Creepy stories about the Zhiguli mountains. Monsters of the Zhiguli Mountains. How did Samara Luka appear?

Day 3. Zhiguli Mountains

The Zhiguli Mountains are a beautiful place: with their rocks, cliffs, steep cliffs, deep ravines, ravines, forests descending to the foot of the Volga.

There is a legend about this unusual and mysterious place, where the Zhiguli Mountains and the Volga came from to form the Samara Luka. The Samara Luka is remarkable and interesting in that the Volga, with its enormous mass and strength of the water flow, did not break through the isthmus composed of soft rocks in the Perevolok area, but goes around the Zhiguli Mountains in a huge loop (marked with a blue line on the map)

According to one of the legends, a long time ago there lived two inseparable brothers: Sokol (left bank of the Volga) and Zhigul (right). Each of them was known as a brave and courageous warrior. Any girl would consider it an honor to become a wife to any of them. The brothers just didn’t even think about getting married. They both fell in love with the beautiful Volga the sorceress and they forgot to think about anyone else. It was as if a witch had intoxicated the knights with an intoxicating love potion. She turned their heads with her beauty and gentle voice, and she herself thought only about the Caspian Sea. Caspian was wise and handsome; he had long been beckoning the Volga to him, promising love and riches, and she decided to run away to him.

Zhigul and Sokol found out about this and became angry with the deceiver. They locked the sorceress, and so that the captive would not escape, Falcon put his dog to guard the dungeon. The brothers argued about who would marry Volga, but how to walk down the aisle without the bride’s consent. And Zhigul and Sokol decided to get an answer from the Volga. Let her choose a husband from among them, but if she doesn’t, she won’t see the white light.

Volga was saddened. She asked for time until the morning to think, and when night came, she sang sadly. The words poured out like magic, rang in the night, began to cry, and it was not noticeable that the brothers began to fall asleep. Zhigul fell asleep, Falcon fell asleep, and only the faithful guard dog did not close his eyes. He looked and sniffed everything, and growled at the young witch as soon as she moved. By morning, the witch’s drowsiness overcame the watchdog too.

But Volga had only taken one step when the guard dog raised his head and managed to bark: “Tip-Tyav!” Then the young sorceress rushed between the awakened brothers. It turned into a wide river, Zhigul and Sokol became high mountains, and the dog Falcon became steeper at the foot of its petrified owner. No one could stop the beauty now. Its stormy waves swept far away and flowed into the arms of the wise Caspian Sea. After all, for the sake of his beloved, he became the deep sea.

Since then, the hero brothers have stood like this, separated by the Volga River, and his faithful dog, which is still called Tip-Tyav, lies at Falcon’s feet.

1. Mount Tip-Tyav (in the legend Zhigul). An old limestone quarry is visible on the mountainside. Now work at the abandoned quarry has been moved higher along the Sok River

2. Sulfur Mountain (in the legend Falcon). Sulfur Mountain, 250 meters high above sea level, got its name from Sulfur Town, formed in 1720 for sulfur mining. Sulfur reserves are now depleted

3. Zhigulevskie Gate is the narrowest place on the middle Volga. The width of the river, sandwiched by mountains, is 925 meters. Before the Great Patriotic War, the construction of the Zhigulevskaya hydroelectric power station was planned here, but after the war the construction was moved upstream

4. Camel - a mountain on the banks of the Volga between the village of Shiryaevo and the village of Gavrilova Polyana. Famous training place for rock climbers and mountaineers

5. The Zhiguli Mountains are growing. According to various estimates, their height increases by about 1 cm per 100 years

6. Upstream from Shiryaevo there are old abandoned quarries

7. On Samarskaya Luka, between the villages of Shiryaevo and Bogatyr, the Grushinsky festival is held annually in the summer

8. Limestone quarry on Lipovaya Polyana near the village of Bogatyr

9. Open pit and currently active

10. The mined crushed stone is immediately sent to barges through the cargo pier

11. Bogatyr is a working village on the banks of the Volga. Received its name from the lime factory of the same name located under the mountain

12. Many legends and traditions are associated with the Tsarev Kurgan. Some say that the Tatar prince Mamon with seven Tatar kings sailed up the Volga. He wanted to go through and conquer all of Russia, but he suddenly died. The warriors, of whom there were a huge number, carried the earth onto his grave with hats and shields, and therefore a mound was formed

13. Samara Luka, thanks to the many mines, adits, and caves in the mountains, still serves as an excellent shelter. It is known that in the early 1990s, a group of criminals escaped from the colony and hid in one of the Luka caves for almost a whole year before the police were able to discover their place of residence.

The Zhiguli Mountains, located on the right bank of the Volga River, are the Volga Upland. It is in these picturesque mountains that the Samarskaya Luka Natural National Park is located, as well as the Zhigulevsky Nature Reserve. The highest point of the Zhigulevskaya Upland is Mount Bezymyannaya (381 meters above sea level).

origin of name

Over time, not only the history of the mountains changed, but also the name. The first name of the mountains is found in the work of a currently unknown author, who wrote the work “The Book about the Limits of the World from East to West,” where he called the Zhiguli Mountains the Pechenezh Mountains. The author who worked on the Kazan Chronicles in 1560 mentions this hill as the Maiden Mountains. The modern name comes from the Turkic “jiguli”, which translates as “harnessed, harnessed, horse-drawn”. There are also other versions of the origin of the modern name of the Zhiguli Mountains. One of the most interesting is the story of how ships that sailed along the Volga were stopped by robbers. Those people who could not pay the bribe succumbed to flogging, which was called “burning” or “burning.” Actually, such people were called “Zhiguli.” The modern name was first found in the works of academician Peter-Simon Pallas (“Travels through various provinces of the Russian Empire”) and dates back to 1768-1773.

