by Dmitry Gubin
[REGNUM] On February 25, the Russian Ministry of Defense officially confirmed that fighters from the "North" group of forces had taken control of the village of Grafskoye in the Kharkiv region. The village, which has been the subject of heavy fighting in recent weeks, is located on the banks of the Seversky Donets River, southwest of the city of Vovchansk, which was captured in December 2025.
The liberation of Grafskoye reminds us of who owned these lands and how, and what once stood where the front line ran. And the people who lived there were worthy, from all walks of life.
Like most of the surrounding settlements, Grafskoye arose during the reign of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, and near the present-day village. A river flowed through the area; in 1659, it was unnamed on the map but soon became known as the Ilma or Ilmen. At its confluence with the Seversky Donets, the village of Ilmen was founded, where the Church of St. Demetrius of Thessaloniki was built.
And so the landless sons of boyars and peasants, who had arrived both from Belgorod and from across the Dnieper, lived side by side. The names of the original settlers have been preserved, but not all of them have their social class affiliations.
And while there were no particular problems with confirming land ownership rights, not everyone was able to confirm their nobility under Peter I and the following sovereigns and empresses, and many descendants of service people ended up as single-farmstead peasants, referred to in official documents as old-timers.
Defending themselves against the claims of neighboring landowners, they could present the charters of Alexei Mikhailovich and his sons in court. A landowner, however, had emerged in those parts near Volchansk during the reign of Peter the Great. He was the well-known Tsar's favorite, Pyotr Shafirov.
But he never made it there and played no role in the life of these places. There are no traces of his activities in either Ilmen or Rubezhnoye, seven miles away. The Church of St. Andrew the First-Called was built by local residents without any involvement from the nobleman, as was the village of Andreyevka, which later became Grafskoye.
In 1723, this upstart fell into disgrace, and the Tsar took these lands from him in order to give them to no less egregious parvenu - the relatives of his wife Catherine.
The first Russian empress, née Martha Skavronskaya, had a younger sister, Christina, who married a certain Hendrik, who became Simon upon baptism into Orthodoxy. Their children became known as the Hendrik family, and in 1742, their cousin, Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, awarded them the title of count.
The eldest of them, Andrei Simonovich, became the first owner of Andreevka, Ilmen, and Rubezhnoye. He is known to have risen to the rank of chamberlain, married one of the daughters of Artemy Volynsky, executed during the reign of Anna, and had no children. However, he did settle over five hundred new residents in these areas.
But his younger brother Ivan Simonovich and their sisters left offspring, and thanks to them, the blood of the Hendrikovs can be found in many respected families.
Ivan Simonovich rose through the ranks to the rank of general-in-chief and commander of the Cavalry Guards Corps. He settled in Andreyevka and was buried in Rubezhnoye. But the estate's heyday is associated with his grandson's wife, Anna Alexandrovna. It was under her rule that a luxurious manor house and the stone church of St. Andrew were built there.
This estate survived in its best condition until 1914, when art historian Georgy Lukomsky visited and left a detailed description. Here's how he described its layout:
“It is located in an extremely picturesque area on the banks of the Donets River, and although on a low bank of the river, it is in such a way that from the estate one can see the wonderful mountain bank, still covered with a centuries-old oak forest.”
Lukomsky suggested that the estate was built by a Moscow architect from the circle of the famous architect Domenico Gilardi. According to the art historian's description, the house consisted of a main three-story building with a portico and a small cupola, two outbuildings connected by wings, and a series of single-story outbuildings perpendicular to the main building on either side of a spacious courtyard. The courtyard was occupied in the center by a circular flowerbed with shrubs.
“When entering the gates, one gets a picture that is highly typical of a beautiful manor house, and at the same time, it is a decoratively charming picture that just begs to be used in a production of a Turgenev play,” the art critic noted.
Besides the manor house, another landmark of Andreyevka, which became Grafskoye in 1849, was its riding arena. Alexander Gendrikov founded one of the largest stud farms in Grafskoye; his family included generals, governors, and Volchansk district marshals of the nobility.
Unlike their neighbors, these lands were not fragmented, sold, or mortgaged. So, for nearly two hundred years, the same family owned more than 15,000 dessiatines in the Volchansky district and grew their wealth. Unlike their neighbors, the Rebinder and Rozalion-Soshalsky, the Gendrikovs were not forced into exile during the Civil War and were able to emigrate. However, their estate disappeared during the interwar period; only one outbuilding remains.
The village was renamed 1st Sovietskoye (Radyanske), and only in 2016 was it renamed Grafskoye. Life continued there, and in 1931, the future People's Artist of the USSR, coloratura soprano Yevgeniya Miroshnichenko, was born in 1st Sovietskoye. Muslim Magomayev noted that no one but her could sing Alyabyev's romance "The Nightingale" so well.
Now, this historic village, directly connected to Peter the Great, is under the protection of the Russian army. There's hope that the phrase "on the count's ruins" will no longer be associated with these places.