Comprehensive source studies in the service of historians and local historians: new information about the estates of the Southern coast of the Crimea in the XIX – early XX century. and their owners (by the example of studying the area of Magarach).

Karagodin Andrey Vasil'evich PhD in History Senior Lecturer, the Department of Source Studies, Lomonosov Moscow State University 119992, Russia, g. Moscow, ul. Lomonosovskii Prospekt, 27 k.4, aud. E445 avkaragodin@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Bulavintseva Evgeniya Viktorovna Scientific supervisor, Crimean Regional Local History Public organization "Istok" 298635, Russia, Republic of Crimea, Yalta, Lomonosov str., 1-8 jeka-yalta@mail.ru

       The topic of the development of the Southern Coast of Crimea (YBK) as a resort in the XIX–early XX century. Today, due to the growth of domestic tourism in Russia (caused, among other things, by the restriction of international traffic due to the coronavirus pandemic that began in 2020), has become the focus of attention of the reading public and professional historians. Royal and grand ducal palaces, estates and cottages of remarkable people, gardens and parks of the "imperial" period attract the attention of guests and residents of the coast: after all, these sights have defined the "cultural landscape" of the YBK since then and to this day, are the "highlight" of the Russian Riviera, as the YBK was often called at the turn of the XIX–XX centuries., bearing in mind its geographical and climatic similarity with the Italian and French Riviera ^[29].However, there are a lot of "white spots", monuments and landscapes in a deplorable state, with poorly or unreliably reconstructed history on the historical and cultural "map" of the South Caucasus.

The task of replenishing knowledge about the history of an important region of Russia, its cultural ensembles, understanding them as spaces of historical memory, important sources of information about the past and, importantly, revealing their tourist potential is set for themselves by historians dealing with Crimea from various scientific centers of Russia, as well as local historians.

 By "local history", we, following S.O. Schmidt, understand the sphere of scientific, cultural, educational and "memorial-protective" activities in the field of studying the past and present of a region, and not only scientific, but also public, in which not only specialist scientists, but also a wide range of people are involved, mainly local residents ^{[40, p. 20]}.

Today, the main efforts of historians and local historians dealing with the history of the South Caucasus at the turn of the XIX–XX centuries are aimed at localization on the map of estates and dachas, documenting the names of their owners, guests, tenants, the history of construction and reconstruction of buildings, reconstruction of the visual appearance of resorts, studying the history of everyday life. All this should serve to establish a fair idea of the value of historical and cultural monuments, often "invisible" among modern buildings, to spread reliable historical knowledge, to educate residents of the Crimea and its numerous guests.

We are also talking about correcting, clarifying and deepening the "consensus" narrative that has developed over the previous decades in journalistic and fiction publications devoted to the YBK. The common apocrypha, often duplicated from article to article, the stereotypical and superficial description of only a few palaces built for the Grand Dukes of the Romanovs and Nicholas II himself by the local architect N.P. Krasnov at the beginning of the XX century, and the legends associated with them sometimes obscured a thorough reconstruction of historical facts, a broader view, an unbiased analysis and historical explanation, referring to the analysis of various socio-economic, socio-cultural factors that caused the rapid development of the YBK as a resort during this period.

Here are some good examples of the work of historians and local historians presented to the general public in recent years. Thus, senior lecturer of the Faculty of History of Lomonosov Moscow State University, Candidate of Historical Sciences A.V.Karagodin, in collaboration with the authoritative Yalta local historian M.M.Petrova, in 2019-2020, managed to reconstruct the history of several important monuments of the "late Imperial" era on a fundamentally new documentary basis on the YBK – the Swallow's Nest castle, the New suburban settlements Mishor and the New Simeiz.

The Swallow's Nest on Cape Ai-Todor has become a symbol of the YBK not only because of its unusual architectural appearance and location, but also because of myths and legends associated with the castle: for many years, the authors of both reference literature, guidebooks and excursions, and architectural historians have given different, often contradictory information about the owners and at the same time, even in scientific publications it was recognized that the history of the "Swallow's Nest" is still reliably unknown ^[32]. Thorough work with sources - documents from the funds of the Yalta County Zemstvo Board, the Tauride Provincial Drawing Board, the Yalta City Council, the Tauride Provincial Noble Deputy Assembly, reference literature and other documents stored in the State Archive of the Republic of Crimea (GARK) helped to restore the complete history of land ownership on Cape Ai–Todor and the construction, reconstruction, purchase and sale of the famous building. guidebooks of different years, memoirs, local periodicals, postcards and photographs from museum repositories, made available thanks to large-scale digitization programs of the funds. For example, it turned out that the author of the reconstruction project of the Swallow's Nest castle in 1913, by order of the Moscow merchants who bought it from Baroness S.A.Shteingel, the Old Believers Rakhmanovs, was a young amateur architect, engineer N.S.Sherwood, who arrived on the South Coast from Moscow to rest and cure tuberculosis - this is possible and it is worth explaining both the excessive extravagance, the "theatricality" of the building, and the significant structural damage it received during the Crimean earthquake of 1927, which led first to the truncation and conservation of the building, and then to the reconstructions of 1969-1971 and 2019-2020.

The history of attribution of the "Swallow's Nest" was covered in detail by A.V. Karagodin and M.M.Petrova in scientific and popular publications, the Internet, received a wide response ^[19]. In each of the publications, the authors emphasized that the history of the "Swallow's Nest", as well as other monuments of the South Caucasus of that time, cannot be studied outside the context of the epoch. The industrial revolution, the appearance of a railway connection with the Crimea (1872-1875), the acquisition of the Livadia estate by the Romanovs in 1861, scientific proof of the benefits of the South-coast climate for health, especially in the treatment of tuberculosis, the abolition of serfdom and the associated ruin of landlords: all this led to the fact that by the beginning of the XX century on the land of the owned by a small number of large noble landowners, new owners - entrepreneurs, merchants, industrialists, stockbrokers, engineers, doctors, artists, military, writers and artists — presented their rights.