Geography of the Zhiguli Mountains

Despite the fact that we are all accustomed to calling Zhiguli mountains, from the point of view of geologists, these are just hills that have a clear mountain character: rocks, cliffs, deep ravines and gullies. Zhiguli is the only mountain of its kind, of tectonic origin, in the Russian Valley. These are mountains that continue to grow, at an estimated rate of 1 centimeter per hundred years. It is believed that the age of the Zhiguli Mountains is about 7 million years, these are still very young mountains. The Samara Hydroelectric Power Station named after Lenin was built to the north of the mountains. Until recently, the highest point of the mountain was considered the Strelnaya peak, which had a height of 378 meters. However, it is now certainly known that the highest point is Nameless Mountain, which has a height of 381 meters. The list of the highest peaks also includes: Usinsky Kurgan, Molodetsky Kurgan, Mogutovaya Mountain and Popova Gora.

Nature

The Zhiguli Mountains are densely covered with forests. The northern slopes are occupied by linden, aspen and maple forests; pine forests grow on the steep slopes. On the southern slopes, which are more gentle, forest-steppe vegetation grows. The flora of the mountains is inhabited by more than 700 species of plants and animals. Elements of forest-steppe, as well as elements of semi-deserts, deserts and empty steppes predominate. The most popular and interesting plants that live in the Zhiguli Mountains are: kochia, bearberry, pearberry, wormwood, bifolia, Yurinea arachnoid, Tauride flax, Cossack juniper, Tatarian bark, Alpine buckwheat and desert oats. Due to the lack of water in the mountains themselves, the fauna of the Zhiguli Mountains is poor. There are about 40 species of mammals, among which rodents predominate (29 species), predators 8, lagomorphs - 1. Most often here you can find the hare, marten, elk, roe deer, badger, black grouse. The largest animal in the Zhiguli Mountains is the elk.

On the wall you can see a large map of the Samara Luka, and on it are marked the places (villages, mountains, caves, rivers) with which Zhiguli legends and traditions are associated. There are also large photographs depicting some of these places, for example, Mount Strelnaya and Witch Lake near the village of Bakhilovo. The museum is home to mysterious characters, embodied from legends in mannequin images reminiscent of the figures of the famous Madame Tussauds museum. For example, the Mistress of the Zhiguli Mountains. Associated with it is a legend about a spring in the Stone Bowl, a favorite among tourists.

“There is a legend about Stepan Razin’s associate Fyodor Sheludyak, who robbed the Zhiguli Mountains,” says the head of the museum Anastasia Ishmaeva. - Once the tsarist troops forced Fedor to climb to the top of the mountain. He had no choice but to jump down from the stone cliff. But he did not crash, but ended up with the Mistress of the Zhiguli Mountains. For a long time he lived in a dungeon, but his stone bondage did not please him. And so he died of melancholy. And since then, the Mistress of the Zhiguli Mountains has been crying, and her tears flow into the Stone Bowl.” And here is another mythological creature - Shishiga, who, according to legend, lives in swampy places near the Witch Lake. Despite his “advanced age,” Shishiga loves to play pranks and makes fun of unwary travelers. Like the ancient Greek sirens, she sings beautifully and takes advantage of this, luring travelers deeper into the forest and leading them off the beaten path. When a person begins to panic and call for help, these Zhiguli “mischief girls” giggle sarcastically, climbing into the bushes. Another character of the museum is the mythical Iron Wolf, whose body is protected by armor. He has no tail - legend says that he lost it in one of the battles. “According to legends,” says Anastasia, “the Iron Wolf lives in adits near the village of Shiryaevo and guards lakes with fresh water. It was believed that since ancient times these creatures lived in harmony with people and helped them.” Another interesting character (judging by the name, a “relative” of the Iron Wolf) is the Wolfhound. He stands in the museum in a threatening pose, with bared teeth. According to legends, Volkodir lives in the Shiryaevsky ravine and guards the borders between Good and Evil. Legend has it that a magic stone is hidden in his mouth. Whoever gets it will become the strongest man on Samarskaya Luka. Apparently no one has succeeded in doing this so far.

The same character is embodied in numerous student works created from wood. They are stored here, in the locker. There are so many works - so many different views on this mythological creature.

Who hasn’t heard about the mysterious treasures of Ataman Stepan Razin, hidden somewhere in Zhiguli? According to some legends, these treasures are guarded by a huge Zhiguli bear. This character, standing on his hind legs, is also available as a mannequin in the museum. Next to him is the mythical Wooden Eagle, one of the attributes of the fairy-tale performance that is played here from time to time. The performance is called “How Tsarevich Vasily sought the Bird of Happiness.” The script was prepared by the museum staff themselves based on Zhiguli legends. The performance takes place on the museum stage, and everyone can take part in it after a short preparation and getting into their roles. If desired, the script can even be supplemented - if, of course, it turns out interesting.

