Bakota
Bay, Sea, and Lake
Bakota is a submerged village, located in 55 km from Kamianets-Podilskyi, Khmelnytskyi region. The ancient settlement was first mentioned in the 13th century. At the end of the 20th century (1981), after the construction of New Dniester Hydroelectric Station, Bakota was flooded, and the “Bakota Sea” emerged. The unique rock-cave St. Michael's monastery (13-14th century) is located at the cliff of the “sea’s” bank, which is about 70 m height.
A lot intertwined here - the submerged village, the former capital of Ponyzzya, and the border between the regions
The local cells of the St. Michael's monastery, dug in the soft sandstone on the White Rock, are considered to be the oldest cave-monastery complex of the Middle Transnistria region. This Dnister region is famous for numerous cave cells. When sailing to Bakota on a boat, and it is the best way to get there, as there is no good road to the submerged village, you will see the 120-meter White Rock. However, in the summer, it is impossible to notice the monastery behind green trees. No matter how you get to the location of the spelaean cells, but you can get inside only by the stairs hidden inside the mountain.
The first written references of the monastery at Bakota are found in the Lithuanian Chronicle (14th century), which describes the occupation of Podillia by the Koriatovych dynasty in 1362. However, the chronicle indicates that the monastery existed long before the arrival of this dynasty. Soviet academician Tykhomyrov, who visited the historic monument in 1962, suggests that the rocky spelaean monastery was found in the late 11th - early 12th centuries.
According to a legend, in the 13th century, the locals and monks hid in the cave monastery from the Mongol-Tatars horde of Batuy. The invaders offered them to renounce their faith, but nobody agreed. Then the Mongol-Tatars bricked up the entrance to the monastery and everyone inside died. However, this legend may be describe every ancient cave in the Podillia region. At the beginning of the 15th century, the collapse of the upper rock destroyed several ancient monastery buildings, and since that time, Bakota gradually changed from being the capital into a village of little interest to chroniclers and cartographers.
The interest to the rock-cave monastery was revived at the end of the 19th century when the professor at Kyiv University Volodymyr Antonovych started to work here on behalf of the Russian Imperial Archaeological Commission. The archaeologist excavated the remains of cells and the monastery (or rather, the Bakota citizens found all these remains as they were the ones, digging under the professor supervision ). Even then, there was a suggestion that this place served for religious rituals long before Christianity appeared in these lands. At that time, three caves were discovered with human bones found in some niches of the floor corridors. Totally, 17 niches were located in the walls of caves and 19 tombs on the rocky floor. By the way, this was Antonovych's second visit to Podillia; he had visited Bakota for the first time in 1883.
In 1893, in place of the Old Russian church of the Bakota's monastery, a new wooden church was constructed, and later sanctified by a bishop Podilskyi and Bratslavskyi St. Dmitro on August, 14 in the presence of many Podillia and Moldavian prayers. Since then, August 14 has become the day when many people rocky spelaean came to the liturgy). Later, the church was renewed several times, and was reopened in 1941-1942. In 1918-1940, the path to the monastery actually turned into a state border with Romania. However, in 1963 the monastery was destroyed, as a result of the duty wave of the fight against religion. Nevertheless, August, 14, the monastery serves an indulgence.
However, the monastery was not in the village, and the Bakota village was near the river. People started talking that it may soon disappear in the 1960s, when the rumors about the construction of a large hydroelectric power plant on the Dnister river spread around. But these thoughts were soon forgotten. The rumors about a station became reality in 1973. The residents had a couple of years to move: by 1981 they cut down their own fruit trees, destroyed their homes, transported things to new places. As a result, 165 houses were abandoned, 560 people lost the most precious thing in the world - a motherland. On October 27, 1981, the Bakota village was deregistered and flooded.
The water level rose slowly: from 1981 to 1987 it rose for 35 meters, flooding Bakota, Luka-Vrublivetska, and the neighboring Teremtsi village. A few years ago, an English-speaking diver recalled that when diving in Bakota, he saw a sad ghost of a man, that later turned out to be a monument of the soldier ...
Interesting Facts
According to meteorologists, the amount of heat per square meter in Bakota is equivalent to Yalta (Crimea) because of the microclimate. The rocks protect this land from the cold winds; the gardens and forests, abandoned in 1980s may still be found here.