The mystery of the disappearance of the inhabitants of an Eskimo village Angikuni still excites the minds of people interested in the secrets of our planet, although more than 80 years have passed since then. To this day, no rational explanation has been found for this incomprehensible phenomenon.

Lake Angikuni

This event happened on November 12, 1930. Canadian hunter Joe Labelle(Joe Labelle) hunted furs on the shores of Lake Angikuni. The lake has long been famous for its rich fishing; trout and pike were found in abundance. And in the surrounding forests there were many fur-bearing animals. That is why this remote and difficult terrain attracted hunters and fishermen.

However, not everyone decided to go there for prey - ominous legends have circulated about this area since ancient times. Old-timers said that the lake was inhabited by evil spirits, which from time to time reminded the local residents of themselves.

But it was the twentieth century, the legends were fading into the past, and life went on as usual, and the hardiest of hunters made it to this remote corner of Canada. Among them was Joe LaBelle, who had returned from the lake more than once with rich booty.

He knew the surrounding area well and always, before heading back, stopped to rest and warm up in a local fishing village, which, like the lake, was called Angikuni. The local Inuit people (an ethnic group part of the larger Eskimo group) were very friendly and hospitable. They were always ready to feed and warm the traveler.

Eskimo family. Photo from 1917

November turned out to be very frosty that year, the hunter was very tired and cold. With the last of his strength he skied along the familiar road. On the approaches to the village, he shouted a greeting from afar, notifying the fishermen of his arrival. Imagine his surprise when he did not hear in response not only human voices, but even the barking of a dog.

Labelle barely made it to the village and went into the first house he came across. The stove was lit, and there was a pot of still warm meat stew on the table. But there was no one in the house, and there were no dogs in the yard. The hunter entered a neighboring house, then another, and another...

He walked around the entire village, but everywhere there was the same strange picture - not a soul, but it felt like people had left their houses just before his arrival. And they left in a hurry, abandoning their work. Somewhere dinner was being prepared on the hearth, somewhere untouched food stood on the table, in other houses the work that had begun was abandoned - preparing skins, cutting a fur jacket.

But the strangest thing was that when leaving home, people did not take with them either weapons, warm clothes, or food supplies. After all, in these harsh regions, no one ever left home light. The second inexplicable detail was that there was not a single trace of people visible around the houses. But the footprints should have been clearly imprinted on the snow.

The hunter, despite being mortally tired, was so amazed by what he saw that he did not stop in the abandoned village. The sight of the settlement suddenly and mysteriously deserted was shocking. Horror gave the hunter strength, and he was able to travel several miles to the nearest post office. Having reached the telegraph, Labelle reported the unexplained incident to the Canadian police.

A few hours later, a detachment of mounted police reached the village of Angikuni. Along the way, they were joined by three more hunters who found themselves not far from the lake. Admand Laurent and his two sons, having heard from the police about the incident, said that the day before they had witnessed a strange phenomenon.

Two days ago, while staying, they noticed an unprecedented luminous object in the sky, which was slowly moving towards Lake Angikuni. It changed shape, now taking the form of a cylinder, now a pointed spindle. The hunters assured that the luminous object was not like anything they had seen before - it could not be the northern lights, nor a cloud, nor any other atmospheric phenomenon characteristic of these places.

Photos of these Eskimos are often published in articles about the mystery of Lake Angikuni. Although they have nothing to do with the missing village itself, they are just ordinary Eskimos of those years.

The police who arrived at the scene carefully examined the village. They discovered several more strange and sinister details that escaped the attention of the exhausted and frightened Joe LaBelle. The local cemetery on the edge of the settlement was destroyed.

Without exception, all the graves were dug up, and the bodies of the buried disappeared. This could not have been the work of local residents - the Inuit treated their dead with reverence, and disturbing the peace of the cemetery was an ancient taboo. But this destruction could not be carried out by animals either - the graves were dug carefully, the burial stones were stacked in even rows.

