All Saints

(Travel home April 6-9, 2007)

A trip to your homeland is a return to your origins, it is an activation of memory, it is joy and sadness at the same time, it is a collision with the phenomenon of time, it is a deepening into oneself. I was born and grew up in the village of Vsekhsvyatskoe, at the age of 17 I went to Yaroslavl to study at the Yaroslavl Pedagogical Institute named after. Ushinsky, from Yaroslavl at the age of 22 he went to Leningrad to study at the graduate school of the Botanical Institute. V.L. Komarov Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Then there was work and life in Kaliningrad, Altai, Syktyvkar, Transbaikalia, Magadan, Anadyr and, finally, Vladivostok. I often came to my homeland to visit while my parents were alive, then I came to visit my brother. And now I am already 60 years old, my parents died, my children grew up and matured, I have 7 grandchildren, the children of my younger brother also became adults and all three were going to get married. This time I went to Vsekhsvyatskoye with my daughter Irina from St. Petersburg by train via Vologda. In Vologda, my brother Vitaly met us, we drove south through the city of Gryazovets, the Baklanka railway station and the village of Kukoboy (by the way, the birthplace of Baba Yaga). Spruce forests with birches and aspens along the sides of the road were pleasing to the eye and brought back to the past. The village of All Saints, as always, appeared suddenly: Here I am again in my homeland, spread out, lies a village. As if candles stick out poplars and birches like Russian brooms.

This year the spring is abnormally early, all the snow melted even in the forest, on the Sheleksha and Ukhtoma rivers the ice drifted and the water subsided, the rivers entered the banks. Previously, this was only in mid-May.

Sheleksha river near the bridge. We used to go fishing here in the spring. Hefty ides pecked at the worm on the bait. However, getting them off the bridge was not easy. Up to 20 fishermen went to the bridge for such fishing at the same time. Irina was here many years ago when she was 5-6 years old.

Here on the bank of the Sheleksha I have been fishing for as long as I can remember. This tract is called rather strange - Toviny Oviny. Why? Nobody remembers anymore. Who is Tovin? On the high, unflooded bank of the river, there used to be a nagumen or barn that belonged to my grandfather and great-grandfather, and behind it on the mountain stood a windmill that belonged to my great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather. Today, on the site of this mill, there is a warehouse of the Smena collective farm. The kolkhoz has completely fallen into disrepair from democracy, and the kolkhoz buildings have long been abandoned and are falling apart.

View of the village of All Saints from the Sheleksha River. The river separates the village from Pogost. In June, housewives brought tubs of cabbage, mushrooms and cucumbers to the river. They put stones in them, filled them with water and placed them in the river. The tubs got wet, did not dry out, then they were steamed with juniper, washed and used in the fall for new pickles. But under the tubs, while they stood in the water, lived huge slippery burbots. We, the children, quietly pushed the tub aside and began to catch burbot, some with our hands, some with a fork. I remember how the wounded burbot crawled into the trouser leg and, fluttering in it, reached the stomach. I had to jump ashore in horror, take off my pants and shake the burbot out of them. That was laughter! And it happened near the opposite bank.

View of Pogost from the place where I shook slippery burbot out of my pants in 1955. Against two birches on the bank of the river then stood a large one-story former manor house. The All Saints seven-year school was located in this house, I studied there from the second to the fourth grade. Then the seven-year school from Vsekhsvyatskoye was transferred to the village of Vysokovo, and only Primary School so that from the fifth to the seventh grade I had to stomp for 3 kilometers. Every day there and back it turned out 6 km. Today's residents of All Saints associate the churchyard with the cemetery, which is located behind these houses. Once upon a time there was a large beautiful church of All Saints, hence the name of the village - All Saints. In the 1950s the church was closed and gradually deteriorated, then in 1957 it was blown up. What for? To use bricks to build barnyards. Who ordered? then leadership. I remember that terrible explosion, fragments of bricks flew at a distance of 300 meters from the center of the explosion. But the Graveyard is not a place where the dead stay. Graveyards were the places where ancient Russian princes came to collect tribute from smerds living in neighboring villages. Once the whole village of All Saints was called Pogost. And it was at least 1000 years ago before the adoption of Christianity by Russia. Traditionally, priests in the Church of All Saints were people with the surname Donskoy. Most likely, the first priests came from somewhere in the Don. When it was?

I planted this birch when I was 7 years old. He brought a twig as tall as me from the forest and planted it near the neighbor's house near the front garden from the side of the street. The fact is that in our front garden, located 15 meters to the left, bird cherry, mountain ash, cherry were planted, and no trees grew near the neighbors. The birch I brought from the forest did not find a place near our house, it was a pity for me to throw it away, and I planted it near the neighbors' house.

There are no neighbors in that old house. This brick building was built later. Birch survived, grew up, became like a Russian broom. And so we met her. We are the same age, we are 60 years old. This is how time manifests itself in growth and aging in our world. Time is a movement from birth to death. But is there a time after death?

Once upon a time, grandfather Sasha Zabolkin, a great carpenter, lived in this house. I was surprised that from the boards and logs you can make a real table, chest of drawers, wardrobe, bed. Grandfather Zabolkin said that all people are divided into only two parties: the first is those who can make nuts out of shit, and the second is those who can only make shit out of nuts. Having lived most of my life, I was convinced that he was absolutely right.

