Trubnaya street. A story of three houses

There are two known legends about the origin of the name of the area, and both of them are associated with women. According to the first version, the area was named after the wife of boyar Fyodor Goltai, who owned these lands at the beginning of the 15th century. Allegedly, his wife, Marya, was a woman of extraordinary beauty. Another version says that a gang of robbers led by Atamansha Marya lived in this grove.

The most plausible version of the origin of the name, as always, is the most prosaic: after the Time of Troubles, the Maryino settlement appeared here, from which the grove received its name. However, until the beginning of the 18th century, Maryina Roshcha was part of a forest area where robbers actually operated.

Oddly enough, this area became famous thanks to the cemetery. In the second quarter of the 18th century, the house of God was moved here - a place where suicides were buried and unidentified corpses found on the streets of the city were buried. There was such a tradition: on the day of Semik, Thursday in the seventh week after Easter, to bury all unidentified bodies. Many Muscovites gathered on this day at church houses in the hope that their missing loved ones were buried here.

After the memorial services, the townspeople went to a nearby grove, where the secular commemoration continued, with songs and round dances.

Such meetings in Semik became a tradition and soon turned into real folk festivities. The dense grove was conducive to this, and soon enterprising Muscovites set up booths and taverns here.

Reproduction from a painting by an unknown artist of the mid-19th century “Festivities in Maryina Roshcha.” State Historical Museum/RIA Novosti

At the beginning of the 19th century, local peasants began to rent out their huts to Moscow summer residents. The proximity to the city and the beautiful Maryina Grove decided the matter, and this place began to attract high society. Celebrations in Maryina Roshcha became a real attraction of Moscow; they were always mentioned in guidebooks.

“How strange it is, in Moscow the most favorite festivities of the common people are Vagankovo ​​and Maryina Roshcha,” noted writer Mikhail Zagoskin. — Vagankovo ​​is a cemetery behind the Presnenskaya outpost, Maryina Roshcha is also an old cemetery a stone’s throw from the Lazarevskoye cemetery; in a word, this place of the most riotous fun, drunkenness and gypsy songs is surrounded on all sides by cemeteries.

In this Maryina Grove, everything is seething with life, and everything reminds of death.

Here, among the ancient graves, a riotous choir of gypsies thunders; there, on the gravestone, there is a samovar, bottles of rum and Russian merchants are feasting.”

However, in 1851, progress and an iron monster burst into the beautiful green grove: the Nikolaev Railway was built through the area. Spreading trees and shady coolness gave way to rare birch trees and deafening whistles of steam locomotives. By the end of the century the area had become industrial. In 15 years (from 1897 to 1912), its population grew fivefold due to the influx of workers. Most of the inhabitants of Maryina Roshcha were forced to rent housing. At this time, criminal elements often found shelter here: thieves, robbers and buyers of stolen goods. From a prestigious dacha area, Roshcha turned into a factory, criminal outskirts. So, for example, the expression “In Maryina Roshcha, people are simpler” appeared. In 1912, a correspondent for the Moskovsky Leaf newspaper wrote: “There is no sewerage. The cleaning of sewage is carried out in a primitive way - carts of “golden diggers” drag out the sewage, spreading an impossible stench.”

Khitrovka: labor exchange and shelters

Khitrovka was considered the most dangerous place in Moscow at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. It is interesting that since the 17th century, Russian nobility lived on the site of the Khitrov market, which would later become a famous refuge for beggars and criminals. The noble estates burned down in 1812, and 12 years later Major General Nikolai Khitrovo bought the land. Having cleared this place and built shopping arcades with residential courtyards here, the benefactor donated the new square to Moscow. After his death, shopping arcades appeared on all four sides of Khitrovskaya Square.

Notoriety came to this place after Khitrovskaya Square was turned into a labor exchange.

After the abolition of serfdom, thousands of freed peasants went to the city to earn money. There was little qualified labor, and people had to look for a job for weeks. Someone never found him and sold the last of their belongings to feed themselves.

