The official age of Kerch is 2600 years. I don't even know who first came up with this nonsense: to set an exact date and celebrate it right there? After all, archaeologists claim that the first people lived here long before that. During this time, for various reasons, dozens of peoples ended up here, but mystically the Russian patronymic IVANOVICH appeared next to the names of those who changed this city for the better.
Eduard IVANOVICH Totleben
First, the ferry "Kavkaz-Crimea". Then, along the broken road with the self-explanatory name of the Cimmerian Highway, I went to the Kerch Fortress, or the Russian Fortress. Its construction was carried out from 1857 to 1877. The construction of a strong naval fortress, capable of blocking the path of the enemy fleet to the Sea of Azov, was caused by the defeat of Russia in the Crimean War. As a result, a first-class fortress appeared, which became a kind of monument to the brilliant fortifier Eduard Ivanovich Totleben. Indeed, in it, he embodied all the advanced military engineering ideas of that time.
The German surname Totleben comes from the motto "Treu auf Tod und Leben" ("Faithful until death"). And Count Eduard Ivanovich Totleben fully acquitted him. Russian general, famous military engineer. In his life, this man managed to fight in the Caucasus (1848-1850), and distinguished himself in the defense of Sevastopol during the Crimean War (1854-1857), and worked as the chief manager for the defense of the Black Sea coast during the Eastern War (1877-1878). He built forts and fortifications in Kerch, Ochakov, Odessa, Sevastopol, Sveaborg, Dinaburg, Nikolaev, Vyborg, Kronstadt, Kiev and other vulnerable cities of the Russian Empire.
The construction of the fortress "Kerch" was supervised by Alexander II himself, who visited the city three times. The Russian Empire spent more than 12 million rubles, and, as a result, received one of the seven strongest fortresses in Russia, the support of the empire on the Black Sea.
A young Kerch writer Dmitry Markov meets me in the fortress. Dima turned out to be a very emotional guide: “We have been walking here not so long ago - until 2000 the Fortress was closed. In Soviet times, a military unit was located here, there was an ammunition depot. Then they took them out for many years. And I’m still not sure that nothing was left at all. Our fortress! Walk through the compartments, barracks, tunnels, think about those who served here. Wander around the unnecessary structure that survived the wars for which it was built, listen to the echoing echo in its labyrinths and rejoice in the WORLD!"
The fortress was built in the era of smooth-bore weapons and was completed when rifled weapons appeared, so that it did not participate in any of the wars for which it was intended, and during the Second World War it was largely destroyed due to bombing - almost no ground structures remained, but in general, less than half of its structures have survived to us.
The fortress was also badly damaged by vandals. Below, there is almost the only surviving authentic forged gates that stood in all passages from the inner part of the fortress to the moat. Ventilation outlet is in the center of the frame.
Fortress "Kerch" is hidden under earthen embankments, it is difficult to see it from the ground, air or water, but at the same time it has all the traditional attributes of classic defensive structures: ditches, ramparts, loopholes, walls.
They are made of natural local materials: shell rock, red brick, limestone. The latter was very viscous in structure. When the nucleus hit the walls, it did not fly into pieces and did not hit a large number of people.
Usually, when you mention a military facility, practical, angular, without unnecessary details of the building come to mind. Everything is completely different in the Totlebena fortress: the most unpretentious buildings are decorated with amazing brick ornaments. The huge fortification, hidden in the coastal hills at the narrowest point of the Kerch Strait, looks amazing.
Most of the structures of the fortress are connected with each other by underground passages (posterns). The longest of them leads from Fort Totleben to the coastal batteries. The length of this tunnel is about 600 meters, and it is about it that most of the myths, legends and simply scary stories are composed that hardly have anything in common with the truth.
The gate leading to the Ak-Burun fortification.
Ventilation shaft
One of the gates leading from the inside of the fortress to the defensive ditch.
Defensive ditch.
Half-caponir in the moat.
An inscription on the inner wall of the moat.
View of the half-caponier in the moat.
The entrance to the half-caponier is from the moat.
Ventilation shaft.
One of the pre-revolutionary barracks and the ruined staircase to it (possibly already from the Soviet era).
Probably a powder magazine.
Barracks.
A caponier in a moat, dilapidated during the war.
Inscriptions apparently made by soldiers of the Red Army in 1941.
View from the fortress towards the Mithridates ridge.
Moat.
Giorgio IVANOVICH Torricelli
After wandering around the desert fortress, I go to the very center of the city, to the foot of Mount Mithridates. Once upon a time there was a beautiful temple - the First Russian Museum in Kerch. While we are climbing the majestic staircase with griffins up the mountain, it becomes clear: there is nothing to look at.
… In 1834 Kerch was lucky. The highest order was received on a loan of 50,000 rubles for the construction of a museum building directly on Mount Mithridates, and already in 1835 it was completed. The Athenian temple of Hephaestus (patron saint of trade), located in the agora (market square) next to the acropolis, was taken as a model. The architect was sent to the city architect of Odessa Giorgio Ivanovich Torricelli.
Giorgio Ivanovich Toricelli is one of the largest architects of Odessa in the first half of the 19th century. In 1823-1827 he served as an "architectural assistant", and then became the city architect of Odessa. In 1828 he drew up a general architectural plan of the city.
Of the buildings and structures designed and built in Odessa under the supervision of Toricelli, it can be noted: the Archangel Michael Cathedral (destroyed in 1931), St. Paul's Church, the palace of the Odessa friend of Pushkin, Count I. O. Witt, the English Club (now the Museum of the Navy), the Birzhevaya Square ensemble, the Museum of the Imperial Odessa Society of History and Antiquities, the Tolstoy mansion (now the House of Scientists), the merchant exchange (now the Odessa City Council) on Primorsky Boulevard, Sabaneev Bridge, as well as 44 Pale stores -Royal.
