I didn’t remember fairy tales.
Judging from this book, Vasily Berkh was sometimes disappointed that he could not find any serious artifacts. In the town of Vetlan, at the request of an acquaintance from the capital, he decided to record old local songs. He gathered the girls and women who lived there, promised them fifty dollars each, and prepared to listen. But the modern ones, known to everyone, shouted.
Berkh, annoyed, asked the boss: “And the old man? Where are the old melodies?” He replied that people go to Nizhny Novgorod or Sarapul every year and listen to fashionable melodies there. And, alas, no one remembers what the ancestors sang. So Berkh decided to write ancient legends and fairy tales, and was introduced to a resident who supposedly knew many folk legends.
But she also combed her tongue as if it were written, telling what was printed in the books. Vasily Berkh simply raised his hands: the old days have disappeared, fashionable songs are sung everywhere and modern fairy tales are told. However, he left many interesting memories about the places he had to visit and what he managed to discover.
Around the world on a boat.
Vasily Berkh himself was a military sailor. After graduating from the cadet corps, he received the rank of midshipman and went to distant seas. He participated in a military expedition to Holland that proved disastrous for Russia in 1799, when the Russian corps was defeated by the French.
And then he participated in the circumnavigation of the world under the command of Lisyansky. Russian ships went not to make geographical discoveries, but to Alaska for commercial purposes.
But it turned out that for this they had to swim around the Earth. At the same time, it was necessary to move the Russian embassy to Japan and establish trade relations with China. Even the famous Count Rezanov traveled with them.
Returning from a hectic campaign, Vasily Berkh was already ashore, and at the age of 28 he retired as a lieutenant and earned a pension. He soon found himself in Perm, where he became an official of the state house. Berkh worked in this position for ten years, then returned to St. Petersburg, devoted himself to the history of the Russian fleet and more.
He wrote several books and published the results of several archival studies. As a result, Emperor Nicholas I appointed him the official historiographer of the Russian fleet. Vasily Berkh never visited Perm again, but we can consider the book “A trip to the city of Cherdyn and Solikamsk to investigate historical antiquities” as one of his first historical works. Berkh, a meticulous and observant person, as a sailor should be, even though he is retired, recorded many events and facts, and even refuted several local legends.
Useful stalagmites
Vasily Berkh visited Nyrob, where the uncle of the first Russian tsar from the Romanov family, Mikhail, once languished in a well. Boris Godunov exiled him here for imaginary (or real) intrigues. Romanov was fed only bread and water. The kind inhabitants of Nyrob began to bring him kvass to somehow diversify his diet.
The guards realized this, six locals were chained and sent to Moscow, from where only two returned, the rest died from torture. After a year of sitting in the hole, Mikhail himself died.
When Godunov died, in memory of the help of the residents of Nyrob, the tsar, also Mikhail Romanov, issued them a letter prohibiting them from collecting taxes and duties from them. But the inhabitants of Nyrob lived in peace for only 100 years. In 1720, a state census was taken and they were again required to pay taxes. And the actual letter was lost somewhere. Meanwhile, there was a legend that the inhabitants of Nyrob were free from this burden until the Soviet regime. The royal charter was later found, but in 1744 the inhabitants were forced to pay some taxes. At least a little, but a relief.
Vasily Berkh also visited the famous Divya cave. It is considered the longest in the Urals, surpassing even the famous Kungur. There are many grottoes, stalactites, stalagmites and other exotic underground species. But Berch described it as a crack in the rock that you can barely squeeze through. The interior is “dark, cramped and suffocating.” In addition, stones were collapsing there and the future historian of the Russian fleet decided not to climb too high.
Local residents told him that the Divya cave is known not only in the Kama region, but also in the Vologda and Vyatka provinces. The farmers come from there, cut the “droplets” (stalagmites) and use them to treat some external diseases. And bats trapped in a cave “cure fever.”
No robbery and murder
During his research in the north of the Kama region, Vasily Berkh also found royal letters issued to local residents. Two of them, Vasily Shuisky and Alexey Mikhailovich, concerned the circulation of alcoholic products. It was a profitable business and never went unnoticed by the king. Alexey Mikhailovich sent instructions to increase the price of vodka. Before the decree, a bucket of wine cost four rubles, and since 1662 it cost five. The tsar explained this by the fact that the prices of the bread from which alcohol was distilled had increased.
Vasily Shuisky’s charter allowed the best merchants to make moonshine for their needs. But only for holidays, name days and weddings. The tsar ordered “not to smoke wine in order to sell it, but to drink calmly among themselves, and that there should be no theft or murder.” Perm residents promised that they would not allow any crime to be committed after drinking homemade moonshine. However, it is unknown whether they kept their word or not.
Tsar Dmitry Ivanovich, known as an impostor, ordered the Perm authorities to conduct an investigation into the case of fights and murders. They “according to their court and their investigation, did justice to each other according to our decree without any bureaucracy.”
The Solikamsk churches are among the oldest in the Kama region; They are now classified as cultural monuments. Photo: Konstantin Bakharev
Bladeless knives
The inhabitants of Solikamsk gave Vasily Berkh three diaries that have long been preserved in the archives of his home. He combined them into one book and called them “Solikamsk Chronicler”. Some of the entries are quite interesting.
For example, in 1550, local residents saw a “star with a tail”, that is, a comet suspended in the sky for 33 days. After 22 years, Prince Afanasy Lychenitsyn went to war against Khan Kuchum, “he lost a lot of people, all weapons and potions.” And in 1579 the first population census in the history of the Urals took place in the north of the Kama region. The Chronicler says that the scribe Ivan Ignatievich Yakhontov and the scribe Tretyak Karpov were sent. According to its inventory, in the city of Solikamsk there are 190 yards, 26 shops and 16 salt works.
There is an entry about Ermak here. In 1580, “Ermak Timofeevich took Siberia with a squad of 540 people.” By the way, Vasily Berkh discovered that at the same time the son-in-law of the Swedish king Johan III wanted to attack Russia from the Siberian side. The warlike Norseman was going to send a fleet, sail the northern seas and attack the Muscovite kingdom from beyond the Urals. But Johan III only laughed at his son-in-law.
The Solikamsk Chronicler contains information about the Vogul attacks and constant skirmishes with them. News was recorded about the construction of a road from Solikamsk to Siberia. Forty people with axes and saws crossed the taiga and in two years opened a path 400 kilometers long. Many interesting things can be found in the Chronicler. For example, “the thief Stenka Razin in Moscow was cut down alive and given to dogs to devour him”, “there was a fire set by unknown persons at 3 in the morning, all shops with goods were burned” or “By sovereign decree Fifty kopek, half fifty kopek and ten kopek coins were issued. It was ordered to carry blunt knives.
Vasily Berkh’s book became a rarity in the 19th century and was not republished until 2009 in a small edition. Now it is a source of much information about Verkhnekamye’s life.
