Burials in Harbin, Russian section of Maksimov. History and us

BOOK OF THE LIVING

With the arrival of spring, we traditionally visit cemeteries. This is connected both with the church calendar (Easter days, Trinity Saturday), and simply with the change of season. In winter, it happens that there are such snowdrifts that you can’t even reach the fence. And then the snow has finally melted, and everything on the graves of loved ones needs to be cleaned up, trimmed, and painted. So it turns out that in Russia, the “cemetery season” opens at the very time of the revival of nature, when everything wakes up from winter hibernation. And this is probably not accidental. For an Orthodox person, a cemetery is a place of future resurrection, a future new life. An Orthodox Christian, unlike a pagan, will never call this place a necropolis, that is, a “city of the dead.” The Russian word cemetery is from the word “put”, “treasure”. The dead are not buried here, but rather laid there, awaiting resurrection. And they weren’t even laid, but, to be precise, “buried”, that is, hidden, stored. And it is no coincidence that this place has been called a graveyard since ancient times. They don't visit the dead. But only to the living...

Indeed, when I visited the cemetery, more than once I felt like I was visiting. Surrounded by names and photographs of strangers. You walk between the graves and get to know them. It's a strange feeling. And recently I came across an unusual book - an album of photographs depicting tombstones and brief information about who is buried here. It would seem that it is not such an exciting read. But... I couldn’t tear myself away! People I had never known appeared before my eyes as if they were alive.

This book is unique. It was published last year in Australia by a Russian emigrant using her savings and donations. Before this, letters with the following content were sent to different parts of the world: “Gentlemen! Here is a list of people who were once buried in Harbin (China) in various cemeteries. Before the demolition of their graves, Mr. Miroshnichenko managed to photograph the monuments of 593 graves. His daughter Tatyana, who now lives in Melbourne, decided to publish a book in memory of all Harbin residents.” These Russian cemeteries were indeed destroyed by the Chinese during the Cultural Revolution. But the names of those buried on them have not sunk into oblivion. Over the course of several years, many others were added to the 593 photographs - Russian Harbin residents, scattered around the world, responded to this call. Among them was Syktyvkar resident L.P. Markizov, who showed me this book.

From correspondence with L.P. Markizov: “Australia, Melbourne, 02/14/2000 Hello, dear Leonid Pavlovich! I will be Tanya Zhilevich (Miroshnichenko), daughter of Vitaly Afanasyevich, who died in Melbourne in 1997. When my husband and I helped sort through dad's things, we found the films that dad had shot before 1968. The films lasted almost 40 years. It is very difficult to find relatives from Harbin. People have dispersed all over the world. New generations know little about their ancestors. I was 10 and a half years old when I left Harbin with my brothers and parents...

It's a pity that there is no dad. He knew the people in Harbin well. This means that the films are destined to be in my hands... My husband had to put them in order, because... they became covered with white powder and began to deteriorate a little.”

“03/25/2000. As a girl, I visited cemeteries with my parents in Harbin many times. Everything was different there. The cemetery was not as cold as ours here. There were greenery and warm people with a soul... I forgot to write - for my surprise and surprise, when I was in Sydney, Vladyka Hilarion saw my memorial book, he approved it and blessed its publication. Happy Easter!”

It is impossible to read these letters from a Russian woman, abandoned by fate to distant Australia, without emotion. In between times, she writes about her relatives: about her son Yura, who helped create a memory book on the computer; about a 77-year-old mother who finds it increasingly difficult to stand in church during long services; about the fact that for the first time in her life she had to bake Easter cakes - her mother used to do this. She writes about how Christmas was celebrated before that. “If we want to see snow in winter, we have to go far into the mountains to see it.”

She also shared her doubts. One day she received a letter from Russia from a woman. “She saw her father’s grave for the first time when she received a photo card from me. She left Harbin for her homeland in 1954, and her father died in Harbin in 1955. In the letter she writes that she cried for a couple of days. I don't know if I'm doing a good job collecting my memory book. A lot of times I reveal to people their wounds and past memories. But I couldn’t throw away my dad’s films either. The graves have already been treated cruelly once and razed to the ground.”

And here is a very recent letter: “02/14/2001 The days flew by quickly again. I had to fly to Sydney again because of my completed long-awaited book. In Sydney they tried to gather past Harbin residents up to the archbishop, Vladyka Hilarion, in the Russian Club. It was unexpected to meet such a warm welcome, a huge bouquet of flowers, which had to be carried with honor back on the plane to Melbourne... Soon your winter-winter will end, and a lovely spring will come. The birds will sing with joy and the trees will gain life in their leaves. And I’ll watch from the window as our birch tree loses its leaves... It’s autumn here.” In the letter, Tatyana Vitalievna included a photograph of her house in Melbourne: under its windows, next to neatly trimmed exotic bushes, a huge, spreading Russian birch tree grew higher than the roof.

“The whole life of the people who lived in Harbin was imbued with churchliness,” recalls Tatyana Vitalievna. “Numerous churches were overcrowded, new ones were being built...” It’s amazing: in “greater Russia” the persecution of the Church is in full swing, and here, on the corner of Skvoznaya and Vodoprovodnaya streets, the people of Harbin are building a wonderful temple. In the year 32 it was consecrated in the name of Sophia, the Wisdom of God. His parish had its own charitable institution, the Sofia Parish Funeral Home, thanks to which the homeless or poor dead were buried with dignity, in compliance with Orthodox customs .

Tatyana Vitalievna recalls: “All the priests from all over Manchuria came here to Radonitsa. The remembrance of the dead was a big day in Harbin. We decorated the graves of our relatives with flowers and willows. Funeral services were served. Being in the cemetery, I never felt a sense of fear; it seemed to me that the cemetery was a beautiful park...”

“The Assumption churchyard was huge, I can’t even say how many hectares,” Leonid Pavlovich Markizov comments on this photo. – These were the graves of the first Russian settlers who built the CER, and subsequent emigrants. Until the end of the 60s, old Russia still lived here. And then there was expulsion, we were literally uprooted from here - even the cemetery was destroyed. The Chinese lined the embankment of the Sungari River with slabs from Russian graves. Now the churchyard is a city park, and in the cemetery’s Assumption Church a museum has been set up with an exhibition of dried butterflies.”

For a long time, the rector of this temple was Rev. John Storozhev. The photograph shows him with his wife before he was ordained. He became a priest in 1912, surprising many: after all, Storozhev was then a famous, highly paid lawyer in the Urals. But the path of a worldly defender disappointed him. In 1927, on the day of his funeral, one Harbin high school student wrote in an essay: “He was an inspired speaker, a preacher of the teachings of Christ: he was known to Nicholas the Emperor, who was killed by the enemies of the Cross...” It is known that on the eve of the execution of the Royal Family, Father John served for her last liturgy.

The wife of Fr. Ioanna, M. Maria, a former talented artist and pianist who accompanied Chaliapin, was also buried at the Assumption Cemetery in 1941.

OURS IN CHINA

“Leonid Pavlovich,” I asked Markizov when he came to our editorial office, “it’s still not clear why the Chinese needed to destroy Russian cemeteries?” It seems that in the East they have always treated the dead with respect. And here is such fanaticism...

– In Japan, yes, there is a cult of ancestors. It's different in China. I think it comes from us, we taught them. In the 70s, I remember, I found myself in Vladivostok and went to the old city cemetery, where my mother’s ancestors should be. So, imagine, you can’t enter it - everything is overgrown with weeds, a completely abandoned place. This is who we are. In Georgia, when you come to a cemetery, it’s clean, like in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. But in our country people can be buried ten times in the same place. This is the Soviet attitude towards the dead.

Now we criticize Mao Zedong, the Chinese “cultural revolution”, and the Red Guards. And for some reason we forget that we brought them this ideology, that we are responsible for it. In the USSR, churches were destroyed, dance floors were set up on graveyards filled with asphalt - what can we expect from the Chinese if they are like that themselves?

Of course, this did not start immediately in China. Let me give you an example with one grave. In 1920, the famous General Kappel, Kolchak’s closest associate, was buried in Harbin...

