The hamlet of Shakhonino cannot be found on the tourist maps of the Yaroslavl Region. And even on he ordinary maps, perhaps, you can hardly see its name even using a not very strong magnifying glass. Now, you can get into Shakhonino accompanied only with an experience guide after a four-kilometer walk through the forest away from a rather bad road. But I really wanted to see the mysterious church with my own eyes, so I put on my high boots, used insect-repellent spray from head to toe, and went to the Danilovsky District where the once populous hamlet of Shakhonino is ‘living out’ its last days.
On the Danilovsky District’s old maps of the 19th-century, you can see two names at one point - the hamlet of Shakhonino and the village of Voskresenskoye, also called Voskresenye (Resurrection), in Zhary that is in Bludovo. There is a legend associated with these names that all locals know. Marina Ushakova, a teacher, local historian and a native of these places, told this story to the correspondent of EcoTourism EXPERT.
A hamlet is a populated area with several dozen or hundreds of individually built houses where the predominant occupation of the residents is agriculture and crafts. A village is a rural settlement where agricultural activity is the main activity, or at least it was such for most of the history of the village. The main difference between a hamlet and a village is the absence of a church in hamlets. However, this is not the strict rule. For example, the hamlet of Logduz in the Vologda Region has a wooden church. Currently, there are no official differences between a hamlet and a village in Russia.
Two hundred years ago, the local people decided to build a church in the hamlet of Bludovo, a mile away from the hamlet of Shakhonino. They dug a pit on the outskirts and laid the foundation. But suddenly, on the night from Saturday to Sunday, a miracle happened - the foundation of the church disappeared in Bludovo, but appeared in Shakhonino. The builders and local people were greatly surprised, but decided not to tempt fate by returning what they had built to Bludovo, and resigned themselves entirely to the will of Heaven. This is how the Church of the Resurrection was built in Shakhonino that is considered to be ‘in Bludovo’. And in the unlucky Bludovo hamlet, on the site of the ’runaway’ church, a pit remained that was later turned into a picturesque small pond. They say, it still exists, but overgrown with bushes.
And the legend about the ‘journey’ of the church would have remained only an funny ‘fairy tale’ if not for its name. It says that the church is ‘in Bludovo’, which confuses all the local historians and forces the researchers to have heated discussions about this name. Why is the church located in Shakhonino, and its name includes the word ‘Bludovo’? Why were both Shakhonino and Bludovo always considered hamlets and not villages? Why are the village of Voskresenye (Voskresenskoye) and the hamlet of Shakhonino on the maps, while in fact, this is the same place?
There is even a separate topic on the discussion board in the Internet posted by the Yaroslavl Historical and Genealogical Society dubbed Voskresensky Pogost in Zhary (in Bludovo) and the Hamlets of the Parish, Danilovsky County/Hamlet of Shakhonino, Danilovsky District. The local historians taking part in the Internet discussions are of opinion that the Voskresensky Pogost (churchyard) is the village of Voskresenskoye, also caleed Voskresenye (Resurrection). Only clergy and ministers of the church lived there. And the hamlet of Shakhonino was located closely, actually forming one settlement with the Voskresensky Pogost (churchyard), and common people lived in Shakhonino, which explains that Shakhonino had the status of a village. So, this issue is clear. But it remains unclear why the word Bludovo is in the name of the church. By the way, local historians have discovered that in some old documents Bludovo is still called a village or a small village, but it is called a hamlet more often. So, was there really a church in Bludovo, or... its foundation that was later on moved to Shakhonino?
Marina Ushakova kindly went with us to Shakhonino. We stopped the car close to the hamlet of Alekseytsevo as there was no road and we couldn’t keep on driving. This absence of any road worries all the local people still living in the neighborhood, and their number is small now. The matter is that the Church of the Resurrection was located in the very center of the parish, which included a lot of hamlets. Previously, there were many people in all the neighboring hamlets; the dead people were buried, naturally, in the cemetery in Shakhonino. And locals keep on burying the deceased persons there - after all, it’s customary to bury the departed next to their dead relatives... Having walked along this way, you wonder: how is this possible? People have to walk on foot through a field or along a rough ‘road’ made of logs (laid by log-men) and covered with mud, then they should walk along a path through the forest and, finally, they cross a small log trestle bridge over a stream. How could people carry a dead person along this difficult road and path?
“Everyone tries to do this one way or another,” sighs Marina. “When the log-men started making a road using logs, we were happy, we thought the road to the cemetery would become easier. But that was not the case - the relatives tried to drive along it and said that they couldn’t transport a dead man”.
The local people keep on experiencing difficulties while transporting coffins - some people use tractors to transport them, and other people carry the coffins on their shoulders... The same difficulties they have transporting monuments, fences to the graves. But I would like to note that the cemetery in Shakhonino is well-kept, clean, the grass is mowed around. This makes you wonder! Here, in this wilderness and silence, this cemetery seems to be the most ‘alive’ place because people regularly come here, they cherish the memory of the departed relatives. The place is difficult to reach, but people take care of it and keep it clean ...
We were talking about the history of Shakhonino on the way to the hamlet located four kilometers away. Marina Ushakova was born here and studied at the local school until the 8th grade, her school has long since disappeared. And Marina lived (just imagine!) in the house of her great-grandfather Konstantin Leonidovich Sokolov, the priest of the Church of the Resurrection.
...We saw the graceful, light, and beautiful building of the church quite of a sudden among the branches in the clear air... And indeed, as Marina said, it looked like the church from the painting The Rooks Have Arrived by painter Savrasov. I was surprised that its building was in rather good condition although, according to Marina, it had not been restored for two hundred years, the cross was struck by lightning twice. Still, the church looked better than many other similar churches. However, despite the anti-religious persecution after the revolution of 1917, this church, by some miracle (a miracle again!) was not profaned because it was never officially closed, destroyed, or converted into warehouses, shops or cultural centers. it stopped functioning in 1962 when the last priest left the village. The reason, apparently, was natural - the parish gradually became deserted.
Some time ago, the residents of the nearby hamlets wanted to raise money to restore the church, but at first, the local rural council was against this as well as the diocese because there were practically no parishioners left.
There are the remains of majestic paintings on the walls of the church. It’s just amazing. It looks as if there was any other, higher-level civilization that could create such beauty here. But now, in the era of high technology, we can’t even make a road to this place. If only it would be possible to ‘bring’ a road to Shakhonino from any other place, from Moscow, for example. Another road could be built very fast in Moscow...
“My mother used to travel a lot and saw a lot of churches,” says Marina. “She believed that even the Feodorovsky Cathedral in Yaroslavl was inferior to our church as for the beauty of the paintings.
Shakhonino is now practically deserted but in the warm season, people still come here to stay in their summer houses (dachas), and the hamlet is considered alive. But Bludovo disappeared - it was deleted from the list of existing hamlets in 2002.
But let’s return to the legend about the church that ’ran away’. Was it a miracle or some kind of mistake in the name repeated from year to year? Upon our return, we asked local historians about this. They believe that the legend is almost a ‘standard’ one; there are similar stories about other churches in the Yaroslavl Region.
Curiously enough, why were these wonderful ‘fairy tales’ invented? People would say now that it’s an excellent marketing ploy to attract tourists. But we can only guess what our ancestors thought about...