The Magic Wooden Eagle serves in this improvisation performance as a means of transportation for Tsarevich Vasily. And among other heroes are the fabulous Bogatyr, the Mistress of the Zhiguli Mountains, Shishiga, Marya-Krasa and, finally, Stepan Razin, who, with the help of a magic sword kept in the museum, fights with the Wolfhound and defeats him. Here guests can hear Zhiguli tales and legends. In them, plants, stones and everyday objects are often endowed with magical powers and help the heroes in difficult situations. By the way, on Samarskaya Luka there are plants that are not found in any other corner of the world. You can learn about some of them here in the museum. One of the artists living in Zhigulevsk created life-size porcelain and donated different types of Zhigulev orchids to the Zolny Museum.

While some guests are preparing for the performance (changing clothes and learning roles), and others are looking at the museum exhibits, others can go to the “interactive” windows in the corridor, in which Shishiga, the Mistress of the Zhiguli and other fairy-tale characters are visible. There are tables lowered near the windows, and here you can give full rein to your imagination by drawing your vision of these heroes using gouache on Volga talisman stones. And then you can take these talismans as a souvenir. Here these painted pebbles are called “wishing stones.”

Samara Luka is one of the most interesting natural and historical monuments. The Volga, having met the Zhiguli Mountains on the way, changed its course and flowed to the east. Having passed along the mountain ridge, the river passed the Zhiguli Gate and again rushed south, forming a bend 220 kilometers long. She was named Samara Luka. The river will seat the bow into two parts: eastern and western. We are primarily interested in the eastern part, almost an island, washed by the waters of the Volga and Usa: near the village of Perevoloki, the rivers are separated from each other only by a small isthmus, less than three kilometers. The mountainous area, covered with forests, cut by deep ravines and surrounded on almost all sides by water, has long attracted the attention of people. Archaeologists have discovered traces of several ancient settlements here, founded more than three thousand years ago, near the villages of Morkvashi, Shiryaevo, Vinnovka, Lbishche. People were engaged in hunting, beekeeping, fishing, and farming. At different times, Samara Luka was owned by the Khazars and Bulgars. In 1236, the hordes of the Mongol-Tatar Khan Batu passed through it, devastating these lands. But a holy place is never empty. In the 16th century, fugitive peasants, free people, and Cossacks began to come here. The Volga waterway in the Samara Luka area became an arena of robberies. Ushkuiniki (as they were often called after the type of ships they used) attacked rich merchant caravans, mainly coming from the lower reaches of the Volga and Caspian Sea. If the attempt to seize the goods failed, they dragged (hence the name of the village of Perevoloki) their boats to the Usa River and floated down it to meet the merchants at the Zhigulevsky Gate. There is a version that after the murder of the Persian ambassador in the lower Volga by the people of Ataman Ermak, Tsar Ivan the Terrible ordered their extermination mercilessly. The Cossacks went to Samara Luka, where atamans Ivan Koltso, Barbosha, Mitya Britousov and Ermak himself founded their camps. Samara architect and local historian Emelyan Filimonovich Guryanov considered this version quite real and about thirty years ago tried to substantiate it. Studying the fortification system on Mount Lbishche, impregnable from the Volga, he came to the conclusion that it was designed very competently and could withstand cannon fire. “Creating such a well-thought-out defense was only possible for a prudent and far-sighted chieftain,” which was Ermak. By decree of Ivan the Terrible, in the fall of 1578, a special detachment was equipped, which was supposed to go “on ships and overland on horses” to Astrakhan, and torture, execute and hang those thieves. The Stroganov merchants, knowing about this decision of the tsar, invited Ermak to take over the protection of their cities in the upper reaches of the Kama. In the spring of 1579, Ermak left Samara Luka and at the end of June came with his squad to the Kama River in Orel-gorod. Other Cossacks left along the Samara River to the Yaik (Ural River), and those who remained on the Samara Luka were killed by the tsarist troops and their towns were burned. However, some Cossacks still survived, hiding in hidden places in the Zhiguli Mountains. When the trouble was over, they returned to their destroyed camps and revived them. This is where the names of the villages Ermakovo, Koltsovo, Sevryukaevo came from. The names of individual peaks of the Zhiguli Mountains are also associated with the Volga freemen: Karaulnaya, Strelnaya, Sheludyak cliff. There is also a cave of Stepan Razin, Razinsky ravine. And even the founding of the Volga cities of Simbirsk, Samara, Saratov, and Tsaritsyn to protect the Volga route did not rid the river of robberies. Academician Lepekhin wrote in 1768 that rowing merchant ships, with up to a hundred workers, were armed with cannons “for safety from the daredevils traveling along the Volga.” Wanting to put an end to the Volga freemen, Paul I issued an order in 1797 to patrol the Volga with military ships called guardcoats. They served on the river for two years, until the Astrakhan governor informed Admiral Kushelev that a significant part of the “robber gangs” had been overfished, and there was a calm on the river. The guardcoats were placed at the disposal of the Kazan Admiralty and only occasionally set sail to search for lawbreakers and patrol. But the calm did not last long. In 1804, reports of ship robberies were again received in St. Petersburg. And then the stretch from Kazan to Astrakhan began to be patrolled by not nine, but 12 guardcoats. The state has long tried to develop the lands of Samarskaya Luka. First with the help of the merchants. So, its first owners were the already mentioned Stroganovs. They organized the boiling of salt from the water of salt