There are thriving settlements, dying ones, and there are dead ones. The latter always attract large number tourists and extreme sports enthusiasts. The main topic of this article is the abandoned villages of the Moscow region. It’s very difficult to say how many there are in the Moscow region, and indeed in Russia in general. After all, new abandoned villages appear every year. You can also see photos of these villages in this article.

- Russia's problem

It is not for nothing that they say that this is the soul of the country and the people. And if a village dies, then the whole country dies. It is very difficult to disagree with this statement. After all, the village is truly the cradle of Russian culture and traditions, the Russian spirit and Russian poetry.

Unfortunately, abandoned ones are not uncommon today. Modern Russians increasingly prefer an urban lifestyle, breaking away from their roots. Meanwhile, the village is degrading and more and more abandoned villages are appearing on the map of Russia, photos of which are striking in their despondency and melancholy.

But, on the other hand, such objects attract a large number of tourists and so-called stalkers - people eager to visit various kinds of abandoned places. Thus, abandoned villages in Russia can become a good resource for the development of extreme tourism.

However, the state should not forget about the problems of the Russian village, which can only be solved through a complex of various measures - economic, social and propaganda.

Abandoned villages in Russia - reasons for the degradation of villages

The word "village" comes from "to tear" - that is, to cultivate the land. It is very difficult to imagine authentic Russia without villages - a symbol of the Russian spirit. However, the realities of our time are such that the village is dying, a huge number of once thriving villages simply cease to exist. What's the matter? What are the reasons for these sad processes?

Perhaps the main reason is urbanization - the process of rapidly increasing the role of the city in the life of society. Major cities are attracting more and more people, especially young people. Young people leave for the cities to get an education and, as a rule, never return to their native village. Over time, only old people remain in the villages and live out their lives there, as a result of which the villages die out. For this reason, almost all the abandoned villages of the Moscow region appeared.

Another fairly common reason for the degradation of villages is the lack of jobs. Many villages in Russia suffer from this problem, as a result of which their residents are also forced to go to cities in search of work. Villages can disappear for other reasons. For example, it could be a man-made disaster. Villages can also degrade due to changes in their economic and geographical location. For example, if the direction of the road changes, thanks to which a particular village has been developing all this time.

Moscow region - the land of ancient churches and estates

Moscow region is an unofficial name. The historical predecessor of this region can be considered the Moscow province, which was formed back in 1708.

The Moscow region is one of the leading regions in terms of the number of cultural heritage sites in Russia. This is a real paradise for tourists and travelers: more than a thousand ancient temples and monasteries, dozens of beautiful estates, as well as numerous places with long-standing traditions of folk arts and crafts. It is in the Moscow region that such ancient and interesting cities as Zvenigorod, Istra, Sergiev Posad, Dmitrov, Zaraysk and others are located.

At the same time, the abandoned villages of the Moscow region are also on the lips of many. There are quite a lot of them in this region. The most interesting abandoned villages of the Moscow region will be discussed further.

Such objects attract primarily extreme sports enthusiasts, as well as local historians and various antiquity lovers. There are quite a lot of such places. First of all, it is worth mentioning the Fedorovka farm, the villages of Botovo, Grebnevo and Shatur. These abandoned villages of the Moscow region on the map:

Khutor Fedorovka

This farm is located 100 kilometers from Moscow. In fact, this is a former military town, so you won’t find it on any of the maps. Around the beginning of the 90s, the village of 30 residential buildings fell completely into disrepair. At one time there was its own boiler house, substation, and also a store.

Botovo village

The old village of Botovo is located in the Moscow region, near the Volokolamsk station (Riga direction). Once upon a time in this area there was the estate of Princess A.M. Dolgorukova. The center of this estate was a wooden church, which was built in the 16th century (the church has not survived). The last owner of the estate in Botovo, as is known, gave it to the peasants at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Of the surviving objects in Botovo, you can see only the ruins of the Resurrection Church, built in the 1770s in the pseudo-Russian style, as well as the remains of an old park with an area of ​​​​twenty hectares. There are still old birch and linden alleys in this park.

