Gypsy ravine (Lugansk)

The settlement of the area began in the 1920s. On the slopes of the Gypsy ravine there were small marl shacks that formed the Gypsy farm. After World War II , people of different nationalities lived here, in particular gypsies . According to the farm there was a spontaneous clothing market in which "sackers - speculators " traded.

With the development of the new city center at the turn of the 1950s - 1960s, the construction of the private sector along the modern Central Market, Sovetskaya and Chelyuskintsev streets was subject to demolition. Gradually, the ravine itself fell asleep. At the same time, in the 1950s - 1960s, the Gypsy farm received notoriety. Gypsies constantly committed numerous apartment thefts, robberies of citizens and other crimes. At the turn of the 1960s - 1970s, the regional leadership was tasked with law enforcement agencies to eliminate this "criminal nest." The operation to neutralize the criminals, which began early in the morning, was headed by the then head of the city department of the interior, police colonel Nikolai Petrovich Vodko. About 200 law enforcement officers took part in it. Dozens of criminals were detained, stolen gold jewelry weighing several kilograms was discovered, which the gypsies hastily buried in garbage cans. Since the farm was formed by the seizure of land, almost all the gypsies against whom no criminal cases were initiated were deported to different parts of the country. In 1973-1974, the Gypsy ravine was cleared of buildings.

In the early 1980s, a landscape park with a fountain was planned in a ravine, but it did not become a popular place with the townspeople. And in the early 1990s, tents of the Central Market were installed on the territory. In place of the former Gypsy farm and clothing market, new private sector houses grew up (modern streets of Alekseev, Yakubovsky, Old Bolsheviks).

• Forostyuk O. D. Walks the Old Town. - Lugansk, 2011.