Deminskoe gold - a legend or a reality?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

If fate throws you into the Eastern Sayan Mountains, you will surely be told the legend about “Deminsk gold”, a rich deposit where gold bars lie right under your feet, do not be lazy just to bend over. Legend? However, some people claimed that they were there and saw everything with their own eyes.

The story of an escaped convict

The legend begins in the 60s of the XIX century, when six prisoners fled from the Alexandrovsk hard labor camp, located near Irkutsk. Usually the fugitives headed towards the Siberian tract, but the Cossacks sent in pursuit reported to the head of the prison that the six crossed the Angara on the ice and went up on the snow-covered valley of the Kitoy River to the remote mountainous regions of the Eastern Sayan. "Fools," the officer chuckled, "the taiga is harsh, it doesn't like to joke."

A few weeks later, four, unable to withstand the hardships, descended into the Tunkinskaya valley in the hope of getting lost among the local population and were immediately captured. And two decided that it was better to perish in the taiga as free people than in shackles in hard labor. One really disappeared in the taiga, he died in a fight with the beast, drowned while crossing the river, crashed, fell off a cliff or froze - it is unknown, but he did not go down and did not surrender to the police. The second was Dmitry Demin.

Demin did not disappear with gigantic strength, possessing good health and taiga experience. He built a winter quarters for himself in the Shumak Valley and began hunting and fishing alone, occasionally exchanging skins for bread and cartridges from hunters.

Demin hid from people for two years, and then one day he showed up in the settlement of Tunka, entered the house of a local assessor and threw a canvas bag on the table. From the untied pouch, several yellow nuggets the size of pine nuts rolled onto the table. For half a pound of gold, the fugitive convict bought himself freedom and the right to live in the village.

Demin built a house for himself, got married, started a farm. Occasionally he went to the taiga for several days. Observant neighbors noticed that after each such trip, new animals appear in Demin's farm, and expensive utensils in the house. The neighbors tried to follow Demin, but he declared curious that whoever would follow him into the taiga in the taiga and stay - and the neighbors' curiosity vanished. So he lived, keeping the secret of his "bank", not opening it to anyone, including his sons.

Golden Waterfall

The lamp smoked, barely illuminating the face of Christ on the old icon, in the next room the widow of Dmitry Demin sobbed five minutes later: her husband, a hero who seemed to never be worn out, was preparing to leave for eternity. Dmitry Demin's two sons stood by the bed and caught every word of their father.

- Right tributary of Kitoya. Ice bowl, you can go down only by rope. There is a waterfall in the bowl, and nuggets under it. Everything is yours. I ask only one thing: go there only in case of extreme need and never take in excess of what is necessary. Work hard to achieve everything. Gold - it dresses, it also destroys. Swear!

The sons began to earnestly baptize themselves, turning to the icon.

The brothers forgot about their God on the very day after the death of their father. As summer came, we bought horses, provisions, equipment and set off for a tiny treasure. However, on the very first crossing, the horses died, the equipment disappeared, and the brothers themselves survived by a miracle. Hungry, cut short after a few days of wandering in the taiga, they returned home. Exhausted, the brothers burst into the upper room, and from the ancient icon Jesus looked at them reproachfully, raising his right hand in warning. The brothers no longer went for gold, heeding their father's behest to achieve everything with their own labor.

In search of the Siberian Eldorado

Rumors about the Siberian Eldorado agitated the inhabitants of Tunka for many years and gradually reached Irkutsk. The industrialist Kuznetsov, the owner of the Nyurundukan mine, organized several expeditions, personally tracked Demin's entire path using his serifs and went to the deposit. This is evidenced by his memorandum to the Mining Administration, in which he asks for the right to develop.

However, Kuznetsov did not receive such permission. Having invested a lot of money in the search and for the last few years living exclusively with this dream, the industrialist was very upset by the refusal, went to bed and soon died. The orders of those years did not require the obligatory application of maps, Kuznetsov did not leave any notes or plans behind him. So the secret of finding the Deminskoye deposit was lost again.

Next, they will tell you how unsuccessfully the German Schnell was looking for gold, and how the mining technician Novikov found it during the Civil War, fighting in Kolchak's army.

“All this is nonsense,” smiles the Irkutsk scientist DS Gluk, the grand-nephew of that same Novikov, “I was once interested in this story, asked my relatives and even studied the investigative materials from the archives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, to which I gained access as a distant descendant. Innokenty Schnelle, who had only a German surname, never looked for gold, his passion was Sayan jade. Vladimir Novikov was also far from gold prospecting and never served with Kolchak. But he really found Demin's gold."

Luck of Vladimir Novikov

In 1915, a company was organized in Irkutsk to buy meat from the population for the warring Russian army. Living in the village. Shimki Novikov worked there as the head of the Shimki cattle procurement center. In 1917, the company supplied meat to the army of the Provisional Government, and from 1918 - to Kolchak's army. In 1920, when the Reds came to Irkutsk, Novikov decided to stay out of harm's way for a dashing time in a quiet place and went into the taiga. There he was lucky.

He saw gold early in the morning. The stream flowed down the rock and "golden fireflies" flashed in the sun's rays. Novikov went down to the ice circus and picked two shtoffs (capacity about a liter) of gold with a knife. With his booty in the spring of 1921, he returned to Shimki, where he surrendered to the authorities and handed over 10 kg of yellow metal under an act. After serving from April to December under investigation, he was released as not posing a threat to Soviet Power.

In 1926, there was a knock on Novikov's door. No, not what you thought: a certain Nepman Fisenko was ready to invest a lot of money in an expedition to the Deminskoye field. On May 29, 1927, five people set off for the gold: Novikov, representatives of Fisenko Shvedov and Narozhny, and the Leonov brothers, Kuzma and Vasily, hired as workers, prospectors.