Village Grebnevo

Grebnevo is a 16th century estate with a rich interesting story and a rather tragic fate. It is located forty kilometers from the capital, on Shchelkovskoye Highway.

The first owner of the estate was B. Ya. Belsky, the armorer of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, then the estate was owned by the Vorontsovs and Trubetskoys. In 1781, Gavril Ilyich Bibikov became the owner, and it was under him that the estate acquired the appearance in which it has survived to this day.

Dramatic pages in the history of the estate in Grebnevo are associated with the beginning of the Soviet era. The nationalization of the complex led to the fact that the buildings gradually began to lose their historical appearance. First of all, all the interiors of the buildings were damaged. At first, a tuberculosis sanatorium was located within the walls of the estate complex, then a technical school. And only in 1960 the Grebnevo estate was declared an architectural monument of republican significance.

At the end of the 1980s, the estate seemingly received a new impetus for its development and preservation. A cultural center was formed here, and various concerts, events and exhibitions began to be regularly held on the territory of the estate. Active restoration work has begun to restore the complex. But in 1991 there was a huge fire there, after which only the frames of estate buildings and structures remained. The Grebnevo estate remains in this state today, increasingly turning into ordinary ruins.

Village Shatur

The old village of Shatur has been known since the 17th century. It is located on poor soils, so the main occupation of local residents has always been hunting. Perhaps it was for this reason that the village fell into decay in the mid-twentieth century.

Today the village is completely deserted. Occasionally, the owners of individual houses come here (several times a year). Among the abandoned village, the old brick bell tower, towering above the deserted village, looks great.

Memo for extreme tourists

Despite their gloom and decrepitude, old uninhabited villages and other abandoned places are of great interest to many tourists. However, traveling to such objects can be fraught with certain dangers.

What should so-called extreme tourists know?

• firstly, before going on such a trip, you should notify your relatives or friends about your trip, its timing and route;
• secondly, you need to dress appropriately; remember that you are not going for an evening walk in the park: clothes should be closed, and shoes should be reliable, durable and comfortable;
• thirdly, take with you the necessary supply of water and food; your backpack should also have a flashlight, matches and a standard first aid kit.

In conclusion...

The old villages of the Moscow region amaze travelers with their desolation and picturesqueness. I can’t even believe that such objects can be located just a few tens of kilometers from the capital - the largest metropolis on the planet! Entering one of these villages is like using a time machine. It seems as if time has stood still here...

Unfortunately, the number of abandoned buildings is growing every year. Perhaps someday this problem can be solved. But for now, abandoned villages serve only as objects of interest for all sorts of extreme sports enthusiasts, stalkers and lovers of dark antiquities.

What could be more interesting than finding new places to cop? Probably the process of searching with a metal detector itself. After all, if you look at it, all search engines can be divided into several categories. Someone bought a metal detector for fun and goes out to search only occasionally, while the person is not ready to invest and spend money on this hobby.

Such people rarely devote themselves completely to this hobby, and accordingly, the search for places for them is limited either to the territory that is adjacent to the house (if we are talking about village residents), or they visit the fields closest to the metropolis. As a rule, this category of citizens in rare cases chooses to cop a hundred or two kilometers away. And this is normal, because for them a cop is just a one-time adventure out of a thousand possible ones, to each his own.

Another category of searchers are people who are inspired by this type of hobby, but for whom it is not the main one or for whom there are some restrictions in order to completely devote themselves to the search business. For example, a person has a shortage of time, he does not have a car, a person is passionate about some other hobby that does not interfere with treasure hunting (tourism, hunting, fishing, and so on). People from this group devote much more time to searching, sometimes even studying old maps, but still for them the priority is the main hobby, and treasure hunting comes into the background and searching with a metal detector is a pleasant addition.

