The Kiselevs' estate. On the history of the estate babkinosergey golubchikov, candidate of geographical sciences, member of the union of journalists
“Wherever we go, whatever we see, we feel - he was already here, he saw it, he caught it before us,” writes about his favorite English artist Terner Ruskin. The same feeling grips us in the vicinity of Istra.
Chekhov lived here. And when we read the pages of his intricate stories splashing with laughter, still signed with the name "Antosha Chekhonte", we seem to be walking again along the friendly Istra roads, through the endless Istra forests, again standing by the transparent icy waters of Istra. Still intact in the shallow Istrian waters are the green piles of the bath, the construction of which is associated with fishing for burbot ("Burbot").
The writer's brother Mikhail Chekhov writes about this story: "Described from nature." Somewhere nearby, right there on the shore, with a fishing rod in her hands, Miss Matthews - "Albion's Daughter" ... the governess of the guests who came to Babkino, was idle for hours, "recalls the same Mikhail Chekhov in his article" Anton Chekhov on Vacation ". In the evenings, fog hangs over Babkin, hiding a lonely traveler in the whitish gloomy haze. And it seems that such a simple, earthly happiness leaves with him. After all, this is probably how poor "Vera" thought, chilly wrapping herself in a damp handkerchief, harboring the grief of unrequited love. The testimony of the writer's brother fully confirms this. "The garden described in" Verochka "in the moonlight with wisps of fog crawling through it is a garden in Babkin."
Chekhov's heroes have grown into Istra landscapes, and we feel their presence in these places. This connection is so strong and so organic that our imagination is ready to find any landscapes abundantly scattered in Chekhov's works right here. A connoisseur of Chekhov's art, Y. Sobolev, even connects the later "The Seagull" with Istra places. “Near the house - above the cliff - a platform. Here, according to legend, Chekhov especially liked to sit. It was here that the idea of "The Seagull" originated in him, - he writes.
Is this heartfelt love for the beauty of Istrian places accidental in Chekhov? After all, he was not the only writer whose fate was whimsically intertwined with the history of the "out-of-the-ordinary" town of Voskresensk - present-day Istra. His surname sooner concludes an extensive list: V. A. Zhukovsky, M. Yu. Lermontov, A. I. Herzen, N. M. Yazykov, M. P. Pogodin, Yu. F. Samarin, P. V. Schumakher, B M. Markevich.
Only one A.P. Chekhov took her into the crucible of his creativity. Istra turned out to be the most fertile soil for the young Chekhovian talent. He alone survived her as a writer. In a letter to N. A. Leikin (June 25, 1884), A. P. Chekhov emphasizes his purely literary attitude towards Istra places: “The monastery is poetic. Standing at the all-night vigil in the twilight of galleries and vaults, I come up with themes for "sweet sounds." There are many topics ... ". It was in Istra, with which more than seven years of his literary youth are associated, that his talent was largely formed and strengthened.
Time retained the original appearance of this town until the tragic days of autumn 1941. Walking along the quietest, affable streets, where every turn seemed to reveal the intricate background of the next story by Chekhov, I wanted to call Istra "Chekhov's Reserve". And in this lies the severe pain of her irreparable loss. In December 1941, the great battle for Moscow was won. The exhausted enemy, being thrown farther and farther to the west, took revenge on monuments, gardens and dwellings in impotent rage. He blew up the unique New Jerusalem Monastery, burned Istra, cut down apple trees on fires and mined the city famous by Chekhov. Now the new Istra, like a phoenix, is rising from the ashes. The city is being restored, and the memory of Chekhov revives here with renewed vigor.
In 1884, when Chekhov was already living in Istra, D. I. Mendeleev, speaking of Kuindzhi's landscapes, argued that nature influences human characters in different ways. Istra nature turned out to be close to Chekhov's inner world; he is one of all the writers who have been here, turned out to be the singer of these places. It is significant that other places did not evoke in him a creative response with such force as it did in Istra.
After a seven-year connection with his beloved town, Chekhov spent the summer of 1888 in Luka, and his brother Mikhail Chekhov, already accustomed to the fact that the environment prompts A.P. Chekhov with themes, writes not without bewilderment: “... Life in Ukraine why something did not give him as many topics as in the previous years in Babkin: he was interested in her only platonically. "
"The theme is given by chance," Chekhov writes in one of his letters from Istra. The chance brought him to Istra. In 1880 his brother, Ivan Pavlovich, was appointed a teacher at the local parish school. The lonely Ivan Pavlovich, who had just left the Chekhovs' basement abode on Trubnaya, suddenly found himself a spacious, furnished apartment designed for a large family. With the first days of spring, the writer's mother with his sister and younger brother moved to Voskresensk (as Istra was called before). At first, Anton Pavlovich comes here only on short visits, but gradually Istra attracts him more and more. In the local intelligentsia, the young writer met a sensitive, welcoming and attentive environment. Here, "all the thick magazines that were published at that time were positively subscribed to." “As a writer, Anton Chekhov needed impressions, and now he began to draw them for his plots from the life that surrounded him in Voskresensk: he entered it entirely. As a future doctor, he needed medical practice, and she, too, was here at his service. "
The hospital where Chekhov underwent medical practice left a lot of time for creative observation. Her chief physician, P. A. Arkhangelsky, recalls: "Often he sat on a stool in a doctor's office in some free corner and from there he observed with his soulful eyes ...".
The doctors knew about his literary works, and once one of them jokingly burst out: "... Probably Anton Pavlovich will earn more than one patch for us!" The beginning writer saw a lot here. “The hospital brought him closer to the sick peasants, revealed to him the customs of their and the lower medical personnel, and was reflected in those works of Anton Pavlovich, which depict doctors and paramedics (Surgery, Fugitive, Turner). “He often spent time in the hospital from the morning until the end of the appointment,” we read in the notes of Doctor Arkhangelsky, “sometimes he was late home for dinner, and he stayed with me to have lunch. I remember: you used to go to the hospital at 9 o'clock in the morning and see a bicycle with a huge front wheel moving from behind a cemetery along a birch alley, and on it one of the Chekhov brothers, accompanied by the others; alternately sitting down and falling, they finally reached the hospital; Anton Pavlovich usually stayed and walked with me to the hospital, and the brothers either followed the road further, or returned back. "
Dr. P. A. Arkhangelsky was far from being an ordinary person. "His fame as a general practitioner was so great that last year medical students and even young doctors came to his practice." “Pavel Arsenievich himself was known as a very sociable person, and medical youth always gathered around him for practice, many of whom later became medical luminaries ...
Often, after a hard day, they gathered at the lonely Arkhangelsk, parties were created at which a lot of liberal things were said and literary novelties were discussed. They talked a lot about Shchedrin, Turgenev read into the binge. They sang folk songs in chorus - "Show me such a monastery", Nekrasov recited with relish ... These parties were a school for me, where I received political and social education and where my beliefs, as a person and a citizen, were firmly and forever formed, "recalls M. Chekhov.
We have the right to apply these words of his to Anton Pavlovich himself. Doctor Arkhangelsky, as if summing up his memories of Chekhov, characterizes his further life path in the following way: “He did not become a practitioner, but remained a subtle diagnostician of human mental states, and a sensitive depiction of human sorrows”. The Chikinskaya hospital in the city of Istra not only provided a medical school for the student Chekhov, it also became a writing school, developing in him the ability to observe and analyze.
Already the first Chikin stories of Chekhov speak of the young writer’s keen interest in ordinary people, peasants, fishermen, hunters. Voskresensk was famous for the originality of its taverns. The writer is making a big profit here. Creative diligence is here for everyone and in everything. Anton Pavlovich is a guest of these taverns, and even prefers not to shop, but to pick up some products here. In a letter to the publisher of Oskolkov, N. A. Leikinuon lists his first doctoral fees: “... he treated one young lady's tooth, did not cure it and received 5 rubles; he treated the monk for dysentery, cured him and received 1 ruble. " etc. And not without sadness he finishes: "I put all these rubles together and sent them to Bannikov's tavern, from where I get vodka, beer and other medicines for my table!"
