Underground Kremlin. Underground passage to the Kremlin

ALTERNATIVE HISTORY: There is an opinion that there was a Great "Mongol" Empire. During the era of the Great Troubles, the Romanovs overthrew the Horde dynasty and tried to consign the very fact of the existence of the Great “Mongol” Empire to oblivion. All life in Russia changed dramatically. Many plans, drawings, maps and books were lost or destroyed. In particular, a fog of oblivion descends on underground Moscow. It is believed that interest in underground Moscow was revived only in the second half of the 17th century. According to one version, Moscow became the capital of Rus'-Horde in the 16th century and began to be built only under Ivan the Terrible. Previously, here, on the banks of the Moscow River, there was only a relatively small settlement that arose on the site of the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380, which, according to one version, took place exactly on the site of Moscow. Here, near the mass graves of the soldiers of the Battle of Kulikovo, at first, probably, only monasteries and churches were built in memory of the bloody battle. People came here to worship. Some surviving warriors, clergy and their families settled here. Since the place, drenched in blood, was surrounded by a sacred aura, the settlement that arose did not grow much and had, so to speak, a sacred character. Only those who were in one way or another connected with the Battle of Kulikovo settled here. But there was no capital here for a long time. Other cities of Rus' acted as such at different times. The imperial capital of Rus'-Horde was moved here, to the site of the future white-stone Moscow, from Yaroslavl = Novgorod or from Suzdal = Susa, only in the middle of the 16th century, as a result of a deep split within ruling class Empire. The location was probably not chosen by chance. Namely because it, as the site of the Battle of Kulikovo, was considered holy for Rus'-Horde. Here, “on the blood”, on the banks of the Moscow River, it was decided to build a new powerful fortified capital. Large-scale work has begun. Underground and above ground Moscow has actually become one of the wonders of the world.

ALTERNATIVE HISTORY 2: Large-scale construction of Moscow began not in the 15th century under Ivan III “The Terrible”, as is believed today, but in the 16th century, under Ivan IV “The Terrible”. The construction of the capital of the state in a new place was explained by the fact that the court of Ivan “the Terrible” for some time “fell into heresy,” which caused a split in the ruling circles of the Empire. The Tsar was even forced to leave his former capital (Yaroslavl or Suzdal) and opt for a small settlement on the site of the Battle of Kulikovo. Stone Moscow began to be built here. However, the king could not invite his builders due to a split in society. Orthodox Church categorically condemned the heresy of the king and his inner circle. That is why, most likely, Italian masters were invited. At that time, Italy was one of the provinces of the Great "Mongol" Empire and Western European architects came to the metropolis on the orders of the Tsar-Emperor. After construction was completed, of course, the main architects who knew all the details and the plan of underground Moscow had to be silenced forever.

CONSTRUCTION OF AN UNDERGROUND CITY: Apparently first on the surface of the earth open method deep passages, halls, galleries, service rooms, chambers, wells, etc. were dug. The construction was enormous. When the monstrous masses of earth were removed, the construction of the floors began. White stone was used to line the walls of the pits - future premises. Stone ceilings were placed on top. These were the deepest floors. Then the next underground floor was built above them, creating here its own system of rooms connected by galleries. The ceilings were made of stone slabs. Then we moved on to the next underground floor. And so on. Gradually, the giant pits, like honeycombs, were filled with a complex system of rooms and galleries. In other words, a huge underground anthill was growing. Its “roof” gradually rose upward until it finally reached the previous ground level. The surface regained its previous appearance, but now a huge underground, mysterious anthill city already lived underneath it. First of all, the builders pursued the goal of defense against possible attacks by enemies. It was possible to hide in the underground city during wars and sieges; troops could be moved along distant underground passages to unexpectedly reach behind enemy lines. Warriors emerging from the ground somewhere in the Moscow region could stab the enemy in the back. Since the enemy did not know the exit points of distant underground passages, the appearance of the Horde “from underground” was, most likely, always a complete surprise. The system of moves was probably deeply classified. The plans for the underground city were a state secret, to which only a few were allowed. Thus, Moscow consists of two cities - underground and above ground. And it is still unknown which of them was originally larger. The underground city, presumably, contained the treasury, archives, valuable documents, military equipment, food and water supplies in case of a siege, and much more. It was possible to go deep underground not only from the Kremlin, surrounded by powerful walls, but also from other points of above-ground Moscow.

MISSING PLANS: At the same time, apparently, a firmly established fact is the absence today of ancient plans and DRAWINGS of underground Moscow. Moreover, as it turns out, the Romanovs no longer had them. The first Romanovs, it turns out, at first had a vague idea of the enormous scale of the underground city. And only then did they begin searches and random excavations in the hope of stumbling upon either the treasures buried here, or the royal archives, or the library of Ivan the Terrible. After the split of the Horde and the seizure of power in Rus' by the pro-Western Romanovs, the Horde plans and drawings of the underground city either died in the fire of the Great Troubles, or were deliberately destroyed in order to deprive the enemy of military advantages. The last "Mongol" military leaders could bury Moscow's underground secrets forever. In the 17th century, the darkness of oblivion fell on underground Moscow. As we will show below, the first Romanovs, having come to power, had a rather vague idea of underground Moscow. For example, the accidental discovery of repositories of Horde archives there was a complete revelation for the new rulers of Russia. After much research in the archives of Moscow, he (Stelletsky - Author) came to the conclusion that “the underground passages or hiding places of Moscow have always constituted an element of family and state secrets and official documents information about them was not recorded." All that remained was to inspect the buildings where there were dungeons, check the traditions, legends, rumors. Sometimes (but very rarely) Stelletsky was able to meet people passing by one way or another.

IMPRESSIBLE CITADEL: Having finished with the underground labyrinth, the builders began to create a surface, “visible” Moscow. Large cathedrals, the Kremlin, etc. began to be built. Numerous above-ground structures hid a huge underground city under their foundations. Today, surface Moscow has changed a lot compared to how it looked in the 16th-18th centuries. Suffice it to say that by our time the system of ring defensive structures that surrounded Moscow in the Middle Ages has been almost completely demolished and disappeared. Only their names and ancient plans remained. Let us recall that in the center of the capital a stone Kremlin was erected, surrounded by a mighty triple belt of walls (today only one row of them has survived). At some distance, around the Kremlin, there was a second belt of powerful fortifications called Kitay-Gorod. The third belt is known as the White City (in its place is the modern Boulevard Ring). And then the fortifications of the Zemlyanoy City were created, encircling all the previous structures in a ring. (Nothing remains of the walls of Zemlyanoy City; today it is the Garden Ring). In addition, even further away, open sections of walls were built, blocking the main roads leading to Moscow. Gates were also built in the walls. Such fortifications could delay for some time an army moving towards the capital. These are the so-called outposts. Today, the memory of them remains only in Moscow names - Rogozhskaya Zastava, Sushchevsky Val, etc. The walls of the White City were demolished in 1760-1770. It was extremely difficult for the enemy to penetrate such a deeply layered defense system. Moscow, which became the capital Great Empire in the 16th century, it was conceived as an impregnable city.

THE KREMLIN IS 200 YEARS YOUNGER: The incredible scale of the Moscow underground city, which we will discuss later, absolutely clearly indicates that in the 16th century there was no large settlement at the site of the construction that began. In fact, if there was already a noticeable surface city here, then in order not to touch standing houses, such construction would have to be carried out deep UNDERGROUND from the very beginning, by laying numerous tunnels, as is done today when creating a subway or mines. But today, for the construction of such underground structures, powerful technology, equipment, and tunneling machines have been developed, which make it possible not to disturb the houses located above and their foundations. Nothing like this had ever happened in the 16th century. Therefore, the construction was, of necessity, open. The builders were "biting" into the ground from above. It’s unlikely they had to demolish it to do this. big city, which existed here previously. And it’s a completely different matter if there was only a relatively small settlement in this place. Of course, they could have razed it to the ground without hesitation and begun a grandiose capital imperial construction. This consideration once again indirectly supports our conclusion that Moscow arose as a large stone city no earlier than the 16th century. The most complex system Moscow's underground structures, of course, were perceived by contemporaries as a miracle, a mystery, a mysterious LABYRINTH, once you entered it you could not get out. It is clear that without any plan, traveling through underground passages was dangerous in every sense. The fame and legends about this building spread throughout the world of that time. Most likely, it was underground Moscow that was described by many “ancient” authors as the “Egyptian Labyrinth”. We will talk about this below. Let us remember that “Egypt”, which is talked about a lot in the Bible, is the Rus-Horde of the 14th-16th centuries, see KhRON6, chapter 4.

