Alexander 3 train wreck. Imperial train crash site

Description

Imperial train crash

Imperial train crash- the catastrophe that happened to the train of Emperor Alexander III on October 17 (29), 1888 on the Kursk-Kharkov-Azov (now Southern) railway, as a result of which neither the emperor nor his family were injured, leaving the terrible wreckage unharmed. The rescue imperial family in the church and right press it was interpreted as miraculous; An Orthodox church was erected on the site of the disaster.

The place of the railway accident was the village (settlement) of Borki, which was then part of the Zmievsky district of the Kharkov province. It is located at the river Dzhgune, about 27 km from Zmiev. In the last quarter of the 19th century, there were about 1,500 inhabitants in the village, bread was sold and there was a station of the Kursk-Kharkovo-Azov railway.

The accident of the Imperial train occurred on October 17, 1888 at 2:14 pm, on the 295th kilometer of the Kursk-Kharkov-Azov line, south of Kharkov. The royal family traveled from the Crimea to St. Petersburg. The technical condition of the cars was excellent, they worked for 10 years without accidents. In violation of the railway regulations of that period, which limited the number of axles in a passenger train to 42, the imperial train, which consisted of 15 wagons, had 64 axles. The weight of the train was within the limits set for a freight train, but the speed of movement corresponded to the express train. The train was driven by two steam locomotives and the speed was about 68 km/h. Under such conditions, 10 wagons derailed. Moreover, the path at the crash site passed along a high embankment (about 5 sazhens). According to eyewitnesses, a strong push threw everyone on the train from their seats. After the first shock, a terrible crack followed, then there was a second shock, even stronger than the first, and after a third, quiet, shock, the train stopped.

A terrible picture of destruction, resounding with the cries and groans of the maimed, presented itself to the eyes of the survivors of the crash. Everyone rushed to look for the imperial family and soon saw the king and his family alive and unharmed. The car with the imperial dining room, in which there were Alexander III and his wife Maria Fedorovna, with children and retinue, suffered a complete collapse.

The car was dropped on left side embankment and presented a terrible view: without wheels, with flattened and destroyed walls, the car was reclining on the embankment; its roof lay partly on the lower frame. The first push knocked everyone to the floor, and when, after a terrible crack and destruction, the floor collapsed and only the frame remained, then everyone ended up on the embankment under the cover of the roof. They say that Alexander III, who possessed remarkable strength, held the roof of the car on his shoulders while the family and other victims got out from under the rubble.

Sprinkled with earth and debris, from under the roof came out: the emperor, empress, heir Tsarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich - the future last Russian emperor Nicholas II, Grand Duke Georgy Alexandrovich, Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna, and with them the faces of the retinue invited to breakfast. Most of the faces of this car escaped with minor bruises, abrasions and scratches, with the exception of Sheremetev's aide-de-camp, whose finger was crushed.

In the entire train, which consisted of 15 cars, only five cars survived, stopped by the action of Westinghouse's automatic brakes. Also remained intact and two locomotives. The car, in which there were court servants and barmaids, was completely destroyed, and all those who were in it were killed on the spot and found in a disfigured form - 13 mutilated corpses were raised from the left side of the embankment among the wood chips and small remains of this car. At the time of the crash, only Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna was in the car of the royal children, thrown onto the embankment along with her nanny, and the young Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, taken out of the wreckage by a soldier with the help of the sovereign himself.

The news of the collapse of the imperial train quickly spread along the line, and help rushed from all sides. Alexander III, despite the terrible weather (it rained with frost) and terrible slush, he himself ordered the extraction of the wounded from under the wreckage of the broken cars. The Empress with medical personnel went around the wounded, gave them help, trying in every possible way to alleviate their suffering for the sick, despite the fact that she herself had an arm above the elbow injured and that she remained in one dress. An officer's coat was thrown over the queen's shoulders, in which she provided assistance.

In total, 68 people were injured in the crash, of which 21 people died. Only at dusk, when all the dead were informed and not a single wounded remained, the royal family sat down in the second one who arrived here. royal train(retinue) and departed back to Lozovaya station, where at night it was served at the station itself, in the hall of the third class, the first thanksgiving service for the miraculous deliverance of the tsar and his family from mortal danger. Two hours later, the imperial train left for Kharkov to go to St. Petersburg.

The investigation into the causes of the accident with the royal train in Borki, with the knowledge of the king, was entrusted to the prosecutor of the criminal cassation department of the Senate A.F. Koni. The Minister of Communications, Admiral K. N. Posyet, the chief inspector of railways, Baron Shernval, the inspector of imperial trains, Baron A. F. Taube, the manager of the Kursk-Kharkov-Azov Railway, engineer V. A. Kovanko and a number of other persons. The main version was a train crash as a result of a number of technical factors: poor track condition and increased speed trains. A few months later, the incomplete investigation was terminated by the highest order.

Another version of events was described in the memoirs of V. A. Sukhomlinov and M. A. Taube (the son of an inspector of imperial trains). According to her, the crash was caused by a bomb that had been planted by the assistant cook of the imperial train, who was associated with revolutionary organizations. By planting a time bomb in the dining car, calculating the moment of explosion by the time of breakfast royal family, he got off the train at the stop before the explosion and fled abroad.

At the crash site, a skete was soon arranged, called Spaso-Svyatogorsk. Immediately, a few sazhens from the embankment, a magnificent temple was built in the name of Christ the Savior of the Most Glorious Transfiguration. The project was drawn up by the architect R. R. Marfeld.

On May 21, 1891, on the last journey of Empress Maria Feodorovna with her daughter Xenia Alexandrovna and the Grand Dukes to the south, in their presence, a solemn laying of the temple took place in Borki, at the site of the disaster. Most high place embankment, almost at the railroad track, was marked with four flags - this is the place where during the crash the grand ducal carriage stood and from which it was thrown unharmed Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna.

At the foot of the embankment, a wooden cross with the image of the Savior Not Made by Hands was placed - this is the place on which the imperial family set foot, emerging unharmed from under the wreckage of the dining car; a cave chapel was erected here. In the place where the Empress and her children cared for the sick, the administration of the Kursk-Kharkov-Azov railway planted a square, which was thus located between the temple and the chapel.

... M (i) l (o) of Yours, G (o) s (by) di, the essence of our destiny is filled: not according to our iniquity did you create for us, below according to our sins did you repay us. Most of all, Thou didst surprise Thy (and) l (o) Thy presence on us on the day he, when our hope does not perish in the least, showed us the salvation of Thy anointed most pious sovereign, our EMPEROR ALEXANDER ALEXANDROVICH, miraculously preserving him and his wife, his most pious sovereign, the EMPRESS MARIA FEODOROVNA and all their children in the gates of mortals. N (s) do not bow down from (e) the heart and our knee before You, Vl (a) d (s) to the belly and death, confessing Your inexpressible m (i) l (o) s (e) rdie. Give us, G (o) s (po) di, the memory of this terrible visitation of Yours is firm and unceasing in yourself from generation to generation and do not leave Your m (i) l (o) from us ...

During the Great Patriotic War the temple was blown up and the chapel was damaged. Without a dome it's unique architectural structure stood for over 50 years. In the early 2000s, the chapel was restored with the help of railway workers. Almost all services of the Southern Railway took part in the restoration: builders, signalmen, power engineers. Participated in the restoration charitable foundation"Dobro", construction organizations: SMP-166 and 655, limited liability company "Magik".

AT Soviet time the stopping platform of the railway between the stations Taranovka and Borki was called Pervomaiskaya (like the nearby village) and was little known to anyone except local residents. Recently, the original name "Spasov Skit" was returned to it - in honor of the event that took place here more than 100 years ago.

To perpetuate the memory of the miraculous salvation of the royal family in Kharkov, a number of other steps were taken. commemorative events, in particular, the creation of the Kharkov Commercial School of Emperor Alexander III, the casting of a silver bell for the Annunciation Church in Kharkov, the organization of a number of charitable institutions, scholarships, etc.

At the Borki station, a disabled home for railway employees was opened, named after the emperor. On October 17, 1909, a monument to Alexander III was unveiled in front of the entrance to the invalid's home. It was a bust of the emperor in a frock coat and cap on a pink granite pedestal. Money for the monument was donated by employees of the railway. After the revolution of 1917, the bust of the king was thrown down, while the pedestal with a damaged bronze bas-relief has survived to this day.

In addition, chapels and churches of the patron saint of the tsar, Prince Alexander Nevsky, began to be built throughout Russia (for example, the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Tsaritsyn).

In Anapa, on August 15 (27), 1893, “in memory of the miraculous salvation of the life of Their Imperial Majesties and the August family during the crash of the royal train on October 17, 1888,” a temple was laid in the name of the holy prophet Hosea and Andrew of Crete (the day of the collapse of the imperial train fell on the day church memory of these saints). The author of the project of the temple was the architect V.P. Zeidler. The construction of the temple was completed in 1902; around 1937 this temple was demolished (due to the need for bricks for the construction of the club and school buildings). In 2008, on the site of the destroyed temple, a chapel was erected in the name of the prophet Hosea.

By decree of the Governing Synod, a special prayer service was compiled and published in honor of the miraculous image of the Savior Not Made by Hands, since at the time of the crash, Alexander Alexandrovich had with him a copy of the ancient miraculous Vologda Icon of the Savior Not Made by Hands.

The landscape painter S. I. Vasilkovsky painted the painting “The Crash of the Tsar’s Train near the Borki Station on October 17, 1888”, which was originally kept in the Russian Museum of Emperor Alexander III (now the State Russian Museum) in St. Petersburg.

Emperor Alexander III with his wife, Empress Maria Feodorovna. State Archive of the Russian Federation / Photo TASS

On October 17, 1888, Emperor Alexander III and his family were returning from Livadia to St. Petersburg. When the train was passing by the Borki station in the Kharkov province, the train derailed.

After the accident with the royal train, Sergei Yulievich Witte claimed that long before the accident in Borki, he had warned Alexander III that the imperial trains were developing too high speed on the South-Western Railways.

This is how the Government Gazette described this incident: “During the crash of Their Majesty, the Sovereign Emperor and Empress Empress with the entire August Family and the faces of the Retinue were at breakfast in the dining car. When the first car derailed, the following cars flew off on both sides; -dining room, although it remained on the canvas, but in an unrecognizable form.<…>It was impossible to imagine that anyone could survive such destruction. But the Lord God saved the Tsar and His Family: Their Majesties and Their August Children emerged unharmed from the wreckage of the car."

At the time of the train crash, Alexander III with his wife and children was in the dining car. This car, large, heavy and long, was mounted on wheeled carts, which fell off on impact. With the same blow, the transverse walls of the car were broken, the side walls cracked, and the roof began to fall on the passengers. The footmen standing at the door died, the Royal Family was saved only by the fact that the roof, when falling, rested at one end against a pyramid of carts and a triangular space was formed in which it ended up.

About this terrible moment of his life, the Tsesarevich left the following entry in his diary: “A fatal day for everyone, we all could have been killed, but by the Will of God this did not happen. During breakfast, our train derailed, the dining room and six cars were broken, and we came out unscathed." After the crash, Empress Maria Feodorovna said: "In all this, the hand of Providence, which saved us, was palpably visible."

Sergei Witte, who was not a witness to the incident, wrote that "the entire roof of the dining car fell on the Emperor, and he, only thanks to his gigantic strength, kept this roof on his back, and she did not crush anyone." The head of the investigation into the causes of the railway accident, Anatoly Fedorovich Koni, considered this statement implausible, since the roof itself weighed several tons and it was beyond the power of any person to hold it. Nevertheless, the professor of surgery at Kharkov University, Wilhelm Fedorovich Grube, was convinced of the direct connection between the deadly illness of the Tsar and the injuries he received during the crash.