The center of the whole Resurrection life, according to M. Chekhov, was the family of Colonel Mayevsky. Anton Pavlovich was very friendly with the Maevsky children Anya, Sonya, Alyosha, participants in long walks, and described their evenings in the story "Children". In the Mayevskys' house, Chekhov also conceives the idea of the future "Three Sisters". “Here my brother,” MP Chekhov informs us, “got acquainted with other officers of the battery and with military life in general, which later rendered him a service in the creation of the“ Three Sisters ”. The lieutenant of this battery, EP Yegorov, was a close friend of the Chekhov brothers and was mentioned by Anton Pavlovich in his story "The Green Scythe". Subsequently, this EP Egorov retired with the same desire to "work, work, work" as Baron Tuzenbach in "Three Sisters". For many years, the city has kept a legend that the idea of the "Three Sisters" was born here. However, the memory of the dacha where Mayevsky lived has faded long ago, but the legendary house of the “three sisters” is known to the whole city. On the eve of the warriors of 1914, the Chekhov scholar Yur. Sobolev, and local old-timers were able to tell him even the name of the “three sisters”. These are the Mengaleva sisters. One of the sisters was the headmaster of the gymnasium. “To our surprise,” writes Y. Sobolev, “the coachman with whom we made our way through these places also knew about it. He took us along a crooked street and showed us a large stone white house.
This is where these three sisters lived, - he said, pointing with a whip at the facade ... ".
“Perhaps,” Sobolev adds from himself, “in fact, those who bore the lovely names of Masha, Olga and Irina lived here ...
Who knows...
But in the recollections of our trip, the episode with the house of the “three sisters” is perhaps the most exciting ... ”.
Across the alley from Mayevsky's house stood the building of the parish school, where Chekhov visited his brother (1881 and 1882) and where he lived in the summer months (1883 and 1884)
In the days of the Great Patriotic War, it was recalled with particular acuteness that here Chekhov wrote the story "The Appreciative German", revealing all the blackness of the soul of future "supermen". In the fall of 1941, they came to this quiet, cheerful city and burned down the house where the great writer lived and worked.
Blackened bricks and stoves with crumbling tiles now stand in the place where the parish school was. From the entire colossal estate, only the entrance gate of heavy brickwork, with rattling cast-iron handles, remained.
The parish school building was located near the town square and bordered on one side of the property with the local cathedral. Bannikov's tavern also stood here on the square. When the heat subsided, Anton Pavlovich appeared on the streets.
“In the evening,” he writes in one of his letters from here, “I go to Andrey Yegorych’s post office to receive newspapers and letters, and I delve into correspondence and read addresses with the zeal of a curious idler. Andrey Yegorych gave me a theme for the story "Exam for rank". The simplicity of manners in the city was patriarchal. Service here was a calm, homely affair. The post office did not work every day, and it was not easy to send the story to the next issue of the magazine in time. The Vindavskaya (now Kalininskaya) railway did not yet exist, and the nearest station, Kryukovo, (the present-day October Railway) was 20 miles away. Chekhov seeks postal opportunities, informing in a subsequent letter about his difficulties to the editor: “I had to bow to the fat pilgrim. If the pilgrim reaches the station to the post train and manages to lower the letter in the proper place, then I am triumphant, if God does not vouch for her to serve literature, then you will receive a story with this letter. "
And yet Voskresensk did not provide Chekhov with that share of calm and quiet that is so necessary for concentrated writing. That is why, when in 1885 the landowners of the Kiselevs offered to settle for the summer at their estate Babkino, four versts from Voskresensk, captivated by the park, river, ponds, the friendly Chekhov family moved here with delight.
About the exceptional significance of three years of life in Babkin for the work of Chekhov, his brother Mikhail Pavlovich says: “... in almost all stories of that time one can see this or that picture of Babkin, this or that person from Babkin's inhabitants or from ordinary people who gravitated towards Babkin villages ". Let us recall that the first creative successes of Anton Pavlovich fell precisely during these years. The main feature of Chekhov's new friends was that "the Kiselev family was one of those rare families who knew how to reconcile traditions with high culture." I. Grabar in his monograph about Levitan gives them the following characterization: "The owners of the Kiselev estate, a typical Lonz yyan1: 5 family, turned life into a continuous holiday, full of witty buffoonery and some kind of reckless bohemia."
Kiselev's father-in-law, V.P. Begichev, was associated for many years with the largest representatives of Russian art. On his Moscow apartment, arriving from Petersburg, A.S. Dargomyzhsky, and the author of "Tarantas", V. A. Sologub. A. N. Ostrovsky and P. I. Tchaikovsky visited him easily. By friendship with Begichev, BM Markovich lived in Babkin a year before Anton Pavlovich and wrote here his "Abyss" and "The Child of Life". For a long time, being the director of the Moscow imperial theaters, Begichev stood at the center of Moscow theatrical and artistic life. And with his stories about her, he seemed to introduce the novice writer, the "serf's grandson" Chekhov, so far only a "newspaperman", into the sanctuary of high, official art, secular salons, thick magazines, respected editorial offices. “We, the Chekhov brothers, spent hours at his place,” recalls Mikhail Chekhov. The appearance of V.P. Begichev, original and fascinating, asked for an inquisitive writing pen. Markevich captures him as Ashanin in "A Quarter of a Century Ago", and Anton Pavlovich, remembering him, creates the image of Count Shabelsky in his "Ivanov". Some plots of the stories written in Babkin are wholly drawn from the evening conversations with Begichev over tea: “To him,” writes the writer's brother, “Anton Chekhov owes his stories“ The Death of an Official ”(an incident that really happened at the Moscow Bolshoi Theater) and“ Volodya ” ...
His daughter, Maria Vladimirovna, wrote in magazines herself and for many years to follow she maintained a correspondence with Anton Pavlovich. They were also brought together by a mutual passion for fishing.
Her husband A.S.Kiselev, nephew of the once famous diplomat Count P.D.Kiselev, was the local zemstvo chief. However, his cell served more for the entertainment of Babkin's guests than “did justice and punishment” in the local village population, “... it used to be, Levitan was tried,” recalls M. Chekhov. “Kiselyov was the chairman of the court, Anton Pavlovich - the prosecutor, especially for which he made up. Both were in uniforms embroidered with gold. Anton Pavlovich spoke an accusatory speech, which made everyone die of laughter. "
In Babkin, a strong friendship between Chekhov and Levitan is struck. The brooding backwaters of Istra, lyrical paths in the green thicket, hills along which centuries-old fir trees climb, attracted the young artist to the village of Maksimovka, two versts from Babkin, on the other side of Istra, but Levitan did not live here for long. Having chosen a separate outbuilding for him, the Chekhovs quickly dragged him to Babkino: they walked together, looked for hares and in the evenings arranged a "theater for themselves": the river and arranged an evening Muslim prayer there, and Anton Pavlovich fired at him from behind the bushes with a blank charge; Levitan was falling, and with the whole house we arranged his funeral. "
The passion for jokes and hoaxes was not only a curious curiosity in Chekhov's complex biography. Sometimes this passion was, as it were, a self-examination of the dramatic ideas of the future writer that had not yet been realized. Let us remember that jokes and amusements precede Chekhov's introduction to literature. “Almost every day,” his brother writes about the Chekhovs' life in the house on Trubnaya, “he performed in his family, in his own improvisations. Either he lectured and portrayed the old professor, then he acted as a dentist, then he represented the Athos monk. His first work, printed by him in "Dragonfly" ("Letter to a learned neighbor"), is precisely one of his lectures, which he played in person before us. " This feature of Chekhov's character finds fertile ground here, in Babkin.
The day in Babkin started early. "At seven o'clock in the morning, Brother Anton was already sitting at a table made from a sewing machine, looking out of a large square window at a magnificent view and writing."
Anton Pavlovich's talent grew in the business routine of Babkin's days. Perhaps not a single doctor believed so much in the renewing forces of the new resort he opened as Chekhov in his "own" Babkino. There is no correspondent whom he would not call here. Solid N.A. He is ready to seduce Leikin with "pilgrimage" and nature, in relation to which he promises him "something that (he) has never seen anywhere else." A.S. Lazarev-Gruzinsky promises: “If you arrive this minute, you will find yourself right in the center of time and space ... I will send you my life coachman Alexei with a cart to the station, who charges humorists very cheaply for delivery. You will recognize Alexei by: 1) stupidity, 2) a confused look, and 3) the issue of New Times, which I will command him to hold in his hands. There are also friendly admonitions to the architect F.O. Shekhtel, the future author of the Moscow Art Theater building: “Throw your architecture! We need you terribly ... "" If you do not come, then I wish you that your ribbons would be publicly untied in your street ... ".
