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

- Russia's problem

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

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

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

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

Abandoned villages in Russia - reasons for the degradation of villages

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

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

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

Moscow region - the land of ancient churches and estates

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

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

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

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

Khutor Fedorovka

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

Botovo village

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

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

Village Grebnevo

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

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

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

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

Village Shatur

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

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

Memo for extreme tourists

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

What should so-called extreme tourists know?

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

Finally...

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

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

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

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

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

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

Satellite images

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

General Staff cards

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

Red Army maps

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

Schubert map

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

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Strelbitsky Map

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

Mende Map

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

PGM or General Survey Plan

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

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

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

Where can I download?

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

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In the 3rd issue of “Military Archeology” there was a typo - a paragraph was omitted from Sergei Frolov’s article “In Search of Missing Villages” from the “Milestones of History” section. To eliminate this error, we are publishing the full version of the article in the live journal.

The easiest and surest way to touch history and find something interesting is to study missing villages, hamlets and villages, human settlements. Over the centuries-old history of our country, rare periods of life passed in relative calm, throughout the existence of the Russian state - constant civil strife, foreign invasions, popular uprisings. Villages, sometimes entire cities, disappeared from the face of the earth and were rebuilt. Many human settlements never rose from the ashes of history. Exploring such places will certainly bring positive results - the land still holds a lot of different secrets.
In the old days, such abandoned places were called wastelands, now they are called tracts.
In a broad sense, a tract is any part of the terrain, a section of terrain that is different from other sections of the surrounding area, for example, it could be a forest in the middle of a field, a swamp or something similar, as well as a section of terrain that is a natural boundary between something. (Wikipedia)

On any modern map of scale 1:100000 or 1:200000 you can see mysterious names with the letters “ur.” ahead. To more accurately determine the location of the disappeared village, you can use old maps, which are not difficult to acquire now, not like 10-15 years ago. Geographical atlases of Mende, Schubert, as well as maps of the General Survey will suit you. It would also be a good idea to visit the local history museum in the area where the research is planned. In the museum you can learn a lot of interesting and useful information - about the passage of trade routes, important geographical and historical objects, populated areas, places of concentration of any production and places of fairs and battles...
We compare the old map with the modern one and - full speed ahead. Rivers, streams, ravines and old roads are good guides for finding your way in the search for a missing village; they can be quite easy to find on the ground. In addition to the objects indicated on old maps, it is necessary, if possible, to examine the intersections of the largest roads, places of fords, bridges and crossings, as well as the area at the confluence of rivers and streams and near prominent heights and hills.
Lost villages can be roughly divided into two types - those that disappeared without a trace (literally leveled by machinery for crop land) and those that disappeared but left visible traces - mounds of foundations, pits from wells, ruins of buildings, wild fruit trees and shrubs. They were not leveled and were used for farmland except as pastures for livestock.
Most of the leveled villages are still being plowed, although recently in many places “the arable land has been overgrown with forest,” as during the period of the Polish devastation. In vast fields, it is not easy to find a plowed village; you will have to wander around. Signs of it will be fragments of bricks, crockery shards, and metal village rubbish. In our area, outside the black soil zone, the former village on the arable land is distinguished by the darkest color of the soil compared to the rest of the field. Signs of a once residential place can be trees standing alone in the middle of a field - linden, willow, oak. Or, for example, a linden alley in the forest, or a piece of terrain covered with poplars. In the fields, it is also necessary to remember about land reclamation, which was carried out everywhere during the Soviet period. It often happens that instead of a stream, you can find only a small dry hollow in a field, while according to the old map there was a dam and a water mill on the river.

