OLD RUSSIAN KRAI-RODINA S.V. RAKHMANINOV

It is not accepted to say that the landscapes of the Novgorod land were reflected in the music of Rachmaninov: Sergey Vasilyevich lived only the first nine years in his small homeland.
As you know, Sergei Rachmaninov was born in the family of the general's daughter Lyubov Petrovna Butakova and retired hussar officer of the Grodno regiment Vasily Arkadyevich Rachmaninov.
The place of his birth was reported by Rachmaninov himself. “I forgot to say that I was born in Novgorod Province in one of our estates,” wrote Sergey Vasilyevich in 1896 to his friend, musicologist, folklorist and composer Alexander Zatayevich. If you need to know the name of the estate, which I doubt, it's called "Oneg," which, decades later, Rachmaninoff had to argue with. Novgorod archivist and local historian Marianna Fyodorovna Trunina was the first in 1973 to open the metric book of the Old-Degtyarev Church in the regional archive (before that only a copy was known), in which it was recorded:
Month and day: Birth – March, 20, baptism – April 2. The birth name is Sergius. The title, name, patronymic and surname of parents: the Old Russian county of the estate of Semyonovo landowner, the retired Life Guards of the hussar regiment staff metropolitan Vasily Arkadiev son Rachmaninov and his lawful wife Lyubov Petrovna Rachmaninova.
The successors were the magistrate of the 3rd section of the Starorussky district A.N. Vaskov and S.A. Butakov from the estate of Oneg of the Novgorod district. Baptized priest Platon Vasilyevich Savitsky and psalmist Peter Nikolaevich Lubochsky.
That is, Sergey Vasilyevich Rachmaninov was baptized in the Staro-Degtyarevskaya Church, which is two versts from the Semenovo estate, together with the estate of Novye Degtyari and the Kosheli estate received by V.A. Rachmaninov on the donation record of P.I. Butakov. It is funny that there are still disputes in Novgorod: Semyonovo or Oneg is the birthplace of the composer?
However, while Novgorod journalists argued about the birthplace of Rachmaninov, senior researcher of the Old Russian Museum of Local History Nina Sergeevna Sergeeva thoroughly studied the archival data and found that the early spring of 1873 was cold, rainy and snowy. To make 178 versts in a carriage – specifically to baptize a child in Old Degtyars – more than strange, especially when you consider that from Onega to Novgorod – a primer, from Staraya Russa to Zaluchya – a cobblestone pavement, from Zaluchya to Semyonov – a countryside.
Born in Semyonov, Sergey Vasilyevich, of course, could not remember this fascinating forest kingdom, scattered in the hills south of Staraya Russa, because very soon the family moved to Oneg: in 1877, an estate in Novye Degtyary and a manor in Koshely were laid, and in 1878 - the Semyonovo estate. Why didn’t Mr. Rodriguez know about his birthplace? According to Sergeeva, Sergei stayed in Semenov “so short that this biographical detail was not later bothered to explain to him by any of his relatives, distracted by difficult family activities.”
. In 1885, the estate was acquired by a doctor of medicine, a real state councillor Anton Antonovich Rohel, the author of books on Old Russian mineral waters (published in 1880 and 1881, one in St. Petersburg, the other in Novgorod); together with his father, a gardener A. A. Rohel, a tenant of the Staraya Russa resort in 1868-1890, he was engaged in improving the conditions of treatment in the famous health resort (Dostoevsky’s wife and children were treated in Staraya Russa, and perhaps Fyodor Mikhailovich himself; also F. [28] In 1895, the estate passed to the state prosecutor and the Minister of Justice, the author of many works on criminal law and judicial proceedings Nikolai Valerianovich Muravyov.
The last mistress of Onega, according to the stories of old-timers, was a powerful, business landlord, who was called Katya Janiha. In the thirties, a pioneer camp for two hundred children was already located in the building of the manor house.
The war almost completely destroyed one of the most beautiful estates. The Germans, according to some sources, placed a school of pilots here; according to others, a resting house for them; to destroy this object, soldiers of the 305th Infantry Division of the 52nd Army of the Volkhov Front, occupying positions on the other side of the Volkhov, dropped a bomb on Oneg. The house was blown up; the park was badly damaged.
Now only the cobblestone foundation resembles the house; the plan of the house has been preserved in the Novgorod archive, there is also a record of the oral description of its exterior. Perhaps there will come a time when it will be restored.
Now it is easy to get to Onega: from the suburban Novgorod bus station for about an hour - to Red Udarnik (this is still called the Novgorod-Zakharyino flight by the name of the already non-existent collective farm), and from Zakharyin - on foot. There is another entrance from the highway to Onega - from the village of Podberezye.
The road to the estate went along yellow bumpy fields, overgrowths, thick dark thickets; from time to time it suddenly appeared a loose gray strip of the Volkhovs; if coastal groves did not interfere, it rolled from one end of the earth to the other, then narrowing, then spilling among the gentle shores.
The manor was separated from the river by a wide rail (wetland coast); the grasses there were so high that three or four people walking along an invisible path found themselves only moving caps. And in the park, like scenery for a fairy-tale performance, luxurious compositions of trees and shrubs were gathered in tiers: alone, in pairs, groups, dances, processes. What was not: linden, oaks, hazel, alder, elm, willows, fruit ... Miraculously preserved the foundation of the manor house, the outlines of the dance floor, landscape glades; the former ponds were pointed pink jungles of Ivan-Tea, a well was filled with cold water to the top; to which the steps hidden in the damp grasses slid... And how the powerful owners, turning the ancient park into thickets, wrapped its nettles, hawthorn, elderberry, piled up the rubble of dry land... People forgot about Onega. On the ancestral nest of the great composer has long been running shy rabbits, but someone from the locals will come to pick juicy wild apples ...
The small country was ungrateful to the memory of its famous countryman.