Peredelkino is a legendary town of writers, built surrounded by pine forests, on the southwestern outskirts of Moscow. Dacha village is conveniently located between Minsk and Borovskoye highway. Anyone who wants to feel the atmosphere of the gradually disappearing world, where the lion’s share of literary works was born in the Soviet era, can visit Peredelkino. During walks along the quiet green streets of the dacha village is worth a look at the memorial houses-museums of famous writers, to collect water from the spring that inspired Boris Pasternak, visit Russia’s largest literary necropolis, to examine the empty cottages, which are still not resolved issues of ownership.

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Video: Peredelkino

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Highlights

Dacha settlement Peredelkino is located on the territory of the Novomoskovsky administrative district. Curiously, such a settlement is not listed in official documents. At the same time, there are the railway station Peredelkino, the whole district of Novo-Peredelkino, the village of Peredelki. Officially, the writer’s town is part of the settlement of DSK “Michurinets”, but its glorified traditional name has not disappeared anywhere.

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Before the revolution, these places were associated with aristocratic estates Izmalkovo and Lukino, located on the banks of the Setun River and its tributary Peredelka, also known as Samarinka – from the Samarinsky ponds. In the 30s of the XX century there appeared a settlement with wooden cottages built especially for the Soviet masters of the word. The names of almost all the classics of the recent past are in one way or another connected with Peredelkino. Here they drew inspiration, created their masterpieces. At the writer’s dachas gathered noisy companies or held chamber evenings with intimate conversations, played out love dramas worthy of description in novels.

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Today in Peredelkino for visitors are open the doors of the house-museums of Boris Pasternak, Kornei Chukovsky, Bulat Okudzhava, the museum-gallery of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, recently renovated House of Writers’ Creativity. A relatively new resident of Peredelkino, sculptor Zurab Tsereteli has organized his own curious museum here, which features his works.

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History of Peredelkino

The history of the first settlements on the banks of the Setun River dates back to ancient times. According to one version, the word “Setun” has Baltic roots and means “a deep or wide stretch of river”. In Russian chronicles these places are first mentioned in 1646, when in the village of Lukino, near the Setun River, began to build a wooden church of the Transfiguration of the Lord. At that time Lukino belonged to Ivan Fyodorovich Leontiev, a large Nizhny Novgorod landowner, voivode, “faithful friend” of the sovereign Mikhail Fyodorovich. The Leontiev family also owned the neighboring villages of Peredelki, then called Zapolye, and Izmalkovo.

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The estate that united these settlements remained in the ownership of the Leontiev family until 1729, when Ivan Fedorovich’s heirs sold it to Prince Mikhail Dolgorukov. After the death of the tsaradvorov the estate was inherited by his daughter Agraphena Dolgorukova. Under her in Izmalkovo erected a stone church in the name of Dmitry Rostovsky.

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In the second half of the XVIII century Dolgorukovs allocated Izmalkovo from Lukino, and soon its owners became representatives of the ancient family Petrovo-Solovo. At the end of the century Lukino became the property of Varvara Razumovskaya, the daughter of Count Peter Sheremetev. Through the efforts of the pious countess the Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord in Lukino was rebuilt in stone. During the Napoleonic invasion most of the estate buildings were burned down, but the church was not damaged, although it was looted. Today the church is part of the complex of the Moscow Patriarchs’ residence in Peredelkino. Napoleon’s troops did not bypass Izmalkovo. There is a legend that in September 1812 in the estate park, under the shade of a century-old oak tree, Bonaparte gave the order to Murat to move towards Moscow.

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In 1829, Councillor Fyodor Samarin rented Izmalkovo for his household for the whole season, and a year later he acquired the estate as a property. The family lived in a two-story mansion built in the Empire style. Here was collected a library, including 12,000 editions, arranged home school, where Samarin’s children were preparing to enter the university. Fyodor Dmitrievich’s first son, Yuri Samarin, who became a prominent publicist and one of the ideologists of the anti-creepostal movement in Russia, spent his childhood and youth in Izmalkovo.