 Like the "Swallow's Nest", for the past hundred years, the village of Simeiz, 20 km west of Yalta, has been serving as a visiting card of the YBK. To this day, it enjoys the reputation of a place favored for recreation by the sea by the creative and scientific intelligentsia of the capitals, as it has retained in general its pre-revolutionary appearance of a low-rise country resort. Until recently, information about the history of Simeiz also had to be collected bit by bit in separate passages of the works of historians, art historians and local historians. It was only known that in 1900-1920 the lands of the family estate of industrialists Maltsov, which I.A. Maltsov began to acquire at the end of the 1820s, were divided by his grandchildren - brothers I.S. and N.S. Maltsov into plots and were sold for the construction of dachas of the resort Novy Simeiz.

Thanks to the comprehensive study by A.V.Karagodin and M.M.Petrova of reference literature, archival materials, photofixation of old buildings, roads, gazebos, parks, trees planted at the beginning of the XX century, etc., correlating them with pictorial (old photographs, postcards) and written (memoirs) sources and work on the streets of Simeiz using surveys of the residents of the town with the involvement of their family archives, the authors managed to clarify the location of all sold plots without exception, to establish the names and social status of their owners. They turned out to be mainly representatives of the emerging "middle class": railway engineers, military, industrialists, entrepreneurs, scientists and artists; in addition to the nobles, among them were people from the urban inhabitants, wealthy peasants, representatives of the clergy.  Valuable information that allowed to shed light on the motives of the sale of family lands by Maltsov's heirs was found in the State Archive of the Republic of Crimea – in the funds of the Yalta Zemstvo and the Tauride Noble Assembly, the fund of the estate "Simeiz" of the heirs of Major General S.I. Maltsov and in documents on the nationalization and municipalization of private-owned Simeiz dachas after November 1920. Memoirs and diaries of summer residents of New Simeiz turned out to be an important source of information about the dachas and summer residents of New Simeiz, which shed light on the daily life of the resort's monasteries from the end of the XIX century to the mid-1920s.

All the data identified on the basis of these sources were entered into a database, which was subsequently presented on the Simeiz website. A guide to old dachas": this is how a representative system of materials of various types was formed and thereby solved the innovative task for Russian historiography of creating an interactive meta-source, which is at the same time a publicly accessible channel for the dissemination of reliable historical knowledge ^{[20, 21]}.

Convincing results obtained during the reconstruction of the history of the holiday resort Novy Simeiz led A.V.Karagodin and M.M.Petrova to the idea of the possibility of creating similar databases and websites for other holiday villages of the Southern Coast in the late XIX – early XX century. So, for the first time in historiography, the history of the very first, chronologically, of the suburban settlements of the YBK – New Mishor was reconstructed. This task was complicated by the fact that, unlike the New Simeiz that appeared next, a guide to the resort was not published in the New Mishor, a list of summer residents was not published, the layout of the plots was not preserved, and the appearance of the area underwent significant changes in the late 1970s, when several large-scale reconstructions of the sanatoriums located here were implemented. In the guides to the Crimea of different years, it was only reported that since 1898, large landowners P.P. Shuvalov and O.P. Dolgorukova created a New Mishor resort on the lands of their estate Mishor, the right to long-term lease of plots in which was sold until 1918.Processing of information from the documents of the funds of the State Archive of the Republic of Crimea with the support of reference literature made it possible to lay the foundations of the database of owners of suburban areas of Novy Mishor.

Its further filling was based on the search for information in the published sources of personal origin of the identified summer residents of the New Mishor – the memoirs of the dancer V.A. Sudeikina, O.K. Kuprina-Jordanskaya, the correspondence of M.P. Chekhov, etc. Pictorial sources were identified and analyzed – postcards and photographs of the beginning of the XX century . The study of the landscape, the comparison of personal observations with postcards of the beginning of the XX century, taking into account the data of narrative sources (correspondence, memoirs) allowed us to calculate the location of four cottages of the New Mishor that have not survived to this day and accurately attribute a number of buildings that have changed their appearance. In total, until 1920 (the time of the final establishment of Soviet power in the Crimea), 16 plots in Novy Mishor were leased. Among the tenants were well-known entrepreneurs (S.T. Morozov, A.S. Koehler, D.I. Baulin, M.F. Kulchitsky, A.S. Chichkin, D.I. Demkin), figures of science and art (L.M. Brailovsky, M.P. Chekhov, A.A. Khotyaintseva). Representatives of the scientific and artistic intelligentsia (writer A.I. Kuprin, historian M.I. Rostovtsev) visited here; sometimes the latter were the closest relatives of the merchants, and the latter, as was fashionable in that era, sought to get closer to the bohemian circle. The projects of the dachas of the New Mishor reflected the aesthetics of the Art Nouveau style with its characteristic tendency to "aestheticize everyday life" (this is especially true of the dachas built by the artist and sculptor L.M. Brailovsky for himself, M.P. Chekhov, artist A.A. Khotyaintseva and public figure V.N. Radakov). The database formed for the holiday resort Novy Mishor was also transformed into a historically-oriented thematic website on the Internet for the presentation and dissemination of newly acquired historical knowledge ^[23].

All three of these examples, demonstrating the potential for fruitful cooperation between professional historians and local historians, have gained fame and recognition. For her contribution to the establishment of the true history of the Swallow's Nest Castle, the resorts of Simeiz and Mishor and her long-term work in the archives, local historian M.M.Petrova was awarded the B.D.Grekov Medal of the State Committee for Archives of the Republic of Crimea in 2021; in Moscow, under the leadership of A.V. Karagodin, the Lomonosov Moscow State University has already a special seminar on the history of the YBK has been successfully working for several years, several bachelor's and master's works on this topic have been defended.

The main point of contact between the efforts of historians and local historians in the process of reconstructing the history of the YBK is obvious: in the absence of special source studies, review historical works on this topic, it is the identification of a range of reliable and representative sources, as well as the definition of ways and methods to increase their informational impact.As one of the leaders of the Russian school of source studies, Academician I.D. Kovalchenko, emphasized, in a historical source (and the historical source, in essence, is everything that is created in the course of people's activities, serves as the basis for scientific knowledge), which performs the function of accumulating, storing and transmitting social information about the past, there are always two types of information: expressed, that is, obvious to the creator of the source, and hidden, not obvious to him ^[25].