Alexander III, despite the extremely bad weather (it rained with frost), he himself ordered the extraction of the wounded from under the wreckage of the broken cars. Professor Grube recalled: "Their Majesties deigned to go around all the wounded and with words of consolation encouraged the weakened and discouraged." Empress Maria Feodorovna went around with the medical staff of the victims, assisted them, trying in every possible way to alleviate their suffering to the sick. Alexander III wrote to his brother, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich: “This day will never be erased from our memory. It was too terrible and too wonderful, because Christ wanted to prove to all of Russia that He still works miracles and saves believers from obvious death into Him and His great mercy."

The collapse of the imperial train 117 years ago, an event occurred on the Russian railway that had significant historical consequences. On October 17 (old style) 1888, a train wreck occurred, in which the family of Emperor Alexander III was traveling.

It was a typical autumn day. Outside the window - rain, piercing wind. But the dining car was comfortable. The train, clattering its wheels, rolled towards the capital. The royal family (in addition to the emperor - his wife, twenty-year-old heir Nicholas, the Grand Dukes and Grand Duchesses), as well as part of the retinue, quietly breakfasted. Suddenly, the car shook violently, threw it somewhere to the side, turned around, the wall fell off, and the roof began to fall on the heads of the dignitaries frozen in horror. But here the emperor did not lose his head and, standing up, picked up the falling roof with his hands. He was a man of strong constitution, strong, and he managed to hold the roof on his back until all the people who did not have breakfast got out of the dining room.

However, it cannot be ruled out that such an interpretation of the miraculous salvation of the imperial family is a legend. Investigating the cause of this catastrophe, the famous Russian lawyer, a prosecutor's worker (and not a lawyer at all, as for some reason it is sometimes claimed) Anatoly Fedorovich Koni believed (the book "On the Path of Life") that the royal family was saved due to the fact that the walls that had been moved from the impact kept the roof. It's more believable. The photographs taken after the disaster show that the roof remained hanging, but did not collapse at all.
The royal dining room was thrown off the wheels and turned around.
Photo by Alexey Ivanitsky.

It happened not far from Kharkov between the stations Taranovka and Borki at 14 hours 5 minutes. How could this happen to the "main train" of the empire? Terrorist attack? There were grounds for such an assumption, because several assassination attempts were made on the father of Alexander III - the "tsar-liberator" Alexander II, and in the end the bombers managed to destroy him. And now, seven years after the death of his father - an attempt? According to some reports, after the train crash, voices were heard in the dining room: "What a horror! Attempt! Explosion!", To which the emperor reacted sharply and unexpectedly in his hearts: "You need to steal less!" And where does the traditional Russian occupation?

The investigation clearly showed that the crash was not due to a terrorist attack, but for a technical reason. The heavy royal train was driven by two locomotives. The speed was - "royal". And the second locomotive, followed by four more cars, derailed. All wheels were knocked out from under the dining car ... The situation was aggravated by the fact that the accident happened on a high embankment, over a deep beam. From under the rubble of the royal dining room, everyone got out only with scratches and abrasions (only the adjutant wing of Sheremetev suffered more, but not seriously), but in other cars 19 people died and 18 were seriously injured.
The roof of the dining room held...
Photo by Alexey Ivanitsky
The emperor deigned to personally dispose of the organization of assistance to the victims. And, despite the piercing wind, rain and heavy mud, he descended several times down the slope, to the dead and wounded stationed there. And his wife, Maria Fedorovna, a Dane by birth, tore the linen into bandages, bandaged the wounded herself. An ambulance train arrived from Kharkov, and all the victims were placed there. And only after that the emperor went to the approaching retinue train. This train went around the damaged area - to the Lozovaya station. The rural clergy arrived there by the highest command, who served in the presence of the king a memorial service for the deceased victims and a prayer of thanksgiving on the occasion of "the miraculous deliverance of the most august family about the greatest danger."

However, one cannot say that the royal family did not lose anyone in this railway accident. Lost. And the emperor was very worried about this loss.

Five years before this tragedy, the Kamchatka Laika appeared in the royal family. It was presented to Alexander III by the sailors of the cruiser "Africa", which returned from Pacific Ocean. That's what they called it - Kamchatka. And the emperor was very worried that his beloved dog died in a train crash. Judging by the diary, he often thought about her. “Today I refrained from inviting anyone,” the tsar writes in one of his hard days, - in such cases, at least the dog is terribly lacking; and with such despair I remember my faithful Kamchatka; after all, this is stupid, cowardice, but what to do - it is still so! Do I have at least one disinterested friend among people; no, it can’t be, but the dog can, and Kamchatka was like that.” A monument was even erected to a four-legged friend in the imperial garden, under the royal windows. .

For some time, this Spaso-Svyatogorsk Skete stood at the crash site. Has anyone remembered the dead dog with the same pain? Unlikely. So the "miraculous salvation" of the entire royal family really happened. And this was the reason for a religious outburst: dozens of churches and chapels were built on donations from the population to commemorate this event throughout Russia - from the Crimea to Eastern Siberia.
But there were also more significant consequences for the country of this collapse - personnel, technical and political. “Derailments are, unfortunately, a fairly common occurrence on the roads: we have about 300 of them a year,” wrote the Russkiye Vedomosti newspaper two days after the crash. “The reasons for derailments are extremely numerous and varied and can be both in imperfections way, so in the shortcomings of the rolling stock and in incorrect train control... A track washed out by rains, rotten sleepers, a suddenly burst rail, incorrect setting of a switch, untimely setting of a signal, a spoiled wheel, uneven braking of a car - all this can lead to derailment and subject the train to more or less harm." Isn't that why the tsar uttered his famous phrase in the broken carriage!

Outwardly imperial train
was not luxurious. After the collapse of the royal train, the Minister of Railways, Admiral Konstantin Posyet, and the Chief Inspector of Railways, Baron Sherval, were dismissed. But it was not only a matter of dishonesty, the uncleanliness of some specific railway workers or officials.
Lizoblyudstvo and sycophancy is always in honor. And to please the emperor, his train was allowed to travel in violation of safety rules. In the summer of the same 1888, Alexander III traveled three times along the South-Western Railways. It consisted of heavy wagons, and two freight locomotives drove the train. At the same time, the speed was too high for the then railroads with light rails, wooden sleepers and sand ballast. The train could knock out the rails. About this in a report addressed to the Minister of Railways was written by the manager of the South-Western Railways, Sergei Yulievich Witte (see the appendix for an excerpt from his memoirs).

According to his position, he was obliged to accompany the royal train on his section of the track. Witte demanded that the speed of the train be reduced to safe, otherwise he refused to accompany him. The requirements were satisfied, since these roads were private, and not state-owned, but the minister and the emperor then expressed their dissatisfaction to the adamant manager, since no one limited the speed of the royal train on other railways in the country.
But the contents were royal,
including car.
Nevertheless, after the resignations of high-ranking transport workers, the intractable Sergei Witte, on the contrary, was invited to work in the capital as the director of the department of railway affairs in the Ministry of Finance. From this began his brilliant career in the highest echelon of power. And he did a lot for the development of not only the country's railways, but the entire Russian economy. Thus, the tariff law on freight traffic developed by him made it possible to make the operation of railways profitable, and this served as an impetus for the further rapid development of the country's transport network, where, as you know, roads have always been (and still remain!) One of the two most important Russian problems. It was in those years that Russia set a world record for the scale of railway construction. Probably, it would not be out of place even now to recall the principles of the tariff policy of the wise business executive-financier Witte.

The collapse of the royal train played a big role in the fate of another now practically forgotten person. Since the accident happened not far from Kharkov, a local photographer Alexei Mikhailovich Ivanitsky came from there.

Photographer
Alexey Ivanitsky. His photographs, taken from the Russian State Archive of Film and Photo Documents, illustrate this material. He was a professional photographer, and after this shooting he became an All-Russian celebrity. For a series of photographs about the accident of the royal train, Alexander III granted him a piece of land near the village of Gaidary, Zmievsky district, Kharkov region. Ivanitsky, in fact, became a court photographer under the last two Russian tsars. Filming with him was considered an honor by the then domestic celebrities. Suffice it to recall the well-known photograph of Vera Komissarzhevskaya. Fyodor Chaliapin came to shoot him.
At Soviet power the Bolsheviks, of course, slapped him - on December 9, 1920, in the Crimea. Just like that - for noble origin. He really came from the nobility. And his wife was the granddaughter of the ataman of the Transdanubian Sich, Major General Osip Gladky. However, this was probably not the main thing, he was simply reminded that he was close to the imperial court. Although he could shoot the leaders of the new government. It didn't happen. And, unfortunately, until now, the grandson of the photographer, historians cannot find the priceless archive of Ivanitsky, who was arrested by the Chekists. And this is a few boxes of glass negatives. Surprisingly, Ivanitsky, now in a completely different state, returned the rights to real estate in the early nineties. But the biostation of Kharkov National University was located there. And there were painful property disputes, and unsuccessful attempts by a poor heir, a former Soviet officer, to restore a dilapidated family nest. And the grandson was forced to sell the received inheritance to the university ...

After the accident at the Borki station, serious technical conclusions that everyone must follow the traffic rules and that a new, more powerful and faster steam locomotive is needed. In 1890, the Ministry of Railways instructed the Nikolaevskaya (now Oktyabrskaya) railway, the most technically advanced at that time, to create and manufacture a passenger steam locomotive at its Alexandrovsky plant, which could drive trains weighing up to 400 tons at a speed of up to 80 kilometers per hour. hour. To fulfill such requirements, it was necessary to build a steam locomotive with three paired axles. In fact, this type of steam locomotives in Russia by that time already existed. Back in 1878, for the first time in the world, ahead of other countries by 14 years, they began to build at the Kolomna plant. But they were operated only on the Ural mining railway, which at that time had no connection with the entire network of the country. With the participation of Professor N.L. Shchukin Aleksandrovsky plant in 1892 began production of new, powerful, high-speed and reliable locomotives. After several improvements, these steam locomotives were allowed to drive trains at speeds up to 108 kilometers per hour since 1914!

Family of Alexander III.
Standing on the left future emperor Nicholas II. There were political implications crash. Although the imperial family "miraculously" escaped, Alexander III himself received kidney disease as a result of an injury and died almost on the anniversary of the train crash - on October 20, 1894, relatively young (49 years old), not having time to prepare for the heavy burden - the autocratic government of the country of the heir , the future of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II.
In principle, Alexander III was not the best tsar for Russia. And not the smartest, and very tough. After the almost liberal sovereign-father, he, probably frightened by "excessive freedom" and terrorist acts, stopped many of the reforms that had begun in society, even turned back some things, tightened the screws, strengthened the "vertical" of his autocratic power by strengthening bureaucratic control over society. apparatus, in particular, limited the powers of the zemstvo, abolished elective dumas in small towns, subordinated universities to appointed trustees, doubled tuition fees in higher and secondary educational institutions, stopped admission to higher female courses, established taxes on inheritance and interest-bearing papers, increased taxation of crafts, engaged in the Russification of the Baltic region, forbade Jews to settle outside the cities and at the same time evicted Jewish artisans from Moscow and the Moscow province ... Therefore, it was he who prepared the ground for discontent in the country, which spilled over under Nicholas II into riots and revolutions. Nevertheless, he did something useful for the economy, including for railway construction. It must also be credited to him that during the fourteen years of his reign, Russia did not fight. And if the domineering, strong-willed dad had lived for at least another ten years, you look like a weak-willed, inconsistent, insecure son would have gained his mind and mind and would not have allowed such a terrible fate for himself, for his family, for our country. Follow the traffic safety rules on the railways! Regardless of ranks and ranks ...