During the civil war he performed simply miracles: with a group of volunteers he destroyed Red troops five times larger. He did not shoot prisoners, his own Russians, but released them unarmed. Because of his fame and victories, Trotsky even declared that “the revolution is in danger.” But during the tragic Ice Campaign, Kappel died, his body was transported from Chita to Harbin. I remember his grave well - a cross with a crown of thorns. Such a backstory.

The year 1945 comes. Soviet troops enter China. So what? “Red” soldiers, Marshals Meretskov, Malinovsky, Vasilevsky come to the grave of the “knight of the white dream” and take off their hats in front of him, saying: “Kappel - that’s where he is.” This is how it happened, the people of Harbin testify to this. It never occurred to anyone to demolish this monument. But in 1955, some employee of the Soviet consulate came here and ordered: “Remove.” The Chinese broke the monument, its remains lay for some time under the fence. And soon, having learned, the Chinese demolished the entire Russian cemetery.

– This was in Soviet times...

– Do you think we have learned anything over the past 10 years? Not long ago we were discussing whether it was worth setting up cemeteries for German soldiers on our land, since they were invaders, enemies. Well, enemies, what of this? We must all respect the dead, otherwise what kind of cultured people are we?

I remember in the summer of 1938, after graduating from the Harbin Polytechnic Institute, I went on vacation to the Yellow Sea in the city of Dalniy (Dalian). Just at this time, battles were taking place near Lake Khasan, and news came that ours had defeated the Japanese there. A lot of us, Russian boys and girls, gathered, and an idea arose: together we would visit the memorial sites of Port Arthur associated with the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. We took the local train and we were already there.

Let me remind you that all of Manchuria, along with Harbin and Port Arthur, was then under Japanese rule. But none of the Japanese stopped us. Against. We see, at the station they sell Japanese postcards, and on them... scenes of Russian heroism during the defense of Port Arthur. In the Russian fortress, at the site of the death of General Kondratenko, there is an obelisk with a respectful inscription in Japanese. In the cemetery there are well-kept graves of 18,873 Russian soldiers who died here, and an Orthodox church. It turns out that the Japanese pay salaries to both our priest and the cemetery staff. There are also two Orthodox chapels - one of them was built by the Japanese. We go into the museum: the first hall - the military glory of Russia, paintings of the Battle of Poltava, the Battle of Borodino, the defense of Sevastopol, and so on. The second hall is dedicated to the defense of Port Arthur. Among the exhibits are the greatcoat of Admiral Makarov and the helmet of the artist Vereshchagin. The Japanese raised the battleship on which they died from the bottom of the sea, buried their bodies with honor, and placed their personal belongings in a museum. Thus, by respecting the enemy, the Japanese exalted their victory. Although it is known that their victory was not entirely deserved. The fortress could still be defended; Kondratenko would not have surrendered it. But General Stoessel surrendered, then he was tried for this by a military court.

– On the eve of the canonization of Nicholas II, her opponents accused the Tsar of starting this war. Like, why do we need some kind of Port Arthur?

- Why is this so?! This was the only Russian ice-free port.

- Well, we had ports on the Black Sea.

“They are under the control of Turkey, as soon as the Turks close the Bosphorus Strait, the need for these ports immediately disappears. It is no coincidence that Russia, trying to take possession of the key to the Black Sea, access to the Mediterranean Sea, fought so much with the Turks. How much effort was spent. But in the Far East everything was resolved peacefully. The Chinese gave us a long-term lease of both Port Arthur and the territory around the railway that connected this port with Chita and the freezing port of Vladivostok. This was more profitable for the Chinese than, for example, giving Hong Kong to the British: we built a road across all of Manchuria, provided work over a vast territory, and enriched the region. In turn, with access to Port Arthur, the entire Russian Far East developed economically. Its capital was Harbin, built by the Russians, the junction station of the Chinese Eastern Railway. This was our state territory, and when the Japanese attacked, we had to defend it.

Formally, this land until recently belonged to Russia, because the tsarist government entered into an agreement for a period until 2003...

Leonid Pavlovich spoke about life in Harbin during his youth. Marvelous! Imagine that in tsarist Russia there was no revolution, no upheavals - naturally it continued to live and develop freely after the 17th year until... the 60s. This is exactly what Harbin was like with its churches, gymnasiums, institutes, newspapers, magazines, football and hockey teams, etc. This experience of Russian life is still not in demand.