Another shocking discovery awaited the police a hundred meters from the village. They found the corpses of sled dogs under the snow, which, according to a preliminary examination, died of starvation. It seemed incredible. After all, the abandoned houses were full of food supplies. And the Eskimos have always considered sled dogs their main wealth, and would rather starve themselves than let them die of hunger.

This inexplicable story became the sensation of the year; newspapers all over the world vied with each other to put forward more and more new versions of what happened. The official version of the Canadian police did not suit anyone. It said that the Inuit tribe, guided by some of their practical or religious ideas, decided to migrate to another site.

But this did not explain any of the mysteries of the disappearance of people. Why didn't they seize things, weapons, food? Why did they let the dogs die? Why are there no traces left?

No one could offer a rational explanation for this mystery. The most common hypothesis was that the Inuit were abducted by aliens. No matter how implausible it may sound, only such a hypothesis made ends meet. And only she could connect the disappearance of people with the appearance the day before of a strange flying object, which no one had ever seen in this area either before or after the mysterious incident.

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.

The difference between a beginner and a successful search engine is that the latter can “read” the landscape.

There are several sure signs that there was once a small village on the site of the forest edge, which means the search will be successful. Let's share secrets.

2. All roads lead to housing. Abandoned roads, once trampled by thousands of feet, do not disappear as quickly as settlements. And if you follow one of these roads, it will almost certainly lead to a tract.

3. The first sign of a “gone” village is deciduous vegetation. It is known that first it grows on the tracts, and only then coniferous trees appear. True, if the forest is initially deciduous, the sign does not work.

4. Big old trees. Although they do not bring tangible benefits, trees are often planted in villages just to have them. And an old birch or poplar should immediately alert you. Travelers usually rested under such trees or sometimes planted a plant near the house. You need to check the entire space near the roots of such a tree with a small coil, and if many signals appear, then the place is correct.

5. Look at the tracks on the ground. Usually, for many years, in the place of the missing house, along the contour of the foundation, some depression remains - square, rectangular in shape. Stones, bricks or the remains of a furnace are often visible. The depressions in the snow are clearly visible, but searching through the snow is quite difficult. Also, the site of the village is indicated by the pits that were on the site of the cellars. Note that the relief is noticeable in early spring and late autumn, when grass does not interfere.

6. Wild cultivated plants. There will probably be fruit trees left - apple trees, cherry trees, maybe planting onions or flowers that are not so easily found in the wild. Pay attention to this.

7. If in doubt, dig the soil. Forest soil is empty and quite light, usually grayish in color. And the soil in the tracts is rich in coals, shards, metal debris like nails (and if the village was abandoned in the 70-80s, then also vodka stoppers, foil, and cans).

8. A sign of an abandoned village is nettles. She loves to grow on humus. So if you saw thickets of nettles in the forest, there was almost certainly a village there. But nettles most often grow on the site of a former landfill; and it is clear that if you search in the nettles, you will find a lot of metal trash and debris.

Legends of mysterious disappearances are widespread throughout the world. But, without a doubt, one of the most popular is the incident that occurred in North America, in the Roanoke Colony, whose inhabitants were last seen alive in 1587...

...The leader is the unexplained disappearance and whereabouts of more than thirty men, women and children who disappeared from an Eskimo village near Lake Anjikuni in the first half of the twentieth century.

Lake Anjikuni is rich in pike and trout. It is located along the banks of the Kazan River in one of the remote regions of Canada. This region is rich in legends about evil spirits. The more fascinating and mysterious the story of the disappearance of local residents looks.

The whole story began in November 1930, when the Canadian fur hunter Labelle arrived in an Eskimo village and, to his surprise, found that the huts were empty. But just a few weeks ago it was a hospitable, bustling settlement, full of life. Now he was greeted by deathly silence.

The hunter was unable to find a single inhabitant of the village. Understandably, he wanted to know what happened. However, his searches did not yield any results. He walked around the entire village, looking into every corner. The boats and kayaks of the local population were in their usual place, on the pier, and all the necessary household items and weapons remained in the houses.

