Museum of Natural History Yesterday I invited my seven-year-old daughter to go to the Museum of natural history. Although this place is one of the top liners among other parents, we have not been there before. This museum was founded in 1907 and named after Charles Darwin, an English scientist whose theory of Evolution was popular in those times and, then, became a part of the Soviet materialistic ideology. Today the exposition of the museum is also built according to this theory. It offers a lot of information about a genesis of life and a variety of living beings on the Earth. We saw a number of stuffed animals, that delighted my daughter and depressed me. Their superficial naturality combined with empty glassy eyes communicated to me an oppressive feeling of doom. I assume that in the past hunting and making such “statues” could inspire and motivate natural studies, but today such methods seem to be cruel. Besides stuffed animals there were many paintings on the walls. Made in rather rude manner they did not attract nor me neither my daughter. As I can judge, children usually don’t appreciate observing glass cases with exhibits, but they love to communicate with them. Children usually prefer active participation to passivity.In the Darwin museum there were not so many interactive things, but each of such things attracted little visitors. For example, there was a balance that counted one’s weight not in kilograms or pounds, but in parrots, snakes, dogs, elephants, and whales. There were buttons to push and to listen birds’ or frogs’ voices. Finally there were statues of dinosaurs that were moving and growling. Even though my daughter and I had a good and interesting day, I felt a little bit disappointed. I expected to see something more than this. The most impressive thing for me was a building of the museum. Constructed in the late 1980s it is a typical example of the Soviet brutalism. Massive and monolith pilasters are divided by tight windows. A heavy pyramid on the top reminds examples of the ancient architecture or even primitive huts and caves. By its look this building preaches fundamentality and seriousness of the scientific studies.

Nécrologie. Ce matin j'ai lu que Vladimir Yankilevsky, un de plus célébres artistes soviétiques, est mort le 4 janvier. J’ai toujours voulu faire connaissance avec lui, parler avec lui de son art et de la vie artistique des années 1960s et 1970s dont il était témoin et participant. Hélas, j’ai perdu ce chance et mon désir sera jamais réalisé. Aujourd’hui je voudrai écrire quelques mots à propos de son art. Pendant la période soviétique, Yankilevsky créait les tableaux, qui rappelaient les travaux des surréalistes et tout d’abord de Joan Miro. Avec des formes abstracts Yankilevsky exprimait les sentiments et expériences humaines. Comme un philosoph il réfléchit de la place des hommes dans l’univers. Des tous ses travaux je préfère un pentaptyque daté 1980, qui s'appelle “Adam et Eve”. Ses première, troisième et cinquième parties sont les paysages abstractes, tandis que les deux autres sont les installations construit des sculptures et des objets de la vie quotidienne soviétique. Ses peintures n'étaient pas typiques pour la scène artistique de Moscou des années 60s, voila pourquoi Yankilevsky participait dans les expositions publiques trés rarement. dans les années 1980 il a quitté l’Union Soviétique et passé la reste de sa vie à New York et à Paris.

Bonjour Bonjour à tout le monde! Je m'appelle Vera et j’habite à Moscou en Russie avec mon mari et ma fille de sept ans. Mon mari est peintre, ma fille va à l’école, et moi, je suis historienne d'art et travaille sur ma thèse qui est consacrée à la peinture de la période soviétique. Il y a environ dix ans que j'apprenais le français. Mes études ne durait pas trop long - sept ou huit moins - mais ils me plaisaient beaucoup. Depuis lors, je n'ai presque pas étudié le français et j'ai oublié beaucoup des choses. Ça m’afflige! Des temps en temps je regarde des cinémas en français ou lis des livres, mais c’est pas accès et je me sens très agitée quand j'essaie d’exprimer mes pensées et mes sentiments. Donc j’ai decidé a faire des courts notes chaque jour. Je serai très reconnaissant pour les corrections et commentaires. Merci!

My village Thirty years ago my parents-in-law decided to build a house in a village. They were dreaming about a summer residence surrounded by forests and fields, with a bucolic atmosphere. Once they favored a little place named Vereten’kovo (the village of Spindles), which perfectly suited their reverie. All the house building works were realized by themselves, that’s why the process was not fast and lasted for a couple of years. Tales about this epopee became a part of our family mythology and are being retold again and again. For the first time I came to Vereten'kovo eight years ago with my future husband to be represented to his parents. Every year our family get together in Vereten’kovo. Relatives, who live in different cities, have a chance to meet each other here. So, thanks to this place we never lose connection between each other and support kind relationship. The house is made of wood and is very comfortable for life. It has two floors with five bedrooms, kitchen, dining room and hall. It is filled with old family photos, my husband’s early paintings, folk crafts and many other knick-knacks. Some of the objects, such as wooden spinning-wheel and accordion were bought at the flea market in a neighbored town, some furniture is also rather old and is a heritage from our great-grand mother. Some time ago our house had a stove in its dining-room. In was made of bricks in the manner of those stoves, that had been traditionally used by peasants up to the mid of the XX century. We heated it with wooden logs and cooked lettuce soup, millet porridge and roast veal on its hot coals. Three years ago the stove was broken, when we knew that our neighbor’s house burned down because of a disrepair in their stove. The main problem with Vereten’kovo is that the village is isolated from the rest of the world by kilometers of wild forest. Some zones of the forest are rather dangerous because of the deep bogs, whose territory is becoming larger and larger thanks to the beavers’ activity. Lost in the forests, our little village with its dozen of houses has nor cafes, neither shops. To buy something to eat we have to go seven kilometres on foot by a tortuous route in the woods. But the biggest trouble is a bad connection with telephone and Internet networks.

