At the exhibition in Gorki they told about the fate and tastes of Zinaida Morozova

At the exhibition “Palms and Roses of Zinaida Morozova” everywhere you look – flowers and palm trees are everywhere: in paintings, dishes, furniture, dresses, wallpaper. From such a concentration of plant beauty (more than 400 exhibits) you want to close your eyes so as not to become ill. The exhibition presented in the southern building of the Gorki Leninskiye Museum-Reserve tells about the fate and tastes of Zinaida Morozova. It was the widow of a millionaire and collector, whose works from the collection of which the Hermitage and the Pushkin Museum are now proud of, made Gorki the way we see them today. This magical “girls” world was inherited by the leader of the world proletariat and did not change anything here. Lenin was dying in the marshmallow luxury created by the “Barbie” of the Silver Age. Strange thing: these seemingly heavenly places reflected the fateful fate of both inhabitants of the estate.

The history of the Gorki estate dates back more than one century, but its most famous owners lived here at the beginning of the 20th century, at the turn of the era. Lenin’s estate, standing on the hills, is called thanks to its famous inhabitant – Vladimir Ilyich. In the estate near Moscow, he first appeared in 1918, when he was recovering from the assassination attempt on Fanny Kaplan. He was advised to treat his wound in a sanatorium, into which the estate of Zinaida Morozova was turned after the revolution. Lenin liked it here, largely because there was a telephone, but the place itself, filled with greenery and silence, was to his liking. After 1918, he often visited there, and when his health began to deteriorate, he moved to a permanent position and strictly forbade changing anything on the estate. The only innovation is the railing, which helped Lenin to climb to the second floor of the main house. The founder of the USSR lived here with his family – his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya, sister Maria and brother Dmitry. By the way, it was he who was the last resident – he did not want to move out, no matter how they persuaded him, and he died in Gorki in 1943, after which the museum was immediately turned into a memorial museum. A curious detail: in Soviet times, the furniture in the main house, where Lenin spent his last years and died, was covered with white sheets, which made it seem that the house was filled with ghosts. However, this was not done for safety, but because the floral interiors in the rococo style did not fit well with the figure of the leader of the world proletariat. It is not good for Lenin to die in flowers. But that’s exactly what happened.

The exhibition “Palms and Roses by Zinaida Morozova” sheds light on many historical moments that have not been advertised before. Gorki Leninsky for many years was perceived precisely through the figure of Vladimir Ilyich, but the fate of the creator of the estate is no less dramatic. The current exhibition is the first big story about Zinaida Morozova, whose fate is worthy of film adaptation.

The historical immersion begins on the street, where different types of roses are planted in front of the main house, which Zinaida Grigoryevna grew on her estate more than a hundred years ago. She did this not only for beauty, there were several greenhouses on the territory where they planted flowers for sale – Morozova supplied them to 22 stores in Moscow. She did not need money, but she wanted to prove herself as a business woman, and she succeeded. However, only at first glance, one of the richest women of her time was doing well. The first floor of the exhibition tells about her difficult, but bright fate.