In this sense, the methods and techniques of complex source studies are especially important, allowing to reconstruct historical reality by analyzing and comparing explicit and implicit information extracted from numerous sources of different types (written, pictorial and material) and types.

It is also appropriate to recall the words of the outstanding historian and archaeologist, academician V.L.Yanin, uttered in the article "On the problem of integration of written and material sources": "The correct study of any problem of history should be based not on a specifically limited group of sources <...>, but on an exhaustive set of these sources or on a sufficiently representative combination of them. Source studies must be comprehensive. In this regard, scientific and organizational activities should take into account such a need for research and strive to unite specialists of different profiles in single working and authoring teams <...> synthesis of sources in a single study is the main means of developing historical science today" ^{[43, pp.20-21]}.

Another aspect is also important: representatives of the humanities are increasingly armed with quantitative methods of processing not only statistical, but also narrative and visual information, resorting to working with databases and banks of digitized sources of various types. According to the majority of authors, mastering digital, quantitative methods is today the key task of historians, on which the future of history itself as a science claiming social "centrality" depends ^[38].

The results of the long-term work of Yalta local historians, spouses E.V. and A.A. Bulavintsev, devoted to the reconstruction of the history of its poorly or completely unexplored fragments, convince that modern methods of information retrieval using quantitative methods and computer technologies used in the context of complex source studies, allow us to successfully solve new problems in the field of studying the history of the YBK. These authors are engaged in the study of estates and cemeteries of the South Caucasus; postal and rural roads, including medieval ones; historical reconstruction of tourist routes and trails. They have developed author's methods of searching and distributing information, tested a number of tools for research work. The research results are demonstrated at annual historical conferences and on author's excursions conducted by E.V. Bulavintseva.

So, the Bulavintsevs use the capabilities of modern GIS technologies in local history, combining them with a full-scale survey and photo-fixation of the area, sketching and drawing up diagrams. In short, the essence of the geoinformation search methodology is as follows. In order to work with the prepared scanned (raster) materials of old maps and terrain plans in GIS, they need to be linked (by coordinate or geographic reference – English georeferencing – means the translation of scanned data from the file – local coordinate system into a geographical one). In other words, geographic linking means linking a digital image file to locations in physical space. A geographical reference can be applied to any type of object or structure that may be associated with a geographical location, such as roads, rivers, bridges, or buildings. Such a binding can be carried out in the Global Mapper program in several stages. As a result, the image is adjusted to the selected coordinate system – it is transformed (English rectify) and new coordinates are assigned to each pixel of the image. After successfully linking the old map, raster data is exported to the necessary geodata formats for subsequent use directly in research.

The first experience of such work in 2018 was the geo–linking of the Yalta 1905 Plan, when the finished result was exported to 3 formats: KMZ - for the Google Earth program; Google Maps Tiles – for work in the SAS program.Planet and OZF are the format of the OziExplorer program.

In fact, it may be necessary not only to bind the raster, but also to evaluate the accuracy of the binding. Therefore, field surveys are carried out using an Android smartphone with a GPS receiver and using the functionality of the OziExplorer navigation program, which allows you to track the current location received from GPS on a linked map. Also in the program you can create waypoints, routes and record a track (a trace of movement). The track recorded by the program during a full-scale survey (PLT format) can be analyzed on a PC in any GIS application, including specifying the accuracy of the map binding. After correcting the map binding in Global Mapper, the necessary files are created anew.

Using the capabilities of the Google Earth program, by drawing the necessary objects, for example, buildings or territory boundaries on a linked map, you can determine their coordinates, measure distances and areas, and also see the location of these objects on modern satellite images of the Earth's surface from Google. The SAS program.The planet has more convenient functionality than Google Earth, and also provides a single interface for downloading and viewing maps, not only Google Maps, but also most other online mapping services such as OpenStreetMap and Yandex.Maps. All maps downloaded by this program remain in the cache on the computer, and they can be viewed without an Internet connection, so it is SAS.The planet has become the main tool in local history work.

With the help of the described methodology, A.A. Bulavintsev carried out the geo-linking of more than 17 maps and plans of Yalta and YBK, prepared information products for work in the SAS program.Planet and OziExplorer. In research and local history work, the plans of Yalta in 1871, 1905, 1912 and 1943 are constantly used; the plan of Massandra in 1834 and the excursion map of the Yalta district of the YBK in 1903.

Thanks to the method, it was possible to establish where the first postal road to the town of Yalta ran, along which A.S. Pushkin, A.S. Griboyedov and the first travelers of the YBK passed (to this day, many publications mistakenly indicate that the first postal road was the current Sverdlov Street).

Determining the boundaries of the estate "Massandra" revealed that one of the Vorontsov vineyards has survived to this day within historical boundaries, and the first city church in the name of John Chrysostom, along with the adjacent territory (park and the first city cemetery) were built on the land of the estate "Massandra": M.S.Vorontsov provided part of the land belonging to his children, as a gift of the future city. Analyzing the map of the estate "Massandra" in 1834, as well as conducting a survey of a local resident V.G. Ryabov, it was possible to localize a new archaeological object "Ruins of the Monastery", which in 1894 was examined by the founder and first director of the Chersonese Museum K.K.Kosciushko-Valyuzhinich (research materials were introduced into scientific circulation by S.G.Bocharov ^[1].

Fig. 1. The ruined monastery in the center of the estate "Massandra" and the Vorontsov vineyard preserved to this day (GARK. F.377. Op.7. d.529; published for the first time).

During a full-scale inspection of this place by Evgenia Bulavintseva in 2018, fragments of masonry on lime mortar, ceramics and ceramides, as well as fragments of human bones were found. The Yalta archaeologist N.P.Turova, invited to inspect the object, revealed a "spot of decay with the remains of a burial structure," but the first exploratory excavations by the expedition of the Institute of Archeology of the Crimea of the Russian Academy of Sciences, led by N.P.Turova, began only after the predatory development of the slope with the remains of the burial began in 2020 ^[39].

