Today we shall venture into a district that was once a rural retreat beyond the city limits, and has since become the Nodirabeghim mahalla of Mirzo-Ulugbek, encompassing the Lunacharsky Centre. We are heading to the former village of Nikolskoye.
These places were, in effect, dacha retreats, and representatives of Tashkent's high society and demi-monde would frequently make their way out here. Some came for a few days, whilst others took dachas for the entire summer. To own a dacha in precisely this spot was considered not so much a matter of prestige as something thoroughly desirable. After all, it brought one closer to Chimgan. By modern standards the journey was not particularly long, yet one must bear in mind where the city's residential quarters ended — at Darkhan, at the site of the former Kazakhstan cinema, and near the railway station. But in those days, on horseback…
The Village of Nikolskoye
Today it would be well-nigh impossible to find any trace of it, though there are accounts of certain outbuildings that have survived in someone's courtyard. It came into being shortly after Tashkent's incorporation into the Russian Empire. Initially, it was decided to establish the settlement at the foot of Shorteppe Hill — where the Orthodox cemetery on the Karasu district now stands. However, the site proved to be overgrown with reeds, making malaria a very real threat, and so almost immediately the settlement was laid out on the very spot known in the memory of Tashkent's residents as the centre of Lunacharsky. The first inhabitants of this new residential district were settlers — Cossacks from the Orenburg Cossack Host and from central Russia.
Naturally, the settlement did not spring up overnight — the settlers arrived gradually, but across the broad expanse of land, residential houses and outbuildings slowly appeared, and extensive orchards and kitchen gardens were established. Land was allocated on the principle of "as much as one can manage."
Some took up poultry farming, whilst others turned to dairy production — all the more so since, in Tashkent, locally produced goods were of fine quality and sold with great enthusiasm. And the air! What air there was — clean, pleasant, breathe it in and drink it deep, and illness would not find you!
The Settlers
In this once-outlying spot, one might still find today, with a little effort, the ancient plane trees planted by the settlement's first inhabitants, and — quite possibly — traces of those very first orchards that once delighted their owners with the most exquisite fruit. And, as part of the natural order of things, everyone wished to live better, and so the more prosperous townspeople were exceedingly keen to acquire a modest plot on which to build a dacha. Or, at the very least, to rent one for the summer, for the family, for the children.
Such a desire was shared by Nikolai Ivanovich Ivanov, a first-guild merchant and patron of the arts already well known in Tashkent by that time. Almost immediately upon his arrival, Nikolai Ivanovich turned his attention to the absence of even the most modest little church in the settlement. It is for this reason that history attributes to him the devoted founding of a church in the name of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker of Myra. In all likelihood, that is precisely how it was — the distinguished merchant had a hand in everything that might bring benefit both to himself and to those around him.
A solemn prayer service and the laying of the foundation stone of the future church were conducted by Bishop Neofit in the presence of many senior officials of the regional and city administration on the 8th of November 1883. But this was only the beginning.
Nikolai Ivanovich, as the sole organiser of the construction, was well acquainted with the building materials used in these parts, and he immediately rejected local materials such as adobe and reeds. He resolved to create a kind of monument to himself — one that would serve people for many decades to come.
Truth be told, nowhere on the walls of the church was there any mention of the merchant Ivanov's central role in the construction of the new building — such was his modesty. And for a full four years after the laying of the foundation stone, work on the site did not begin.
The Creation of the Church
I gaze intently at a photograph of the ancient five-domed church and cannot shake the feeling that the celebrated architect Wilhelm Solomonovich Heinzelman was involved in its construction. The style is unmistakably his — Byzantine-Russian with various embellishments.
The actual construction of the church began only in the autumn of 1887. It was then that the unforgettable first-guild merchant came into his own, deploying the full force of his mercantile energy.
He procured fine bricks and roofing materials, commissioned a great quantity of icons and decorative finishes, and sourced stone for paving the area around the church. Even the gold for the domes and crosses was acquired by him personally. The church turned out to be both austere and, at the same time, extraordinarily beautiful — one might even say distinguished — unlike any other building of its kind in the Turkestan region.
But Nikolai Ivanovich thought not only of the congregation, but also of the future priest — the rector of the new church. He therefore arranged for a six-room residential house to be built nearby, in which the church's first rector resided from the very first day of his ministry.
That rector was Pyotr Alexandrovich Ostroumov — a nephew of the distinguished educator and orientalist Nikolai Petrovich Ostroumov. All in all, this genuine monument of architecture and art cost Nikolai Ivanovich a considerable sum for the time — fifty-five thousand roubles. The merchant continued to bestow his attention upon this splendid edifice until the end of his days.
The Site of the Church
Finding the site where the church once stood is quite straightforward. One crosses the first bridge and, across the road, sees a small rise — to the left of the bus stop for those travelling "into the city." Today the site is occupied by a four-storey administrative building, said to be a departmental hotel, which bears a vague resemblance to the Sayokhat Hotel.
To its right, the very house of the church's priest has so far been preserved. Whether the people living there today have any inkling of the history of the house they inhabit, I cannot say. The church itself was demolished in the 1930s at the insistence of the so-called "God-fighters."
The Tragic Fate of the First Priest
Whilst his uncle — the renowned orientalist Ostroumov — died of natural causes, his nephew, Pyotr Alexandrovich, was far less fortunate. Here is what Tashkent historian Yuri Flygin has to say about him:
It was through his efforts that a garden was laid out near the church, which he tended to personally.
Following the revolutions of February and October 1917, the parish councils of many congregations found themselves populated by a great deal of dubious, mercenary figures on the fringes of church life, for whom faith was very far from a primary concern. Such individuals actively interfered in the work of priests, frequently sought to manipulate them, and steered parishioners in whatever direction suited their own interests.
A similar situation took hold at St Nicholas's. Father Pyotr was compelled to leave the Nikolsky parish. In the early 1920s, he served for a time as a supernumerary priest at Tashkent's Church of Alexander Nevsky — now known as the Botkin Church. He was subsequently posted to Ashgabat, where he was arrested. He died in custody.
Previous instalments in this series on Tashkent's mahallas can be found on the author's page:
Svyatoslav Morskoy | HD MagazineReal name: Stanislav Balashkin. “I love my Tashkent and can’t stand it when the history of our city is rewritten.”mag.humodoc.com
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