In the areas of the oldest villages, very few fragments of brick are found - in those days it was rarely used to build foundations. But there are large quantities of earthenware ceramics. Based on the composition and appearance of these shards, a knowledgeable person can accurately determine their age, that is, the age of the village. Finding such a village can be considered a success; there will be almost no metal debris, such as foil, aluminum wire, plugs and cartridges. Most often, old settlements were located on the banks of streams and rivers, and sometimes “near wells”, along the most important trade routes. The ancients preferred sunny southern slopes of hills, protected from northern winds by heights or forests. Only later did people begin to build houses at the very peaks of heights, open to all winds.
The unleveled village consists of overgrown mounds of foundations surrounded by semi-wild fruit trees and bushes. As a rule, in the areas of former buildings, the thickets of nettles, fireweed or other grass are the densest, so for work in the summer it would be advisable to use a scythe or a gas mower. Typically, the foundation of a house is dug along the inner perimeter to a depth of homogeneous soil, especially in the corners. There, the owners sometimes, when building a house, placed mortgage coins so that there would be money in the house. Often in the corners you come across brass and copper folds and crosses that fell from the shelf during a fire or destruction of the house. As practice shows, the largest number of coins are found along the main, front wall of the house, where the windows were located. This place can be determined by a map and compass, or by fragments of glass found in the ground, or simply visually - the windows usually faced the sunny side.

The discarded soil and excavation site are periodically checked with a metal detector. The fact is that in many houses in the old days there simply was no wooden floor. Houses were sometimes built half-earth - a hole was dug, from which a frame was subsequently raised. The floor was earthen, trampled down or covered with straw, in which it was difficult to find a coin or, for example, a ring that had been accidentally dropped. Of particular interest are furnace pits, which are sometimes called brownie pits. Often, garbage was swept into these pits - shards of dishes, small animal bones, along with which lost coins and other interesting objects ended up there. When plowing, the contents of such a house are turned out to the surface by plows and dragged across the field from year to year.
In places where the oldest villages and settlements are plowed, it is advisable to use a search probe with a tip to find house holes. First, you need to notice a place, a certain patch of land, where you come across the most finds - coins, crosses and other items made of non-ferrous metals, as well as a lot of ceramics and the soil itself is quite humus, “livable”, that is, black in color. After this, you should examine this place with a probe. In areas of house holes, you will feel the characteristic dip of the probe, as well as the grinding of the tip on the ceramics. Over time, having dug several holes, you will easily learn to recognize the necessary objects, even if you have not previously had experience working with a search probe.

It is necessary to explore the missing village persistently and thoroughly, checking not only the places where the houses stood, but also the territory of vegetable gardens and outbuildings. Often, valuables were buried away from the house. Experienced treasure hunters do not use discrimination at all, working in the “all metals” mode. Firstly, the depth of object detection increases. And secondly, when choosing all the metal garbage, they practically do not miss even the smallest objects, for example, a “scale” - a Russian medieval coin. Every beginner should know that finding a coin next to a cast iron frying pan can be difficult even with a state-of-the-art metal detector.
It will be useful to work with a metal detector at other historical sites indicated on the maps. These include inns, brick and other industries, trading shops, piers, ruins of landowners' estates, manor parks, etc. The only thing that must be avoided is excavations on the territory of archaeological and historical monuments that are protected by the state. This is where you may get into trouble with the law.
And one last useful note: try to fill the holes after you work with a shovel. Firstly, you won’t attract competitors with your holes, and secondly, no agronomist or head of the village administration will attribute damage to agricultural land to you.
Now all that remains is to wait for the new field season and off we go. And so that this winter doesn’t seem so long and boring to you, use the time to study historical and local history literature, maps, and choose upcoming routes. After all, it was not us who proved that practice without theory is nothing, and vice versa.

In this article I will try to tell you how to find an abandoned or disappeared village, without a map.
Personally, the first thing I pay attention to is the vegetation; it can tell a lot about the area. Of course, the presence of fruit-bearing trees in a forest or clearing is immediately noticeable; they stop growing in the place of settlements only after a long period of time equal to 50-70 years. During this time, you can still see bricks, foundations and tree beams sticking out of the ground.