For several years, A.A.Bulavintsev was engaged in painstaking reconstruction of the history of Yalta cemeteries from 1837 (the year of acquisition of city status) to 1913, memorialization of the cultural heritage of historical necropolises. To solve this problem, not only a large volume of archival documents was processed, but also the geo-linking of the historical plans of the city to the modern coordinate system was carried out, which made it possible to indicate not the assumed, but almost exact boundaries of territories, their perimeter, area and coordinates of the boundaries of the necessary objects. As a result, it was possible to accurately determine the boundaries of three city, as well as Out and Hospital cemeteries, which, undoubtedly, should serve to preserve these territories as places of historical memory ^[2].

E.V. Bulavintseva has been restoring the memory of the forgotten estates of the Magarach tract east of Yalta for seven years: from the history of the colony of winemakers organized here by decree of M.S.Vorontsov from among the bright participants in the colonization of the South Caucasus at the turn of the 1830s, the organization of owner's cottages with parks and gardens to the reconstruction of estates into boarding houses and sanatoriums in the second in the middle of the XIX century. up to the moment of their nationalization in 1920-21, the creation of Soviet sanatoriums. She processed more than 300 cases from the funds of the State Archive of the Republic of Crimea, revealed the plans of many estates of the Magarach, for the first time in the literature, their borders were historically reconstructed and the names of almost all owners were determined. To date, the list of owners for the period from 1828 to 1922 includes more than seventy persons of owners and employees associated with possessions in the Magarach tract.

With the help of techniques of complex source studies and the use of modern GIS technologies, it turned out to be possible to identify the exact location of many estates of the Magarach tract, while refuting some misconceptions that existed in the literature. The estates "Jamiet", "Bereket", "Natashino", "Nardan", "Dreams", "Poselippo", "Nyutino" and others have been studied in detail. The results of this work are presented comprehensively for the first time in this publication.

The name Magarach (or Mgarash) comes from the name of an old Greek settlement located near the Magarich mountain and the old Ai-Yan spring ^[13]. The first documentary mention of it is found in the Ottoman tax Records of 1652 and 1680 ^[33]. After the resettlement of Christians in the Azov region, two destroyed churches of St. Joachim and Anna and St. John the Baptist ^[26]. The traveler and naturalist Peter Simon Pallas saw a ruined monastery in Magarach. The road from Magarach to Marsanda (the estate "Massandra", which since 1828 belonged to the children of Count M.S. Vorontsov, governor of the Novorossiya Region) passed by the alleged medieval monastery in Magarach and the old Church of the Nativity of John the Baptist in the estate "Massandra", on the ruins of which M.S. Vorontsov was built by architect F.F. Elson temple Beheading of the Head of John the Baptist 1829-1832.

The ruined Greek village of Magarach, together with Massandra and Nikita, was part of one of the first estates of the YBK "Bogodannaya Dacha" ^[7], received into eternal and hereditary possession in 1796 by Matvey Nikitin, Smirnov's son, adviser to the Tauride regional board. The guardians of his heirs sold this huge estate (today it is the territory of D. Vasilevka to Gurzuf to the east of Yalta) in parts at auction in 1810. Four plots were allocated from the Bogodannaya dacha, which later received the names: Massandra (620 des.), Martian together with the forest zone (748 des. 1188 sq. fathoms), Forest dacha (1300 des.) and the Dacha of the Nikitsky Botanical Garden (397 des.) ^[14].

Fig. 2. Fragment of the "Bogodannaya Dacha", divided into the future estates "Marsanda", "Martian", the Dacha of the Nikitsky Botanical Garden with the Magarach tract (highlighted in yellow outline) and the State Forest dacha (GARK. F. 377. Op. 1. D.756; published for the first time).  

As Christian Steven, the first director of the State-owned Nikitsky Botanical Garden, wrote, the lands of the Magarach tract were cut by numerous ravines and rocks and unsuitable for breeding a garden there ^{[27, p.23]}. Travelers of that period also noted the abandonment and unsightliness of this area ^{[30, p.129]}. The situation changed after the decree of His Imperial Majesty and the order of the Tauride and Novorossiya Governor-General Count M.S. Vorontsov on the allocation in 1828 of a special land survey from the Nikitsky Botanical Garden tract of Magarach, which read: "Due to the fact that on the Magaracha, located on the Southern coast of Crimea near the Nikitsky Garden, the land belonging to the directorate of this garden cannot be cultivated and remains unoccupied, without bringing any income to either the crown or the edge, I decided to divide 120 dessiatines of this land into small plots and transfer them to private individuals for the establishment of vineyards on the basis of His Majesty's decree of September 14, 1828" ^{[30, p.129]}.

This decree marked the beginning of the settlement of the Magarach tract. The plots were distributed to those who wished under special conditions. According to the historian and winemaker P.I. Keppen, "up to 40 plots of more than 200 dessiatines of land were allocated from the Magarach dacha, and distributed to various persons who, wishing to plant grape orchards, undertook to plant at least 2,400 bushes for each dessiatine. This order was awarded the Highest approval with the fact that the owners who fulfilled the conditions are not subject to any tax for the plots they received into ownership. In order, however, to ensure the treasury that the landlords who received the land will actually plant vineyards on them before the expiration of the four-year forty, then 100 rubles are collected for each tithe, which money is returned with the interest due when issuing an act for the eternal possession of the said lands. Thus, the Magarach dacha, whose former owners (Greeks) moved to the Sea of Azov and which since 1799 served only as a pasture, is now turning into a colony of educated and hardworking winemakers" ^{[24, pp.113-114]}.

There were enough people willing to accept such conditions: judging by the letters of the Tauride governor A.I.Kaznacheev to M.S. Vorontsov, it was necessary to add the number of plots, which increased from 36 to 42. "All the plots were distributed, but I saw a lot of empty land and ordered to add 6 more plots" ^[35]. Almost all the plots occupied an area of 3 to 5 dessiatines, and only plot No. 23 had an area of 17 dessiatines, due to its location on a rocky hillock. Many took two or even three plots.

