It turns out that it is a difficult matter to "count" the settlements (villages, farms, hamlets) that have disappeared in the maelstrom of time. The main problem is to decide from what point in time to count. As a source (point of reference) I will take a map of the General Staff of the Red Army in 1941, published at a scale of 1: 100,000, that is, 1 cm - 1 km. On it I will highlight those settlements that do not currently exist. I repeat once again - all this is to help researchers of this interesting topic. A topic that will always haunt the minds of researchers.

No wonder the classic once said:

Two feelings are wonderfully close to us,
In them the heart finds food:
Love for native land
Love for father's coffins...

I'll start with the Pervomaisky rural settlement close to me. As a child, I often had to visit Lebedinka: fishing, and just went with my father to visit friends. So I had to hear about Plesso, and about Perekrestov, and about Tamilyanka, where the church still stands. Although the farms themselves disappeared before I was born.

The place where the Plestso farm was located, we called it Pletsy. There, on the melon field, the guys and I enjoyed delicious “kavuns” and melons with the weather. I confess, we "extracted" them in a not very legal way.

Perekrestov in my childhood is, first of all, a pond of the same name. And the fact that the pond got its name from the disappeared farm, I learned much later.

Above the map I have highlighted:

1. Farm Friedrich Engels.

2. Farm Kopani.

3. Farm Alekseevka.

4. Farm Popasny (Mikhail Gribanov, author of "Father's stories about the war" was born in this farm).

5. Khutor Perekrestov.

6. Farm Plestso.

7. Farm Tamilyanka.

8. Farm Pokrovka.

I will continue about Lipchansky rural settlement, which is no less close to me. How many paths, field paths were traveled here in childhood, all these places are very familiar to me! You go, you wind like this along a field road among endless collective farm fields. Parents sent to mow grass for domestic animals. And you see ahead a place overgrown with weeds: the remains of foundations, cellar failures, feral cherries, apple trees, pears.

People used to live here!

For some reason, you always involuntarily fall silent in such places.

A few years ago, together with the guys - search engines, we went to the place where the Teplinka farm was located before the war. And until the mid-1990s - the MTF of the Vostok state farm. They were looking for a burial, which was reported by one pensioner from the Varvarovka farm. Grandmother, being in her advanced years, could not personally show this place, but "on her fingers" she told what was there and where. Unfortunately, we did not manage to find anything, only everyone suffered with prickly "bugs" with which the place of the former Teplinka farm was overgrown. Among our finds is a detail from an Italian gas mask, and several cartridge cases.

Marked above on the map:

1. farm No. 2 of state farm No. 106 (former 2nd branch of the Vostok state farm. Residents of the 2nd farm moved to the Varvarovka farm in the 1970s).

3. Farm Teplinka.

4. Farm Novo-Lipchanka.

5. Farm Sarmin.

6. Farm Novo-Mikhailovka (on the site of this farm on older maps the farm Zhokhov (Zhokhovka) is indicated)

7. Farm Novo-Pokrovka.

In the area to the south and west of the village of Shurinovka, farms unknown to me are marked on the map, perhaps they were located on the territory of the neighboring Kantemirovskiy district:

8. Farm Novo-Bugaevka.

9. Farm Novo-Aleksandrovka.

10. Farm Zaikin.

But the Novaya Derevnya farm marked on the map still exists. Now Novaya Derevnya is one of the streets in Shurinovka village. Although there are now few inhabitants living on Novaya Dereva.

Several families also live on the farm Chumakovka (locally Chumachivka). But there is no such name on modern maps. There is the village of Lipchanka.

By the way, for lovers of local toponyms! The village of Lipchanka is widely scattered along both banks of the Left Bogucharka River. I know such self-names of parts of the village: in addition to the mentioned Chumachivka, these are Kruglivka and Progress, as well as Popovka (also a disappeared farm).

