"Trap for patriots": how Pushkin's grave was mined in 1944

The Pushkin Reserve was established in 1922. Initially, it included the estates of Mikhailovskoye, Trigorskoye and the family cemetery of the poet in the Svyatogorsk Monastery. "Pushkin's great-grandfather Abram Petrovich Hannibal received these lands in hereditary possession. A century later, Alexander Sergeevich spent two years in exile here, during which he wrote many works, and subsequently repeatedly came here. He honored the memory of his ancestors, studied the genealogy and wrote about it more than once in poetry. As well as about where he will be destined to find his last refuge, "Andrei Vasiliev, curator of the Hannibal-Pushkin necropolis, told RT.

During the Great Patriotic War, the territory of the museum-reserve was occupied. "In July 1941, the Pushkin Hills were already bombed, but our fighters defended these places for another nine days, did not want to surrender them. They fought even when there was already an order to retreat, and left the Mountains only when they were in the cauldron, "Elena Khmelyova, senior methodologist at the Pushkin Reserve, explained to RT.

During the occupation, the invaders retained the status of a museum and even brought their guide from Germany - a woman named Schiller, who claimed to be a relative of the German poet. As the director of the Pushkin Reserve, Georgy Vasilevich, explained to RT, it was an attempt on the part of the Germans at first to show that they are a civilized nation and are not going to fight with the Russian people: "Like, look, even the museum is open. However, this did not affect the expected humility of the occupied people. Moreover, people have united to resist the enemy."

• Demining of the grave of A.S. Pushkin. 1944 year. Shot from the chronicle.
• © Scientific Archive of the Pushkin Reserve

The fighters, who could not get out of the encirclement, joined the partisans. Local high school students organized an underground, which was led by the school's komsorg. In 1943-1944, the underground fighters were tracked down, Elena Khmelyova continues: "Those who were suspected were brutally tortured. The girls, already half-dead, were burned in the house of the headman. And the boys, also half-tortured, were thrown into a well in another village.

In 1943, the Germans began to build the Panther defensive line, part of which ran along the Sorot River in the Pushkin Hills. These facilities were built by prisoners of war and local residents on pain of death. As Elena Khmelyova said, many of the Pushkinogorsk residents went to the partisans with their whole families, just so as not to cut down trees in the reserve. The occupiers also tried to force women to mine Pushkin's grave and the territory of the Svyatogorsk Monastery, and when the residents refused to do so, they were shot, the senior methodologist of the reserve added.

• Report of the Extraordinary State Commission for the Establishment and Investigation of the Atrocities of the German Fascist Invaders and Their Accomplices. Pravda newspaper, August 30, 1944.
• © RGB

At the same time, the museum itself was regularly looted. According to the act of the Extraordinary State Commission for the Establishment and Investigation of the Atrocities of the German Fascist Invaders and Their Accomplices, published in Pravda on August 30, 1944, the representative of the German military commandant's office, Vossfinkel, repeatedly came to the museum and took away everything he liked from it: paintings, furniture, books. And as soon as the front line began to shift to the West, the Pushkinogorsk commandant Treibholz gave the order to load all museum valuables into cars and send them to Germany.

Tunnel with aerial bombs

On July 12, 1944, the Red Army troops entered the Pushkin Mountains, breaking the German defenses. "When the sapper units approached the Pushkin places in 1944, we were given the task of crossing the Velikaya and Sorot rivers and clearing road bridges," said Captain Soldatenko, a participant in those events. "The privates and officers knew that they were entering the places where the great Russian poet A.S. Pushkin lived, worked, and were eager to release them as soon as possible."

• Plan of the central part of the village of Mikhailovskoye with the application of German military fortifications on it.
• © Scientific Archive of the Pushkin Reserve

German troops, retreating, mined the entire territory of Pushkin's places, and also laid rows of barbed wire. Tatyana Ivanova, a senior researcher at the scientific archive of the reserve, showed the schemes drawn up, as they say, in hot pursuit from nature and according to the memories of local residents: "This had to be fixed by any means. There were no technical means then, so those who could make plans did this work.

"Mikhailovskoye was ruined. The nanny's house, the only building that has survived since the time of Pushkin, was dismantled by the Nazis for a dugout. There was scorched earth, everything was destroyed, mines were everywhere - on the outskirts of the Pushkin Mountains, on the main street of the village, in separate houses. Moreover, there were shells that cannot be neutralized, only blown up, "Elena Khmelyova describes the situation.

