Vasilyevsky Descent Square. Interesting information about Vasilyevsky Spusk. A miracle created by human hands
In the formation of new Russian city toponyms after 1917, for obvious socio-political reasons, the names of churches, monasteries, Christian holidays and similar vocabulary were practically not used.
In addition to simply returning to the map many losses of the Soviet period (Znamenka instead of Frunze Street, Prechistenka instead of Kropotkinskaya Street, Rozhdestvenka instead of Zhdanova Street, etc.), some agiotoponyms (the word agios in Greek means “holy”) are generally born, as it were, anew. A clear example that has become a short time very famous Moscow toponym Vasilyevsky Spusk, which until the early 90s was practically not used either orally, much less in writing.
Vasilyevsky Spusk is the territory of the slope leading from the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary (St. Basil's Cathedral) down to the embankment of the Moscow River and the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge.
Before the cathedral, on this steep slope stood the Church of the Holy Trinity (that’s why the original name of Red Square was Trinity, but more on that a little later).
Now both Muscovites and tourists usually call this cathedral St. Basil's Cathedral, but its true name is the Intercession Cathedral (or more precisely, the Intercession Cathedral, which is “on the ditch”). It was built by Russian architects Barma and Postnik (according to some assumptions, these are two names of the same person) in 1554-1561 by order of Ivan the Terrible, in honor of the victory of the Russian army over the Kazan Khanate. The temple seemed to perpetuate the heroic deeds of the people and preserve the memory of those who died in the Kazan campaign. Barma and Postnik erected an unusually picturesque cathedral of nine, as required by the artistic composition created by the masters (later there were ten), temples of different heights, located around one central one. The churches also symbolized the days of the siege of Kazan. The decorativeness and beauty of the temple were predetermined by the fact that it stood on the largest public square in Moscow and, as it were, was specially created for the people. And the very place where he stood was quite unusual - the highest in the square: it was really the beginning of the cliff to the Moscow River, and nearby there was a ditch that protected the Kremlin wall.
An excellent expert on Moscow, Yakov Belitsky, knew how to suggest how to examine the monuments of Moscow antiquity, including St. Basil's Cathedral. This is what he wrote about it in his book “Forgotten Moscow”: “The cathedral, like many things on Red Square, has a secret. From a distance, he, familiar from book pictures, from albums, is no longer able to bestow you with at least some novelty. But you need to come close to it and slowly walk around it, and then... Then you will see in detail its domes and carved porches, and the festive multicolor of its tiles will float before your eyes.”
The cathedral was consecrated in honor of the holiday of the Intercession of the Virgin Mary, famous and beloved by the Russian people. In the “Complete Orthodox Theological Encyclopedic Dictionary” of the early 20th century, the following is said about this holiday: “Protection of the Most Holy Theotokos (October 1) holiday Orthodox Church. Installed in memory of an event that took place in Constantinople... In the war with the Saracens, the city was in danger, but on this day St. Andrew the Fool and his disciple Epiphanius, while in the Blachernae Church during the all-night vigil, saw the Mother of God in the air with a host of saints, praying and spreading her veil (omophorion) over the Christians. Encouraged, the Greeks repulsed the Saracens. There is an akathist in honor of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos.”
The cathedral really rose above the moat, which was reflected in its full name: the Intercession of the Virgin Mary, which is “on the moat.”
In 1588, a small church of St. Vasily, perceived by the people as built in honor of the Moscow holy fool Vasily. So, almost thirty years later, it received another name: St. Basil's Cathedral, which existed along with the official Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos. In our time, the first name is more known and used. It also formed the basis of toponyms.
That part of Red Square, which was enclosed between the cathedral and the Kremlin wall, was called Vasilyevskaya Square even before 1938: after 1938 it was officially included in Red Square.
The territory located below the Church of the Intercession of the Virgin, i.e. Vasilievsky Spusk, began to be used for various kinds of events at the end of the so-called “perestroika”, when Red Square remained a closed place for these events. But within the means mass media journalists used the toponym Red Square, although in reality they were talking (as, for example, in the text about the start from the center of Moscow international marathon peace that happened on Vasilyevsky Spusk) about the territory lying beyond the border of the square.
