Like many settlements in the Moscow region, Klin keeps secrets of the past and mysteries of history. The main legend of Klin tells about the gold of Novgorod boyar Velyaminov.
Grozny raid
The winter of 1570 stood out in Russia frosty and terrible. Ivan the Terrible surrounded himself with bands of guardsmen and zealously exterminated all objectionable and rebellious. One of the sovereign’s main enemies was declared “lord” Veliky Novgorod - a very prosperous and freedom-loving city, which means “dangerous”. About the tsar’s intentions, the northern outskirts of the state were heard very superficially, but the Novgorod elite quickly realized that Ivan the Terrible would not do without threats. The necessary conclusions from the political situation were made by the prosperous Novy Novgorod boyar Nikita Fedorovich Velyaminov. He was a very wealthy man, even by the high standards of Novgorod capital, and before his disgrace he was a member of the “inner circle” of the young sovereign. Velyaminov guessed the mood of Ivan the Terrible and urgently sent a convoy with his most valuable property to the south along the waterway "from the Varangians to the Greeks". Evidence of this remained in historical sources, including the Velyaminovsky Chronograph:
The payload was made up of two dozen chests loaded with sledge with gold and silver utensils, the precious Velyaminov family jewelry, uncut emeralds and sapphires, ancient books and leather purses with foreign coins. All this was disguised as a batch of hemp rope.
Until now, historians are wondering why Velyaminov himself and his "golden train" did not move to fraternal Lithuania, but to the "den of the beast." Be that as it may, the news of the campaign of Grozny with the guardsmen to Novgorod found the boyar in the small village of Klin on the Sestra River in the Moscow-Tver border region. For a long time, one of the transshipment bases of the Velyaminovs' merchant flotilla was located in the village of Klin, and they knew the dense wedge neighborhoods well. The precious "baggage" was safely hidden, the messengers were sent home. However, Velyaminov himself stayed in Klin - went to bed with a severe cold. Another secret - who informed Ivan the Terrible about the true “stuffing” of Velyaminov’s hemp convoy. The king executed the boyar in a very cruel way - put him on a stake. However, even before the painful death, Velyaminov never said where he had hidden his treasures. The furious Ivan the Terrible ordered the guardsmen to literally turn Klin upside down and “shake up” all the townspeople. However, the Clinch massacre also did not lead to any results - neither the chests nor the treasure bags of the tsar’s “peasants” were found. The village was burned, the army of Grozny went on, and the wedge ash forever buried under itself the main secret of the proud boyar.
In search of treasure
The legend of the countless treasures of Velyaminov was difficult to forget. For several centuries, different people have tried to find the treasured treasure. Some to get rich, others to restore historical events. It is known that it was the “gold rush” that drove the raid detachment of the Lithuanian colonel Vasa Sokolovsky, who unsuccessfully besieged Klin in 1617 during the next Russo-Polish war. At the beginning of 1812, the Klin landowner and collector of ancient tales, Alexander Kartsev, applied to the Moscow Governor General with the initiative to organize a search expedition to Klin. Kartsev’s plans were hindered by the ongoing Napoleonic invasion, which left no chance for this bold project. The landowner himself was killed under obscure circumstances by Cossacks from the detachment of General Ferdinand Wincenzherode, who stood near Klin after the fall of Moscow. The serfs of Kartsev claimed that the Cossacks interrogated their master, putting him naked in the well. It turns out that the "bloody gold" Velyaminov took another life. In 1916, the historian Stanislav Pshisemsky, who studied medieval Zemstvo archives, published the brochure "Novgorod Golgotha", where for the first time competent assessments of Klin events of four hundred years ago were presented. In particular, he suggested that the treasures of the boyar Velyaminov were either drowned in an ice hole on the Sestra River, or hidden in the vast underground cellars of the Novgorod trading post. The second assumption is particularly interesting. Underground Wedge - the theme is as interesting and covered with legends as the treasure of Velyaminov. It is known that there were underground passages that led from the ancient Klinsky Kremlin to the Sestra River. Later, their system was expanded by the efforts of military fortifiers and city merchants, who willingly used underground galleries as warehouses. Obviously, Novgorod merchants from the Velyaminov clan were well acquainted with this wedge “landmark”.
New secrets
Probably, the first Klin KGB officers knew about the dungeons. In the 1930s, they closed the Assumption Church, which was still under Ivan the Terrible, which is considered one of the key points of the city catacombs. For several years they used it for their secret purposes. The underground passages of Klin were of great interest to the task force of the fascist occult and ideological organization Anenerbe, which was actively looking for something in the occupied city in the winter of 1941. This story is also very vague, there are few historical facts to judge the events taking place here. Recently, however, rumors appeared in Klin about the discovery of the remains of a person with a medallion of an officer of the Third Reich in an old basement covered with earth in the area of Papivin Street. Shopping arcades located in the center of Klin keep a lot of mysteries and legends. People who trade in them believe that the treasure of the merchant Velyaminov exists. Also, many believe that under these buildings there are dungeons that ancient merchants used as storage. For example, when arranging the Mushroom Girl fountain near the Shopping arcade, workers found many old coins.
The mystery of the missing gold remains unsolved. In one, historians agree: the treasures of the boyar Velyaminov did not leave Klin anywhere. They are hidden here in the city. Maybe the treasure rests in the thickness of the bottom silt of the Sestra River, lies in deaf catacombs underground or buried somewhere not far from Sovetskaya Square. So, modern historians and archaeologists have yet to solve many mysteries of the past.
© A. Shugaev, Klin news agency