Glutton at the Khitrov market. Photo: pastvu.com

All these people who came to look for work lived in shelters. “The two- and three-story houses around the square are all full of such shelters, in which up to ten thousand people slept and huddled. These houses brought huge profits to homeowners, wrote Vladimir. — Artels of visiting workers came to the square directly from the train stations and stood under a huge canopy, specially built for them. Contractors came here in the mornings and took the hired crews to work. After noon, the shed was put at the disposal of the Khitorov residents and traders: the latter bought up everything they could get their hands on. The poor people who sold their clothes and shoes immediately took them off and changed into bast shoes or props instead of boots, and from their suits into “changes up to the seventh generation”, through which the body is visible.”

The image of Khitrovka, a place where ordinary people are denied entry, attracted many writers, actors and directors. For example,

Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko in 1902 came to one of the night shelters, put vodka and sausage on the table and feasted with the tramps,

and at the same time they studied the life of the urban “bottom” to stage and create the scenery of Gorky’s play “At the Depth”.

During the revolution, Khitrovka began to destroy itself. Gilyarovsky described it this way: “In 1917, the Utyug shelters, one and all, flatly refused to pay the apartment tenants for an overnight stay, and the tenants, seeing that there was no one to complain to, abandoned everything and fled to their villages. Then the shelters first of all broke down the tenants' closets, lifted the floor boards, where they found entire warehouses of bottles of vodka, and then heated the very walls of the closets in the stoves. Institutions came for the shelters and everything made of wood, up to the roof bars, was also taken away for firewood. The most rabid people continued to huddle in houses without roofs, windows and doors.”

In the 1920s, the Moscow City Council decided to “clean up” the Khitrov market. The Soviet government “swept away this ulcer, incurable under the old system, and in one week in 1923 cleared the entire square with the centuries-old dens surrounding it, in a few months converted the recent slums into clean apartments and populated them with workers and office people,” wrote Gilyarovsky.

Trubnaya Square: “Hell” and “Hell”

No matter how dangerous Khitrovka was, there was a district in Moscow that definitely surpassed all others in the reputation of the most disadvantaged places. Since its appearance in the city, Trubnaya Square has been a place where ordinary people gathered. Since 1590, the wall of the White City ran along one side of the square. At the bottom of one of the towers there was a hole made with a grate, from which the Neglinnaya River flowed; this hole was popularly called a “pipe”. This is where the name of the area came from.

During the reconstruction of Moscow after the fire of 1812, part of the Neglinka was enclosed in a brick chimney. But the pipe could not cope with the spring flood, so

Every year the river burst to the surface in powerful streams, so much so that, according to eyewitnesses, “it poured like a waterfall into the doors of shops and into the lower floors of houses.”

Trubnaya Square and Neglinnaya Street suffered the most from the floods.

But this is not the only thing that tarnished the reputation of Moscow Square. In the middle of the 19th century, the “Crimea” tavern, famous throughout the city, opened in a three-story building located between Tsvetnoy Boulevard and Trubnaya Street. The establishment quickly became a gathering place for cheaters, swindlers and gamblers who were ready to squander all their money on cards. Moreover, among the players one could also meet rich merchants.

Although “Crimea” was considered a hot place, it was only a “purgatory”. The real underworld was located under the house, in a huge basement that occupied the entire space between Tsvetnoy Boulevard and Trubnaya Street. If “Crimea” was noisy with a cheerful Hungarian choir, laughter and shouts, then the “Hell” tavern was silent. Even the entrance to it - a wide door in the wall below the level of the sidewalk - could not be found by everyone.

Pipe area. Photo: pastvu.com

In addition to “Hell”, the dungeon contained the “Three Hells”. It was no longer a tavern, but a real meeting place for criminals of various kinds. There was forgery of documents, thieves' division of loot, card games for large sums - the bill ran to thousands of rubles - and much more. It was quiet here, the bouncers kept order, and only their own people were allowed in, those whom the barman, the owner of “Hell” or the bouncers themselves knew.

“The Underworld” was a complex network of corridors, within the walls of which there were closets: “hellish forges” and “devil’s mills.”

