the brutal murder of Lübben’s family and servants took place. Nearby there is a house where Chekhov stayed in the summer of 1890 on his way to Sakhalin. A participant in the assassination attempt on Alexander II lived in the building opposite him. And between the houses there is another monument - the Turgenev Stairs.

Alexander Nedelko, Sergey Antonov, Dmitry Ivanov
SmartNews, February 27, 2014

There is no point in hiding that abandoned villages and other populated areas are the object of research for many people who are passionate about treasure hunting (and not only). There is a place for those who like attic searching to roam, to “ring through” the basements of abandoned houses, to explore wells, and much more. etc. Of course, the likelihood that your colleagues or local residents have visited this locality before you is very high, but, nevertheless, there are no “knocked out places”.

Reasons that lead to the desertion of villages

Before starting to list the reasons, I would like to dwell on the terminology in more detail. There are two concepts - abandoned settlements and disappeared settlements.

Disappeared settlements are geographical objects that today have completely ceased to exist due to military actions, man-made and natural disasters, and time. In place of such points one can now see a forest, a field, a pond, anything, but not standing abandoned houses. This category of objects is also of interest to treasure hunters, but we are not talking about them now.

Abandoned villages precisely belong to the category of abandoned settlements, i.e. towns, villages, hamlets, etc., abandoned by residents. Unlike the disappeared settlements, the abandoned ones for the most part retain their architectural appearance, buildings and infrastructure, i.e. are in a state close to the time when the settlement was abandoned. So people left, why? A decline in economic activity, which we can see now, as people from villages tend to move to the city; wars; disasters of various types (Chernobyl and its environs); other conditions that make living in a given region inconvenient and unprofitable.

How to find abandoned villages?

Naturally, before heading headlong to the search site, it is necessary to prepare a theoretical basis, in simple words, to calculate these most likely places. A number of specific sources and tools will help us with this.

Today, one of the most accessible and fairly informative sources is Internet:

The second quite popular and accessible source- These are ordinary topographic maps. It would seem, how can they be useful? Yes, very simple. Firstly, both tracts and uninhabited villages are already marked on fairly well-known maps of the Gentstab. It is important to understand one thing here: a tract is not only an abandoned settlement, but simply any part of the area that is different from other areas of the surrounding area. And yet, on the site of the tract there may not be any village for a long time, but that’s okay, walk around with a metal detector among the holes, collect metal garbage, and then you’ll get lucky. Not everything is simple with non-residential villages either. They may not be completely uninhabited, but may be used, say, as summer cottages, or may be occupied illegally. In this case, I don’t see any point in doing anything, no one needs problems with the law, and the local population can be quite aggressive.

If you compare the same map of the General Staff and a more modern atlas, you can notice some differences. For example, there was a village in the forest on the General Staff, a road led to it, and suddenly the road disappeared on a more modern map; most likely, the residents left the village and began to bother with road repairs, etc.

The third source is local newspapers, local people, local museums. Communicate more with the natives, there will always be interesting topics for conversation, and in between, you can ask about the historical past of this region. What can locals tell you about? Yes, a lot of things, the location of the estate, the manor’s pond, where there are abandoned houses or even abandoned villages, etc.

Local media is also a fairly informative source. Moreover, now even the most provincial newspapers are trying to acquire their own website, where they diligently post individual notes or even entire archives. Journalists travel a lot on their business and interview, including old-timers, who like to mention various interesting facts during their stories.

Don’t hesitate to visit provincial local history museums. Not only are their exhibitions often interesting, but a museum employee or guide can also tell you a lot of interesting things.