A piece of paradise was found in Kapusnaya Balka on the outskirts of Volgograd, where 1,500 people were shot

Volgograd continues to surprise and impress. Going here, almost to the outskirts of the city, we expected to see a typical private sector with its impassable roads, unkempt conditions and stray dogs. Volgograd residents who know about this place do not hide the fact that they come here for fishing, picnics, and enjoy the aroma of pine needles in a small forest. And just listen to the silence. Today in the section “Who Lives Well in Rus’” we will talk about the village of Kapusnaya Balka in the Kirovsky district.

There is truly silence in the beam, and now the birds are singing and the lilacs are blooming.

Back in 1985, this entire residential area that we saw with our own eyes was not here. In the middle of the scorched steppe there were only a couple of dilapidated wooden houses. Private development began in Soviet times.

The picturesque place on the hill of the modern Kirovsky district of Volgograd received its name in 1812. The beam to this day is a natural fault and a ditch with a lake. Most of the private residence with the cemetery is located on one side, above the beam. On the opposite side there is no housing. It is here, in the lowlands, that a forest with old tall pines grows, and from the heights an endless field opens up and a view of rare beauty over half of our city.

Nearby there is a landmark monument for our city – a monument to the defenders of the 64th Army. Geographically, it no longer belongs to Kabobnaya Balka, but to the neighboring village of Peschany. From September 1942 to January 1943, an auxiliary control point of the 64th Army of the Stalingrad Front was located at this place. It immediately becomes clear why. From this point Volgograd, the river “Volga Sails” is clearly visible. And even a piece of the Motherland. Have you ever seen anything like this?

The beauty of this place can amaze and amaze endlessly. But realizing one of the events that happened here will forever change your attitude towards it.

People have liked the beam for a long time. After the Patriotic War of 1812, the landowner of the village of Otrada – on the right bank of the Elshanka River, Cossack General Yegor Popov decides to take several thousand prisoners from Saratov to work on his estate for cabbage work. They turned out to be French prisoners, who at that time were being taken to this city.

The task of the French in the ravine was to install a dam in a huge ravine to retain water, and also to level the ground for planting cabbage. Special gutters were installed from the dam so that water could flow well into the cabbage gardens. The French coped with their task. A historical fact says that the cabbage grown here amazed everyone with its size, not only the residents of Tsaritsyn. The diameter of the cabbage was up to an arshin – 71 centimeters. Yegor Popov managed to earn very good money from this cabbage, created by the hands of the French. Since then, the beam began to be called Cabbage.

The private estate that has grown on the shore of the lake is striking in its scale. There are two-story cottages that are very impressive by modern standards. There are both paved and dirt roads, lighting, and a bus stop. Local residents are transported by bus No. 58, which runs from the Akvarel shopping center. We came across several village grocery stores. The kindergarten and school are located closer to the second Longitudinal and they no longer belong to the beam.

Here is a man fishing on the shore of a lake with reeds. He says that usually a lot of locals gather on the shore. He himself regularly comes to Kabobnaya Balka to go fishing:

– I caught four carp! I’m coming from Khimgorodok, this is the closest place to me. Public transport goes here: minibuses, buses. A bus goes to the dachas behind the pond. But nothing goes up, I get to the “central”, and here I only walk and walk along the bottom. There is also a bridge here, grandfathers usually sit on it and also fish.

We walk a little more along the shore of the lake, the road among the pine trees leads higher and higher. The reservoir ends abruptly, we see a large fault, you can go down and go out to the opposite bank to the houses.

Among the pines, either one of the vacationers or one of the locals organized barbecue areas. Everything looks pretty decent. Perhaps they are trying to maintain exemplary order here and remove garbage. This forest is also a favorite for Nordic walking enthusiasts.

But does Kapusnaya Balka, which now seems like a cute resort village among the familiar gray urban development, remember its terrible past? Perhaps it was for this reason that people never decided to build housing on the second half of the beam.

During the Civil War, the beam became a place where hundreds of people were executed. The suicide bombers were brought here either one at a time or in groups. The man stood over the cliff. These were his last moments of life. Then he was shot at point blank range. The bodies fell to the bottom of the ravine, which turned into a huge mass grave.

The bloody executions of the “Reds” took place here throughout the year, in 1919. Cabbage Balka became the place of execution of 1,500 Red Army soldiers and those who supported Soviet power. These were ordinary lumber mill workers. A year before the mass executions, detachments were formed in the Kirov region, and the regional headquarters of the Red Guard worked. The workers, in fact, became volunteers who came to the defense of Tsaritsyn. Stubborn fighting in the area continued, but at the end of June, Red Army units left Tsaritsyn. The city was subjected to white terror. They brought captured Red Army soldiers, underground fighters and other residents, everyone who was on the side of the Bolsheviks, to Kapustnaya Balka to be shot. Workers of the Beketovsky lumber mills were dealt with especially cruelly. Information from the Tsaritsyn newspaper “Borba” has been preserved that the people killed here were not covered with earth for a long time, and the “whites” also forbade taking away the bodies.

The eerie grave was buried much later. In 1920, Tsaritsyn was returned from the control of the White Guards. It was decided to rebury the remains of the murdered people in a mass grave in Beketovka on Dobrolyubova Street. However, now there is nothing left of her. The monument was dismantled back in 2001. In addition, according to unofficial data, research was carried out, but the remains of one and a half thousand people were not found. Experts came to the conclusion that the bones were destroyed by a natural process; they were destroyed by brine.

As a reminder of those brutal events in Kapusnaya Balka, right at the place of execution, a memorial structure appeared in 1930. Later, a few years later, in 1956, they could not forget about this place again – a monument with a memorial plaque was erected on the shore of the execution cliff. New semicircular memorial with inscription “Here in 1919, 1500 heroic defenders of Red Tsaritsyn were brutally shot by the White Guards” was built and opened in the beam in 1974-1975.

Now the state of this monument, the site occupies a fairly vast territory, leaves much to be desired. Weeds grow in front of the arched stele, and tulips crawl out chaotically in a cracked flowerbed. The monument itself is covered with strange inscriptions on the back, is slowly being destroyed and covered with green spots. Despite this, to the right of it there is a modest children’s playground, below is a sports playground with an old, rusty football goal. The monument to the defenders of the 64th Army is similarly in a forgotten state. It is covered with numerous cracks; behind, where the covering had collapsed, there are ugly holes. The iconic number “6” is also slowly being destroyed.

How much does a quiet life cost 17 kilometers from the center of Volgograd?

We found several advertisements for the sale of brick houses in Kabobnaya Balka. One of the owners is selling a three-story mansion house for 20 million rubles. The owner built a sauna with a swimming pool on the ground floor, and also thought of separate bathrooms on each floor. He believes that an impressive property in a unique location is worthy of a large happy family.

On the same street, a three-story house is also for sale; this owner decided to say goodbye to invisibility in Kabobnaya Balka for 10 million rubles.

— A spacious, chic, bright three-story house for lovers of peace and quiet, located in a quiet place in the Kirovsky district away from the roads. The house is in excellent condition. On the ground floor: boiler room, corridor, sauna, bathroom, swimming pool. On the second floor there is a hall, a dining room, bedrooms with loggias, and a bathroom. On the third there is a living room, bedrooms with loggias, and a bathroom.