Chekhov especially valued Babkin and Voskresensky. Everything was close to him here. Therefore, getting here, you involuntarily begin to see everything in some special, "Chekhovian" light. The seagulls flying at Babkin's made Yu. Sobolev believe that the "Seagull" was also born here. Even the Kiselev house seemed to him ... "similar to the house that is shown at the Art Theater in the first act of" Ivanov "... And it seems that now the voice of the old man Begichev, described by Chekhov in the person of Count Shabelsky, will be heard from the balcony the melodies of the sobbing cello will flow. " By the time Sobolev arrived in Babkino, it had already become a merchant's property. Where there was once a story about Turgenev and Tchaikovsky in the Kiselev house, Beethoven and Liszt were played, the "Crafts School of Alexei Kolesnikov" grew up there. And “nevertheless,” writes Sobolev, “here there is a“ Chekhovian ”mood" of that distant time when he lived here, young, so cheerful, witty. " The power of all-crushing time recedes before the blessed memory of the great writer.
One kilometer from Babkino, on the other side of Istra, behind a swampy swamp, on the high hills of Maksimovka, stands the ancient Polevshinskaya church. Even in pre-Petrine times, an unknown builder built its strict walls, a light bell was brought out, and an intricate gatehouse was set up at the aisle in the fence.
The Chekhovs often wandered around these places, and the loneliness of the Polevshinskaya church constantly excited the imagination of the writer. There were services in it only once a year - "on Kazanskaya". A lonely watchman lived in the hut, occasionally showing the way for the lost troika, and he called the night hours, breaking the fun of Babkin's evenings with a dull bell ringing. Thinking about this watchman, Anton Pavlovich creates his "Witch" and "Bad Deed".
Babkin's sunny world lived imperiously in Chekhov's soul. Even in winter, in Moscow, his memory sacredly keeps past joys. “In my poor soul,” he writes to Kiseleva, “there is still nothing but memories of fishing rods, ruffs, tops, a long green thing for worms ... about camphor oil, Anfisa, the path through the swamp to the Daraganovsky forest, about lemonade , bathing ... waking up in the morning, I ask myself a question: caught something or not? ". This heightened joy of life, imprinted by Chekhov in stories, essays and humorous inscriptions under the drawings, will amaze him in ten years. “Recently,” writes Anton Pavlovich in 1895, “I looked at the old“ Shards ”, already half-forgotten, and was surprised at the enthusiasm that I sat in you and in me then ...”.
The memory of the writer so lovingly preserves the memories of Babkin that the slightest external reason is enough for it to appear before the eyes of the writer. Looking out the windows of his office in the lady of Korneev, he writes (1887): "The green trees of Sadovaya remind me of Babkino, in which I spent three unnoticed years as a hermit ...". Resting in the summer of 1891 in Aleksin, his thoughts return to Babkin: "... when rain clouds hung over our park ... I remembered how in such weather we went to Maksimovka to see Levitan and how Levitan threatened to shoot us with a revolver." Babkin's events live so firmly in his memory that he uses them as an arsenal for already unhappy comparisons: “As for my own life, I can safely say the same thing that the priests said when they left you after dinner:“ No health, no joy, and so, the devil knows what ... ".
It is generally accepted that, having left Babkin in August 1887, Chekhov did not appear here again. Usually, all biographies seem to draw a sharp line separating "Babkin" and "post-Babkin". Meanwhile, for another five years in the writer's correspondence, we find indications of his Babkin's trips.
"January 6, 1888" he writes to Kiseleva: “... the way back seemed short, for it was light and warm, but alas! Arriving home, I greatly regretted that this path was the opposite ... ". A little later (February 15), he wrote to Kiselyov himself: "As for the trip to Babkino in oil week, my whole gang of robbers decides to go like this!" On Christmastide days in 1890, the same theme: “The Moscow air is bursting: 24 degrees. I was counting on going to the village tomorrow to see Koklen the Younger ... ”(That was how Anton Pavlovich called the son of the Kiselevs). "Tomorrow I am going to Babkino." “I was in the village with the Kiselevs ...” Such phrases are full of phrases in his letters in subsequent years.
Babkino becomes synonymous with youth for A.P. Chekhov. To be here means for him to return to better and happier days. In 1896, Chekhov wrote to Kiselyov from Melikhov: “Everyone has grown older, became more positive, we often sing the romances sung by Mikhail Petrovich (tenor Vladislavlev) and Maria Vladimirovna (Kiseleva). I would like to go to you, I would even very much like to ... ”. Nice and that is not able to erase the memory of the sunny Babkin. In 1897, Chekhov wrote from here to Kiseleva: "It is very good here, but nevertheless, I would still gladly spend Christmas not here, but in Babkin, which is so sweet and dear to me in my memories."
But if trips to Babkino are difficult, then there may be another connection with these places of creative youth. Chekhov jokingly wrote to Kiselyov from Melikhovo in 1892: "How would you oblige us if you had a telephone from Babkin to Melikhovo at your own expense ...".
Time erases the once strong thread of friendship. The Kiselevs sell Babkino, and the new service of Alexei Sergeevich makes them leave the Moscow region.
Longing for Moscow, which has become a symbol of cultural and active life, does not leave Chekhov during his years in Yalta. In 1903, a year before his death, doctors unexpectedly recognize this "hairdressing city" as harmful to his destroyed lungs and, to the joy of Anton Pavlovich, recommend that he settle in the vicinity of his beloved Moscow. Having lived for some time near Nara in the Yakunchikova estate, he is seriously thinking about buying an estate in the Moscow region or at least a summer residence: Memories of his youth draw him to Zvenigorod and Voskresensk. At one time in 1884, for several weeks of his life in Zvenigorod, where Anton Pavlovich was replacing a doctor who had gone on vacation, he presented us with "Dead Body" and "At Autopsy". “I came to Chikino,” recalls M. Chekhov, “and a doctor from Zvenigorod, S. P. Uspensky, a young man from seminarians ... who spoke in“ o ”and addressed everyone with“ you ”.
Listen, Anton Pavlov, - he turned to Chekhov, - I will go on vacation, and there is no one to replace me. Serve, brother, you are for me. My Pelageya will feed you. And there is a guitar ... ".
Cheerless meetings await Anton Pavlovich in Zvenigorod. He has to look for friends of his youth in cemeteries: “I saw the grave of SP Uspensky; the grate is still intact, the cross has already fallen, rotted. "
With a kind of special warmth and sadness, he writes about the town, which gave so much to his work: "... it is still just boring and pleasant." For two days of Chekhov's last farewell meeting with Voskresensky, he lived in the estate of Zinaida Morozova - Pokrovsky - Rubtsov, which once belonged to the Golokhvastovs, Herzen's relatives, where the latter stayed in 1829. Three kilometers that separate him from the city, yes, did not become an obstacle for Chekhov, and he often visits a town dear to his soul.
We have no witness testimony of how the heroes of Chekhov's stories met their author. Has he remained for them the former “healer and district doctor,” or has the all-Russian glory of Anton Pavlovich stood between them as an invisible but insurmountable barrier? Chekhov himself mentions this sparingly: "I saw paramedic Makarych in Voskresensk!" Who is this "paramedic Makarych"? Is it not one of those on whom Anton Pavlovich earned his "patches", from whom he wrote off his "surgery"? “I saw E.I. Tyshko. He got older, lost weight, on crutches. He was very happy to me ... ”E.I. Tyshko, wounded in the war of 1877-1878, an officer, a regular at the Mayevsky house, constantly wore a black silk hat. "Tyshechka in a hat" is so often encountered in Chekhov's letters that it seems to acquire an independent literary existence. But not only he has aged, everything has aged. “I have grown very old,” Chekhov writes about one of the houses he once visited.
