Telushkin, Peter

Accurate information about the life, works and death of Telushkin has not been preserved. It is known that he came from the village of Myagra, Mologsky district, Yaroslavl province , from the family of Mikhail Stakheev. The landowner Trusov sold it to the merchant Telushkin of the village of Vyatskoye, Danilovsky district of the same province, having paid the money received with the treasury for debts. ^[1] At the age of 23 in the spring of 1829 he came to St. Petersburg to earn money. Peter, being the master of the roofing workshop, had experience in high-altitude work - he had to repair the domes of churches and bell towers; was low, but easily raised 13 pounds .

In 1830, he received temporary, but loud fame for his bold ascent on his hands, without scaffolding , to the cross on the 55-meter spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral for repairs. The cross and angel of the cathedral often suffered damage from lightning and wind, and each time the repair was very expensive; the most expensive was the construction of forests, since the height of the Peter and Paul Cathedral, together with the spire to the cross, was 122.5 m. In the autumn of 1830, sheets were torn from the cross by the wind, and wings were from the angel. There was a usual fix with the preliminary erection of forests. At this time, Telushkin submitted a written statement stating that he undertakes to repair all the damage in the cross and angel of the cathedral without building scaffolding. Telushkin, as a poor artisan, not having the collateral required for contractors for construction work, "laid, as the St. Petersburg Gazette put it, " his life in securing his affairs. " For his work, he did not appoint a certain remuneration, leaving his superiors to establish its value, and asked only for the issue of 1,471 rubles for the materials that he would need during the repair. The conditions proposed by Telushkin due to their profitability were accepted, although no one hoped for a favorable outcome of his enterprise. Nevertheless, Telushkin successfully completed the work undertaken, showing unusual physical strength, dexterity and quick wit.

At one time, newspapers were filled with descriptions of this enterprise. In brief, the circumstances of this rise are as follows. In the bell tower of the Peter and Paul Cathedral there are dormer windows and two small (up to 0.5 m²) hatches opening outward, the upper of them at a distance of approximately 8.5 m from the dormer windows. Telushkin began work on October 8, 1830. On wooden fortifications in the interior of the spire, he reached the upper hatch. The spire of the cathedral is covered with copper gilded sheets, in horizontal junctions directly imposed on each other, in vertical ones - curved by an edge; bends protrude 9 cm from the surface and form strips along the length of the spire. Telushkin also used these protruding ribs here to entwine a spire with a rope. After attaching the end of the rope to the inner wooden fortifications of the Spitz and girding it, he went outside, significantly went down and then, supporting the body with the rope, he began to move from edge to edge around the Spitz and up along it. This movement was worth an incredible effort, because the protrusions made it possible to grab them with only two fingers (thumb and forefinger), and Telushkin often showed blood from under the nails. Exceptional physical strength was needed in order to rise up with four fingers with the whole body. Under such incredible conditions, Telushkin managed to surround the spire and rise at the same time to the hatch from which he sank. The rope entwined around the spire could already hold it tightly to the spitz, and at the same time pulling the free end of the rope through a special loop, he got the opportunity to shorten the rope ring on the spire, which was necessary because the latter thinned up. Housing support was thus provided. But more means were needed for lifting. From the upper hatch to the apple itself, on which there is a cross with an angel, iron hooks are located along the length of the spire, 3.2 m from each other, with a protrusion of 9 cm from the roof. They used Telushkin to use it for further raising. Of the two ropes with the witty use of complex loops and a pit knot, he arranged moving stirrups, which he threw over the nearest hook. With the help of these stirrups, spending terrible efforts and resorting to various, sometimes very resourceful tricks, Telushkin from hook to hook reached the apple itself.