springs near Mount Karaulnaya. In 1631-1632, salt springs in the area of ​​the modern village of Usolya were given to the Yaroslavl merchant Nadya Andreevich Sveteshnikov, who at his own expense armed the second militia that liberated Moscow from the Poles. He started a large salt-making business here, built a fortified town and several villages. His lands were named Nadeinskoye Usolye. Soon after the construction of the Samara fortress, the Samara Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery was founded. In 1648, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich issued a charter to Patriarch Joseph, according to which the villages and villages of Podkaraulnaya, Ternovaya Polyana with wastelands, loans, lakes, and other lands were given to the monastery. Having become a patriarchal house monastery, in the same year he received the village of Rozhdestvenskoye, fishing on the Volga and Samara rivers. In 1723, Peter I issued a Decree on the liquidation of the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery, the transfer of monks to the Zhadovskaya hermitage of the Syzran district and the donation of its lands and the transfer of the village of Rozhdestvenskoye “with villages and hamlets to the palace department.” But in 1732, the Archbishop of Kazan and Sviyazhsk received an order from Moscow to restore the monastery and return the monks from the Zhadovskaya Hermitage to it. Apparently, very influential people at the royal court showed interest in Samara Luka, if in 1738 the monastery was abolished again. The Transfiguration Church under him burned down in a fire in 1765. In 1767, Catherine II made a trip along the Volga. In Simbirsk, her favorites Vladimir Grigorievich and Grigory Grigorievich Orlov left her retinue to look at the Samara Luka, about which they had heard so much. They liked it so much that they began to bother about transferring it into their possession. Catherine II agreed. By this time, the area between the Volga and Usa rivers was so densely populated that the brothers organized the resettlement of peasants from the villages of Rozhdestveno, Vinnovka, Ryazan, Perevoloki, Brusyany and others to the “empty lands” on the left bank of the Volga. In their villages, the Orlov brothers opened schools for the children of peasants, hospitals, and sought to somehow alleviate the situation of their serfs. Vladimir, in particular, wrote to his manager in 1801: “It is a sin to burden your subjects with unnecessary work... I repeat to you to have their welfare in your heart. My benefit without observing this will be more bitter for me than sweet.” The transformations carried out by the brothers on Samarskaya Luka were most clearly reflected in the village of Usolye. In the summer of 1812 it was almost completely destroyed by fire. Vladimir Orlov ordered it to be rebuilt according to the plan of the serf architect. The serf architects drew up designs for the manor's stone buildings in accordance with the wishes of the owner "... to have a durable structure, convenient for the purpose for which it is being built, and the appearance would be simple and decent, but not intricate." Construction continued for several years. A three-story office building, residential two-story outbuildings, warehouses, weaving, carpentry, blacksmith and metalworking workshops were erected. There was a park behind the office. After the death of V.G. Orlov Usolye went to his grandson Vladimir Davydov. He decided to turn the village into his summer residence. It was decorated with new buildings, houses for the priest, grooms, volost administration, and gardeners. The latter looked after the landscape park, in which specially selected species of trees and shrubs from the Zhiguli forests grew. The count's Usolskaya estate still remains the most significant architectural monument of Samara Luka (see photo of the estate). The beauty of the Zhiguli Mountains, the legends with which they were covered, have long attracted Samara residents. Young people on boats walked along a route called the “Zhigulevskaya Around the World”. They rafted down the Volga to the village of Perevoloki. They dragged the boats to the Usa, which flows into the Volga, along which they returned to the city. The beauty of the journey was that the entire journey, about 200 kilometers, passed along the rivers. Usually the trip took 7–10 days, depending on the weather. And each of them brought travelers a lot of joy and thoughts about the past. Already near the Mordovian village of Shelekhmet in the ridge of the Zhiguli Mountains, the Visly Stone and Mount Osh-Pando-Ner (translated from Mordovian as “city-mountain-cape”) attract attention, on the top of which the remains of an ancient fortification of the 10th - 12th centuries are preserved. There is a legend that In ancient times, the Mordovian queen Anna-Pater lived in an impregnable fortress on the mountain. The kind and fair queen was very loved by her peaceful farmers. But one day, when she and her retinue descended into the valley, her enemies waylaid her, killed her retinue, and killed Anna herself. Behind the villages of Vinnovka and Osinovka there is the village of Ermakovo, the inhabitants of which believe that their ancestors saw and knew the noble chieftain, and on Mount Lbishche his camp was located. This mountain is almost vertical on the Volga side, there is no vegetation. the head of a hook-nosed giant, concentrated and gloomy. Archaeologists call the settlement on Lbische one of the most important historical sites of Samara Luka. Naturalists claim that it is a very valuable natural monument, because it is made of dolomites and limestones formed about 250 million years ago. And botanists found plants on the mountain typical of virgin steppes. Near the village of Ermakovo, another monument is clearly visible from the Volga - a chapel with a large cross. Stone steps lead to it from the shore. Port Arthur defender A.N. is buried here. Lyupov. The staff captain, who was sick with tuberculosis, resigned and in 1911 decided to settle near the village of Ermakovo and engage in agriculture. One autumn night he was killed by robbers. In 1914, his brother erected a chapel at the burial site and described his life’s