On July 7, 2026, a stone was laid in the village of Nagorye on the site of the future monument to Admiral Grigory Andreevich Spiridov.
The village became the naval commander's last refuge: here, in the Transfiguration Church, built at his own expense, the admiral himself rests in the Kazan chapel.
The idea of the monument was conceived by Yuri Nikolaevich Ptashnik, an entrepreneur from the Highlands. Once he visited the Turkish Chesma, where the Russian fleet defeated the Turkish squadron more than 250 years ago, and stopped at the monument to Hassan Pasha, who commanded the defeated fleet at that time. The scale and solemnity of this monument amazed Yuri Nikolaevich: it turned out that in Turkey they honor the memory of the losing military leader much more than in Russia they honor the memory of the winner. "What struck me was the scale of the monument to the naval commander who lost the naval battle," he recalls. It was then that he promised himself that a monument worthy of the great naval commander would surely appear in Spiridov's homeland, in the village of Nagorye.
After returning home, Ptashnik headed the local initiative group "Sobornost" and got down to business: under his leadership, more than a hundred signatures of residents were collected in support of the project, and the foundation stone for the future foundation of the monument was chosen right in the quarry.
Capsules with earth from places associated with the admiral's name were placed in the foundation stone: his homeland, Vyborg; Kronstadt, where his naval career began; Chesma, the site of the admiral's main victory, which consolidated his fame as an outstanding naval commander; Lemnos Island, where the events of the First Archipelagic Expedition during the Russian-Turkish War of 1768-1774 unfolded.
After the ceremony, residents and guests of the village laid flowers at the bust of the admiral on the street bearing his name.
The ceremony was also attended by Tatyana Kulakova, First Deputy head of the Pereslavl-Zalessky Municipal District, Yuri Ptashnik, initiator and patron of the project, Anatoly Kashirin, Chairman of the Yaroslavl branch of the Military Historical Society, Albert Gaifutdinov, member of the St. Petersburg Maritime Assembly, and others.
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Grigory Andreevich Spiridov was a naval commander of the XVIII century, a hero of the Russian-Turkish War of 1768-1774. In 1770, under his command, the Russian fleet defeated the Turkish squadron in the Battle of Chesma. For this victory, Catherine II awarded him the Order of St. Andrew the First—Called and granted him a patrimony in Pereslavl county - the villages of Nagorye and Voskresenskoye. In 1944, the main street of the village was named after the admiral, and in 1962 a bust was erected.