Chekhov was chastely secretive in showing his experiences. He did not even give us a short testimony about his meeting with the places where his writing youth found so much inspiration. But the opportunity to establish his shelter here again attracted him, and he seriously thought about the issue of acquiring a small property in Voskresensk. The incredible price stopped Chekhov, and he recalls, not without sadness, in a letter to his sister about his refusal to live here again: “There is one wonderful place behind the church, on a high bank, with a descent to the river, with its own bank and with a wonderful view of the monastery ... I have not bought and will not buy, since the prices in Voskresensk are now extraordinary. For this piece of land in one and a half tithes with a house they ask ten thousand. I would give four thousand. Already a very good view, spaciousness, it is impossible to build up in any way, and a clean place, unclean, and a bank of its own, you can put a top ... ". The tiny manor, about which Chekhov wrote, whimsically interspersed into one of the Istra dead ends, has survived to this day. She also stood over a steep river bank and, as it were, attracted fishermen and lovers of river distances. The December 1941 fire destroyed her too.
The story of Chekhov's long-term friendship and his beloved sunny hills, hidden paths, raspberry-covered ravines, and duckweed ponds is over. In a calm wheelchair, the sick Chekhov leaves the Istra territory forever, in order to go to die in a foreign land in a year. And in Chikin even now nightingales are singing at night, in the clear Istra waters a lazy burbot is occasionally stirring, foliage is whispering on the hills near Maksimovka and, slowly, Babkin's alleys are overgrown. Everything here faithfully preserves the good memory of the dear Antosha Chekhonte, who loved these places so much and so immortalized them.
B. Zimenkov
("Moscow Region", literary places (series of publications),
State Literary Museum. Moscow, 1946)
Viktor Mosalev, our regular freelance writer, Chekhover and ethnographer, continues to acquaint the newspaper audience with various aspects of the life of Russia's main playwright. The village of Babkino, a former village, is located five kilometers north of Voskresensk (now Istra), more precisely, the New Jerusalem Monastery, on the right bank of the river of the same name, and we will gladly stop at that historical place when I lived in Babkino with my family in the summer with 1885 to 1887 our favorite writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov.
It is known that since 1880 the estate of Babkino was owned by the nobleman Aleksey Sergeevich Kiselev, who held the position of the zemstvo chief, and his wife's name was Maria Vladimirovna. They had children: Sasha (a girl) and Seryozha, they are often mentioned in Chekhov's biography. The Kiselevs are people of great cultural interests. Mother A.S. Kiselyova - to Elizaveta Nikolaevna Ushakova - the poet Pushkin dedicated his poem "You are spoiled by nature" (1829); she married retired colonel S.D. Kiseleva. He served as the Moscow vice-governor and among his acquaintances was A.S. Pushkin. With his wife S.D. Kiselyova Pushkin was on good, friendly relations. Pushkin also knew Pavel Dmitrievich Kiselev, the Russian ambassador in Paris, well, calling him "the most remarkable of our statesmen."
Maria Vladimirovna was the daughter of the former director of the Moscow imperial theaters, Vladimir Petrovich Begichev, and the granddaughter of the famous book publisher and freemason of the 18th century N.I. Novikov. She received a good education, studied music (among her teachers, the famous composer A.S. Dargomyzhsky), sang well, had literary abilities, collaborated in a number of children's magazines, and Anton Pavlovich helped her more than once and made critical comments about her stories. Living in the Begichev estate in the summer, he was closely acquainted with composers Dargomyzhsky, Tchaikovsky, pianist Anton Rubinstein, playwright Ostrovsky. Chekhov listened with interest to his memories. He possessed an excellent skill as a storyteller, and such stories as "The Death of an Official" (1883) and "Volodya" (1887), Chekhov wrote based on what he heard from Begichev. Some of the circumstances of the Kiselyovs' life in the old "noble nest" Chekhov used in his story "At Friends" (1898), and later in the play "The Cherry Orchard" (1903).
In Babkin was part of the furnishings from the palace in French Nice. The fact is that the uncle of the owner of the estate was Count Pavel Dmitrievich Kiselyov (1788-1872) - an outstanding statesman, a participant in 24 battles of the Patriotic War of 1812. Pavel Dmitrievich is best known as a man who managed to greatly facilitate the life of state peasants - he spent a well-known reform of their management in 1837-1841. But then he took the place of ambassador to France, and the palace in Nice belonged to him. Count Kiselyov died in Nice, in his own palace, and left his three nephews large capitals and all the furnishings. Part of this situation ended up in Babkin with his nephew Alexei Sergeevich Kiselev.
The Chekhovs' relations with the Kiselev family - Alexei Sergeevich, Maria Vladimirovna and their children Sasha and Seryozha - were friendly, cordial, almost kindred. “Nice and kind people,” Chekhov will say about the Kiselevs, who have become friends of the Chekhovs for many years.
In his book "About Chekhov" K.I. Chukovsky wrote: “He was hospitable like a tycoon. His bread consuming came to passions ... ". For two decades Chekhov was at the center of literary life, was associated with many writers, painters, and actors. His personal charm attracted people of different classes, social status, and age to him.
Once, examining the sketches of Maria Pavlovna Chekhova, a friend of the Chekhov family, the artist I.I. Levitan exclaimed: "What are you, Chekhovs, all talented!" Indeed, nature has richly endowed the children of the ruined Taganrog shopkeeper, the former serf Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov:
Anton is a genius writer,
Alexander and Mikhail are writers
Nikolay is an artist
Ivan is a teacher of good memory,
Maria is an artist and memoirist, curator of museums in Yalta and Moscow.
Chekhov's middle brother, Ivan, passed the teacher examination in December 1879 and was assigned to the small town of Voskresensk (now Istra), which had only one parish school, which was headed by Ivan Pavlovich. The trustee of this school, the famous cloth manufacturer Tsurikov, did not spare money for its improvement, and Ivan Pavlovich suddenly found himself a spacious, well-furnished apartment, designed not for one single teacher, but for an entire family. For the Chekhovs, who then lived in Moscow cramped and poor, this was a pure find. They began to rest from Moscow in Voskresensk, as in a country house, where there were wonderful surroundings with clean air, hilly forests and a river with fish. They liked Voskresensk, and they began to come there with the whole family every summer.
But by chance Ivan Chekhov met A.S. Kiselyov, the owner of the Babkino estate, and Kiselyov invited him to tutor his children, and this is how the connection between the Chekhov family and Babkin and its inhabitants was born. It began with the fact that Masha Chekhova became friends with Maria Vladimirovna, began to stay for a long time in Babkin, and then, in the spring of 1885, the entire Chekhov family moved to the dacha there.
Babkino played an outstanding role in the development of Anton Chekhov's talent. Not to mention the really charming nature, where a large English park, a river, forests, and meadows were at the guests' disposal, and the people themselves gathered just for the selection. The Kiselevs' manor house stood on the right, high bank of the Istra river, around the forest, green meadows, the silence was such that you can hear the clouds floating in the sky - the charming nature of our "Switzerland".
Unfortunately, now this manor house is not there, but its model can be seen in the school museum in the village of Novosyolki, Serpukhov district, near Melikhov. The school was built at the expense of Chekhov, the third in a row. Note that this model of the manor house was glued from paper by Mikhail Pavlovich Chekhov from memory in 1934 after receiving information that the Babkin manor house burned down in 1929, and the outbuildings and other outbuildings were pilfered for firewood.
Maria Pavlovna Chekhova dreamed that a museum of A.P. Chekhov.
Local residents and surrounding villages soon learned that the young doctor Chekhov, who practiced for free, had rented a dacha from the Kiselevs. To serve the patients in Babkin, it was necessary to create a first-aid post with the necessary medicines. Maria Vladimirovna Kiseleva voluntarily undertook to perform the position of assistant at the reception of patients by Chekhov. In addition, she loved fishing and for whole hours with his sister Masha and Anton stood idle with a fishing rod on the river and conducted literary conversations with them. The presence of a first-aid post in Babkin allowed a resident of the village of Maksimovka, located on the opposite bank of the Istra River, to tell Chekhov that their resident was ill. The patient turned out to be a friend of Chekhov and his brother Nikolai, the artist Levitan, who came to Maksimovka for sketches. Levitan was persuaded to move to Babkino, he joined the cheerful company and began to take an active part in various comedy performances and jokes, immediately composed by Ant Chekhov.