These corridors were underground passages that remained from the water supply network installed under the house at the end of the 17th century. Thanks to such holes, all visitors to “Hell” and “Hell” could quickly escape the raid. Knowing the futility of trying to catch any of the authoritative thieves on their territory, the police did not look into the “Underworld” for a long time.

The revolutionaries also took advantage of this circumstance. In 1863, in the dungeons of Hell, revolutionary Nikolai Ishutin and his accomplices developed a plan to assassinate Alexander II. On April 4, 1866, Dmitry Karakozov, Ishutin's cousin, shot the Tsar. The monarch survived, but the “Three Hells” did not. Karakozov was hanged, Ishutin was sentenced to lifelong exile, and the Moscow police finally turned their attention to all the most dangerous places. The “hellish” dungeons have been cleared. “Crimea” lasted on Trubnaya Square a little longer. At the beginning of the 20th century, the merchant Praskovya Kononova began to own Vnukov’s house. In the premises of the former tavern, she set up a store where they sold building materials, and the second part of the house was occupied by a textile store. So Trubnaya Square gradually “corrected” and turned into a civilized area of ​​the city.

Grachevka: prostitutes as a prototype of the Mother of God

If Trubnaya Square in the 19th century was a gathering place for sharpers, gamblers and drunkards, then debauchery flowed into the narrow alleys and cramped dirty courtyards of Trubnaya Street. At that time it was called Grachevka or Drachikha and was a Moscow red light street. “Here lived women who had completely lost their human form, and their “cats” who were hiding from the police, those for whom it was even risky to enter the shelters of Khitrovka,” Gilyarovsky wrote about this area.

There were women standing near the entrances and along the walls, inviting potential clients and simply drunk people in Russian and illiterate French,

who came here by accident. Once the clients were lured inside, they were robbed by the “cats,” the lovers of the prostitutes. The dirtiest and cheapest dens were located in the courtyards of Grachevka; they were not illuminated by red lamps, and their windows were curtained from the inside. These establishments were most often owned by runaway criminals and thieves, although “in public” their mistresses (former prostitutes) acted as hostesses. In the 80s of the 19th century, the establishments flourished and enjoyed the connivance of the police and the security department, since they were not considered potentially dangerous to the authorities: all efforts were concentrated on finding revolutionaries.

Vasily Perov “The Drowned Woman” (1867)

In the late 70s - early 80s of the 19th century, a young medical student named Chekhov, who came to Moscow from Taganrog, lived on Drachikha. Subsequently, the writer will talk about his impressions of this area in the story “The Seizure”.

In one of these establishments, one of the more decent ones, overlooking Grachevka itself, in the 60s of the 19th century lived the prostitute Fanny. We know about her from the story “On Nature. Fanny at No. 30,” which was written by the artist. Teacher Perov was looking for a model in order to paint the image of the Mother of God in the church, on the wall behind the throne.

In search of a “good female figure,” he and his student went to one of the brothels on Grachevka.

There they found a young girl, Fanny: “Her personality was the most ordinary, only dark red hair, sort of like Titian’s Magdalene, caught the eye. She looked to be about twenty years old.”

For three days Fanny posed for the artist (in exchange for payment at the usual rates - this was the condition of the “mama”). One day during a break, when the artist was talking with his model, the girl asked who he was painting from her. Having learned that the Mother of God was being painted from her, the girl “turned into a marble statue of fear.” “From me... From me... mother... of God!!!.. Are you crazy, or what?!” - this is how Fanny reacted then, calling herself “a lost, despicable and depraved woman for whom there is no salvation.”

A few years later, Perov, having conceived the painting “The Drowned Woman,” went to the morgue to copy the image of a drowned woman from the body of a young girl. Without looking, he chose one of the bodies, number 30. It was Fanny, who had died a few days earlier from consumption.

Trubnaya Square got rid of the reputation of a “bad” place by the beginning of the twentieth century, but it was more difficult to drive crime and prostitution out of Grachevka. In 1907, the street was renamed Trubnaya, but the spirit of Drachikha remained on it until the 1920s, when the brothels were demolished by the Soviet authorities.