The Lost Expedition

In early August, the Leonov brothers returned. Lowering their eyes, they reported that the companions had died while crossing the river.

- And they died, and all the equipment was sunk, the true cross is true! - one of the brothers made the sign of the cross, turning to the corner where the icon was hanging. - They themselves barely escaped, they wandered through the mountains for two months, without supplies, without matches, without weapons, miraculously survived!

“By your appearance, it doesn’t look like you wandered in the mountains for two months,” the head of the Shimki police said suspiciously and ordered the Leonov brothers to be arrested.

During a search in the Leonovs' house, they found part of the expedition's instruments and a Novikov's Browning with a monogram and four cartridges in a clip of six.

December 18, 1927 in the village. Tunka, the president of the court read out the verdict:

- Sentence Vasily and Kuzma Lenovs to the highest measure of social protection - execution.

Kuzma Leonov staggered. An Adam's apple twitched on Vasily's throat.

- However, in connection with the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, replace the execution with 10 years of imprisonment.

Kuzma Leonov fell powerlessly into a chair and burst into tears.

- We did not kill! They drowned! - Vasily Leonov shouted when the convoy took him out of the courtroom.

The court really did not have direct evidence of the crime, but in the spring of 1929 they appeared.

The policeman squatted down and carefully examined the human remains lying on the ground.

- They shot in the back of the head. Who do you think this is? - he raised his head and looked at the hunter who had found the corpse.

- And no need to guess. Novikov is. See, he has a red beard? And so, - the hunter picked up a homemade ring with the initials "VN" from the ground, - his ring. Novikov is.

Chasing the golden calf

But has the Soviet Power really forgot about the wonderful gold deposit? Of course not. Back in 1928, an expedition of prof. Lvov. It was led by Fisenko, who once sponsored Novikov. Having in hand a detailed description of the route written by Novikov, Fisenko promised to bring the expedition to the “Novikov bowl” within 10 days. However, once on the spot, Fisenko could not find the landmarks indicated by Novikov, and the expedition returned with nothing. The 1930 expedition was also unsuccessful. There was only one way out.

The investigator patiently watched as Vasily Leonov, sitting opposite him, moving his lips, read the materials of the investigation into the discovery of an unknown corpse. After reading, Leonov put the documents aside.

- Well, yes, we killed them. So what? I'm already shaking the deadline.

- And the deposit? You were there?

- Well, they were. The whole week. Two poods of gold were mined.

- How many? - the face of the investigator stretched out.

“Two pudiks,” Leonov repeated calmly.

- And where is it?

- So it remained there, - Leonov smirked, - we did not go for gold, but only to reconnoiter the road. Explored.

The investigator put a piece of paper in front of Leonov, moved his pen and inkwell:

- Describe the road.

“… You need to climb up the Shumak, about ten kilometers and here, from the corresponding curtain, turn to the right, having crossed the watershed ridge between Shumak and Kitoi. Having passed ten kilometers in this direction, you need to descend from the loach, sometimes steep, in the upper reaches of one of the right tributaries of Kitoi to a steep closed glacial circus, called the Novikov bowl, where there is a gold deposit under the waterfall …”, the investigator read.

- Very confused, vague. "About ten km …", "from the corresponding curtain …" Can you show it on the map?

- Where from, chief, - Leonov smiled slyly, - we are uneducated people. On the spot, unless I can show.

Leonov looked at the investigator and grinned: brother Kuzma died of consumption and now he is the only one who knows the way to the coveted deposit.

Gold Rush in the Eastern Sayan Mountains

In 1931, a new expedition went to the Sayan Mountains, led by Vasily Leonov. After several weeks of walking in the mountains of the Eastern Sayan, he announced that he was not able to find the deposit. Apparently, giving away the location of the "golden waterfall" was not part of his plans. Vasily Leonov went back to the camp, which became the final station of his life. Deminsky treasure slipped out of hand and again turned into a legend.

In 1934, a special, most numerous and qualified expedition set out in search of 14 people on 26 horses. 16 wells were examined, but the expedition found neither the deposit itself, nor traces of the presence of Demin, Novikov or the Leonov brothers. In the report, the head of the expedition, Mitrofanov, wrote in despair: “apparently, the fabulously rich gold ore deposit Kitoisko-Shumatskie loaches does not exist and never has been”.

Was it so or not?

This will be answered by:

1. The escaped convict Demin existed. In 1928, in Tunka, they still showed the house where his numerous offspring lived.

2. In the local archive there is an act of Novikov's delivery of gold to the authorities; the act contains a gold nugget weighing 10 pounds (4.5 kg).

3. The death of Novikov's expedition is an indisputable fact, documented.

4. In the mountains of the Eastern Sayan, rich gold deposits have been repeatedly found, though not as rich as in the legend and in the wrong place. So there is gold here.

So why hasn't the deposit been found yet?

The interlocutor-geologist unfolds the map:

- Search area - about 500 sq. km. mountainous, inaccessible relief, more than a hundred streams and rivers, dozens of ice circuses. It is more difficult to find among them the “Novikov's bowl” - more difficult than a needle in a haystack, the classic “go there, I don’t know where”, an absolutely hopeless idea, and he folds the map with a sigh.

And yet, from time to time, mountain tourism enthusiasts with the skills of prospectors, alone and in groups, appear in the Kitoi Loaches with the hope of finding this Siberian "McKenna gold".

“Again, again, gold beckons us, again, again, gold, as always, will deceive us …"