To be continued

Victor Rylsky

A Russian cemetery in the Harbin suburb of Huangshan, which translated from Chinese means Yellow Mountains. Our compatriots are buried here. They came to China for various reasons, many were born here and died here.
I read the inscription on one of the monuments: “Mikhail Mikhailovich Myatov. Born November 5, 1912, died July 27, 2000.”
We met Mikhail Mikhailovich, the head of the Russian diaspora in Harbin, in 1997.
As a seven-year-old child in 1919, he, along with his father, mother and five brothers, came here from Samara. Their path first lay in Siberia, where the head of a large family, the Samara merchant Mikhail Myatov, fled from the civil war, when the city was changing hands and his hard-earned capital was plundered. It was necessary to save the family. The war caught up with them in Siberia. Then we moved to Transbaikalia. From there to Manzhouli station and along the Chinese Eastern Railway to Harbin.
From this city the younger Myatov left to study in Europe, in the Belgian city of Liege. He returned from there, having learned three languages, received a managerial qualification, and began working in a Russian-Danish company producing perfumes.
Mikhail Mikhailovich, unlike his brothers, survived the occupation of Manchuria by Japan, the arrival of the Soviet army in 1945, and the cultural revolution in China. Why unlike brothers? Because immediately upon arrival in Harbin, they began to think about which country to choose for permanent residence, and soon left for Australia and the USA. Of the entire large Myatov family, only Mikhail Mikhailovich remained in this city to the end, although he wanted to end his life’s journey in one of the monasteries in Alaska. He had an invitation, but illness and old age prevented the trip.
Mikhail Mikhailovich is one of those representatives of the Russian intelligentsia, with whose departure you acutely feel what kind of people Russia has lost.
He had never been to Soviet or new Russia, although he remained a citizen all his life. Russian citizenship did not give him the right to receive a pension from the Chinese authorities, and the Russian authorities did not care about some old man who carefully retained his citizenship, and with the fall of the Russian Empire, citizenship of the USSR and Russia.
Offers to visit his historical homeland came from private individuals, but due to fears that after crossing the Chinese-Russian border he would be deprived of the right to return to China, this undertaking seemed risky. In addition, he did not know modern Russia and was afraid of being disappointed.
Vladimir Alekseevich Zinchenko is buried next to Mikhail Mikhailovich. Died May 7, 2002. Born in 1936 in Harbin. He is from the generation born in this city. The son of army private Kolchak and a refugee from Primorye. The future mother of Vladimir Alekseevich, a seventeen-year-old girl, followed her wounded brother with the retreating white troops, walked with the convoy through Primorye, Korea and ended up in Harbin. Vladimir Alekseevich’s father, originally from the Urals, took part in the famous Ice Campaign across Lake Baikal with the remnants of Kolchak’s defeated army and came to Harbin. My father died in May 1944, before the arrival of the Soviet army, otherwise he would have been transported to the USSR, and there he would have received 25 years in the camps or would have been shot, as happened with every third Russian resident of Harbin. My son has never been to Russia either.
Just two names. Meanwhile, hundreds of graves were moved here in 1957 from the territory of a large Russian cemetery, where about one hundred thousand Russians were buried. The cemetery turned out to be, as it happens, in the center of the city. The Chinese authorities did not dare to build anything in its place, but they created a cultural and recreation park on its territory. A cultural revolution was beginning in China, and the Russian trace had to be erased from the appearance of the city, from the names of streets and squares, from the architecture of the city.
The remains of relatives and friends could be transferred either by very wealthy Russian people, or by relatives born from mixed marriages. But since Russian men did not have the habit of marrying Chinese women, preferring to see them among the servants, and Russian women who married Chinese at that time tried not to show off their Russianness, which was dangerous, most of the Russians left Harbin before the start of cultural revolution, there was no one to take special care of the remains.
But lie, lie here, under gravestones with already erased names, witnesses to the former glory of the Russian Empire, when the territory called Manchuria already had the simple Russian name of Yellow Russia, witnesses to the greatest adventure of the Minister of Finance, and then Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers Sergei Yulievich Witte with the construction of the Chinese -Eastern Railway. He found 500 million rubles of free cash in the Russian treasury (a huge sum at that time) for the construction of a highway that had no analogues in the speed of construction and the boldness of engineering solutions. And in order to prevent Russia’s Western partners, Great Britain and France, from suspecting its expansionist intentions, in the summer days of 1896, at the celebrations marking the coronation of the new Russian Emperor Nicholas II, an agreement was signed with the special ambassador of China, Li Hongzhang, on the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway, and a little earlier, an alliance treaty in connection with Japan’s attack on China and the seizure of part of its territory. We were allies with China. And to protect the yet non-existent road, the same year, a fifty-thousandth Russian army corps set off across the ocean, a thousand miles from Harbin, to become a barrier from the Japanese on the ice-free Yellow Sea in the fortress city of Port Arthur and the port of Dalny founded by the Russians.
In October 2003, I, my colleagues and Chinese friends, were wandering around Dalian at night, and suddenly discovered a square surrounded by buildings built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. On the bronze tablets it was written in Russian that these buildings are protected by the state and the square used to bear the name of Nicholas II.
And around these buildings the thirty-forty-story giants of the new China traced the sky. Modern road junctions, expensive cars, restaurants and shops, fashionably dressed people, many eateries, private traders preparing food right on the street, a mixture of languages ​​and dialects. Everything testified to the special flavor of this seaside port city, where the Japanese, Canadians, Americans, Swedes, Finns found their place in the free economic zone, and only occasionally one could hear Russian speech.
Here, on the Liaodong Peninsula, washed on three sides by the Yellow Sea, Russian soldiers and sailors held the defense in 1904.
At the Russian cemetery in Harbin there is a monument to the commander and crew of the destroyer “Resolute”. Captain of the second rank, Prince Alexander Alexandrovich Korniliev and his heroes died during the defense of the Port Arthur fortress. Their bodies were transported to Harbin via the Chinese Eastern Railway. The funeral took place in a cemetery in the city center. The tetrahedral stele was crowned with a double-headed eagle, a symbol of the Russian Empire. With the arrival of the Soviet army in 1945, the command decided to restore order in such a delicate matter. An eagle was knocked down from the monument to sailors and a red star was erected, and to give greater credibility to the inviolability of Soviet power, the stele was decorated with the coat of arms of the Soviet Union, a kind of cemetery wreath. With such symbols, the remains of the sailors were transferred to a new cemetery in the Huangshan region. Only in 2003 the monument was restored to its original appearance.
Somewhere here, not even marked by a mound, lies the ashes of Lieutenant General Vladimir Oskarovich Kappel, one of the most talented tsarist generals, who received this title at just over thirty years of age. He, who died of wounds in Transbaikalia, was taken by soldiers all the way to Harbin. Meanwhile, Kappel, with the last hope for the success of the white movement, was waiting in Siberia for the already captured and betrayed admiral, the conqueror of the Arctic, the Supreme Ruler of Russia, Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak. He also visited Harbin during the formation of his army in 1918. The crazy commander, the great mystifier, a descendant of the Teutonic knights, Baron Ungern von Sternberg, who was striving for Tibet, disappeared along with his army in the Gobi Desert. The favorite of the Cossacks, Ataman Grigory Semenov, found refuge in Harbin. The other side won. It was all over.
General Kappel was buried with military honors under the walls of the Church of the Iveron Mother of God. And here the Soviet command - or rather, its political leadership - decided, in order to avoid turning the grave into a place of pilgrimage, to rebury his ashes in another place less accessible to citizens. This was done in secret, under the cover of darkness, and the grave was lost. According to another version, the Chinese, who was entrusted with the reburial, dug to the coffin of the general, put an Orthodox cross on it, which stood on the grave and again covered it with earth...
Here, in this cemetery, lie witnesses of the period when the railway, along with its personnel, became unnecessary to anyone. The tsarist government fell, but the new one had no time for the CER - according to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Bolsheviks brought the borders of the former Russian Empire to the borders of the Moscow appanage principality. The anarchy continued until 1924. The restlessness led to the fact that the flag of the French Republic was raised above the road administration building, which flew over the territory that belonged to Russia for a whole week.
Then Soviet specialists were sent to Harbin, and the tsarist ones were removed from work, and they dispersed to different countries. There was an emigration center in Shanghai under the flag of the International Red Cross and you could choose your country of residence. Those same specialists from old Russia who did not want to go to a foreign land began to be taken in batches to the USSR, shot and given prison sentences. Some were tried five or more times.
Then the Chinese Eastern Railway, as a sign of friendly disposition, or more simply for a guarantee of non-aggression against the USSR, was sold to Japan in 1935 to the government of Manchukuo Di Guo (read Japan). “Our proposal was another manifestation of Soviet love of peace,” said People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR M.M. Litvinov. “The Soviet Union wanted only one thing – to return... the cost of the road to its real owners.”
The right of way, as the corridor of the Chinese Eastern Railway was called, was a kind of state within a state in which there were laws, courts, administration, railway guards, a huge staff of Russian employees, starting with the road manager, General Dmitry Leonidovich Horvat, who issued his own money, announced before transfer of powers to Kolchak as the Supreme Ruler of Russia and ending with the switchman.
The concession with the Chinese government for the right of extraterritoriality of the right-of-way was formally concluded on behalf of the Russian-Asian Bank for the CER Society, a joint-stock enterprise of which a block of one thousand shares was in the hands of the Russian government.
The property of the CER in 1903 was determined by the enormous value of 375 million gold rubles. In addition to the road, the CER Society owned 20 steamships, piers, and river property: its Pacific flotilla was worth 11.5 million rubles. The CER had its own telegraph, hospitals, libraries, railway meetings
However, negotiations regarding the sale of the Chinese Eastern Railway, which began in May 1933 in Tokyo with the participation of Japan as an intermediary, soon reached a dead end. Japan, which did not contribute to their successful outcome, offered an extremely insignificant ransom amount for the journey - 50 million yen (20 million gold rubles)
The Soviet delegation initially offered Japan to acquire ownership of the CER for 250 million gold rubles, which at the exchange rate was equal to 625 million yen, then reduced the price to 200 million rubles and took a wait-and-see approach. The Japanese were in no hurry either. But when the imperturbable samurai ran out of patience, they made arrests on the Chinese Eastern Railway among responsible Soviet employees and threw them into prison. The Soviet delegation protested, stopped negotiations on the sale of the road and packed its bags.
Negotiations continued in February of the following year. The Soviet side again made concessions and instead of the original amount offered less than a third - 67.5 million rubles (200 million yen). Moreover, she agreed to receive half in money and half in goods. Japan passed over this proposal in silence and continued to introduce its own rules on the CER, knowing that the road was practically already in its hands. The Soviet government reduced the amount to 140 million yen and invited Japan to pay one third in money and the rest in goods.
A year and a half after the first Soviet offer, Japan finally agreed to purchase the CER for 140 million yen, not counting 30 million yen to pay compensation to dismissed CER employees.
The Soviet government, which did not take any part in the construction of the road, squandered it for literally pennies, believing that it had received a big political gain.
For more than ten years, the Japanese actually ruled the Chinese Eastern Railway, although formally the road was under the control of the government of Emperor Pu Yi.
In 1945, after the defeat of Japan, the CER was returned to the USSR. And seven years later, free of charge, with all the buildings, communications, buildings and structures, the road was handed over to the people's government of China. According to the 1903 agreement on Russian ownership of the CER on concession rights for a period of 80 years, the transfer was supposed to take place in 1983. It was supposed to be as big a celebration as Britain's handover of Hong Kong to China in 1998. The holiday didn't work out.

Engineer, the collar is unfastened.
Flask, carbine.
We'll build a new city here,
Let's call it Harbin.