The most difficult thing was to climb along the arc of an apple to the cross, where it was required to fix it. Spitz has an apple with a diameter of slightly more than 0.7 m, while the diameter of the apple reaches 2.8 m. Therefore, it was not possible to climb directly on the apple. Telushkin tied two new ropes to the spire, made loops close to the surface of the spitz in them and put his feet in these loops so that they could rest against the spitz under the apple itself, and the end of the rope that was wrapped around the spitz he held to the spire, he lowered it somewhat. Thanks to this, he took an inclined position and hung in the air almost horizontally, facing up. Hanging in this position, Telushkin tied the 13-meter-long rope with him at one end to a rope entwined around the spire, and gathered it together in circles and threw it up with a strong swing, giving direction along the arc from right to left. The rope, having described an arc in the air, twisted around the base of the cross, and its unwound end hung down to Telushkin. Telushkin made a dull loop on it, threaded the other end into it, and twisted the rope until it was pulled on the cross. According to this rope, on which the knots were previously made, he climbed to the cross.

Telushkin completed the entire rise in two days: the first was spent on preparing and bypassing the Spitz at the hatch, and the second on a further rise. It was no longer difficult to make a rope ladder for constant ascents, since it could be strengthened at the cross. Since that time, Telushkin every day, except for especially inclement weather, for 6 weeks he climbed to a height for work, in total, dragging a master instrument over his shoulder. He secured the torn sheets, corrected the figure of an angel, strengthened the cross. Often, townspeople specially came to see him. After 110 years, climbers checked the spire and on the oak binding of the frame, which was preserved during later alterations, they found Telushkin’s painted painting. In fact, Peter Telushkin is the first famous Russian industrial climber . ^{[2] [3]}

For the work he was paid from one to five thousand rubles in bills . After the article by the then president of the Academy of Arts, A. N. Olenin , was published in the “Son of the Fatherland” , he watched the master’s work from the window of his house through a telescope, and after talking to him, the whole of Russia talked about Peter Telushkin, his people called the "heavenly roofer." Olenin introduced Telushkin to the sovereign , who awarded him money and a silver medal "For Zeal" on the Anninsky ribbon. There is a legend that he was also presented with a letter, having seen which they were obliged to pour for free in any tavern, but he lost it; then he was given a special stigma under the right cheekbone, according to which Telushkin, when he came to the drinking establishment, snapped his fingers - from here allegedly went a characteristic gesture signifying the drinking of alcohol. ^[one]

It is known that Peter Telushkin also repaired a boat on the spire of the Admiralty . ^[1] In May 1831 he was married to the serf girl Iraida Fedorova. ^[4] But the glory and the crumbling roofing orders (for 300-500 thousand rubles) did not go to him for the future: he soon drank himself and died in the autumn of 1833.

His image has been preserved - a portrait of G. G. Chernetsov , small in size, painted in oil on cardboard, on which he is depicted as a short, slightly snub-nosed, cropped “under the pot”, with a reddish mustache and beard; dressed in brown caftan, long-toe-toe. This portrait is a sketch for the painting " Parade on the Field of Mars in 1831 ", where Telushkin is depicted among 223 St. Petersburg celebrities of that time. ^[five]

In 1953, N. V. Stotsky’s book, The Tale of Peter Telushkin, was published (reprinted in 1964).

• Industrial alpinism

• The metric book of the village of Krasny-on-Sheksne for 1803 State Archive of the Yaroslavl Region, f. 230, op. 2, d. 996, l. 45.
• Olenin A.N.On the repair of the cross and the angel (without forests) on the Spitz of St. Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg. - Son of the Fatherland, 1831, part 140, volume 18, number 14, pages 406-414; the same as a separate brochure, St. Petersburg. 1831.

• Stotsky N.V. The Tale of Peter Telushkin. - Arkhangelsk: Arkhangelsk Book Publishing House, 1953. - 112 p. - 15,000 copies.
  • Stotsky N.V. The Tale of Peter Telushkin. - Arkhangelsk: North-West Book Publishing House, 1964. - 108 p.
• An autograph under the clouds // Pikul V.S. Through thorns - to the stars. Historical thumbnails

• Telushkin Peter // Russian Biographical Dictionary : At 25 t. / Under the supervision of A. A. Polovtsov. 1896-1918.
• Peter Telushkin // The most famous inventors of Russia / Compiled by S. V. Istomin. - M .: Veche, 2000 .-- 469 p.
• Peter Telushkin - the first Russian industrial climber // Kalenich I. A feat for the glory of the Fatherland. - L .: White Nights, 1985 .-- S. 246—256.