Urban land improvement on bones: a fountain will be erected in Borovsk on the site of an ancient churchyard

Yevgeny Sosedov, Moscow Regional Branch of VOOPIIiK

In April 2021, Borovsk, this ancient reserved town, was recognized as a historical settlement of federal significance. However, the status does not save him from vandalism by local authorities.

Several years ago, the whole world managed to stop the massive demolitions of historical buildings, but now another problem has come to the city - improvement.

In the center of Borovsk there is the Trade Square (Lenin), on which the Transfiguration Church has stood since medieval times, at first wooden, and since the 17th century, stone, with a side-altar and a chapel in honor of Paraskeva Pyatnitsa.

At the churchyard near the church, worthy townspeople and soldiers who defended Borovsk and Moscow from enemy raids were buried, 467 people were buried here, brutally tortured by the Nazis in 1941. A concentration camp for the civilian population was created in the temple, where 1,500 residents of Naro-Fominsk were herded. People were dying en masse from cold, hunger, and unsanitary conditions. During the liberation of Borovsk, 467 corpses of women, children and the elderly were found inside the cathedral.

In 1957 the cathedral was blown up.

Until now, there is neither a monument nor a cross on the square at the site of these terrible events, only stones from the base of the cathedral are piled up in a heap and a memorial plaque is attached to them. This is the merit of the keeper of Borovsk, Vladimir Kobzar , who heads the Kaluga branch of VOOPIIiK. Social activists are fighting in vain for the installation of a memorial chapel on this site.

But since 2008, each mayor (there were three mayors) puts a fountain on the square. Now the fourth mayor is trying to put the fourth fountain - right on the bones. Our mayors have such an obsession (how can we not recall the infamous fountain on Birzhevaya Square in Moscow, under which the foundations of the 16th century temple were recently demolished).

At the same time, the entire ensemble of the square is an object of cultural heritage, and under the square there is also an object of archaeological heritage - a cultural layer of the XIII-XIV and XVII centuries.

As usual, it was decided to simply sacrifice the cultural layer to the improvement, because concrete must be poured under the fountain to a depth of 2 meters.

In May-June 2021, the work of the Institute of Archeology took place in Borovsk, providing this very improvement. However, instead of the 163 square meters of excavation planned by the project, archaeologists limited themselves to 48 meters - right under the bowl of the fountain. They immediately ran into an ancient churchyard, which they knew about in advance, but continued to dig. They raised 110 dead, including in decks, but did not stop.

They dug up a part of an ancient building of the 18th century. with a basement associated with the demolished church, but at first they tried to declare it a Soviet barn. Now we are talking about disassembling it.

It should be noted that these are the first such struts in the city, however, they are conducted not for scientific purposes and not for the purpose of museumification of finds, but for a specific vandal improvement project. Everything is done in a hurry and extremely careless. Recently, I visited Borovsk and saw with my own eyes how human bones, fragments of skulls and gravestones were lying around the excavation site, mixed with modern debris. An eerie sight.

Now digging has begun over the entire area: everywhere they open it up with excavators and eliminate the real pavement - the same age as the city's Trade Rows. There is no intelligible improvement project tied to the historical appearance of the square, there are solid computer renders created on the knee. But for them federal funding has been allocated within the framework of the competition of the Ministry of Construction. There would be no way to restore at least one building for this money on the square, which is now lavishly decorated with plastic and advertising.

Archaeologists of the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences claim that the method of archaeological work - archaeological observations - is quite sufficient in the framework of work to ensure the preservation of the cultural layer of the city of Borovsk. In other words, the excavator takes out the cultural layer, bucket after bucket, and archaeologists fix it and work with a metal detector. Do you think all archaeological items will be found this way? And how many of them, together with the soil, will go in a dump truck to dump roads and swamps on the outskirts of Borovsk?

A total of 10 pits were dug in the area.

But even the stated observations are not carried out: an agreement with the Institute of Archeology was not concluded for the archaeological support of these works, that is, the work is carried out completely outside the law.

The Kaluga branch of VOOPIiK records systematic damage to the cultural layer, which should be punished with a considerable fine.

The Department for the Protection of Monuments of the Kaluga Region was informed about the situation, the City Administration was recommended to inform the contractor about the illegality of these works.

Applications were written to the police, the TFR, the prosecutor's office, the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and even the President of the Russian Federation with a request to stop the violation of the law. Residents of Borovsk do not want a fountain on the bones and demand respect for the memory of the place. However, the authorized bodies are still inactive.

It remains to ask for help from the media and informational support! Let's all help Borovsk together!

Original here