True treasure hunters

And, finally, the third group of people are true treasure hunters who are immersed in the search. For such people, searching is a hobby, adrenaline, emotions, they are completely distracted and abstract from pressing problems when they are engaged in treasure hunting. You could say they live it, morally speaking. Accordingly, winter for them is the time to sum up the outgoing season, find new places, and make a plan for the next season.

We have already talked about finding new places, and various programs that allow you to look at the world from space are a huge help. But, in addition to the satellite, old maps are also very useful, which can give a search engine a lot of information. For example, on numerous forums, many treasure hunters write about how to use old maps, how to put them on new ones, how to link them, and so on. I use these methods, but having been treasure hunting for many years now, I have developed my own strategy for finding new places.

For example, one of the search engines is trying to find a disappeared village. And it's good if you can find it. But, as a rule, such villages have already been traversed by search engines and treasure hunters more than once. And although there are no knocked out places, you need to know this rule, and it really works, but it is much more pleasant to search where the field is level and the pits of the comrades are not visible. So, in addition to previously existing villages on old maps, I am also looking for those that still exist. There are much more such settlements than plowed villages, therefore, you can safely go searching in the vicinity of such a village.

Experience shows that if you have found a village that is at least 100-150 years old, then by drawing a circle around it with a radius of 1500-2000 meters, you can very well continue searching in this place for many years with finds. Places near rivers can be successful, especially where there were previously mills. This information can be obtained from old maps. Finding the exact location is difficult, but there is a trick here. As a rule, rivers maintain their course for 100-200 years. Therefore, with some degree of probability it is possible to combine the card with satellite image, guided by the river bed. Well, then it’s a matter of technology.

We found an approximate point, enter it into the navigator, and already look around the area. Accuracy, in this case, can vary, and sometimes you first need to walk around without a metal detector, walking 1-3 kilometers along the coast in both directions. But a number of signs will clearly indicate that there could once have been a mill here: a convenient bank, a good approach, a pool, old roads, and so on. Well, don’t forget to talk to the locals, who can tell you something about the place.

Using forums for treasure hunting

You can search for places and read forums. Some of the comrades can boast of finds, and if you recognize the place (or the forum members themselves wrote, or you somehow recognized the place from photographs), then access to the areas bordering this place may be quite successful. For example, there was a case when one of the search engines I knew found a swag field; we went there very well at one time. But everything comes to an end someday.

So, the maps said that there was nothing more to do here, but we decided to explore the forest adjacent to the interesting field, walk a section of 1300 meters, going deeper into the forest no more than 100-150 meters. The area is huge, and it is clear that it will take more than one day to cover it all. But we went there periodically, and slowly led with metal detectors. The calculation was simple: if the field was so shabby, people had previously planted something there, then these same people could go into the adjacent forest, rest or hide something, and could lose something. As a result, there were coins, buttons, and other interesting finds.

As you can see, you can search for places to search in different ways, and each treasure hunter develops his own search scheme over the years. And looking through maps in winter (the most different cards on different scales), you can discover a lot. By the way, don’t forget to mark the most interesting points where you found finds in your navigator. When there are more than a dozen of these points, you can “draw” your own interesting map, which will “open” your eyes to many things. What are your secrets for choosing a place to cop?

The difference between a beginner and a successful search engine is that the latter can “read” the landscape.

There are several sure signs that there was once a small village on the site of the forest edge, which means the search will be successful. Let's share secrets.

2. All roads lead to housing. Abandoned roads, once trampled by thousands of feet, do not disappear as quickly as settlements. And if you follow one of these roads, it will almost certainly lead to a tract.

3. The first sign of a “gone” village is deciduous vegetation. It is known that it is she who grows on the tracts first, and only then do they appear. coniferous trees. True, if the forest is initially deciduous, the sign does not work.