The hunter Ivan Gavrilov, an extraordinary liar, like all hunters, the gardener Vasily Ivanovich, who divided the entire plant world into "trap" and "botany", carpenters who built a bathhouse, peasants, sick women who came to be treated, finally, nature itself - all this created the abundance of plots and well tuned Chekhov to professional work as a writer.
Everyone woke up in Babkino very early. At about seven in the morning Anton Pavlovich was already sitting at a table made of a sewing machine, looking out of a large square window at a magnificent view and writing. He then worked in "Oskolki" and in the "Petersburg newspaper" and wrote generously about Babkin's impressions. We dined too early, at about one in the afternoon. Anton Pavlovich was a passionate lover of looking for mushrooms and came up with themes while walking through the forest. Near the Daraganovsky forest there was a Polevshinskaya church, which always attracted the attention of the writer. They served in it only once a year, on Kazanskaya, and at night the dull beating of the bell flew to Babkin when the watchman rang the clock. This church with its house for the watchman by the post road gave Anton Pavlovich a reason to write "The Witch" (1886) and "Bad Deed" (1887). Returning from the forest, we drank tea. Then Anton Pavlovich again sat down to write, later they played croquet, and at eight o'clock in the evening they dined. After supper we went to the Kiselevs' big house.
A.S. Kiselev and V.P. Begichev sat at the table and played solitaire. The good pianist E.A. Efremova, the governess of the Kiselyovs, accompanied, every evening introduced the inhabitants of Babkin to Beethoven, Liszt and other great musicians. Singer, once the famous tenor Vladislavlev sang. The Chekhovs sat around Maria Vladimirovna and listened to her stories about Tchaikovsky, Dargomyzhsky, Rossi, Salvini. It can be argued that the love of music developed in Anton Chekhov right here. On these evenings, much was said about literature, art, Turgenev and Pisemsky were savored. We read a lot - here we got all the thick magazines and many newspapers.
Then the composer P.I. Tchaikovsky, who had just recently performed with his "Eugene Onegin", excited Babkin's minds. There was often talk of music, composers and dramatic art. Adorable children ran through the cleared English park, exchanged jokes and witticisms with Anton Pavlovich, he was very fond of children. While living in Babkin, he wrote a comic story "Soft Boot Boots", pasting funny pictures from magazines into the text, and besides, he also composed a fable.
So, thanks to the cheerfulness of Babkin's lovely owners, all of its then inhabitants, including Anton Pavlovich, were very cheerful. Chekhov wrote a lot, critics praised him. So, on Babkin's material, such stories as "Burbot" (1885), "Daughter of Albion" (1883), etc. appeared.
Sometimes Anton, along with Levitan, played the fool. Sometimes, on summer evenings, both dressed up in Bukhara robes. Anton smeared his face with soot, put on a turban and with a gun went out into the field on the other side of Istra. Levitan went there on a donkey, got off it, spread the carpet, and began to pray to the east. Suddenly, from the bushes, Bedouin Anton sneaked up to him and fired at him with a blank charge from a gun. Levitan fell on his back. It turned out to be a completely oriental picture ...
And then, it happened, they tried Levitan. Kiselev was the chairman of the court, Anton was the prosecutor, for which he made up specially ... Both dressed in uniforms embroidered with gold, which survived from Kiselev himself and Begichev. Anton spoke an accusatory speech, which made everyone die of laughter ...
The wonderful nature of Babkin and its environs, according to Chekhov, “almost drove Levitan crazy with delight, with the wealth of material, for the soul grabbing landscapes” ... Here Levitan painted a wonderful picture “River Istra” - a gift to Anton Pavlovich. This picture remained with Chekhov until the end of his life one of his favorites.
To the 150th anniversary of the birth of A.P. Chekhov, on Buzharovskoe highway near the village of Babkino, a sculpture by Sergei Kazantsev was installed, depicting two geniuses of the pen and brush Chekhov and Levitan, who met in our Istra open spaces.
In 1887 in Babkin Chekhov read the report of the doctor P.A. Arkhangelsk on examination of Russian mental institutions. Before leaving for Sakhalin, Chekhov met several times with the author and was interested in the philosophy of the ancient thinker Marcus Aurelius. Thus, Chekhov thoroughly studied psychiatry, which allowed him to express his opinion in the story "Ward No. 6", published in 1892, and this drew public attention to the issues of psychiatry in Russia.
A.P. Chekhov loved the beauty of Babkin's landscapes and rested here with his soul, as evidenced by his letters from Babkin:
“I can't describe nature. If you are in Moscow in the summer and come on pilgrimage to New Jerusalem, then I promise you something that you have never seen anywhere else ... Luxury nature! So I would have taken it and ate it ... "(NA Leikin. May 9, 1885).
“... It's a shame to sit in stuffy Moscow when there is an opportunity to come to Babkino. We have great: the birds are singing, the grass smells. There is so much air and expression in nature that there is no strength to describe ... ”(F.O. Shekhtel. June 8, 1886).
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, artist P.M. Sadovsky sang to him the romances of the then famous composer Konstantin Shilovsky, the owner of the village. Glebova.
Victor MOSALYOV, photo from the Internet
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The Babkino estate was located near Polevschina. In 1864, at the village of Babkin, there was the estate of State Councilor Vladimir Alexandrovich Rukin. In 1874 it passed into the possession of I.I. Rapper, and from 1875 to 1877 was in the possession of F.I. Pekhler.
In 1880, the estate in the village of Babkino was owned by the nobleman Aleksey Sergeevich Kiselev, nephew of the Minister of State Property, member of the State Council, diplomat, infantry general, adjutant general, Count P.D. Kiseleva.
The Chekhovs lived in Babkin for three summers (1885-1887). They came here on visits and at Christmas or Easter. Ivan Pavlovich Chekhov first met the Kiselevs.
Brother Mikhail Pavlovich described in his memoirs how it happened: “Twenty-five versts from Voskresensk, where my brother Ivan Pavlovich was a teacher, was Pavlovskaya Sloboda, in which an artillery brigade was stationed. To this brigade belonged the battery with Colonel Mayevsky at the head, which lodged in Voskresensk. On some occasion in Pavlovskaya Sloboda there was a brigade ball, at which, of course, officers from the Resurrection Battery were to be present. My brother Ivan Pavlovich also went there with them.
Imagine his surprise when, at the end of the ball, the Resurrection officers who had brought him there decided to spend the night in Pavlovskaya Sloboda, and in the morning he had to open his school in Voskresensk; besides, it was winter, and it was impossible to go home on foot. Fortunately for him, one of the invited guests came out of the officers' meeting, who was leaving for Voskresensk and for whom three horses were immediately awaiting.
Seeing the helpless Ivan Pavlovich, this man offered him a place in his sleigh and safely delivered him to Voskresensk.
It was A.S. Kiselev, who lived in Babkin, five miles from Voskresensk, the nephew of the Russian ambassador to Paris, Count P.D. Kiseleva. This Count Kiselev died in Nice, in his own palace, and left his three nephews large capitals and all the furnishings. Part of this situation ended up in Babkin with one of his nephews, Alexei Sergeevich. This Alexei Sergeevich was married to the daughter of the then famous director of the imperial theaters in Moscow V.P. Begicheva to Maria Vladimirovna.
They had children - Sasha (a girl) and Seryozha, who are mentioned more than once in the biography of Anton Chekhov. Thus, having met my brother Ivan Pavlovich on the way, A.S.Kiselev invited him to his tutor, and this is how the connection between the Chekhov family and Babkin and its inhabitants was born. It began with the fact that our sister Masha, having met through Ivan Pavlovich with Kiselev and made friends with Maria Vladimirovna, began to stay for a long time in Babkin, and then, in the spring of 1885, the entire Chekhov family moved to the dacha there ...
Babkino played an outstanding role in the development of Anton Chekhov's talent. Not to mention the really charming nature, where we had a large English park, a river, forests, meadows, and the very people gathered in Babkino for sure. The Kiselev family was one of those rare families who knew how to reconcile! traditions with high culture. A.S.'s father-in-law Kiseleva, V.P. Begichev, described by Markevich in his novel "A Quarter of a Century Ago" under the name "Ashanin", was an unusually fascinating person, sensitive to art and literature, and we, the Chekhov brothers, sat for hours at his place in his femininely furnished room and listened who told us about his adventures in Russia and abroad.