The radial-ring principle of planning of ancient Russian cities is a feature of the development of ancient Russian cities and Moscow in particular. From the center of the settlement, the expanding city was surrounded by ever new defensive walls. This was precisely the prerequisite for the emergence of many, including Trubnaya.

Pipe Square: history of origin

“The Underworld” is the second part of the complex, accessible only to “initiates”. It consisted of small rooms - "forges" and large rooms - "devil's mills".

There was also an underground part - the "Hell" tavern, where a very dangerous public gathered. Here they played cards for money and life, drank drinks common among exiles and convicts, and resolved issues displeasing to the government.

It is with Trubnaya Square that important events in the political life of the city are connected: an assassination attempt on the Tsar was being prepared, and there was also a mass death of residents of the capital going to the funeral of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin.

Monument on Trubnaya

In 1994, a stele “Grateful Russia to the soldiers of law and order who died in the line of duty” was unveiled on Trubnaya Square in Moscow. This event sums up everything said above. After all, this square is a bloody place in the capital, where not only citizens died, but also guardians of the law who tried to restore order in the most gangster corner of Moscow. The authors of the stele are A. V. Kuzmin and A. A. Bichukov.

The monument is made in the form of a Roman triumphal column, the trunk of which is cast in bronze. The column is installed on a granite stepped pedestal, the base is decorated with bas-reliefs. One of them depicts a Mother grieving over the body of her deceased son.

On the column is a figure of St. George the Victorious, killing a serpent with a spear. The symbolism of the sculpture is obvious: St. George the Victorious personifies the warrior of Law and Order, and the snakes represent the criminals with whom he fights and invariably wins. It should be noted that the image is different from the canonical one - St. George the Victorious is depicted not as a horseman, but as a standing warrior trampling the enemy snake with his foot.

The height of the column reaches 32.5 m, which is 15.5 m lower than the famous Alexander Column in St. Petersburg.

Every year, a Memory Watch is held near the monument, where Moscow police officers gather and lay flowers - a tribute to the memory of the fallen defenders of law and order.

Sights of Trubnaya Square

At the corner of Trubnaya Square and Neglinnaya Street there is a historical building that houses the School of Contemporary Play. Previously, on the site of this building there was a tobacco stall, and in the 19th century, according to the design of D. Chichagov, this building was built, intended for the fashionable “Hermitage”, which attracted the entire aristocratic elite of Moscow. It was here that the famous chef-inventor Lucien Olivier shone with his art.

This restaurant is also associated with the name of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, who signed a contract here with the famous book publisher Suvorin to print the complete collection of his works.

But the house on the corner of Bolshoi Golovin Lane has the historical name “House with Pregnant Caryatids.” It housed one of the most popular brothels in aristocratic Moscow.

Nearby, on Tsvetnoy Boulevard, is the famous Yuri Nikulin Circus.

How to get to Trubnaya Square? The most convenient way to travel is the Moscow metro: to the Trubnaya Ploshchad or Tsvetnoy Boulevard stations.

And in order not to confuse anything, we suggest that you look at the photo of Trubnaya Square in advance.

Have a nice trip and unforgettable impressions!

Rozhdestvensky and Tsvetnoy boulevards. Pipe area

We have already mentioned Rozhdestvensky Boulevard (chapter “Rozhdestvenka”); Now it’s time to get to know it and the surrounding area up close. But, speaking about it, we cannot ignore, for example, Trubnaya Square or Tsvetnoy Boulevard - these places are located too close to each other. Trubnaya Street, also mentioned by Akunin, also runs here.

The vicinity of Trubnaya Square is one of the first places in the capital where people began to settle (the so-called Drachevskoye settlement). Looking at the urban development and the flow of vehicles, it is difficult to imagine the miserable dugouts on the banks of the Neglinnaya River, which slowly rolled its waters. However, local residents have long called it Samoteka - the memory of this has survived to this day in the names of nearby Samotechny streets. Another Moscow river, the Naprudnaya, also flowed here (until the 19th century).

During the construction of the walls of the White City, a drain for Neglinka waters was provided in them - the so-called “pipe”, or in modern terms, a tunnel. To prevent uninvited guests from entering the city through this “pipe,” it was closed at both ends with forged bars. Therefore, the hydraulic structure, which was advanced for its time, and the area that arose subsequently was called Trubnaya, or simply the Pipe.

