OUTSTANDING POLTAVITES SEEN AFTER DEATH
At all times, mystery has aroused contradictory feelings in people: fear, suspicion and distrust on the one hand, and curiosity, amazement and unconscious delight on the other hand. Everything people could not
explain was thought extraterrestrial, supernatural. From ancient times, they have understood under ‘mysticism’ phenomena aimed at setting up connection with ghostly and supernatural forces. In case the objectives of mystical practices are a direct communication or union with God and the divine forces these actions are called religious mysticism, whereas foretelling, superstitions, alchemy, occultism etc. are considered for non-religious one.
But how should be described the mysterious phenomena a person whose death had became common knowledge was seen again in this world? What is it: a divine resurrection, occultism or usual rumors?
For instance, the creator of the worldwide famous Dead Souls was justifiably apprehensive about his being buried alive. This clearly shows lines of Gogol’s Will: “I do tell not to bury my body until clear signs of decomposition appear. I remember this because the minutes of life numbness came upon me when I was having the disease: there were no heart and pulse beats.”
Gogol was buried at noon on Thursday, February 24, 1852. “I was looking at the deceased for long - one of his doctors Tarasenkov wrote - I was thinking that his face expressed calm and a clear mind gone into the coffin, not suffering.”
And after 79 years, on May 31, 1931, Gogol was stealthily and thievishly disinterred from the grave.
Things they saw during the exhumation as though suggested that the writer’s testament had not been followed, he had been buried when fallen into lethargic stupor, he woke up in a coffin and experienced dreadful minutes of his new dying.
- The coffin has been found not once - writer V. Lidin told to the Literary Institute students - it turned out not to be where digging was done but somewhat away for some reason. And as it was dug out of the earth - spoiled with lime, looking like a strong one made of oaken boards – and opened, astonishment was added to trembling of the hearts of those present. A skeleton with a skull turned aside lay in the coffin. Nobody found any explanation to it. Perhaps someone superstitious involuntarily thought then: "What a sufferer, indeed. He seemed to be not alive at his lifetime and not dead after death, this strange great man.”
Doubters have found a logical explanation for the turn of the skull. According to their supposition, the side coffin boards were the first to rot slightly, the lid under the weight of soil sunk by pushing upon the head of the dead, which caused the head turn on the so-called Atlantis vertebrae.
But there were eventually other rumors. They told as if the skull in the coffin was not found, and Gogol’s remains began as low as from the cervical vertebrae, the entire skeleton circuit had been placed into the snuff-coloured frock coat well preserved... When and under what circumstances Gogol’s skull disappeared remains a mystery. In the beginning of disclosure of the grave a skull was found shallow, far above the vault contained the coffin walled but the archaeologists found it belonging to a young person.
In town of Dykanka, Poltava land, the inhabitants had inspired the writer to the mystical works in there is a tale that Gogol has been still alive and wandering around the world. Anyway, Myrhorod people allegedly saw a mysterious ghost train that runs over Poltava area stopping the town railway station and then their legendary fellow countryman looking out the window of one of its old time carriages.
Here is the fate of another of our fellow countryman Yuri Kondratyuk who has calculated the trajectory of human flight to the moon. The route to the satellite of Earth as well as a crater on the opposite side of it was
named after him. The scientist was actually called Oleksandr Gnatovich Shargei. He was born in Poltava and raised by his paternal grandmother and grand-uncle there. In 1916 the student Oleksandr Shargei was called up by the tsarist army for active duty. After the overthrow of the tsar in Russian Empire he was drafted into the army led by general Kornilov while being on the way home and then enlisted into Denikin’s White Army on arrival in Kyiv. Oleksandr escaped from it. When the Red Army came he hid himself for long because the former officer of the Tsarist army was a class enemy for the new power and at risk of arrest. In 1921 relatives of the future scientist managed to obtain an identity of their compatriot Yuri Kondratyuk who had died of the consumption. So Oleksandr Shargei became Yuri Kondratyuk.
When 1941 the war broke out the scientist lived and worked in the capital of the Soviet Union. He was not to be mobilized but voluntarily enrolled to the Militia to defend Moscow and fought as a Private of Signal Company of the 21st Division. In 1942 during a fight a telephone wire was broken by a shell. Kondratyuk, then the Assistant Platoon Leader, went to find the place of bursting in order to resume the communication. And nobody saw him afterwards. But after the war, records by Kondratyuk turned up in some miraculous way in the German archives. Moreover, the manuscript stained with the engine oil dealing with multilevel rocket developments, space-suit, and rocket control by using gyroscope, later ended up at the Library of Congress and from there it was involved into the “Apollo” project and opened the way to the moon for mankind. The scientist supposedly took prisoner by Nazis, was later brought to Berlin where he even worked with Wernher von Braun, developer of V-2 German combat rocket.
No less interesting are stories about Oleg Koshovy one of the leaders of the clandestine anti-fascist organization “Young Guard” in town of Krasnodon, Luhansk Region. He was born in 1926 in town of Pryluky, then Poltava Governorate. Shortly after the birth of the boy his family moved to Poltava. In the Famine year of 1933 Oleg’s parents moved to Krasnodon where during the Second World the boy joined the ranks of the “Young Guard”.
The crypto Koshovy is known to have been disclosed, captured and shot by the German fascists in a forest named Hrymuchy (Rattling) not far from the neighboring town of Rovenky, and his body was thrown into the pit shaft. Later, when Oleg was found he was difficult to be recognized.
Another Young Guard member Sergei Tyulenin’s mother recalled that in approximately 1946 a boy alike Oleg had turned up at the house of Koshovys. “Orphan from Odessa, the Germans have tortured his parents to death, he came as far as to our place. Should I have driven out? I’ve adopted him instead of my son Oleg”- Olena Koshova allegedly explained to the people. Soon after, the commission arrived to Oleg’s mother to find out who was he in reality but the boy disappeared. “Driven away. Turned out to be a hooligan”- she said then. When Olena Koshova died in 1987 Krasnodon people attending her funeral noticed her aged son Oleg in the crowd. Although there is a presumption that it was an actor, Vladimir Ivanov, who performed the character of Koshovy in the Soviet film “Young Guard”.
Today, it’s unfortunately impossible to find out whether all that is fact or fiction, mystery or reality. But we feel like believing that people who were brilliant writers, artists and scientists at their lifetime kept alive after the physical death. At least, in their works.
