20 interesting facts about Moscow and Muscovites, which were noticed by Gilyarovsky

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

On March 12, 1918, Moscow was returned to the status of the capital of Russia, which until then had belonged to Petrograd. What was the capital of those times, Vladimir Gilyarovsky vividly told in his book "Moscow and Muscovites". We have collected 20 quotes from this book that allow you to plunge into the life of the capital of the beginning of the century. Perhaps, in old Moscow, someone will recognize today's Moscow as well.

1. About road traffic

At the end of the last century, they had no idea about the rules of traffic in the capital: they did not recognize either the right or the left side, they drove - whoever wanted, grappled, tumbled … There was an incessant noise all day long.

2. About laws

When Eliseev handed over the third floor of this house under the same roof as the store to the commercial court, the symbols of the law were erected there, as in all courts: a mirror with the decree of Peter I and a gilded pillar with a crown at the top, about which two lines circulated a long time ago: "There is no law in Russia, there is a pillar, and there is a crown on the pillar."

3. About drinking establishments

The same was the tavern and "Arsentich" in Cherkassky lane, famous for the Russian table, ham, sturgeon and beluga, which were served as an appetizer to vodkes with horseradish and red bread vinegar, and nowhere was it tastier. Arsentich's cabbage soup was amazing.

4. About firefighters

There were, of course, real people who suffered from the fire, with genuine testimonies from the volost, and sometimes from the district police, but these were called "fire victims" in police reports, and fake ones were called "firefighters". This is where this, offensive to old firefighters, word came from: "firemen!"

5. About the bath

"Moscow is not Moscow without baths. The only place that no Muscovite has passed was the bathhouse. Moreover, they all had a permanent population, their own, who perceived themselves to be real Muscovites."

6. About utilities

Trubnaya Square and Neglinny Proezd almost to the very Kuznetsky Bridge were then flooded with every downpour, and flooded so that water gushed like a waterfall at the doors of shops and into the lower floors of houses in this area. This was due to the fact that the never-cleaned underground Neglinka cesspool, drawn from Samoteka under Tsvetnoy Boulevard, Neglinny Proezd, Teatralnaya Square and under the Alexandrovsky Garden up to the Moskva River, did not contain the water that overflowed it in rainy weather. It was positively a disaster, but the "city fathers" paid no attention to it.

7. About the summer season

Summer … Empty in Moscow … Everyone went to the estates … Empty in the apartment …

8. About public catering

Opposite the gates of Okhotny Ryad, from Tverskaya Street, stretches a narrow Patchwork Lane, turning into Obzhorny, which crooked towards Manezh and Mokhovaya; the lower floors of the shabby houses in it were occupied mainly by "pyrks". That was the name of the taverns, where they served: for three kopecks - a cup of cabbage cabbage soup, without meat; for a nickel - green-gray noodles from the "bottom" of linseed or hemp oil, fried or stewed potatoes.

9. About crime

"Ogoltsy" appeared at the bazaars, threw themselves on the tradeswomen in a crowd and, knocking over a tray with goods, or even breaking a tent, grabbed the goods and disappeared all over the place. The "trainers" stood a higher degree, their business was to snatch saks and suitcases from the top of the cabins on the avenues of boulevards, in back alleys and on dark station squares …, noiselessly climbing into the pockets of a man in a buttoned coat, jamming and stuffing it in the crowd. And all over the square - beggars, beggars … (About Khitrovka)

10. About street trading

The flea market occupied the entire Old Square, between Ilyinka and Nikolskaya, and partly New - between Ilyinka and Varvarka. On one side is the Chinese Wall, on the other, a row of tall buildings occupied by commercial premises. On the upper floors there are offices and warehouses, and in the lower floors there are shops with ready-made dresses and shoes. All these goods are cheap, mainly Russian: fur coats, underwear, harem pants or coats, and jacket and frock-coat pairs, sewn baggy for common people. There was, however, a "modier" with a pretense of chic, sewn by the same tailors.

