Pankratyev D.G.

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Last Updated on Wednesday, 22 December 2021 15:20

Pankratiev Dmitry Gordeevich (1867-1956) - naturalist.

Born April 23, 1867 in the village of Ilya Karga, Tatar district, Tobolsk province, in a peasant family. There was no school in the village. Curious by nature, Dmitry learned to read and write at the age of six from an exiled convict. Soon the Pankratiev family moved to Semipalatinsk.

In 1899, Dmitry was drafted into the tsarist army. For some time, his part was located in the Ust-Kamenogorsk fortress, and he liked the city. Then the military unit was transferred to Zaisan. Here Dmitry Gordeevich first came into contact with gardening, to which he then devoted a significant part of his life.

In May 1898, he arrived in Ust-Kamenogorsk, where he soon met a former political exile, then a beekeeper, Alexander Nikolaevich Fedorov. Passes a course of study and practice at the Fedorov apiary.

D. G. Pankratiev was an indispensable participant in many beekeeping exhibitions and congresses of beekeepers. At the first West Siberian Agricultural Exhibition in 1911, his report for 12 years of fruitful work and rational beekeeping in the apiary joint with Fedorov was awarded the Small Gold Medal.

A. N. Fedorov organized beekeeping courses at the Pankratiev apiary. The students of these courses were peasants, students, teachers and students of the seminary, who were supposed to become propagandists and guides of rational frame beekeeping among the population. Classes usually ended with excursions to well-maintained, prosperous large apiaries. Pankratiev, as a rule, conducted practical classes and was the closest assistant to A. N. Fedorov.

But Gustav Alexandrovich Vistenius made a gardener out of Dmitry Gordeevich Pankratiev. G. Vistenius grew a garden in Ust-Kamenogorsk. In 1906, he, a doctor in a military hospital, retired and decided to leave the city. The news that he was leaving and selling the garden instantly spread around the city. Buyers came from different directions. The merchant Kurochkin offered ten thousand rubles, but Vistenius did not agree. He decided to hand it over to Pankratiev. In Pankratiev, the doctor unmistakably guessed the real owner of his garden. Vistenius did not just hand over the garden, but set a condition: to contribute 100 rubles annually to the city library-reading room for 15 years.

The first years were spent on the study of plantings in the garden, caring for them and studying the literature on gardening. And soon D. G. Pankratiev came to the conclusion that the plantings of Vistenius, spread over an area of ​​15 acres, were more of a collection than of a production nature, since some varieties were represented only by single specimens. Therefore, Pankratiev began again to prescribe various varieties of fruit, berry and ornamental plants from the central provinces of Russia and Siberia, to select and transfer to the garden the best local wild berry forms. Pankratiev began to sow the seeds of berries and fruit plants and breed his local varieties adapted to harsh conditions. He cultivated up to seventy species of plants in the garden, developed the basic methods of caring for them, and created local agricultural gardening techniques. Seedlings of ornamental and fruit trees, shrubs, seeds of berries and vegetables began to spread among hundreds of amateur gardeners and vegetable growers in Ust-Kamenogorsk and neighboring villages.

At the garden of D. G. Pankratiev, an apple nursery was laid for more than 10 thousand bushes. In the pre-war years, 7-10 tons of raspberries, black currants, cherries, gooseberries, wild strawberries and other berries were delivered to the table of Ust-Kamenogorsk residents annually from the Pankratievsky Garden.

In 1939, the construction of the Ust-Kamenogorsk hydroelectric power station began on the Irtysh. And the gardener transferred his Michurin activities to Ablaketka. Here, with the help of the public, he created another garden, laid out a park and landscaped the village of hydro-constructors, laid a greenhouse facility, which during the Great Patriotic War supplied the population with seedlings and vegetables.

The crowning work of Dmitry Gordeevich was the creation of a vineyard on Ablaketka.

The first attempt to breed grapes in Ust-Kamenogorsk Pankratiev made even before the revolution. In 1917, he ordered several early grape varieties from the Simbirsk province and from Saratov. When planting, most of the seedlings were accepted. In 1921-1922, fruits appeared on many of them, but they were small, sour, and unripe. In subsequent years, all the bushes died out.

By 1941, Pankratiev had extensive experience in gardening. In the autumn of 1941, he went to Zaisan, where he purchased 2,000 bushes of two-year-old grape seedlings from the local state nursery. They were landed on Ablaketka in the spring of 1942. Some of the seedlings died, and some began to bear fruit well. From year to year, the agricultural technology of growing grapes in local conditions has been improved, the area of ​​​​the vineyard has expanded, experience has been accumulated, and productivity has grown.