EVIDENCE OF THE THEORY: In the Romanov version of the history of the construction of stone Moscow, a chronological shift of 100-200 years appears. Before us is an ancient miniature “Construction of the stone walls of the Kremlin in the 14th century.” Miniature of the Nikon Chronicle, 16th century. 1 Osterman volume. - illustration of a chronicle story about the construction of a white-stone Moscow fortress during the time of Dmitry Donskoy. The artist of the mid-16th century, who painted miniatures, did not avoid a certain modernization. Imagining the Assumption Cathedral as five-domed (on the right, in the upper corner), he already saw the Fiorovanti building in front of him. An artist of the 16th century, depicting the events of supposedly 1367, indicated in his miniature the Assumption Cathedral, created by Fiorovanti only in the 15th, and possibly the 16th, century. Perhaps the 16th century artist was wrong, but perhaps he was right. He painted his own modernity, but the Romanov historians made a mistake when they pushed back the construction of the white-stone Moscow Kremlin from the 16th century to the 14th century.

THE MISSING VOLUME: From the annotation of Stelletsky’s book: “The book of the famous historian and archaeologist is dedicated to the legendary library of Ivan the Terrible, the history of which the scientist studied for more than forty years. In the early 30s, he conducted search work in the dungeons of the Moscow Kremlin, which was stopped after the murder of S. M. Kirov."The third volume of the book, which outlined the details of his underground research in Moscow, mysteriously disappeared. Maybe not by chance. In search of Grozny's library, Stelletsky begins to study the topography of the underground Kremlin. At the same time, his attention is drawn to underground Moscow - another secret with seven seals.

ENTRANCE FROM THE EMBANKMENT: Stelletsky examined the underground part of the house of the Archaeological Society on Bersenyevskaya Embankment (house 20, former chambers of Averky Kirillov). During excavations in the courtyard of the house, he discovered a white stone staircase, the steps of which went somewhere under the Moscow River. But then Countess P.S. Uvarova, who headed the IMAO, intervened: “As long as I’m alive, you won’t dig in the house of the Archaeological Society.”

UNTRAVEL KEEPERS OF SECRETS: In 1912, at the Society of Former Students of the Archaeological Institute, Stelletsky read a report “Plan of Underground Moscow.” According to this plan, underground structures under the buildings of the 16th-17th centuries, located within the Garden Ring, are connected to each other and to the Kremlin by a network of underground labyrinths. Ignatius Yakovlevich believed that the teachers of Russian architects in underground work were Italian architects and builders, creators of the Kremlin and Kitay-Gorod: Aristotle Fiorovanti, Pietro Antonio Solari, Aleviz Novy, Petrok Maly. Stelletsky argued that the underground and above-ground Kremlin was built according to the plan of the “magician and sorcerer” Aristotle Fiorovanti. I.Ya. Stelletsky wrote further: “All three architects, as foreigners, could not leave Moscow and had to lay down their bones in it. An accident? Not at all! This is a conscious act of the Moscow court, supported, apparently, by Sophia Paleologue. This peculiar triumvirate of the Moscow Kremlin (Aristotle Fiorovanti, Solari and Aleviz) was the bearer of its most cherished secrets... To release at least one of this glorious trio to Europe was almost tantamount to making the cherished secrets of Moscow the subject of malicious rumors... In this, I think, and only in This is the reason for the violent death of the creators of the Moscow stronghold in its depths."

EXCAVATIONS OF STELLETSKY: An employee of the GPU said: “We won’t let you into the Kremlin, but all of Moscow is yours... We dug it all out ourselves.” And the cache on Bolshaya Dmitrovka was also examined by the GPU officers themselves, which led to zero results. Stelletsky found underground passages in the Sukharev Tower, the Yusupov Palace (chambers of the 17th century in B. Kharitonyevsky Lane), Simonov Monastery. He came across passages that required clearing (the house of the Consistory, the Grebnevskaya Church Mother of God on Myasnitskaya Street, Meyendorff House on Herzen Street, etc.). And in the former Biron castle on Shivkaya Gorka (now on this site there is a high-rise building on Kotelnicheskaya embankment) in the basement there were freshly laid arches, behind them there was a passage that supposedly led to the Vorobyovy Gory area (a long tunnel for many kilometers, going to the other side of Moscow - rivers). For example, during the excavation of a metro tunnel near the Kutafya Tower of the Kremlin, an ancient cemetery was discovered. But the metro builders, naturally, had no time for archeology. The cemetery was destroyed by builders, and the burials were taken to a landfill. In the basements former home Streshnev (17th century), on the territory of the Lenin Library under construction, Stelletsky discovered the steps of a stone staircase going underground. Ignatius Yakovlevich began clearing the steps, but at night someone deliberately damaged the basement vault so much that it became dangerous to work in it.

EXCAVATIONS IN THE KREMLIN: In 1933, Ignatius Yakovlevich writes a letter to Stalin asking him to allow him to begin searching for Grozny’s library in the Kremlin. And he gets this permission. For eleven months he has been excavating in the underground of the Arsenal Tower. “Everywhere and everywhere, time and people have reduced dungeons to a state of, if not complete, then very great destruction. The Kremlin did not escape the common fate...” Stelletsky calculated<<проверить упоминаемый в летописи "тайник", т.е. подземный ход из Беклемишевской башни к Москве-реке... Пройти из Спасской башни подземным ходом до храма Василия Блаженного, близ которого спуск в большой тоннель под Красную площадь, тоннель весьма загадочного назначения. Пройти из Никольской башни подземным ходом, спускающимся ниже алевизовского рва в район Китая и Белого города. После смерти И.Я.Стеллецкого (в 1949 году) его жена передала в дар Центральному государственному архиву литературы и искусства часть документов из архива Стеллецкого. Документальные материалы она передавала сюда до 1978 года. Но есть сведения, что некоторые из них попали в частные руки. Судьба этих документов неизвестна. Сам И.Я.Стеллецкий писал следующее: «Четыре подземных тайника, по сведениям И.М.Снегирева, связывают Благовещенский собор с Грановитой палатой... Против ризницы Благовещенского собора - люк в мостовой, заложенный камнем и чугунной плитой. Люк вел на белокаменную лестницу. Лестница была расчищена на 15 ступеней и вновь заложена. Лестница приводила в подземелье. Слышно было, как по своду подземелья ездят и ходят... По соседству - два кирпичных сводчатых, герметически закупоренных тайника... Среди подземелий между Благовещенским и Архангельским соборами существует и такое, в котором обнаружена небольшая, ниже человеческого роста, железная дверь с огромным на ней висячим замком. Но рухнул свод, и дверь оказалась засыпанной... Железная дверь так и осталась манящей и загадочной, но не исследованной до наших дней... Еще перл. "При заложении фундамента для кремлевского дворца была найдена древняя церковь с коридорами из нее, тайниками". Об этом сообщал в 1894 г. протоиерей А.Лебедев, за 45 лет службы в Кремле наблюдавший девять провалов, из которых только два остались незасыпанными. Моментальная, во всяком случае, спешная засыпка всех провалов, без какого бы то ни было предварительного обследования и, - застарелое и тяжкое зло не только советской археологии и спелеологии...».

STRANGE WELL: Nowadays, in the courtyard of Pashkov’s house, in the basement of an old outbuilding, a well has been discovered that has no analogues in our country. Its diameter is 5 meters. It is made of white stone blocks. Currently, the well has been cleared 16 meters from the earth and rubble with which it was presumably filled in the 30s of the 20th century. After strengthening the walls of the well, its clearing will continue. It is believed that it is a fork in the underground passages. In a neighboring building, a “black box” was found in the basement - chambers without an entrance. A white stone chamber measuring 2x2 meters was discovered under them. It is possible that these are the remains of the palace of Grand Duchess Sophia Vitovtovna that once stood here (15th century).