And this map shows:

1. Farm Neledovo.

2. Farm Lofitsky.

3. Farm Liman.

4. Khutor Nikolenko (now Rostov region).

Medovskoye rural settlement. My maternal ancestors lived in the village of Medovo. And according to the stories of my mother, all these farms were always at my hearing. And when such cards became available, then, one might say, and in plain sight.

1. Farm Savkino.

2. Farm New Life.

3. Farm Zhelobok.

4. Farm Volny (originated in the 1920s)

5. Klenovy farm (it appeared in the 1920s, I heard such a name from old-timers - Klinovy).

6. Khutor Dry Log.

7. 3rd branch of the Bogucharsky state farm.

8. Khlebny farm (the place of fierce battles on December 20-21, 1942 with the Italian-German units breaking through from the encirclement).

9. Settlement designated as a "farm of a state farm" (not far from Vasilyevsky Pond).

1. Badgers (Bursakov).

2. Kozlov (Kozlovka).

Kantemirovskiy farms Dmitrovka and Grigorievka.

The map below shows:

1. Farm Krasno-Orekhovoe (the farm was destroyed during the Second World War. During the fighting, it changed hands several times. The territory of the Verkhnemamonsky district)

2. Khutor Solontsy (also badly damaged during the fighting)

3. Alder Farm (marked as Kuselkin on Italian maps).

4. Khutor Naked (Steppe).

Khutor Ogolev on the map below.

Here, it seems, are all the farms indicated on the maps of the Great Patriotic War. If we take, for example, Schubert's maps, then the number of disappeared farms will increase by an order of magnitude. But this is a topic for another study.

And most importantly, unfortunately in the Bogucharsky district there are settlements that may soon replenish this sad series of forgotten, missing farms. What and who is to blame? The leading comrades from the district and village administrations will surely say that everyone is to blame except them: the general situation in the country, the heavy legacy of the "dashing" 1990s, the very population of these farms, these grandparents who simply have nowhere to go from there.

Karazeevo, Kravtsovo, Dubovikovo, Novo-Nikolskoye, Batovka, Maryevka... How much more do they have left?

A five-story building consisting of three connected buildings. It has a length of 70 meters and a width of 15. Most of the windows on the first floor are boarded up, the main entrance is bricked up, but you can enter from the stairs, of which there are two in the building. On the ground floor, in many rooms, drawings of various Soviet themes from space to the traditions of the Russian peoples are painted on the entire wall. Behind the building is a cell tower of most of the city's operators,...

In accordance with the plan for the development of the coal industry, in 1926, mine No. 142 was laid, and in 1929, mine No. 142-bis, which was put into operation in August 1931. In 1935, mine No. 142-bis was renamed the Kirov mine. Closed in 1995. On the territory there is an administrative and household complex of the mine, a health center, a VGSCH, a lamp, a laundress, a bathhouse and much more. Not far from this complex of buildings is located...

An old Soviet store that has been empty for several decades. The side door is not closed. There is almost nothing inside, except for the old Soviet wooden section of the counter and four fastened chairs. The glass is intact, because the building is monitored by locals due to the fact that the store is located almost in the center of the village.

The three-storey administrative building of the mine administration has two wings and a U-shape. Abandoned before 2013 and sold out by tenants. The central and largest building of the building is abandoned and the entrance is free at the end of summer 2018. The building, despite the devastation, remained inside the Soviet attributes of the interior. The assembly hall is empty, but one of the walls depicts Lenin and scenes from the industrialization of the USSR. The third floor has access to two...

The Soviet four-story dormitory for miners is 40 meters long and about 14 meters wide. On the ground floor there are shops and a hairdresser. In the backyard, most of the window openings are bricked up or boarded up. The floors on the floors are wooden and removed in places. On each floor, a central corridor runs through the entire length of the building. The rooms are empty and rubbish in places. You can get inside through the second floor. You can get to the roof through...

A two-story building 30 meters long and 12 meters wide with an oblong porch and a viewing balcony on it. The glass is almost all broken, the lintel walls lie on the floor, the wooden floors have been removed. Abandoned at least in the 2000s.