Lukino, in turn, passed in 1853 into the ownership of historian and collector Baron Michael Bode. His grandfather, a representative of a noble French surname, left his homeland after the revolution and took Russian citizenship. On his mother’s side, Michael Bode was the heir of the ancient Kolychev family, famous for Metropolitan Philip II of Moscow and All Russia, an irreconcilable denouncer of the oprichnina (in the world – Fyodor Kolychev). Mikhail Bode, who felt himself Russian in spirit, obtained permission from the tsar to adopt the family name and coat of arms of his mother’s ancestors, becoming Bode-Kolychev. Under him, the bar estate in Lukino was rebuilt in a pseudo-Russian style, with “boyar chambers”, elements of architectural forms of the XVI-XVII centuries.

The Bode-Kolychev family lived in Lukino until 1917. Izmalkovskaya estate in 1921 slowly began to “occupy” the children’s colony of the People’s Commissariat of Education, taking away from the owners room by room. The owners sued the colony, sometimes winning the case, but in 1923 they were finally evicted.

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Back in the late 19th century near Lukino and Izmalkovo lay a branch of the Bryansk railroad and the station 16-th verst was opened. In the 1920s it was renamed Peredelkino, after the village of Peredelki, opposite Izmalkovo, or the river of the same name flowing here.

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According to one legend, the initiator of the construction of writer’s dachas near the station was Maxim Gorky, who returned to his homeland from abroad. They tell about a conversation between the writer and Joseph Stalin, during which the latter asked how the masters of the word live in Europe. Gorky replied that his foreign colleagues prefer to create in country houses, in nature. Allegedly after this conversation, Stalin ordered to build near Moscow “residences” for the most worthy representatives of the writer’s shop. In 1933, the Council of People’s Commissars approved the relevant decree.

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The site for the dachas, where they began to build a writer’s town, may also have been proposed by Gorky. The neighborhood of Peredelkino has long been famous for pine forests. Here reigned a special microclimate, favorable for people suffering from lung diseases, to which belonged and the “petrel of the revolution”. For the construction of dachas, a significant part of the forest, stretching from Izmalkovo to Lukino, had to be cut down, but these places have not lost their picturesque appearance.

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The first dachas were built according to modified German designs. Pretty houses with all amenities were small, 5-6 small rooms, but, compared to the city apartments of many writers, looked like chalets. Legally, they belonged to Litfond and were provided for lifetime use on the rights of lease, without the right of inheritance.

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Initially there were 30 cottages in Peredelkino, but after the Great Patriotic War the village began to expand, growing, including dachas of employees of the Ministry of Defense. In 1988 Peredelkino acquired the status of a historical and cultural reserve. Dachas of Kornei Chukovsky, Boris Pasternak, Bulat Okudzhava turned into house-museums. In the 90s, some of the dachas with land were privatized, other properties are still undergoing court proceedings regarding ownership.

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Writer’s Town

The first dacha owners appeared in Peredelkino in 1935, and a year later all 30 houses found owners. The owners had to immediately start improving their “residences,” as the large windows, bay windows, and balconies that adorned them were not reliably insulated. To the Russian cold dachas were clearly not adapted to the Russian cold, and at first the writers came here only in the warm season.

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In the 30s the dachas had only serial numbers, street names appeared in the settlement after the war. The historical core of Peredelkino is Pavlenko, Trenyev, Pogodin, Serafimovich, Gorky and Vishnevsky streets. From 1936 to 1940, many dachas standing on these streets changed their owners. In the houses of repressed writers moved in more “trustworthy” masters of the word.

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In Vishnevsky Proezd, a short cul-de-sac near Samarinsky Pond, the former dacha No. 1 still stands. Its first tenant was Lev Kamenev, a prominent Bolshevik who headed the scientific publishing house Academia at the time. After his arrest in the spacious building opened the House of Writers’ Creativity, which could accommodate more than a dozen families of writers. The Symbolists also lived out their days here. After a fire in 1951, the house was rebuilt, the last owner of the house was the prose writer and ordnonosets Mikhail Alekseev.

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The new House of Writers’ Creativity in Peredelkino opened its doors in 1955. For him built a building for 40 rooms on the corner of Pogodina and Serafimovicha. The two-story house in the Stalinist Empire style was decorated with columns, moldings, bas-reliefs. Behind its fence were several dachas, some of which were turned into wings. In the 70s, a “glass house” was added to the building. Its first floor was occupied by a hall and dining room, above were located cinema hall, cafe-bar, library, billiard room.

