Makhachkala: Lotos Publ., 2007, 104 p. (1)

Makhachkala, 2009. 492 p. (2)

Both books, despite the shocking title of the second, are devoted to the history of Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan. The first book is written by a professional historian who has worked well in archives and sources. P. I. Tahnasva, quoting documents in detail, tells about the appearance of Russian imperial ships led by Peter 1 off the Dagestan coast of the Caspian Sea at the end of July 1722 and its landfall: "The Sovereign Emperor impatiently wanted to go ashore, but because of the shallowness of the water, it was not possible for a boat to come closer than five fathoms to the shore, for which reason His Majesty ordered four oarsmen to carry themselves on a board to the shore; the oarsmen went in water up to their waists, and [Lieutenant] Simonov walked beside the Emperor, supporting him

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for greater safety, with which the rowers had loaded guns "(excerpt from "Description of the campaign of Peter the Great in Persia by eyewitnesses", 1, p. 5).

As a result of the Persian campaign, the Caspian regions were ceded to Russia. On a hill not far from the coast was the village of Tarki, where the residence of the local ruler Shamkhal Tarkovsky was located, who came out to meet Peter I (1, p. 7). However, the real development of the coast begins only about 100 years later, after the signing of the Gulistan Peace Treaty between Russia and Iran, according to which Iran abandoned its claims to Dagestan. Initially, the Russian fortress Burnaya was founded on Mount Tarkitau next to the village of Tarki. In the location of the fortress, as the author notes, there were serious shortcomings: there were no springs inside it. In May 1831, the defenders of the fortress managed to repel the siege of the Dagestani Imam Gazimukhammad, however, in 1838 it had to be abolished, and the garrison transferred to the Lower fortification, located on the Caspian coast. This fortification also turned out to be unviable and was abandoned after its siege by the inhabitants of the village of Akusha in 1843 (1, p. 15-16). A new fortification Petrovskoe began to be built on the site of the camp of Peter I. Among the mountaineers, as P. I. notes. Takhnaeva, Petrovskoe was famous as a place where large stocks of flour were stored, and therefore it became known as the" flour fortress " (khanzhu-khala in Avar). Petrovsky began to grow rapidly, and by 1855, according to the author's calculations, "the number of quartermaster houses reached 150, other state-owned houses up to 33, and the number of permanent residents up to 600 people." Officially, the city of Petrovsk was established on October 24, 1857 by decree of Alexander II (1, p. 26).

An important element in the life of a port city is undoubtedly the presence of a port. The design of the harbor was approved at the competition of the Ministry of Railways in 1859. It was won by military engineer A.D. Volksen. Construction of the port began in January 1861. All these events are described by P. I. Takhnayeva in detail, with the involvement of a wide range of sources. Construction of the harbor was completed by August 30, 1869, but not without costs. As Iskra magazine reported, "one engineer laid the foundation on the shore of the Caspian Sea, and the building grew up on the bank of the Neva," meaning that Volksen built himself a luxury house on the English Embankment in St. Petersburg. Speaking about the completion of the port's construction, the author does not give an assessment of its real effectiveness in the wake of the events described. It is possible to detect it, but near the end of the book, where P. I. Takhnaeva quotes an essay about Petrovsk from the "Military Collection" of 1900: "There are no devices for extinguishing a fire on the pier or on ships: no tanks for water supply, no fire pumps... Since the construction of the big jetty, alluvial spits and shoals are formed. There are breakers along them, of course, and you have to go very far around the line and then turn sharply back towards the port. Taking into account the frequent waves in the Caspian Sea, when waves are thrown over a steamer, such waves are not only unpleasant, but even dangerous for ships: it happens that both cargo and passengers are washed off the deck at the port itself. The port territory is small and cramped, and there are almost no devices for improving the port" (1, pp. 87-88). It is quite obvious that these shortcomings affected the development of not only the port, but also the city itself, but for some reason the author avoids saying this directly.

P. I. Tahnayeva devotes a separate chapter of the book to the construction of the railway through Petrovsk and Derbent to Baku. She rightly notes that the construction work was carried out by the Vladikavkaz Railway Company. On June 22, 1900, the Petrovsk Balajary road section (today Baku district) was "included", according to the author, "in direct communication with all the railways of the country" (1, p.59). Unfortunately, P. I. Takhnaeva reports very sparingly about the construction process itself, its difficulties and peculiarities, but he quotes copiously in the same chapter the travel notes of B. S. Krivenko and Maksud Alikhanov-Avarsky, which, in my opinion, are indirectly related to the topic.

Petrovsk was a small town at that time. As the author notes, "the population in it by 1896 barely numbered up to 8 thousand inhabitants" (1, p. 66). The chapter devoted to the social appearance of Pstrovsk at the end of the XIX - beginning of the XX century was written by P. I. Takhnaeva with great knowledge on the basis of numerous sources. The city's population, according to her, was already multinational at that time, and Petrovsk had a local government headed by an elected city elder and his assistant. There was only one library, but "there were up to 78 drinking establishments: 15 inns, 37 dukhans, 15 beer stalls, 11 cellars of grape wines with the sale of drinking and takeaway", while the city sobriety committee consisted of representatives of both the Muslim and Orthodox population. With a relatively small population of the city, since 1893 "there was a prison for 700 places... In the Petrovsky prison department there were workshops: bookbinding, cooperage, shoemaking, tailoring, locksmith and forge-

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in addition, prisoners worked on unloading barges and trains in the port and depot" (1, p. 70). In the 1910s, as the author found out as a result of studying the "Book of Personal Accounts of subscribers of the Petrovsky Power Plant", almost all houses in the city center used electric lighting (1, p. 70). 73).