4. Big old trees. Although they do not bring tangible benefits, trees are often planted in villages just to have them. And an old birch or poplar should immediately alert you. Travelers usually rested under such trees or sometimes planted a plant near the house. You need to check the entire space near the roots of such a tree with a small coil, and if many signals appear, then the place is correct.

5. Look at the tracks on the ground. Usually, for many years, in the place of the missing house, along the contour of the foundation, some depression remains - square, rectangular in shape. Stones, bricks or the remains of a furnace are often visible. The depressions in the snow are clearly visible, but searching through the snow is quite difficult. Also, the site of the village is indicated by the pits that were on the site of the cellars. Note that the relief is noticeable in early spring and late autumn, when grass does not interfere.

6. Wild cultivated plants. There will probably be fruit trees left - apple trees, cherry trees, maybe planting onions or flowers that are not so easily found in the wild. Pay attention to this.

7. If in doubt, dig the soil. Forest soil is empty and quite light, usually grayish in color. And the soil in the tracts is rich in coals, shards, metal debris like nails (and if the village was abandoned in the 70-80s, then also vodka stoppers, foil, and cans).

8. A sign of an abandoned village is nettles. She loves to grow on humus. So if you saw thickets of nettles in the forest, there was almost certainly a village there. But nettles most often grow on the site of a former landfill; and it is clear that if you search in the nettles, you will find a lot of metal trash and debris.

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On the pages of this blog, I wrote quite a lot about the use of cards in our difficult but interesting business - treasure hunting. Thanks to maps, we learn about old villages, where they were located, how the street ran and when it existed and disappeared.

Using maps, we can even find places where no digger has gone before. So, last spring we found ourselves in an unbroken repair situation. On the PGM there was only a barely noticeable small square. But in fact, there actually turned out to be a settlement where the four of us did some good digging.

Thanks to maps we can make our own discoveries. After all, without them, you don’t know where to go, unless, of course, you talk with the local population or identify the tracts by the poplars that can be seen from afar.

In our time of heyday of the Internet, almost any maps, ancient or not, are easy to find and start working with them. In this article I will talk about some useful maps for coping, in particular those that I use myself.

Satellite images

I'll start with the newest cards. Satellite images are now quite good quality. From them we can see the current state of the place we are interested in. Is the field overgrown with forest, are there any houses left in the village, find out the way to the digging point. This is very detailed map, but it is difficult to see the change in heights. The terrain looks flat. The scale of the photographs is detailed. By the way, if one service does not have a detailed, clear image of the desired area, you can find one from another. For example, if Google’s terrain is blurry, then Yandex’s will most likely be of excellent quality.

General Staff cards

Quite interesting cards too. They are intended for the military, as the name suggests. But they were also popular with topographers, surveyors, geologists, road workers, and others who work on the ground. All General Staff maps are similar: sheets of individual squares, divided into smaller squares. The scale is different. From 250 meters to 10 km in 1 cm. I heard a couple of times that there are also hundred meters, that is, 100 meters in 1 cm. At the same time, the maps of the General Staff have a very low error and can be used with great success on a GPS navigator for orientation and navigation, as well as finding places to dig and plotting routes. All villages are clearly indicated and it is written how many inhabitants there were at the time the maps were created, the order of the location of streets, roads, and mills is shown. I often use it myself, besides, the General Staff is loaded into Ozik on my phone.

Red Army maps

Maps of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. They are very similar to the General Staff, but they began to be created back in the 20s of the last century. Due to a lack of funds, people and opportunities, pre-revolutionary maps were taken as a basis. These cards have limited coverage. Namely, you can find maps of the Red Army only in the western part of our country. There isn't even a Kirov region. Although, somewhere there was a mention that there are topographic maps older than the General Staff of our region. By the way, the inscription “Coordinate system 1942” is very often confused with the date of creation of this map. In reality this is not the case; here we are only informed about the coordinate system. And the date of shooting and release of the map is written in the upper right corner of the sheet. If the General Staff sheet was from 1942, then this would already be a map of the Red Army. According to the information I have, they were produced from 1925 to 1941. Scale from 250 m to 5 km in 1 cm. Having examined this map, it attracted me with its detail and relative antiquity. It shows even the smallest settlements. The number of yards is indicated. Undoubtedly great card for the search engine! But it’s a pity that it is not in our Vyatka region.