Anton Chekhov owes him his stories "The Death of an Official" (an incident that really happened in the Moscow Bolshoi Theater) and "Volodya"; "Burbot" was also painted from life (the action took place during the construction of the bathhouse); "Albion's daughter" - the whole environment is Babkin.
Maria Vladimirovna was the granddaughter of the famous publisher, humanist writer Novikov, she herself wrote in magazines, was a passionate fisherman and spent whole hours idle with my brother Anton and sister Masha with a fishing rod on the shore and conducted literary conversations with them.
In the park, as brother Anton himself put it, "the shadow of Boleslav Markevich wandered," who had lived in Babkin just a year before and wrote his "Abyss" there. " V.P. Begichev knew Markevich well, in 1860 they wrote the vaudeville "Chinese Rose"
Boleslav Mikhailovich Markevich was born in 1822 in St. Petersburg into a noble family. He spent his childhood in Kiev and in the Volyn province. Until the age of fourteen, he was brought up at home under the guidance of tutors and visiting teachers; early literary inclinations were revealed in him.
In 1835, the story "The Golden Coin", translated by him from the French, was published in the "Children's Journal". After his parents moved to Odessa, Boleslav Mikhailovich in 1836 entered the fifth grade of the gymnasium at the Richelieu Lyceum in Odessa, and in 1838 - the law faculty of the same lyceum. After completing a full course at the Lyceum in 1842, Markevich entered the service of the St. Petersburg Chamber of State Property and three years later was appointed an official for special assignments under the same ministry.
In 1848 Markevich was transferred to the service of the Moscow military governor-general with the appointment of an official with special assignments, which he served until 1853.
In 1849 he was awarded the rank of chamber-junker, and in 1853 he was transferred to the vacancy of a secretary under the chairman of the Department of Military Affairs of the State Council. Markevich prospered in the service thanks to wide secular connections, which he owed only to himself - his beautiful appearance, dramatic talent. Markevich - Chatsky - remained in the memory of many contemporaries. He knew how to entertain society, especially the ladies' one, "with his wit, witticisms, anecdotes and singing, and the gift of reading." Talent opened the way for him not only to aristocratic salons, but also to the imperial palace. At the evenings with Empress Maria Alexandrovna, he successfully recited the works of writers, with many of whom - with I.S. Turgenev, A.K. Tolstoy, F.I. Tyutchev, P.A. Vyazemsky, A.N. Maikov, Ya.P. Polonsky, N.S. Leskov - maintained (often initiated) friendly or friendly relations. Boleslav Markevich went on to serve as a supernumerary official for special assignments under the Minister of Internal Affairs, and from here in 1866 to the Ministry of Public Education.
Granted to the rank of chamberlain in 1866, Markevich served as an official for special assignments under the minister, and then from 1873 he was a member of a special committee for the consideration of books published for the people, and a member of the minister's council from 1873 to 1875. A pleasant man in society. entertaining storyteller, excellent reciter, home theater and picnic organizer, he was a typical "special assignment officer" of all trades and was accepted into aristocratic circles.
Count S.D. Sheremetev wrote: “For the first time I saw Markevich in society in the club of farmers who gathered in the halls of the Assembly of the Nobility ... It was a talking shop, in which they were sophisticated in the art of speaking red, which was then becoming fashionable, and here many prepared themselves for wider activities and tried their hand ... A handsome man with an important bearing with his head thrown back, curly with a strong gray hair, spoke speeches; he spoke calmly, fluently, parliamentary; not only spoke, but stood by all the rules of art. It was B. Markevich. Another time I remember him in the palace of V.K. Elena Pavlovna. I saw how the Emperor approached him kindly. Markevich stood in the doorway and, again, was very picturesque. At the same time, I met him at meetings and at public readings with Count A.K. Tolstoy and the Kushelevs. Finally, at one time he often visited S.M. Sheremeteva and read her his story "Marina from the Scarlet Horn". His life was stormy, he experienced many changes of fortune: I do not consider myself in the right to judge him, but I know that reading him gave great pleasure, and his figure was; remarkable. His friendship with Katkov, his quarrel with him, these are all phases; his difficult career, which began in Moscow at the court of Count Zakrevsky. "
In the 1860-1870s. the social role of Boleslav Markevich has changed. Closeness to the highest circles of the St. Petersburg bureaucracy marked the beginning of a new stage in his biography. A secular joker, a womanizer, an amateur actor gave way to an influential official, experienced in the behind-the-scenes secrets of political struggle and who gained "importance in society", thanks to his exceptional awareness, so recognized that even V.P. Meshchersky, publishing the magazine "Citizen" to him "for the indications of the spite of the day."
During these years, Markevich's position was rather difficult, often forcing him to maneuver. Moving constantly in the court circle and in the higher bureaucratic layers, B. Markevich, at the same time, was absolutely loyal to M. N. Katkov: he served as a conductor of his internal political course, a mediator in his conflicts with the authorities and, most importantly, his secret informant. Markevich regularly sent detailed letters to Katkov, which often formed the basis of articles, notes, and even the leading Moskovskiye Vedomosti, and avoided postal communications and often encrypted the most important information (the most influential persons appeared under conventional names).
Markevich started his literary career in 1873, when his "Marina of the Scarlet Horn" made a fuss and made the author himself pay attention to his fictional abilities. In the "Russian Bulletin" Markevich began publishing his trilogy in 1878: "A quarter of a century ago", "Fracture" (1880) and "Abyss" (1883-1884 - not finished). Markevich's works had great success in all strata of society. B. Markevich was the favorite writer of Emperor Alexander III, in public libraries his novels were read to the core. Not least of all, this popularity was due to the fact that many of his heroes were "written off from nature" and, as a rule, were easily recognizable.
A contemporary wrote: "Entering literature very late, already with gray hair, he brought with him a huge life experience, a lot of types, impressions and observations ..." In his novels they saw "a faithful reflection of the era of Alexander II."
Mikhail Chekhov wrote about life in Babkin: “Singer, once a famous tenor, Vladislavlev, who made fame to the popular romance“ Across the river on the mountain, the green forest is rustling, ”in which he kept the upper“ re ”in the word“ eh! ”For a whole minute. . ”, Lived right there and sang his arias and romances. Maria Vladimirovna also sang. EA Efremova every evening introduced Beethoven, Liszt and other great musicians. The Kiselevs were closely acquainted with Dargomyzhsky, Tchaikovsky, Salvini. Then the composer P.I. Tchaikovsky, who had just recently appeared with his "Eugene Onegin," agitated Babkin's minds; there was often talk of music, composers and dramatic art.
Adorable children ran through the cleared English park, threw jokes and witticisms with their brother Anton and brought life to life. The hunter Ivan Gavrilov, an extraordinary liar, like all hunters, the gardener Vasily Ivanovich, who divided the entire plant world into "trap" and "botany", carpenters who built a bath, peasants, sick women who came to be treated, finally, nature itself - all this gave brother Anton plots and set him up well.
Everyone woke up in Babkino very early. At about seven o'clock in the morning, Brother Anton was already sitting at a table made from a sewing machine, looking out a large square window at a magnificent view and writing. He then worked in "Oskolki" and in the "Petersburg newspaper" and wrote generously about Babkin's impressions.
We dined too early, at about one in the afternoon. Brother Anton was a passionate lover of looking for mushrooms, and as he walked through the woods, it was easier to come up with themes.
Near the Daraganovsky forest there was a lonely Polevschino church, which always attracted the attention of the writer. They served in it only once a year, in the Kazan one, and at night the dull beating of the bell flew to Babkin when the watchman rang the clock. This church, with its watchman's house by the post road, seems to have given brother Anton the idea to write "The Witch" and "Bad Deed."
Returning from the forest, we drank tea. Then Brother Anton sat down again to write, later they played croquet, and at eight o'clock in the evening they dined. After supper we went to the Kiselevs' big house. These were wonderful, unique evenings.
In the 1890s. the estate of A.S. Kiselev was supposed to be sold at auction for non-payment of contributions to the St. Petersburg-Tula Land Bank. The estate passed into the possession of the retired hussar colonel Pyotr Mikhailovich Kotlyarevsky.
In 1905 in Babkino - the estate of Tatiana Konstantinovna Kotlyarevskaya (nee Shilovskaya).