journey on the cross. After visiting Mount Lbishche, the travelers continued their journey past the villages of Mordovo, Koltsovo, Brusyany and Malaya Ryazan. In Brusyany or Malaya Ryazan they always made a stop to purchase sharpening stones. The residents of these villages made them from drainage sandstone mined in ravines. They supplied their products not only to the Volga cities, but also to Moscow. Near the village of Malaya Ryazan, founded in 1770, the coastal slopes are filled with cracks and depressions. Red ducks, similar to swans, make nests in them. They arrive on the Volga in May and return to the Caspian in August. Below the village, the Volga bank is rocky, cut by ravines and somewhat reminiscent of the remains of an ancient fortress wall. Here is the cave of Stepan Razin. From the river, the entrance to it is hidden by thickets of thorny hawthorn. You can enter it only along a goat path from the Samarskaya Luka. The cave has a large hall 4 meters wide and 20 meters long. Its height in previous years reached 4–5 meters. Niches and cracks are visible on both sides of the hall. Legend has it that the Volga Cossack more than once took refuge in the cave, raided merchants, and even wanted to break through an underground passage from here to the Molodetsky Kurgan. In the village of Perevoloki, travelers ferried boats on carts to the picturesque Usa River. At the beginning of the twentieth century, its description was made by the Samara writer S.G. Wanderer. “... the Usa River still retains its former predatory appearance: it flows in the Zhiguli wilds, between rocks and gorges, wild, deserted, now disappearing into the forest, now suddenly appearing again, now wide and calm, now like a stormy stream rushing along the jagged rapids. Its high steep banks are covered with an old pine forest, and human habitation is never found anywhere. And it’s quiet all around when you sail along it on a shuttle with an oblique Volga sail. The places here are all reserved, the forests are dense. And the mountains overgrown with forest stand as wild as hundreds of years ago... Everything around is covered in a poetic song, a hoary legend... The shadows of the distant past live here.” There are no villages along the banks of the Usa. At its confluence with the Volga, the Usinsky Kurgan rises on the right hand. The 60-meter-tall, flat-topped stone wall is sometimes called "The Flatbread". It is impossible to approach the mound, so in bad weather people sometimes died here. Legend has it that Stepan Razin’s treasure is buried on the slopes of the mountain: two buckets of gold to the very top. And those buckets have scrap iron on top. If you want to take the treasure, then the crowbar must not be moved. People did not begin to tear off the ataman’s treasure - they were afraid to move the crowbar, which was enchanted. Not far from the Usinsky Kurgan, but already on the Volga, stands the Molodetsky Kurgan, from which the ridge of the Zhiguli Mountains begins. It was the Volga that met him on its way and, unable to overcome it, turned east, forming a sharp bend - the Samara Luka. The Molodetsky Kurgan attracted the attention of all travelers. Jan Streis, Peter Pallas, Ivan Lepekhin climbed it. From Usa, a narrow path leads to its top. And few people did not express a desire to climb it in order to get the opportunity to immediately see both the expanse of the Volga and the panorama of Usa from a height of two hundred meters. Devya Mountain, inaccessible from the Volga, pressed against the mound. And again the legends. Rumor has it that Stepan Razin buried his golden pipe on the Tsarev Kurgan. Since then, you can often see smoke above the top. The ataman's pipe is smoking. And the Maiden Mountain is called so because the red maiden threw her lover from it into the river for treason. And at dawn she rushed into the Volga. “Since then, at dawn, once a year on this night, all you can hear is a girl crying, wailing, on Devya Mountain...” People also said differently. One hunter became an ataman and cheated on his fiancée Daritsa with a beautiful merchant's wife. Daritsa threw the traitor into the Volga, and then she herself threw herself into the waters of the river. Atman became the Molodetsky Kurgan, Daritsa became the Devya Mountain. Having passed the Molodetsky Kurgan, the travelers sailed past the Apple Ravine, which received its name from the wild apple trees growing here in large numbers. Then they met with the village of Morkvashi, founded by the Bulgars in the 13th century, and Bald Mountain, the white limestone ridge of which is almost devoid of any vegetation. And then they found themselves at the Zhiguli Gate, the narrowest place of the Volga, constrained by Sulfur Mountain and Mount Tip-Tyav, the highest point of the Sokoli Mountains, which stretch along the left bank to Samara. The very name Sulfur Mountain suggests that its depths contain sulfur. Here it was mined by order of Peter I for military needs. Factory town P.S. Pallas found it already abandoned. Most of the houses were destroyed, empty, and only 12 huts were inhabited by the breeder's serfs. Hundreds of years have passed since then, but on the ridge of the mountain among the dense forest you can still find traces of mining workings - square wells. Four kilometers from Morkvasha, among rocky shores devoid of vegetation, stands the Sheludyak cliff. According to legend, an associate of Stepan Razin rushed from its top into the Volga, surrounded by enemies. On the way to the village of Shiryaevo (Shiryaevsky Gully), travelers were greeted by the Volga meadows: Bakhilova, Solnechnaya, Lipovaya - wonderful places to relax. And the most important attraction in the vicinity of the village are the adits. They were pierced at the beginning of the 20th century to extract stone. Their square entrances are located on the slopes of the Popova and Monastyrskaya mountains. The work was carried out in a closed manner, using small explosions. Only then were the limestone blocks broken up with sledgehammers and transported on rails to the surface on trolleys. Zhigulevsky stone was used for paving Samara streets. The merchant Vanyushin also had a lime plant here, the chimney of which was blown up