From the memoirs of the former tsarist prime minister Sergei Yulievich Witte
(in 1888 he was manager of the South Western Railways, a private company):

The schedule of imperial trains was usually drawn up by the Ministry of Railways without any demand and participation of road managers. I received a timetable in time, according to which the train from Rovno to Fastov was supposed to travel such and such a number of hours, and in such a number of hours only a light, passenger train could cover this distance; meanwhile, a huge imperial train suddenly appeared in Rovno, made up of a mass of the heaviest cars ... Since such a train, and moreover at such a speed as was appointed, not only could not carry one passenger, but even two passenger locomotives, it was necessary ... to transport it by two freight locomotives ... Meanwhile, the speed was set to be the same as that of passenger trains. Therefore, it was completely clear to me that misfortune could happen at any moment, because if freight locomotives go at such a speed, they completely loosen the track, and if in some place the track is not completely, not unconditionally strong ... then these locomotives can twist rails, as a result of which the train may crash ....

I presented calculations from which it was clear that with our Russian tracks - with relatively light rails, with our wooden sleepers (abroad - metal sleepers), with our ballast (we have sand ballast, while abroad almost everywhere ballast is made of crushed stone ) - the path, of course, is unstable ... I wrote in a report that I no longer intend to take responsibility for the movement of the imperial train under such conditions ... To this I received the following reply by telegram: in view of my such categorical statement, the Minister of Railways ordered to redo the timetable and increase the time of the train by three hours ...

When I entered the station, I noticed that everyone was looking askance at me ... Adjutant General Cherevin came up to me and said: the Sovereign Emperor ordered me to tell you that he is very dissatisfied with riding the Southwestern Railways. ... The emperor himself came out, who heard Cherevin convey this to me. Then I tried to explain to Cherevin what I had already explained to the Minister of Railways. At this time, the sovereign turns to me and says:

What are you saying. I drive on other roads, and no one slows me down, and you can’t drive on your road simply because your road is Jewish.
(This is an allusion to the fact that the chairman of the board was the Jew Blioch.)

Of course, I did not answer the emperor to these words, I remained silent. Then the Minister of Railways immediately entered into a conversation with me on this subject, who carried out the same idea as Emperor Alexander III. Of course, he did not say that the road was Jewish, but simply stated that this road was not in order, as a result of which it was impossible to go soon. And to prove the correctness of his opinion he said:

But on other roads we travel at such a speed, and no one has ever dared to demand that the sovereign be transported at a lower speed.

Then I could not stand it and said to the Minister of Railways:

You know, Your Excellency, let others do as they please, but I don’t want to break the sovereign’s head, because it will end with you breaking the sovereign’s head in this way.

Emperor Alexander III heard this remark of mine, of course, was very dissatisfied with my insolence, but did not say anything ... way back, when the sovereign again drove along our road, the train was already given that speed and added the number of hours that I demanded. I again fit into the carriage of the Minister of Railways, and noticed that since the last time I saw this carriage, it had leaned significantly to the left side ... It turned out that this happened because the Minister of Railways, Admiral Posyet, had a passion for various , one might say, railway toys: for example, to furnaces of various heating and to various instruments for measuring speeds; all this was placed and attached to the left side of the car ...

Crash scheme.

Two months have passed. Then I lived in Lipki opposite the house of the governor-general…. Suddenly, one night, a valet knocks on my door ... They say: there is an urgent telegram ...

I arrived at the site of a train wreck... It turned out that the imperial train was traveling from Yalta to Moscow, and they gave such a high speed, which was also required on the South-Western Railways. None of the road administrators had the courage to say that it was impossible. They also traveled with two steam locomotives, and in the carriage of the Minister of Railways, although somewhat facilitated by the removal of some devices from the left side, no serious repairs were made during the parking in Sevastopol; in addition, he was put at the head of the train, the first from the locomotive. Thus, the train was moving at an inappropriate speed, with two freight locomotives, and even with a not quite serviceable carriage of the Minister of Railways. What happened is what I predicted: the train, due to the swing of a freight locomotive, knocked out the rail. Commodity locomotives are not designed for high speed, and therefore, when a commodity locomotive goes at a speed that does not correspond to it, it sways.

... I concluded that only the central administration, the Ministry of Railways, was to blame, and the inspector of the imperial trains was also to blame. The result of this catastrophe was the following: after some time, the Minister of Railways Posyet had to resign. Baron Sherval [inspector] was also to retire and settle in Finland. By origin, Baron Sherval was a Finn ... The sovereign parted with these persons without any malice ... But Emperor Alexander III, not without reason, considered the engineer Salov, who at that time was the head of the railway department, to be the main culprit of the disaster ... For this reason, Salov during the entire reign of Emperor Alexander III couldn't get any assignment...

Photographs of the Russian State Archive of Film and Photo Documents were used, as well as materials from the sites:
"Pedigree of the Ivanitsky family" (geneo.narod.ru/geneo/geneoRod_ivan.php) and "Zheldorpress-Inform" (zdp.ru).

On October 17, 1888, at the Borki railway station, located a few kilometers south of Kharkov, the imperial train crashed, in which Tsar Alexander III with his wife and children were returning after a vacation in the Crimea.

Despite numerous casualties (20 people died) and severe damage to the rolling stock, including the royal carriage, Emperor Alexander III himself and members of his family were not injured.

At the time of the train crash, Alexander III with his wife and children was in the dining car. The car, large, heavy and long, was mounted on wheeled carts, which broke off during the crash, rolled back and piled on top of each other. The same blow knocked out the transverse walls of the car, and the side walls cracked, and the roof began to fall. The lackeys standing at the door died, the rest of those in the car were saved only by the fact that the roof, when falling, rested at one end on a pyramid of carts. A triangular space formed, which allowed the almost doomed august travelers to get out of the car - injured, soiled, but alive. It was said that the tall and strong emperor supported the roof while his loved ones crawled out from under it. When, six years later, the not yet old and always seemingly strong king fell ill and died, rumors linked the causes of his illness with the physical and moral shock experienced during the crash.

The main version was a train crash as a result of a number of technical factors: the poor condition of the track and the increased speed of the train - trains of this volume were then not allowed to travel faster than 20 miles per hour, and the royal train was supposed to do 37 miles per hour according to the schedule. In fact, before the crash, he was walking at a speed of under seventy. A few months later, the incomplete investigation was terminated by the highest order.

At the scene of the incident, by order of Alexander III, a memorial temple complex was organized. On August 20, 1889, a solemn ceremony of consecration of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior took place. On the territory of the complex, which was part of the Svyatogorsk monastery as a skete, there were also a chapel, mass grave passengers who died during the crash and a monastery.

In 1894, at the site of the train crash, in memory of the salvation of the imperial family, a new Cathedral of Christ the Savior and the Chapel of the Savior Not Made by Hands were erected according to the project of the academician of architecture Robert Marfeld. Prior to this in Russian Empire there were only two temples with this name - in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and the new, third temple was not inferior to them in grandeur.

Temple in the name of Christ the Savior of the Most Glorious Transfiguration. Spasov Skit.

The chapel was erected on the spot where the dining car was located, from under the rubble of which members of the Royal Family emerged unharmed. It consisted of two tiers - at the top a tetrahedral tower with a golden dome and a cross, at the bottom, going deep into the railway embankment, a room for worship.

Photos of the destroyed train were taken by Kharkov photographer A.M. Ivanitsky. As Kharkiv newspapers reported, for the cycle of works “The Crash of the Tsar’s Train at the Borki Station near Kharkov in 1888”, the emperor granted the photographer Ivanitsky “a precious gold ring with a sapphire surrounded by large diamonds”, as well as a plot of land on the banks of the Seversky Donets near the village of Gaidary, Zmievsky district .

The miraculous rescue of Emperor Alexander III with his family caused the construction of many churches dedicated to this event in the country. In memory of this event in St. Petersburg, almost simultaneously with the construction of a new church in Spasov Skete, since 1891, the Church of the Epiphany was built on Gutuevsky Island. New project the temple for 1400 people was created by V. A. Kosyakov and B. K. Pravdzik, who took Marfeld’s project as a model - the idea memorial temple was converted for the needs of the parish church. Thus, a "model" of a distant memorial temple appeared in the capital.

Today, the Church of the Epiphany has been restored, and regular services are held there.

How Alexander III and his family ended up at the death line
Elena Horvatova

In the autumn of 1888, Alexander III, together with his family, visited the Caucasus, planning to return to St. Petersburg at the end of October, by the beginning of the winter season. On October 29, the royal train, in which the emperor was with his wife, children, relatives and courtiers, was approaching Kharkov. The day was cold and overcast, with sleet and biting wind, as is often the case on the eve of November. At one o'clock in the afternoon, Alexander Alexandrovich and Maria Fedorovna, together with their four older children, sat down at the dining table in the "dining" carriage. The youngest daughter, six-year-old Olga, dined in the "children's" car with a nanny.

The old butler brought Guryev's porridge to the common table and froze in anticipation. After the plates of the emperor, empress and grand dukes are filled, you can take the dish to the nursery to feed the youngest princess and her nanny ... But no one managed to finish dinner. Not far from the Borki station, the train suddenly swayed sharply and very strongly, then again. Passengers lost their balance and fell to the floor. No one had time to understand what was happening, when literally a second later the car was torn to pieces, like a cardboard box. The heavy metal roof collapsed down and got stuck, only a couple of centimeters short of the heads of the passengers lying on the floor. The only thing that saved the imperial family was that the wheels and the floor of the car flew off, as if cut off with a knife, and people ended up right on the railway track, on the very carpet that covered the floor of the dining room. If the floor of the car had held in place, they would have simply been crushed by the collapsed roof.

The emperor, who had a heroic build, managed to lift the heaviest wagon roof and held it on his shoulders and back for several minutes, until all his relatives and servants got out and were safe. The golden cigarette case, which Alexander III had in his back pocket, flattened into a flat cake. The Emperor has always had an incredible physical force, and the extreme situation literally multiplied it tenfold.

“It was truly a feat of Hercules, for which he later had to pay a heavy price, although at that time no one knew this yet,” said Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, who escaped, like the rest of the emperor’s children, at the time of this terrible catastrophe.

The “children's” car, in which Olga and her nanny were, was hitched right behind the “dining” car and suffered from the crash no less badly. When the train shook, things fell on the floor in the nursery, glass vases broke, strewn everything around with small sharp fragments ... The nanny managed to pick up the frightened girl in her arms and pressed her to her at the moment when the car was torn to pieces. Olga woke up on the wet ground away from the mangled train - by the force of the explosion she was thrown out of the car, which, like the neighboring "dining room", was now a pile of debris.

It seemed to the six-year-old child that real hell reigns around. No nanny, no mother, no father, no older brothers were to be seen. Part of the cars, which instantly turned into heaps of twisted metal, slowed down the movement. But the rear cars, having accelerated to high speed, continued to move, jumped on those that survived, turned over and mangled them. There was a clang of iron, the wild cries of the wounded, something was burning, mutilated corpses lay near the roadbed ... At first, both the emperor himself and the doctors who examined him after the disaster paid attention only to external injuries - abrasions, cuts, a leg crushed by debris ... immediately - the kidneys of Alexander III suffered from a blow and inhuman stress, and this very quickly led to a severe chronic illness, which even such a strong body as the sovereign could not cope with. However, having got out from under the rubble, Alexander III was least of all inclined to assess his own condition. He even allowed himself to joke:
- I can imagine how disappointed Vladimir will be when he learns that we all survived!

Probably, in this "black joke" there was some truth. If the emperor and all his sons, who were in the same carriage with their father, died, the coveted royal crown would pass to the Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, the brother of the sovereign.