T.A. Aksakova wrote: “The daughter of Konstantin Stepanovich Shilovsky, Tatyana Konstantinovna“ Tyulya ”, living with her mother in St. Petersburg ... at the age of 20 she married the life-hussar Pyotr Mikhailovich Kotlyarevsky. It is difficult to imagine people more different than these spouses: Tatyana Konstantinovna, tall, overweight, calm and even sluggish, with amazingly beautiful and expressive eyes, dark fluff on her upper lip, and a lovely smile, was not beautiful in the full sense of the word, but she was accompanied by a peculiar charm. When she picked up a guitar (and I can't imagine it without a guitar), there was already “give everything, but not enough!”.
It seems that there never was a special unity between the Kotlyarevsky spouses, and as soon as, due to a lack of money, the eternal holiday ended, the relationship cracked. It was at this time that Tatyana Konstantinovna met Nikolai Tolstoy with us, and Kotlyarevsky, for his part, was greatly carried away by a Hungarian named Ermina.
For all of the above, the Kotlyarevskys decided to disperse amicably without screaming and crying. From the remnants of his fortune, Pyotr Mikhailovich bought his wife a small estate in the Zvenigorod district near the village of Babkino (known from Chekhov's stay there), and as soon as the divorce ended, Tyulya married Tolstoy and moved to a specific dacha in Bykovo. Happiness was complete ... The Tolstoys' life together lasted only six months and ended in disaster in 1907.
During the fire, the burning roof of the house collapsed, burying six people underneath (Tolstoy, Shilovsky, Perfiliev, Alina Kodynets, a footman and a maid died). Tatiana Konstantinovna and Nikita Tolstoy, who slept on the ground floor, remained alive.
For a short moment, the February revolution seemed like a cleansing thunderstorm. But after her, the October Revolution fell upon Russia. Tatyana Tolstaya hardly makes her way to the Tambov region. There she hoped to escape from what was happening in the capitals. Near Burnak, an estate awaited her, a small house with a garden.
The train approached Burnak slowly. She peered into the faces of the soldiers and did not recognize those whom she had recently saved from death, bandaged and consoled with a gentle word and song. “Now I would refuse to sneeze for them,” she writes bitterly. Everything became meaningless and unsteady. From now on, nothing can be considered your own, even your own life. They will come and be taken away, stolen, ordered to surrender under the threat of prison and execution. Life seemed like a terrible mirage. And there was nowhere to run from her.
Countess Tolstaya learned to go hunting. She returned with the loot. “If I didn’t like hunting and nature, I would have died in the village ... I already have four fox skins from my hunt,” she wrote to friends in Moscow. She managed to exchange something at the Burnak bazaar or in the district Borisoglebsk. “The other day in Borisoglebsk,” writes Tatyana Konstantinovna, “the wine warehouse was destroyed - 64 thousand buckets of alcohol and vodka. The cellars were accidentally set on fire - more than 500 people died in the fire and alcohol. The rest were selling for a long time at a ruble per bottle and everyone was drunk. "
According to the local press, "the drunken revelry was accompanied by gratuitous shooting, robberies, murders, pogroms and plundering of private estates." And it was impossible to defend. The slogan of the day read: "For one drop of revolutionary blood, let us release tubs of blood of exploiters and enemies!" The "exploiters and enemies" included almost all of Tatiana Tolstoy's friends, who sometimes reached her estate from neighboring estates, where they hoped to escape from hunger and devastation. The Pustovalovs and Obolenskys came to her to rest their souls, remember the old, listen to her singing.
In 1919, Pyotr Viktorovich Ladyzhensky, a friend of Rachmaninoff and Chaliapin, and the husband of the gypsy Anna Alexandrova, joined her. She devotes a whole cycle of her poems to him.
Tatyana Tolstoy's garden was adjacent to the railway. Trains full of bagmen and soldiers passed by two steps from the fence. Of course, they greeted the woman walking in the garden in the most selective language. There was no hope of getting to Moscow again. When the landowner Pustova-lova, the mother of one of her closest friends, the same veterinarian, was robbed and killed two miles away from her, she realized that the end was approaching. “Isn't it fun to live under the sword of Damocles? - Tatyana Konstantinovna writes in one of her last letters. "I've gotten used to the risk of being robbed and even killed." She was first put on the hostage list.
In 1921, a decree was issued on the surrender of all kinds of weapons, for non-surrender - execution on the spot. Once her husband brought her a female Browning from abroad and gave it to her. She had forgotten that an uncharged old Browning was somewhere in the table. When a detachment came to her estate and asked her if there was a weapon, she said: "No, you can check."
The soldiers began to rummage in the room and found the ill-fated Browning in the table. They did not immediately kill her, at first they asked her to sing. She sang all night. But the commanders turned out to be persistent and did not succumb to the softening effect of the music of the romances. In the morning, a friend who was driving to her met a cart loaded with the corpses of the hostages. She recognized Tatyana Tolstaya by the hand that hung from the cart. "
In 1929, the house burned down, and by now nothing has remained of Babkin's estate.
/ Our land - the Babkino estate
The first mentions of Babkin date back to the very beginning of the 16th century. The Landmark Act of 1504, which established the boundaries of Goretov, Surozh and Mushkovy stans, lists the border villages of different owners. It says: "The land of Mushkovskaya village of Prokofievsky Vasily Nefimanov and his villages Oreshnik and Babkino" (Leonid. Historical description ... New Jerusalem, 1876). Further, the same document mentions the village of Mikhailovka, which belonged to the village of Buzharov. The surname of the owner of the village of Prokofievsky, Vasily Nefimanov, subsequently replaced its former name, and "Prokofievskoye" became "Efimanovo". All these villages then belonged to the Mushkov camp of the Dmitrovsky district. During the Time of Troubles, many of them were deserted. In the Boundary Books of Andrei Zagryazhsky and Gavrila Vladimirov, dating back to 1628-1630, in the place where the border of the village of Buzharovo is described, it is said: “across the road that go to the wasteland of the Babkino Epiphany Monastery of the patrimony .... to the right is the land of the Osipov Monastery (i.e. e. Yosifo - Volokolamsk Monastery - S.G.) the Bolshaya Mikhailovskaya wasteland and on the left of the land of the Epiphany Monastery the Babkino wasteland "...," ... the Mikhailovskaya wasteland ... and on the left the land of the Epiphany Monastery, the Efimanov Wasteland "(RGADA, f. 1209, op. 1, book 631, fol. 574 rev.). Thus, all the settlements that were at the beginning of the 16th century turned into wastelands in a century and were given to monasteries. However, the desolation after the Troubles and the Polish - Lithuanian intervention of 1606-1620. affected the entire Western suburbs, the population of which fell by almost 10 times. The blooming land has turned into a dead desert, a cemetery in just two decades. It is known that the Polish invaders were also on the territory of the modern Istra region - they then burned the village of Telepnevo, Luchinskoe. Surely, in search of prey, they did not bypass Babkino.
The Russian land rose slowly from the ashes. Only in the second half of the 17th century did the re-settlement of these wastelands begin, and new owners appeared in the revived villages, which changed quite often. The deserted land was also settled by people from abroad, primarily Lithuanian (prisoners, freemen), small gentry, and peasants. Apparently, it was at this time that "Belarusians and Lithuanians" appeared on the Istra land, who went over to the service of Russia, having experienced all the "delights" of the Polish-Lithuanian domination. So, Yu. V. Gauthier (Zamoskovny region in the 17th century. M., 1937) notes, based on the Scribes, that in the Goretovoy camp, in the patrimony of A. Polev, it was possible in 1624-25. to meet the common bean Yushka Savostyanov "Mozharskie lands of the meadowsweet" (p. 163).
At the beginning of the 18th century, Babkino was already listed as a "small village", that is, the place where the patrimonial estate was located. Repeated changes in the borders of the counties led to the fact that neighboring villages were simultaneously in three different counties: for example, Babkino belonged to Moskovsky, Mikhailovka - to Dmitrovsky, and Efimanovo - to Ruzsky counties.