In the houses, the hunter also found pots with a traditional dish - stewed meat. All fish stocks were also in place. Everything was absolutely the same as before, except for the people. A tribe of more than two and a half thousand people disappeared without a trace on an ordinary day. The hunter did not find any traces of a struggle.

Another detail that added to the mystery of the situation was that there were no traces of people near the village.

According to Labelle, he felt an inexplicable fear and tension in his stomach, and immediately rushed to the telegraph and sent an alert to the Royal Canadian Mountain Police.

Since no one had ever heard of anything like this, the police immediately sent an entire expedition to the village. The search for residents stretched along the entire coast of the lake. When the police arrived at the scene, several more facts were discovered that indicated that the disappearance was of a mystical nature.

First, the Eskimos did not take sled dogs, as the hunter had originally assumed. Their icy skeletons were found deep under the snow. They died of hunger. Moreover, it turned out that the graves of their ancestors were opened, and the bodies of the deceased disappeared without a trace.

These facts have baffled local authorities. It was clear that people did not use either of the two types of transport. Moreover, if they voluntarily left the village, then, as a last resort, they would not leave the dogs tied, they would let them go, giving them the opportunity to find their own food.

But the second secret seems stranger - scientists are confident that the Eskimos could not disturb the graves of their ancestors, since this is prohibited by customs. And besides, the ground at that time was so frozen that it was simply impossible to dig it up without the help of special equipment.

According to one of the policemen who took part in the search, what happened in the village is physically absolutely impossible. Seven decades later, no one has been able to dispute this assertion.

Until now, Canadian authorities have not been able to solve the mystery of Lake Anjikuni. Moreover, they could not find the descendants of members of this tribe. And everything looks as if this village never existed in the world.

Such a strange disappearance of an entire village, to say the least, defies any more or less reasonable explanation. Even if someone had attacked the tribe, the police would have found human remains or traces of a confrontation, but nothing of the kind was found...

However, this is far from the only case; history contains many more similar legends.

In Kenya, in one of the tribes, researchers heard a legend about the island of Envaitenet, on which a large tribe lived for a very long time. It engaged in trade with other tribes. But one day trade simply stopped.

Scouts were sent to the island, who brought information that the village was empty, while all things remained in their places. But, again, a completely logical question arises: how and, most importantly, why were the inhabitants of an entire tribe able to cross the lake unnoticed and where did they disappear to?

After this incident, the island, whose name means “irrevocable,” is considered cursed.

Similar disappearances occurred in Russia.

A lot of reports of similar cases appeared in the media regarding Lake Pleshcheyevo. If you believe history, once upon a time a beautiful city of Kleshchin was built on this lake, but one day all the inhabitants left it in the same way as the Eskimos left their village.

Legends say that this city was cursed by the Spirit of the Lake. Therefore, the city of Pereyaslavl-Zalessky, which was built later in this area, was erected away from the lake. And although these are just beautiful legends, Lake Pleshcheyevo still inspires fear in the local population to this day.

Lake Pleshcheyevo

Residents believe that the fog that often appears on the lake is very dangerous. And if you get into it, you can find yourself in a parallel world and return in a few days, or even disappear altogether.

Something similar is happening in the Irkutsk region. In 1997, in the Nizhneilimsk region, not far from Dead Lake, three local police officers disappeared. And five years earlier, in the same area, an entire train disappeared along with all the people accompanying it.

The Pskov region also has its own anomalous place. This is an area near the village of Lyady, which is crossed by a ravine. It was there that the crew sent for logging disappeared.

Dead Lake

What all these stories have in common is that they all have explanations, even if they are not entirely plausible. But how to explain the disappearance of people in front of a large number of witnesses?

For example, the story that happened to farmer Lange, who disappeared before the eyes of five eyewitnesses, is widely known. And such stories also happen very often. Even in the chronicles of the seventeenth century, there are records that during a meal, Monk Ambrose literally disappeared into thin air.

But in those days, such incidents were explained very simply - by the machinations of evil spirits and witchcraft. In the early 1800s, British Ambassador B. Bathurst disappeared in exactly the same way. At first, his disappearance was not given due importance, attributing it to Napoleonic machinations.