Empress Maria Feodorovna described the catastrophe she experienced in a letter to her brother, King George I of Greece:
“It is impossible to imagine what a terrifying moment it was when we suddenly felt the breath of death next to us, but at the same moment we felt the greatness and power of the Lord when He extended His protective hand over us ...
It was such a wonderful feeling that I will never forget, like the feeling of bliss that I experienced when I finally saw my beloved Sasha and all the children safe and sound, emerging from the ruins one after another.
Indeed, it was like being raised from the dead. At that moment, when I got up, I did not see any of them, and such a feeling of despair took possession of me that it is difficult to convey. (…)
Just at the very moment when we were having breakfast, there were 20 of us, we felt a strong push and immediately after it a second one, after which we all ended up on the floor and everything around us staggered and began to fall and collapse. Everything fell and cracked like on Judgment Day. At the last second, I also saw Sasha, who was opposite me at a narrow table and who then collapsed down ... At that moment, I instinctively closed my eyes so that they would not be hit by glass fragments and everything that was falling from everywhere. (...) Everything rumbled and rattled, and then suddenly such a dead silence reigned, as if no one was left alive. (…)
It was the most terrible moment in my life, when I realized that I was alive, but that none of my relatives was near me. Oh! This was really scary! (...) Then suddenly I saw my dear little Xenia appearing from under the roof a little further away from me. Then Georgy appeared, who was already shouting to me from the roof: “Misha is here too!” and, finally, Sasha appeared, whom I embraced ... Nicky appeared behind Sasha, and someone shouted to me that Baby (Olga) was safe and sound, so I could thank Nashe with all my heart and with all my heart Lord for his generous mercy and mercy, for the fact that He kept me alive, without losing a single hair from their heads!
Just think, only poor little Olga was thrown out of her car, and she fell down from a high embankment ...
But what grief and horror we experienced when we saw the many killed and wounded, our dear and devoted people.
It was heartbreaking to hear screams and moans and not be able to help them or just shelter them from the cold, since we ourselves had nothing left!
All of them were very touching, especially when, despite their suffering, they first of all asked: “Is the Sovereign saved?” - and then, being baptized, they said: “Thank God, then everything is in order!” I have never seen anything more touching. This love and all-consuming faith in God really amazed and was an example for everyone.
My dear old Cossack, who had been by my side for 22 years, was crushed and completely unrecognizable, as he was missing half of his head. Sasha's young rangers, whom you probably remember, also died, as did all those poor fellows who were in the car that was driving in front of the dining car. This car was completely smashed to pieces, and only a small piece of the wall remained!
It was a terrible sight! Just think, to see the broken cars in front of you and in the middle of them - the most terrible - ours, and realize that we are still alive! It's completely incomprehensible! This is a miracle that our Lord has created!
The feeling of newfound life, dear Willy, is indescribable, and especially after those terrible moments when I called my husband and five children with bated breath. No, it was terrible. It was possible to go crazy with grief and despair, but the Lord God gave me the strength and calmness to endure this and with His mercy returned them all to me, for which I will never be able to thank Him properly.
But the way we looked - it was terrible! When we got out of this hell, we were all with bloody faces and hands, partly it was blood from wounds due to glass fragments, but mostly it was the blood of those poor people that got on us, so in the first minute we thought that we were all also seriously injured. We were also in the ground and dust, and so much that we could finally wash off only after a few days, it stuck to us so firmly ...
Sasha severely pinched his leg, so much so that they managed to pull it out not immediately, but only after a while. Then he limped for several days, and his leg was completely black from hip to knee.
I got pretty pissed off too left hand so I couldn't touch it for a few days. She, too, was completely black .., and from the wound on right hand there was a lot of blood. Besides, we were all bruised…”

Tsarevich Nikolai was among the last to get out from under the collapsed roof - he, like his father, first helped those who were weaker: his sister Xenia, his younger brothers ... And "poor little Olga" rolled down the embankment and, in complete despair, rushed to run to no one knows where, only never to see this horror again.

But the surviving adults were already recovering. One of the lackeys caught up with the tsar's daughter and brought her to her father, who managed to save the rest of the children. Olga was so hysterical that she could not remember herself and scratched the face of a devoted servant, not understanding who this man was and why he was carrying her back to this terrible place. The footman took it stoically. The favorite of the emperor, the youngest daughter, was handed over to her father from hand to hand. The father took the child to one of the few surviving cars, where Olga's nanny, Mrs. Franklin, was already there. The woman had broken ribs and damaged internal organs - at the time of the explosion, she covered Olga with herself.

Probably for loving parents it would be quite natural to stay with the children, calm them down after the shock, console them, check for hidden wounds and bruises. But Alexander and Maria, making sure that the children were alive, left them alone - there were many seriously wounded, dying people around, and the king and queen went to help the life doctor, who was confusedly rushing between hundreds of victims.

Maria Fedorovna, one of the few, did not lose her head and tried to alleviate the suffering of people as best she could. She completely forgot about herself, although her arms and legs were cut from glass fragments, and her face and body were covered with bruises and abrasions, one thing was important to the empress - her husband and children were alive. So, now all the forces can be given to other people. And many needed help - more than two hundred and eighty people suffered in the disaster, and twenty-one of them, unfortunately, died.

“Mom behaved like a heroine,- Olga recalled, - helping the doctor like a real nurse".

The Empress ordered fires to be made from everything that could burn, so that the wounded people who found themselves in an open field could warm up at least a little, and ordered them to bring their personal luggage. When the surviving servants found and delivered her suitcases to the Empress, she began to cut her own things into bandages. Any items made of linen or cotton fabric went into action. Maria Feodorovna, without any pity, dealt with her favorite blouses, decorated with unique embroidery, petticoats, nightgowns and bandaged bleeding people.

A lot of time passed before an auxiliary train arrived from Kharkov to the rescue of the royal family and all the victims. But neither the king nor the queen wanted to get into the car until all the wounded were placed in the train and all the dead were loaded into it ...

A month after the catastrophe, Alexander III wrote to his brother Sergei, who had set off shortly before that with his wife Ella on a trip to holy places in the Middle East:
“Through what the Lord was pleased to lead us through, through what trials, moral torments, fear, longing, terrible heaviness, and, finally, joy and thanksgiving to the Creator for the salvation of all those dear to my heart, my entire family, young and old! What we felt, what we experienced and how we thanked the Lord, you can imagine! This day will never be erased from our memory. He was too terrible and too wonderful, because Christ wanted to prove to all of Russia that He still works miracles and saves those who believe in Him and in His great mercy from obvious death.

The railway accident in Borki made a heavy impression on the emperor's family. The sons, and especially Nikolai, considered it necessary to demonstrate courage, imitating their father, but the girls were under the influence of shock for a long time. “It was then that I began to be afraid of the dark,” Olga Alexandrovna admitted already in her old age.

So what was it anyway? A tragic accident or another well-planned assassination attempt? Both the contemporaries of Alexander III and the researchers who studied the documents more than a century later disagreed - should the disaster in Borki be considered an accident, the result of criminal negligence, or a cruel act of terrorism?

The investigation dragged on sluggishly and could not answer all the questions. Versions put forward varied, often contradictory. Sergei Yulievich Witte, who held a major post in the railway department, acted as an expert in the case. It is clear that he wanted to save the "honor of the uniform" and tried in every possible way to downplay the consequences of the disaster and reduce the matter to an ordinary railway accident, in which no one is to blame; except perhaps the emperor himself, who ordered to go at high speed. Other experts who expressed disagreement with his point of view, he declared "not knowing the railway practice" ...

But even from the way Witte describes the catastrophe itself: "The whole train fell under the embankment, and several people were crippled," it is clear that his words contradict the stories of eyewitnesses. Yes, Witte, in fact, was not an eyewitness - he was called to Kharkov from Kyiv, when the crash had already happened a long time ago ...

Meanwhile, Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, although she was a small child at the time of the disaster, remembered everything in great detail and spoke unambiguously about the explosions - "a second or two later the car burst like a tin can" - and insisted that she was thrown out of the car by an explosive wave …

Indeed, it looks like the train was actually blown up, and not just derailed, causing several cars to overturn. The derailed car first leans, falls, after the fall it deforms, and does not scatter on the spot in one second, so much so that the floor in it disappears altogether, and the passengers find themselves right on the sleepers, and the ripped off roof falls on them ...

Terrorists tried to use such artificially provoked railway accidents long before the incident in Borki. In the autumn of 1879, during the reign of Alexander II, several groups of terrorists belonging to the Narodnaya Volya society prepared catastrophes for the imperial train in different parts of the Russian Empire, dreaming of the death of the sovereign. The "Knights of the Revolution" considered that the organization of railway accidents is a very promising business in terms of terrorist attacks. The thought of dozens or even hundreds of accidental victims, inevitable in train crashes, as always, did not stop anyone.

Dynamite under the railway track was laid in three places along the route of the imperial train. And only a miracle saved people from death in all three cases.

First, the driver changed the route and drove the train not through Odessa, but through Aleksandrovsk ... The explosives planted by Vera Figner's group on a deserted stretch near Odessa simply did not come in handy. And the dynamite planted by Andrey Zhelyabov's group under the embankment in Aleksandrovsk managed to get damp and did not explode at the right moment.

The third group, led by Sophia Perovskaya, was preparing a catastrophe near Moscow. From the cellar of a house near the road, the Narodnaya Volya "heroically" dug a tunnel towards the railway track and planted a powerful explosive device in it.

And then the explosion happened without any misfires! But ... again, this is eternal but, sometimes destructive, sometimes saving! For some reason, at one of the stations, the royal train was delayed, it was overtaken by another train - with a retinue - and pulled ahead. But the "retinue" composition was supposed to go to Moscow second!

The Narodnaya Volya, not realizing that the trains had changed places, slammed their dynamite under the "retinue" train. Knowing that Alexander II was in the fourth car, they left only a wet spot from both the fourth car and the fifth car following it. Fortunately, there were no escorts in these wagons - they carried southern fruits and other provisions for the royal table. The sovereign easily survived the death of his peaches and grapes. But if there were people in these cars, everything would turn out to be much more tragic.

Analyzing the picture of the catastrophe of 1888 in Borki, it is hard not to notice its similarity with that long-standing catastrophe seven miles from Moscow.

And in the imperial family, no doubt, they adhered to the version of the terrorist attack, which the guards “blundered” without finding an explosive device. Olga Alexandrovna, who knew well what the family was talking about after the disaster, told years later:
“The cause of the crash has not been established by the investigation. Everyone was convinced that the crash was due to the negligence of the Railway Regiment, whose responsibility it was to ensure the safety of the imperial trains, and that two bombs were in the railway track. According to rumors, the leader of the terrorist group was himself killed in the explosion, but this has not been proven.”

Fan of Empress Maria Feodorovna

Of course, it would be possible to state anything reliably only if experts in the railway business and explosives carried out a serious examination of the investigative materials. But be that as it may, the information on the “rotten sleeper case” (as it was dubbed in society), made public, raises too many questions ...

It seems that Emperor Alexander III simply decided not to draw public attention to the idea that the terrible railway accident could not have been an accident, but a planned terrorist act, another attempt by revolutionaries on the life of the reigning emperor. He probably thought that the news that the terrorists had almost won would breathe new strength into underground organizations and give the revolutionaries confidence.

About the crash of the royal train near Borki in 1888
Gennady Marchenko

About the fact that everything happens for a reason

I have long wanted to write about a well-known historical event that took place near Kharkov, near the Borki station in the autumn of 1888 - the collapse of the royal train. But I'll start from afar. It just so happened that the acquaintance with the place and the subject of the story happened in a rather unusual way, probably not by chance. There is an expression that says that chance is Divine predestination. Perhaps that is why many events, sometimes scattered and obscure in themselves, slowly intertwine into a rather strong thread of a coherent story. I will not languish, I will begin.