Remains of the former DOL "Friendship", closed approximately in the late 1990s. Remains of buildings remain on the site. On the territory there are houses for pioneers, the remains of a dining room, several gazebos, small remains of a sports ground, someone's lovingly planted vegetable garden in the outskirts. Until recently, it was empty, paintball games were played on the territory, now the territory was surrounded by barbed wire along the outer perimeter, and by a fence along the inner one, ...

A small Donskoy farm, which during the Great Patriotic War became a grave for thousands of Soviet and German soldiers, and later disappeared from all maps, was recently discovered by the Mius-Front search engines. A small settlement of miners called Golubyachiy, which has not been visited by a single person for decades, has preserved traces of fierce battles.

“The remains of the foundations of houses, German fortifications, machine-gun nests, mortar positions. Everywhere among the foliage one can see fragments of mines, spent cartridges, pieces of barbed wire. In several places there are rusted helmets of Soviet soldiers, shot through with bullets,” describes the picture that unfolded today in the Golubyach farm, head of the Mius-Front search detachment Andrey Kudryakov. Members of this detachment were the first in the last 30 years to visit Golubyachy and, in fact, rediscovered it.

Miners lived in the Golubyach farm in the early forties of the last century. This was before the start of the war, when fascist troops came to the settlement and occupied it. The farm became part of the Mius Front, a frontier that the Nazis held from December 1941 to August 1943. Already in those years, the locals left the farm, and their place was taken by military vehicles and soldiers.

The history of the search for a small abandoned farm began back in 2008 with a vivid story by veteran Grigory Kirillovich Puzhaev, which he told to young searchers, including Andrey Kudryakov. It was a story about the five Gurov brothers, natives of the Stavropol Territory, who forever connected their destinies with the disappeared Don farm.

Alexei, Pavel, Nikolai, Mikhail and Dmitry Gurov served in the same unit of the 867th Infantry Regiment of the 271st Infantry Division, which in February 43rd stormed the impregnable Mius Front.

“On July 17, units of the 271st division launched another assault on the German fortifications and crossed the Mius River. The regiment, in which the Gurov brothers served, captured a small foothold on the opposite bank of the river, in the place where the mining village of Golubyachiy was located. From July 17 to July 19, the enemy abandoned all available reserves at the position of the division defending this small settlement, but the attacks were repulsed at the cost of huge losses. For valor and heroism, all the Gurov brothers were awarded the Order of the Red Star, all were unanimously accepted into the party right on the battlefield, ”says Andrey Kudryakov.

And on July 20, the fighting flared up with renewed vigor. The mortar crew of the Gurov brothers that day destroyed three Nazi heavy machine guns, suppressed the fire of two mortar batteries. And when the soldiers ran out of mines, the Gurovs, having taken a convenient position in the trench, destroyed more than a hundred Wehrmacht soldiers from machine guns. July 20 did not survive the eldest of the brothers - Nikolai, he was 40 years old, and Mikhail Gurov. Most of the division, numbering about eight thousand fighters, died during the defense of the farm and was forced to return to their original positions, leaving the farm. But the three Gurov brothers survived. They ended up in the hospital. There, the heroes were awarded the Order of the Patriotic War.

In July of the 43rd, the Mius Front failed to break through. Only a month later, in August, our troops will be able to capture impregnable German fortifications and liberate the Rostov region. During August 18, 19 and 20, bloody battles flared up again for the farm, during which Golubyachy, and eight days later the entire Mius Front, were cleared of the Nazis.

Today, on the site of the farm, you can see only the foundations of several houses, trenches and the remains of soldiers lying almost under their feet. According to the Podolsky archive of the Ministry of Defense, there are several large mass graves of Red Army soldiers on the territory of the farm, and hundreds more soldiers are reported missing in the battles for this settlement. In the coming days, search engines from the Mius Front will come to the farm to unearth the remains of the fighters and rebury them.