This is how the poem by the best poet of the Far Eastern emigration in Harbin, Arseny Nesmelov (Mitropolsky), begins. The prototype of the survey engineer was Adam Szydłowski. The world-class engineer planned the city so competently that, having become six million (with a suburb of eight million), it continues to develop according to his plan. All new blocks and microdistricts fit into the project of old Harbin, designed to last hundreds of years.
Here, the future Minister of Railways, Prince Mikhail Khilkov, worked on the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway. As a laborer, he built railroads in America. And in China, his engineering thought reached heights unsurpassed in the world. Take his famous invention on the Greater Khingan, where the train is slowed down and speed is reduced by passing it through a triple loop.
Khilkov’s plans included continuing the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway through the Bering Strait to Alaska.
Arseny Nesmelov’s poem ends sadly and surprisingly presciently:

Dear city, proud and built,
There will be a day like this
What they won’t say is that it’s built
With your Russian hand...

We will forgive the author for the imperfection of the rhyme “built - built”. The former staff captain, a graduate of His Imperial Majesty's St. Petersburg Cadet Corps, was arrested in 1945 by SMERSH and died in the Grodekovo transit prison, one of the CER stations in Primorye. The same fate befell other poets and writers, artists and composers, architects and engineers in Harbin.
Two wings of the Russian emigration - western - Paris and eastern - Harbin. We know the West better. Until the end of the twentieth century, little was known about Harbin and the cultural heritage of its writers, musicians, artists, and architects. The Red Army did not enter Paris, although those undesirable to the Soviet regime, fighters against the Bolshevik regime, were found in Paris, Berlin and other cities, kidnapped and taken to the USSR to be shot in their historical homeland. Harbin is a special place. On October 17, 1945, the city commandant ordered all the intelligentsia, according to the lists, to gather in the building of the Railway Assembly, a kind of club, a house of culture for railway workers, accommodating about a thousand people. There they were arrested and transported to the USSR. Among those who did not manage to emigrate before the arrival of Soviet troops were Vsevolod Ivanov, Arseny Nesmelov, and Alfred Haydock.
Vsevolod Nikanorovich Ivanov once served as press secretary for Admiral Alexander Kolchak. He came to Harbin together with the participants of the “Great Ice March” - units of the White Army retreating from Siberia.
In Harbin Sun. N. Ivanov lived for almost a quarter of a century. China became not just a place of residence for Ivanov, it gave impetus to his self-awareness, confronted him with the most important problems of existence - beauty and faith, antiquity and modernity, art and citizenship. His philosophy was formed in China, and he himself, both as a person and as an artist, was largely determined by the country that opened up to him.
Lyrical and philosophical essays were devoted to China, its history and culture, relations with Russia and the West - “China in its own way”, “Culture and life of China”; poems - “Dragon”, “Chinese” and journalistic articles. For the USSR Embassy in China, he made a description of the country in 28 provinces. During the Soviet period, works of fiction were written about China: “Typhoon over the Yangtze”, “The Path to the Diamond Mountain”, “The Marshal’s Daughter”.
Vsevolod Nikanorovich Ivanov writes with great respect about the Chinese people, agriculture, and crafts; speaks with admiration of classical literature and art; tries to understand the uniqueness of the country and national character. But the main topic he constantly addresses is China and Russia. In 1947, he summarized some of his thoughts in “A Brief Note on Working with Asia.”
The note reflected the ideas of Eurasianism. Defining the problem, Ivanov writes: “You only have to look at the map to see that most of the Soviet Union is in Asia. Therefore, we can be interested in Asia, in its Asian problem and fate, even more thoroughly than we are interested in our native Slavophilism. We are historically and culturally connected to Asia.” The writer turns to the history of Russia in the 13th–15th centuries, writes about the Mongol yoke, which captured vast territories not only in Asia, but also in Europe. “It is quite clear that for false patriotic reasons, and most importantly because of the long-standing admiration for Europe, Russian society tried to forget about this difficult period of power. But Asia does not forget this - in every school in China you can see historical maps on the wall, which show the empire of the four khanates, and Moscow is there - within the border, subordinate to Beijing, the single Golden Capital."
Later, he writes, we left the great gateway to Asia and sat under the window to Europe. Meanwhile, England and then America went to Asia, and only this threat from the East forced the Russian government to reconsider its policy towards Asia. The settlement of Siberia began. In his historical novels “Black People”, “Empress Fike”, “Alexander Pushkin and His Time” Vs. N. Ivanov addresses precisely this period.
In his “Brief Note,” Ivanov writes about the role that Russia played in the development of the North of China – Manchuria. “Russian literature nowhere shows the enormous importance of the construction of the CER for China. We did it and we're not proud of it. In essence, by building a road and buying land with Russian gold, Russia brought to life the vast tracts of Manchuria, which until then had been a disastrous place.”
Wars of the twentieth century, according to Sun. N. Ivanova, these are wars for Asia. The 20th century is a struggle for influence in Asia. America and Europe have succeeded in this. What can Russia oppose to this policy? Ivanov notes several important points in Russia’s relations with Asia, or more precisely with China: firstly, it is necessary to recognize that Russia is an Asian state no less than a European one. That is, to recognize certain common aspects of our history. Therefore, we need a book on the commonality of Russian and Chinese history, we need a new book on the history of China, written for China. A Russian book about Chinese culture should be written. Expeditions to the country of ancient culture are needed. The Anglo-Saxons and Germans have been learning from China for a long time, but they don’t talk about it. This policy, according to Vs.N. Ivanov, will be a continuation of the original Russian policy.
N.K. Roerich, who, like Vs.N. Ivanov, tormented by “an ineradicable desire to do as much as possible for Russia,” wrote in the same 1947: “Vs.N. Ivanov is the one in Khabarovsk, capable, knows the East and Russian history, he is in place in the Far East and can correctly assess events.”
Sun.N. Ivanov returned to Russia in 1945. He was not brought to court during his “white” period, but he practically never left Khabarovsk. In none of the prefaces to his novels will we find any mention of the Harbin period of the writer’s life.
The emigration of thousands of Russian citizens from Manchuria to other countries began not after the revolution and civil war, but much earlier. They began to leave after the completion of the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway and the Russo-Japanese War. In 1907, a party of workers set off to build a railroad in Mexico. Then to Brazil, Canada and the USA (Hawaii Islands). In order to organize the resettlement of Russians in Manchuria, the former governor of the Hawaiian Islands, Atkinson, came and created the “Perelsruz and Co. Emigration Agency” in Harbin with the help of local businessmen. As a result of the actions of Hawaiian agents, 10 thousand Russian citizens went to the islands from January to March 1910.
The exodus of Russians continued after the road was transferred to joint management in 1924, after the conflict on the Chinese Eastern Railway in 1929. In 1932, Japan occupied Manchuria. At that time, the number of Russians in Harbin reached 200 thousand people. The Japanese allowed all Russians to leave the country freely. Everyone who had financial means left, and the center of Russian emigration moved to Shanghai. The Japanese did not touch the emigrants who remained in Harbin, believing that the “enemies” of the Soviet regime could provide them with invaluable assistance. About 100 thousand Russians still remained in Harbin. After the sale of the road to Japan in 1935, the pressure on emigration increased so much that it provoked a massive outflow of Russians to Shanghai, Tianjin, southern China, North and South America, Australia and Africa. There were so many Russian emigrants around the world that the League of Nations had to solve the problem. A so-called Emigration Center was organized in Shanghai, where a “Russian emigrant passport” was issued. Countries such as Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Brazil received money for transportation, accommodation, and job creation for Russians.
Of course, those Russians who had money chose prosperous Australia, the USA, Canada, and New Zealand to live.
At the end of the thirties, the Soviet government declared an amnesty to all Russian Harbin residents and allowed them to return. The people of Harbin rejoiced. The city is divided into those who leave and those who remain. People went shopping and bought everything they could need in their homeland. However, trains with posters “Receive, Motherland, your sons” reached through the Manchuria station to Chita, where the trains were reorganized and sent straight to Siberian camps.
The Russians left in 1945, after the Red Army entered Harbin, but not of their own free will, when every third Russian Harbin resident out of the 50 thousand who remained there was subjected to repression.
The last, sluggish call to the residents of Harbin came from their historical homeland in 1954 - to raise virgin and fallow lands. They gave us three days to get ready, from Friday to Sunday, which fell on the holy holiday of Easter for Russian Harbin residents. Most of them went in a completely different direction - to Australia. From 1956 to 1962, 21 thousand Russians left for this country. The Russian emigrant Harbin died, although the agony continued for another ten years. By the early 60s, everyone who wanted to leave had left. However, 900 people never left Harbin. Some were born in this city and did not know another homeland, it was scary to move to other countries, others could not do this due to lack of money or illness. These people survived the nightmare of the “cultural revolution”, the Sino-Soviet conflict over Damansky Island, hunger and cold. The last Russian from China, 77-year-old Sergei Kostrometinov, moved to Australia in 1986 after serving 16 years in a Chinese prison on charges of “Soviet social-capitalist reformism.” During all 16 years of imprisonment, Sergei Ivanovich never understood why. He sat for the Soviet Union, but chose Australia as his place of residence.
In 2005, about a hundred Russian women remained in Harbin, married to Chinese men and their children, who practically do not know the Russian language.
And again we will return to the graves of Mikhail Mikhailovich Myatov and Vladimir Alekseevich Zinchenko. After them, none of our compatriots from that time remained in Harbin. It was the last stronghold of Russia in this city.
Next to the Russian one there is a Jewish cemetery, a little further away there is a cemetery for Russian Muslims. All of them lived at the same time in Harbin, making up the Russian diaspora, creating the face of the city. Now no one who lived here, loved, suffered, suffered here is no longer there. Some lie here in the cemetery, others far abroad. And we can only remember what they were like, our compatriots, who came here a hundred years ago to the shores of the Sungari to build a railway and a city. Modern and a hundred years ago and today. The beginning was Russian.