I remember well that day, the first days of October 1998, it was raining and it was getting dark. We were going to visit our godfather, and we have been very friendly families for many years, and then we remembered that tomorrow is Lenka's (cousin's) mother's birthday. We needed flowers. The issue was resolved simply, it's good that they remembered in time. I rode the metro to the assembly point and bought, as I remember now, a large bouquet of carnations, carefully packed from the rain by the seller, also in some kind of Kharkov newspaper. In turn, our Kyiv godfather, my childhood friend, who had recently been ordained to the priesthood, was visiting us. We gathered at the appointed place and after a while pressed the bell.

The joy was intense and lasting! They congratulated my mother and, in the heat of table talk, only after a while they remembered that they should put flowers and put them in water. I unfold the bouquet and catch my eye on a small article about some kind of wreck of the royal train near Kharkov. In business! I couldn't resist and read it aloud. It was written extremely stupidly, so that I did not understand anything until the end, only the link to Kharkov was specific. Despite the degree of fun, we immediately switched to this topic and Aunt Valya, tomorrow's birthday girl, soon said the key words: "And I know where it was - in Borki, I lived there for many years and the chapel still stands at the crash site, despite explosion attempts. I omit all further conversations, the main thing is that the call to action has already been sounded, and Aunt Valya volunteered to show everything on the spot.

In the morning we went. From Kharkov, the road passed along the Simferopol highway to the ancient town of Merefa, after which it was necessary to turn left, already to Borki. Driving along Merefa itself, Aunt Valya asked: "Have you been to the site of the appearance of the Ozeryanskaya Icon of the Mother of God, the spring beats, five kilometers in total?" Of course they were not and immediately turned in the indicated direction. With difficulty, but found. In the middle of the village of Ozeryany, behind the tank standing on a pedestal, it was necessary to turn on a completely level place into a deep ravine. At first they didn’t even understand this, but when they saw it it was already too late - a very steep serpentine descent, most importantly soaked clay soil, though slightly sprinkled with gravel. To begin with, it was necessary to go down, and there the war will show the plan. It turned out that it was not a ravine, but a descent from the mountain down to a very picturesque valley. We seem to have stepped into another time. A spring springs from under the mountain, a small and very well-groomed church stands nearby, a little further a few old huts under a thatched roof, a lone grazing horse and no one. Only Great Silence! Shocked, we took water from the spring and, having bowed to the holy place, decided not to risk it, but immediately go where we were going. It had been raining non-stop since morning, threatening to turn into adult autumn rain. In general, they got into the car and ... drove off so easily, as if on dry asphalt, everyone noted this.

It was still twenty kilometers to Borki. In "Zaporozhets", which I then had, I did not have to be bored - it was crowded, noisy, crowded and therefore comfortable. Well at least they noticed the road sign "Borki", further through the railway crossing and several hundred meters in the opposite direction, along the embankment.

A dilapidated, decapitated, beautiful architecture chapel, with its structure going into the thickness of the embankment, told us that we were at the goal.

Everything pointed to the life that was in full swing here in the old days - an ideally planned territory, the remains of an old neglected square, in the distance, three hundred meters away, along a straight street, a memorial sign in the form of a granite stele is visible, into the body of which a bas-relief depicting the Royal Family is cut into the crash site, and old buildings.

After looking around a bit, they approached the chapel itself, and then they only saw that the old, rickety, iron-studded door was slightly ajar and the sounds of quiet singing of a memorial service were heard from inside.

Having made the sign of the cross, we entered. After a few moments, the memorial service ended, and the officiating priest turned to us. With some surprise, he greeted us and said that he was expecting a delegation from the diocese and asked why we were so late? With even greater surprise, he learned from us that we are not from the diocese, but on our own, and the priest who is with us is not at all local, from Kyiv. With the permission of the rector, we took a picture of the interior of the chapel, as a keepsake.

Then we were the only ones surprised. And there was something. It turned out that the funeral service, the end of which we heard, was for the repose of all those who died at this place exactly one hundred and ten years ago in a terrible railway accident and with a special mention of members imperial family later deceased, but who were participants here. From the moment of the accident, this memorial service was annual and was preceded by a large procession with the Ozeryansk Icon of the Mother of God from the place of its appearance to the chapel itself. The Sovereign Emperor also always participated in the procession.

Well, what! We just went all this way on a whim, knowing absolutely nothing. Completely shocked by what we heard, we talked for a long time with the father rector, before the quiet ones set off on the return journey.

Such events are usually strongly embedded in memory. That is exactly what happened. Describing all this in a few decades, I don’t even remember, but I seem to see everything in detail and colors, as if only a few minutes had passed. As you can see from the photo, through the efforts of many people, the chapel itself and the area around it have changed a lot, for the better. During this time, a lot of good things happened to us, and the place of residence (is it by chance?) Changed, we live only more than twenty kilometers from the ever-memorable Borki station, in the suburbs, and Zaporozhets has long been forgotten. And the family has grown. All are alive and well. The history of this unusual journey became beloved and often remembered, and to those distant events of October 1888, there was a feeling, albeit small, but personal involvement.

So the next part of this story will be a story now about the catastrophe itself.

Incident, investigation and new questions

A century-long barrier of time separates us from that tragic day. The materials of the investigation have long been carried out and read out, measures have been taken, tons of words have been said and mountains of papers have been written. For a long time already, since that same, accidental first reading about the wreck of the royal train, I have been interested in this topic and more and more questions arise, everything is very ambiguous. However, I will act, as always, - first things first.

This is how the Government Gazette of November 1 (October 20), 1888, reports this incident:
The imperial train, which left the station. Taranovka at noon on October 17, crashed at the 277th verst, between st. Taranovka and Borki, on an embankment running through a fairly deep gully. During the crash of Their Majesties, the Sovereign Emperor and the Empress Empress, with the entire August Family, and the faces of the Retinue were at breakfast, in the dining car. When the first carriage derailed, a terrible pitching occurred; the next wagons flew to both sides; the dining car, although it remained on the canvas, was unrecognizable: the entire base with wheels was thrown away, the walls flattened and only the roof, curled to one side, covered those in the car.
It was impossible to imagine that anyone could survive such destruction. But the Lord God preserved the Tsar and His Family: Their Majesties and Their August Children emerged unscathed from the wreckage of the car. All the persons in this car were also saved, receiving only slight bruises and scratches, except for Sheremetev's adjutant wing, who suffered more than others, but not seriously. Regrettably, the death of others from broken parts trains were accompanied by misfortunes. 19 killed ... 18 wounded ...
Sovereign Emperor deigned to personally dispose of the organization of assistance to the wounded. Despite extremely bad weather, with piercing rain and heavy mud. His Majesty several times descended downhill to the dead and wounded and fit into the retinue train called for at the crash site only when the last wounded man was transferred to the ambulance train, which arrived at the request from Kharkov ... "

I think it's important to continue quoting, it's very eloquent:
"Due to the blocking of the way, the retinue train with Their Majesties and Their Most August Family was sent to move along the Catherine line to Lozovaya station. a prayer of thanksgiving to the Lord God on the occasion of the miraculous deliverance of the greatest danger ...
The investigation will find out the exact cause of the train crash; but there can be no question of any malice in this accident."

This message itself contains the most severe contradiction - the investigation has not yet been carried out, but it has already been stated that there can be no question of malicious intent. Why, then, just a few moments after the crash, when groans were heard from all sides and cries were heard: “What a horror! Assassination attempt! Explosion! ”, The sovereign said the phrase that has become historical:“ You need to steal less! The king probably had reasons for that. In my opinion, everything was predetermined, the only question was time - irresponsibility, negligence and theft should have done their job.

An investigation was ordered. It was entrusted to head it to the brilliant lawyer Anatoly Fedorovich Koni (at court he was disliked because of the case of Vera Zasulich: Koni was the chairman at the court and allowed her acquittal). Everyone, of course, immediately thought of the terrorists, the Narodnaya Volya were quite recently. However, very quickly, all experts came to the decisive conclusion that there were no traces of a terrorist attack, just a locomotive or its tender derailed. On the other hand, a mass of stunning, even impossible by absurdity, but still real circumstances began to surface.

The royal train had the status of an "emergency train of extreme importance." In general, everything that had to do with the person of the sovereign was surrounded by extraordinary reverence. The composition of the train cars was determined by the Minister of Railways in agreement with the Minister of the Court and the head of security. In practice, this meant that the Minister of the Court submitted proposals (in this case, he was guided by his own considerations, taking into account, for example, the composition of the retinue), and the Minister of Communications approved them. The retinue was numerous, everyone wanted to travel in comfort and considered themselves entitled to demand separate compartments, and even a carriage. As a result, the royal train became longer and longer. Before the crash, it consisted of 14 eight-wheeled and one six-wheeled car, although the rules on trains the highest persons(there was such an instruction) limited the size of the composition in winter time(since October 15) 14 six-wheeled wagons. In other words, a train with 42 wagon axles was considered the limit, but in reality the royal train had 64 of them. It weighed up to 30 thousand pounds, stretched over 300 meters and more than doubled the length and weight of an ordinary passenger train, approaching the weight of a freight train. consisting of 28 loaded wagons. But freight trains were not then allowed to travel faster than 20 miles per hour, and the tsarist train, according to the schedule, was supposed to do 37 miles per hour. In fact, before the crash, he was walking at a speed of under seventy.

One locomotive could not pull such a hulk, two were coupled. AT normal conditions this is how freight trains were driven, passenger trains were not allowed for security reasons. Nevertheless, two steam locomotives were hitched to the emergency train. And two locomotives are, firstly, two drivers who had no connection either with each other or with the train. The royal train, in principle, was equipped with a telephone, but after the alteration it worked poorly, and the brigade did not like to use it. He was not connected to steam locomotives at all. In order to tell the driver something, he had to climb over the tender and wave his hands. Secondly, two steam locomotives at a speed of over 40 miles per hour created a dangerous additional side roll, especially if they did not have the same wheel diameter. And so it was with the royal train - one passenger locomotive was attached (Struve P-41), and the other freight locomotive (Zigl T-164).

Immediately behind the steam locomotives was a baggage car, in which there was a small power station for lighting the train, then a workshop car, followed by the car of the Minister of Railways. Next were two kitchen cars and a car for people serving the kitchen, a dining car, a grand prince's car, then a car of the imperial couple, the heir to the throne, and five cars of the royal retinue. The length of the train was 302 meters. According to experts, the crash occurred precisely because the swaying steam locomotive tore the tracks and derailed.

In this form, the imperial train traveled for ten years. The railway workers who were related to him, and the Minister of Railways himself, knew that this was technically unacceptable and dangerous, but did not consider it possible to interfere in the important layouts of the court department. The Minister of the Court, of course, did not delve into the technical circumstances, and the head of the tsarist guard, General Cherevin, all the more, it was his job to put up a guard. There were two special persons responsible for technical safety - the chief inspector of railways, engineer Baron Shernval and his assistant, technical inspector of the movement of imperial trains, engineer Baron Taube, but their job description was drawn up so stupidly that neither one nor the other knew what, in fact, they were responsible for. All this confusion, in essence, rested on the Minister of Railways, Admiral Konstantin Nikolaevich Posyet, an old man with former naval merits: but not with railways - Posyet not only did not understand anything about railways, but did not hide it and somehow even believed that such details do not concern him.

