All roads have a beginning and an end. Only not everyone knows for certain where these points are. About the Old Smolensk road is known.
It starts from the Moscow Kremlin, from the Trinity Tower, as befits the Russian road, and ends on the border with Belarus. There, 20 kilometers from the village of Red, and there is a “zero mile”.
Road appearance
It is difficult to name the date of its occurrence , but it should already have been in the 14th century. According to the surviving documents, scientists concluded that then there was a close relationship, primarily trade, between Moscow, Smolensk and Orsha. So there was a road.
At first it was land - water, and then only land and direct drive. And they called it in the documents of that time the Great Smolensk or Ambassadorial, and sometimes the Great Main Hotel (from the word "guest").
Traveling along it at that time was almost a feat for foreigners and completely impossible. The writer I. S. Sokolov-Mikitov describes their impressions: “The road was hard. A wild forest full of wild animals. Muscovite men are terrible. A terrible road, which, in order not to drown in the swamps, the Russian people are strewn with log cabin. ”
But, apparently, the need was strong, as long as the guests still went along that road to the Moscow Kremlin.
Postal business in the Smolensk region
All invaders from the west went to Russian lands along the Old Smolensk road . At the beginning of the 17th century, the Poles captured most of the Smolensk region, which became their territory for half a century. When the lands returned to Russia, a postal route was laid westward. To speed the movement of the postal service, the local population was ordered to keep the road in good condition.
In 1668, the first postal station was established in the village of Mignovichi, and by the middle of the 19th century there were seven postal routes with 43 stations in the Smolensk province. Most of them were located on the Old Smolensk tract .
Road conversions
Peter I , who began the reorganization of all governing bodies, did not pass over the road business. He referred questions of the construction of roads and their maintenance to the newly created Chamber College; in the provinces, special commissioners dealt with these issues.
By his order, local peasants who completed field work were actively involved in the repair and construction of roads. The width of large roads was established, including the one leading from Smolensk to Moscow,
three fathoms, that is 6.39 meters.But, despite the efforts made, the roads in Russia remained in poor condition. Travelers still complained that the road was often not well laid, and numerous swamps and marshes made it difficult to move in the summer.
In 1764, Catherine the Great signed a decree on the establishment of stone milestones on all the main roads of Russia, which included the Old Smolensk Road . They should have been the same, a sample in the form of a drawing was attached. A new instruction immediately followed: not to pave the roads with logs, but to make them “where there is convenience”, stone. But, as usual in Russia, orders were sometimes carried out, but from what it was.
Along the Smolensk road for the first time verst indexes of logs were displayed, many trees were planted along the tract. When they grew up, a tent was formed above the travelers' head, protecting them from the heat and rain.
1812 and 1941
Every student in our country knows that Napoleon went to the capital along the Old Smolensky tract. He walked with his invincible army, and the Russian, exhausted army retreated along the same road.
Napoleon went all the way from Smolensk to Moscow, from start to finish. But before he had to enter a decisive battle near the village of Borodino. On August 26, 1812, two enormous armies converged on the Borodino field . The French Emperor was sure that on this day he would achieve the surrender of Russia. After 15 hours of battle, both exhausted troops, who suffered huge losses, were in the same starting positions.
To save the army for further battles, M.I. Kutuzov led him away under cover of night from the Borodino field, and Napoleon completed his march along the highway to the Kremlin. And then back.
The fierce battles during the Great Patriotic War also fell on the places through which the Old Smolensk Road passes . Probably, nowhere is there such a large number of monuments to those who died in those wars during the defense of their Fatherland, as in cities, villages, villages, and simply in an open field along it.
Modern road
The road was of great importance until the middle of the 19th century, until the modern, by that standards, Warsaw highway was built. It passed through the Kaluga and Smolensk provinces, through Belarus to Warsaw. Since then, the old tract began to lose its significance, was used for local purposes, and less attention was paid to it. The road fell into decay, and when the Moscow-Minsk-Brest highway was built in the 20th century, it was almost forgotten.
Today, the Old Smolensk road on the modern map
looks like a dashed line. Some of its sections are in very poor condition, some are completely impassable. Although in some places good asphalt was preserved, and other sections turned into dirt roads.Although talk about the fact that the road will be restored is not the first year. I'd like to believe it.