Later, with the transfer of rallies and demonstrations from Manezhnaya Square to the site of interest to us near St. Basil's Cathedral, an urgent need arose to use its exact geographical name. Thanks to the influence of the media, the unofficial (since it is not registered anywhere!) toponym Vasilievsky Spusk became firmly entrenched in Russian speech in the shortest possible time. The sharp increase in the toponym Vasilievsky Spusk in the speech of Muscovites, in newspapers, magazines, on radio and television is also due to the fact that this place began to be actively used for a wide variety of cultural and sporting events - from concerts of rock bands to the display of fashion collections.
Both components, both parts of the toponymic phrase are noteworthy Vasilyevsky Spusk. Common noun descent is perceived by Russian speakers as an integral part of that thematic group of words that means intracity objects such as “street”, “square”, “alley”. In fact, we are dealing with the false part of such a thematic series, because even historically the word descent was not included in it, in contrast, for example, to the word sacrum, which has fallen out of use with the meaning “small city square with a crossroads”: Nikolsky sacrum, Varvarsky sacrum, Ilyinsky sacrum, etc. A special chapter in one of the best books on the history of the capital is devoted to Moscow sacrums, their history, and the etymology of their names (see: Moscow. Detailed historical and archaeological description of the city. Published by A. Martynov. The text was compiled by I. N. Snegirev. T. 1. M., 1865, p. 176189).
The famous scientist, professor E.M. Murzaev in his special study “ Geographical terms in the toponymy of Moscow" (article published in the collection " Geographical names in Moscow" does not highlight the term descent among the terms shaft, gate, butyrki, mountain, shore, swamp, enemy (ravine), outpost etc. However, the same researcher introduced the dictionary entry SPUSK into his “Dictionary of Folk Geographical Terms”.
“Descent. An inclined surface along which one descends (here E.M. Murzaev first refers to the well-known 17-volume dictionary of the Russian language of the USSR Academy of Sciences. M. G.). In toponymy, a slope with a road, path, or street laid along it. Wed. go down, start. St. Klovsky Spusk and Andreevsky Spusk in Kyiv. For semantic parallel, see gangway».
It is precisely due to this content that the term descent accurately characterizes the features of this territory: in front of us is the road down along the Kremlin wall, the slope near St. Basil's Cathedral.
Let us quote some pre-revolutionary and modern publications:
“Already the Intercession Cathedral (St. Basil’s Cathedral) is immediately distinguished by its bizarre architecture from the Kremlin churches. Built in memory of the conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan, which gave the trade routes to the Caspian and Siberia into the hands of the Moscow Posad, it was made up of eight original churches... And as a “votive” temple, connected with the growth of the Moscow Posad, and not the boyars who came at that time fell into disrepair, it was taken to spite the boyars outside the Kremlin, to the suburb, to the moat that separated Red Square from the descent to the Moscow River" (this is an excerpt from the book "Around Moscow: Walks around Moscow and its artistic and educational institutions" edited . N. A. Geinike and others);
“The Cathedral of the Intercession on the Moat, better known as St. Basil’s Cathedral, is located in the southern part of Red Square, near the Spassky Gate of the Kremlin, above the descent to the Moscow River” (this quote is an excerpt from the fundamental publication “Architectural Monuments of Moscow” of the early 80s x years).
Because the word descent in our Moscow toponym it is still associated with a thematic series street, embankment, mountain(type Poklonnaya Gora ), then it should be written in the title with a lowercase letter: descent. In the Kiev toponym, this same noun has long and firmly become part of the name of the street, therefore both components of the name Andreevsky Spusk must be written with a capital letter, similar to the Moscow names that are similar in structure: Kuznetsky Most street, Suschevsky Val street, Tserkovnaya Gorka street.
