Peredelkino

Peredelkino

Peredelkino dacha complex located not far from Moscow is a cult place for three generations of people raised in the former USSR. It is a cult place because writers and poets famous in Russia and abroad lived and worked here in different periods of time. Babel, Pasternak, Ehrenburg, Ilf and Petrov - all of them had their dachas here.

The plan of a dacha complex in Peredelkino belonged to M. Gorky. About 100 writers supported his idea. However, they were lack of money to create a full-fledged dacha cooperative. The construction took much time. Besides, the government was not going to subsidize the dacha construction for creative intelligentsia. Eventually Gorky managed to convince the government leaders in necessity of financing the construction of "writers village". So it took 5 years in order the first 30 top writers were able to finish their dacha construction. So the year of 1935 is considered to be the year of the writers village creation.

In 2005 Peredelkino celebrated its 70th anniversary since the day it was constructed. During this period of time many happy and sad events took place here. In 1937 – 1938 many of the Peredelkino summer residents were subjected to repression and executed by shooting. With the beginning of World War II in 1941 the complex became completely empty as almost all of its residents were at the front, the other were evacuated.

In postwar years the complex went on being constructed. As usual there were many interesting people and bright writers here. In 1960's Peredelkino became the centre of literary bohemia. Bulat Okudzhava sang his songs and Vasily Aksyonov read his first novels here.

Nowadays one can meet some of the representatives of "men of the sixties" in Peredelkino. The poet Alexander Voznesenski who once wasn’t afraid of arguing with the general secretary Khrushchev at one of the national plenums still lives here. Not so long ago there was opened Bulat Okudzhava’s State Memorial Museum and the House-Museum of Boris Pasternak, the Nobel Prize Laureate.

People were success to preserve the atmosphere of creative freedom and peace that was common for Peredelkino in the very beginning of its creation.