More than half a century ago, an event occurred in the Soviet city of Kuybyshev that subsequently generated a lot of rumors. It was then that history was born, which became the main urban legend of today's Samara. Word of mouth passed on the news of a girl who was petrified on New Year's Eve, dancing with an icon in her hands. Yes, and stood immovable for four months. Based on this story, several documentaries and feature films were shot.
New Year's Eve
The event that excited the city, according to rumors, occurred on the eve of 1956, just December 31. In the house number 84, which is on Chkalovskaya street in the Volga city of Kuibyshev, young people gathered to celebrate the holiday. The party is in full swing. Young people drink slightly, sing, dance in pairs. But Zoya Karnaukhova, the cavalier was not enough - her boyfriend Nikolai did not come that evening. Well, since my friend is not there, Zoe decided, I will dance with the icon of his namesake. The girl took off the wall the image of St. Nicholas. And just spun with him in a dance, as she was immediately punished for blasphemy.
Legend has it that suddenly a terrible thunder thundered, lightning flashed, and the girl instantly turned into a living statue. It simply grew into the floor and could not move. It seems that the girl is alive, but is unable to get out of place. And he cannot utter a word. As if petrified in an instant.
The news of the miracle quickly spread throughout the city. An excited crowd soon gathered near the mysterious house. Hundreds of people wanted to look at the girl who was punished by higher forces for blasphemy. Mounted police tried to disperse the crowd, but there were so many people that they could not do this. As a result, the police authorities decided to put a cordon near the private house. To protect the building from destruction.
According to legend, the "standing stone Zoe" lasted four months. Others believe that the girl was almost immediately knocked out of the floor and taken to a special KGB psychiatric clinic. Others say that the girl stood petrified in the house before Easter, after which a mysterious old man freed her with her holy word. The whole history as if was strictly classified by decision of the party organs and the Soviet authorities, since it did not fit into the canons of dialectical materialism.
So, here is a summary of the legend:
- in a house on Chkalovskaya street, the girl was dancing with an icon;
- dancing Zoya Karnaukhova petrified;
- the girl stood motionless for 128 days.
Stone Zoe: facts
Journalists have repeatedly begun to investigate the described event. And they came to the conclusion that no mystical miracle happened on the eve of 1956 and in the next four months. Where did the legend come from?
If we turn to the confirmed facts, it turns out that in the first two weeks of January 1956, in the area where the house was located on Chkalovskaya Street, there were indeed crowds of people. According to some estimates, the number of pilgrims sometimes reached several thousand at a time. They were attracted to this place by verbal messages spread by human rumors that a girl had committed a crime against religion here on New Year's Eve, daring to dance with the icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in her hands. And for this it was turned by higher forces into a stone statue.
The name and surname of the girl was not called by anyone. The name "Zoya" surfaced much later, around the beginning of the 80s of the last century. And the name "Karnaukhova" appeared another ten years later. Researchers working in the archives of Samara could not find any traces of a real person with such data.
The local archive of socio-political history contains a transcript of the regional party conference held in late January 1956. It contains the words of the first secretary of the CPSU regional committee, Efremov: he mentioned a shameful phenomenon, which religious fanatics and distributors of harmful rumors probably had a hand in. The party leader said the New Year’s Eve, a dance with an icon and a fictional girl who allegedly was petrified.
The leadership of the party’s regional committee instructed the editor of the Volzhskaya Kommuna newspaper to publish material exposing the falsification, and the propaganda department of the regional committee to conduct explanatory work among the masses. The corresponding feuilleton was published in the newspaper on January 24 of the same year.
From eyewitness accounts
The documentaries on this topic provide evidence of four alleged eyewitnesses to divine intervention in earthly affairs. They confirm the fact that the girl was petrified, being punished for desecrating the shrine. It is striking that two of those who describe the events that took place in a mysterious house on Chkalovskaya are ministers of the church, and by their age they are unlikely to remember what was happening. Two more eyewitnesses who assure the audience of the reality of the “miracle” are simply illiterate.
The investigative journalists managed at one time to find tenants of the houses located in the neighborhood of the “cursed” place. It turned out that they did not know about the “miracle of petrified Zoe”. But remember that just at that time, huge crowds of curious people gathered near 84. The people strayed into the crowd for several days, and then the mass of people quickly dispersed. The neighbors of the house on Chkalovskaya indicated that in the middle of January 1956 strange people came to them more than once, asking if they had a stone damsel by chance? The residents who did not understand anything only shrugged.
It was possible to establish that in the indicated house, which many years later mysteriously burned down, at the described time, Claudia Bolonkina lived. The woman was selling beer and, according to rumors, was not very moral. They said that she allegedly took ten rubles each from the curious for the opportunity to look at the petrified girl in her house. The amount at that time is not the smallest. But it turned out that Claudia took money only for a picky inspection of her apartment, and not for showing some mythical girl.