To establish the names of the owners of the plots allowed both descriptions of travelers in the middle of the XIX century, including a description provided with a schematic plan of the plots with the names of their owners from Charles Montandon's guidebook published in 1833, and archival documents (funds No. 26 and 27 GARK). The first owners of the plots were mostly nobles close to M.S. Vorontsov, active participants in the second wave of development of the South Caucasus, which came in the first half of the XIX century, which before the annexation of the peninsula to Russia was a sparsely populated area without roads, replete with stone collapses. Among them were, for example, the vice-governor of the Tauride province N.M.Longvinov, Secretary of Count M.S.Vorontsov A.I.Levshin, doctors F.K.Milhausen and I.I. Grapperon, English engineer I.I. Upton (author of the projects of the Count's pier and the Tower of Winds in Sevastopol), Admiral A.S.Greig, lieutenant Colonel, P.V.Shipilov, a military engineer and builder of the first road to the YBK, A.Asher, the manager of M.S. Vorontsov's estate in Alupka, and others. In fact, it was an attempt to organize a colony of enlightened winemakers from among the representatives of the progressive power circles of imperial Russia on the Southern Coast: it is obvious that this enterprise, to this day practically unlit in historiography, deserves close attention.

Fig. 3. Magarach. A plan with the names of all the owners and the number of vines planted by them (a total of 249,000 vines). From the book by Charles Montadon "A traveler's Guide to the Crimea" (Odessa, 1834).

 In the future, many sites were merged and received names that are known from pre-revolutionary guidebooks, but have not been localized until now. By the time the Soviet government came to Crimea and nationalized the estates in 1921-22, there were 17 estates or dachas on the territory of the Magarach tract.Let's take a closer look at a few stories of plots and their owners.

So, the former Orenburg vice-governor Mikhail Nikolaevich Sushkov became the owner of plots under No. 20 and No. 36. In 1833, after Sushkov's death, they passed to Lieutenant Colonel Zakhar Makarovich Yakovlev, the leader of the nobility of the Tauride province in 1842-1843. He planted a vineyard and an orchard on his plot and set up a small estate. In the guide to the Crimea by Charles Montandon, it was noted that 15,000 vines of grapes grow on the land of Z.M. Yakovlev – this gave him the right to hereditary ownership of land and its inheritance. Later Yakovlev built a large master's house, ordering in 1849 a project from the First architect of the Southern Coast K.I. Eshliman. By 1859, Yakovlev already had three good-quality houses ^[12].

The plots were bought from Yakovlev's heirs in 1867 by the lady-in-waiting of Empress Maria Alexandrovna, Baroness Maria Petrovna Fredericks, daughter of Baron Peter Andreevich Fredericks (1786-1855), Adjutant General, acting privy Councilor, chief of the court of His Majesty, and Countess Cecilia (Cecile) Gurovskaya, childhood friend of the Princess of Prussia, the future Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, mother of Emperor Alexander II. Maria was the goddaughter of Emperor Nicholas I and was brought up at court with his children, at the age of 17 she became a lady–in-waiting, and from the age of 19 she became a retinue of the imperial court. After the death of Nicholas I, she tried not to leave the Dowager Empress Alexandra Feodorovna alone until her death. While living in St. Petersburg, Maria took part in the charitable activities of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, and then Maria Alexandrovna, as well as in the work of several orphanages (organized by her uncle Baron B.A. Fredericks and the Alexandrinsky orphanage E.V. Rebinder) ^[42].

When in 1860 the Specific Department, on the advice of the life physician Sergei Petrovich Botkin, acquired the Livadia estate in the Crimea from Potocki's heirs in order to improve the health of the sick Empress Maria Alexandrovna, M.P. Fredericks and Marfa Stepanovna Sabinina, a teacher and music teacher for the tsar's children, came along with the royal family to get acquainted with the new estate. After the trip, many of its participants acquired estates on the YBK, which gave an undoubted impetus to the development of Yalta and its surroundings as a resort ^{[6, 11]}.

In 1867, while in Livadia, M.P. Fredericks decided to move to the Crimea for permanent residence. She named her newly acquired estate in Magarach from Yakovlev's heirs "Jamiet", which in translation from Crimean Tatar means "charity", "service", "common life". Having settled in the Crimea, M.P. Fredericks and M.S. Sabinina, with the Highest patronage of Empress Maria Alexandrovna, created the Annunciation Community of Sisters of Mercy. The female part of the community – sisters, paramedics, a baroness and a visiting priest lived in the Fredericks master's house, in which a house church was arranged. The house in which the hospital was set up was nearby. The history of the estate of M.P.Fredericks "Jamiet" is described in detail in the publication of E.V.Bulavintseva, published in 2020 ^[3].

Another estate of the Magarach, whose history was restored by E.V.Bulavnitseva – "Cham-Agach". Using his example, it is possible to gradually disassemble the author's algorithm of research work on the study of the history and localization of estates in the Magarach tract.

On the 1834 plan of the traveler Charles Montandon, part of this estate is located under the number No. 23 ^{[30, p.131]}. According to archival sources, initially this plot belonged to the official of special assignments for the Feodosiya district, staff captain Kuris, then, at the insistence of his wife in 1833, he sold it to Lieutenant General and cavalier Paisii Sergeevich Kaisarov, who not only planted the required number of grape bushes, but also built a house in which he settled ^[8]. He named his estate, together with plot No. 25, in honor of his daughter Natalia – "Natashino". He owned the estate for 11 years, until his death in 1844, after which "Natashino" was bequeathed to his wife and daughter ^[5]. However, neither his wife nor daughter Natalia, a lady-in-waiting of the court, did not want to live in the Crimean estate, so in 1850 it was sold to Egor Ivanovich Gelfreich, a cavalry general, commander of the Cuirassier and Dragoon regiment, a participant in the Patriotic War, a military writer. After being dismissed in April 1857 for health reasons, he settled in the Crimea, spending the summer on the Southern Coast, and the rest of the time in Simferopol. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, soirees and balls were held in the Simferopol house and in the Natashino estate ^{[28, p.51]}.

E.I. Gelfreich died on December 30, 1865 in Simferopol, was buried in the city cemetery. The estate passed to his only daughter Malvina, married Lavrentieva, the wife of the military writer Alexander Ivanovich Lavrentiev, who completed his career with the rank of general of infantry. In November 1887, a nobleman Leonid Nikolaevich Shestakov bought a small plot of land from Malvina Egorovna Lavrentieva with a measure of 3 tithes of 552 sq. fathom ^[10]. The Shestakov family originates in the Yaroslavl province and comes from Kazarin Litvinov, a native of Lithuania. The Shestakovs have served for the benefit of the Russian Empire since the XVII century . Leonid Nikolaevich was born on January 23, 1845 in the family of advisor to the St. Petersburg Provincial Board of collegiate assessor N.V. Shestakov and V.N. Muravyeva, daughter of historian-archaeologist N.N. Muravyev, State Secretary of Emperors Alexander I and Nicholas I. After the death of his parents in 1846, he became a complete orphan. Shestakov rose to the rank of collegiate secretary and worked for 36 years under the Odessa mayor.

