Disposal of the past: Zvenigorod and Arkhangelskoye are passed to the developers for tearing to pieces

Lyudmila Butuzova

Deputies of the Odintsovo city district urgently, under the guise of quarantine, adopted new Land Use and Development Rules, allowing smashing the historic Zvenigorod in the interests of particularly important developers. The Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, for the sake of commercial structures, agreed on a project to cut off the protection zones of the Arkhangelskoye State Museum-Estate on almost 300 hectares and legalized a huge number of illegal construction sites and land allotments.

Evgeny Sosedov, the vice-chairman of the Central Council of All-Russian Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments, called the news as "murderous". “Zvenigorod is the coeval and rival of Moscow, it has remained the way Moscow was 600-700 years ago, here you can see the history alive, - he said, - The system of the resettlement goes back to the XIV-XVI centuries. This is a fragile territory, and it’s not about the preserving of one church, but about the thing that the church is visible for many kilometers and forms an integral image of the Russian landscape and of the homeland in general. If this is built up, the landscape will be killed once and for all, the future generations will only get blank spots in their memory”.

And it seems that the memory will be killed itself too. A year or two of building robberies, and nothing remains of the ring of the manor houses around Zvenigorod. And here Vvedenskoye and Yershovo, Pushkin's Zakharovo, Porechye, Corallovo are still alive... Levitan, Savrasov worked here. Zvenigorod was Chekhov's house, Mikhail Prishvin lived in Dunino. Zvenigorod land is called Switzerland near Moscow for its picturesque floodplain forests and meadows.

“There are carpets from forget-me-nots, violets, lilies of the valley, raspberries in buckets, it's only half an hour from Moscow. Just walk around this forest... It's not a park in which everything is artificial. There’s a real smell, the birds sing just like crazy”, - Vera Ilyina, a member of the Council of Volunteers for the Maslovsky Forest, says. - Maslovsky forest of the taiga type, rare in the near Moscow region. There are northern mosses, cranberry swamps. This is no longer in the suburbs. And it’s constantly wanted to destroy more and more developers”.

It is hard to imagine that any of the violets with cranberries stopped... Landscapes that are dear to the heart are practically not protected from development, the security documentation for Zvenigorod, Savvino-Storozhevsky Monastery, Assumption Cathedral, wonderful estates and temples located along the Moskva River are not approved over the years, and it unties the hands. Even a call Patriarch in defense of the protected places ignored. And the appeals of residents and famous cultural figures for the governor Andrei Vorobyov and bureaucrats from his committee on architecture and urban planning have the same price as their own promises to save Zvenigorod from development. Let us recall, we recall, most recently, when they forced the inhabitants of a free city into one district with Odintsovo by force.

In less than six months, as per the new Rules for Land Use and Development, it became possible to devote Zvenigorod so that his mother would not recognize him. All floodplains of the Moscow River on both sides opposite the Savvino-Storozhevsky Monastery go under construction; ennobled by the skyscrapers of the floodplain between the Vvedenskoye estate and Upper Posad, the same expects protected areas with centuries-old oak forests in the valley of the Storozhka river between the monastery of the Monk Savva and the village of Dyutkovo (Taneyev and Levitan worked here, the coveted place was sung in Pushkin's poems). Under the housing complexes will leave the park and the entire floodplain opposite the estate of the Porechye Medvednikovs; riverbank around the house-museum of M. Prishvin in Dunino; Duninsky landscape-archaeological complex with a section of the Frontier of Defense of Moscow in 1941 and holy sources. Even in the "zone of parks R-1", 75 percent of the territory can be built up! What can we say about the Banka River, half-dead in love with developers. According to local residents, sewage flows from new residential complexes - Pyatnitsky quarters and Mitino-02 - flow into it. Fresh photos published by the Save the Krasnogorsk movement show the extent of pollution and arrived just in time for the new PSZ adopted by the Odintsovo deputies to be signed by Zvenigorod and Banya, the drinking water source in Moscow, death sentence.

“The document is so shocking that it’s hard to find the words to describe it. Perplexed, the attack happened meanly, without declaring war”, - says Yevgeny Sosedov, a seasoned fighter for preserving the cultural heritage, who at one time managed to enlist the support of the president twice, for example, on the battlefield for Arkhangelsk, but, alas, to date, commercial interests break through any defense. The most shocking thing in this story, says Sosedov, that the Ministry of culture, led by current minister Olga Lyubimova, merged the interests of culture and the federal museum to please lawless people who had already done irreparable damage to the estate with their illegal construction sites and, moreover, that endangered the health of Muscovites by spoiling aquifers sewer drains. The circumcision of the protection zones of the Arkhangelskoye estate by another 300 hectares, according to experts, will make the disaster inevitable. It does not fit the head that the project was developed for budget money by order of the Arkhangelskoye estate museum.