However, numerous eyewitness accounts confirmed that Napoleon had nothing to do with this incident.

A more modern case occurred in our time, when a wife disappeared almost before her husband’s eyes, simply getting out of the car to wipe the windows.

But people do not always disappear without a trace. Sometimes it happens that people who disappeared in one place, after a certain period of time, appear in another, completely unfamiliar place.

This, for example, happened in the second half of the twentieth century to one of the military pilots who had to eject because his plane crashed. When he came to his senses, it turned out that the accident site was approximately one kilometer away. And one of his colleagues claims that the plane simply disappeared...

The Chinese town of Guilin, famous for its winding, branching caves, can also “boast” of cases of disappearances.

Guides who conduct tours of the caves are forced to count tourists after each trip to the cave. And the reason is not only that someone might fall behind or get lost.

Guilin Caves

In 2001, a very strange, but rather funny story happened. A new tourist joined one of the excursions, whom no one had seen before. It turned out that this man himself believed that he was in 1998, and he caught up with his group, from which he had fallen behind, deciding to rest a little in one of the caves.

In 1621, the royal guard of Mikhail Fedorovich captured the detachment of Khan Devlet-Girey, who went on a campaign in 1571. What amazement was visible on their faces when they found out what year they were in.

According to the soldiers of the detachment, they, together with the Tatar army, took part in the assault on Moscow; on their way there was a deep ravine covered with fog. They managed to leave it only after half a century.

According to scientists, such disappearances can be explained by the existence of temporary “black holes” through which a person can get into a parallel reality, but getting out back is almost impossible. Such time gaps arise due to geophysical anomalies, such as faults in the earth's crust.

No less often used is the version that people are abducted by aliens to conduct their research.

Teleportation is an unpredictable phenomenon, so it is impossible to know in advance exactly where this anomaly can take a person. Scientists also claim that similar miracles can be demonstrated by residents of religious tribes, whose main part of life is meditation, as well as Tibetan yogis.

Teleportation can also be explained by the fact that in certain circumstances paranormal supernatural abilities can “awaken” in a person, in particular, the emergence of a danger to life and a great desire to leave a certain place.

This assumption was proven experimentally - a dog was set on a cat. The cat was so scared that it hissed and...disappeared. Only a collar was found at the site, and the animal itself was found a few days later on the roof of the church bell tower.

Similar cases are recorded almost every day. And even despite the fact that most of them have a prosaic, ordinary explanation, some of them really defy any logic and amaze with their mystery and mystical background.

You can be sure that most cases will never make it to the pages of the media, since there will simply be no one to tell about them...

http://www.softmixer.com/2012/02/blog-post_6494.html

Platonova Natalya

This work on local history reflects the history of the village of Tereshok, Pochinkovsky district, Smolensk region. In Tereshka there is a unique wooden church, which is about 200 years old. The material was collected from local residents, and archival documents were also consulted.

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Introduction……………………………………………………page 2
Main part:

Chapter 1. The village is our Motherland………………………page 5

Chapter 2. Reasons for the disappearance of villages……………..page 7

Chapter 3. History of the village of Tereshok

And the Church of St. Nicholas…………………………….page 9

Chapter 4. Family of priest I.A. Solntseva…………….page 10

Chapter 5. Activities of the temple in the 20th century………………..p.12

Conclusion……………………………………………………………..p.13
List of references…………………....page 14
Applications……………………………………………………………..page 15

"My village! It's good when you exist. There are paths to your unforgettable childhood, everything around you, down to the tussocks and bushes, is dear and close. And even when the village is no longer there, you still remember everything, everything is dear to you. Your family and friends are buried there.”

