Memoirs of Old Moscow in the Years Before Lenin and Stalin
Memoirs of Old Moscow in the years before Lenin and Stalin Vladimir Gilyarovsky translated and edited by Brian Murphy Michael Pursglove Memoirs of Old Moscow in the years before Lenin and Stalin Vladimir Gilyarovsky translated and edited by Brian Murphy Michael Pursglove The translators Brian Murphy: Former Professor of Russian, University of Ulster; former UN translator; translator and editor of Mikhail Sholokhov's Quiet Flows the Don. Michael Pursglove: Former Senior Lecturer in Russian, University of Exeter; translator of Ivan Turgenev's Fathers and Children, Smoke and Virgin Soil (all Alma Classics), of D.V. Grigorovich's Anton and of numerous Russian short stories. Cover Kitai-gorod from Theatre Square, photographed by Nikolai Naidenov in 1884 PREFACE The casual reader might be surprised to learn that none of the chapters of this book, such a nostalgic evocation of old Russia, were published before 1926 and that the majority of them date from 1934 or 1935. A more careful reading will reveal references to post-1917 Russia, but these are relatively few: aeroplanes, the metro, the cleaning up of the filthy River Neglinka, the demolition of the Khitrovka slum, NEP, the opening of the House of the Peasant in what had been the Hermitage Restaurant or the workers' demonstration which ends the chapter devoted to his great friend Anton Chekhov. It is, however, surprising that a book which, for all its occasional nods of approval to the Soviet regime, contains long passages devoted to Moscow's flourishing merchant class,was allowed to be published in the 1930s. This was a time when, especially after the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers in August 1934, Communist Party control over all branches of the Arts was consolidated.
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