After a person leaves his acquired place, the forest quickly begins to take back the field that the person had reclaimed from him, first shrubs appear (possibly wild raspberries or currants will appear) and willow, then birch, aspen and oak appear, and then pine and spruce appear. Trees always replace each other in a certain sequence. In the forest, this is very noticeable, as is the fact that after the clearing is overgrown, the trees in it are still very low compared to the trees around.

It is also worth remembering that where a person lived, there will always be soil pollution with nitrogen, and nettle and burdock are very fond of it. Moreover, nettle also loves ashes, so it very often follows the contours of a burnt house. It’s still not worth focusing too much on nettles, since they grow for about 180 years and move very easily, but you can take note of this advice. I often pay attention to the growing horseradish in the fields; this plant is quite unpretentious and used to be in everyone’s garden.

The fields that are plowed every year must be carefully studied for ceramics and glass, an integral attribute of human life. You can travel to such fields for a very long time, since plowing raises coins closer to the surface; such fields attract quite a few coin seekers every year, because it takes more than one year to completely knock them out.

In the Moscow region, if you see a poplar, walnut or larch in a forest or clearing, then a person is definitely in charge of you, since these trees originally grew in a different latitude and were brought here, and if you see these trees in a row, then perhaps this is an alley and there may be a manor nearby.

The next important step in finding settlements is water; in the past, people almost always settled near a fresh body of water. So if you know an old lake, river or pond, go look for convenient approaches to the water that would not be flooded during high water. See for yourself where you would like to put a house and dig a garden, turn on your imagination where our ancestors could have lived before.

There is another interesting detail: churches. Almost all churches tried to be built of brick, unlike ordinary houses, so you can often find a dilapidated church in the middle of an empty field. As you understand, there was most likely a village around and in such a place you definitely need to dig. But there are almost no such untouched places left in our country.

Well, who doesn’t want to look for disappeared villages without a map, I give a link to Schubert’s map of 1860, where almost all the provinces of the Russian Empire are indicated. That's all for those who want to add something, I'm waiting for your comments.

It turns out that it is a difficult matter to “count” populated areas (villages, hamlets, hamlets) that have disappeared in the whirlpool of time. The main problem is to decide from what point in time to start counting. As a source (reference point) I will take the 1941 edition of the Red Army General Staff map at a scale of 1:100,000, that is, 1 cm - 1 km. On it I will highlight those settlements that currently do not exist. I repeat once again - all this is to help researchers of this interesting topic. A topic that will always excite the minds of researchers.

It’s not for nothing that the classic once said:

Two feelings are wonderfully close to us,
The heart finds food in them:
Love for the native ashes,
Love for fathers' coffins...

I’ll start with the rural settlement of Pervomaisky, which is close to me. As a child, I often had to visit Lebedinka: fishing, and just went with my father to visit friends. So I heard about Plestso, and about Perekrestov, and about Tamilyanka, where the church still stands. Although the farms themselves disappeared before I was born.

We called the place where the Plestso farm was located - Plestsy. There, at the melon patch, the weather-beaten guys and I feasted on delicious “kavuns” and melons. I admit, we “extracted” them in a not very legal way.

In my childhood, Perekrestov was, first of all, a pond of the same name. I learned much later that the pond got its name from the disappeared farm.

I have highlighted above the map:

1. Farm Friedrich Engels.

2. Kopani farm.

3. Khutor Alekseevka.

4. Popasny farm (Mikhail Gribanov, author of “Father’s Stories about the War”) was born in this farm.

5. Khutor Perekrestov.

6. Plestso farm.

7. Tamilyanka Farm.

8. Pokrovka farm.

I will continue about the Lipchansky rural settlement, which is no less close to me. There are so many trails and field paths traveled here in childhood, all these places are very familiar to me! You drive and wind your way along a field road among endless collective farm fields. My parents sent me to cut grass for the livestock. And you see ahead a place overgrown with weeds: the remains of foundations, cellar failures, wild cherries, apple trees, pears.

People once lived here!