CONSTRUCTION OF THE KREMLIN: Aristotle and Solari, one might say, divided the spheres of their work in the Kremlin: Aristotle took over the underground Kremlin, Solari - the ground one. When the underground Kremlin (it took ten years to build) began to develop into a ground one, Aristotle was still in Moscow. The initiator of the construction of the above-ground Kremlin was Aristotle. He began construction from the most important side - along the Moscow River, from the Tainitskaya Tower. Simultaneously with the Borovitsky section of the wall, Solari carried out work on a section that was especially rich in all kinds of underground secrets - along Red Square. It was necessary to link the underground Kremlin with the surface one. Solari built the Alarm Tower and the mysterious Senate Tower. The cleaning of this tower from construction debris, carried out in connection with the progress of work on the construction of the Mausoleum, revealed that the tower inside turned out to be a well of unknown depth, since the bottom had not yet been found even at the eighth arshin. Perhaps this is a hatch into underground Moscow.

WATER PIPELINE AND DUNGEONS OF THE KREMLIN: The chronicler notes: “From the Frolovsky strelnitsa to the Nikolsky strelnitsa, they laid a sole and a new strelnitsa over Neglimnaya with a secret lock.” Strelnitsa Novaya is the Dog Tower, the most important key to the underground Kremlin. In the Krekshin Chronicle we find indications of the secrets of the “underground Kremnik”: Solari built two branch strelnitsa, or hiding places, and many chambers and paths to them, with jumpers along the underground, on stone foundations leaks, like rivers, flowing through the entire Kremlin-city, besieged for the sake of sitting." In these meager and vague words, a whole amazing system is presented, the entire mechanics of underground Moscow is revealed. Towers with hiding places were called "diversion" - "diversions" to the river. "Many chambers..." are underground chambers. Mysterious structures are connected to each other by underground "paths" - highways or passages that merge under the Kremlin into a junction station. The passages are divided into sections that belonged to different persons, hence the iron doors with heavy iron doors so common in the underground passages castles, or, in the figurative expression of the chronicler, “underground bridges.” The underground rivers under the Kremlin “on stone foundations” are the secret of the Arsenal Tower, which contains a whole range of mysteries. At the time of the “siege,” the Kremlin needed not only water in general, obtained through the Solarian “cache” from Neglinnaya, but also a direct supply of it to the royal chambers. Nature accommodated human convenience: under the Arsenal Tower there was a spring of abundant water. Solari processed it into a well. In it, the water periodically rose and overflowed over the sides. Natural “water flows” formed, directed along “stone foundations” (chutes or pipes) in underground galleries, where they should be, with “branches” to the side. Aleviz was entrusted with all the work requiring knowledge of hydraulic engineering: the construction of a ditch, the installation of sluices to fill it with water, the associated installation of ponds on Neglinnaya, and the correction of its bed. The underground part of the Aleviz wall is equipped with a number of chambers 6x9 m. The hiding place is a 3x3 m tunnel, which Aleviz built according to the plan of the underground Kremlin, developed by Aristotle Fiorovanti twenty years before. He (Aleviz) turned the Moscow Kremnik into an impregnable island, connecting the Moscow River with the Neglinnaya River in 1508 with a deep water ditch. The depth of the ditch is twelve arshins, the width is fifty. The ditch was lined with white stone with a jagged fence discovered during the construction of the Mausoleum of V.I. Lenin. Iron bridges were thrown across the moat to the Spasskaya and Nikolskaya towers; the gate was closed by three doors. Aleviz built an underground passage from the Kremlin, from the side of the Nikolskaya Tower, to Kitay-Gorod, which was surveyed in 1826. A stone staircase led under the ditch at a depth of up to fourteen arshins, in the direction of the current Historical Museum. The moat lasted about three hundred years, and the bridges twenty years longer.

UNDERGROUND BOOK STORAGE: I.Ya. Stelletsky notes: “Zabelin is right that in Russia in the 17th century no one had any idea about the lost treasure.” In June 1663, the Greek Paisius Ligarid (1614-1678), a monk of the Order of St. Vasily, the placeless Gaz metropolitan addressed a letter to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich: “O most sacred and pious Emperor! (Alexey Mikhailovich Romanov is still called the Emperor, that is, the title that was previously used only for the king-khans of the Great “Mongolian” Empire). It has long been known. about your Majesty’s collection of many excellent books from various book depositories, therefore I humbly ask you to allow me free entry into your depositories to examine Greek and Latin works...” Nothing is known about Alexei Mikhailovich’s reaction to the letter, but after some time the letter reached Princess Sophia Alekseevna, the Tsar's eldest daughter. She had long been attracted by the underground secrets of the Kremlin, and she knew from personal experience that under the Kremlin there were underground passages leading out of the Kremlin. In one of these moves, she more than once made her way from the Kremlin to the palace in Okhotny to her “Vasenka”. The princess remembered her faithful Vasily Makaryev, called and punished: everything that she saw in the underground Kremlin that was new, unprecedented, should be reported to her and only to her alone. Deacon Makaryev was free to choose any point from where he could penetrate the underground Kremlin. He chose the Taynitskaya Tower. He knew about an underground hiding place from under the Tainitskaya Tower under the entire Kremlin to the Sobakina Tower near the Neglinnaya River. The hatch leads into a tunnel going in opposite directions - under the Moscow River, on the one hand, and to the Assumption Cathedral, on the other. Deacon Makariev headed the way that leads to the cathedral. He could have gone out into the cathedral and limited himself to that, but personal curiosity, awakened by everything he had seen, drew him further underground, past the cathedral. Deacon Makaryev, by eye, established the width and height of the tunnel (3x3 meters). The clerk was amazed by the flat ceiling of the tunnel made of white stone slabs (which speaks in favor of the theory of open-pit construction of dungeons). At certain intervals under the Aleviz Wall, voids or chambers (6x9 meters) were made. One of these cells in the area of the Trinity Tower turned out to be closed with an iron door and padlocks. At the top, above the doors, the clerk noticed two windows without mica, behind iron bars. Makariev was able to illuminate the inside of the chamber through the bars. It was loaded with forged boxes right up to the brick vaults (“to the brim”). The clerk's further journey through a tunnel along the Aleviz Wall led him to the "Cache" (Sobakina) tower, a hermetically sealed, round room with a spherical vault. To the left there was a wide brick staircase leading down to the bottom of the hiding place, where there was water. Directly in front of him was a narrow secret passage in the wall. He climbed the narrow steps (up to eighteen) and emerged onto the first floor of the round Dog Tower. Niches gaped with large openings along the two-meter walls of the tower. The clerk went towards one of them, which led out into the fortress moat on Red Square. Now this niche is walled up; then it had a door. The clerk successfully climbed to the opposite bank of the ditch and entered what was then called the Grinding Row. The clerk reported to Princess Sophia. The story brought the princess into indescribable excitement. She demanded to remain silent.

THE SEARCH OF KONN: Makaryev really did not talk about what he saw for many years and only before his death he passed on information about the Kremlin dungeons to the bell ringer Konon Osipov, who a few years later decided to retell them to those close to Peter I. Osipov’s story caused great surprise at court. “And in 1718 he reported about those chambers to his closest steward, Prince Ivan Fedorovich Romodanovsky, in words, in Moscow, in the Preobrazhensky Prikaz. And they ordered him to interrogate why he knew about those chambers? And he said: he became aware of the Big Treasury from the clerk Vasily Makariev “He said that, on the orders of the blessed princess Sofia Alekseevna, he was sent to a hiding place under the Kremlin City and went to that hiding place near the Tainitsky Gate, but he didn’t really say... The blessed princess did not order anyone to go to those chambers before the sovereign’s decree.” However, Prince Romodanovsky did not convey anything to the Tsar. After 6 years, Konon Osipov, having lost patience, sent a written report, but not to the tsar, but to the Office of Fiscal Affairs, as required by regulation. The office recognized the matter as so significant that it immediately forwarded the report to the Senate. The Senate recognized the latter as the ravings of a madman, but nevertheless saw itself forced to inform the Tsar. Peter, having barely listened, seized upon this message with fervor and ordered the astonished Senate to immediately give the matter “full speed.” The Tsar ordered the organization of an expedition, the results of which are not reported in archival documents. But fragments of Osipov’s report survived: “I was ordered to find these two great chambers, filled with chests, in a hiding place under the Kremlin-city, and I found the entrance to this hiding place, and it became impossible to go that way.” It is believed that this time the chambers could not be found. But perhaps the search ended in success. Documentary evidence of the rise of the boxes to the surface has not reached us. But some of the chests were most likely taken out.

