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Video: "Khitrovka thieves": How Khitrovskaya Square in Moscow became a symbol of criminal life
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Today Khitrovskaya Square in Moscow is a pleasant place for walking. A small well-equipped park in the very center of the city does not in any way remind of the bad reputation of Khitrovka before the revolution. A century ago, not only respectable and prosperous Muscovites, but even the city authorities tried to bypass this area - a real paradise for thieves and crooks of all stripes.
Place of markets, taverns and slums
After the fire of Moscow in 1812, the son-in-law of Field Marshal Kutuzov, Major General Nikolai Khitrovo, bought out a couple of burnt-out estates near his mansion and built a square with trading rows in their place. She was named after his last name - Khitrovskaya. After the death of Khitrovo, the trading rows began to grow and rebuild, their owners changed. Only one thing has not changed: the Khitrov market has become an important place in the economic life of the city.
After the abolition of serfdom, more and more peasants came to the cities for temporary and permanent work. And where there is trade, jobs appear. In the 1860s, a labor exchange was organized on Khitrovskaya Square, where it was possible to hire servants or seasonal workers.
The unemployed had to live somewhere temporarily - numerous tenement houses with cheap apartments and simpler shelters were opened for them. Their owners, naturally, ran their business, renting out living space, and it was profitable for them to rip off more money from the visitors, giving them less comfortable conditions. Therefore, the inhabitants of the shelters found themselves in a difficult situation. Moscow scholar Vladimir Gilyarovsky, in his famous book "Moscow and Muscovites", reads the following conditions of their life:
The square has acquired a life of its own. For example, a hospital was opened in the Khitrovo mansion. The inhabitants of the slums needed something to eat - taverns and taverns worked for them. Local charities tried to organize free canteens, but this did not add to the welfare. And how can you feed several thousand people … Thus, in the absence of money, food and life prospects, crime began to spread among the inhabitants of Khitrovka.
Gangster Moscow
Some cunning people turned into "professional beggars". It must be said that in those years the features of the "beggar's profession" did not differ in any way from the current situation. Gilyarovsky wrote:
Thieves brought real glory to Khitrovka. There were so many of them that each of them belonged to their own "specialization". "Ogoltsy" attacked in broad daylight on trade shops and stole the goods. "Trainers" specialized not only in entrances, but in general in back alleys and night squares. "Fortachi", as you might guess from the name, climbed into the windows of houses. And today we call "screeners" pickpockets.
The criminal world was in sight, and the unofficial names of taverns became widespread among the population: "Transit", "Siberia", "Hard labor". They also had their own hierarchy. Fugitive convicts liked to stay in "Katorga", and the institution was famous as a real "den of violent and drunken debauchery", in the words of Gilyarovsky. And let's say, "The Messenger" was guided by a simpler audience. There gathered beggars, "homeless" (that is, simply homeless) and "bargainers" (small buyers of stolen and un-stolen things).
Bad reputation
Not everyone perceived Khitrovka solely as a symbol of criminal Moscow. The same Gilyarovsky could trustfully retell the darkest stories from the world of domestic crime, describing them as a general phenomenon, and not as an exception to the rule. The aunt of the Moscow writer Vladimir Muravyov told him in childhood about Gilyarovsky:
Maybe there weren't so many bandits in relation to all the inhabitants. But it is difficult to call Khitrovka a prosperous area either. The directors and creators of the Moscow Art Theater Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko made a special trip to Khitrovka to study the life of poor Muscovites for staging Gorky's play At the Bottom.
After the revolution, the place's notoriety only increased. Affected by the consequences of the Civil War and the catastrophic impoverishment of the population. At the end of the 1920s, the city authorities demolished the Khitrov market and built a public garden on the square. And soon a school building (then a technical school) was built on it. The very name of Khitrovka was decided to be erased from the face of the earth - the square was renamed in honor of Maxim Gorky.
The historical name Khitrovka returned already in the 1990s. The building of the technical school was then demolished and the square was again laid out. But, fortunately, they did not restore everything - Muscovites left the former glory of the criminal district for history buffs.
And in continuation of the theme of the history of the capital, more 20 interesting facts about Moscow and Muscovites, which were noticed by Gilyarovsky.
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