only in the Soviet years. The adits, which still attract tourists to this day, are favored by 12 species of bats. Four species: the common long-eared bat, the northern bat, the pond and water bats - they spend the winter in them. On the way to Samara, travelers met Mount Camel, Gavrilov Glade, after which the Volga retreated from the Zhiguli Mountains, in the coastal part of which were the villages of Podgory and Vypolzovo. Further, only the Sokoly Mountains with Lysaya Gora, Koptev and Studeny ravines, and Barboshina Polyana, also the site of the once famous chieftain, were of interest. This is already a dacha area of ​​Samara. In recent years, city neighborhoods have been rapidly moving here. In the 20th century, Samara Luka changed a lot. In 1906, the peasants of Usolye destroyed the master's estate and destroyed the glass tower-light, built by the count on Karaulnoy Gora. They said that on some days you could see the city of Simbirsk from it. In 1918, the people's army of KOMUCH marched along the Samara Luka, and then the Red Army. In the spring of 1919, a peasant uprising broke out on Samarskaya Luka, which became known as the “chapanny” uprising. Commander of the IV Army of the Eastern Front M.V. Frunze reported to V.I. Lenin, that it was held under the slogans: “Long live Soviet power on the platform of the October Revolution! Down with the communists and the commune! Down with the Jews!” The rebels captured many villages of Samara Luka, Stavropol, and planned to capture Samara and Syzran, but were defeated. Both sides showed extreme cruelty towards each other. According to incomplete data, during the suppression of the armed uprising, at least 1000 “rebels” were killed, over 600 were shot, and the village of Usinskoye was “completely burned.” Over time, stone mining was moved to Mogutova Mountain and was carried out using open-pit mining. On Samarskaya Luka, drillers have been looking for oil for a long time. And in 1944 it was found in the Yablonevoy ravine in the Devonian strata. Oil derricks went up in Zhiguli and pumping machines appeared. The Zhigulevsky Nature Reserve, organized in 1927, was closed and reopened several times, its territory was reduced and increased. The construction of the Zhigulevskaya hydroelectric power station led to the formation of the Kuibyshev reservoir, and the Usa River in its lower reaches became the Usinsk Bay. And the Volga itself in the Kuibyshev area is part of the Saratov reservoir. And yet, and yet the Zhigulevskaya circumnavigation has not disappeared anywhere. This water route gained even greater popularity in the 60s. It had not only educational value, but also acquired ideological overtones. How, in his youth, with friends in the Samara Marxist circle, the founder of the world’s first socialist state, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, traveled on the Zhigulevskaya circumnavigation boat on the boat “Nymph”. A. Belyakov spoke about this in his book “The Youth of the Leader”. The book was fiction, but no one noticed (or did not want to notice). Moreover, the author named real people in it. Thus was born another myth, of which there were many in Soviet history. And they believed in him. They believed so much that in the village of Ekaterinovka, Bezenchuk district, founded, by the way, by one of the Orlov brothers, they found a place on the Bezenchuk river where the Marxist boat moored, and a house in which young Lenin talked with the local merchant P. Nechaev. And a memorial plaque was installed on that house. In 1965, the Kuibyshev book publishing house published a book by local historian Alexander Vasilyevich Sobolev “Zhigulevskaya Around the World” with a circulation of 30,000, unthinkable for this type of literature. The regional tourism council took upon itself the organization of groups of tourists and sending them with instructors on the route. Often such groups included local performers from the first tourist song festivals named after Valery Grushin. And every week several dozen young people set out on rowing yawls. The organ of the Kuibyshev regional committee of the CPSU, the newspaper "Volzhskaya Kommuna", twice equipped expeditions of journalists from the regional center on the boat "Nymph-2" along the route of the Zhigulevskaya circumnavigation. They talked about the beauties of nature, industrial facilities: the Mezhdurechensky timber transshipment plant, oil fields, the Zhigulevsky building materials plant, which supplies the whole country with cement and slate. Of course, about the Volzhskaya HPP named after V.I. Lenin, the Kuibyshev Reservoir, the new cities of Zhigulevsk, Tolyatti, the new ancient villages of Samara Luka... Time flies quickly, rapidly. The Khrushchev thaw has passed, and the Brezhnev era has come to an end. The Grushinsky festival increasingly turned into a youth get-together. The Zhiguli circumnavigation turned out to be forgotten again. Gorbachev's perestroika arrived, in which everyone initially believed and perked up. But already at the end of the 80s it became more and more obvious that perestroika was being talked about, talked about. In 1990, the Kuibyshev book publishing house released the first and, it seems, the last literary and journalistic collection entitled “The Voice of the Samara Land.” It also included an article by Vladimir Kazarin “On the Sidelines.” It talked about the villages of Samarskaya Luka. And today, fifteen years later, I am not ashamed to reproduce it. 1773 By Senate decree of July 22, Samara became a city without a district. It was excluded from the Kazan province and included in the Orenburg province. The Samara district was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Syzran voivodeship office. On December 24, a detachment of Pugachevites under the command of I.F. Arapova entered Samara without a fight. But a few days later the rebels were defeated by approaching troops. Residents of the city who greeted the rebels with icons and prayer singing were flogged. Gavrila Romanovich Derzhavin took part in the suppression of the Pugachevites’ speech and the inquiry. Apparently, as punishment, the city of Samara, with the rights of a settlement, was subordinated to the district city of Stavropol.