COMPOSITION OF THE TREASURE: It is believed that the royal archives of Grozny were kept in the chests seen by clerk Makariev. A list of this archive has been preserved ("Acts of the Archaeographic Expedition", No. 289). There are two hundred and thirty boxes according to the inventory - enough to clutter the room up to the vaults. Zabelin regretted the loss of this archive: “This is where our true treasure was, which, if preserved, could shed true and extensive light on our history from the time of Batu. In the one hundred and forty-eighth box here there are old defteri from Batu and many kings, with the mark , that “there is no translation for them, no one knows how to translate. (Let us explain that defteri, or deuteri, according to V. Dahl, is an ancient word of Tatar origin, meaning “khan’s label or letter of output, i.e. duty, tribute, fees”). In the forty-seventh box, for example, there are definitive letters and spiritual letters and books of the old great princes. It is impossible to list all the most precious monuments stored in these boxes. Some, for example, box 138, with the spiritual letters of the Moscow princes, fortunately, have been preserved, and have been preserved in the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a long time and to this day. This circumstance proves that the boxes were intact, perhaps even in the 17th century."

HISTORICAL CENSORSHIP: It probably follows that in the 17th or 18th century, on the orders of the Romanovs, all 230 boxes, after being discovered in the underground Kremlin, were immediately removed. After all, they tell us that materials from some of these boxes are still stored in the Moscow archive. The entire archive of Grozny was taken out, opened and thoroughly reviewed. Then they divided it into two unequal parts. Everything that did not suit the Romanovs was thrown into a big pile. What told about the history of Rus'-Horde of the 14th - 16th centuries. Most of these old documents were immediately destroyed. The minority were treated differently. They probably decided to produce “authentic ancient Russian documents” for the general public. To have something to show in museums. This group of documents was rewritten, having previously been edited in the manner required by Romanov. That is, simply put, they corrected Russian history. Zabelin wrote that the spiritual letters of the Moscow princes, which were in the 138th box of the royal underground archive, were “accidentally preserved.” But perhaps they are fake, because... do not bear tughras - a sign of the authenticity of medieval royal documents. Consequently, sometimes “ancient princely charters” without tughra displayed in museums today are fakes. And what did they do next with the originals of the “smaller part of the royal archive”? They were most likely destroyed too. After which the Romanovs and their historians breathed more freely. The evidence has become noticeably smaller. The alibi became stronger. By the way, the need to pore over translations of old works from the Batu era has also disappeared. No wonder they themselves wrote: “there is no translation for them, no one knows how to translate.” It's easier to throw it into the fire. Having completed the destruction of the originals, they announced that “it was not possible to get the chests.” And the 138th box, they say, ended up in the Ministry of Internal Affairs “by chance,” by itself, somehow even unnoticed by the employees. And several more chests along with it. It’s understandable why they started arguing so loudly. Because independent scientists, not privy to such Romanov tricks and unaware of the scale of the falsifications, could innocently ask. Since you have at least one chest numbered 138, where are the other two hundred and twenty-nine? After all, there are probably a lot of interesting things there. So in the surviving inventory of the tsar’s archive (the inventory, by the way, the Romanovs “missed” and did not think to burn it in time) documents of amazing importance are listed. Such “wrong” questions were immediately answered with a confident and authoritative “answer.” They say that under Peter I it was not possible to get the boxes. (Although, as they themselves admit, by order of Peter I the case was immediately given “full speed”). Here, you see, a certain architect suddenly interfered. He was afraid that the vaults would collapse, and Peter’s order supposedly immediately “stalled out.” Was not fulfilled. Because the architect was authoritative. And ten years later, already under Anna Ioannovna, in 1734, somehow it was still not possible to get the chests. Each time it stubbornly failed. No luck. And in general, Konon Osipov’s report was, they say, false and there is nothing more for us, historians, to ask about some ancient royal archive. And even more so about the afterlife of Batu’s era. There were none. And there was no archive.

KONNON'S CACHES: There are other reports from Konon Osipov, in which he claimed that there are several “luggage”, that is, storage facilities, in the underground Kremlin. As I.Ya. Stelletsky reports, “Osipov indicated the following places: 1 - from the Tainitsky Gate; 2 - from the Konstantin Powder Chamber (near the Church of Constantine and Helen); 3 - under the Church of John, the copyist of the Ladder; 4 - from the Yamsky order across the road to the College of Foreign Affairs (near the Archangel Cathedral)." It is possible that Konon Osipov got to the bottom of information about some other storage chambers, and not only with books and documents.

OLD NEWSPAPERS: “Government Bulletin” dated February 24, 1912 wrote: “ancient underground passages in Moscow form a whole network, little explored yet. So far, underground passages have been discovered between the Novodevichy Convent and the Albert Gunther manufacturing factory, under the Donskoy Monastery, Golitsyn Hospital and Neskuchny Garden The underground passage under the Borovitskaya tower was well explored, in which two niches were found, opening tunnels to the center of the Kremlin and under Ilyinka. The Tainitskaya, Arsenalnaya and Sukhareva towers also have underground passages. Other underground passages were discovered, apparently standing separately from the general network. ". They also wrote the following: “The Moscow Kremlin... is an outstanding monument of military architecture of the late 15th century and yet remains almost unstudied to this day. This instruction applies especially to the underground part of the Kremlin, which is of enormous interest... Research by Prince Shcherbatov shows the extreme complexity of the Kremlin’s underground structures, the great difficulty of not only accurate exploration, but also simple penetration into them. Most of the passages are walled up, some are cut off by the foundations of later buildings...” The German newspaper “Fossie Zeitung” dated July 20, 1929 wrote: “For many centuries the belief has been held that an underground city is hidden under the Kremlin. Treasures in the form of gold and silver from the times of Novgorod, which cannot be assessed, the Grozny library, valuable paintings and historical relics, pearls and precious stones in huge quantities... Only Peter I managed to put his hand into this secret safe.”

THE KREMLIN AND EGYPTIAN PYRAMIDS: A.V. Shchusev drew attention to an interesting fact. “We need to establish what the underground chambers are made of... According to all data, from Myachkovo stone. This is weak, fine-grained limestone. The masonry in the basements in the old days was mixed: stone and brick, similar to how they were built in Egypt. Hence the dryness basements, although there were no special protection against dampness. Zabelin also mentions the dryness of basements." Probably the Horde conquerors of African Egypt took advantage of the experience of building Slavic underground structures in Africa. As they built in Rus', they began to build in conquered Egypt.

HUGE ROOMS UNDER THE KREMLIN: I.Ya. Stelletsky recorded in his diary: “In the dungeons of the Arsenal... It is clear to me that this is the same “ditch” that Konon Osipov mentioned... The depth of the dungeons is 6 meters! two huge tunnels and a narrower one between them. At the end, i.e. near the Arsenal (Dog) tower, there are a number of mysteries: a walled door, six hatches blocked with boards rotten from time to time, stains in the walls and a terrible roar in some places. That is, there are some large voids behind the walls.” The size is amazing: “Now the wall on the left is broken, you can crawl into the neighboring, 9 meters wide, cache, which was laid with white stone pillars (brils), which have already been chosen to be 2-3 meters deep.” And further: “A vast, 6 meters in diameter, vaulted room has been opened...”. I.V. Stelletsky wrote: “In the same mine, more precisely near Kutafya, a tomb with a knight in chain mail was found. The coffin was damaged and pieces of chain mail were pulled out, but the main thing remained in the ground. I’ll pull it out!” However, no further details are given in the book.