F.I. Mezhentsev

Introduction

A lot of suffering, a lot of grief and misfortune befell Russia and its people in the past twentieth century. In the whirlwind of historical events, the usual way of life collapsed, millions of our fellow citizens died, and the era changed. The system in Russia changed as a result of the Great October Socialist Revolution, significant milestones in the history of the country: NEP, industrialization, collectivization. The Civil War and the Great Patriotic War, the post-war hard times and the collapse of the Soviet Union left an indelible mark in the memory of the people. But, remembering the bygone century, we have something to be proud of. The Great Victory in 1941-1945 is ours. Man's first step in space is ours. We know at what cost we got each achievement, how many lives, destinies, how many tragedies and drama there are in them.

Almost inaudible against this background is the tragedy of thousands of ordinary villages that somehow disappeared imperceptibly from our land and geographical maps. This topic is interesting to me, because there are several dozen such settlements in our region. How and why did this happen? What did the country gain by losing these “unpromising” villages?

Relevance The research topic is determined by the disappearance of villages and hamlets as populated areas; reduction in the number of rural residents; revival of the Orthodox Church in the countryside.

Goal of the work - justification of the practical significance of research activities to study the history of the native land for its further use in the educational process.

In progress the following tasks were solved:

1. Collect material about the history of the village and its unique wooden church;

2. Study and collect information about the history of the church and its abbots.

Object of studyare the disappearing village of Tereshok, Pochinkovsky district, and the Church of St. Nicholas, which was not closed during Soviet times.

Subject of researchis to search for ways aimed at expanding and deepening basic knowledge and skills, at developing the abilities of cognitive interest within one’s native land.

Research hypothesis– if I collect material about a disappearing village, then I will thereby restore another page in the history of our region, take a step towards ensuring that the future generation will preserve and remember the past of their small homeland, will be proud of their village and its inhabitants, and that that they were born and live here.

Practical significancetopic is to study the assigned tasks and issues of local history. Analysis of the results allowed us to put forward the following points of significance of the work performed:

Acquiring research skills;

Gradual formation of skills and abilities in work;

Work in lessons and extracurricular activities;

In progress The following methods were used:

Working with archival documents;
Study of literature;
Analysis;
Conversation;
Search;
Generalization;
Systematization.

Chapter 1. The village is our homeland

The village is a whole world, bright, whole, original, full of life, half hidden from prying eyes. To know it, you need not hours and days, but months and years.

Why is it so easy to breathe when you come to the village, why is it that your soul is freer here, but also more weary than in the city? Instead of boredom here there is sadness, and joy here is brighter and more open. We often do not realize this, accepting the village not with our minds, but with our hearts. And the answer seems to be simple - the village is our ancestral home, close or distant. But, having accepted with your heart, you need to understand with your mind - what the village did wrong, to whom, and is it not our fault that news of our filial attention so rarely reaches her, like a distant mother or grandmother. And with our new speech, and habits, and borrowed thoughts, we seem to betray her, patiently and wordlessly, without expressed reproach, waiting for us and ready every minute to greet everyone, regardless of their number or origin. And just like a mother, she is compassionate and merciful to everyone, friendly and hospitable, compassionate and attentive...

But people are leaving, traditional life is leaving, entire villages are disappearing along with them...

The arable lands are overgrown, the crops are covered with weeds, and the hills where the dwellings used to be were are leveled by the rains and winds. There is no accordion sound, no songs are heard outside the walls of cultural centers, which are now located mainly in regional centers and on central estates, centers of outgoing Russian village culture. But before it was different - a sincere song and an apt, beautiful word sounded primarily where there was arable land and mowing, they sounded not officially, but from the soul of that very people, the guardian of language and culture. But what we see today: desolation, the departure of the Russian people from the village. And so throughout Russia. To watch, to be indifferent witnesses to this tragic phenomenon - is this really our destiny, the people living on this earth? Today we are all here, and it’s up to us to decide what the Russian village should be like. No one, no capital, no “foreign uncle” can or wants to help us. Today the problem of the village is not in the media: show business, money, problems of billionaires and squabbles of power - this is what interests “them” today, and is being imposed on us.

What about the village?

