At the bottom of the shallowed Kakhovskoye reservoir, the golden treasure of Old Man Makhno “lurked”

The deliberate destruction of the dam of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station by the Kyiv “commanders” and the ensuing grandiose water disaster will certainly become one of the most tragic pages of the military special operation. Against the backdrop of alarming forecasts about the consequences for the environment of such a terrorist act, which are discussed by the media, an interesting point related to the disappearance of the Kakhovka Sea still remains in the shadows. After all, its devastation gives a chance to find one of the most legendary treasures.

68 years ago, in June 1955, an important stage began at the construction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric complex: the lintels of the new, newly erected dam were closed, and the filling of the huge reservoir began. Father Dnepr had to work for a long time to fill this man-made sea to the marks planned by the designers. Only after more than two years did the water reach the intended level – the normal retaining horizon.

The reverse procedure, which occurred due to the fault of the current frenzied Kyiv authorities, who gave the order to destroy the dam with powerful ammunition strikes, took much less time. Through the resulting huge breach, the water left in a matter of days. As a result, the Kakhovka Sea, familiar to several generations of local residents, disappeared, shrinking to the size of the old Dnieper channel.

What happened experts call the largest environmental disaster. However, the “departure” of the Kakhovka reservoir, it turns out, may have completely different consequences. Kyiv “state terrorists”, who ordered to blow up the dam, by such a barbaric action made it possible to reveal one of the most important “golden” secrets that remained on the territory of the former Soviet Union.

We are talking about the treasure of Old Man Makhno.

The MK correspondent learned some details of this legendary story from a search engine enthusiast who once lived on the territory of the Zaporozhye region of Ukraine, but now moved to Russia.

“There are serious reasons to believe that it is on the territory where the waves of the Kakhovka Sea were walking a few days ago that there is a cache where the chieftain’s trusted people hid the gold he collected,” says Stanislav Z. “The existence of such a treasure has been talked about since the pre-war times, however, for the last almost seven decades, no attempts have been made to find it: after all, after the creation of the Kakhovka man-made sea, all these treasures were protected from extraneous visits by an additional multi-meter water column. But now that the reservoir has been drained, there is a chance, at least theoretically, to still find the Makhnovist treasures.

The famous anarchist, who left a noticeable mark on the history of the Civil War, during the time he was at the head of his “free army”, managed to collect a fair amount of wealth. At least many contemporaries from among the participants in those events said and wrote later: the father had accumulated a very impressive treasury.

The origin of the main part of these treasures is known for certain. This is the so-called gold of Ataman Grigoriev. The leader of the “dashing Cossack freemen” in 1919 participated in the liberation from the white troops of Odessa. Here, Grigoriev’s detachments were able to make a notable profit: the “atamans” were the first to break into the building of the Odessa State Bank and seized its vaults, pulling out a lot of precious metal from there. Documentary evidence contains a list of them: gold ingots with a total weight of 124 kilograms, 1 million 265 thousand 185 rubles in gold chervonets of royal minting and 238 pounds of silver.

However, Grigoriev did not remain the master of these values ​​for long. Having learned about such a luck of his lucky colleague, Nestor Makhno decided to correct the “injustice” committed by Mrs. Fortuna. The insidious old man lured Grigoriev to his place – allegedly to a congress of like-minded rebels – and, seizing a convenient moment, with his henchmen shot the “conqueror of Odessa”, who had come trustingly almost without guards. Having eliminated the opponent, Makhno, at the head of the detachment, hurried to the Alexandria railway station, where Grigoriev’s personal train was standing, in the carriages of which there were gold reserves.

When a couple of years later, Nestor Ivanovich, pursued by the Red Army, left the country, crossing the Romanian border with a small detachment, he could not take any significant treasury with him. It is known that until his death in 1934, Makhno, while in Europe, lived very poorly.

So the gold and silver from the Odessa Bank and other valuables “privatized” by the militant father were probably hidden somewhere on the territory of Ukraine, along which the Makhnovists pretty much walked into the Civil.

The GPU-NKVD began to hunt for these treasures back in the pre-war years. One of the former Makhnovist commanders, Fyodor Karetnikov, who took the risk of returning to Russia, but quickly regretted such an act, fell in with them. Under pressure from the Chekists, this man, who was once among the people closest to the ataman, during interrogations gave very detailed testimony about Nestor Makhno, and spoke, among other things, about his gold reserves.

According to Karetnikov, at the end of the summer of 1919, their ataman army had to retreat under the onslaught of white troops led by General Slashchev. In such a situation, the bulky convoy turned out to be a burden, and therefore the dad decided to hide the valuable cargo that was with him until better times. On the night of August 28, most of the Odessa gold was buried near one of the coastal Dnieper burial mounds near the city of Nikopol.

Having received such testimony from Karetnikov, the Chekists, of course, took him to the places he mentioned. However, the Makhnovist was never able to indicate where the treasure was hidden: either he really got confused over the years among the mounds similar to each other, or he deliberately led the operatives by the nose, not wanting to give out the “golden” secret.

If until the second half of the 1950s there were still some hopes of finding Father Makhno’s gold, then after many neighborhoods of Nikopol were at the bottom of the overflowing Kakhovka reservoir, it became generally impossible to get to the treasure.

Of course, for almost 70 years of the existence of the man-made sea, the memory of treasures hidden somewhere under the water column has been preserved – at least among enthusiastic treasure hunters. Now, after the destruction of the dam of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station, the former golden mirages may suddenly again seem achievable to someone. At least one “lock” – water – from this cache was removed. The matter remains “for small”: to accurately determine that cherished mound and the place near it, where it is necessary to dig out a cache with jewelry, arranged more than a hundred years ago by the legendary father Makhno.

Meanwhile, the dried-up Kakhovka reservoir is already sharing its secrets with researchers. Information has recently appeared: not far from the island of Khortytsya, where the natural banks of the Dnieper, hidden under water before, were exposed, an ancient ship about 7 meters long was found. Archaeologists have come to the conclusion that this is a boat made from the trunk of a huge oak tree by people who inhabited the banks of the Dnieper many centuries ago. There is an assumption that the age of the find may even exceed 500 years. Our distant ancestors used similar dugout boats as watercraft, for fishing and for crossing from shore to shore.