Giving vent to humor, we can assume that, just as the ancient “pipe” carried away the waters of Neglinka, Trubnaya Square began to collect everything that did not fit in the city center. So, in 1840, the so-called Bird Row was transferred here from Okhotny Ryad - shops that sold live birds (both ordinary domestic ones and songbirds). In 1851, it was decided to remove shops selling tree seedlings, seedlings, seeds, and cut flowers from the Kitai-Gorod wall that were obstructing travel. They also found a place on the Trumpet. These “new settlers” laid the foundation for the Bird Market, which was noisy on the square for many years, aptly depicted by A.P. Chekhov (the story “In Moscow on Trubnaya Square”). E. Ivanov notes: “The variety of visitors to this market competed with Sukharevka.”

The Neglinensky Canal ran in both directions from the Pipe. The city authorities carefully lined its banks with trees, but there were no people willing to walk under them. The underground gallery in which Neglinka was hidden ran directly under Trubnaya Square, and a waterfall was built at the beginning of modern Tsvetnoy Boulevard to drain water.

Tsvetnoy Boulevard is unique in its own way. It is the only one of all Moscow boulevards that was not formed after the demolition of the walls of the White City. It is the memory of the drained and filled-up Neglinensky Canal. In 1844, M. N. Zagoskin admiringly remarked: “Would it ever occur to anyone that this wide boulevard on Truba, with its green meadows and smooth paths, was not so long ago an almost impassable and stinking swamp!” (“Moscow and Muscovites”).

At first the boulevard was called Trubny, and since 1851, when flower shops appeared on Truba, it became Tsvetnoy.

Tsvetnoy Boulevard became a place for celebrations of the “common people”; thanks to this, it housed many booths and panopticons, “in which fairground curiosities like talking spiders with a human head were shown for a reasonable fee” (V.P. Sytin). In the second half of the 19th century. Trubnaya Square and the adjacent Tsvetnoy and Rozhdestvensky boulevards were lined with stone houses in which apartments and rooms were rented. “Senka, of course, found housing - Moscow, not Siberia. He sat down on a reckless driver in Teatralny Proezd, asked where a visiting person could best settle down, so that it would be decent, and the driver took him with a breeze to Madame Borisenko’s rooms on Trubnaya” (“Death’s Lover”).

Akunin, relying on the same Sytin, describes Rozhdestvensky Boulevard as a completely respectable place: “We got off on a steeply upward green street, which Petya called Rozhdestvensky Boulevard. We turned into an alley.

It was already ten o'clock, it was dark, and the lanterns were lit.

“Here it is, Prospero’s house,” Petya said quietly, pointing to the one-story mansion” (“Mistress of Death”; Petya’s companion is Masha Columbine).

But at the same time, this place is quite lively: “The suicide chose a very noticeable place for his desperate act - Rozhdestvensky Boulevard, from where it’s just a stone’s throw from Trubnaya Square. Apparently, one of the late passers-by, or a policeman, or a night cab driver must have noticed a body hanging on an aspen tree, moreover, illuminated by a gas lamp standing nearby” (ibid.).

And at the same time, the vicinity of Truba for many years had the glory of the “city bottom”. It is difficult to say what attracted the scum of society to these places, so close to the center, more - the labyrinths of passage yards or the labyrinths of Neglinka’s dungeons. On nearby Trubnaya Street, which had another name - Grachevna, or Drachevka, brothels sprang up like filthy mushrooms. “Ineska is a b-young lady from Grachevka, and her zone of influence covers Trubnaya Square and the surrounding area,” says Fandorin about his “cover” (“Decorator”). Some wits derived the etymology of the street name from the word “tear”, putting an obscene meaning into it. In fact, Drachevka - perhaps the oldest name of Trubnaya Street - comes from the profession of the inhabitants of the settlement that was once located here: they “tore” grain, turning it into cereal in grinding mills. In the 17th century craftsmen began to settle on Drachevka (or, as they also called it then, Drachikha), who made “rooks” - a type of cannon shells. This explains the duality of the old street name.