Already after the war, the three surviving Gurov brothers came every year to the ruins of the Golubyachiy farm to honor the memory of their brothers and fallen comrades. The last time they were here was about 30 years ago. Even then Golubyachiy was a ghost farm. After the war, it disappeared from all maps, and over the decades of desolation, it was surrounded by a continuous impenetrable forest and thorny bushes. To get here, and before that to determine the location of the farm, it took the search engines almost six months.

“We decided to find the place where this heroic farm was located in order to restore mass graves and return missing soldiers from the war. Modern methods of overlaying GPS data on old military maps, as well as the stories of residents of the Kuibyshev region, were very helpful in determining the location of the farm,” explains the head of the Mius Front.

In these lands of the Neklinovsky district, where the Mius River makes bizarre loops, making its way through the thickets of reeds, local residents still find traces of that terrible war. Shell fragments, abandoned graves of unknown soldiers...

Old-timers recall that during the protracted battles with the Nazis near Matveev-Kurgan, the water of the river turned purple with blood, and the banks were completely covered with the bodies of the dead.

“Everything was bombed: the city, and nearby villages, and small farms scattered on the outskirts of the region,” local residents recall.

Abandoned building of the former farm club. Photo: AIF-Rostov/ Julia Panfilovskaya

For example, the Zhatva farm, where thirty families lived, was literally bombarded by the Nazis. The shelling prevented digging holes, and the dead were thrown into a large well in the middle of the farm. Within a few hours it was packed to the top...

“God only knows how people survived all this,” says pensioner Nina Lazutkina. - However, when the Germans were driven away, people put everything in order in a year, straightened the huts, planted the fields, and repaired the roads. And now, it would seem, there is no war, only we live in devastation. Maybe it’s just beneficial for someone that these places, for which our fathers and grandfathers fought to the death, disappeared from the face of the earth?

Harvest at sunset

From the village of Bolshaya Neklinovka to the small farms of Zhatva and Paliy, only eight kilometers. And these few kilometers cut off the farmers from civilization...

“We are already accustomed to living here like the damned,” admits pensioner Valentina Grokhotova. - Buses do not go to us, the road is broken. In order to somehow survive in retirement, I take one part-time job in the village, then another. And every day I walk eight kilometers there and the same back along the field. There is nowhere to hide from the heat, rain or snow. The other day it was so hot that I thought I would not get there. I stand under the scorching sun, my head is spinning, and there is even no one to call for help. Nearby is only Paliy, where several families remained to live, and even those old people. Though howling, they still won’t hear, but they will hear, they won’t come running: how much of those forces they have left ... They will soon die one after another, and their lonely houses will be overgrown with weeds, like all the other neighboring huts. The same fate awaits our Harvest."

The Harvest Farm is several times larger than the Paliy Farm, where only six residential buildings remain. Once upon a time, thirty houses here had their own collective farm brigade, where farmers worked, a kindergarten, a school and a club. And in dashing
Everything fell apart in the 90s. Since then, the farm, immersed in sunflower fields and a green grove, began to fade away. Young people left in search of a better life. Those who were richer saved up some money, sold their huts and moved to Bolshaya Neklinovka or Pokrovskoye. There were only pensioners and a few families who believed that it was only necessary to wait out the hard times, and everything would work out. Moreover, back in the Soviet years, a gas pipe was laid along the farm. They promised that every house would be connected.

Pensioner Nina Lazutkina: You have to walk eight kilometers to civilization. Photo: AIF-Rostov/ Julia Panfilovskaya

“And now, all our lives, we have been waiting for gas, even if it is within easy reach,” lamented pensioner Lidia Fedorovna Ivashchenko. - So we drown with coal, we carry firewood and cylinders. A ton of coal, by the way, costs eight thousand rubles. Four tons are needed for the winter. With our pensions, a warm house becomes a luxury. The authorities respond to all our requests: they say, it is unprofitable to connect the farm to the pipe, live the old fashioned way. We would not mind living the old fashioned way, if only we were treated, as before, with respect. I am a labor veteran, in my team I worked as a milkmaid all my life, but for what? For the sake of giving up on us? Yes, there is gas! We don't have a grocery store or a pharmacy here. Many pensioners gather, make lists and ask someone to go to the regional center. You have to prepare for frost ahead of time: store food, dry crackers, carry gas in bottles. Like snowfall, we are cut off from the world for several days.