We dedicated one day in Harbin to temples. Fortunately, there is a variety of temples here. We were in Orthodox churches, in a synagogue building, in a Lutheran church, in a Confucius temple, in a Buddhist temple. We ran next to a Catholic church and an inactive Orthodox church on the territory of an amusement park.

St. Sophia Cathedral is the hallmark of Harbin, built in 1907. The temple is not operational, entrance is 20 yuan. The ticket says that the cathedral is part of the Harbin Museum of Architecture. This museum also includes the building of the synagogue, about which a little later, and the area of ​​the St. Sophia Cathedral.
The cathedral is beautiful in appearance.
1.

Inside, - photos 2-4, - its condition leaves much to be desired.
2.

3.

4.

On the same square there is a strange squiggle with a tower. At this place there was a temple with a tower of a similar shape.
5.

This is what the temple looked like, on the left in photo 6, on the site of the current strange squiggle. The photo was taken inside St. Sophia Cathedral.
6.

Two more photos (7 and 8) from St. Sophia Cathedral.
St. Nicholas Cathedral is the very first Orthodox church in Harbin. It was built from wood brought from Canada in 1899, despite the fact that the history of Harbin begins in 1898. It was burned by the Red Guards in 1966.
7.

St. Alekseevskaya Church is located at the intersection of Gogolevskaya and Tserkovnaya streets. It operated in Harbin since 1912 as an Orthodox church.
In 1980, after restoration, it was transferred to the Catholic Church.
8.

St. Sophia Cathedral in the evening and during the day.
9.

Photos 10 and 11 - St. Sophia Cathedral Square in the evening.
10.

11.

The Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary ("Ukrainian parish") is the only operating Orthodox church in Harbin. Belongs to the Chinese Orthodox Church. Built in 1922. From 1986 to 2000, Orthodox priest Gregory Zhu served here. Now there is no permanent priest.
12.

We were lucky, we got into the service with a lay rank. This is a service without a priest; the parishioners themselves read the texts one by one. There were few parishioners, about 20-30 people, mostly Chinese.
13.

Inside the Lutheran Church before the start of the service. Good technical equipment. The preacher (on the right in the photo) walks around the hall, personally greeting the parishioners. At the entrance they handed out modest brochures, which I missed somewhere and can’t find.
15.

If you turn around from the entrance to the Lutheran Church (on the left in the photo), you can see the Intercession Cathedral ahead and the Catholic Church on the right.
16.

It was Sunday and there were a lot of people opening the doors to the Catholic church.
17.

The Church of the Sacred Heart (or Polish Church) was built in 1907 for Polish workers who built the Chinese Eastern Railway.
18.

The synagogue building is not far from the pedestrian street Tsentralnaya. It is now part of the Harbin Architecture Museum.
19.

Inside the synagogue. Someone spares no expense to keep the premises in excellent condition. On the ground floor there is an exhibition of paintings dedicated to Harbin. On the second and third there are exhibits related to the history of the Jewish community in Harbin. I will make a separate post on this topic.
20.

Entrance to a Confucian temple built in 1929 on Wenmiao Street. I will make a separate post on the Confucius Temple and the Jile Si Buddhist Temple.
21.

Jile Si Temple is located next to the amusement park. The Ferris wheel can be seen from the temple area under construction. It was the first day of the lunar calendar, when the Chinese almost without fail go to the temple in order to have happiness. Why on the first day? A little more about the temple later.
22.

To the territory of the amusement park. The Ferris wheel rises above the building of the now inactive Orthodox church.
23.

I'll digress a little. The amusement park was closed for the cold season, so entrance to the park costs a penny, 3 yuan. In the warm season, entrance to the amusement park costs 270 yuan per person.

Orthodox church built in 1907. Apparently, the temple was built at a Russian cemetery. Now closed, there is no cross on the spire.
24.

Opposite the closed Orthodox church is the place where there was a Jewish cemetery.
25.

26.

A mosque built in 1906 on the site of a wooden mosque built in 1897. Now it’s operational, but somehow we didn’t get to it. Photo from the building of St. Sophia Cathedral.
27.

S. Eremin,

member of the Russian Geographical Society,

Chairman of the Historical Section of the Russian Club in Harbin,

member of the club PKO RGS - OIAC "Russian Abroad"

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

On May 9, 2007, we visited the currently abandoned Church of the Iveron Icon of the Mother of God and saw an unsightly picture: heaps of garbage, dirt and desolation. The decision was born right on the spot - our students decided to gather and clear the perimeter of the temple. No sooner said than done. In the summer of the same year, the first, now traditional, subbotnik was held to restore order in a place sacred to us, Russians.

Subbotnik 2015 at St. Iveron Church

For four years we carried out such labor landings constantly, twice a season. In the spring, they planted and watered homemade flower beds, covered them with pieces of red brick, and closer to autumn they weeded all this beauty. And in 2011 we saw a joyful picture! Chinese workers, apparently using budget money, restored complete order near the walls of the temple. They made beautiful capital flower beds, laid out the area around the temple with paving stones, and paved the driveways from Officers Street to this place. I want to say that no one stopped us from working. The Chinese authorities realized that we were simply and quietly doing a good deed. And they put things in order at their own expense.

ORTHODOXY IN HARBIN

Previously, there were 22 Orthodox churches in Harbin, but currently only five have survived. Three of them are the decoration of the city. These are St. Sophia Cathedral on the Pier (Harbin Museum of Architecture), St. Alexeevsky Church on Gogol Street (transferred to the Catholic community of the city) and the current Intercession Church. His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus' served there in 2013 on Radonitsa. Currently, renovation work is in full swing at the temple; it has been closed for reconstruction since April.

St. Sophia Cathedral in Harbin

Waiting for their renovation, built simultaneously, in the same year - in 1908, are the St. Iveron Church, located near the railway station, on the former Officers Street, and the Assumption Church - on the former New Cemetery.

And the first shock that reminded me that from early childhood I dreamed of becoming an archaeologist, a servant of the goddess Clio, was the exhumation of the remains of the legendary Russian general Vladimir Oskarovich Kappel in December 2006. I had the opportunity not only to observe, but also to directly participate in this work.

