Few Muscovites are aware that there is a square in! their city named after the writer Maxim Gorky, even though it is located right in the center of Moscow. No famous companies are located there, no trendy stores. In fact, Maxim Gorky Square, as such, does not exist, since a Soviet-era school building stands smack in the middle of it, taking up almost its entire area.
In contrast, every Muscovite has heard the old name for this tract of land: Khitrovka. This place was the criminal depths of pre-revolutionary Moscow, a place whose dark timbers have inspired the literary imaginations of writers from Gorky to Akunin.
The disappearance in the 1920s of Khitrov Market – one of the district’s few attractions – is not something we should shed any tears over. While the annihilation of such legends as the Sukharevsky, Tishinsky or Ptichy Markets can rightly be called a crime against national culture, the liquidation of Khitrov Market was an essential public safety measure. However, only the market is gone. Khitrovka itself is alive and well even today.
To find it, one has to take Moscow’s metro to Kitay-Gorod station and exit onto Slavyanskaya Square. Take Solyanka Street until you reach Podkolokolny Lane. This is where the guidebook Moskva i Moskvichi (Moscow and Muscovites), the famous bestseller by Vladimir Gilyarovsky, will really come in handy. Gilyarovsky, a journalist who lived from 1853-1935 (see Russian Life, Sep/Oct 2005), described in great detail the life of Khitrovka during the early years of the 20th century. We are told, for starters, about “a large square in the center of the capital, near the Yauza River, surrounded by stone houses with peeling paint...”
As mentioned above, no square, in essence, remains, but the houses that surround the school grounds on three sides date back to Khitrovka’s notorious heyday. And here, right where the lanes come together, is where the guardhouse of the legendary policemen Rudnikov and Lokhmatkin stood. These men held sway over the entire district, despite the fact that “Rudnikov took no interest in cries for help, if there was no money to be made from them, and kept the doors to his guardhouse shut.”
Now, let us try to get oriented. The flophouses were known by the names of their owners. Rumyantsev House had two taverns – Peresylny (“the transit prison”) and Sibir (“Siberia”), and in Yaroshenko House there was one called Katorga (“forced labor”).
Archivists tell us that Madame Yaroshenko owned 11 Podkolokolny (“under the bells”) Lane. With three stories facing the lane and two facing what remains of the square, this building looks almost exactly as it did in the 19th century. Today, this modest edifice is rich in character, creating an impression of utter tranquility. The windows are overgrown with cactuses and geraniums; a band of scruffy mutts wallow around the gates. There is nothing to suggest the horrors that took place here under the tsars. In fact, it is hard to imagine that this is the very Katorga that was “the den of uproarious and drunken debauchery, a point of commerce between thieves and fugitives.” Unsavory transactions were conducted here, base passions raged, and “the clamor, cursing, fights, and clattering of dishes” never ceased.
Once, on this very spot, one of the masters of Russian literature, Gleb Ivanovich Uspensky, came to see womanhood in a whole new light. Upon leaving a tavern that Gilyarovsky had brought him to so that he could have a good look at local mores, the peevish Gleb Ivanovich ran into a slattern on all fours in a puddle – a sight he would recall for the rest of his life with the words, “And this is the pearl of creation!”
Where are you, Katorga? I circle the building in hopes of seeing some trace of the building’s past, but the house has been renovated a hundred times – just try to find anything! Then, through the paint, I see some ancient graffiti: “Natashka’s a fool,” and nearby, “On this spot Filofei Trupka was double-crossed.” How many memories these gray walls must hold!
It is hard to pinpoint the exact location of the tavern. Gilyarovsky, unfortunately, was not meticulous with his details. On the one hand, there are references to a basement, but at the same time the windows “shine with red lights through smoked glass.” We also read of a low doorway, but nothing on the front of the building matches this description, although in principle any door might have seemed small to a giant like Gilyarovsky. A local old-timer, Babushka Liza, who has lived here since 1930, supports the theory that Katorga was in the basement. But, on the other hand, rather steep steps lead to the basement. It seems unlikely that Gilyarovsky would have failed to mention such a detail. The mystery lives on.
In the end, the residents of either the ground or sub-ground floor of 11 Podkolokolny Lane can make a case for the colorful history of their lodgings. Today, the basement belongs to the congregation of a neighboring church, and the ground floor houses a shop that produces carved frames and moldings, a beauty salon, and, most surprising of all, the Moscow Society for Sobriety and Health.