Did the people who plowed here all their lives think that they would be forgotten at the end of their lives? The ambulance, even in good weather, travels for half an hour, but in bad weather, at least lie down and die.

God Forgotten

The gas pipe and proximity to the regional center were the main reasons why Lyashenko's large family moved here ten years ago. And it was they who became a trap for the mother of three children, Svetlana. A few years ago, she lost her husband, and she also had to take her sick father to her. Today, a woman keeps four cows and goats to somehow feed the children and the old man:

“Due to the fact that we don’t have transport here, I can’t even take milk to the market, I rent it at half price to private dealers. All earnings go to food, medicine and coal. For many years now I have been selling my father’s hut in Paliy, there were many people who wanted to see it, but as soon as people hear that we don’t have gas and even the ability to connect it, they immediately hang up.”

Frightens people and the lack of public transport. Previously, a school bus picked up locals, but today the driver does not take anyone: it is strictly prohibited.

The harvest farm is dying. Photo: AIF-Rostov/ Julia Panfilovskaya

“This is understandable, at one time a tuberculosis patient traveled with our children, as soon as we found out about this, we ourselves raised a fuss,” Svetlana explains. - A lot of young families are looking for inexpensive houses for maternity capital, and almost everything here is for sale. But people come, look and turn back. We haven't had new settlers for many years. They just bought a house. Looks like life is pressed down, there is absolutely nowhere to go ... Every morning we see a guy walking along the field to work, and a baby is sitting on his shoulders. Dad goes to Bolshaya Neklinovka and takes the child to a kindergarten seven kilometers from home ... There are rumors that they will soon move out of here. The farm is dying. People cling to any straw to get away from here. And the point is not that everyone is lazy, they don’t want to live on earth or they are striving for a long ruble in the city, but that they are simply forced to leave their homes. I sometimes look at my children and think, why did they have such a life, in a God-forsaken place? We do not have a single playground, the club, which was once a cultural center, has long been filled with boards. Life is dying. But the places here are fabulous, the lands are rich. And in order to revive the farms, not so much is required - gas and transport. And people will come here. And maybe our small homeland will be reborn again.

And everything will be overgrown with weeds?

The cup of patience is also overflowing due to problems with water. The only well in the farm, from which people took drinking water, became shallow. The water in it is cloudy, you have to defend it before drinking or cooking on it. Yes, and in private wells the water is no better, suitable only for watering vegetable gardens and livestock. Many are forced to buy bottled water, but for this, again, you first need to get to the regional center.

“Here’s how to live in such conditions, even the old, even the young? - asks Lydia Ivashchenko - I think the farm is living out its last years. The old people will die out, the children will stop coming to them, and everything will be overgrown with weeds, as the neighboring Paliy has already overgrown. And will we disappear from the map of the Don region, as if we were never here? It turns out that they betrayed us, still alive, to oblivion. There was no more strength left to fight. We have one activist living in our farm - Sveta, she always tried to achieve something, gathered people, wrote letters, applied to the administration. While she was moving, we had at least some hope. And recently, Svetlana's husband became seriously ill. Cancer. Medicines are expensive, you won't be able to go to the hospital. And the man fades before her eyes. "Burn it all to hell!" - Sveta says now and hardly leaves the house. Sitting next to her dying husband for days on end. How long he has left, God alone knows. However, like our farm ... "