No less interesting is the history of the first part of the toponym Vasilievsky Spusk. Having the form of an adjective, it is formed by, as scientists say, transonymization (i.e., the transition of one proper name into another name, name, designation), not the official name of the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but its popular name - St. Basil's Cathedral. Such was the power of the spiritual folk tradition: Muscovites loved and revered the holy fool Vasily as a teacher, and after his death as a heavenly prayer book and patron. The following is known about this, in particular: “The place where he (cathedral. M. G.) founded, used to be a cemetery with a church in the name of St. Life-Giving Trinity, in which the holy fool Vasily the Blessed was buried... There are many legends associated with the pious deeds and prophetic abilities of the holy fool, for example, this one: having heard a lot about the ascetic life of Vasily, Ivan the Terrible once called him to his palace and ordered him to bring him a glass of wine . The blessed one, having accepted it, poured the wine out the open window. The Tsar ordered another to be poured for him, and Vasily did the same. Then the king angrily asked the holy fool:
Why are you acting so dishonestly with the sovereign’s salary?
“I’m putting out the fire in Novgorod,” answered the blessed one.
Soon the news of the fire in Novgorod justified the words of the holy fool. They said that in 1547 Vasily predicted the great fire of Moscow... In order to correct the morals of the people and those in power, he took upon himself the feat of “foolishness for the sake of Christ.” Foolishness - a new order of lay holiness - has been included in the Russian Church since the beginning of the 14th century.” V. G. Cherkasov-Georgievsky included such an interesting story about St. Basil in his book about religious centers and communities in Moscow.
And here’s how, even more interestingly, Ya. M. Belitsky wrote about the holy fool Vasily, nicknamed the Blessed, in the book “Forgotten Moscow” I already mentioned: “...Across this square among countless shops, among the noisy whirlwind of people in rags and barefoot At any time, Vasily's son Yakovlev once wandered. He was born in 1480 in the parish of the Church of the Epiphany in Elokhov. They say that his father was a shoemaker and he should have been a shoemaker too, but even in his adolescence he left his parental home, wandered around Moscow, and the glory of a healer and clairvoyant followed him.
There are a great many legends about Vasily, nicknamed the Blessed.
They say that one day some rich man gave him a fur coat from his shoulder. The gang of thieves noticed this fur coat and sent a rogue to him, who said to the holy fool in a mournful voice:
My friend died. And he and I were so poor that we had nothing to cover him. Give your fur coat to God's cause, holy man.
“Take it,” said Vasily, “and let everything be as you told me.”
When the swindler approached with a fur coat to the one who, pretending to be dead, was lying on the ground, he saw that he had actually given his soul to God.
Basil the Blessed died in 1551, and three years later, to commemorate the victory over the Kazan Khanate, Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich founded the Church of the Intercession.”
The motivation and specific type of model of formation in Russian speech of the city toponym Vasilievsky Spusk are quite transparent (despite the unusual details of its history and modern facts of the 90s of the 20th century): the anthroponym (person's name) Vasily the Blessed, and the chapel of St. Basil's Cathedral of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and St. Basil's Cathedral, and Vasilyevsky Descent. By the way, this new name can also be defined as a kind of toponymic metonymy.
The Great Manege building was built by order of Alexander I over eight months in 1817 on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the victory in the War of 1812. The construction was carried out according to the design of engineer Augustin Betancourt by a special staff of engineers and architects subordinate to the chief inspector of hydraulic and earthworks in Moscow, Major General Lev Carbonnier. The building was then called “exertzirgauz” (house for military exercises).