It is noteworthy that the anti-alcohol activists know nothing of their headquarters’ past renown. But Tatyana, a friendly neighbor of the Society, tells us that as recently as 20 years ago tourists used to visit here. They were being shown the house where Maxim Gorky’s famous play, The Lower Depths, took place. Cinematographers still occasionally come here – such picturesque, genuine Old Moscow buildings are hard to find. Tatyana also reported that, in addition to the officially registered residents, “asocial elements” (i.e. the homeless) have been known to take shelter here. But, unlike the ragamuffins of Khitrovka, their descendants do not draw attention to themselves, the only sign of their presence being the periodic thunder of snoring from the basement.
The servants’ wing of Katorga has also survived. At one point, it served as a haven for the Khitrovka intelligentsia. In No. 27, the “scrivener’s” apartment (the apartment numbers have long since changed, so we have no way of knowing which one this is), lived scribes, noblemen who had drunk their fortunes away, and writers. The renowned theatrical directors Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko came here when they were working on their first production of The Lower Depths, to observe the characters they were portraying in their natural habitat.
This house is the oldest in the district, and was once a boyar mansion. The walls are a meter thick, and within them can be seen a brick stamped with a double-headed eagle, which indicates that the building is more than 300 years old. The artist Nikolai Avakumov, who rented a studio on the first floor, was apparently more interested in the history of his city than in an orderly dwelling. He removed the plaster in his kitchen and found a magnificently preserved ornate window frame from the 17th century. For fire-prone Moscow, which up to the Petrine era was primarily a wooden city, this was quite a find.
Along the back of the ancient building stretches a gallery with brick columns – an essential feature for any establishment catering to renters during the second half of the 19th century: it offered separate entrances to each of the apartments. This is one of the few remaining examples of this architectural genre, making it a valuable historical landmark of Old Moscow for this reason alone. It is especially gratifying to see that this gallery, cluttered with broken refrigerators and rusting bicycles, is still being used as originally intended and looks just as it must have a hundred years ago, refrigerators aside.
The current residents of the building are a fairly cultured lot – there are a few artists’ studios and a school for Orthodox choirmasters. Babushka Valya still recalls a time when the yard was filled with blossoming lilac bushes and apple trees and how the residents of the former Katorga would take their cots out into the yard and spend the night there.
On the second floor of the former servants’ wing lives Uncle Yura. The natives warmly recommended him as an expert on the neighborhood and an attraction worthy of interest in his own right.
Uncle Yura, or rather, Yuri Viktorovich, greeted us with the unexpected question, “Do you understand criminal jargon? Actually, it doesn’t matter. The most important thing – don’t mention the Olympics. That’s when I started to drink, and up to then everything was fine, I was working as a cop, lived on Preobrazhenka, and now – this is how it is.” He had buried his wife, seen his daughter married, and was now living alone in an apartment with 14-foot ceilings and a six-foot-high cabinet. He was reading the highly engaging Beria: The End of a Career. The mysterious past of Khitrovka was not something he cared to discuss.
I look fondly, but with a sense of trepidation, at these scenes reminiscent of Old Moscow. There have already been reports in the real estate press that Khitrovka will be turned into a second Ostozhenka, that is, the long-time residents would be thrown out, the buildings would be leveled, and new ones would be put in their place to ease the dire shortage of luxury housing.
“Well, Yuri Viktorovich, have they tried evicting you from here yet?”
“Naw, I’ve got in-laws in crime. Volodya came with some realtor chick not long ago – they wandered around a while and off they went. I don’t think they’ll be poking their noses around here anymore.”
And thank God. We can continue our tour of the neighborhood with a light heart. After all, we have come here for a taste of vice, not just to pass the time of day. In particular, we cannot pass up the opportunity to partake in a bit of drink and gluttony as offered on the other side of square.
In the old days, an unprepossessing public, even by local standards, could be seen loitering here – beggars and homeless people, whose social life centered on the tavern Peresylny. The higher-class thieves, master pickpockets, and big-time fences would gather at Sibir. Both of these establishments were located at 12 Podkolokolny Lane, on the first floor facing the street. Now the building and the entire block is taken up by something called Metrostroy-2. The name suggests some kind of construction enterprise, but just what they are building, nobody knows. Nevertheless, they have been at it for quite a while. The construction site is secret, so all the doors are bolted shut – except for one. It warms the heart to discover that this door leads to an establishment that still more or less fulfills the original mission of the premises, although in truth this place, which goes by the name SMU-152, is more a cafeteria than a tavern. But it is a marvelous archetype. An intriguing sign hangs by the entrance: “Real suppers at real prices, from 1 to 4.” The real prices were such that I was able to eat like a true glutton, with soup, a main course, compote, and beer (albeit, bottled) for 89 rubles and zero kopeks [less than $3].