His wife Olga Evgenievna, nee Princess Gagarina, on her mother's side came from an ancient family of Princes Sturdza, influential and enlightened Moldavian lords. The wedding took place on April 11, 1876 in the Embassy Church of St. Petersburg. The couple had two daughters – Olga in 1878 and Lyubov in 1879. After retiring, Shestakov moved to Yalta, and choosing a quiet and peaceful place away from the hustle and bustle of the city (Yalta was already beginning to experience a resort boom of the late XIX – early XX centuries), settled in the tract Magarach. The Shestakov family named their estate "Ai-Luli" ^[37]. In a pine forest next to the road to Simferopol on a high hill there is an owner's house, next to it outbuildings. On the night of June 27, 1894, a steamer traveling from Yalta to Odessa, on which Shestakov was with his youngest daughter Anya, crashed near Cape Tarkhankut. Of the 142 passengers, only 102 people escaped. Among the dead were the Shestakovs. Leonid Nikolaevich and his daughter were buried in the family tomb of Sturdza at the Resurrection cemetery at the Church of St. Magdalene in the Odessa Monastery.

After the tragic death of her husband and younger daughter, Olga Evgenievna, together with the elder Olga, left the Crimea, leaving the estate in the care of the manager. For a long time the estate was rented out. Since 1903, the former owner's cottage of the Shestakovs, renamed the boarding house "Cham-Agach" (from Crimean Tatar – "pine forest") it appears in the guides to the YBK ^[29]. The renaming of the estate was most likely caused by advertising purposes: the organizers of the boarding house emphasized the improvement of clean mountain air and a good table for "weak-chested, nervous, anemic, overworked and recovering from diseases" patients. Almost all the guidebooks of the 1903-1915's reported about the boarding house at the "beautiful Shestakova dacha": G. G. Moskvich, A. Ya. Beschinsky, K. Yu. Bumber, etc. For a number of years, N.Ya.Korptsova was the tenant-keeper of the boarding house "Cham-Agach", with her he achieved special fame. O.E.Shestakova herself lived permanently in Moscow ^[15].

In 1917, the new (and last) owner of the estate was the former Kursk provincial leader of the nobility, the master of the Imperial Court, colonel of the Life Guards of the Hussar Regiment, Prince Lev Ivanovich Dondukov-Izvedinov. Izvedinov came from the hereditary nobility of the Kursk province. Since 1889, he was married to Princess Nadezhda Vladimirovna Dondukova-Korsakova (born in 1867, the year and place of death are unknown), the niece of the governor of the Caucasus and commander of the troops of Prince A.M. Dondukov-Korsakov (1820-1893), heir to the estate "Guzel-Tepe" in Yalta. Due to the absence of the successors of the Dondukov-Korsakov family, on January 12, 1907, L.I. Izvedinov was allowed to attach to his surname and coat of arms the surname, coat of arms and title of the Princes Dondukov and henceforth be called Prince Dondukov-Izvedinov.

Peaceful life in the Cham-Agach estate ended in January 1918, when Yalta in general and the Cham-Agach estate in particular became the scene of bloody battles between revolutionary sailors from Sevastopol and the Crimean Cavalry Regiment opposing them, which did not recognize the power of the Bolsheviks and consisted partly of Crimean Tatars ^[18]. The events of those days in the estate are described in the memoirs of Prince Dondukov-Izvedinov, published in 2000 by the Crimean art critic and local historian A.A.Galichenko, author of popular books on the "noble estates" of the Crimea at the beginning of the XX century ^[4]. The memoirs say that the destroyers "Kerch" and "Hadzhibey"  armor-piercing shells were fired at the village of Nikita, where there was a white headquarters. "The shells, bursting on the rocks, raised a wild howl. Pieces of shells, stones together with the echo created a living hell around. It went on for an hour or two, and then it subsided. During the shooting, I went out of the house into the garden, where I had to lie behind a rock for quite a long time, because it was absolutely impossible to determine where the gaps were. Everything was spinning and screeching in the air. I didn't even hear such a howl in the war!" ^[4].

According to A.A.Galichenko, from the passage below it clearly follows exactly where the estate "Cham-Agach" was located: "At the entrance to the upper Massandra from the village of Nikita, right at the bus stop of the current sanatorium "Sosnyak", the majestic, spreading crown of the Lebanese cedar stands, reminding itself that once here at the very at the foot of the Crimean mountains there was a very small landowner's estate by the standards of that time, some 3.5 tithes. Now, among the newly built buildings of the sanatorium, you can hardly distinguish its remains. Pools, old retaining walls, stairs and, finally, the place where the house used to stand. Indeed, it offers a magnificent view of the Yalta coast, including the notorious pier. Here, as the author described, the shelling of the revolutionary ships standing on the raid could well have been carried out, which served as a reason for the return fire and the red terror that followed it" ^[4].

However, E.V. Bulavintseva had doubts about the above localization of the estate "Cham-Agach", it seemed not so obvious already at the level of description: "the house stands on a sharp cliff", "there are rocks and stones around", which are not near the stop and the road to the current sanatorium "Sosnyak".

Soviet sanatorium "Sosnyak" 1935-41. indeed, as it was found out in the process of analyzing and summarizing numerous materials from the GARK (F.529, F. 49 – salary and expense books of different years, F. 62 – land books of different years, as well as cases of nationalization and drafting lease agreements – F.P-2756. Op. 1 and 2, F.R-361. Op. 2), etc., gradually united under its name several pre-revolutionary estates of different areas, which were part of the estates of the Magarach tract and allocated at different times from the estate "Natashino" (estate or boarding house "Cham–Agach" - 3,5 des., estate "Guzel-Er" – 2 des., the estate "Sosnyak" – 1 des., the estate "Mountain boarding house" – 1600 sq. sazhen, the estate "Quinta-Madera" – 2 des.).