Anatoly Fedorovich Koni, who interrogated Posyet, tried to find out why he did not intervene and did not pay the sovereign's attention to the incorrect composition of the train. Posyet perked up and said that he had even converted, even Alexander II. And he said that about ten years ago he was present at a meeting at the station of the German emperor. Quickly flew up to the platform german train stopped immediately. “This is how they do it! - said Alexander II. “And we slow down and crawl towards the station.” “But they only have four wagons,” objected Posyet. "So what's next?" asked Koni. It turned out that there was nothing more. Wilhelm got out of the car, the king and his retinue moved towards them. It seems that Alexander did not understand that they tried to draw his august attention in such a delicate way to the problem of the composition of the train.

However, the railway staff was extremely concerned about the convenience and tranquility of the sovereign and his retinue. It was supposed, for example, to pick up the heaviest cars at the beginning of the train, behind the locomotive. But in the same place, smoke, fumes, noise - and heavy royal wagons were placed in the middle. All passenger trains were supposed to check the brakes after changing the locomotive: when leaving the station, the train was accelerated and slowed down. And now a "Reduced brake test" is necessarily carried out at the third kilometer after starting off with a planned braking. But they did not dare to subject the royal family to unnecessary shocks and shaking, so the brakes were not checked (!).

Theoretically, the composition was equipped with both automatic and hand brakes. At the hand brakes in each car, a conductor had to be constantly on duty in order to have time to pull the handle on the driver's whistle. But the two heaviest royal cars did not have a hand brake at all - again, so as not to disturb passengers with shaking. The conductors were ordered not to hang around in vain, but to help the servants. As for the automatic brake, after the change of the locomotive at the Taranovka station, its pressure gauge did not show the pressure necessary for braking, and the brake valve on the tender became clogged and failed. We set off without brakes: do not detain the Russian autocrat because of them! And the drivers that day were driving without whistling on slopes when they should have slowed down.

However, as the experts concluded, the lack of brakes no longer played any role in the picture of the crash. Rather, another circumstance played a role: there was a wagon with a faulty running gear in the train. It was located directly in front of the royal ones, and was ... the personal carriage of the Minister of Railways (!).

In Russia, after all, there was one person who was seriously worried about the safety of the imperial family. It was Sergei Yulievich Witte, who then held the relatively modest post of manager of the South-Western Railways. In September 1888, when the tsar's train was traveling to the Crimea, he was accompanied according to his position on his section of the route by Witte, along with the chief engineer of the South-Western Roads Vasiliev. Sitting in the Posyet car, they noticed a characteristic knock under the bottom. The cause of the knock was not the rails, but the car itself, it noticeably lurched to the left. At the bus stop, Witte called the mechanics and pointed out the problem to them. The mechanics said that this often happens with this car, they picked something up and promised to start repairs in Sevastopol. On the way back, the mechanics said that since the ministerial car had withstood the southern mountain roads, then nothing would happen to it now. Witte tried to appeal to Posyet himself, but he went to bed and through the servants advised Witte to submit a report to the ministry. And Sergei Yulievich filed it, describing the incorrectness of the formation and maintenance of a special-purpose train. It seems that this played a role in his further rise: Alexander III remembered that only Witte was seriously worried about him.

Then, during the investigation, Witte repeated his main recommendation: "The system of the movement of imperial trains should strive not to violate all those orders and rules that usually operate on the roads." That is, one should not consider the violation of elementary safety rules as a special sovereign privilege and believe that the autocrat and Newton's laws are not written.

On the morning of that day, the tsar's train arrived in Taranovka one and a half hours behind schedule. Already on the previous stage, the drivers, trying to catch up, drove with might and main, bringing the speed to almost 70 miles per hour. During a stop in Taranovka, General Cherevin, walking along the platform with Posyet, complained about being late. Cherevin had his own reasons for concern: in Kharkov, all the gendarmerie measures to ensure the safety of the imperial family were calculated and adjusted exactly to the schedule of the royal train (secret agents cannot stomp on the streets for hours).

Then, at the inquest, Cherevin assured that he had no idea what danger the acceleration of the train represented, and that if at least someone had told him about it, he would be the first to ask to go with all possible discretion. But, according to him, Posyet at that moment “counted the jackdaws on the roof”, and the technical inspector, Baron Taube, thanked the train crew for the fast ride and promised to thank them. At the same time, the manager of the Kursk-Kharkov-Azov railway Kovanko and the inspector of the Kroneberg road were present, and they should have known the state of the tracks on the next stage.

The road was built under a concession. It belonged to the shareholders and was commissioned ahead of schedule, since it was beneficial for the board. Back in the late 1870s, there were so many abuses around her that she was inspected by several government commissions. They recommended that the government buy the road to the treasury. Shareholders were expected to receive a sixty-year fee corresponding to the average annual profit of the road for the most profitable five years of the last seven years before the buyout. It is clear that the board tried in every possible way to overestimate profitability and did this, of course, by cutting maintenance and repair costs. In 1885, a government inspector, the aforementioned Kroneberg, was sent to the road. At first, he tried to fight abuses, at times his relationship with the road administration became so aggravated that he went to meetings with a revolver. But the Ministry of Railways almost did not support him, and Kroneberg surrendered.

The road administration mercilessly exploited the staff, saved on the repair of rolling stock, cheated on coal purchases (the same persons that were on the board of the road formed a coal company - they sold junk coal to themselves at inflated prices, and the loss was covered by state subsidies) and, of course, , purchased defective materials.

The section of the Taranovka - Borki track, on which the tsar's train crashed, was recognized as emergency in the summer of the same 1888, and the drivers were advised to drive quietly. This section of track was put into service only two years before the crash, but it was originally laid at an angle exceeding the allowable angle of inclination, the ballast was filled with less than the norm, and the embankment constantly sagged and was washed away by rains. They built it hastily, the sleepers were laid defective, weak, they could not hold the rails properly, and in two years in some places they completely rotted and crumbled. True, before the passage of the emergency train, the ballast was added, and the sleepers were replaced, but not with new ones, but removed from another section due to their unsuitability. At the very least, the road withstood ordinary trains, although minor accidents occurred frequently. But the heavy royal train at a speed of 60 miles per hour and the first locomotive swaying violently created an abnormally strong lateral pressure on the rails. If the sleepers were of high quality, everything might have worked out - this train has been driving for ten years.

The steam locomotive derailed, the massive tsarist carriages crushed the lighter carriages in front of them, and Posyet's collapsed ministerial carriage completed the picture. The sleepers were cut right down to the carriage of the heir-prince, who was the tenth in the train.

The following cars were supposed to run into the destroyed dining car, but the two cars closest to it turned across on steel rails, forming a barricade. However, the ensuing blow was so strong that it broke through the car wall and threw the juvenile Grand Duchess Olga into the gap on the slope of the earthen embankment. The girl remained unharmed. She screamed, "Daddy, daddy, I'm alive!" The young Grand Duke Mikhail was taken out from under the wreckage by a soldier with the help of the emperor. Of the members of the royal family, the eldest daughter Xenia, who remained hunchbacked for life, suffered the most. Only five carriages survived in the entire train. The wagon in which court servants and barmaids were traveling was terribly damaged. It contained most of the victims. In total, 21 people died and 37 were injured in the train crash. Only in the evening of that day, when all the corpses were collected and not a single wounded man was left in the tragic place, did the royal family board the arriving retinue train and be transferred to Lozovaya station. And only in the morning of the next day, that is, on October 18, the train departed for Kharkov.

After a thorough investigation of the case, Anatoly Fedorovich Koni came to the conclusion that everyone had “criminally failed to fulfill their duty.” He decided that it would be unfair to bring to trial the direct culprits of the crash - the drivers, Kroneberg and Kovanko (who did not intervene and did not limit the speed on the emergency section) - it would be unfair. Koni swung at the highest officials - Taube, Shernval, Cherevin and, of course, Posyet. In addition, he considered it necessary to prosecute the members of the board of the Kursk-Kharkov-Azov railway - for theft and for bringing the road to a dangerous state.

Bringing to court persons of such a rank in Russia at that time was an unprecedented matter. In the railway department, the idea was firmly rooted that any responsibility for accidents was borne by railway employees, but by no means the owners of the roads, no matter how abused they were. As for the responsibility of ministers and other high dignitaries, this was not even discussed before. But the case was out of the ordinary, because the sovereign and the heir were under threat.

Alexander III was keenly interested in the course of the investigation, listened to Koni's detailed report and agreed that the main culprits - the ministers and the board - should be judged. The Sovereign did not often receive objective information about the real state of affairs, and the story of railway abuses impressed him (Koni, by the way, said that before the opening of the railway in the Kharkov province there were 60 thousand acres of forest, and at that time there were less than 6 thousand acres, the rest was exterminated for sleepers and fuel, taking advantage of forced low prices and lack of government control). Russian legislation the procedure for bringing ministers to court was not provided for, and Alexander III ordered the Minister of Justice to develop and pass through the State Council an appropriate bill.

Meanwhile, the most bizarre rumors about the crash began to circulate in society. And about terrorists, and about a certain boy who brought a bomb under the guise of ice cream into the royal car. It was also said that the tsar himself gave the order to dangerously speed up the train, when Koni informed him about this, Alexander III laughed, said that he had not said anything of the kind, and asked him not to take him to court. Everyone was horrified by the catastrophe and rejoiced at the miraculous salvation of the august family. But, as soon as it came to the responsibility of high-ranking officials, they found a lot of defenders. Posyet, a month after the crash, was removed from his ministerial post, but appointed to the State Council with a decent pension. His wife told in high-society Petersburg salons how much he was depressed by what had happened. Posyet was sorry. Everyone agreed that it would be inhumane to publicly declare him guilty. In the Kharkov living rooms, they were very sympathetic to the members of the railway board - some of them were very prominent figures in the world, they had such charming wives ... They began to say about Koni that he was a socialist, “red”, raises a working question. Even political denunciations were written against him. Somehow, everyone very quickly forgot that, in fact, it was about the royal family.

The new law has been passed. According to him, the issue of bringing the ministers to court first had to go to the tsar for consideration, and then, “having received the highest respect,” go to the State Council. It was decided in two stages, first in a special presence at the State Council (this is like an emergency meeting), then it was submitted to the department of civil and spiritual affairs. They have already finally voted for the return to court, the termination of the case or the imposition of a penalty without trial. And in February 1889, the case of the crash was heard in the State Council. Its members, of course, found themselves in a difficult situation: the supreme will, quite clearly and unambiguously expressed, demanded the condemnation of Posyet and others, and corporate interests were aimed at preventing this and not creating a precedent dangerous for the bureaucratic elite.

A special presence consisted of department chairs and concerned ministers. It listened to the report of the investigation and proceeded to debate. The Grand Dukes Mikhail Nikolaevich and Vladimir Alexandrovich, who were present, were of the opinion that there was “nothing to discuss for a long time” and demanded that Posyet be brought to justice with excessive even, according to Koni, ruthlessness. Some of those present agreed with this. But then there were new plot twists. The smart and cunning former Minister of Finance Abaza spoke in the spirit that Posyet is undoubtedly guilty and “bringing him to trial is a matter of elementary justice,” but his guilt was obvious immediately after the crash, nevertheless he stayed as a minister for another month, and , having received his resignation, was appointed to the State Council. Therefore, Abaza concluded, sovereignty forgave Posyet, and from the side of a special presence it would be inappropriate to punish him. The Minister of the Interior, Count Tolstoy, argued that putting the minister on trial would mean a fall in the prestige of the authorities in the eyes of society. The chairman of the Department of Laws of the State Council, Baron Nikolai, described the mental suffering of the unfortunate Posyet (“imagine what the venerable Konstantin Nikolaevich must now suffer!”), called for thinking how they would be aggravated by the consideration of the case in court, concluded that this would be “unnecessary cruelty” , and in conclusion shed a tear. But the vote still decided the case in favor of putting Posyet and Shernval on trial.