• Scheme of demining of the Pushkin Reserve by sappers of the military unit p / n 28101 / Destroyed and mined by the Nazi invaders stairs to the grave of Pushkin. Svyatogorsk Holy Dormition Monastery. 30.07.1944
• © Scientific Archive of the Pushkin Reserve/RIA Novosti

The fact that the territory of the reserve during the retreat was mined by the enemy did not surprise the experienced Red Army sappers - this is a tactic of war. I was surprised by how exactly this was done. In the hill on which Pushkin's grave and the Assumption Cathedral of the XVI century are located, a charge of such force was laid that its explosion would leave only a crater from historical monuments. "But Lieutenant Andrei Novikov and his soldiers made a forced march to the territory of the monastery before the main forces approached, and did not allow the charge from land mines laid in the depths of the hill to be activated," said Andrei Vasiliev.

A wooden plaque with a warning inscription has been preserved in the museum-reserve: "The grave of A.S. Pushkin is mined. You can't enter. Art. Lieutenant Starcheus." Commander Valentin Starcheus hung it up to avoid accidents.

To the grave of Pushkin, German miners dug a carefully camouflaged 20-meter tunnel, into which they laid ten bombs of 120 kg each. The tombstone was sheathed with boards - according to Andrei Vasiliev, this is how the Germans tried to show that they supposedly cared about the condition of the obelisk: "A strip of flowers bordered the base of the monument, but in several places the plants looked faded. This gave our sappers the idea that it was in these places that we should look for deadly surprises. Indeed, mines with mechanical, chemical fuses and other tricks were found there.

• Red Army soldiers at the grave of A.S. Pushkin. 1944 year. Shot from the chronicle.
• © Scientific Archive of the Pushkin Reserve

The Germans knew perfectly well what Pushkin meant to Russians. They understood that as soon as Soviet soldiers and officers entered the reserve, they would first of all come to honor the memory of the poet. Therefore, the Nazis turned his grave into a "trap for patriots."

"For Russia, the support has always been the word. There are many examples when our soldiers carried books with them in their knapsacks, knowing that they were weighing down their load. Tolstoy, Pushkin re-read in their free time. Therefore, one of the tasks of the Nazis was the destruction of iconic places for the Russian people in order to knock out support from under them, "said Georgy Vasilevich, director of the reserve.

Saviors of the monastery

"The war ended," Captain Soldatenko recalled. - Our unit received the task of demining the territory of the Pushkinogorsk district. Every soldier and officer wholeheartedly felt responsible for the fulfillment of the state task.

Maria Shpineva and Tatyana Belkova, the first employees of the Pushkin Reserve, hired after the war, recalled how they raked the rubble in the park, where logging was carried out for the construction of the Panther fortifications, says Elena Khmeleva: "They found several mines a day, went to the sappers who worked near the Sorot River, they neutralized the shells, and the girls continued to disassemble. When I asked if the young girls were afraid to blow themselves up, Maria replied that someone had to do it.

• Semyon Geychenko (right), director of the Pushkin Reserve since 1945. Fyodor Mineev (left), a participant in the demining of the Pushkin Reserve, a former company commander of the 156th Engineer Battalion of the 12th Engineer Brigade of Riga and a retired major
• RT
• © Scientific Archive of the Pushkin Reserve

A great deal of work on the complete demining of the reserve was done by the 62nd separate battalion of mine detector dogs under the command of engineer-lieutenant colonel E.N. Peresadenko. 138 soldiers, sergeants and officers and 90 specially trained dogs were involved. Only the forces of this battalion for the period from 15 to 22 July 1944 discovered and eliminated 11 493 anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, 2107 shells and four land mines.

Demining lasted several years. Mines in the area of the Pushkin Mountains and on the territory of estates were found in the 1950s. And in 1953, an unexploded shell was found in the wall of the Svyatogorsk Monastery.

Despite the fact that the Soviet soldiers were able to neutralize the mines hidden in the grave of Alexander Pushkin without destruction, losses could not be avoided. Only in July 1944, according to reports, 13 sappers died while performing combat missions, nine of them on the evening of July 13, when the work in the village was mostly completed and the company's sappers gathered for rest and dinner. One of the fighters, Nikolai Bobrov, recalled that then a new German mine RMI-43 exploded, which the sappers had not previously met. On the stone steps of the monastery, newer granite inserts are still visible in the places where the explosion occurred.

• Memorial plaque to the sappers who died during the demining of the grave of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin and the Svyatogorsk Monastery.
• RT

The sappers who died during the demining of the Pushkin Mountains are buried in the memorial cemetery near the walls of the Svyatogorsk Monastery. As the abbot of the monastery, Hegumen Vasily, told RT, every May 9, the monks come to the burial after the liturgy and serve a litany about the soldiers who saved the Assumption Church and the grave of Pushkin.