600 years is considered to be the history. What is about 200?
By Elena Tribuleva, "Vecherniy Brest" (The Evening Brest) newspaper, October 21, 2009
An entrance to the hut heated by
a chimneyless stove. 2003
Due to the managers of the National Park "Belovezhskaya Pushcha" a unique hut heated by a chimneyless stove but dismantled into logs put in the dense forest to be in the decay.
Some years ago all the Belarusian media covered this topic. Participants of the project "Pushcha without borders" provided inventory of the natural, cultural and ethnographical relics in year of 2002 in "Belovezhskaya Pushcha" and revealed a hut heated by a chimneyless stove built in year of 1837 and survived by a miracle in the Rozhkovka village, the Kamenetz district At that time it was the oldest wooden construction in the Pushcha on each (Belarusian and Polish) side of the state border. .
Rozhkovka is a unique village. Specialists say that there are not such analogues neither on the Belarusian side, nor on the Polish one. It was an ethnographical settlement with only one street that was the feature of the XIX century with the huts tightly built to each other, with a block stone pavement, with wooden huts half of which were built in the end of XIX beginning of XX century, with its own legend. Everybody has heard about miraculously Rozhkovka’s survival during the Second World War. This discovery was supposed to be the most precious exhibit in this ethnographical museum without the roof.
Where to find a wooden hut (no the newly built) with clayed floor, with tiny windows (50-55 sm.), with entrance door, with the wooden bolts, which was small even for a shot person (its height was 151 sm.)?
The precious founding was in a terrible condition: the roof was collapsed, the beams were decayed. This hut could not survived one more winter. "The meting was held with the Polish and Belarusian specialists from Bialystok to restore and preserve monuments where was decided to preserve the object", as remembers Nicolai Cherkas, one of the project’s coordinator, a scientist of the National Park "Belovezhskaya Pushcha". The hut was measured, pictured, sketched, dismantled into logs and put in piled under the roof.
The Polish restores claimed that they would work on it without payment. By their counts it was needed 20 m3 of the logs to restore it. According to words of the chief specialist on preservation of historical and cultural monuments of the Brest Regional Executive Committee from the Department of Culture Leonid Nesterchuk, he addressed a couple of times to the administration of the National Park "Belovezhskaya Pushcha" to assist with woods. Finally, one of the project’s participant, the director of the "Belarus Birds' Life" Viktor Finchuk bought for his own money titles and ruberoid to cover the disassemble hut; workers were invited from the near region. It was supposed that the works in the year of 2003 would be restarted but they won’t. The project ended. The information was gathered in the book called "The Cultural Legacy of "Belovezhskaya Pushcha" issued in three languages and journalists started to forget about the hut.
In the beginning of this year I visited Rozhkovka and wanted to look at this famous hut at least in the form of the woods dated 180 years old. "There is no more our hut, says the director of the Dmitrovichi village committee Ivan Yaroshuk. We have not had it a year and a half". In year of 2007 it was decided by the Committee of the Cultural and Monuments Preservation, (the protocol dated June 28th, 2007) to bring the hut under control of the National Park "Belovezhskaya Pushcha". As a result, the hut was moved to the unknown direction. It is interesting that the numbers of wood were known only to the Polish and Belarusian participants of the project, Victor Fenchuk is perplexed.
The place of the new registration of "the object" has appeared a secret not only for villagers of Rozhkovka and journalists. I applied to different institutions and committees, involved friends working in the national park and sent an enquiry to Nikolai Bambiza, general director of the National Park "Belovezhskaya Pushcha", but there was no any answer. By the way, such a behavior of this general head is not a surprise. "The hut is somewhere in the Pushcha", as authorities say. They have to know by their position the place and the condition of the historical values. Finally, the logs were founded in the Dmitrovichi forest area of the national park. The foresters said that they have had these logs for two years. And it was interesting that "Evening Brest" journalists were the first who paid attention to them. It looks like the authorities have forgotten about this logs being busy with the preparation for the celebration of 600 years of the Pushcha’s protected status.
Is it time to remember?
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