Robinson with a machine gun, or the Amazing story of the deserter Mark Gursky
In our view, Robinsonade is associated with the heroic survival of a person who, due to unforeseen circumstances, found himself far from civilization. But this is a stereotype imposed on us by literature and cinema. Among such hermits there were many scoundrels who fully deserved hardships and hardships. There were also just people fleeing from war and other troubles. Mark Gursky, a deserter, was just such a Robinson.
The story that happened in the north of the Novosibirsk region almost 80 years ago, the locals still remember. In 1943, Siberian Mark Gursky, not wanting to go to the front, fled to the forest. No one knows for sure whether the deserter left his unit or simply hid from mobilization, but Mark managed to hide from danger.
First, Gursky went to his relatives Krasikov, who lived in the village of Kreschenskoye, Ubinsky district. It was dangerous to stay in rodney's house, so after making supplies, the fugitive went to live in the forest. He settled tens of kilometers away from human habitation, in the upper reaches of the Tartas River.
Despite living in the middle of nowhere, Gursky did not feel safe and was very afraid of arrest. They didn't stand on ceremony with people like him in wartime, so they had to be careful. Mark built a whole network of huts and dugouts located at a considerable distance from each other. He tried not to stay in his dens for a long time and constantly wandered between them.
The Siberian Robinson ate everything that the taiga could give to a native Siberian. He hunted animals, fished, collected bird eggs and mushrooms. Possessing great physical strength and agility, Gursky emerged victorious even from a fight with a bear, carrying only a knife or an axe.
Mark's land stretches for tens of kilometers. He found fertile plots of land, cleared them of vegetation and planted several vegetable gardens. Along the routes along which the hermit moved in the taiga, there were caches with supplies. Once Gursky was incredibly lucky — he found the wreckage of a military aircraft in the forest. It was an Aerocobra, which was supplied under lend-lease by the Americans.
In the broken fighter there was a valuable thing for Gursky — an aviation machine gun. It was fully functional and there were cartridges in the boxes right there. Mark was very pleased with the find — his old gun worked very badly. Even for a strongman, the weapon turned out to be a bit heavy — machine guns of this type are not designed for hand-firing. But the forest dweller was able to adapt it for hunting. From now on, he emerged victorious from a fight with any predator.
In addition to the machine gun, Gursky removed a dynamo machine from the plane. Now a taiga resident could spend evenings with electric light. But the Siberian Robinson did not abuse the benefits of civilization. A man calmly defeating a bear in a fight was terrified of a police roundup of deserters. Therefore, he strictly observed the blackout. Even the wreckage of the plane Mark hid under branches and mosses.
Despite his fear of the authorities, Gursky was sometimes forced to appear with relatives in the village. He exchanged the meat and mushrooms extracted in the forest for clothes, some products and household items. Mark's dream was to meet someone in the village who would agree to share his taiga life. Nature was taking its toll — Robinson really lacked female company. But he didn't know how to get acquainted, much less persuade a local lady to leave the house.
Soon everything was resolved by itself. Gursky met a girl picking mushrooms in the taiga and simply kidnapped her. To prevent the captive from finding her way back, he led her to his lands by circular paths, mostly at night. But the prisoner did not stay in the clutches of the deserter for long. According to one version, she simply ran away, and according to another, Mark himself released her after learning about the pregnancy.
The girl turned out to be the only person who visited the taiga Robinson. She was interrogated by the police and, based on fragmentary information, they were able to roughly determine the place where Gursky was hiding. After spending several days wandering around the taiga, law enforcement officers still found Mark in one of his dugouts.
When the bound hermit was brought to the village, everyone gasped. He towered over his guards by a head, and behind him two policemen carried a machine gun, which served as a rifle for Mark. This is how one of the eyewitnesses, Nikolai Vdovin, describes Gursky:
In the surrounding villages, Mark was called Tarzan, in honor of the hero of an American film that was in the Soviet box office in the late 30s. Few people had seen him before, and some even considered him a fictional person. It soon became clear that Robinson had been hiding from people for exactly ten years.
What punishment befell the hermit and whether it was at all is unknown. Some say that he received a sentence for desertion, others - that he was forgiven because of the statute of limitations. We only know that Mark Gursky settled in the village and quickly got along with the locals. Local men respected him for his strength and ability to track down the beast. The former forest dweller was even made a foreman of hunters.
But over the years of his solitary life, Gursky had become unaccustomed to people and their company was a burden to him. A few months later, Mark left for the Krasnoyarsk Territory, where no one knew him. There he settled in the taiga, but no longer hid from anyone. There were rumors that he even took his girlfriend and his child with him, but there is no confirmation of this. No one knows how the life of the Siberian Robinson ended and where his grave is located.