Schubert map

With your permission, a brief background. At the beginning of the 19th century, F. F. Schubert headed the corps of military topographers and under him a 10-verst map of the Western parts was created Russian Empire on 60 sheets. But for some reasons it turned out to be inconvenient for practical use. I had to start working on a new one. It began to be created under the direction of P. A. Tuchkov, but later Schubert took over the work on it. It covers the time period of almost the entire second half of the 19th century, starting in 1846. But the main work was done before 1863, when it amounted to 435 sheets. Further work continued at a similar pace. In 1886, 508 sheets were drawn. Basically, they used the already compiled ten-verst, only supplementing and clarifying it. Very good detail of objects. Literally everything you need is indicated: settlements, forests, rivers, roads, crossings, etc. There is even the nature of the relief. Its scale is 1 inch 3 versts or 1260 m in 1 cm. However, not all areas were drawn by Schubert. For example, Vyatka, alas, is not there.

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Strelbitsky Map

In the mid-19th century, I. A. Strelbitsky was part of the Military Topographical Department at the General Staff and he was instructed to update and supplement Special card European part of Russia. Strelbitsky supervised this work from 1865 to 1871. The new map consisted of 178 sheets and covered the European part of the country and parts of the adjacent western and southern provinces. The scale is very undetailed. There are 10 versts in 1 inch. And if we translate it in our manner, then 4200 m in 1 cm. In particular, this map was also used as the basis for creating maps of the Red Army. What can we say about the Strelbitsky map: there is a large error; only major roads and settlements are marked. It would be suitable, of course, as an overview map, but I don’t use it.

Mende Map

Its author is A.I. Mende. From 1849 to 1866, he led the work on creating a map in the central provinces of the Russian Empire. 40 surveyors and 8 officers of the Corps of Military Topographers worked to create this map. Its scale is 420 m in 1 cm. Very interesting map, but does not cover the entire European part of Russia. It's a shame... This is a boundary map with decent detail. Very similar to PGM.

PGM or General Survey Plan

The oldest map presented here and, despite its age, very accurate and detailed. Decree to create a plan general survey was given in 1796. Under Catherine the Great, mass land surveying began: the country's territory was divided into counties, and they were divided into dachas - plots of owners who had rights to these lands within certain boundaries. They were assigned numbers, and their decoding is given in the economic note, which was an addition to the plan for each province. The scale of the map is 1 or 2 versts per inch, which is the usual 420 meters per 1 cm. When superimposed on modern map and when connecting to satellites you will encounter a difficulty - the error is quite large. After all, this is not a map tied to coordinates, but just a plan. But quite a detailed plan! You can get a lot out of it useful information for searching with a metal detector about the time of the appearance of the site, its size at that time, the location of the street and houses, roads and highways. Churches and church lands were marked, on which markets and fairs could be located, since these territories were not subject to taxes. The map is very interesting and I use it. It’s suitable as an overview map: look, think and go. I don't see the point in tying her up. But to put it on modern satellite images still worth it! By the way, some sheets, due to their dilapidation, may not be well preserved and instead of the places of interest you will see a hole.

Thus, we have just looked at those cards that are mainly used by treasure hunters. There are also other cards, but more on them later.

Each map is good in its own way and brings its own specific benefit to the digger when planning digging sites and studying the history of his region. And you need to use the maps at the same time, mentally superimposing them on each other and comparing the terrain in the old and more new map. These maps are the history of our country.

Where to download?

Yes, right here on this blog. I recently started uploading old maps. You can view and download them.

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