A series of meetings of the Department of Civil and Ecclesiastical Affairs followed. They were lethargic, wandered, in parallel, members of the departments listened to all sorts of persuasions and requests, and hesitated more and more. In the end, they voted down the issue of a trial and voted to reprimand Posyet and Shernval even without entering it on the form.

Alexander III could not afford to exert more obvious pressure on officials, especially being an interested person in this story. Russian autocratic arbitrariness was in fact strictly regulated by the norms of unwritten customs, bureaucratic or class. The emperor was not a king from fairy tales, he could not act according to the principle “what I want, I turn back” and quite often he was forced to follow the lead of his entourage, even in small things. The ladies-in-waiting who lived in the palace, for example, noted that the royal family was rather badly fed by the court cooks (after all, they also played palace games, whether they were up to pots). And the imperial family dutifully endured it.

So in the case of the collapse, the king could only swallow the decision of the State Council. The only thing he allowed himself to do was, by his own will, stop the whole case of the crash entirely. Anatoly Fedorovich Koni also fought for such an outcome of the case: it would be very unfair to judge low-ranking perpetrators. The emperor issued a gracious manifesto, and thus the case of the crash almost ended. Commemorative signs were also established, which, as usual in such cases, found their addressees.

“Almost”, because there was a small continuation. Alexander III ordered the conclusions of the investigation to be published and instructed Koni to write an article. But, as the reader probably guesses, it certainly did not get into print.

A story is known that at the time of the crash, the Sovereign decisively showed his remarkable physical strength and supported the collapsed roof, as a result of which his family was saved. Koni called it all a fiction, since the roof itself is multi-ton and no person can hold it above himself, explaining that the roof was jammed on both sides by collapsed wagons, folding it into a house over the royal family.

Surprisingly, this picture tells a different story. At one point, the roof rests on the ground, with its rear plane on the destroyed wagon, from falling to the ground, the roof is held by a tree trunk, small in diameter, possibly cut down nearby. In addition, it is not set vertically, but at an angle, which may indicate a relatively small load, which a person could easily cope with. Why am I? Moreover, the investigation, carried out even by such an exceptionally honest lawyer as Koni, who tried to rationally explain all the most irrational questions, itself gave rise to a lot of rumors and myths. Not wanting to touch them, I want to tell you about how the memory of the crash of the royal train was perpetuated by the foundation of the Spasov Skete and about all the events associated with it to this day.

After and now

What happened then, was the catastrophe of the royal train predetermined, which entailed the death of many people? After considering all the facts given in the previous story, I can say that yes - sooner or later. Some incongruous combination of sloppiness and foresight. Since we have already talked enough about the first and probably not worth more, I will just say a few words about commendable foresight. We will talk about the design features of the cars, which directly housed the royal family. Lead was poured into the floor of the car (I think rather into the frame of the carcass), which was called upon and at the decisive moment softened the force of the blow, preventing deformation of the perimeter of the car. Everything was conceived very well, but the speed was too high, under 70 km / h. It is not for nothing that most automobile crash tests are carried out at a speed of 50 km / h, moreover, at the time of the crash, the royal family was in the dining car, which is the most traumatic of all - a large number of loose and very heavy items, large spaces and, because of this, the relatively lower rigidity of the upper part of the car body, which then completely collapsed in a collision.

If you look at the photograph, you can see that a huge oval table and chairs flew far beyond the limits of the car, people fell on the embankment, the walls of the car collapsed, the roof fell on them. It turned out something like a shelter, thanks to which the passengers were saved. And even if, following A. Koni, who was investigating the case of the crash, to consider that the emperor could not hold the heavy roof of the car on his shoulders, then the fact that the roof did not fall on people and crush them is simply unbelievable ... Waiter Lauter ( he was standing behind his back) died, the dog Kamchatka hid under the table, she suffered the same fate. And the members of the imperial family themselves helped the wounded go out into the street, helped people, and did not rest on the sidelines. Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, even more than seven decades later, could not forget the snow-covered field, the scattered fragments of the imperial train, the scarlet spots on the embankment, and her mother’s hands cut with glass fragments. Empress Maria Feodorovna tore linen into bandages and bandaged the wounded. Moreover, when everything calmed down, the Romanovs did not go to Kharkov, but remained in the field with people. And when they returned to Lozovaya, they sat down at the table with those who survived. When the railway track was restored, they arrived in Kharkov and went around all the hospitals, inquired about the health of the wounded.

The king received bruises, which, according to doctors, became fatal, resulting in the death of the autocrat six years later. It is known about the bent royal silver cigarette case. But still, after the crash, the king and his family were safe and sound, so much so that they could provide assistance for several hours. Given the nature of the destruction, it was unbelievable in itself.

The salvation of the king was perceived by the people as a miracle of God's mercy!

“Today, late at night, we received this telegram, the content of which will make all truly Russian people shudder ... Our Adored Monarch with His Royal Family was in danger ... The pen falls from the hands, the tongue goes numb! ... This is not the time to talk about how what the telegram says could happen! .. We can only pray ... "("Moskovsky Listok" October 30 (18), 1888).

The people of that time knew how to pray, and the feeling aroused by this news was hot and strong. The event of October 17 is immortalized by the establishment of many charitable institutions, scholarships, etc. A skete, called Spasov, was soon arranged near the crash site.

One of the local officials, the provincial secretary, donated his land for the construction of the temple. The original temple was built under the care of the Svyatogorsk monastery and belonged to him.

In 1896, this entire territory was transferred to the balance of the railway department.

A few sazhens from the embankment, a majestic cathedral church was built in the name of Christ the Savior of the Most Glorious Transfiguration. On May 21, 1891, on the last journey of Empress Maria Feodorovna with her daughter Xenia Alexandrovna and the Grand Dukes to the south, in their presence, in Borki, at the site of the disaster, a solemn laying of the temple took place. The project was drawn up by the St. Petersburg architect, Academician of Architecture Robert Marfeld. The greatness of the temple can be judged by one memory of the old-timers - when the weather was sunny, people saw the radiance of the dome even on Cold Mountain, 50 kilometers away.

The highest place on the embankment, almost at the railroad track, was marked with four flags - this is the place where the grand ducal carriage stood during the crash and from which Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna was thrown unharmed.

At the foot of the embankment, a wooden cross with the image of the Savior Not Made by Hands was placed - this is the place on which the imperial family set foot, emerging unharmed from under the wreckage of the dining car; a cave chapel was erected here. At the place where the Empress and her children cared for the sick, the administration of the Kursk-Kharkov-Azov railway planted a square, which was thus located between the temple and the chapel.

A special guardianship was created to take care of the state of the temple. At the expense of railway societies, at the expense of donations from employees and individuals, a hospital and a home for the elderly railway workers were built, a parochial school, and a public free library named after Emperor Alexander III were opened. Subsequently, for many years the emperor came here during the Easter festivities.

After the arrival of the Bolsheviks, everything changed. Archimandrite Rodion (priest of the skete) and Hieromonk Anastassy (treasurer and housekeeper) were brutally murdered in 1917. The village was renamed Shemetiv, that was the name of one of the first inhabitants, then the icons were taken out, the temple was closed, a warehouse for pesticides was set up in it, and destitute children were soon settled. The second time the village was renamed already in the thirties - to Pervomayskoye. A few years later, the temple caught fire and the famous golden dome was completely destroyed. And at the end of the war, the temple was finally blown up, leaving the chapel in ruins. The last surviving mosaics were removed from it by the founder of the local rural museum, Krasyuk.

These frescoes were not exhibited in the museum for a long time, they were hidden in the school basement, and only during perestroika, after Krasyuk's death, they entered the museum's exposition. The photo shows Zinaida Nikolaevna Motronovskaya, the current director of the museum and the granddaughter of an eyewitness to the crash. To everyone who saved the royal family and courtiers from the wreckage of the train, the Empress later distributed gifts. Someone porcelain dishes, someone - money. Zinaida Nikolaevna is proud of the oval porcelain dish, which is now kept in the museum. “She gave her grandmother two dishes: one large, this one, the second smaller and several plates. Grandmother always spoke with piety about the fact that this is the memory of the "Queen" and took care of him all her life.

In such a dilapidated, decapitated state, the chapel stood for about 60 years.

“Two residents of Pervomaisky came to my reception,” Viktor Ostapchuk, then head of the Southern Railway, recalled the recent past, “they asked me to help somehow strengthen the chapel so that it would not collapse at all. They began to raise archives in order to find out who it belongs to, and We made sure that it is on the balance of the railway.The main stretches for many hundreds of kilometers, there are many churches along it, we helped build or restore some of them.But none of them is directly in such proximity.You can say that God himself ordered that We restored it."

Restoration work in the chapel began in 2002 and ended on Easter Day - April 27, 2003. Together with the creation of the complex, a guest platform with grand staircases in the style of the 19th century was rebuilt, and the Pervomaisky railway platform was reconstructed, which was returned to its former historical name - Spasov Skit.

They did everything to the conscience, and the plans include the restoration of the cathedral, the drawings of which were found in the archives. Whether this is possible, a new miracle at this place, time will tell. Now a rotunda has been installed on the site of the Temple. The cross with the Crucifixion of the Savior was placed in 2007 - on the site of the altar of the destroyed Cathedral of Christ the Savior, and made of oak raised from the bottom of the Desna River in the Chernihiv region. It is claimed that the oak has lain in the water for more than 1000 years.

Today, in a clean and quiet park near the chapel, you can meet tourists not only from all over Ukraine and Russia, but also from Europe and America. “For five years I have been looking after the order on the territory of the temple complex and I can say that people are more and more interested every year,” said the guard on duty, “there are many pilgrims, many tourists. One day an elderly woman was brought here. She stood for a long time and looked at the temple, at the departing trains. And a man was standing aside, he was also silent. The woman in parting donated some valuables to the temple, later it turned out that she was a descendant of those who died here. Her grandparents were on the train. My grandfather died, and my grandmother lived a long life, but she never boarded trains again.”

Do not be afraid to follow your grandmother, but get on trains or cars and come, look at everything with your own eyes, and I'm sure your heart will stick with memory to this holy place.

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"Gazeta.Ru" completes its story about the events of October 29 (according to the new style), 1888, when the family of Russian Emperor Alexander III almost died in a monstrous train accident. Learn history with us!

All in all, in memory of miraculous rescue imperial family during 1888-1890. 126 temples, 32 chapels, 320 chapels, 17 bell towers, 116 iconostases, 30 church fences, 2873 icon cases and 54 vestments for icons, 152 altar and external crosses, 434 banners, 685 bells, 324 lampadas, 107 church parochial schools, several almshouses and orphanages.

In 1893, a chapel was erected on the site of the wreck of the imperial train. The inscription "In honor of October 17, 1888" was present on the entrance gate. The last prayer service in the presence of Nicholas II took place on April 19, 1915. And in the 1930s, the Bolsheviks destroyed the chapel. In 2013, a monument to Alexander III was opened in the Zmievsky district of the Kharkiv region of Ukraine.

The physical strain experienced by Alexander III while holding the roof of the car soon manifested itself in the form of pain in the lower back. The autocrat was diagnosed with the onset of kidney disease. The emperor was fading before our eyes, he lost his appetite, because of which he lost a lot of weight, often fell into apathy. His face became sallow and indifferent. Eyes dimmed. Maria Fedorovna understood that things were heading for a sad denouement... In the last months of his life, Alexander III practically did not participate in public affairs, he almost did not get out of bed. November 1 (new style) 1894 at 14:15 he died. The penultimate Russian autocrat, Tsar-Peacemaker, passed away at the age of 49. And just 23 years later, the monarchy also died.