To determine where the boundaries of the estate "Cham-Agach" actually passed, an appeal to the techniques of complex source studies helped: the search for information in written sources, primarily reference literature, archival collections and memoirs, was accompanied by "field" work with material sources on the ground, in particular, the search for boundary walls, and that, in in turn, it was interfaced with the localization of finds on maps and terrain plans, with the involvement of computer programs for geolocation and satellite navigators.

Note that the potential of this approach is only beginning to be revealed by historians and local historians: but comparing the appearance of a monument or landscape today with its image in photographs of past years or archived planning drawings allows, in addition to transforming its appearance, to restore the economic, social, cultural features of its existence in different periods or even epochs ^[22]. It is impossible not to quote the outstanding art historian, Dean of the Faculty of History of Moscow State University, Professor I.I. Tuchkov: "Writing the text was difficult, because I made extra efforts to understand how all this might look... When I went on my first trip to Rome, I immediately went to my monuments. I came to the villa Farnesina, and everything became clear. I suffered for a long time, I thought why she had such an orientation, why she was so turned, and on the spot I immediately understood. Because the Vatican is there, and the owner of the villa was a papal banker. Everything becomes clear when you see the monument, and it is very difficult to understand if you study your subject from books" ^[34].

It was after visiting one of the decommissioned buildings of the former Soviet sanatorium "Sosnyak" – allegedly the Shestakov manor house – in 2017 that it became finally clear to E.V. Bulavintseva that this was not the Cham-Agach estate: neither from the balcony of a two-story building, nor from the terrace of the former dining room of the Soviet sanatorium "Sosnyak" Yalta port and they were not visible, just as the road to Simferopol, described in the memoirs of the shelling of the estate, was not visible. The fact that from the eastern side of the hillock, where the former canteen is located, the shelling could not be carried out in the western direction, along the Yalta pier, was pointed out by an expert – a rocket officer and an artilleryman of the Far Eastern Navy of Russia, having calculated the trajectory of the projectiles. And when working with the materials of the funds for the nationalization of 1921, it became finally clear from the GARK that in the description of the estate "Cham-Agach" none of them corresponds to the remaining buildings in the sanatorium "Sosnyak". Accordingly, it was necessary to localize the estate "Cham-Agach" from the western side of the rocky massif.

According to the materials of the GARK, it was found out that the lost Dzhemiyet cemetery and the chapel-crypt where Baroness M.P.Fredericks and M.S.Sabinina were buried, along with their sisters and mother, were located on the border of the estate of M.P.Fredericks "Dzhemiyet" with the estate "Cham-Agach", opposite the Shestakov manor house. During field work, a boundary wall was discovered, well preserved below the modern south-coast highway, the border between the estate "Bereket" by A.N.Shatova and the estate "Cham-Agach" by L.N. and O.E. Shestakov. This object, when determining the coordinates and direction of the wall line, made it possible to link a fragment of the plan of the estate "Jamiet" with the designation of the cemetery and chapel to the modern area. This was definitely the location of the Dzhemietovsky cemetery, and according to archival materials, the owner's house of the estate "Cham-Agach" was located opposite it.

Fig. 4. On the left: the estate "Cham-Agach" and the old Simferopol road (from the collection of A.Gavrelyuk; published for the first time). On the right: view of the pension "Cham-Agach" (in the distance) from the Simferopol highway between the estates of "Bereket" by A.N.Shatov (chapel with gatehouse) and "Jamiet" by M.P.Fredericks (from the collection of A.Udodenko; published for the first time).This house is clearly visible in old photographs, as well as the road – part of the Simferopol highway going past the estate "Cham-Agach" (the road was expanded and rebuilt in 1859, 1886-1889 and 1903, after which the segment of the way in the estate "Natashino" was also called the road to Simferopol); the chapel in the estate "Bereket" Shatov with a gatehouse; vineyards of M.P.Fredericks, owned by the appanage department since 1900.

The chapel near the post road, built in honor of the rescue of the royal family in a train accident on October 17, 1888 in the estate "Bereket" by A.N.Shatov, was considered a Yalta landmark at that time. The estate of Major-General Nikolai Fedorovich Shatov was one of the sections of the special surveying of the Nikitsky Botanical Garden Dacha in the Magarach tract, distributed in 1828. In the spring of 1890, the daughter of Nikolai Fedorovich from his second marriage, Anastasia, submitted an application to the construction department of the Ecclesiastical Consistory for approval of the chapel project in memory of the event of October 17, 1888. Control over the construction was carried out by the I.D. of the provincial architect titular adviser Mechislav Silvestrovich Komarnitsky ^[9]. In 1891, the chapel was consecrated. Based on the plan of the estate and the binding to the locality of E.V. Bulavintseva, the boundaries of the estate "Bereket" by A.N. Shatova were determined, and the location of the chapel itself was determined, part of the foundation of which has been preserved to this day on the territory of private ownership.

At the final stage of the study, thanks to the use of modern computer technology, knowing the exact coordinates of the boundary line between the estates "Bereket" and "Cham-Agach", it was possible to establish another boundary wall – the border of the estates "Jamiet" and "Cham-Agach". They coincided with those that are visible on the "Excursion map of the Yalta district of the Southern District" (scale 1 verst in inch), issued in 1903 as an appendix to the "Guide to the mountains of the Crimea" and developed by the Crimean-Caucasian Mountain Club edited by a full member of the Yalta branch of the KKGC and the Russian Geographical Society V.A.Merkulov ^[36]. In the appendix to the book under No. 143, "The Dacha, formerly Shestakova on the Simferopol highway," is indicated, on the map it is located opposite the schematic designation of the cemetery. Analyzing the image of the boundaries of the estate on the excursion map, it was necessary to designate another, eastern border of the former estate. During a full-scale study of the area, E.V.Bulavintseva managed to find it, or rather part of its base: it was located to the west, behind the dining room of the former Soviet sanatorium "Sosnyak" and in 2015 was still visible. This was the eastern boundary of the estate. It follows from this that the construction of the kitchen-dining room of the sanatorium "Sosnyak" in 1936-1940. according to the project of the Soviet engineer-architect Guriy Ivanovich Dyadin was carried out on the territory of another former estate – "Guzel-Er". In the funds of the GARK, it was possible to find documents on the construction of a kitchen-dining room, which states that in order to level the plot for construction, it was necessary to remove 400 cubes of rocky soil ^[17], which means that there was a high rocky hill on this place, along the slope of which the eastern border of the estate "Cham-Agach" passed.