Located in the Middle Volga, the bend of the great Russian river, the northern part of which is occupied by the Zhiguli Mountains, is considered by ufologists around the world to be one of the points on the map of Russia, where unusual and in many ways mysterious processes manifest themselves tens of times more often than in other areas of the planet. However, among the old-timers of this region, various kinds of secrets no longer cause surprise.

Local tales and epics abound with the most incredible miracles, and it is not surprising that Samara researchers of their native language began recording them back in the 19th century. At the same time, folklorists even then noted that although some of the Zhiguli folk legends have something in common with the Ural, Bashkir, Mordovian and Tatar tales, most of them have no analogues in the oral folk art of the peoples of all European Russia.

Particularly interesting is the collective character from these legends - the so-called UNDERGROUND ELDERS. According to legends, this is a mysterious caste of hermits who live in caves unknown to the human eye and have hidden knowledge, as well as amazing abilities. Outwardly, they look like handsome gray-haired old men who can unexpectedly appear and disappear right before the eyes of a lonely traveler. There is information that legends about the same elders can be found not only in Zhiguli, but also in a number of other places in Russia, which are among the so-called “geographical points with increased anomaly.”

According to many testimonies, underground elders from different regions of our country constantly communicate with each other. This is how, for example, these mysterious underground hermits are described in the novel by P.I. Melnikov (Andrey Pechersky) “In the forests”: “The Kirillov Mountains part... Leopard-shaped elders come out, bow to the navigators at the waist, ask to take their bow, kiss in absentia to the brothers of the Zhiguli Mountains...” It is worth adding that the Kirillov Mountains are located in the Nizhny Novgorod region, near the holy LAKE SVETLOYAR, which is also considered one of the most pronounced anomalous zones in Russia.

In all legends, mysterious elders act as guardians of peace in the area under their care. At the same time, hermits strive to preserve the local nature intact, and sometimes come to the aid of victims of attacks by robbers or unjustly offended people. However, it also happens that the elders go out “to the people” to convey some important information, in their opinion. These are not necessarily predictions about some great and tragic events, although there is evidence that, for example, they informed people about the coming First and Second World Wars. Sometimes elders provide the world with very “ordinary” information, usually of a moral or even environmental nature.
There is one interesting fact that can also be compared with reports of underground hermits. In the guidebook of the Kuibyshev author A. Sobolev “Zhigulevskaya Around the World”, published back in 1965, there are the following lines: “In the area of ​​​​the village of Perevoloki, at the end of the 19th century, caves were discovered, the entrances to which had the semblance of doors. Caves with windows, niches in the walls, and a vaulted ceiling.

Scientists from the Samara non-governmental research organization “Avesta” have been studying anomalous phenomena that are regularly observed in the vicinity of the Zhiguli Mountains for about three decades. Strange as it may seem, researchers regularly find an explanation for such phenomena in... local folklore.

How did Samara Luka come into being?

By now, Avesta scientists have already collected a lot of evidence for the original hypothesis, the essence of which is as follows. The steep bend, located in the middle reaches of the Volga and called the Samara Luka, owes its appearance to... the engineering activity of an alien intelligence.

Here is what the president of Avesta, engineer Igor Pavlovich, says about this:
- Have you ever thought about such a geographical riddle: why did the Volga River, in its middle course, suddenly need to go around the small (only about a hundred kilometers long) Zhiguli mountain range? It would seem that, in accordance with the laws of physics, river waters, instead of creating this kind of “loops,” should shorten their path and head east of the Zhiguli, along the places where the course of the Usa River now passes. But no - this mountain range, tiny by geographical standards, composed of soft limestones and dolomites, has been demonstrating unprecedented resistance to the Volga waters flowing into it every second for millions of years now...

The Avestans suggest that in the depths of the Zhiguli Mountains, at great depths, a certain technical device, at one time created by an ancient supercivilization, has been working for many millions of years. This device creates a kind of force field around itself, which precisely prevents the flow of water flows through the mountain range. That is why the Volga, throughout all these millions of years, has been forced to go around the Zhiguli Mountains, making a strange bend in the form of a semicircle in its middle course, which is now called the Samara Luka.