So, without establishing traces of the terrorist attack, Koni presented to the emperor his conclusions about the guilt officials involved in the tragedy. According to him, they all showed "criminal negligence on a train of extreme importance." Kony finished his report with a report on the "predatory actions" of the board in the operation of the railway, the desire to make money in any way, the irresponsibility of the service personnel and the connivance of all this on the part of the Ministry of Railways.

“So, your opinion is that there was extreme negligence here?” the emperor asked. “If you characterize the whole incident in one word, regardless of its historical and moral value, - answered Koni, - then we can say that it represents a complete failure by everyone to fulfill their duty.

The emperor thanked Koni for the work done and the interesting report, and wished him success in completing the case. Soon, the Minister of Railways Posyet lost his post.

Interrogating Minister Posiet, Koni tried to find out why he did not intervene and did not pay the sovereign's attention to the wrong composition of the train. Posyet perked up and said that he had even converted, and even Alexander II.

In view of the difficult domestic political situation, the activity of various populist organizations, the version of a terrorist attack was not ruled out. An investigation began, which Alexander III entrusted to the popular lawyer Anatoly Koni. Experts carefully examined the wreckage of the train and the torn up railway track. The conclusion of the commission was unequivocal: there was no explosion, a combination of circumstances led to the disaster - poor-quality tracks and a train malfunction. However, there were rumors that the attack was simply hushed up so as not to inspire other attackers. Allegedly, the bomb was secretly planted in the "dining" car by the cook's assistant, who was close to the populists. All these assumptions have remained unfounded conjectures.

They drive on in tragic silence. All are depressed. The children are crying. By the evening of the next day, the imperial train will arrive from Belgorod to Kursk. His Grace Justin will say a short greeting to Alexander III and bless him with an icon. The emperor will receive a report from the governor and military commanders. Then the couple will receive bread and salt from the deputations of the nobility, the Zemstvo, the city and the communities of suburban settlements. After some time, the train will move to St. Petersburg.

Alexander III with his wife and children are transferred to the reserve train that has finally arrived. The family goes to the Lozovaya station: it is a little less than 200 kilometers in the opposite direction, to the southwest. Only in the morning of the next day the train will finally head for Kharkov.

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The exact number of killed and wounded is counted - 21 and 37 (according to other sources, more than 68), respectively. These are Cossacks, military men, barmaids. The most august family is still at the remains of the train, but it's cold outside!

A rescue train has long been called from Kharkov. But he doesn't go...

Alexander III's statement on the situation, which came out a few days later.

And here is how Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna recalled the tragedy. Her memoirs are retold on her behalf in the entry of the Canadian journalist Ian Vorres, which is referred to by Vladimir Khrustalev in the book “Secrets in the Blood. The Triumph and Tragedy of the Romanov Dynasty. “On October 29, the long royal train was in full swing towards Kharkov. The Grand Duchess remembered: the day was overcast, it was snowing wet. At about one o'clock in the afternoon the train drove up to the small station of Borki. The emperor, empress and their four children dined in the dining car. The old butler, whose name was Lev, brought in the pudding. Suddenly the train rocked sharply, then again. Everyone fell to the floor. A second or two later, the dining car exploded like a tin can. The heavy iron roof had collapsed, missing a few inches from the passengers' heads. All of them were lying on a thick carpet that had fallen on the canvas: the explosion cut off the wheels and the floor of the car. The emperor was the first to crawl out from under the collapsed roof. After that, he lifted her up, allowing his wife, children and other passengers to get out of the mutilated car. .

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“A fatal day for everyone, we all could have been killed, but by the will of God this did not happen. During breakfast, our train derailed, the canteen and 6 cars were smashed and we got out of everything unharmed. However, 20 people were killed. and wounded 16. Transferred to the Kursk train and drove back. At st. Lozovoi had a prayer service and a memorial service. They ate right there. We all got off with light scratches and cuts!!!” - this is how Nikolai Alexandrovich described the tragedy in his diary.

“God miraculously saved us all from inevitable death. A terrible, sad and joyful day. 21 killed and 36 wounded! My dear, kind and faithful Kamchatka is also killed!” - Alexander III made this entry in his diary.

“It was the most terrible moment in my life, when I realized that I was alive, but that none of my relatives was near me,” the Empress continued. — Ah! This was really scary! Then all of a sudden I saw my dear little Xenia appearing from under the roof a little further away from me. Then Georgy appeared, who was already shouting to me from the roof: “Misha is here too!” and, finally, Sasha appeared, whom I put in my arms ...

Nicky appeared behind Sasha, and someone shouted to me that Baby (Olga) was safe and sound, so I could thank Our Lord with all my heart and soul for his generous mercy and mercy, for saving me all alive without losing a single hair from their heads! Just think, only poor little Olga was thrown out of her car, and she fell down from a high embankment ... But what grief and horror we experienced when we saw a lot of killed and wounded, our dear and devoted people. It was heartbreaking to hear screams and moans and not be able to help them or just shelter them from the cold, since we ourselves had nothing left!

My dear old Cossack, who had been by my side for 22 years, was crushed and completely unrecognizable, as he was missing half of his head. Sasha's young rangers, whom you probably remember, also died, as did all those poor fellows who were in the car that was driving in front of the dining car. This car was completely smashed to pieces, and only a small piece of the wall remained!

It was a terrible sight! Just think, to see the broken cars in front of you and in the middle of them - the most terrible - ours, and realize that we are still alive! It's completely incomprehensible! This is a miracle that our Lord has created!”

After carefully examining his wife and children, Alexander III jokes: “I can imagine how disappointed Vladimir will be when he finds out that we all escaped!” is an obvious allusion to younger brother emperor who would have inherited the throne in the event of the death of Alexander III and his descendants.

The Emperor thanks Mrs. Franklin. Rescuing Princess Olga came at a high price: the woman's ribs were broken and bruises were diagnosed. internal organs.

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Princess Olga, a tiny six-year-old girl, was, of course, the worst of all. The “children's” car was hitched right behind the “dining room” and suffered no less badly. Things fell on the floor, glass vases were broken, the space was filled with dangerous fragments. Moments before the carriage was torn apart, Mrs. Franklin's nanny managed to pull Olga close to her. This saved the princess. It was too early for her to die: the youngest child of the emperor will live until 1960 and will see a lot more in his lifetime ...

The blow was so strong that it broke through the carriage wall and Olga was thrown into the gap and thrown onto the slope of an earthen embankment. She screamed, "Daddy, daddy, I'm alive!" The young Grand Duke Mikhail was taken out from under the wreckage by a soldier with the help of the emperor.

The section of the Taranovka-Borki track, on which the tsar's train crashed, was recognized as emergency in the summer of the same 1888, and the drivers were advised to drive quietly. This section was put into operation only two years before the crash, but it was originally laid at an angle exceeding the allowable angle of inclination, the ballast was filled with less than the norm, and the embankment constantly sagged and was washed away by rains. They built it hastily, the sleepers were laid defective, weak, they could not hold the rails properly, and in two years in some places they completely rotted and crumbled. True, before the passage of the "emergency" train, the ballast was poured, and the sleepers were replaced, but not with new ones, but removed from another section due to their unsuitability.

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Alexander III came to his senses the fastest and was able to assess the situation. Legendary fact: the emperor lifted the wagon roof and held it on his shoulders and back for several minutes until his wife, children, courtiers and servants got out. One can only guess what inhuman efforts in literally fell on the shoulders of the sovereign. The gold cigarette case in the back pocket of his trousers flattened into a cake. But Alexander Alexandrovich himself at first showed no signs of malaise. Just think, bruises and cuts, and a leg crushed by debris - what is this in comparison with the dead? Unpleasant symptoms appeared much later ... “It was truly a feat of Hercules, for which he later had to pay a heavy price, although at that time no one knew this yet,” Princess Olga later recalled.

Of the breakfast participants, the adjutant wing Vladimir Sheremetev received the most severe injury. He crushed his finger. Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna badly hurt her back, which subsequently hunched a little.

The train was an hour and a half behind schedule. Trying to catch up, the drivers drove with might and main, bringing the speed to almost 70 miles per hour. During a stop in Taranovka, the head of the tsarist guard, General Cherevin, walking along the platform with Minister Posyet, complained about being late. Cherevin had his own reasons for concern: in Kharkov, all gendarmerie measures to ensure the safety of the imperial family were calculated and adjusted exactly to the schedule of the royal train.

The "table" car was a terrible sight. On the left side of the embankment, he was reclining completely torn apart with flattened walls and without wheels, the roof was lying nearby.

The exact coordinates of the place of emergency: the 295th kilometer of the Kursk-Kharkov-Azov line south of Kharkov, 27 km from Zmiev near the river Dzhguna. Today here is the Ukrainian village of Pershotravneve (Pervomaiskoye), founded in 1959, during the lifetime of two witnesses of the catastrophe from the royal family - Princesses Olga and Xenia.

The butler re-approaches his majesty to add cream. Alexander III reaches for the plate, and suddenly... FUCK-TA-RA-RAH!!! The car rocked, metal clanged, everyone fell sharply to the floor. Nobody understood what was happening. Chaos reigned, panic, catastrophe!!! The rails parted, one of the locomotives fell between them. This provoked the derailment of ten wagons. They fell from a high embankment.

In a matter of seconds, the "dining" car was torn to pieces like a cardboard box. Its passengers are fantastically lucky. The heavy metal roof collapsed massively and got stuck, not reaching the heads of the people lying in horror, a few centimeters. In this horror, the sovereign and the heir almost died. But - it passed, Providence saved: the wheels and the floor flew off, as if cut with a knife, and people rolled out directly onto the rails, while remaining on the carpet, laid on the floor of the car. And if the floor had held in place, the soft-boiled roof would have crushed everyone. Ordinary wagons with servants and guards, which were walking in the head of the train, were even less fortunate. The heavy tsarist carriages actually crushed them, crushed them with their own weight.

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Late breakfast is coming to an end. The old butler wears Guryev porridge - Alexander III's favorite delicacy, prepared from semolina in milk with the addition of nuts and dried fruits. The emperor examines the plate with appetite, straightens the napkin on his chest.

No one has yet guessed that the locomotives operating in different rhythms have already loosened the weak upper structure of the track. It is worth going slower along the rails laid on an artificial embankment, but the train rushes along without feeling the approaching disaster.

The imperial train merrily rushes along the Kursk-Kharkov-Azov railway line. Passing Kharkov province. Very soon - Belgorod region, and there it is already a stone's throw to the ancient capital. An exciting journey comes to an end. With the understanding of this, everyone's heart becomes sad. The warm season is over. Months of cold, snow and wind are ahead. Well, they will save the heated fireplaces in the royal palaces.

Alexander Alexandrovich and Maria Feodorovna in their youth. With them is the eldest son Nikolai. (S. Levitsky. RGAKFD. Al. 963. Sn. 203)

They were in no hurry to eat. Time is a wagon, and in every sense. There is no hurry, but you need to keep yourself busy somehow. And what will brighten up the trip better than conversations with a good friend and the closest ministers? Breakfast smoothly flowed into a discussion of topical issues. Basically, Alexander III spoke - thoroughly, with dignity. The environment listened attentively to their emperor. Sometimes Posyet or Vannovsky allowed themselves separate remarks. Their leitmotif was this: everything is fine with us. Everything is in order with the railway and with the army. “Well, yes, because she is one of our two allies,” Alexander III probably thought at that moment.

As you know, the emperor was strict but fair. He had never hit any of the children in his life, but he did not allow them to be naughty, to laugh in his presence. Therefore, the youths early learned to keep discipline - both at the table and in life. Best of all, the requirements of Alexander III knew the eldest son Nikolai, so unlike his father either in character or outwardly. Many secretly wondered: how did such a giant, a bear-king with incredible strength and peasant manners, give birth to such a refined squishy?

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1887 Grand Duke Tsarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich in an army infantry uniform