Visit of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill to Harbin in May 2013. Photo at the Intercession Church

RUSSIAN CEMETERIES IN HARBIN

Once upon a time, in the 80s of the last century, the Huangshan cemetery was looked after by “elder Harbin residents”. Eduard Stakalsky compiled a diagram of burials in this last Russian churchyard in the suburbs of Harbin. This diagram was given to us by Igor Kazimirovich Savitsky, the president of the Harbin-China Historical Society (HCHIS) from Sydney (Australia). Aleksey Eliseevich Shandar, Mikhail Mikhailovich Myatov and Nikolai Nikolaevich Zaika put in a lot of work to maintain order on Huangshan over the years.

It’s hard to imagine how thirty or twenty years ago, in more than two hours, they came here from Harbin on a bicycle in order to work for several hours and hit the road back. Even today, by taxi on smooth asphalt, the journey sometimes takes about an hour one way.

The very last keeper of the cemetery was and remains Nikolai Nikolaevich Zaika. Although he was forced to leave Harbin about five years ago due to illness, he helped us from a distance. Gave very important information for the burial plan.

Only together with our partners, with the “senior Harbin residents,” will we be able to do something useful to preserve the memory of our compatriots.

Orthodox Harbin residents at a subbotnik at Huangshan Cemetery, 2010

We have identified 463 names. It turned out that 87 monuments were moved here from two Harbin cemeteries closed in 1957-58.

In the Khabarovsk archive of the Bureau of Russian Emigration in Manchuria there is data on 122 people lying in this loamy land (hence the name - Yellow Mountain). Railway workers, doctors, military men and priests lie here...

Monument to Doctor Vladimir Alekseevich Kazem-Bek after renovation

Over the past five years, we have managed to repair about 20 monuments. The largest monument in terms of volume of work is the grave of the unmercenary doctor Vladimir Alekseevich Kazem-Bek, known throughout the city. From the doctor’s homeland, Kazan, employees of the Baratynsky Museum gave us his portrait. There was also a monument to White Army Colonel Afinogen Gavrilovich Argunov, a hero of the First World War and the Civil War, and five monuments to students of the Harbin Polytechnic Institute who died in 1946 under unclear circumstances.

The graves of KhPI students were repaired in August 2015

In 2011, the Russian Club in Harbin had the opportunity to put a cross on the grave of the most famous prayer book and holy man - Schemamonk Ignatius. He lived and served in the Kazan-Bogoroditsky Monastery for many years. Thanks to the Chinese city leaders for allowing us to do this good deed.

We received funds for the cross through Father Dionisy from Hong Kong, from distant fraternal Serbia, from Belgrade. On Trinity Sunday, June 12 (that year this holiday coincided with Russia Day), we additionally placed two more crosses and three slabs on the neighboring graves of Russian Orthodox priests. The money donated by our Serbian brother in Christ, thanks to savings, but not to the detriment of the quality of work, was enough to repair all four monuments to the priests.

Schema-abbot Ignatius from the Kazan-Bogoroditsky Monastery in Harbin

Unwittingly, we turned to Father Ignatius, as a man of prayer, with a request for help in restoring the Russian cemetery. And... half a month later they sent us money to repair two monuments from the Russo-Japanese War. Funds were donated by KhKIO (our long-time partner) and the Russian Club in Shanghai (chairman - Mikhail Drozdov). We handed over to the Chinese side our project for the restoration of these two large tombstones and, after receiving their consent, we began work.

On August 28, 2011, on the Feast of the Assumption, Orthodox Harbin residents who came here to the cemetery were pleasantly surprised.

Parishioners at the renovated Intercession Church. July 2016.

A CUP OF TEA HARBIN STYLE

At the club we have held and are holding various events - we celebrate holidays, organize competitions, chess tournaments, sports competitions, excursions around Harbin.

Meeting and conversation on the history of Harbin, 2014

A list of events is born when there is an interested person, an initiator who is ready to do something important and interesting for the Russian diaspora.

One of the most interesting, in my opinion, events in the work of the club was the “Harbin Cup of Tea”. Does everyone know about the Chinese tea ceremony? Are our Russian tea traditions worse? We showed our Chinese friends the scope of Russian tea drinking! Samovar, pancakes, jam, sour cream, honey, Russian costumes, paintings and still lifes on the theme of the Russian tea ceremony, fragments from our films about Maslenitsa - the Chinese were delighted! We took pictures, treated ourselves, and thanked them.

Chapter Ten

Russian necropolises of Harbin

Over the half-century of Russian presence in Northeast China, the city acquired many cultural monuments. And last but not least, these include the few Russian necropolises that were mercilessly uprooted during the era of the “cultural revolution” by the efforts of the “new generation” Chinese. It was they, intoxicated by the promises of the local party leadership of the “inevitably coming communism”, poisoned by lack of faith, and not least inspired by purely xenophobic sentiments, skillfully used by Chinese politicians of the middle of the last century, who became the main weapon in the destruction of monuments of Russian culture in Harbin. We can judge the diversity of the erected monuments and their artistic value only from the meager recollections and retellings of people of the third generation of refugees from China, and some photographic materials recently published in Australia and designed to give the most general idea to the uninitiated person about the culture of emigrant burials in the former Harbin. It is not yet possible to fully judge the diversity of the heritage forever lost to descendants, however, the fragmentary references and photographs of Russian churchyards that exist indicate the unconditional continuity of Orthodox traditions, coupled with the conservatism of the spiritual way of life of the Orthodox, Lutheran and Jewish families living in Manchuria. In Harbin, in the center of the New City, there was once an Old Cemetery, laid out there for the repose of the first generation of city planners and warriors, “who laid down their lives on the battlefield.” At that time, when the cemetery was just beginning, it was located on the then city outskirts, but in the course of rapid urban construction it soon “moved” almost to the center, finding itself two or three blocks from Bolshoy Prospekt. Anyone could get there by bus or tram. According to the description of old-timers, the necropolis was distinguished by the special property of conveying solemn silence to everyone who entered, despite the fact that the most turbulent life of the metropolis was in full swing outside its gates. In the 1920s, its chief caretaker, the captain of the Trans-Baikal Cossack army, Ivan Fedorovich Pavlevsky, lived at the cemetery, who arrived in Harbin with the ranks of the security guard at the beginning of the 20th century, in 1900. Over the quarter of a century spent in Northeast China, this once black-bearded hero in a Circassian coat pulled together into a glass turned into a gray-haired old man who constantly stood at his post, regularly observing the last refuge of the first settlers. Near the fence overlooking Bolshoy Prospekt, adherents of Russian glory erected a now destroyed majestic granite cross, on which the following words were inscribed in Slavic script: “In this old railway cemetery, many of the first figures in the construction and protection of the CER found eternal rest. On July 12, 1920, on the day of the 20th anniversary of repelling the Boxers’ attack on Harbin, this cross was erected in prayerful memory of these brave pioneers of Russian cultural affairs and may their graves be preserved intact for eternity. May this cross stand unshakably and remind us of the deceased bearers of Russian culture.”

Church of the Intercession of the Mother of God

For a number of years, before the Church of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos was erected at the Old Cemetery in 1930, every year on the day of remembrance of the repulsed attack of the Chinese rebels, all those whose relatives and friends were among the first builders and defenders of the city gathered at the cemetery. Over the years, there were fewer and fewer places in the Old Cemetery, and the city authorities decided to close it, leaving insignificant areas for especially famous citizens and old-timers of Harbin. In 1944, shortly before the arrival of Soviet troops, the hero of the defense of Port Arthur, Major General P. P. Kravchenko, who died at the age of 67, was buried in the Old Cemetery. In the Russo-Japanese War, he distinguished himself as a company commander, spending the entire time of the siege in the fortress and establishing himself by participating at the head of his company in a fearless attack on the High Mountain. Among the deceased famous townspeople in the Old Cemetery, one can note the burial of the first police chief of Harbin, Lieutenant M. L. Kazarkin. A special place was occupied by the graves of military leaders - the commander of the hundred Security Guard, military foreman of the All-Great Don Army V.M. Gladkov, the commander of the 2nd brigade of the 2nd Cavalry Division, Major General Chevakinsky, the General Staff, Major General N.V. Lebedev, the commander of the Sapper Battalion Ya. I. Vasiliev and the chief of staff of the Zaamur Military District A. M. Baranov.