We continue on our way, consulting Gilyarovsky’s canonical text. Somewhere here was the “wanderers’“ apartment, home to impoverished “monks from non-existent monasteries,” “burly young men with unkempt beards and faces swollen from drink,” peddlers of exotic religious relics like pieces of “the ladder Jacob saw in his dream.”
Next to Sibir, at the V-shaped corner of Pevchy and Petropavlovsky Lanes, stood a building called Utyug (“the flatiron”). This wedge-shaped building at one point belonged to a Mr. Romeyko, and behind it stood a number of other flophouses, with accommodations for 767 people in 64 apartments, meaning more than 11 people per room. These buildings were referred to as The Dry Gap, The Swine House, or just Kulakovka (the last two names originating from their original owners – gentlemen by the names of Svinin [svinya is Russian for pig] and Kulakov).
As Gilyarovsky tells us of this place: “…A door from the square [now a real estate agency]. In an apartment on the second floor, surrounded by a crowd, a man lay face down in a pool of blood with a knife in his back thrust all the way in.” While the police report was being written up, someone stole the knife and managed to hock it in the neighboring tavern.
Today, the second floor is filled with respectable apartments. Once the dreariest den of squalor, where even the police were afraid to set foot, now this place is home to a beauty salon called VIP Prestige. A network of Kulakov’s underground caves lies hidden beneath a mound in the courtyard. Air ducts point to the existence of secret tunnels, but whatever might be there is so crammed with garbage that access is impossible.
The last sight extolled by Gilyarovsky is Bunin House, on the corner. This establishment was tidier than the others, and for a reason. Here, in addition to paupers and purveyors of wine, lived young ladies. They started to work at age ten, and had additional income from the by-product of their trade – the illegitimate babies that, naturally, were in plentiful supply, were bought up by beggars for 25 kopeks a piece to be used as “props” (this abominable business still thrives in Moscow today).
Today, this is truly a lovely place, another rare case of a cozy Old Moscow courtyard. It was not always this way. The little one-story huts with wooden porches seem quaint, yet these are the same ones where the hookers once lived. This was also a place where unfortunate passersby could wind up with knives in their bellies, and at nighttime you could purchase a bottle of bootlegged “Smirnovka” for 50 kopeks. “The only sounds from the square,” Gilyarovsky wrote, “were drunken songs and cries for help.”
Today these huts are home to some mysterious offices. Those who work there categorically refuse to divulge their professions. We can only guess what form of evil an outfit with the self-important name of “Moskoopnadgortekhtsentr” (suggestive of something to do with do with technical services for some sorts of cooperatives) might be up to. I can only offer the observation that four out of five of the young ladies leaving this establishment were not wearing brassieres. Lends the place a certain aura.
Such is Khitrovka at the dawn of the third millennium. Once the city’s bleakest neighborhood, comparable in seediness to what we have today near Three-Station Square (where the Leningradsky, Kazansky, and Yaroslavsky train stations converge), Khitrovka was a headache for many generations of the guardians of law and order. No police raids, shake-ups, or special operations were able to solve the problems of Khitrovka. It took Soviet authoritarianism to establish order, emptying every building and then converting them into communal apartments for the new generation of urban proletariat. It may have thrown off its past vices, but Khitrovka is still Khitrovka.
As evidence, I offer this first-hand experience. One evening I was strolling through these parts with a certain V., a fellow of medium build, but always up for a challenge. From around the corner appeared three genuine khitrovantsy – filthy, bloated, stinking. They asked for 10 rubles, saying that they had just come back from Siberia and had to get back on their feet. Well, why not give it to them? But V. had other thoughts on the matter. “Scram, mutants,” he exclaimed disdainfully. “You’ll pay with your blood!” the khitrovantsy countered, and thrust a penknife into my companion’s left hand. “Aaaa! Blood! Police!” the victim cried. Before we knew it, the would-be robbers had melted into the darkness of the slums.
That is the story. Explore these iniquitous grounds to your heart’s content, but keep in mind that the past is always nearby. RL
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