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At the end of the 80’s House of Creativity added a red-brick building with rooms equipped with all amenities. Today it is a medium-sized hotel. The main building, which stood abandoned since the early 2000s, has recently been restored. There are audio rooms where archive recordings with the voices of writers and poets reciting their texts can be heard. You can look into the working library with authentic wood furnishings and leather chairs, or into the billiard room, where you could often meet Vladimir Vysotsky, Bulat Okudzhava, Vasily Aksyonov.

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A landmark place in Peredelkino is the Boris Pasternak House-Museum, located at 3 Pavlenko Street. The two-story wooden building stands out with a rounded facade and has hardly changed its original appearance. The outstanding poet and prose writer lived in this house from 1936 to 1960. Here he created brilliant translations of works by Shakespeare, Goethe, wrote many of his poems, including from the cycle “Peredelkino”. At the dacha Pasternak worked on the novel “Dr. Zhivago”, which became the pinnacle of his work and the cause of harassment by the authorities and “literary generals”. Boris Leonidovich also learned about the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to him in Peredelkino.

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In the memorial museum restored authentic environment, you can see personal belongings of the writer, rare photographs, paintings painted by his father – a talented painter and graphic artist. The central room of the exposition is Pasternak’s study, located on the second floor.

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In the dachas on Pavlenko Street at different times lived writer Konstantin Fedin, Mayakovsky’s lover Lilya Brik and her last husband, Irakli Andronnikov. Today’s inhabitants of the houses are Andrei Voznesensky’s widow Zoya Boguslavskaya, literary critic, publicist Alla Latynina and her daughter – journalist Yulia Latynina.

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On Serafimovicha Street, once the busiest street in Peredelkino, the Kornei Chukovsky Museum is located in building No. 3. The house, painted in yellow while the owner was still alive, has a relaxed atmosphere, unlike the ascetic atmosphere of the Pasternak Museum. The former dacha of the famous children’s writer looks residential. Here you can see a lot of funny toys, souvenirs, trinkets given to the owner by friends, colleagues and children whom Chukovsky adored. The exposition of the museum also includes photographs, paintings, graphics. A huge library of the writer has been preserved, which contains about 5000 books.

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Chukovsky was one of the most hospitable inhabitants of Peredelkino. In his house regularly gathered friends, neighbors, every summer in the backyard of the dacha, among the pine trees, arranged “bonfires” with the reading of poems, improvised theatrical scaffolding, on which artists, musicians, children of dacha residents performed. “Chukovsky fires” at Kornei Ivanovich’s dacha still gather guests every summer.

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Hospitality was also characterized by the poet-bard Bulat Okudzhava. He settled in Peredelkino in 1987, having received a modest house on Dovzhenko Street, 11. Here he lived for 10 years. Bella Akhmadulina, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Fazil Iskander were frequent guests in Okudzhava’s house. They later initiated the creation of a memorial museum dedicated to Bulat Shalvovich and his friends, literary sixties.

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The house-museum is conventionally divided into two parts. The first, dedicated to the life and work of Okudzhava, preserves authentic interiors and displays his personal belongings, photographs, paintings donated by artist friends. Here you can also see the table generously set for the poet’s guests, the famous collection of bells started by Akhmadulina. The second location of the museum houses a small concert hall, an annex with a multicolored tent, where “Bulatov Saturdays” are held from May to August. Poets and bards of different generations and musicians performing classical music perform in front of the audience.

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Not far from the house-museum of Okudzhava, at the intersection of Dovzhenko Street and Lermontov Street, an impressive mansion, acquired in 1990 by Zurab Tsereteli, attracts attention. Prior to that, the 300 m² house, which had no equal in Peredelkino, belonged to the Russian-French artist Nadia Léger, wife of Fernand Léger, an avant-garde painter and member of the French Communist Party. Tsereteli rebuilt the mansion to his own taste, decorating the facade with mosaics. Later he leased an adjacent plot of forest and bought the former dacha of Alexander Dovzhenko, where he erected a house that looked like a glass palace.