From the first years of its existence, the vineyard on Ablaketka began to attract the attention of amateur gardeners. Gardeners from Barnaul, Zmeinogorsk, Semipalatinsk, Novosibirsk, Leningrad, and Bulgaria came to see the "Pankratieff Miracle".

In addition to grapes, Pankratiev acclimatized and grew Manchurian walnuts in his garden, the first harvest of which in 1949 amounted to three tons of fruit; cork tree, oak, linden and many other ornamental and fruit plants.

Boris Gerasimov, a prominent Kazakh local historian and researcher of the region, wrote a lot about the merits of Pankratiev in the development of rational beekeeping and horticulture in Altai. Academician B. A. Keller, who led an expedition to East Kazakhstan on the instructions of the government to study the plant resources of Altai in the mid-30s and visited the Pankratiev garden, noted in his report: "... all the threads of the development of horticulture in Ust-Kamenogorsk lead to Pankratiev" .

In addition, Dmitry Gordeevich was the first meteorologist of the region. From 1898 to 1959, he monitored weather conditions and natural phenomena from the Yekaterinburg Magnetic and Meteorological Observatory. His notes were accurate and specific. The main physical observatory in 1913 awarded the observer of the meteorological station Dmitry Pankratiev with a light bronze medal in memory of the 300th anniversary of the reign of the Romanov dynasty. This medal was allowed to be worn on the chest. But few people saw the award from Dmitry Gordeevich, he was a very modest person.

Surprisingly, he had many friends among the inhabitants of the city, scientists and writers. In 1891, his company commander wrote in his description: "... it is rare to meet a person of such high moral qualities. Namely: modesty, good nature, pious structure of the soul, always a thinking person."

A very strong friendship connected Dmitry Gordeevich with the famous writer Georgy Grebenshchikov. One of the first Grebenshchikov noted the importance of Pankratiev's activities for the city and its inhabitants. In 1911, when a strong hail caused great damage to the garden and apiary, Pankratiev even fell ill. Then Grebenshchikov sent him a long letter of consolation: “I don’t want to flatter you for consolation, but I want to tell you the true conviction that your works have already deserved to be entered on the tablets of local history, but isn’t this the highest award for your stubborn and ascetic labor.

Literature about the life and work of D. G. Pankratiev

Books

Анов, Н. Ертіс нұры [Мәтін] / Н. Анов, Г. Молотков. - Алматы : Қазақ мемлекет баспасы, 1954. - 168 б. 

Кузьменко, Б. Ертіс өңірі  [Мәтін] = Прииртышье = Prііrtyshye / Б. Кузьменко. - Алма-Ата: Кайнар, 1982. - 184 с.

Қасымұлы, А. Алтайдан ұшқан ақиық [Мәтін] / А. Қасымұлы. - Өскемен : Шығыс Баспа, 1999. - 181 б. 

***

Анов, Н., Молотков, Г. Огни на Иртыше  [Текст]. - Алма-Ата: Казгосиздат, 1953.- 155 с. 

Черных С. С берегов Иртыша [Текст] / С. Черных. - Алма-Ата: Казахстан, 1981. - Панкратьевские сады. - С. 144-163.

Барышников, С. И. Пчелка  [Текст] / С. Барышников. - Алма-Ата: Кайнар, 1985.- 96 с. 

Черных, С. Одна, но пламенная страсть [Текст] / С. Черных. - Алма-Ата: Казахстан, 1986. - След на земле. - С. 94-120.

Кратенко, А. И. Беловодье... Потерянный рай  [Текст] / А. Кратенко. - Усть-Каменогорск, 1991. - 77 с. 

Articles

Исатаев, Т. Сад, которому 100 лет [Текст] : [об истории создания Панкратьевского сада в г. Усть-Каменогорске] / Т. Исатаев // АиФ: Казахстан. - 1994. - N 38. - С. 7.

Кущ, Г. Его именем назван сад [Текст] : [к 130-летию со дня рождения садовода Д. Г. Панкратьева] / Г. Кущ // Рудный Алтай. - 1997. - 13 февраля.

Черных,С. Панкратьевские сады [Текст] / С. Черных // Семь дней. - 1999. - 15, 22, 29 июля; 5 августа.

Шимолина, Н. Я знаю: саду цвесть! [Текст] : [Панкратьевский сад переживает третье рождение] / Н. Шимолина // Рудный Алтай. - 2002. - 5 сентября. - С. 2.