In 1724, Babkino was in the possession of the midshipman of the navy A.A. . M., 1996), Land-surveying plan of the village of Babkin and the village of Efimanov was drawn up in 1769. The explication to it says that they are in the possession of the "fleet of Captain Commander Ivan Ivanov, the son of Sinyavin and the widow and daughter of the Polunins ... but inside of that property consists of arable land 185 dessiatines, wood-burning woods 234 dessiatines 1954 sq. soot., hay mowing 19 dess. 611 sq. in the village of Efimanova, there are 78 male souls "(RGADA, f. 1354, item 867, B-1" s. Plan of the village of Babkin).
For the village of Mikhailovka, which also belonged to Sinyavin, a separate boundary plan was drawn up (ibid., Op. 867, M-39. Plan of the village of Mikhailovka). From earlier documents it is known that as early as 1743 there was a "landlord's courtyard", i.e. this village was a village.
In the "Economic Notes to the plans of the dachas of the General Survey" of the 1780s. it is said that in Babkin there is "a wooden manor house, with it a garden with fertile trees" (RGADA, f.1355, op.1, d. 755). At the same time, this area was part of the Voskresensky district, which existed for a very short time (1781-1794), but soon it was transferred to the Ruzsky district. According to the description of the Moscow province compiled at the end of the 18th century, the village of Babkino with two villages "is for the captain - the guarantor's daughter Rukina and for the girl Nadezhda Polunina" (RGVIA, VUA N 18861, part VI, N 775).
In 1815, after the death of Agrafena Polunina, by the decision of the Zvenigorod district court, an inventory was drawn up of the village of Babkin that belonged to her, which paints a picture of a completely destroyed economy. This economy was transferred to Lieutenant NS Sukmanov for debts (note that the French invasion of 1812 did not touch these places, the detachment of Marshal Beauharnais marched south of Voskresensk to Zvenigorod). According to the inventory of 1815, in the village of Babkino there was a manor house, wooden, dilapidated, covered with boards; there are 2 dilapidated wooden cattle huts covered with thatch, at these huts the wicker yard is covered with straw, there are no master's livestock and poultry. Master's carriages: carriages -1. The master's dishes: 3 large pots, a samovar - 1. The land there numbered 185 plowed forests, wood-fired forests 234 dessiatines, hay mowing 19 dessiatines, in general, the entire estate was estimated at 6,171 rubles.
At the end of the 30s. In the 19th century, the village of Babkino belonged to Mrs. Pushkina. The owners of the estate conducted exemplary agriculture, and were noted among the best in the Zvenigorod district in 1841 in the Moscow Provincial Gazette (No. 48, p. 737). The inhabitants of the village, in addition to agriculture, were also engaged in the manufacture of sheepskin sheepskin coats (Collection of materials on the study of Moscow and the Moscow province, Ed. By N. Bocharov, M., 1864). Soon the estate was sold to A.I. Rukina for 5 800 rubles. (TsGIA of Moscow, f. 98, op.1, d.107); in the Rukin family, it was approximately until the end of the 60s of the XIX century. In the "Index of villages and inhabitants of the Moscow province" K. Nystrem (Moscow, 1852) it is noted that "the village of Babkino" belongs to Vladimir Alekseevich Rukin, a collegiate adviser. In the estate "there are 10 male and 7 female courtyard souls living on the manor's estate." In "Extract from descriptions of landlord estates" according to the audit commissions for 1860, we find that in the estate of Rukin in the village. Babkino at that time lived 29 courtyards at the estate and 150 serfs (there were 36 houses in the village), arable land in total was 180 acres (per capita - 1.2 dess.) (See Voskresensk district of Moscow province, Voskresensk, 1924 ).
In 1874, the Collegiate Secretary Aleksey Sergeevich Kiselev bought Babkino for 19 thousand rubles "from some German" - so it is said in the memoirs of the sister of S. V. Kiselev's wife, writer N. V. Golubeva (N. V. Golubeva. Memoirs about Chekhov. "Literary heritage" N 68. Moscow, 1960). The increased cost of the estate was due to the fact that Kiselev bought it with an almost completed house, with several outbuildings and outbuildings. Completion of the house continued for almost 12 years, but, according to the same Golubeva, "The Kiselevs received the dacha as a toy."
A.S. Kiselev was the head of a poor family and held the position of a zemstvo chief. Despite his modest income, A.S. Kiselev was a trustee of a parish school in the village of Nikulino. theaters in Moscow and the granddaughter of the famous educator and freemason N. I. Novikov. She herself was also engaged in literary creativity - mainly children's stories.
The Kiselevs' estate, acquired and equipped by them, was turned into a place that many people of art and literature willingly visited, and they all spoke with great respect about the owners of Babkin, and left many flattering memories of them. It was with the Kiselev-Begichevs that he stayed in 1885-87. A.P. Chekhov and I.I. Levitan.
The watercolors of the brother of the writer Mikhail Chekhov, who came to Babkino, depict the main manor house, the attached kitchen, the wing in which the Chekhovs lived, and the view from across the river (the album is kept in the State Literary Museum. Manuscript funds. OF-4651).
A one-storey manor house with a spacious terrace and a mezzanine with its main facades facing Istra. He stood at a steep cliff, enclosed by a balustrade, from where a steep staircase led to the bathhouse. Lawns, flower beds, paths and alleys were laid near the house. The estate was most likely built in the 60s or 70s, although the literary critic Y. Sobolev (Y. Sobolev. Anton Chekhov. M., 1916) who visited Babkino in 1915 believed that the house was built earlier, in 40 -es of the XIX century. Sobolev noted that the house "is strikingly beautiful, stands firmly and imperceptibly traces of time on it."
The estate complex, in addition to the outbuilding in which the Chekhovs lived, also included a greenhouse and numerous outbuildings: sheds, cellars, glaciers, etc. by the second half of the 90s. were on the brink of ruin. Suffice it to say that at that time only 4 people lived in the village of Babkino (A.P. Shramchenko, Reference book of the Moscow province, M., 1890). The Kiselevs were forced to sell the estate for debts (apparently, it had already been mortgaged). It was bought by a retired hussar - Colonel Kotlyarevsky, but he himself soon sold Babkino (TsGIA of Moscow, f. 54, op. 165, d. 259).
The new owner of the estate was the merchant Kolesnikov, who decided to completely change the profile of the estate. At first, in the outbuilding, a linen workshop was set up, but soon the new owner planned to open an art and craft school for peasant girls (ibid.). For her, he decided to adapt another of the outbuildings, the project of a major overhaul of which was developed and submitted to the construction department of the Moscow Provincial Administration. A general plan of the area with an indication of all buildings of the estate was attached to the drawings of the restructuring of the outbuilding. From this drawing it can be seen that in Babkin there was a whole economic complex in the form of an almost closed quadrangle, which included stables, a cowshed, sheds, It was located in the southern part of the estate, and a road led to it. To the east of the buildings, the plan shows a park that occupied several acres (TsGIV of Moscow, f. 54, op. 166, d. 419).
A free art and craft school was opened in Babkin in 1912; the Charter of its activity was drawn up, in which it is written that there will be given knowledge on various types of embroidery and sewing skills. In the memoirs of Y. Sobolev, it is indicated that the school was located in half of the estate. Only two rooms still retained the same, lordly furnishings at that time.
After the revolution, Babkino was transferred to the Voskresenskoe district administration of Soviet farms. In 1920, the Act on his acceptance lists the surviving manor buildings, and some of them are named after their last use: a manor house with a mezzanine, an office, a manager's apartment, a 2-storey dilapidated building, a gatehouse with a greenhouse, a stone barnyard with a stable , a pigsty, carriage sheds, mills, a smithy, 2 glaciers, sheds, barns. The building records indicate that the main house had 12 rooms on the ground floor and 3 rooms on the mezzanine (TsGAMO, f. 4997, op. 1, d. 599). In addition, there is an inventory of the furnishings by room.
The manor house burned down in 1929 (Radchenko, Evtyukhov "Along the Istra region", 1934). To date, only the remains of the estate park have survived, which is one of the monuments of history and culture of the Istra region, compiled by the Committee on Culture of the Administration of the Moscow Region.
Another name is also connected with Babkino - the well-known scientist, geographer, karst scholar, anthropogeographer A.A.Kruber (1878-1940). He was born in Voskresensk and in early childhood his parents took him to Babkino for the summer (see "Istra News" of January 20, 1994, article by S. Golubchikov "Geographer from Voskresensk").