For some reason, you always involuntarily fall silent in such places.

Several years ago, together with the search guys, we went to the place where the Teplinka farm was located before the war. And until the mid-1990s - MTF of the Vostok state farm. We were looking for a burial reported by a pensioner from the Varvarovka village. Grandmother, being in her old age, could not personally show this place, but she told “on her fingers” what was there and where. Unfortunately, we were unable to find anything, only everyone suffered with the thorny “budyaks” with which the site of the former Teplinka farm was overgrown. Among our finds is a part from an Italian gas mask, and several shell casings.

Marked above on the map:

1. farm No. 2 of state farm No. 106 (former 2nd department of the Vostok state farm. Residents of the 2nd farm moved to the Varvarovka farm in the 1970s).

3. Teplinka Farm.

4. Novo-Lipchanka farm.

5. Sarmin farm.

6. Novo-Mikhailovka farm (in place of this farm on older maps the Zhokhov (Zhokhovka) farm is indicated)

7. Novo-Pokrovka farm.

In the area south and west of the village of Shurinovka, the map shows farmsteads unknown to me; perhaps they were located in the neighboring Kantemirovsky district:

8. Novo-Bugaevka farm.

9. Novo-Alexandrovka farm.

10. Zaikin Farm.

But the Novaya Derevnya farmstead indicated on the map still exists. Now Novaya Derevnya is one of the streets in the village of Shurinovka. Although only a few people live on Novaya Dereva now.

Several families also live on the Chumakovka farmstead (locally called Chumachivka). But on modern maps this name no longer exists. There is a village called Lipchanka.

By the way, for lovers of local place names! The village of Lipchanka is scattered widely along both banks of the Left Bogucharka River. I know the following self-names of parts of the village: in addition to the mentioned Chumachivka, these are Kruglivka and “Progress”, as well as Popovka (also a disappeared farm).

And on this map are indicated:

1. Khutor Neledovo.

2. Khutor Lofitsky.

3. Khutor Liman.

4. Nikolenko farm (now Rostov region).

Medovskoe rural settlement. My maternal ancestors lived in the village of Medovo. And according to my mother’s stories, all these farms were always on my lips. And when cards like these became available, they were, one might say, in plain sight.

1. Savkino farm.

2. Khutor Novyi Byt.

3. Zhelobok Farm.

4. Khutor Volny (established in the 1920s)

5. Klenovy Farm (established in the 1920s; old-timers heard the name Klinovy).

6. Sukhoi Log farm.

7. 3rd department of the Bogucharsky state farm.

8. Khlebny Farm (the site of fierce battles on December 20-21, 1942 with Italian-German units breaking out of encirclement).

9. A settlement designated as a “state farm farm” (not far from Vasilyevsky Pond).

1. Badgers (Bursakov).

2. Kozlov (Kozlovka).

Kantemirovsky farms Dmitrovka and Grigorievka.

The map below shows:

1. Krasno-Orekhovoe farm (the farm was destroyed during the Second World War. During the battles it changed hands several times. Territory of the Verkhnemamonsky district)

2. Solontsy farm (also badly damaged during the fighting)

3. Olkhovy Khutor (on Italian maps it is designated as Kuselkin).

4. Khutor Naly (Steppe).

Khutor Ogolev on the map below.

Here, it seems, are all the farms indicated on the maps of the Great Patriotic War. If we take, for example, Schubert’s maps, the number of disappeared farms will increase by an order of magnitude. But this is a topic for another study.

And most importantly, unfortunately in the Bogucharsky district there are settlements that may soon join this sad row of forgotten, missing farms. What and who is to blame? The leading comrades from the district and rural administrations will probably say that everyone is to blame except them: the general situation in the country, the difficult legacy of the “daring” 1990s, the very population of these farms, these grandparents who simply have nowhere to leave.

Karazeevo, Kravtsovo, Dubovikovo, Novo-Nikolskoye, Batovka, Maryevka... How long do they have left?