This is not to say that the construction went smoothly. The idea proposed by Betancourt and implemented by Carbonnier implied a unique technological principle: a one-of-a-kind wooden rafter structure that spanned a space of 44.86 m without intermediate supports. However, with the onset of heat at the end of July 1818, two trusses of the Manege cracked. They were fixed, but a year later, in the heat, damage occurred in the rafters again. By the highest order of Alexander I, from September 1823 to May 1824, the farms were rebuilt, and their number increased from 30 to 45. In August 1824, a ceiling was sewn to the roof of the Manege. The miracle of technology from Empire times is the result of the joint action of many architects. The ideas of A. Betancourt and L. Carbonnier were brought to mind by honest and modest professionals, about whom history is almost silent: Colonel R.R. Bausa, engineer-lieutenant A.Ya. Kashperov and others. The chief architect of the Commission for buildings, the famous Moscow architect Osip Bove, in 1825 decorated the Manege with stucco and plaster decorations. Since 1831, concerts and folk festivals were regularly held in Manege. After the revolution, there was a government garage in Manege, and during the time of Nikita Khrushchev (since 1957), the Central Exhibition Hall opened in the building. Interesting fact said researcher Sergei Petrov, who studied the design of the Manege for many years as head of the Main Directorate for the Protection of Monuments of the USSR. It turns out that in order to preserve the wooden structures, in Beauvais’s time the entire attic was filled with shag. Half a meter. All kinds of rodents and insects do not like this smell. Despite the fact that the shag itself was smoked during the war of 1941–1945, all the structures were as good as new back in the seventies of the 20th century. But even then there was still a thick smell of tobacco in the attic.
It’s interesting that the incident with shag in Manezh brings with it a beautiful trail of cultural associations. Associations relate, first of all, to the history of Russian architecture. That's shag! When pronouncing this, today almost exotic, word, how can one not recall the symbol of the transformations of modern Moscow - the Maxim Gorky Central Park of Culture and Culture, on the territory of which the first All-Union Agricultural Exhibition - VSKhV - was located in 1923. And its symbol for subsequent generations was the “Makhorka” pavilion built by the young architect Konstantin Melnikov - one of the first examples of avant-garde form-making.
Sergei Khachaturov
How Moscow streets were namedThen the square was filled with small shops, and they disappeared only by 1937. And in 1938, the area between the cathedral and the Kremlin wall was officially included in the structure. So it lost its own name.
When cultural and sporting events began to be held here, it was necessary to give this place a name. It is not known who came up with this name, but it was spread by television and radio presenters who reported on the events that took place here.
One of the scandalous events of the Soviet era is associated with Vasilyevsky Spusk. In May 1987, a plane landed here, on Vasilyevsky Spusk, and not on Red Square.
19-year-old German amateur pilot Matthias Rust landed. He took off from Hamburg on a Cessna-172B Skyhawk light aircraft and made an intermediate landing in Helsinki for refueling. The pilot told the air traffic control service that he was flying to Stockholm, but soon headed for Moscow. Rust crossed the state border, all air defense lines and landed next to - in the very center of the capital.
The scandal was unheard of! The party leadership was confused: the USSR had just recovered from the Chernobyl disaster and could not make another mistake. The generals stated that they could have shot down Rust's plane, but preferred to let him land. However, an urgent meeting of the CPSU Central Committee and 74 people removed from their posts say that Rust was not expected. There is also a version that this episode was a provocation by Gorbachev in order to cleanse the generals and put people loyal to him there.
Matthias Rust himself called his flight a gesture of peace. But the Soviet authorities regarded it as hooliganism and illegal crossing of the state border. The pilot was sentenced to 4 years, and after 15 months was amnestied.
They say that......after Rust’s landing, Red Square was dubbed Sheremetyevo-3, and a joke circulated around the country that a police post was set up near the fountain in case an American submarine surfaced.
Among the servicemen of the air defense regiments there was a joke about two lieutenant pilots on Red Square, one of whom asked the other for a cigarette. The other replied: “What are you doing?! There is no smoking at the airport!”
There was also this joke:
- Mikhail Sergeevich, Matthias Rust sat down there on Red Square!
- So should I go meet him?
Rust was also called “Sokolov’s fighter,” because after his flight, Sokolov was removed from his post as Minister of Defense.
...curious people who came to Vasilievsky Spusk were told that the plane was parked on the square because they were filming a movie.
...on Vasilyevsky Spusk they planned to extend the first
Photo from the 1890s.