In one of the aisles of the cemetery in 1907, the Church of St. Stanislaus was erected, which was an excellent example of Gothic architecture, with traditional statues of saints located in the internal niches of the church, and canonically accurately recreated altars of Western European Catholic churches. By 1923, 1,743 graves remained in the Old Cemetery, as well as an area with unmarked burials. “You, O Lord, weigh their names.” In 1902, a place was allocated for new burials within the city, which immediately received the name New Cemetery, which was later called Assumption Cemetery, in honor of the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary erected on it. The foundation of the temple took place on June 29, 1907, and it was consecrated on November 22, 1908. In terms of the fame of the people buried there, this cemetery harmoniously complemented the Old one. Priest Fr. John Storozhev, who gave communion to the family of Emperor Nicholas II for the last time, found his last refuge there.

Even in the days of his earthly life in Harbin, Fr. John hosted the famous investigator Sokolov, who continued interviewing witnesses to the murder of the royal family after he was forced to leave Russia. Ioann Vladimirovich Storozhev came from a merchant family in the Nizhny Novgorod province, and was born in Arzamas. In early childhood, after the untimely death of his father, he was transported by his mother to the Diveyevo Monastery, founded by the Monk Seraphim of Sarov, but in the first years of his adult life he chose the path of civil service, graduating first from the Noble Institute in Nizhny Novgorod, and then from the Faculty of Law of Kyiv University . Upon graduation, he served in the judicial department, then, tired of bureaucratic life, on the eve of his own appointment to the prosecutor's post, he resigned and transferred to the class of sworn attorneys. In this field, he gained fame and became one of the most successful lawyers in the Urals, however, even here he did not follow the beaten path, being ordained by the ruling bishop to the priesthood in Yekaterinburg in September 1912. The Russian Empire was already on the eve of its tragic death. The transition from the liberal camp of sworn attorneys to the conservative and partly “right-wing” camp of the Orthodox clergy did not seem to be a significant change in life for the future pastor, for in his new field he quickly began to create a new, this time “spiritual” career. Having started as a diocesan missionary, able to find a common language and faithfully convey the word to the most diverse representatives of the population of the Urals, Fr. John receives the position of rector of the Irbit Cathedral, and soon of the Ekaterinburg Cathedral in the city of the same name. In his present rank I found Fr. John suffered a merciless wave of civil unrest, and when the Bolsheviks came to the city, he continued to serve, and it was to him, at the insistence of the commandant of the “House of Special Purpose” Yankel Yurovsky, that a soldier was sent to invite an Orthodox priest to conduct the last, as it turned out, service for the imprisoned imperial family. Since the political views of Fr. John is unknown to us, we can assume that he did not refuse the invitation more because of his pastoral duty than because of the presence of loyal feelings. The refusal of the request of the all-powerful Yekaterinburg security officer could have been the reason for the extrajudicial murder of the refusing priest, a case that was countless during the Civil War. One way or another, having gathered and notified his deacon about this, Fr. John was escorted with him to the Ipatiev mansion under the escort of Red Army soldiers. This is what the priest himself wrote, telling about the first and last meeting with the royal family. “When we entered the commandant’s room, we found here... disorder, dust and desolation... We came, what should we do? Yurovsky, without greeting me and looking at me intently, said: “Wait here, and then you will serve the mass.” I asked again: “Lunch” or “Lunch?” He wrote “Obednitsa,” Yurovsky said. When we got dressed, and a censer with burning coals was brought (brought by some soldier), Yurovsky invited us to go into the hall for the service. I walked forward into the hall, then the deacon and Yurovsky. At the same time, Nikolai Alexandrovich came out of the door leading to the inner rooms with two daughters, but I did not have time to see which ones. It seemed to me that Yurovsky asked Nikolai Alexandrovich, “What, have you all gathered?” Nikolai Alexandrovich answered firmly - “Yes, that’s it.” It seemed to me that both Nikolai Alexandrovich and all his daughters...were, I won’t say, oppressed, but rather tired. After the service, everyone venerated the Holy Cross, and the deacon handed Nikolai Alexandrovich and Alexandra Fedorovna each a prosphora... When I was leaving and walking very close to the former Grand Duchesses, I heard a subtle word “thank you” - I don’t think it was just my imagination.”

As can be seen from the passage, Fr. John was not a big fan of the monarchy, and on his last visit to the imprisoned sovereign he impeccably fulfilled only his professional duties. As if to deny the God-given nature of the titles of the imperial family, some time later he called the Grand Duchesses “former,” as if not understanding that neither a once-crowned sovereign nor his descendants could be “former.” During the white rule in Yekaterinburg, Fr. John decided to leave for Harbin, where he lived with his family until his death in 1927. There he was successively rector of the St. Sophia Church, then St. Alexeevskaya. Contemporaries spoke about the extraordinary eloquence of the pastor, who attracted parishioners with masterfully constructed sermons, which is not surprising, taking into account his education and successful service as a sworn attorney, where eloquence, as is known, is the key to professional success. We would venture to suggest that in numerous sermons this pastor hardly called on those gathered to repent of the sin of the apostate king and pray for the granting of a new sovereign to Russia. His entire previous life experience spoke of his belonging to the liberal strata of Russia, who looked with indifference at the tragedy of the abdication and fall of legitimate monarchical power; it is not surprising if the awareness of the need for nationwide repentance did not visit him until the end of his days in Manchuria. Contemporaries assured that Fr. John put a lot of effort into organizing a school for the poorest children at the Harbin Alekseevskaya Church, as well as creating a good parish, but it was unlikely that he understood the importance of the providential event that made him the last of all the Orthodox clergy to give communion to the last Russian sovereign.

Interior of the Hagia Sophia

It is noteworthy that, contrary to canonical tradition, two young suicidal poets, Georgy Granin and Sergei Sergin, who shot themselves on the night of December 5, 1934 in the Nanking Hotel in Harbin, also found their rest at the Assumption Cemetery in Harbin. Both were members of the Harbin literary circle “Young Churaevka,” whose members were united by their senior mentor, the poet Alexei Achair. In 1945, he was arrested by SMERSH and transferred to the USSR to serve his 10-year sentence. In a poem dedicated to his wife before separation, the poet wrote:

“That you and I are not each other’s property,

What a mysterious union of different wills -

Let the thunder thunder, let the blizzard rage.

When I say goodbye, I’m not afraid for you.”

His wife, Galina Apollonovna Achair-Dobrotvorskaya, who was a famous opera singer in Harbin, emigrated to Australia after her husband’s arrest, where she died in Queensland in 1997.

After the poet left the camp, they were not destined to see each other again. The poet remained in Russia and died in Novosibirsk in 1960. The literary circle, which at one time was patronized by the master, existed in Harbin for about a decade and a half, giving the opportunity to form and develop a whole group of young literary talents.