Now, when you read the memoirs of contemporaries about the history of the surroundings of Trubnaya Square, you are amazed at how peacefully the seemingly polar manifestations of urban life coexisted here. During the day, peaceful townspeople strolled here, and at night they were replaced by professional criminals (just remember Gilyarovsky’s essay “Night on Tsvetnoy Boulevard”). Let us also remember Akunin: the transformed Senka Skorikov, who found the treasure, is not embarrassed by the place and settles scores with an acquaintance from Khitrovka: “...at the corner of Tsvetnoy Boulevard he turned around - so, I imagined something.

Lo and behold, there is a familiar figure under the lantern. Whoops! Did you follow from Khitrovka, or what?

Skorik rushed to him, the thief, and grabbed him by the chest.

Give me back the boilers, you bastard!” ("Death's Lover")

Ksaviry Feofilaktovich Grushin, passing on to young Fandorin his knowledge of the life of the city’s bottom, it was not for nothing that he demonstrated Grachevka on a par with Khitrovka: “Old Grushin, long retired, but knows all of thieves’ Moscow, has studied it inside and out during his many years of service.

It used to be that twenty-year-old Fandorin would walk with him along Khitrovka or, say, along the bandit Grachevka and would only be amazed” (“The Death of Achilles”).

The Hermitage overlooked Trubnaya Square, and literally opposite, on the odd side, closer to Tsvetnoy Boulevard, stood the notorious Crimea tavern, which Gilyarovsky spoke about. This is where Fandorina Akhtyrtsev (“Azazel”) brings him: “They turned from Sretenka into another alley, invisible, but still with gas lanterns rather than kerosene, and a three-story house with brightly lit windows appeared ahead. This must be “Crimea,” thought Erast Petrovich with a sinking heart, having heard a lot about this famous Moscow establishment.” There, together with Fandorin, “who for the first time found himself in a real den of debauchery,” the reader has the opportunity to see “the audience... the most motley... there were no sober people at all. The tone was set by merchants and stockbrokers with pomaded partings - it is known who has the money these days, but there were also gentlemen of an undeniably lordly appearance, somewhere the aide-de-camp's monogram on his shoulder strap even flashed in gold. But the main interest of the collegiate registrar was aroused by the girls who sat down at the tables at the first gesture. Their necklines were such that Erast Petrovich blushed, and their skirts had slits through which round knees in fishnet stockings shamelessly poked out.” At the exit from the tavern, the “white-eyed” Akhimas, dressed as an official, is already waiting for Akhtyrtsev and Fandorin, and only the “newest American corset “Lord Byron” made of the strongest whalebone” helps Erast Petrovich avoid death.

And here’s how Gilyarovsky describes “Crimea”: “On a free evening I came to Grachevka.

After listening to the Hungarian choir in the Crimea tavern on Trubnaya Square, where I met sharpers - regular visitors to the horse races - and some of the merchants I knew, I went through Grachev’s hangouts, not the official ones, with red lanterns, but those that huddle in the basements on dark, dirty courtyards and in the dank “vaters” of “Kolosovka”, or “Bezymyanka”, as it was sometimes called.

By midnight this alley, the very air of which was particularly fetid, was humming with its usual noise, in which the sounds of a broken piano, a violin, or a harmonica broke through; When the doors opened under the red lantern, drunken songs began to flow.

In one of the remote, dark courtyards, almost no light penetrated from the windows, and vague shadows moved across the courtyard, whispers were heard, and then suddenly a woman’s squeal or desperate swearing...

In front of me is one of those slums where drunks are lured, who are robbed clean and thrown out in a vacant lot.

Women stand near the entrances, show “living pictures” and invite drunks who happen to wander in, promising for a nickel to provide all the joys of life, right down to a cigarette for the same price...

Long before the construction of the Hermitage, on the corner between Grachevka and Tsvetnoy Boulevard, with a wide façade overlooking Trubnaya Square, Vnukov’s three-story house stood, as it still stands today. Now it has become lower because it has sunk deep into the soil. Long before the Hermitage restaurant, it housed the riotous Crimea tavern, and in front of it there were always troikas, reckless drivers and paired “darlings” in the winter, and in rainy times part of Trubnaya Square was an impassable swamp, water flooded Neglinny Proezd, but I never reached Tsvetnoy Boulevard or Vnukov’s house.