“On Moskvoretskaya Street there was the “Yamskaya Prikaz” - this is a very old building, located in the middle of Moskvoretskaya Street on the right side of it, if you go from St. Basil’s Cathedral to the Moskvoretsky Bridge. “Yamskaya Prikaz” was inhabited by Kimryak shoemakers, single artisans or working two or three together. There were several artisans in one room.
When a buyer appeared at the Yamskaya Prikaz, sellers pounced on him from all sides and pulled the buyer towards them, praising their goods.
When an official from the craft or city council came to check the trade certificates, he could not find the owners.
In general, when checking the fishing certificates, curious scenes occurred among all the artisans. As soon as an official appeared in some house inhabited by artisans to
checking the number of hired workers from one or another owner, alarm began throughout the house: the owners, in order to reduce the number of workers, began to hide them in every possible way - tailors crawled under rollers, shoemakers ran out into the hallway and hid in closets, climbed into attics, onto roofs... When the official left, everything calmed down, and the craftsmen got to work... (how similar it is to checking some market by the migration service these days - d1)
The shoes produced at the Yamsky Prikaz were the cheapest; judging by the prices, its quality was low. It happened like this: a buyer would buy boots, put them on, go home and, before reaching home, the soles would fall off...
Nevertheless, this cheap product found many buyers in Moscow. Just as now many industries supply their workers with special clothing, so before many employers kept workers under the condition of giving them shoes, and these shoes were bought in the “Yamsky Prikaz”, since it was impossible to get them cheaper anywhere." (I. Belousov. Gone Moscow) .
Photo from the 1900s. Moskvoretskaya street. View from the Moscow River towards Red Square. The prospect is closed by the streets of the Middle Trading Rows (the outer part of the rows has been preserved).
“Long Moskvoretskaya Street there are shops selling spices; there is always a pungent smell here. They sell wax and church candles, as well as soap and the then famous Murom tallow candles. They were so strong that traders in the cold winter knocked them against each other, and they did not crack or break. They produced little soot and burned brightly.
On the opposite side they were selling ropes, matting, various papers, and at the very corner near the bridge there were live fish shops with cages on the river, from where Moscow was supplied with a yard of live sterlets." (P.I. Bogatyrev. Moscow Antiquity. Kitay-Gorod).
Photo from the 1900s. Moskvoretskaya street. The same photo as the previous one, but in a different processing.
On the left side of the photo you can see the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker of Moskvoretsky.
The Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker of Moskvoretsky was built in 1829-32. on the foundations of the old temple. The main altar is Annunciation. Freestanding bell tower - 1857. Closed in 1929, broken down in the 1930s.
Photo of 1882 from Naydenov’s albums. Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker of Moskvoretsky.
Photo from the beginning of the 20th century. Bell tower of the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker of Moskvoretsky.
Photo from the 1890s. View from Kremlin wall to Varvarka. In the foreground is the now defunct Maslyanny Lane (it ran from Vasilyevskaya Square to Moskvoretskaya Street). On the left is St. Basil's Cathedral.
Photo from the late 1890s. Vasilyevskaya Square.
Photo from the 1900s. Vasilyevskaya Square.
“Cheap warm goods were traded near the Kremlin wall - down from the Spassky Gate to the Moscow River there was a row of tents with stockings, mittens, scarves, hand-knitted sweatshirts. Traders of these goods made them right there, sitting knitting at their tents. Some traders sold their goods from their hands and walked around hung with stockings, scarves, and handkerchiefs." (I. Belousov. Gone Moscow).
Photo from the 1910s. Vasilyevskaya Square. View from the Spasskaya Tower.
Photo from 1905. Vasilyevskaya Square.
Photo from the 1910s. Vasilyevskaya Square. The writing on the postcard is wrong.
Photo 1911
Photo 1917 Moskvoretskaya street. From the archive of T. Yarzhombek. View from Red Square towards the Moscow River.
Photo from the late 1910s.
Photo from the late 1920s. Vasilyevskaya Square. On the right are shadows from what was demolished in the 1930s. quarter.
Photo from the late 1920s - early 1930s. Moskvoretskaya street. View from the old Moskvoretsky Bridge.