MOSCOW AND THE "EGYPTIAN" LABYRINTH OF HERODOTOUS. Herodotus speaks about the “Egyptian” Labyrinth in his book “Euterpe”. There is a version that biblical Egypt is the Rus-Horde of the 14th-16th centuries with the territory of present-day Egypt included in it. If before describing the labyrinth Herodotus really talked about African countries, now he goes on to describe some events in Rus'-Horde = “Egypt” of the 15th-16th centuries. That's why he marked the beginning of his new story here. And the story begins with the most remarkable structure, according to Herodotus, namely, the Labyrinth. Here is this famous text: “And so they (the kings) decided to leave a monument, and having decided this, they erected a labyrinth a little above Lake Merida near the so-called City of Crocodiles.” Probably, it is reported here that the princes of Rus'-Horde decided to erect the common capital of the great “Mongol” empire in the form of a “labyrinth”. Herodotus' description is rather confusing. He may be retelling some travel notes from other travelers that came to him. Therefore, the picture that confronts us is contradictory and confusing in detail. Herodotus continues: “I saw this labyrinth: It is beyond any description. After all, if we were to collect all the walls and great structures erected by the Hellenes, it would turn out that less labor and money were spent on them than on this labyrinth alone... Of course , the pyramids are huge structures, and each of them is worth many creations combined, although they are also large. However, the labyrinth is larger than these pyramids. It has twelve courtyards with gates located one against the other, and six are facing north. , and six to the south, adjacent to each other. Outside, there is a single wall running around them." Thus, Herodotus considered the labyrinth as the most grandiose structure in Egypt. Perhaps here Herodotus describes the underground and above-ground white-stone Moscow of the 16th century. The scale of this “structure” surpasses anything built in the Empire before. All its provinces were involved in the construction of the new capital of the Empire. For example, some architects were called from Italy. When Herodotus speaks of the only wall surrounding the Labyrinth, he may be referring to the Kremlin wall.

DESCRIPTION OF THE CITY: Herodotus says: “Inside this wall there are chambers of two kinds: some underground, others above ground, numbering 3000, exactly 1500 of each. I myself had to walk through the above-ground chambers and inspect them, and I speak about them as an eyewitness I know about the underground chambers only from stories: the Egyptian caretakers never wanted to show them, saying that there were the tombs of the kings who built this labyrinth, as well as the tombs of the sacred crocodiles. That is why I am talking about the lower chambers only from hearsay. The upper chambers that I have seen surpass all the creations of human hands. The passages through the chambers and the winding passages through the courtyards, being very intricate, evoke a feeling of endless amazement: from the courtyards you move into the chambers, from the chambers into galleries with colonnades, then again into the chambers. and from there again into the courtyards. Everywhere there are stone roofs, as well as walls, and these walls are covered with many relief images. Each courtyard is surrounded by colonnades of carefully fitted pieces of white stone." Herodotus quite correctly says here that the structures of the Labyrinth are made of white stone. We have repeatedly emphasized earlier that underground Moscow was lined with white stone. All researchers note mainly white stone masonry of galleries, staircases, chambers, etc. The intricacy of Moscow's surface structures is also well known. There was no regular linear layout here that would make it easy to navigate among the houses and temples. “And in the corner at the end of the labyrinth there is a pyramid 40 orgies high with huge figures carved on it. An underground passage leads into the pyramid.” Apparently, here Herodotus, speaking about the pyramid, means the bell tower of Ivan the Great in the Moscow Kremlin.

CONFIRMATION OF THE THEORY: In African Egypt there is nothing like such a huge labyrinth as described by Herodotus. And in Rus' there is an underground Moscow. We must be aware that the primary story about Moscow in Rus'-Horde was probably superimposed on some information about African Egypt. That is, Herodotus' story can be a layered chronicle. Its foundation, the first and main layer, contains information about the metropolis of the “Mongol” Empire. And the secondary layer, which appeared after the Scaligerian edition of the 17th-18th centuries, belongs to African Egypt. It was superimposed on top of the story about Rus'-Horde. As a result, in the book of Herodotus a motley mixture of Russian-Horde and African-Egyptian events was formed.

WHAT IS THIS LAKE?: Herodotus writes: “No matter how amazing this labyrinth is in its grandeur, what is even more surprising is the so-called Lake Merida, on the shore of which it stands. The circumference of this Lake Merida is 3600 stadia, or 60 schens... And then, that it is the work of human hands and dug artificially, this is clearly visible. Almost in the middle of the lake there are two pyramids, rising 50 meters above the water of the same depth and their underwater part... The water in the lake is not spring (this area is completely waterless). ), and carried through a canal from the Nile, and for six months it flows into the lake, six months - back to the Nile... Local residents said that this lake has an underground outlet in Libyan Sirte: it flows underground to the west into the country.. The Egyptians carried the excavated soil to the Nile, which naturally accepted it and dispersed it with its current. This is how, according to the stories, this lake was dug out.” It is possible that deep canals-ditches dug around the Moscow Kremlin are described here. They connected the Moscow River and the Neglinnaya River, as a result of which the Kremlin seemed to be located on an island, since it was completely surrounded on all sides by wide water. In any case, it is precisely in this form, as a “big island on the lake”, that it is shown in ancient drawings. In this regard, let us repeat the following quote once again: “He (Aleviz) turned the Moscow Kremnik into an impregnable island, connecting the Moscow River with the Neglinnaya in 1508 with a deep water ditch, which Tanner mistook for another branch of the Neglinnaya.” In addition, in underground Moscow, an ingenious system of underground rivers, canals and sluices was also created, through which water flowed inside the Moscow Kremlin. It is clear that these “water works” were also extremely large-scale and required the excavation of huge volumes of soil. The construction aroused the admiration of Western Europeans who visited the Moscow-Jerusalem of the 16th century under construction. Similar stories, rumors and rumors reached Herodotus and ended up on the pages of his History. "Merida Lake" may be the ancient name of the Moscow River. Researcher of old Moscow I.E. Zabelin says: “the actually epic name of the Moscow River - Smorodina - has been preserved in epics and songs... the Smorodina River is directly called the Moscow River and the details of its location are described... "A good fellow drowned in Moscow - the Smorodina River. The name "Lake Merida" - MRD - is part of the name of the river sMRDN = Smorodina, that is, the Moscow River. Indeed, in the 16th century the Kremlin was surrounded by the waters of the SMORODIN River = Moscow River and wide canals. Another version: the name of “Lake Merida” contains the word “smerdy” (smerdy are free peasants or commoners). Perhaps the Moscow River received the epic name Smorodina because many smerds, free peasants, lived in these places.

INCONSISTENCY WITH CROCODILES?: The question may arise: if Herodotus is talking about Moscow, then where do the “crocodiles” come from? However, Herodotus does not speak of “crocodiles,” but of “tombs of sacred crocodiles.” In Rus', there was a widespread custom of storing holy relics in monasteries and churches, that is, mummies, the dried bodies of people canonized as saints. Sometimes the relics were divided into separate parts and distributed between different religious centers or cities. The relics were worshiped, they were carried with them during military campaigns, when founding new cities, etc. The underground catacombs where the relics were kept are well known, often placed there without coffins, but simply placed in niches in the walls. By "sacred crocodiles" Herodotus meant "sacred (holy) relics." The word “crocodile” may have come from the combination crust-body, crust-dil, crocodile, because relics are the “dry crust of the body”, Krak is the sound of breaking a dry, brittle object. So Western European travelers, seeing the veneration of holy relics in Rus', later told their compatriots that in Rus'-Horde there are many sacred “korko-bodies”. And there are even entire “Corco-tel” Cities. This is how “crocodiles” appeared in the “ancient” chronicles - a distorted Russian expression. During the era of the great "Mongol" colonization of the world, Slavic conqueror-colonizers appeared in Africa. They saw powerful animals covered with hard skin-skin and called the same phrase korko-body, that is, a body, an animal covered with exceptionally strong bark-skin. and Western Europeans turned the expression corco-body into “crocodile.” So the corco-body began to mean both “holy relics” in the everyday life of Western Europeans and the African animal - “crocodile”. And in medieval African Egypt the cult of “sacred crocodiles” spread. Crocodile mummies were made in large numbers and worshiped. From the original origins of the custom was forgotten, and African Egyptians began to worship crocodile animals and their dried mummies as “holy relics,” holy corco-bodies.

News edited Core - 9-07-2011, 18:52

The dungeons of the Moscow Kremlin have attracted the attention of historians and archaeologists for many years. Research and excavations have been carried out here several times, but the underground Kremlin still holds a lot of mysteries.