...The riotous “Crimea” occupied two floors. On the third floor of a second-class tavern, traders, sharpers, swindlers and all sorts of crooks, relatively decently dressed, walked around. The audience was consoled by songwriters and accordionists.

...Under the mezzanine, the lower floor was occupied by commercial premises, and under it, deep in the ground, under the entire house between Grachevka and Tsvetnoy Boulevard, there was a huge basement floor, entirely occupied by one tavern, the most desperate place of robbery, where the underworld, flocking to the point of insensibility, had fun from the hangouts of Grachevka, the alleys of Tsvetnoy Boulevard, and even from the “Shipovskaya Fortress” itself, the lucky ones came running after particularly successful dry and wet affairs, betraying even their hangout “Polyakovsky tavern” on the Yauza, Akhitrov’s “Katorga” seemed like a boarding house for noble maidens in comparison with “Hell” "

For many years, before the eyes of the Hermitage, which had already entered into glory, the drunken and noisy “Crimea” hummed and “Hell” was ominously silent, from the dungeon of which not a single sound came from the street. Back in the seventies and eighties, it was the same as before, and perhaps even worse, because over twenty years the dirt had further saturated the floor and walls, and during this time the gas jets had completely smoked the ceilings, which had settled significantly and cracked, especially in the underground passage from the common huge hall from the entrance from Tsvetnoy Boulevard to the exit to Grachevka” (“Moscow and Muscovites”).

This passage depicting the morals of Grachevka (and Truba), among other things, dispels the belief, popularized by who knows who among amateur Muscovite scholars, that the “Hermitage” and “Crimea” with “Hell” were located in the same building. Of course, the words “long before the Hermitage restaurant” are balanced by a story about a parallel restaurant and tavern.

One of the reasons for this misconception is that the surroundings of Trubnaya Square underwent dramatic changes during the years of Soviet power. We can say that the new government “revived” the tradition of pushing onto Pipe everything that was no longer suitable for the center, but nevertheless continued to bring benefits to the city. For example, in 1930 the Okhotny Ryad market was moved here - this is how the famous Central Market arose in Moscow... Nevertheless, we must pay tribute to those who put an end to the slums of Drachevka and the brothels of Tsvetnoy Boulevard. There is no trace left of the Crimea tavern, and it is difficult to establish exactly where it was located.

But let's return to Akunin's novels. In them, a large role is given to transport, and in the passages devoted to the surroundings of Truba, we read a lot of evidence of this. There were several cab stands here. “On Rozhdestvensky Boulevard Zaika stopped the van” (“Mistress of Death”), writes someone “F. F. Veltman, pathologist, doctor of medicine” is a voluntary police assistant, also a kind of amateur detective (“Zaika” is an operational nickname assigned by him for Fandorin’s convenience). The moral level of this “guardian of justice” characterizes Veltman’s cunning plan to expose the chairman of the suicide club, Prospero: “The owner will personally offer the Stutterer a cup of poisoned wine... For the sake of the interests of the cause, the Stutterer will have to be sacrificed...

When Zaika drinks poison and goes out to die on the boulevard... I will call the policeman who always stands on Trubnaya Square. The fact of death from poisoning will be registered by an official representative of the authorities, and if Zaika has not yet lost consciousness by the time the policeman appears and if he has even a drop of conscience, then he will have time to testify...” Rozhdestvensky is meant by the boulevard.

Fandorin himself travels around these parts in a self-constructed “outlandish three-wheeled carriage, moving without any horse traction,” as the same Veltman defines it. The narrow-minded Veltman and the car, to which Fandorin gave the name “Flying Carpet,” are the “heroes” of two novels in the series - “Death’s Lover” and “Death’s Mistress.” The similarity of their names is not accidental - the events described develop in parallel, and we seem to be looking at the actions of Fandorin, simultaneously unraveling two cases, from different angles. Such a rare type of plot organization allows the reader to gain additional pleasure by comparing both texts. For example, Fandorin with his protégé Senka Skorikov, portraying the “Jewish boy Motya,” visits Veltman (“Death’s Lover”): “The doctor was puny, disheveled and kept blinking his eyes. Staring at Senka with fear, in response to the polite “good health” he nodded vaguely.