Fig. 5. From left to right: the plan of the estate of M.P.Fredericks (letters B and G, GARK); a fragment of the map from the "Guide to the mountains of Crimea" edited by V.A. Merkulov; the scheme of the estate "Cham-Agach" on Yandex.Maps, 2021 (published for the first time).After determining the boundaries of the estate "Cham-Agach", it was possible to draw up its plan-scheme and calculate the area, which amounted to 3.2 tithes.

Taking into account distortions and errors, the size of the plot on the plan almost coincides with the documented area of the estate of 3 acres 552 sq. sazh., which remained unchanged from the moment of its acquisition in 1887 until 1922.

So, after the discovery of boundary walls and clarification of the actual area of the estate, which coincided with the one recorded in the bill of sale fortress and in other materials of the GARK, the location of the estate "Cham-Agach" became known for sure: it was located on the western slope of the rocky massif, above the modern highway (and not where it was mistakenly placed by A.A. Galichenko). The territory of the estate "Cham-Agach" did not coincide in any way with the territory of the famous Soviet tuberculosis sanatorium "Sosnyak" (formed in the fall of 1945, and on July 1, 1946, it was listed as a sanatorium of the resort management of the VTSPS No. 17 "Sosnyak"), located on the eastern side of the slope. The vast territory of the now famous Soviet tuberculosis sanatorium No. 17 "Sosnyak" does not coincide with the borders of the Soviet sanatorium "Sosnyak" 1935-1941. The Central Committee of the Union of workers of the nitrogen industry and special chemistry of the USSR, which in 1935 united under one common name "Sosnyak" several pre-revolutionary estates: "Cham-Agach" (aka "Ai-Lyuli"), "Guzel-Er", "Sosnyak", "Mountain boarding house" and "Quinta-Madera".

To this day, none of the buildings of the pension "Cham-Agach" has survived. Lev Ivanovich Dondukov-Izvedinov joined the Armed Forces of the South of Russia together with his son, emigrated to Yugoslavia in 1920, then moved to France, where he died on July 30, 1939. The estate "Cham–Agach", which suffered after the shelling, left in this form without owners and supervision, was looted by residents of the village of Nikita in the early 1920s, numerous destructions required repair, tenants who agreed to repair could not be found, and on March 10, 1925, after an inspection of the estate by the commission, it was decided to disassemble the buildings for building material and sell it at auction ^[16]. Nevertheless, in 2015, during the survey of the area, the author recorded the foundations of two large and one small-sized buildings. Presumably these foundations belonged to the kitchen, stable and gatehouse. The supposed location of the owner's house is now privately owned, behind a high fence; one of the buildings of the PALLASA Boutique Hotel is located above one of the discovered foundations today.

After the localization of the estate "Cham-Agach", E.V. Bulavintseva managed to restore the borders of other estates that were part of the sanatorium "Sosnyak" in 1935-1941 (these materials are now being prepared for publication). The author, being a professional artist and designer of the architectural and spatial environment, is also working on the creation of infographic stands with full-scale and reconstructed images of buildings of former estates as part of the former Soviet sanatorium "Sosnyak", as well as the presentation of materials on the Internet.

The given examples of reconstruction of the history of the estates of the YBK in the XIX – early XX centuries and the personal stories of their owners and guests convincingly prove several theses at once.

Firstly, modern historical science does not recognize the division into "high" and "low" genres, and local historians, driven by a passion for studying their native places, play an equally important role in it, as do certified historians, whose direct professional duties include establishing historical facts and broadcasting reliable knowledge. Let us quote again the words of the outstanding source historian, theorist and practitioner of local lore S.O. Schmidt: "the process of cognition begins with what is more accessible to understanding, with observations on what is closer, more visible, more tangible... Local history knowledge is at the heart of primary education, training and the development of concepts about the importance of past experience, in the foundation of historical memory" ^[41].

In our opinion, the criterion for the viability of a researcher-historian today is not belonging to a particular workshop or institution, but motivation to search for the truth, knowledge of the methodology of a systematic approach and structural analysis, techniques of complex source studies, modern methods of information retrieval, computer technologies, the desire to master new approaches and actively participate in the process of dissemination of historical knowledge.Secondly, it is obvious that it is the techniques of complex source studies in the modern conditions of the information boom and the increasing availability and increasing volume of various databases and data banks, collections and collections of sources of various types and types, including material ones, that allow the most effective way to solve the problems of reconstruction of historical facts, reliable knowledge about historical phenomena and processes.

According to the experience of the authors, the information search, as a rule, begins with information from reference and local history literature, guidebooks, continues with the help of potentially the largest volume of valuable data documentation from archival funds, which allows you to identify or clarify data on the boundaries of privately owned lands on the YBK, the change of their owners, to obtain or clarify information about these owners, their class affiliation and so on. With this information in mind, it is logical to continue the search according to the newly approved criteria in sources of personal origin – memoirs, correspondence – as well as in the periodical press. The next level of search will be the identification of a range of visual sources that captured the appearance of country resorts and their inhabitants in the era we are interested in, and – if possible – acquaintance with the spaces of historical memory themselves, their photo fixation in our days.However, it hardly makes sense to talk about the strict sequence of these stages: it should rather be about the synergetic effect of working with sources of various types – written, visual, material – and types, their mutual information enrichment.

The study of the spaces of the past hardly makes sense without filling them with biographies and the fates of the heroes who lived in them, which is realized primarily with the help of sources of personal origin – memoirs, letters, diaries. In this case, even "uncultured" landscapes forgotten in historical literature, such as the current Magaracha, which is a typical example of banal post-Soviet private development among a neglected park, are again transformed into "cultural", spiritualized spaces of historical memory and require a society that respects its history to treat itself accordingly.