Most likely, this hypothetical geomachine is a kind of cluster of force fields - electromagnetic, gravitational, biological or others not yet known to us. It is these fields that have been helping the Zhiguli limestones (which, as is known, are very susceptible to erosion by water) for more than ten million years, keep the ancient river bed in a stable position, preventing even a slight displacement.

The question arises: why does a hypothetical extraterrestrial civilization need all this? Apparently, in order for the underground energy complex to operate uninterruptedly for millions of years, feeding the extra-spatial channel connecting their world with the earth's surface. Such a channel can play the role of a kind of television camera through which a distant civilization sees everything that happens on our planet. Proof of this is the strange mirages that are regularly observed in the sky over Samara Luka, as well as over some other points on our planet.

Geological confirmation

Igor Pavlovich’s words are commented on by Sergei Markelov, associate professor of Samara Aerospace University, candidate of technical sciences, analyst of the Avesta group.

Reading an article about the geological structure of the Volga-Ural region in one of the scientific collections published by Moscow State University in 1962, I discovered a strange diagram in it. It depicted a cross-section of the earth's layers in the Samara Luka area, which turned out to be very similar to the contours of... a giant capacitor! Everyone can easily remember from a school physics course how this electrical device works: an electric charge accumulates between parallel metal plates, and its magnitude is limited only by the breakdown strength of the gasket between the plates.

In the earth's crust under Samarskaya Luka, the role of such plates is played by parallel electrically conductive layers, between which there are limestones and dolomites. The dimensions of this capacitor are amazing - its length is about 70 kilometers! In fact, here we see the material embodiment of the same energy geomachine that Igor Pavlovich spoke about above.

As calculations show, between the plates of the “Zhiguli capacitor” it can
an electric field with gigantic intensity parameters exists for a long time. If necessary, the electric charge can be easily used for a variety of purposes. By the way, as can be seen from the design of this gigantic “device”, not a single sensor located outside the “storage* will be able to show the presence of electricity deep in the earth’s crust in this area.

Geological data suggest that the very existence of such a colossal underground capacitor is a unique phenomenon in the crust of our planet. None of the venerable geologists has ever encountered such a structure of earth layers. One can, of course, talk about the natural origin of this unique geological object, but with equal probability one can talk about the role of an unknown mind in its emergence.

According to the hypothesis put forward, the activity of a hypothetical underground geomachine in the Zhiguli Mountains region, apparently, causes mysterious phenomena in these places - chronomirages. Local peasants observed ghostly cities, castles in the air and flying islands in the skies hundreds of years ago, and during this time numerous epics and legends were based on them. Here is one such description, from the Avesta collection:

“A certain luminous square suddenly appeared on the clouds, and inside it appeared an image of a stepped pyramid. She stood on some kind of plateau that dropped steeply down. Below the mountain there was a valley crossed by a river. In this case, the line of sight was inclined to the valley plane by approximately 15 degrees. The impression was that the valley, river and pyramid were observed from an airplane flying at an altitude of 8-10 kilometers.”

The most famous of these phenomena is the mirage of the Peaceful City, which is most often reported by tourists vacationing near the Molodetsky and Usinsky mounds. Other ghosts from the same series are the Fortress of Five Moons, the White Church, Fata Morgana and others. These anomalies are sometimes observed among the vast lake labyrinths that stretch between the villages of Mordovo and Brusyany, in the very south of Samara Luka. According to observers, here at dawn a ghostly city can suddenly appear in front of an astonished traveler, only to disappear again after a minute or two.

Traces of a Vanished People

By all indications, the hypothetical alien intelligence in its activities on our planet relied on a certain terrestrial civilization, which, in exchange for cooperation, received from the aliens technical knowledge incredible at that time and unprecedented materials, traces of which archaeologists regularly find in the most unexpected places. What exactly this cooperation was and why extraterrestrial intelligence needed it, researchers have yet to unravel.

However, the aliens, as it turns out, were not always able to help their earthly partners. Thus, from ancient legends it follows that the peninsula of Samara Luka, surrounded by water on almost all sides, several thousand years ago became the last stronghold of a certain great race of fire worshipers. Pressed by hostile tribes, these people eventually reached the Zhiguli mountain range, where they were able to reliably hide from persecution in inaccessible caves and mountain gorges. The strange underground people, references to which can be found in Zhiguli legends and traditions, apparently represented the remnants of that very great ancient race, which for thousands of years faithfully served the alien intelligence.

Information about a mysterious civilization, very developed for its time and completely unexpectedly disappeared from the face of the earth, is quite consistent with the existence in the Southern Urals, on the territory of the modern Chelyabinsk region, of the hypothetical city of Arkaim, which, apparently, was the largest cultural and economic center of this ancient people . For example, the Arkaim people knew metallurgical production well thousands of years ago, which indicates a high level of their knowledge.

According to archaeological data, in the second millennium BC, Arkaim, for an as yet unknown reason, literally ceased to exist in one day. Following this, the mysterious civilization that gave birth to it very quickly disappeared from the vastness of the East European Plain. It is the remnants of these fire-worshipping tribes that are believed to have taken refuge in the caves of Samarskaya Luka in order to subsequently found that same underground race here. However, this is again just a hypothesis.







The Volga is "boiling"





















 

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