11. About morals

The most frightening was the Maly Kolosov lane, leaving Grachevka on Tsvetnoy Boulevard, which was completely occupied by half-ruble brothels of the last analysis. The entrances of these establishments, facing the street, were illuminated by the obligatory red lantern, and in the backyards the dirtiest secret dens of prostitution huddled, where no lanterns were supposed to be used and where the windows were hung from the inside. It is characteristic that dogs were not kept in all such yards …

12. About wipers

The watchmen on duty and the janitors, who were establishing order, approached each cab driver who was approaching, and he thrust a dime prepared in advance into their hand.

13. About the quirks of the rich

All the nobility, administrative and merchant, gathered for dinner. Before dinner, the guests were invited to the hall to see the gift that the husband (merchant Khludov, author's note) made to his young wife. They brought in a huge box of fathoms, two lengths, and the workers tore off the tire. Khludov, with an ax in his hands, tried with them himself. They knocked off the lid, turned it upside down and lifted it up. A huge crocodile fell out of the box.

14. About the student canteen

A two-course dinner with a piece of beef in the soup cost seventeen kopecks, and without beef eleven kopecks. For the second, cutlets, then porridge, then something from potatoes, and sometimes a full plate of cranberry jelly and a glass of milk. Cranberries then cost three kopecks a pound, and milk two kopecks a glass.

15. About night clubs

Especially famous were the dinners to which the revelry Moscow came after the performances. The halls were filled with dress coats, tuxedos, uniforms and ladies in open dresses sparkling with diamonds. The orchestra thundered in the choir, champagne like a river … The classrooms are overflowing. Date numbers were trading in full swing! From five to twenty-five rubles for a few hours. Someone who has not been there! And everything was kept secret; the police did not interfere in this matter - you will even stumble upon the bosses there!

16. About fires

Only in 1908 did the first fire engine appear in the fire station on Prechistenka. It was a small car with a sliding ladder attached at the top to rescue those who died from the upper floors, but not higher than the third. In this car, the first to rush to the fire was a fire major with a fire master, a paramedic and several brave men - firefighters-axes. Then there were no skyscrapers, and all of Moscow was visible from the tower at a glance. On the watchtower, under the balls, a sentry walked day and night.

17. About beauty salons

The furnishings of the first-class hairdressers were modeled on the finest in Paris. Everything is done abroad, from the best material. Perfumes from London and Paris … Fashion magazines urgently from Paris … In the ladies' halls there are great hairdressers, people of creative Kuafer imagination, experts in styles, psychology and talkers.

18. About students

The students for the most part consisted of the provincial poor, of commoners who had nothing to do with the townsfolk, and huddled in the "Latin Quarter", between two Bronnaya and Palashevsky lane, where unpaved streets were filled with wooden construction sites with small apartments.

19. About taxi drivers

The cabman is in the inn and eats and warms up. He has no other rest, no other food. Life dry. Tea and tripe with cucumbers. Occasionally a glass of vodka, but never drunkenness. Two times a day, and in frost and three times, he eats and warms himself in the winter or dries a wet dress on himself in the fall, and all this pleasure costs him sixteen kopecks: five kopecks tea, eat up to the dime for a dime, and a kopeck to the janitor for being a horse give him a drink and keep an eye on the deck.

20. About people

And all because there used to be people in Moscow, but now there is a public.

Unique black-and-white newsreel of snow-covered Moscow, filmed over 100 years ago in 1908, makes it possible to plunge into the atmosphere of old Moscow, about which Gilyarovsky writes. No less valuable to us and gorgeous color photographs of pre-revolutionary Russiamade by Proskudin-Gorsky, as well as color photographs of pre-revolutionary Russia in 1896taken by Czech photographer František Kratki, who came to the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II.

Muscovites dream, like all people on the planet. What do modern Russians want, who have lived to be 100 years old? you can find out from the photo report of the Danish photographer - 230 shots, which capture people of all ages.