Notes about my summer days. A couple of days ago my parents and me visited a place, where we lived when I was a child, and where we have never been since then. It is a little town located near to Nizhniy Novgorod, surrounded by forests and three rivers. Its population counts about 20 000 people, most of whom are occupied at the shipbuilding and sewing factories. But it is mostly famous not for the industry, but for its citizen Valery Chkalov - a pilot who made the first non-stop flight from Moscow to Vancouver through the Northern Pole. The flight took place in 1937. A year after that Chkalov tragically died examining a new model of planes. In his honor, his native town was named Chkalovsk, and Stalin ordered to build there a House of Culture in a shape of a plane as a memorial. It reminded the building of the Northern River station in Moscow. It also has a spire and monumental forms. This features are common for the Soviet architecture of the first decade after the Second World War. But in opposite to buildings of the late 1940s, the Chkalovsk House is not pompous and over decorated. It has strict proportions, square windows and laconic walls that make it close to the style of constructivism. The house, where Chkalov was born is now a memorial museum, some of the planes he was flying by are situated in a big garage. They are available for the visitors and attractive for children, who can climb by the special ladder and glance into the pilot cabin of that very plane that traversed the Northern Pole in 1937. After visiting the tourist points I went over the places connected with my private history. I have found my kindergarten and school, the school where my parents worked, and finally the house where we lived. We moved to Chkalovsk in 1993 and enjoyed living there. My parents remember our first year there as one of the happiest in their biography. The strong economical crisis that was growing in the mid 1990s turned the city into the poverty and depression. In 1998 my father got an invitation to work in Peru and we left Chkalovsk forever. I like Chkalovsk mostly for its views, for its wild but picturesque river quays and beaches, for its quiet streets with wooden houses and front gardens, from which one can hear sizzling of grasshoppers or voices of roosters. I was happy to realise that nothing has changed there during the 20 years of my absence, and my parents, affected by nostalgia, got a desire to buy a summer house on one of the Chkalovsk quays.

It's raining in Moscow This year summer in Moscow is so fresh and cold, that I hardly remember those few days when I could put a shirt with short sleeves on, and my sandals are still waiting for their turn. Many people are discontent about it. Actually, Russian climate is rather severe, and summer months bring the only consolation, the rare chance to warm a blood and to get charged by the sun. Even when the summer is warm, it seems too fleeting, its end arrives too soon and unexpectedly. But this year we are out of any dose of sunny vitamins and joy. It’s raining from May till now with short pauses. However I don’t see a reason to keep a stiff upper lip, because such weather is very comfortable for studies. So, I’m spending my days in the library proof-reading my PhD thesis, and in the evenings I’m visiting art exhibitions or stroll along Moscow streets. Thanks to the wide pavements laid during last three years our city center became much more agreeable for walks. What’s more, many citizens prefer to leave Moscow in summer and move to the countryside, that is why it becomes more quiet and empty and, thus, comfortable for promenades. Yesterday, when my library got closed and my husband finished his work, we took an architectural guide and observed three magnificent houses built in the 1920s. The first one was a so-called “Melnikov House”, it was projected by Konstantin Melnikov, and it reminds of the art-deco style. The edifice has two adjoining circles in its plan and a spiral stairs inside. The windows are diamond-shaped, and the front wall is made of glass. The second house on our way had been intended by Trotzky to be a club for ex-prisoners. It included a big cinema theater, a library, and a hall for meetings. The building was constructed by Vesnins brothers, who were famous constructivists by that time. Vesnins wanted to experiment with heavy cubical volumes and put them one by another. But now the edifice looks rather like a prison with monolith bank wall. From some angles it reminds Bastilia. But I’m not sure if the architects had it in mind. The third building on our way was a Narkomfin House. It had been invented by a famous avant-gardist Yakov Guinzburg. It is a very elegant and, I would say, graceful edifice, long as s ship, with continuous windows and a line of ascetic columns below, which makes the building light, as if it was lifted over the ground. This evening as soon as the storm will be over we will certainly continue our educational adventures!