Only in 1841, after all the preparations, the museum opened its doors to the public. “One can judge what impression it makes from all sides of the Bosphorus, especially when this majestic mass, illuminated from the bottom of the pediment to the top, is reflected in the waves,” wrote the Swiss traveler Dubois de Montpere.
The Anglo-French, who seized Kerch on May 12, 1855, ravaged the museum and set up a powder warehouse in it. The landing party demonstrated all the "power of European culture": "The museum door has been broken … the marble floor has been broken, the fireplaces have been broken, the windows in the hatches have been broken, the furniture and cupboards in the niches have been destroyed. Ancient things kept in the museum have been stolen … Marble lions and tombstones that were under columns of the museum, all stolen, except for a few that do not matter. " According to N. P. Kondakov, the floor of the museum was covered with broken dishes and glass for several vershoks. The remaining valuables (including ceramics) were taken abroad by the British Colonel Westmaket.
In fact, a hundred years after that, the building passed from hand to hand. After the war, the building served as a church and was kept in decent shape, and after a landslide that began in the 1880s, it was strengthened, then repaired - there was again a church, and before the Second World War - a museum. The building was so destroyed during the war that it actually had to be rebuilt, which the Soviets did not want to do, and in 1959 one of the key architectural structures in Kerch's appearance was demolished.
The public figure Eduard Desyatov, whom I met, is in favor of the restoration of Theseus' temple. He is surprised by the long-term reluctance of the city authorities to raise this problem at the federal level: “The basement floor has been preserved, drawings, paintings, drawings, photographs have remained. What is missing? Real Kerch people know the value of this temple, they saw it. And new generations of townspeople and leaders, alas, are not ready to act, because for them the temple does not exist."
Local historian Konstantin Khodakovsky does not quite agree with him: “I support this initiative, but the priority in the Mithridat complex should now be the perishing staircase - it should almost be re-moved, and then the chapel, the final stage should be the Temple of Theseus - these three buildings formed the image of the city for more than a hundred years, and until now it is impossible to imagine Kerch without the Mithridates staircase."
Mithridates staircase
[center]
Konstantin IVANOVICH Mesaksudi
Places associated with the biography of the hereditary honorary citizen of Kerch, the owner of a large tobacco factory, a vowel of the Kerch-Yenikalskaya Duma, the headman of the Greek Church Konstantin Ivanovich Mesaksudi, are innumerable in the city. By the beginning of the 20th century, the Mesaksudi family owned real estate in various districts of the city, the total area of which was about 145 thousand square meters. and was estimated at 336 336 rubles 50 kopecks.
The house where the Mesaksudi factory was located is well preserved. Interestingly, there is still a building in the courtyard, built together with the main buildings in 1915 and repeating the appearance of the first Mesaksudi factory in 1867, but which already served as a kindergarten for workers' children.
The country's largest enterprise for the production of elite tobacco products enjoyed well-deserved fame and supplied its products to the imperial court, and the owner of the production acquired the legendary fame of a successful entrepreneur and a generous benefactor. The founder of the tobacco factory, Konstantin Ivanovich, and later his children Grigory and Dmitry, who ran the enterprise, showed constant concern for their workers. At the plant there was a mutual aid fund, a cooperative with cheaper products than in the city, and a nursery for children. Cadre workers received cash bonuses, gifts on the occasion of marriage and the birth of children. Benefits were paid in the event of injury or disability. The owner supported the pharmacy and the outpatient clinic.
The factory was nationalized in 1920 and existed until 1941, remaining the largest enterprise in the tobacco industry in the Crimea. During the Great Patriotic War, in 1941, according to some information, part of the equipment was evacuated to Armavir. The remaining machines and stocks of raw materials were transferred by the invaders to Feodosia in order to resume tobacco production for the needs of the troops. The enterprise was never revived.
You can read about the visits of the descendants of Konstantin Ivanovich Mesaksudi here. Kerch Historical and Archaeological Museum
Georges IVANOVICH Matrunetsky
Georges Ivanovich Matrunetsky was born, lived and worked here, in Kerch. He wrote an incredible amount, choosing for himself a multi-layered tempera (friends say that it took a lot of colors, and the artist experimented as best he could, mixing various components in them). In the dashing 90s, he had to earn money as a designer at the Zaliv shipyard, but, oddly enough, this did not affect his creative manner and the subjects of his paintings. He remains faithful to the once chosen theme, "writes a generalized image of the Kerch Peninsula - a narrow strip of land, enclosed between two seas, the image of a wise, passionless, eternal, gray sea."
Once his father, a hammer-worker Ivan Konstantinovich Matrunetsky, came here from Ukraine and built a house with his own hands, which still stands on Chernyakhovsky Street. Now the artist's widow Maria lives here and this is perhaps the only place in Kerch where you can see at least a few of his paintings. I hope that someday there will definitely be a house-museum of the artist here.
The works of Georges Matrunetsky are in the Feodosia Art Gallery, the Simferopol Art Museum, museums in Odessa, Kiev, private collections of different cities and countries … Even during his lifetime, he did not know stinginess and easily donated his paintings to friends, galleries, institutions, but only a few could and wanted to save these canvases are for posterity: paintings were sold and exchanged for products in difficult years, and sometimes they simply "disappeared" from local museums. The time has come for them to return to their homeland.
P. S. Such are the different "Ivanovichs".