The military graves in this cemetery were called the “Mass grave of fallen soldiers who fell for the Tsar and the Fatherland in the Russian-Japanese War of 1904–1905,” and near them until 1959 the Ecumenical memorial service for Radonitsa was served, on spring, bright sunny days, when all Orthodox Harbin celebrated Easter. Another famous burial of the Assumption Cemetery was the grave of the ataman of the Transbaikal Cossack Army, Major General Ivan Fedorovich Shilnikov. The general, who at one time served as chief of staff of the Special Manchurian Detachment of Ataman G.M. Semyonov, continued to lead the armed struggle against the Soviets while in exile. When Ivan Fedorovich died in his Harbin home in 1934, he was buried according to Cossack traditions. He was buried in the St. Alexei Church, and when the funeral procession went to the Assumption Cemetery, a saddled horse was led behind the hearse, and a saber and a Cossack officer’s cap were screwed onto the lid of the coffin. The general's awards were carried on the pads. One of the priests of the St. Alexei Church, Father Vasily Gerasimov, himself a former participant in the fight against the Bolsheviks, who completed the Great Siberian Campaign in January 1920 under the command of the Commander-in-Chief of the armies of the Eastern Front, Lieutenant General Vladimir Oskarovich Kappel, took part in the general’s funeral. “It was a terrible journey - in winter, without roads, through snow, on ice, at a temperature of -40°C, the army marched,” recalled a participant in the campaign. Father Vasily, being an ordinary volunteer, fell ill with typhus and was taken along with other wounded and sick army ranks to Chita. When the Kappelites left Chita in the fall of 1920, Fr. Vasily left with his comrades-in-arms and reached Harbin, where he first found work as a journalist, and over time was ordained a deacon, and then a priest, serving in the St. Alexei Church. One of the obediences of Fr. Vasily was involved in organizing assistance to the poor, which he did, combining this with his work as the secretary of Bishop Nestor. In 1948, he and Fr. Vasily Gerasimov and the secretary of the Diocesan Council E.N. Sumarokov were arrested by SMERSH and taken to the USSR, where they received various camp sentences on the standard charge of collaborating with the Japanese. O. Vasily was sentenced to 10 years in a camp and died in the USSR. In contrast to the tragic fate of Fr. Vasily Gerasimova, Archpriest Konstantin Koronin, spiritual mentor of the future Saint Philaret and rector of the parish in the church in the Hospital Town, found his rest in 1924 at the Assumption Cemetery.

Among the many other prominent people buried at the Assumption Cemetery were figures of enlightenment, such as Sergei Afanasyevich Taskin, the founder and creator of a Russian gymnasium that existed in the Chinese town of Yakeshi from 1937 to 1955, and such as the immunologist Vsevolod Vladimirovich Kozhevnikov. A military doctor who served on the fronts of the Great War of 1914–1918, and was part of the Russian corps of General M.A. Lokhvitsky in France, in the 1918–1920s, Dr. Kozhevnikov continued his work in hospitals in Siberia, in Tyumen and Tomsk, from where he arrived in Harbin. There, Vsevolod Vladimirovich, together with fellow doctors, worked on the development of vaccines against the widespread plague infection in Manchuria, the use of which actually stopped the spread of a terrible epidemic in Northwestern China in the early 1920s.

The Church of the Assumption was built in the shape of a ship, as if floating on the waves of oblivion, which can metaphorically include a vast necropolis, where tens of thousands of Harbin residents found their rest at different times.

On the territory of this necropolis, several alleys were laid out, including the main one, leading from the entrance cast-iron gate, over which was poured the famous inscription “Believe in Me, even if you die, you will come to life” to the arch over which the bell tower was located. The path from it to the temple itself was decorated with tall trees on both sides. To the right of the main alley stood a monument to the priest Fr., famous among Harbin residents. Evgeniy Panormov, the work of the talented Harbin sculptor Volodchenko, who was later mercilessly destroyed by the Chinese administration during the demolition of the cemetery.

Behind the alleys, at one time, two squares with symmetrically located flower beds and a fountain were built, and in the right aisle of the cemetery there was a rich greenhouse, in which, with the participation of the church clergy, beautiful flowers were grown, which decorated the temple on holidays. In addition to their direct duties, the servants of the greenhouse also carried out some public duties - they lit lamps every day and monitored the condition of the graves. Almost next to the main alley of the cemetery there was a garden in which cherry and apple trees bloomed annually, thick bushes of black currants and gooseberries grew, and a little further away there was an apiary. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, the Assumption Cemetery was literally buried in greenery in the summer. Behind the square there was a one-story abbot's house, and a little further away there was a small two-story building, on the second floor of which there was a meeting hall. To the left of the bell tower were the apartments of the cemetery and church employees - the choir director and the long-term permanent caretaker - Luka Petrovich Popov. According to the recollections of those who visited the cemetery, the architecture of the tombstones was dominated by the traditions of Italian, and a little less often, Russian master stonemasons. Marble obelisks, crypts, statues and monuments with bas-reliefs and high reliefs, as well as ornamental decorations depicting garlands, flowers, leaves and wreaths, were quite common there. It was common for wealthy Harbin families to order expensive marble compositions or fragments from Italy to decorate crypts and monuments. This tradition was started by the family of Chamberlain Nikolai Lvovich Gondatti, who ordered a marble angel to crown the pedestal of the monument to his daughter Olga, niece of the famous Russian composer Igor Fedorovich Stravinsky, who died at the age of 23, and was continued by the families of successfully practicing Harbin doctors: Zhukovsky, Alexandra Georgievna Yartseva, Ivan Georgievich Urzov and Tamara Semyonovna Maslennikova-Urzova. As a rule, Korean (pink) or Italian (white) marble was used to make monuments. In complex compositions of tombstones, as, for example, in the case of the burial of the famous doctor V.A. Kazem-Bek, a combination of white marble, reinforced concrete and metal was used. Often, local stone - black and gray granite - was used to make monuments.

On the day of the temple feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God, after the bishop's service of the Divine Liturgy, a procession of the cross took place through the cemetery, with the obligatory singing of the festive troparion and the irmos of the canon. An eyewitness to the festive services recalled: “Many people visited the cemetery on the day of Holy Easter. Many people loved to celebrate Easter night in the cemetery church. On Holy Saturday, from about ten o'clock in the evening, the usual silence of the night in the cemetery was broken. Many cars from the city came to the cemetery gates, delivering Orthodox pilgrims to Bright Matins. Just before the start of the service, colored lanterns on the trees were lit along the main alley, and in the interval between them, bowls burned, creating an amazing picture of the night celebration. The religious procession and bright matins took place in front of a large crowd of pilgrims. At the end of Matins, many returned to their homes, while others, after the Divine Liturgy, went to their native graves to bring the first greeting to their loved ones with this triumph of the victory of life over death and, with the flickering of the lamps, waited there for the morning dawn.”

The ruined Pre-Orthodox cemetery. 1950s

In the morning, efficient rickshaws began transporting returning Russians in all directions: from the nearest tram stop to the house itself.

In 1940, the Assumption Cemetery was rebuilt to accommodate its rapid growth and to expand accessibility to visitors on memorial days and holidays. With donations from parishioners, the gates were restored and installed, and the appearance of the bell tower was updated.

When talking about the Harbin necropolises, it would be unfair to keep silent about another, less famous resting place of Orthodox people - the cemetery at St. Alexei Church in Modyagou. In 1934, the original plan for the construction of the temple was modified in order to optimize costs, and the final version, approved by the parish council, was adopted according to the drawings of engineer Tustanovsky. More than 700 thousand bricks, among other materials, were used to construct the temple building, and it was completed by October 6, 1936. The church was consecrated in honor of Metropolitan Alexy of Moscow. The cemetery at the temple accommodated dozens of burials of city inhabitants, among whom were Russian “pioneers” of the development of Manchurian lands, local businessmen, and members of the Ukrainian diaspora. “On ordinary days, the cemetery was quiet, thoughtful, it was a kind of botanical garden, all kinds of trees, shrubs, and flowers were planted there,” the memoirist recalled. “In spring, the aroma of flowering trees carried for kilometers... Around... there were even apiaries.”

Destroyed monument at the Assumption Pogost

After the massive demolition of Russian cemeteries, including Pokrovskoye and Uspenskoye, by order of the Chinese authorities in 1958, some remarkable monuments, many of which came from Italy, were used by the Chinese communists to strengthen the Sungari Dam. At the expense of some relatives who remained living in Harbin, other tombstones and ashes were transferred to the new Huang Shun Cemetery in Sankeshu, 25 kilometers outside the city. Orthodox parishioners moved two churches there - St. John the Baptist from the Moscow barracks area and Boriso-Glebskaya from the Chenkhe area. Later these two temples were combined into one. The destroyed Russian necropolises, through the efforts of the hardworking Chinese, were gradually turned into parks, all the graves were razed to the ground.

In the early 1990s, the Chinese government allocated funds for the construction of a new temple, consecrated in the name of John the Baptist, which was completed in 1995.

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