In search for the grave monument of the Professorsurgeon E.G. Salischev (part 3)

The paper was prepared according to archival and published documents, the study and systematization of which made it possible to find out how the monument was installed and then lost on the grave of the outstanding professor E.G. Salishchev at the cemetery of the Ioanno-Predtechensky (John the Baptist) Tomsk Convent in Tomsk. According to the materials of the newspaper “Sibirskaya zhizn'” (“Siberian Life”) it was revealed that Professor E.G. Salishchev, who died in June 1901, was buried in the professorial section of the monastery cemetery. Two years after the funeral, a monument made in St. Petersburg was erected on his grave. The newspaper “Sibirskaya zhizn'” published a photograph of the monument, taken on the day of its consecration on November 10, 1903. The newspaper report and the inscription on the monument, copied in 1910 by the abbess of the convent Zinaida (Kotelnikova), provide reliable information about the tombstone. Subsequently, this information was distorted, and the monument was destroyed. After the revolutions of 1917, anti-church sentiments were whipped up in society, liturgical churches were closed, and clergy and parishioners were persecuted. In 1920 the nunnery in Tomsk was closed, in 1927 burials at the monastery cemetery were prohibited. In the same year, the buildings of the monastery were transferred to the Siberian Technological Institute (modern Tomsk Polytechnic University) for student hostels. And in 1930, under the pretext that the campus, located in a former convent, needed “places for walking”, the Tomsk City Council decided to liquidate the cemetery and use gravestones as building material. Attempts by the head of the Tomsk Regional Museum M.B. Shatilov to save the professorial section of the monastery cemetery from destruction were unsuccessful. In the mid 1950s on the cemetery site, construction began on a 4-storey residential building (modern Uchebnaya st., 42). In the course of work on the paper, it turned out that along with reliable information about the monastery cemetery and the monument on the grave of E.G. Salishchev, there are quite a lot of distortions. The most important of them is the decision of the executive committee of the Tomsk Regional Council of Working People's Deputies dated July 25, 1961 No. 242 “On the further improvement of the protection of cultural monuments in the region”. In the appendix to this document, in addition to all other information, “the grave of the famous Russian scientist surgeon Prof. E.G. Salishchev. Location – campus of the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute. Unverified and unconfirmed data on the burial of Salishchev at the long-destroyed monastery cemetery were included in 2017 in the unified state register of objects of cultural heritage of the peoples of the Russian Federation, and even the address of the nonexistent monument was indicated: 39/2, Vershinin st., Tomsk. It was found out that the chapel in the name of St. Domna Tomskaya is located at this address. Completing the search for a grave monument, the authors of the paper express confidence that the memory of the surgeon E.G. Salishchev will survive all the losses and distortions and will be eternal.

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