The results of the 2010 census showed that more than a third of Russian villages are dead or on the verge of extinction. In the Pochinkovsky district, about 50 villages have disappeared from the face of the earth, and about a dozen more are on the verge of extinction. The remaining residential buildings are occupied by old or elderly people who are forced to live here. In practice, a large working-age part of the population leaves to work or gets a job in large cities. Isn't this a real tragedy for us?

As a resident of the rural hinterland, the experiences of ordinary peasants about the ruin of villages are very close and understandable to me. And I don’t want this to happen to my home village. Unfortunately, if I can still help my village with something, then no one will help dozens of other villages in the Pochinkovsky district. Therefore, I consider it my duty to do everything so that the memory of them and their residents does not disappear. Before your eyes will pass the fate of a village with an interesting past, full of life, celebration, happiness, but extinguished due to someone’s evil plan or short-sighted policy.

Chapter 2. Reasons for the disappearance of villages

In March 1965, the Resolution of the CPSU Central Committee “On urgent measures to develop the country’s agriculture” was issued. An attempt was made to breathe life into agriculture. Changes took place in the lives of collective farmers, namely: they got the opportunity to hand over excess product to the state at higher prices. Every month the peasants began to receive a kind of salary as an advance on future collective farm contracts. They gained the right to a pension, social insurance, and the pressure on private farming was stopped. Construction of roads and electrification begins. However, the results turned out to be quite modest, and a massive outflow of people from the village continued. Instead of laying roads, power lines, and communications facilities to remote settlements, the country’s then leaders preferred to declare them “unpromising,” transporting cowsheds, poultry houses, and pig farms from there, closing medical posts, schools, and shops there. The policy of mass liquidation of such villages is rooted in the fight against the farm system of the 30s and reached its dawn in the 70s. Sociologists, in alliance with Agroprom officials, argued that the course towards agro-industrial integration and the concentration of agricultural production inevitably leads to the concentration of workers’ residence on the Central Estate. Only “promising” villages can be socially developed. Thus began the policy of “consolidation of collective farms,” which led to the destruction of hundreds of small “unpromising villages.” In place of flowering gardens, verdant vegetable gardens, houses breathing full life, there remained several rickety huts without windows and doors, streets overgrown with weeds, and destroyed foundations. But once there was a large village here. In empty houses left without owners, sad eyes look out at the world. Their look makes your soul sad, your heart is ready to jump out of your chest. And it seems that you are about to hear a plea: “Don’t pass by, stop, talk to us.”

The walls of empty houses also remember the faces of their owners, their conversations, joys, sorrows, farewell to their native village, the ringing voices of children running along the village street... And now there is silence here. In such villages, it seems, even the birds sing more sadly. The bird cherry and apple trees planted by people seemed to have aged before their time - they bent and dried out. At such a time, you don’t even pay attention to the beauty of your native land. Black and white conquers everything.

Abandoned villages cannot be restored. The hearts of the people who left these villages are still bleeding... The forced farewell to their native village forever left deep scars in their hearts. Thus, the consequences of big politics are visible even now, affecting the lives of thousands of people.

It is impossible to predict whether the disappeared villages will come back to life. Most likely, the accordion will never sound on the outskirts of the village, the shepherd's horn will not sing, the clear voices of children will not sound... We have already lost these villages... But there is still time to save dozens of small villages for which we can do something. So let's act, and not watch indifferently as our villages fall silent one after another...

The fate of the villages developed differently: some disappeared naturally, others were forcibly transported to the largest populated areas. The village suffered especially in the 1960-70s of the 20th century. The main reasons for the disappearance of settlements were:

- Natural outflow of population;

- Collectivization;

- Consolidation of collective farms;

- Lack of roads, water pipes, electrification.

Chapter 3. History of the village of Tereshok and the Church of St. Nicholas

Not a single historical era passes without a trace. There always remains documentary evidence of certain events, on the basis of which history is written.

The village of Tereshok is part of the Stodolishchenskoye rural settlement. Until 1917 it belonged to the Roslavl district of the Smolensk province. In the “Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language” V.I. Dahl presents the meaning of the word “TERESHOK”, found in the Smolensk region, as “moth, butterfly”. As a village, it is marked on the map of the Smolensk governorship of 1775.