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In his possessions, the prolific creator opened a museum, where he collected many monumental sculptures, which for various reasons did not find a use, or he did not want to part with them. There are also copies of internationally recognized works. Among the pine trees are sculptures created in different styles, decorative and playful compositions, including on the theme of Georgian folklore, phantasmagoric panels, reliefs.

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Gogol Street branches off from Lermontov Street, where the Yevgeny Yevtushenko Museum is located in house No. 1. The poet settled in Peredelkino in 1969, at the zenith of his fame. Since then Yevtushenko has significantly expanded and reconstructed his dacha, and in 2010, after a long legal battle, he managed to privatize it. Soon a museum-gallery opened here.

On the first floor there is an exhibition showing photographs taken by the poet himself during his performances at home and abroad. In the neighboring halls one can see works by Picasso, Pirosmani, Chagall, Shemyakin, and other masters of fine art. Some paintings were presented to Yevtushenko by the authors. On the second floor of the gallery authentic interiors of the study, workshop, library are reproduced. Personal belongings of the poet, photos, books, records with recordings of his performances are collected here. You can also listen to songs set to Yevtushenko’s poems.

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Peredelkino neighborhood

Not far from the Peredelkino railway station are the walls enclosing the territory of the former Lukino estate. Now behind them is the summer residence of the Holy Patriarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church. This land and the surviving pre-revolutionary buildings were given by the Soviet government to the Church after the Great Patriotic War at the request of Patriarch Alexy I of Moscow. The estate complex has been restored, but it has retained its Neo-Russian style, which it owes to the former owner of Lukino, Baron Mikhail Bode-Kolychev.

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Only the ancient church of the Transfiguration of the Lord and the adjacent park area with a small children’s playground are available for visitors. In the courtyard of the church, a marble obelisk installed by Mikhail Bode-Kolychev has been preserved. It is engraved with the names of the baron’s ancestors executed by Ivan the Terrible’s oprichniks.

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Next to the patriarch’s residence in Peredelkino is the Orthodox Heritage Center. The main building is also built in pseudo-Russian style and richly decorated with stucco. It accommodates rooms for official ceremonies and priests’ recreation. A museum of the Russian Orthodox Church is located on the territory of the center.

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Near the walls of the residence, not far from the railroad station, is the Peredelkinskoye cemetery, one of the most famous literary necropolises in Russia. The ancient rural pogost, which existed since the XVII century, became the burial place of the inhabitants of the writer’s town in the 60s of the last century. Boris Pasternak, the Chukovsky couple, Arseny Tarkovsky, Robert Rozhdestvensky and other celebrities are buried here. Not far from the cemetery, between 2006 and 2010, a chapel of the Resurrection of Christ was built.

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Once part of the territory of the writer’s village was part of the Bakovsky lesnichestvo Moskvoretsky forest park, which stretched for 1000 hectares. The houses located on Lermontov Street are facing the woodland. Today the woodland is thinning, and cottages are being built on its territory.

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Practical information

In Peredelkino you can go on your own or contact professional guides-literary scholars. They place their contacts in the network. Tour guides organize group and individual tours, focusing on the opening hours of the houses-museums, which periodically changes. Entrance tickets to the museums cost from 150 rubles.

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On the territory of Peredelkino you can have a snack at the restaurant located in the House of Writers’ Creativity. Near the Samarinsky pond, on Budennovskoye highway, there is a cafe “Peredelkino” – a charming institution with a summer terrace and a glassed-in veranda. Here, mainly Caucasian cuisine is presented.

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How to get there

From the platforms of Kievsky railway station in Moscow, suburban electric trains regularly depart, making a stop at the railway station Peredelkino. Travel time is 20 minutes. From the station to the town of writers can walk in 10 minutes.

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Another option is to take the metro to the station “Novoperedelkino” (Solntsevskaya line). Here you can take a cab for 200 rubles and get to Peredelkino in 10 minutes, or take one of the buses that go in the direction of Lukino.

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Motorists will find it convenient to drive to Peredelkino along the Minsk highway to the 21st km (5 km from the Moscow Ring Road) and turn left, following the sign for the House of Writers’ Creativity. The road leads across the bridge on the Peredelkino River, with the Samarinskie ponds on the right. You can also take the Borovskoye highway through Novo-Peredelkino, Lukino, crossing the bridge on the Setun River.

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