Ghost farms remember Sholokhov and keep treasures

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I was told about the ghost farm Chiganaksky by friends who traveled around the region and accidentally stumbled upon it. What he saw depressing: abandoned houses, devastation. We met one inhabitant, and at the sight of people he fled into the reeds. You see, he went wild all alone. So we decided to visit the local Robinson Crusoe ... - Yes, you will never get there on your "top ten"! You need an all-terrain vehicle, and you won’t find it on weekends with fire. You arrived unsuccessfully, - Aleksey Blagodarov, manager of the administration of the Sholokhov district, laid siege to our impulses. We did not know then that in recent years the sands have swallowed up several dozen farms, and the future of many is now in question. And not only farms. Look, the village of Yelanskaya a century ago was larger than Veshenskaya (population - about 10 thousand), and now there are only 125 people in it. The history of the disappeared farms would have remained hidden from posterity for centuries, if not for our countrymen Alexander Zhbannikov and his mother Tatyana Dmitrievna. They spend all their free time in the archives and searching for the last of the Mohicans - those who still remember that there were such farms on the Don as, for example, Kurshovka and Khryankovka. - The old Cossacks fascinated us with the idea to collect information about the disappeared farms. Somehow they started talking about settlements that are now not on the maps, about their grandfathers who lived there, - says Tatyana Zhbannikova. - I went to the Department of Architecture - I got a list of these farms. Most of them have sunk into oblivion in the 60s - 80s of the last century, when the state came up with the idea of ​​their enlargement.

Erik - Don's floodplain. In 1945 there were 44 yards here. It was a good farm. Watermelons were grown to immense sizes. They say it couldn't be lifted. The farm disappeared as unpromising. The last inhabitants of Erinsky, the Garanins family, handed over to the researchers Zhbannikovs old photographs inserted into glasses from gas masks. Such hung in many houses in memory of the war.

Khutor Ostrovskoy or Shpynevka

The founder of the farm is Natalya Ushakova. The woman was of rare beauty. Her uncle served as the bodyguard of Nicholas II himself. The descendants of the Ushakovs (they live in Veshki) still eat okroshka from plates with royal coats of arms. Natalya Ivanovna wore skirts with brushes: bristles were sewn on the hem so that it would not fray, shook off - and the order. Everyone envied her. But also respected. The famine of the 30s of the last century ruined this strong woman. Khutor Ostrovnoy In the middle of the 19th century there were 22 courtyards here. The last inhabitant of Ostrovnoye, Spiridon Vypryazhkin, spent a long time here all alone. Mikhail Sholokhov liked to take guests to him, because the fish almost jumped out of the river to Spiridon on a bait. He stayed here with the writer Charles Snow and his wife, as well as with Nikita Khrushchev. Once Vypryazhkin joked unsuccessfully on the brother of Sholokhov's wife Maria Petrovna. I fed him raw pike, which made the brother-in-law feel sick to the stomach. The joker left the farm in the 60s of the last century, he ended his days in Veshki. Tales about Spiridon are still circulating among the people. Khutor Otrozhensky It was founded at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and was located two kilometers from the village of Veshenskaya on the Otrog spring, which is now one of the sights associated with the name of Mikhail Sholokhov. It was founded by a miroshnik (miller). The mill was just standing on the spring. According to the stories of old-timers, the miroshnik was immensely rich. He had an only daughter, Sophia. They say she suffered from dementia. One rogue took her in marriage, coveting the wealth of her father. The father soon died. The husband convinced Sophia that the money needed to be better hidden, and together they buried it in the garden. Of course, the hubby then dug the cache and hid it. They say that people still believe that the legacy of the miroshnik is still in the ground. Then Yesaul Kargin settled in Otrozhensky. For every Trinity, he arranged a religious procession. They say that the captain prayed for some sins, made a vow. As a result, the church recognized the Otrog spring as a saint. An old cross rises near the spring - either to the miroshnik, or to the captain. Answers are lost. Now there is only one water pump left from the farm, which supplies water to the entire Veshenskaya. By the way, in one of the interviews, Sholokhov's daughter Svetlana said that the teacher took them to the Otrog, they read aloud Pushkin's "Mermaid" and took pictures against the background of the destroyed mill.