Preobrazhenskaya square. Part.2 On the wall of the inner court of the Scientific institute I discovered a huge mosaic, made, probably, in the 1960s, just after the building works had been finished. The mosaic is damaged because of barbarous annexes made , probably, during the last decade. The image of the ensemble is much spoiled by the rubbish heap organized by its walls. Nevertheless, it is still impressive. The stones of the mosaic are large and bright, its surface is very vivid and rich, and it perfectly suits to the glass surface of the high wall above it. Soviet artists loved to invent mosaics for scientific institutes. Appealing to the abstract and figureless images of physical elements they could receive a permission to make an abstract piece. This very mosaic is divided on two parts: on the left one there are three figures of two engineers (male and female) and a worker, they all look rather heavy and absurd. In the opposite, the right part of the composition is covered with an abstraction, which looks much more picturesque and free. Glass and golden inclusions make the mosaic shining like a jewellery. It seems to me, that the author of this panno was much more excited about the right part and, probably made the figures only for the order’s will. They could also be accepted by the artist for material purposes. It is well known, that in the Soviet Union figural compositions were better paid than the abstract ones, and practical artists could take from the wall both a material gain and a professional satisfaction. Unfortunately we know nothing about this monument and its master. To get an information one would have to spend hours in the archives. It is incredible, but the general fashion for the Soviet period, that is embracing our society, does not provoke a careful attitude to the material and cultural values made by the Soviets. Art of the XX century is disappearing in front of our eyes. Some of the monuments look like ancient ruins, the others have been raped without a trace.

Preobrazhenskaya square. part 1. I have been living in Moscow for 13 years, but I still haven’t seen many of the city districts. Yesterday was my first journey to one of the eastern areas of the city, namely to the Preobrazhenskaya square. I had a certain aim - to see an art exhibition of one contemporary Russian science artist. It was an opening day. I took a tram at the eastern border of the city center and moved towards the north through new residential areas, squeezed between huge industrial zones and old cemeteries. Some of the Moscow districts look rather unfriendly and depressive, specially when the sky is overcast, and the roads are covered with puddles. Unique houses survived from the first half of the XX century were rarely arising on my tram track and looked like a rare avis. The Preobrazhenskaya square with its surroundings proved to be a little bit more humane, than the long way to it. History of this area dates back to the XVII century, however, there are no visual traces of that epoch in the contemporary city landscape. An old historical district with its low houses of bricks, churches, and large waste squares was destroyed in the 1960s and 70s and built up with rather featureless panel edifices. High malls of glass and new multi-storey housing built during last thirty years have finally encumbered the square. The exhibition I was looking for housed in a hall of an ex-Scientific institute which had cultivated radio technology and military technics. Its main buildings were constructed in the 1960s and represent a high example of Soviet Modernism in architecture. It is a high rectangular volume covered with glass. In 2014 Scientific institute moved to another building, while this one was occupied by artists’ studios, galleries, and sport sections. Accordance of old industrial zones to artists is rather common now. Unfortunately the building was not restored or at leased conserved and, thus, is being destroyed now.

Sirotkin House Sirotkin House is located on the high quay of the Volga river in Nizhnii Novgorod, Russia. It was built in 1916 by young architects brothers Viktor, Leonid, and Alexander Vesnins. For its harmonious neo-classic proportions and graceful colonnades, the house should be mentioned among the most beautiful buildings in the city. Its first owner, Dmitrii Sirotkin, was merchant, ship owner, and philanthropist. He also leaded the government of Nizhnii Novgorod for some time and became famous for such social actions as beginning of construction of the sewerage system and improving of the tram and electricity networks in the city. After the Revolution in 1917 Sirotkin immigrated to Serbia; his house was nationalized by the state and used as an art museum. From 1992 to 2007 the building experienced its first restoration. Now it is open for the visitors, and, besides its historic interiors (original floors, doors, ceiling paintings, chandeliers, and even radiators), it offers to observe`a wonderful collection of European Art. The foundation of this collection was led in the early XX century by some private donors. After the Revolution it was enriched by some oeuvres from nationalized collections of ducks Sheremetievs, Orlov-Davydovs, and Abamelek-Lazarevs, later, in the 1930s and 40s, some pieces from the State Hermitage and the Moscow Museum of Foreign Art (contemporary Pushkin Museum) were given to Nizhnii Novgorod. However, the main part of the collection was formed after the Second World War in 1946 thanks to the Soviet soldiers who brought a big quantity of art pieces from Hungarian private collections as trophies. Nowadays more than 200 items are conserved in the depository of the Nizhnii Novgorod art Museum, and many of them are exposed in the halls of the Sirotkin House. The real rears of the collection are paintings by Cranach, El Greco, Crespi, Jordans and wooden sculptures by unknown German Renaissance masters.