According to Yevgeny Sosedov, all objections to the project were made, the examinations were written, alternative design decisions were proposed, at all possible venues, meetings and personal meetings voiced. To no purpose. It was not possible to explain to the leadership of the Ministry of Culture why it is impossible to build up the banks of the Moskva River... The real threat of environmental catastrophe that has risen to its full height for cultural officials remains an empty phrase. Looks like they’ve sang completely different “experts” in their ears, for whom the development of Moscow and the Moscow Region is still an extremely profitable business, and the very concept of “cultural heritage” exists to ensure that people can enjoy carefree living in the most wonderful residential complexes - water and near museums - temples.

We are not afraid to say that after the takeover of Morton, it was PIK that became the number one builder in the country and the main one in replacing domestic antiquity with its wretched new buildings. I can’t turn a blind eye to the fact that the residential complex of the Ilyinsky Luga PIK has already created a real sanitary disaster in the protected areas. Sewer drains without any treatment are discharged directly onto the terrain. Former agricultural fields turned into a fetid swamp, villagers choke on a constant stench, sewer shit flows to the Ilyinsky grove and are already approaching the Ilyinsky cemetery. And there, by the way, Spiridon Ivanovich and Olga Ivanovna Putins are buried, the grandfather and grandmother of the President of Russia, who worked for a long time in the Ilichyovo boarding house on the territory of the Ilinsky estate.

Moreover, the historical cemetery is literally planned to be covered with shit from two sides: PIK apartment buildings have already encircled it on the left, the New Riga residential complex Granel Group is approaching. It is believed, apparently, that it is all the same dead... But there are living ones. According to official data of Mosvodokanal, Rublevskaya and Zapadnaya stations provide 60 percent of the capital’s population with drinking water. There are no other reserves of drinking water in the capital.

However, it is not Muscovites who protest against environmental lawlessness, but only rural residents. 300 people live in Glukhov, 1,500 live in Ilyinsky-Usov. PIK’s intention to build another multi-storey building for people here from tightly placed houses practically pressed against each other will not only increase the population of the territory at times, but will also create such a burden on the natural infrastructure that a sip of clean water and an unpolluted meadow will become an unattainable luxury for everyone. In confirmation that the horror is already close, in November last year, residents of Ilyinsky brought to a public hearing a can with brown slurry, which flows from their taps, and the posters "PIK connected the sewer to our grove".

Very soon, all the charm of life in a reserved corner was felt by new settlers who bought apartments from PIK. Samples of water, which he supplies the LCD "Ilyinsky meadows", dragged for analysis. Expert opinion: this sample does not comply with sanitary rules and norms due to the detection of fine sediment. Such water is definitely not suitable for drinking. It is also not recommended to use for washing - water with a hardness higher than 6 values (normal from 1.5 to 3) can cause skin irritation. In this regard, residents are advised to use mechanical cleaning and softening systems with ion-exchange resin.

PIK responded to the claims of the new settlers with a promise to create absorption ponds (a kind of analogue of aeration fields) on the territory, where the effluents will evaporate. The authorities of Krasnogorsk considered it reasonable to build sewer facilities in the immediate vicinity (less than 40 meters) from the cultural heritage of the Tsar’s estate Ilyinskoye. The general plan of the city district describes in detail what the smell of servicing the multi-apartment buildings of PIK Group and other residential complexes will smell like. The discharge of sewage is planned in the tributary of the Lipka River, which flows into the Moscow River above the Rublevsky and Western water intakes. It is planned to discharge thousands of tons of domestic sewage per day, which, according to experts, exceeds the total volume of all discharges that currently exist in the Moscow River in the sanitary protection zones of the capital's drinking water supply, and, in their opinion, poses a direct threat to Russia's national security . Let's not forget that the Lipka River flows into the Moscow River opposite the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence.

Nevertheless, all the government bodies of the Moscow Region have already agreed on an illegal scheme for the construction of sewage facilities here. Absolutely no one raised questions that the structures themselves are planned to be placed close to the objects of the only royal estate of Moscow Region, associated with one of the most revered saints of the Russian Church - the holy Martyr Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fedorovna Romanova. This territory is included by the Federal Tourism Agency in the national tourist project "The Imperial Route", the annual Elizabethan Religious Procession takes place here...

Let us recall that the development project was inherited by PIK Group from Morton, which has gone down in history, the timing and scale of implementation are exclusively in line with the policy of the PIK itself, which suffers from excessive aggression and gigantism. It follows that it is planned to torment Arkhangelsk for a very long time, at least until 2034. Today, only the first stage of the first stage is being implemented, which will include 22 residential buildings, 3 kindergartens, a school and a multi-storey ground parking. Five residential buildings with a height of 7 to 9 floors are already completely ready, another 9 buildings are under construction. The construction period for multi-level parking lots has not yet been determined, but it is known that the total capacity of garages is 4,950 parking spaces.