Sexton's excavations

From time immemorial, the Moscow Kremlin was not only a symbol of sovereign power, but also a place about which legends were made. Not all of them arose out of nowhere. Many are based on real documents, reports and notes of service people. And hundreds of years of archeology have not given up hope of penetrating the secrets of the dungeons.

They tried to explore them three times, and each time the excavations were stopped from above.

In the Tainitskaya Tower, the sexton found the entrance to a gallery that needed to be excavated, and they even gave him soldiers, but there was a danger of collapse, and the work was stopped. Six years later, Osipov returned to the search by decree of Peter I. The sexton was assigned prisoners for work, but the search was not crowned with success. In the Arsenalnaya corner, Osipov found the entrance to the dungeon, which was flooded with water from a spring. Five meters later he came across an Arsenal pillar, and breaking it in the middle, he ran into the rock.
Ten years later, he carried out excavations inside the Kremlin to “intercept” Makaryev’s move, but was again defeated.

Shcherbatov's attempt

The story continued in 1894. The case was picked up by the official of special assignments, Prince Nikolai Shcherbatov. In the Nabatnaya Tower, he found the entrance to a walled-up gallery leading to the Konstantino-Eleninskaya Tower. A counter vaulted corridor 62 meters long was found in the Konstantino-Eleninskaya Tower. At the end of the gallery, behind the brickwork, they found a cache of cannonballs. Later, Shcherbatov dismantled the floor in Nabatnaya and found a passage leading to this hiding place from the other side.
While exploring the Corner Arsenal Tower, Shcherbatov, like Osipov, was unable to penetrate further.

Then the prince decided to break through the underground gallery from the Alexander Garden. The passage went under the Trinity Tower and led to a small chamber with stone vaults, on the floor of which there was a hatch leading to the same room below. The upper chamber was connected by a corridor with another room. From the second chamber a low tunnel began, which went into the wall.

Under the Borovitskaya Tower, Shcherbatov found a chapel, a dungeon under a diversion arch, a passage that led to Imperial Square, a “foot battle” that made it possible to keep the space near the tower and the chamber under the ramp under fire.

His excavations of the “Osipovsky” passage under Corner Arsenalnaya led to discoveries. They found an unloading arch under the wall and opened an exit to the Alexander Garden, which was immediately walled up. But then Stelletsky ran into a boulder. He believed that the passage further was free of earth, but the scientist was prohibited from excavating and ordered to clear the dungeon of the Corner Arsenal to the bottom. It turned out that the spring, which kept flooding the dungeons, was enclosed in a stone well with a diameter of five meters and a depth of seven.

Unexpected finds

It was cleared to the bottom in 1975. Archaeologists found in it two military helmets, stirrups and fragments of chain mail from the late 15th century, and stone cannonballs. A spillway was installed at the bottom of the well, which was supposed to protect the container from overflowing. After it was cleared, the flooding problems stopped.

In June 1974, archaeologists discovered an internal passage near the Middle Arsenal Tower. Behind the walling, a staircase from the 15th century, covered with earth, opened up, which could lead to the treasured tunnels. A year earlier, a gallery was found near the Nabatnaya Tower, leading from the Nabatnaya Tower to the Spasskaya Tower, but the beginning and end of the gallery could not be found.

Underground roads

However, moves are not everything! After all, the Kremlin territory is large. On April 15, 1882, a cave-in opened in the middle of the road between the Tsar Cannon and the wall of the Chudov Monastery. Three policemen could walk along it abreast. One end of the tunnel rested against the wall of the Chudov Monastery, and the other was littered with stones.

When digging the foundation of the Annunciation Monastery in 1840, cellars and underground passages with piles of human remains were found. They talk about a whole road passing under the Annunciation Cathedral. Here in the cathedral, Prince Shcherbatov discovered a hiding place that could lead further down. The prince cleared the space under the floor of debris and reached the mosaic floor, which could easily be the vault of an underground tunnel or structure. The mysterious iron door, supposedly located in the dungeons between the Annunciation and Archangel Cathedrals, also remains a mystery.

Kremlin - underground

Some particularly zealous researchers of underground Moscow assure us that the Kremlin was originally conceived as a huge underground structure, for which a pit was dug on the site of Borovitsky Hill, in which a whole system of tunnels, rooms and galleries was laid. And only after this the builders began creating the above-ground part of the Kremlin. Then, they say, the dungeon plans were lost or deliberately burned. If we take into account the depth of the cultural layer, which in some places reaches seven to eight meters inside the Kremlin, we can say with confidence that many finds were previously located on the surface of Borovitsky Hill.
True, this does not make the mysteries any less.

The Kremlin dungeons, striking the imagination not only with their size, but also with the many secrets they keep, became the legacy of the last princes Ivan III, his son Vasily III and, finally, the first Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible. They housed royal treasuries, gunpowder warehouses, and gloomy dungeons, not inferior to those created in the castles of medieval Europe.

Secrets hidden in dungeons

Over the past three centuries, attempts have been made repeatedly to penetrate the secrets of the dungeons lying in the very center of the capital. The reason was sometimes not only curiosity, but also purely mercantile interest. Legend has it that the dungeons of the Moscow Kremlin hide in their secret rooms chests full of gold that belonged to the treasury or were the personal reserves of its rulers.

But not only the “despicable metal” has always attracted researchers of underground labyrinths; there is reason to believe that the greatest historical and spiritual value of antiquity is hidden in them and has been waiting for its owners for many years - the library of Ivan the Terrible. Containing several thousand valuable scrolls and folios, it once belonged to the emperors of Byzantium, and in the 11th century to the Great Prince of Kyiv Yaroslav the Wise. It is generally accepted that Ivan the Terrible, shortly before his death, ordered this treasure to be hidden in the depths of the dungeons.

Sexton speleologist

The first known attempt to lift the veil of the unknown was made in 1718 by the sexton of the Presnya Church of John the Baptist, Konon Osipov. The impetus for this was the story he had previously heard from the clerk of the State Prikaz, Vasily Makariev, who, fulfilling the orders of Princess Sophia, had previously descended into the Kremlin dungeons near the Tainitskaya tower and saw there vast rooms filled with chests darkened by time. The clerk himself had already died by that time.

In the Tainitskaya Tower itself, Osipov managed to find the entrance to the gallery, littered with earth. It was possible to move along it only after first excavating a passage. But as soon as he and the soldiers assigned to help him went a few meters deeper, the gallery’s arch sank, threatening to collapse at any moment. Not wanting to risk either his life or the lives of the soldiers, the sexton abandoned his plan.

Subsequent attempts

He had to resume the expedition six years later, but not at his own request, but on the orders of Peter I. The Emperor, as you know, did not like to joke, and, having refused, the ill-fated sexton could have lost his life without going down to the Kremlin dungeons. This time, it was not soldiers who were assigned to help him, but convicted criminals: they would die under the rubble, and that’s fine. However, he still did not dare to repeat the attempt in the Tainitskaya Tower.

This time Osipov started from the Arsenal corner tower and soon managed to discover the entrance to the dungeon there. But it was impossible to move along it because of the spring water with which it was completely flooded. I had to return again with nothing. The sexton made his last attempt ten years later. He tried to repeat the route taken at one time by the state clerk Makariev, but even here the dungeons of the Moscow Kremlin turned out to be impregnable.

Research of Prince Shcherbakov

Over the next one hundred and sixty years, no expeditions to the underground were undertaken. In any case, there is no information about them. The story told above was continued only at the end of the 19th century, when Prince Nikolai Shcherbakov, a scientist who was then serving as an official on special assignments, became interested in the secrets hidden under the walls of the Kremlin.

At the base, he discovered a walled-up entrance to a gallery leading to the neighboring Konstantino-Eleninskaya tower. Having dismantled the masonry, the prince found himself in a vaulted underground corridor and, moving along it, discovered a room in which dozens were stored. Subsequently, to this secret arsenal, the prince discovered another passage leading from the same Alarm Tower, but from the other side.

Discoveries made by the prince

The prince tried to explore the Corner Arsenal Tower, in which the sexton Osipov had failed before him, but just like him, he retreated, not risking entrusting his life to the dilapidated vaults, ready to collapse at any moment. Later, under it, it was possible to excavate a chapel leading to the Imperial Square of the Kremlin, as well as a number of rooms that had a fortification purpose.