Who is this? - Skorik asked the engineer in a whisper when the fly, groaning, began to sit down.

It doesn’t matter,” Erast Petrovich answered gloomily. - This is a character from a completely different story, which has nothing to do with our current affairs. We are going to Rozhdestvensky Boulevard. March-march!

And here is the continuation of this trip, but from the novel “Death’s Mistress,” this time in the perception of Veltman himself: “We got to Rozhdestvensky Boulevard by motor. I sat between Genji and his strange companion, clutching the railing with both hands. The nightmare unit was controlled by a Jew..."

Now let’s remember an event that is not directly related to Fandorin, but is nevertheless of interest to us and fits well into the topic. In the house on the corner of Rozhdestvensky Boulevard and Maly Kiselny Lane in 1881, the wealthy tea merchant Alexei Semenovich Gubkin died. A rumor spread throughout Moscow that rich “goodies” would be distributed during the wake. Professional beggars and simply poor people from all over the city gathered at the Gubkin Gate at the appointed hour. The police failed to organize order in the excited crowd, and 10 people died in the ensuing stampede. Before a similar tragedy on Khodynka (1896), Muscovites talked about what happened as one of the most terrible episodes in the life of the city. Until now, many researchers, when mentioning Khodynka, draw a parallel between it and Gubkin’s funeral. However, on March 9, 1953, another tragedy occurred on Trubnaya Square, the descriptions of which are not so widely known and not so popular, but the horrors of Khodynka pale in comparison.

An attempt was made to streamline the flow of people flocking to the Hall of Columns to bid farewell to the body of I. Stalin displayed there - some of the streets were blocked, and trucks stood along those left for passage to block the passage. On Trubnaya Square this “corridor” turned, forming a corner. The same thing happened here as happened 57 years earlier on Khodynka. This is what Oleg Kuznetsov, who found himself in the thick of events that day, told a correspondent of the newspaper “Facts and Comments” in 2002: “The screams were heard more and more often. I saw how soldiers dragged children and women, pressed up against the vehicles of the “gorge,” by their raised arms, and placed them next to them in the backs. It was possible to leave the square by crawling under cars, but not everyone knew about it and not everyone could do it. I was no longer interested in what was happening around me; I realized that I had to save myself. My chest was compressed, I, like many others, began to choke... When suddenly something completely incomprehensible, almost mystical, began: the dense, compressed crowd began to slowly sway. At first, the frightened, screaming people leaned forward, as it seemed to me, up to 45 degrees above the ground, and then leaned back in the same way.

After two or three strong bends, unnatural for a person, I felt that if I didn’t immediately break out of this hellish stream, I would be finished. That's when I first learned what crowd panic was. People became infected with it from each other... The next morning, a huge pile of different shoes lay on the square...

...I was advised not to go down to Trubnaya Square, assuring me that they wouldn’t let me in there - they supposedly had been washing it since the night... That morning they were washing “corpse square,” as Muscovites called it in a whisper for some time. There were persistent rumors that several hundred people died at the leader's funeral funeral. It is difficult today to say with certainty about the number of victims. But I knew one thing for sure: if someone fell from the compressed human layer onto the asphalt, he had no chance to get up - the person was simply trampled.”

As we see, in some ways History repeats itself...

The next point of the excursion awaits us. We walk along Rozhdestvensky Boulevard, not forgetting to take a look at Bolshaya Lubyanka Street on Sretensky Gate Square. It was Amalia-Cleopatra’s chaise (“Azazel”) who turned towards her in the episode when Fandorin tries to find out the beauty’s address. Following the phaeton, Erast Petrovich notes “how it turns towards Bolshaya Lubyanka.” You know that the chase led Fandorin to one of the alleys adjacent to Sretenka Street. This is where our path lies.