In the documents of the general survey of the second half of the 18th century, preserved in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts, the village of Tereshok had another name - Vasilyevskoye.

According to information from 1859, 25 versts from the district town of Roslavl, near the Tereshka River, there was a village called Tereshok consisting of 9 households, in which 30 men and 49 women lived. Nearby was the owner's village of Safiropol (Guta) with a well in one yard with 16 men and 17 women. In the owner's village of Prilepovka (Petropavlovskoye), 30 men and 36 women lived in 10 yards.

According to information from 1872, the village of Tereshok was owned by Voevodskaya and Rimsky-Korsakov. After the revolution, the Safiropol estate disappeared. Prilepovka has been gone for about 10 years now. Now only a few families live in Tereshka. But, surprisingly, the Church of St. Nicholas is made of hewn logs, filled with rainbow light thanks to the stained glass windows that have been preserved here and there.

To the left of the temple you can see old linden trees, surrounded by thickets of bushes, in the middle of which there are small rectangular mounds. This is an old cemetery. I find a small stele. This is all that remains of the 19th century necropolis. The graves of noblewomen Olga Dmitrievna Rimskaya-Korsakova (1813-1854) and Varvara Feodorovna Rimskaya-Korsakova (1841-1873) and many others were lost.

Behind the altar of the Church of St. Nicholas are his shepherds. On the stele there is an inscription:

Chapter 4. Family of the Priest I.A. Solntseva

Priest Ivan Andreevich Solntsev was the son of a psalm-reader in the village of Gorenov, Roslavl district. First he studied at the Roslavl district theological school, then in 1863 he graduated from the Smolensk Theological Seminary with a second-class certificate. He taught in Sychevsky and Belsky districts. On August 6, 1866, he was ordained a priest in the village of Tereshok and additionally served as a teacher of the law at the Borshchev two-year ministerial school. From his memoirs:

“My Tereshok, when I entered here as a priest, was not Tereshok, but “Teremok”; The church is small, dilapidated, the villages are sparse, there is forest all around. Sometimes you live and don’t see the light. But then the railroad passed, and my parish began to liven up: the peasants began cutting down wood, began preparing wooden products and sending them by rail. Thanks to this, the life of the parishioners has improved, and at the same time my financial situation has improved.”

The priest had a large family - two daughters and four sons. The eldest daughter Anna Ivanovna married the clergyman Nil Mikhailovich Belkin. He began serving in Tereshka, and was ordained a priest there. In 1896, Neil Belkin was a teacher of law at the Stodolishchensky Zemstvo School. Ekaterina Ivanovna married Nikolai Guryevich Pankov, a teacher, musician, full member of the Russian Society of Beekeepers.

In 1894, Maria Klavdievna Tenisheva bought the Flenovo farm and organized an agricultural school, the first head of which was N.G. Pankov. His wife also worked with him as a teacher.

The sons of Father John have different fates. Ivan Ivanovich was an army officer, Konstantin Ivanovich was a priest.

Alexander Ivanovich Solntsev is a graduate of the Nezhin Lyceum, a self-taught artist, an active participant in the Talashkino community of craftsmen and craftsmen of Princess M.K. Tenisheva. Leaving Tereshok, he sketched his father’s grave as a souvenir. A hundred years later, this drawing helped great-grandchildren living in different cities find the path to their great-grandfather’s homeland.

From 1900 to 1918, Alexander Ivanovich taught ancient languages and history at the K.I. gymnasium. May in St. Petersburg. The main motto of the gymnasium was the saying of the founder of modern pedagogy, John Amos Comenius, “First to love, then to teach.” According to the testimony of a former student of the gymnasium, academician D.S. Likhacheva, A.I. Solntsev is the author of the first Soviet alphabet.

Sergei Ivanovich Solntsev studied at the Faculty of Law at St. Petersburg University in 1900-1904. In 1909 he was sent abroad to improve his economic education. In 1912 he defended his Ph.D. thesis