With the help of photographic technology, which was imperfect at that time, the prince captured the entire dungeon he had studied under the Kremlin. The photos were then kept in his personal collection until the revolution.

Need dictated by life

After the Bolsheviks came to power, the new owners, first of all, made sure that potential enemies could not use the Kremlin dungeons to carry out terrorist acts. For this purpose, on their orders, all photographs and plans taken by Prince Shcherbakov were confiscated and, apparently, destroyed, and most of the underground passages and premises were walled up.

However, in 1933, near the Armory, unexpectedly for everyone, a Red Army soldier from a security unit fell into the ground. This was evidence that the dungeon under the Kremlin requires detailed study, otherwise it may be fraught with the danger of collapse.

By the way, this case was not the first. Back in 1882, in the area between the Tsar Cannon and the wall of the Chudov Monastery, the soil unexpectedly collapsed, revealing a hitherto unknown underground room. In September 1933, a decision was made to carry out research work and the necessary preventive measures. The famous archaeologist Ignatius Stelletsky was entrusted with leading them.

Research results

Several lines of underground communications were discovered and studied, one of which had access directly to the Alexander Garden. However, the main interest for scientists was the entrance to the dungeons of the Arsenal corner tower. As it turned out during the work, the spring that flooded it was enclosed in a wide and deep well, equipped with a spillway. It was its clogging that caused the well to overflow and subsequent flooding of the entire room.

At that time, the work was not completed; it was completed only in 1975. After pumping out the water and clearing the way to the base of the well, scientists discovered two military helmets, fragments of chain mail and several stone cannonballs. All these finds were dated to the 14th century.

Random finds

But it was not only the scientists who studied the Kremlin dungeons who made various discoveries. There were also completely unexpected finds. For example, in 1930, during excavation work on Red Square, workers discovered an underground passage at a depth of five meters, in the depths of which they discovered several skeletons dressed in armor. The reason that forced these warriors to end their lives in the darkness of the dungeons will forever remain a mystery.

There is also a known case when a minor crack that appeared in 1960 on the wall of the mausoleum prompted a study of the soil on which it was built. As a result, at a depth of fifteen meters, an underground passage was discovered so spacious that an adult could walk along it at full height.

Death hidden in the dungeons

Almost a hundred years earlier (in 1840), while digging a foundation pit for the cathedral of the Annunciation Monastery, a very ominous discovery awaited the builders: the earthen wall suddenly collapsed, and an underground passage filled with a pile of human remains opened in front of them. We will also never know what tragedy unfolded here that cost these people their lives.

But there are dungeons whose terrible purpose has become the property of history. It has been documented that at the corner facing Vasilievsky Spusk, in the bowels of the earth, there were dungeons in which for centuries those upon whom the wrath of the sovereign fell suffered martyrdom. Here, by order of Ivan III, boyar I.N. lost his tongue for impudent speeches. Bersenyu-Beklemishev and here, after much torture, Prince A.F., accused of treason by Ivan the Terrible, died. Khovansky.

Legends and tales of the underworld

The Kremlin dungeons, photos of which are presented in this article, contain many places associated with blood and torment. Is it any wonder that they are associated with the most incredible legends about people from the other world wandering in underground corridors and sometimes horrifying random witnesses.

Most often they mention the spirit of Ivan the Terrible, deprived of eternal peace for his atrocities and doomed to endless wanderings. A record of the meeting with him was preserved, made in May 1896 by Nicholas II personally, who was in the Moscow Kremlin on the occasion of the coronation. In those days, the blood-stained ghost of the tyrant king appeared to him and his wife Alexandra Feodorovna, which subsequently gave many reasons to see in this an omen the future collapse of the three-hundred-year-old dynasty.

Imposter Spirit

But it is not only the spirit of the formidable tsar that disturbs the Kremlin’s nightly peace. After the impostor, who went down in history under the name of False Dmitry I, was torn to pieces by an angry crowd in May 1606, his ghost began to appear from time to time between the battlements of the ancient walls. It is curious that the last time his appearance was noticed was on an August night in 1991, just before the start of the famous events.

A sentry who turned gray overnight

Mysticism and the Kremlin’s dungeons have long merged together. Evidence of this was a story that became widely known about forty years ago. One night, a young security guard who was on duty in the old building near the Patriarchal Chambers, where in former times the apartment of the notorious People's Commissar of Internal Affairs N.I. was located, raised the alarm. Yezhova.

The team arrived a couple of minutes later and found their colleague sitting on the asphalt near the entrance in a state of deep shock. His hair was completely gray, and his face had changed so much that it was difficult to discern familiar features.

Coming from another world

Only a few days later, in a ward at a military hospital, the guard was able to give his first testimony. As it became known from his words, around midnight he clearly heard the sound of footsteps going down the stairs. Following this, the key jingled in the lock of the locked and sealed outer door below. Having no doubt that there had been an unauthorized entry into the facility he was protecting, the guard pressed the panic button, and, unfastening his holster as he went, he rushed after the intruder.

Jumping out into the street, he saw a few steps away from him a short figure in a long overcoat walking away. At his shout, the unknown person stopped and turned around. In the moonlight, standing in front of him was the bloody People's Commissar of the NKVD, well known from old photographs.

The young and strong nerves of the sentry could probably withstand such a striking resemblance to Yezhov. But when he began to slowly dissolve into the air and fall underground, the guy suffered a nervous shock. Three months later he was discharged.

Excursions into the world of the unknown

The secrets of the Moscow Kremlin, the dungeon and all the streets adjacent to it attract not only scientists, but also those who value our history. And there are many such people in the country. In addition, there are simply lovers of thrills and excess adrenaline in the blood. Their imagination is fueled by stories about what is hidden in the Kremlin dungeon, about those otherworldly forces that guard these treasures. They are not afraid of either fatigue or financial expenses.

These days they have the opportunity to personally visit the Kremlin dungeons. The excursion can be booked at any of the travel agencies specializing in this direction. Pre-staffed groups are led by professional diggers and spelestologists - specialists in the study of underground communications and artificial caves.

Delight and horror experienced in the dungeons

On websites owned by agencies, you can read the records of those who have already visited the dungeons of the Moscow Kremlin. Reviews are usually the most enthusiastic. Despite the fact that each agency organizes excursions in its own way and presents the material differently, in general, excursionists create an unforgettable impression that then remains in their memory for a long time.

The only thing that many people pay attention to is the fatigue-inducing physical activity associated with walking through the underground labyrinths. But the pleasure gained from contact with the mysterious world is worth it.

Sexton's excavations

From time immemorial, the Moscow Kremlin was not only a symbol of sovereign power, but also a place about which legends were made. Not all of them arose out of nowhere. Many are based on real documents, reports and notes from servicemen. And hundreds of years of archeology have not given up hope of penetrating the secrets of the dungeons. They tried to explore them three times, and each time the excavations were stopped from above.

The first attempt, in the fall of 1718, was made by the sexton of the Church of John the Baptist on Presnya, Konon Osipov. Referring to the words of the clerk of the Great Treasury Vasily Makariev, who in 1682, on the orders of Princess Sophia, went down into the secret passage leading from the Tainitskaya tower to the Sobakina (Corner Arsenal) and allegedly saw chambers filled with chests, the sexton asked Prince Romodanovsky for permission to look for them. Unfortunately, the clerk himself was no longer alive. In the Tainitskaya Tower, the sexton found the entrance to a gallery that needed to be excavated, and they even gave him soldiers, but there was a danger of collapse, and the work was stopped. Six years later, Osipov returned to the search by decree of Peter I. The sexton was assigned prisoners for work, but the search was not crowned with success. In the Arsenalnaya corner, Osipov found the entrance to the dungeon, which was flooded with water from a spring. Five meters later he came across an Arsenal pillar, and breaking it in the middle, he ran into the rock. Ten years later, he carried out excavations inside the Kremlin to “intercept” Makaryev’s move, but was again defeated.

Shcherbatov's attempt

The story continued in 1894.