He - grandfather Zabolkin - taught me to appreciate old instruments. Once, in the attic of our house, I found an old rusty ax without an ax handle. My father planted it on an ax handle and sharpened it, cleaned it of rust. Once, returning from the forest, where I used this ax to prepare firewood, I met grandfather Zabolkin. He, seeing my old ugly ax, offered to exchange it for any of his axes that I liked. He took me to his carpentry workshop and offered me a choice. My eyes lit up from his axes. Without rust, impaled on magnificent ax handles, his axes made me feel delighted. I chose one that seemed to me the best. Grandfather Sasha looked, laughed and said: "I agree, only you first ask your father for permission." When I told my father about grandfather Zabolkin’s proposal to exchange axes, my father forbade me: “What are you, our ax is 10 times better, they don’t know how to make such steel today, and if they can, then they don’t use it for axes.”

Not everything new is better than old, even if it shines brighter.

Here is what is left of the house where I was born and lived for the first 9 years of my life. This house was built by my grandfather Dmitry Iosifovich Galanin when he returned to his native village from revolutionary Petrograd in 1918. There, since childhood, he worked at the factory as a blacksmith. He was sent to St. Petersburg at 10 summer age after the death of his father. My grandfather was raised by his father's brother.

For 10 years, my grandfather rebuilt the house, outbuildings, set up a household, but in 1929 the NEP in the USSR ended, and collectivization began in the village. My grandfather's sister and her entire family were exiled as kulaks to Siberia to build Magnitogorsk. And they had five children.

The blow for my grandfather was too big. He died in 1930 at the age of 54. In the same year he was born younger son Nicholas, my own maternal uncle.

Yes, indeed, time is a movement from birth to death, from creation to destruction. Only the relay race of life is capable of defeating time.

And this is the house that my father Voronin Vladimir Kuzmich built in 1959-64. I participated in its construction. Then the house was overhauled and the second half (the one at the back) was added to it by my younger brother Vitaly Voronin. Now my brother and his family live in this house.

Construction was very difficult. We had no money, we did everything ourselves. In the collective farm then it was possible to earn 15-20 rubles a month, this was only enough for food and poor clothes.

Today my brother is a private entrepreneur. Without any initial capital in 1993, he began to make log houses and bathhouses for sale. Today, 20 jobs have arisen from this enterprise of his, practically out of nothing. On average, its workers receive 8,000 to 10,000 rubles a month, while on the Smena collective farm the average salary of an employee is only 800 rubles a month.

I planted apple trees in front of the house in 1964, but my father planted oak and larch. In 1973 I brought him acorns and larch seeds from Kaliningrad.

All Saints Village Club. In front of him is a monument to fellow countrymen who died in the Great Patriotic war 1941-45 This building was built in the early 60s. It houses a library, a hall with a stage, a room for artists. Yes, there are those too. Self-activity has not yet completely died in Vsekhsvyatskoye. And here they still glorify labor, not capital. This is what Russia will live on.

Old priest's house on Pogost. Now the Don family lives in this house. Yes, the distant descendants of those Don, who once brought Christianity to All Saints.

In the 50s, this house did not belong to the Donskoy, it housed the primary classes of the All Saints seven-year school. I studied in this house in the 1st and 2nd grades.

In the early 60s, the house began to collapse, and the village council sold it to Veniamin Donskoy, who bought the collapsed family house and repaired it.

The family of Venya Donskoy has 10 children, 1 of them is a guy. Venya has already died and is buried in the cemetery, near the former church in the highest priority place, where the clergy were always buried. Venya himself was never a priest; he was born, grew up and grew old in the era of atheists.

But his uncle Sergei Donskoy was a priest in the era of atheists, but he served not in All Saints, but in other churches in the Yaroslavl region, often visiting his homeland.

View of the All Saints Cemetery and part of the Pogost (right). In the days of my childhood and youth, a bonfire was annually lit on Shrovetide here to the right of the cemetery. Then I somehow did not pay attention to it special attention. But then I thought, why exactly in this place, on Pogost next to the cemetery? Maslenitsa is a pagan holiday and has nothing to do with Christianity. This means that this place was cult even before Christianity. Christian missionaries deftly attached themselves to holy places, to places of traditional burial places. They introduced new names, new ceremonies into the old cult ceremonies, but the holy places of worship remained the same. Well, if so, then in this place, in addition to Christian elements material culture something must be preserved even from pre-Christian times. To test this hypothesis, Irina and I went to the churchyard.

View of the neighboring village of Korovino from the ancient temple of All Saints and the sacrificial stone. The highway that can be seen ahead is the road along which you can go to the right to the village of Kukoboy, the cities of Gryazovets and Vologda, and to the left - to the village of Semenovskoye, the cities of Poshekhonye and Rybinsk, as well as to Danilov and Yaroslavl.

This farm of my brother is called a rafting ground. Harvested wood is transported here with whips. Here it is cut, cleaned of bark, sorted. Part goes to the construction of log cabins, part goes to the sawmill for the manufacture of timber and boards, part is sold to the factory for the manufacture of plywood, and the rest after such sorting goes to firewood. V.V. Voronin created his own individual entrepreneurship from scratch, having no authorized capital, without taking a single ruble of credit.