In the city, as P. I. Takhnaeva writes, there were three churches - the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, the Assumption and St. Nicholas. She rightly notes that among them the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, consecrated on August 29, 1891, stood out in particular (1, pp. 75-76).1 It is probably worth adding that the cathedral was consecrated by the protopresbyter of the military and naval clergy and the famous spiritual writer Alexander Zhelobovsky, who later became (in 1905) a member of the Holy Synod. It would be useful to mention that the cathedral was located on Sobornaya Square (now Lenin Square) in the city center, which the author calls "the current city square" (1, p.76). The last service in the cathedral was held on September 10, 1938, and after the war in 1952, preparations began for its demolition. During the first three months of 1953, the cathedral was blown up, and the place where it was located was built up by a complex of government buildings in Dagestan. More details about how this happened are written in the second book included in my review. Despite the exotic name "Bandit Makhachkala", in it the author tells about a number of little-known pages from the history of Soviet Makhachkala, in particular about how the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral was blown up. The central square in those years was called Stalin Square, and instead of the current Ilyich Square, a majestic monument to Stalin was erected there in the mid-1930s, which was located opposite the cathedral. According to Z. M. Zugumov, " around the temple there was an impressive bazaar with a large number of small wooden warehouses, closely pressed together, where from the very early morning until almost late at night there was a brisk food trade... Some of the nondescript-looking stalls were open almost all day and night, with just a tap on the sign. Here you could buy anything (from a carnation to a diamond), as well as meet anyone: merchants, money changers, hucksters, puppeteers, bandy workers, dockworkers, thieves of all stripes, beggars and drunkards" (2, e.98-99). The temple had to be blown up three times, experts from Moscow were engaged in this, who for a week "erected a high fence around the temple, then laid pits, mining it from the inside" (2, p. 104). Prisoners and the dregs of society, local punks, were assigned to sort out the ruins of the blown-up church, which the author tells about with refinement and an abundance of colorful details.

But I will return again to the work of P. I. Tahnaeva. She correctly notes that in the city at the beginning of the XX century there were big problems with water, which came from three springs located on Mount Tarkitau, so " private water carriers delivered drinking water to many streets of the city in wooden barrels. Spring water was released to water carriers from 6 to 11 in the morning and from 4 to 7 in the evening. In dry times, there was not enough water in the city, it was released only for cooking food in the amount of one-third of the usual norm " (I, pp. 80-81).

Another major problem of the city was regular malaria epidemics. According to P. I. Takhnaeva, " the military and city sanitary commissions that investigated the sources of malaria spread came to the conclusion that it was caused not only by the swamps that existed in the city itself, but also by Lake Ak-Gel, located on the south-eastern outskirts..." (1, pp. 82-83). This problem was solved already in Soviet times. It should be noted that before the revolution, the central city of Dagestan was Temir Khan Shura (now Buinaksk). Petrovsk was declared the capital of Dagestan on May 14, 1921, and at the same time renamed Makhachkala (in honor of the Dagestani revolutionary Makhach Dakhadayev).

In my opinion, P. I. Takhnayeva managed to create a three-dimensional, stereoscopic image of pre-revolutionary Makhachkala-Petrovsk. If we keep in mind that after the revolution a new history of the city begins, connected with a fundamental change in its function in Dagestan, then the name "History of another city", i.e. a city that in a certain sense no longer exists, seems to me quite appropriate.

Cities live and develop according to their own laws, depending on the general changes in the country and changes in a particular region. In this regard, Z. M. Zugumov's book" Bandit Makhachkala " complements the work of P. I. Takhnayeva, as it gives a good idea of Soviet Makhachkala. He explains in detail how it developed:

1 According to other sources, what happened on August 30 of the same year. See: Tsitovich G. A. Temples of the Army and Navy. Pyatigorsk, 1913.

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"Specialists started coming to Dagestan in the early 1930s. During the war, these were evacuated theaters, the Moscow circus on Tsvetnoy Boulevard, medical units, institutes with professional equipment and teachers. Immediately after the war and somewhere up to the mid-60s of the last century, various specialists were sent from all over the Soviet Union to Dagestan in the same direction. And in the early 70s, after the strongest earthquake, specialists of various profiles who arrived from many regions of the country almost completely rebuilt Makhachkala. It was their hardworking hands that built the city, which later became like the real capital of the autonomous republic. The Leningrad Hotel, Uzbekgorodok and many other residential and other objects of various designs were built by residents of Leningrad, Tula, Tashkent, Moscow, Kuibyshev (Samara), Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinburg) and other cities of the USSR " (2, p. 296).

A brief but informative picture drawn by the author allows us to understand how the multinational post-war Soviet Makhachkala was built and grew.

Since the author of the second book was a recidivist thief in the past, he describes in some detail the life and features of the Makhachkala central; the image of the prison photographer of the 1960s, Ivan Rybalchenko, who in Stalin's time was one of the executors of death sentences, is remembered (2, p.17-18). The story of the capture of the Makhachkala gang "Black Cat" (in those years, gangs with this name operated in different cities of the USSR) in 1945 also deserves attention (2, p.10-16). Z. M. Zugumov remembers with a kind word some policemen who served honestly in Makhachkala in the 1970s and 1980s, for example, investigator Magomed (nicknamed Beard), who worked in the department for combating pickpockets.

The second book, which belongs to the memoir genre, well conveys the atmosphere of post-war Makhachkala with the peculiarities of its everyday life, bazaars, pigeon coops, small streets and neighborhoods with private one-story houses. I regularly visit Makhachkala and from conversations with old residents of the city I know that its recent history is still, unfortunately, poorly described. Many people, for example, do not know that in his youth, in 1952, Innokenty Smoktunovsky played for a year in the Russian Drama Theater of Makhachkala, so, from my point of view, various memories that truthfully tell about the recent past of the city deserve attention and close analysis.

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