The case was picked up by the official of special assignments, Prince Nikolai Shcherbatov. In the Nabatnaya Tower, he found the entrance to a walled-up gallery leading to the Konstantino-Eleninskaya Tower. A counter vaulted corridor 62 meters long was found in the Konstantino-Eleninskaya Tower. At the end of the gallery, behind the brickwork, they found a cache - cannonballs. Later, Shcherbatov dismantled the floor in Nabatnaya and found a passage leading to this hiding place from the other side. While exploring the Corner Arsenal Tower, Shcherbatov, like Osipov, was unable to penetrate further. Then the prince decided to break through the underground gallery from the Alexander Garden. The passage went under the Trinity Tower and led to a small chamber with stone vaults, on the floor of which there was a hatch leading to the same room below. The upper chamber was connected by a corridor with another room. From the second chamber a low tunnel began, which went into the wall. Under the Borovitskaya Tower, Shcherbatov found a chapel, a dungeon under a diversion arch, a passage that led to Imperial Square, a “foot battle” that made it possible to keep the space near the tower and the chamber under the ramp under fire.

Spring

After the revolution, the Bolsheviks came to power and immediately became concerned about the security of the citadel. They confiscated photographs of the passages from Shcherbatov, filled up the well in the Tainitskaya tower, and walled up the lower chambers in the Trinity. After a Red Army soldier fell underground in the courtyard of the government building in the fall of 1933, archaeologist Ignatius Stelletsky was invited to explore the dungeons. At one time, he put forward a version that the well of the Tainitskaya Tower was once dry, and there were passages coming from it. His excavations of the “Osipovsky” passage under Corner Arsenalnaya led to discoveries. They found an unloading arch under the wall and opened an exit to the Alexander Garden, which was immediately walled up. But then Stelletsky ran into a boulder. He believed that the passage further was free of earth, but the scientist was prohibited from excavating and ordered to clear the dungeon of the Corner Arsenal to the bottom. It turned out that the spring, which kept flooding the dungeons, was enclosed in a stone well with a diameter of five meters and a depth of seven.

Unexpected finds

In addition to archaeologists, builders also made discoveries. In 1930, on Red Square, they found an underground passage in which several skeletons in armor were found. At a depth of five meters, it went from the Spasskaya Tower towards the Execution Place and had brick walls and a wrought iron vault. The passage was immediately covered with earth. In 1960, having noticed a microscopic crack in the Lenin Mausoleum, architects began to find out the reason and found an underground passage under the mausoleum as tall as a man at a depth of 15 meters. In June 1974, archaeologists discovered an internal passage near the Middle Arsenal Tower. Behind the walling, a staircase from the 15th century, covered with earth, opened up, which could lead to the treasured tunnels. A year earlier, a gallery was found near the Nabatnaya Tower, leading from the Nabatnaya Tower to the Spasskaya Tower, but the beginning and end of the gallery could not be found.

Underground roads

However, moves aren't everything! After all, the Kremlin territory is large.

On April 15, 1882, a cave-in opened in the middle of the road between the Tsar Cannon and the wall of the Chudov Monastery. Three policemen could walk along it abreast. One end of the tunnel rested against the wall of the Chudov Monastery, and the other was littered with stones. When digging the foundation of the Annunciation Monastery in 1840, cellars and underground passages with piles of human remains were found. They talk about a whole road passing under the Annunciation Cathedral. Here in the cathedral, Prince Shcherbatov discovered a hiding place that could lead further down. The prince cleared the space under the floor of debris and reached the mosaic floor, which could easily be the vault of an underground tunnel or structure. The mysterious iron door, supposedly located in the dungeons between the Annunciation and Archangel Cathedrals, also remains a mystery.

Kremlin - underground

True, this does not make the mysteries any less.

Maya Novik

They say there is an underground treasury under the Kremlin?

The hypothesis that in the dungeons of the Kremlin towers there are hidden caches in which treasures once hidden here by Russian monarchs were stored (and perhaps are still stored), was expressed at different times by various researchers. As you know, every myth has some truth, says writer, author of the book “Secrets and Mysteries of Moscow” Irina Shlionskaya.

The first tower with a cache appeared in 1485. The chronicle says that on May 29 of this year “a strelnitsa was laid on the Moscow River at the Sheshkov Gate, and a cache was found under it.” That’s how the tower was named - Tainitskaya. Initially, the tower had a diversion arrow, connected to it by a bridge with three arches. In 1770, the Taynitskaya Tower was demolished, as it interfered with the construction of a new Kremlin palace designed by V. I. Bazhenov.

To make the location clear: on the left is the Tainitskaya Tower, in the back rises the Bell Tower of Ivan the Great, and in front of it is the 1st Nameless Tower. But in 1776, the Taynitskaya Tower was restored again, although without the arched vaults.

The Vodovzvodnaya Tower (its former name was Sviblova) was founded in 1488. Only in the 17th century did it receive its current name thanks to a special machine installed inside the structure that pumped water, which was distributed throughout the Kremlin through lead pipes. This is how the first Moscow water supply system appeared.
They say there is also a hidden cache under the tower. But it's empty...

The Konstantino-Eleninskaya tower with a branch archer was built in 1490. The second branch archer appeared after 1508. Both were dismantled in the 18th century, as they began to deteriorate greatly.
Konstantino-Elinskaya, Nabatnaya, Spasskaya towers.
In 1894, archaeologist Prince N.S. Shcherbatov found the upper passage inside the walls between the Konstantino-Eleninskaya and Nabatnaya towers. A vaulted gallery with loopholes abutted a staircase that clearly dates back to a later time, possibly erected in the 17th century during the renovation of Kremlin buildings. Later, the lower passage was discovered, blocked by a brick wall. Behind it was a square cache in which lay stone cannonballs, apparently used for firing at the enemy from the Kremlin.

From the Corner Arsenal Tower there are secret passages inside the walls to the neighboring towers, as well as an underground tunnel to the side

Middle Arsenal Tower. It was this tower that was mentioned in the chronicle for 1492: “From the Frolovskie strelnitsa to the Nikolskie one, they laid a base and a new strelnitsa over Neglinnaya with a hiding place.”

There is no information about the use of underground passages under the Spasskaya Tower. However, apparently, archaeologist I. Ya. Stelletsky managed to find such a passage during his research. In a memorandum from the NKVD MPVO, he reports that he plans to “go underground from the Spasskaya Tower to St. Basil’s Cathedral, near which there is a descent into a large tunnel under Red Square, a tunnel of a very mysterious purpose.” Meanwhile, nothing is known about the result of this expedition, if it took place at all.

The Kremlin's Trinity Tower was built in 1495–1499. She was very interested in N.S. Shcherbatov, and for several reasons. Firstly, as legend has it, in 1812, somewhere under this tower, the head of the palace administration, P.S. Valuev, hid his valuables... Secondly, in 1852, after a heavy rain washed out the pavement at the foot of the tower and an accident occurred. failure at the gate, underground chambers were found.

Trinity Tower, and in front of it the Kutafya Tower.
Shcherbatov managed to obtain permission to build a new underground gallery from the Alexander Garden through the Trinity Gate towards the Kremlin. The archaeologist's instinct did not deceive him: the underground passage led to a chamber with white stone vaults, in the floor of which there was a hatch covered with a slab leading to the lower chamber. From the upper chamber, a vaulted corridor led to another room, from which, in turn, one could get into a long, narrow tunnel. After clearing it, it turned out that inside the Kremlin wall there was a white stone staircase about 10 meters long.

The Petrovskaya (Ugreshskaya) tower was erected above the cellar, where a stone staircase led. In all likelihood, gunpowder was stored here. In 1612 and 1812 the tower was destroyed.
1st Nameless tower.

2nd Nameless tower.
Nothing is known about the caches under the First and Second Nameless Towers. If they once existed, then, in all likelihood, they were damaged in 1547 during the explosion of the powder chamber, when part of the Kremlin wall was destroyed... In 1770, the First Nameless Tower was demolished, and subsequently restored closer to the Tainitskaya Tower. Experts believe that underground caches should be looked for under the wall between the two Nameless Towers.

As for the treasures in the hiding places of the Kremlin towers, two richly decorated helmets with gold and silver notches were discovered only in the well of the Corner Arsenal Tower. Apparently, not all caches served specifically to store treasures, as some researchers of the secrets of the Moscow Kremlin hope.