Video: What is Kukui, where he was and why did Muscovites go there
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Today in many big cities of the world there are areas dedicated to foreigners - various "Chinese" or "Mexican" quarters, where mainly representatives of one nation settle and their "small homeland" is created. In the old days, there was a similar quarter in Moscow, but it was not immigrants from Asia who lived there, but business and practical Europeans, whom our people, according to tradition, for their inability to speak Russian, always called "dumb" - that is, "Germans."
The history of the German settlement begins as early as Vasily III. In the 16th century, hired foreigners, of whom the tsar created a guard for himself, settled the Nalivka settlement in Zamoskvorechye, but in the second half of the century this settlement was burnt down. Under Ivan IV, many foreign prisoners were brought to Moscow. For the construction of houses, they were given a new place, near the mouth of the Yauza, on its right bank. Nearby flowed the Kukuy stream - a tributary of the Chechera river - along it a new settlement was called Kukui. True, at first the residents were unlucky. The German settlement was also smashed by Ivan IV himself, when the Germans were there, and during the Troubles they generally burned it to the ground, and the inhabitants fled to other cities.
Gradually, however, the number of foreigners in Moscow increased again, and their presence began to annoy the indigenous people: they deceived young people with their customs and fashion, raised the price of land, and, most importantly, according to a special permit, they did not pay trade duties, but could “smoke wine "and brew beer. They received similar "benefits" even under Ivan the Terrible (this gave the captive Livonians the opportunity not to die of hunger). Of course, Muscovites were not happy with such neighbors. The new German settlement was organized by force: according to the tsar's decree of 1652, foreigners who did not accept Orthodoxy had to dismantle and move their homes to a new place and form a non-religious settlement outside the city.
As a result, a small town appeared near the borders of Moscow, which became a real "little Europe". The Czech traveler Bernhard Leopold Tanner wrote about the Moscow "Germans" that the inhabitants of the German settlement, although they came from different countries, managed to get along together and created order and cleanliness here, and Muscovites, according to old memory, went to Kukui in search of alcohol, which here you could buy. In 1701, the first pharmacy was opened in Nemetskaya Sloboda (that lane is still called Aptekarsky), and later the first factories - silk and ribbon.
It is believed that it is Kukui that we should thank for the reforms carried out by Peter I. The young tsar, in search of entertainment, often visited the German settlement. The settlement fascinated him at first sight: clean straight streets, embankments and alleys, gardens near houses - all this was very different from what he had seen so far. Here he found friends who had a huge impact on the worldview of the young ruler. The Swiss Franz Lefort and the Scotsman Patrick Gordon over time became his associates in carrying out numerous reforms. And the first true love - Anna Mons - was much more attractive to Peter than his young wife Evdokia.
In Kukuya, the king had the opportunity to forget about conventions. He dressed in a foreign dress, danced with the ladies, and made noisy feasts to his liking. Peter visited here so often that he even paved a special road from the Kremlin to the German settlement. Anna Mons soon became popularly nicknamed "The Queen of Kukui." Peter did a lot for her and her family: constant generous gifts, an annual boarding house and the Dudino volost as a fiefdom for the mother of his favorite. Historians do not exclude the possibility that if it were not for a stupid romance on the side, Peter's first true love could eventually ascend to the Russian throne. However, she most likely disgusted her crowned lover and simply used him for her own benefit. When Anna's love letters were found in the belongings of the accidentally drowned Saxon envoy, Peter fell into a rage and put the infidel under house arrest. However, then the king relented and allowed his unhappy former love to marry. But friends from the German settlement did not betray the king and became his main assistants in carrying out reforms.
However, even under Peter the Great, Kukui himself lost autonomy and began to obey the Burmister Chamber. Gradually, foreigners who got the opportunity began to settle all over Moscow, good times began for them with the reign of the reformer tsar. The settlement was increasingly built up with palaces of the aristocracy and lost its way of life. After a fire in September 1812, when almost the entire area burned out, the former German settlement began to be populated mainly by merchants and bourgeoisie. Since the 19th century, the very names - Kukui and German settlement - have disappeared from speech. Later Muscovites began to call this area Lefortovo.
Trade in alcoholic beverages, which helped the "Germans" survive under Ivan the Terrible, has always been a question not just important for our country, but sometimes a sick one: The history of drunkenness in Russia: from "Tsarev's tavern" by Ivan the Terrible to the "dry" law of Nicholas II
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