Gomel. St. Elijah's Church.

The first houses of Old Believers appeared here in the XVII century, when a mass migration of Old Believers began across the border separating the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (which then included Gomel) and the Russian state, looking for opportunities to freely worship. Part of the name "Spasova" was due to the fact that some Old Believers (Chernets) in the center of the village lived in a monastery called Spassov, because of the Old Believer church erected here in the name of the Transfiguration of the Lord. Most of the Old Believers lived outside the walls of the hermitage in a village or settlement. The word "sloboda" originally meant a suburban settlement, the inhabitants of which enjoyed freedom – they were not personally dependent on anyone.

In 1794, on the site of the previously dismantled Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord, the Old Believers built and illuminated the Elijah Church, which is still in operation and is the oldest preserved Old Believer church in Belarus. It is distinguished by its unusual shape – it consists of three log cabins, placed one after the other on the same axis: a porch, a middle log cabin and a pentagonal altar apse. The middle log house, the largest, square in section, turns into an octagon at the top, which adds volume. There is a bell tower above the entrance in the main part of the church. Its upper part is supported by eight pillars under a low dome. The volumes are covered with curved roofs and faceted domes, above the altar there is a multi–pitched roof. The interior decoration and filling of the temple are unpretentious and not rich. The main entrance is through a glazed veranda (it used to be open). According to some reports, the well-known Yemelyan Pugachev visited and prayed in this church twice.

And Field Marshal Street was considered one of the central streets in the city until the revolutionary events of the early 20th century. In Soviet times, it (already as a Proletarian one) lost its importance, and the area itself was known for an emergency hospital, a music school and a forest institute.

Nowadays, the color of the Old Believers' settlement is almost invisible. But it is there, it is enough just to take a closer look at the individual houses still preserved from those times, located in the private sector, as well as some larger buildings. The second temple of the Old Believers is the Transfiguration Church (Gomel Ancient Orthodox parish of the Transfiguration Church), rebuilt at one time as an economic and administrative building, is now reconstructed and is located on Proletarskaya Street, behind the regional employment center, in the courtyard.

In recent years, the area of the private sector in the city center has become smaller and smaller. Within the territory of the former Spassovaya Sloboda, in connection with the reconstruction of the automobile bridge over the Sozh and the expansion of Frunze Street, a significant "pruning" of the area took place, almost to the very Ilyinsky Church, which so far rises as if in the center of a certain oasis of private houses. Almost like in the old days.