MOSCOW
Whoever has been to Moscow knows Russia
Okhotny Ryad Street
The street got its name from the continuous row of shops and stalls
which all year round offered the best kinds of meat, caviar, fish, vegetables and fruits.
After work, merchants liked to have a good rest, that is why people started opening
restaurants in the street and soon some of them became very popular. After the  Revolution
all pubs on Okhotny Ryad were closed and the street was reconstructed as part of the
project of the general reconstruction of Moscow. Now one can see there the building of
Hotel Moscow as well as that of the Soviet of Labor and Defense where the State Duma works
today. The history of the hotel is very funny. When Stalin got a sheet of paper with two
different plans for the facade drawn on it, he put his signature right between the two
plans. That is why the hotel today has two different facades.
The only building that reminds us of old Moscow is that of the Nobility Assembly built
in 1780 after the project of Kazakov. There is a legend that during repairs there was a
picture of an eagle flying into a dark sky found in the house. People thought it was a bad
sign, and in fact Napoleon attacked Russia a year later.
There were brilliant balls organized in the Assembly and one could see there the most
famous families of Russian high society. Pushkin often visited it, and probably it was
here that he met his future wife. In 1881 there was a festival dedicated to the unveiling
of the monument to the poet on Tverskoy Boulevard – where Dostoevsky made his famous
speech.
The last ball was organized in the Assembly in 1912. In 1924 there were crowds of people
near the building who wanted to take their leave of Lenin, whose body was placed in the
house. From that time a new tradition emerged according to which coffins of Soviet leaders
were put there for the public to pay their last respects.
Mokhovaya Street
 Originally people sold dry moss there to close the
cracks in wooden houses – and that is how the street got its name.
The Manezh
The building was constructed in 1817 and decorated by Bove in 1825. It
was built to celebrate the victory over Napoleon’s army. The Manezh was used for
military training and horse-riding. Already in the second half of the 19th century high
society started gathering there. After the Revolution the Manezh was transformed into a
garage, but in the 1950s cultural life there was born again and today exhibitions taking
place in the building attract numerous visitors.
Moscow University
 The university was founded by Mikhail Lomonosov in
the 18th century. In 1775, on the day of Saint Tatiana, Count Shouvalov formally requested
creation of the University. The document was signed, and since that day Tatiana is
considered to be the patron saint of students.
When the university was opened, there were just three faculties in it: philosophy, law and
medicine. Teachers that taught there were the best from Russia and foreign countries. The
major difference of this university from European ones was that lectures were given not in
Latin but in Russian.
Catherine the Great offered the university a piece of land on Mokhovaya Street and a big
sum of money. But in the great fire of 1812 the building was burnt; the university library
also suffered and builders had to reconstruct everything. In 1832 Tsar Nikolay I gave the
university the Pashkov House.
After the Revolution the university was given the name it has today – Moscow State
University, and in 1940 the name of Lomonosov was added to its title. After  World
War II the creation of a new house for the university on Lenin Hills started (they were
called so, as it is believed Lenin liked walking there). The construction was led by the
architect Lev Rudnev, who had to build not only a building housing many lecture halls, but
also thousands of dormitory rooms, cafeterias, a swimming pool, a concert hall and luxury
apartments for the best professors. Finally it became clear that the new building
wouldn’t be able to house all the faculties, and Rudnev was allowed to build two
adjacent 10-storey buildings.
During Nikita Khrushchev’s thaw there were many cheap houses built in Moscow. The
building of Moscow State University fell under criticism for its decorativeness and use of
costly building materials. At the end of the 1950s it was decided to build a Palace of
Soviets on the Lenin Hills. It would have been the construction of a law structure to
house congressional and reception halls and leave the Kremlin to function purely as a
museum. However the project was abandoned, and in 1961 Mikhail  Posokhin built a
Palace of Congresses not on the Hills but in the Kremlin.
The Church of Saint Tatiana
It is situated in the building that earlier belonged before to the
Pashkov House. This part of the building has been given to the Tsar’s Theatre, that
moved there after a fire on Teatralnaya Square.
When the University was opened in 1775 it did not have its own church and the service in
its honor took place in Saint Basil’s Cathedral on Red Square. The Church of St. Tatiana
was sanctified in 1791 and Catherine the Great offered it a sacristy. During the Great
Fire of 1812 the church was burnt and it reopened only in 1817. In Soviet times there was
a student theatre giving performances in the building, and in 1995 the structure again
became the private church of Moscow State University.
The Pashkov House
 At the end of Mokhovaya Street one can see a beautiful building of white
stone, known as the Pashkov House. It was built by the best Moscow architect, Bajenov, by
order of a rich landowner Pashkov.
There are a lot of legends about it, and according to one of them there is a secret
passage to the Kremlin under the house.
In the middle of the 19th century the Rumyantsev Museum was organized in the house.
Rumyantsev had collected books since his childhood. He gave money for different
expeditions, and by the end of his life had gathered a large collection of ancient coins
and rare manuscripts. He wanted the museum to become a Russian national museum, but
unfortunately, the Count didn’t live to see it. Still, the museum did not stop enriching
its collections. Tsar Alexander II offered it the famous painting “Appearance of Christ
before the People” by Ivanov and some other works from the Hermitage in
Saint-Petersburg.
After the Revolution the museum was closed and its paintings and sculptures were given to
the Tretyakov Art Gallery and to the Museum of Fine Arts. The collection of books served
as the basis for the Russian State Library that is located in the Pashokov House.
Questions to the Next Part:
1. From where did Volkhonka Street get its name?
2. What could be seen on the place of the actual Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts?
3. Why was the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts organized?
4. What kind of paintings did Shchousev introduce to the Russian public?
5. What was the destiny of the Shchusev Collection?
6. Whose project of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was chosen by Alexander I?
7. Why did Nikolay II want the Cathedral to be built on the hill it stands on today?
8. What was the destiny of the marble of the Cathedral when the building was destroyed in
1931?
9. What can we visit today in the Cathedral?
to be continued
Compiled by Alevtina Kozina
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