Zinaida Zimina was born into a merchant family of Old Believers and married early, although the marriage to the merchant and Old Believer Sergei Morozov did not last long. During the wedding with her first husband, she met the second – Savva Morozov, who was Sergei’s cousin. Soon a relationship began between them. Two years later, Zinaida divorced, but Savva did not dare to marry her, because the Old Believers did not honor marriages with divorced people. When Zinaida became pregnant, there was no way out. The scandal was serious and far from the last in Morozova’s life. Savva Timofeevich did not spare money for the education and outfits of his wife, who loved to show off in society. Once she put on a dress, the train of which was longer than the train of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, which caused a big scandal. However, over time, the difference in the characters and temperaments of the spouses manifested itself more and more, and then Savva Timofeevich became completely carried away by the actress Maria Andreeva, left his pregnant wife, but her mistress eventually preferred Maxim Gorky. Morozov returned to his wife with shattered nerves: rumors spread about his madness. In 1905, Zinaida took her husband to Cannes for medical treatment. The exhibition includes a photograph taken near the expensive hotel where they stayed. Savva Timofeevich is standing under the palm trees. This picture was taken by Zinaida, not yet knowing that in a few hours she would become a widow. In the evening of the same day, the body of Savva Morozov was found in the hotel room, which is behind his back in the photo. Whether he shot himself, or whether the Bolsheviks killed him, staging suicide, is a mystery to this day. About 15 thousand people gathered at Morozov’s funeral, the sea brought flowers. In the photograph presented at the exhibition, we see Zinaida Morozova in mourning, behind her are huge bouquets. As her grandson recalled, at her husband’s funeral, she was annoyed by two wreaths: one of white lilies with an inscription from Maxim Gorky and Maria Andreeva, and the second – with a large cross of red roses – from the society for helping political prisoners. Flowers – a symbol of beauty and grace – are reminiscent of death. Palm trees – a symbol of martyrdom and eternal life – also carry a disturbing narrative. At this moment, Zinaida Morozova is 37 years old and has four children. She inherited a huge fortune.

After the funeral, Morozova sells the Gothic mansion on Spiridonovka, which her husband allegedly built for her. In the new life in the Gorki she bought, there will be no hint of Gothic. “Her world was completely different: this is the world of the Barbie doll before the invention of the Barbie doll,” commented Sofya Bagdasarova, curator of the exhibition. In this new world, she not only has a new home, but also a new husband – the Moscow mayor, Major General Anatoly Reinbot, who looks fantastically like her late husband (in a joint photo they are again under palm trees). Morozova receives the coveted status of a noblewoman, and Rainboat solves her financial problems. In 1909, she rebuilt Gorki – the project was made by the architect Fyodor Shekhtel, who also built the mansion on Spiridonovka. Here she is trying to build a personal paradise that is soon destined to collapse.

In this girlish world, everything is in flowers, palm trees, peacocks, bees. Here are the pink flower-decorated armchairs that stood in her house. Here is an embroidery with shepherds, which the millionaire occupied her leisure time. Here are expensive perfumes, again in a flower bottle, luxurious porcelain, a cream dress embroidered with floral patterns.

Few things were preserved directly from Morozova, so Sofya Bagdasarova had to fantasize and bring to the exhibition items that fit into her taste preferences and the general style of rococo and modern, which the owner of Gorki liked. But the further we travel through this realm of heavenly bad taste, the more often we notice the clouds gathering over it, the coming breakdown and the symptoms of decay.

So, on the first floor of the exhibition we find a portrait of a noblewoman by the Soviet artist Yuri Vasnetsov. This is not Morozova (no picturesque portraits of her have been preserved), but a lady from the Silver Age, which Zinaida Grigorievna could have been if she had been painted by a Soviet artist. The woman’s face is almost erased, and the luxurious interiors behind her seem to be saturated with a corrosive fungus. On the second floor, we will find weeds that appear among the traditional noble flowers used to decorate interiors and clothes. There is something disturbing in the bees embroidered on the curtains (their images enlarged several times decorated a separate room where you can sit on the benches and think about the past and present) – Napoleon chose this symbol for his empire. The most eloquent is the final exhibit: before us is a series in the spirit of Andy Warhol – multi-colored flowers and skulls by the artist Maria Kochetkova. At the exhibition for the first time it was possible to collect a series of eight prints together.

It seems that Zinaida Morozova filled her world with flowers in order to hide from personal problems, to protect herself from thoughts about the impending collapse of the usual world order. The world where balls and the length of the train of a dress are so important, where a woman can embroider all day, inhaling the scent of roses, sitting under palm trees, died very soon. And Morozova’s personal happiness was by no means cloudless. Soon after the wedding, Reinbot was dismissed from the post of mayor for bribes, in 1911 he was again accused of embezzlement, and again the rich wife hushed up the matter. In 1916 they parted, two years later he was shot. The revolution left Morozova without her beloved estate and livelihood. She was forced to sell the things she had left to feed herself. Nemirovich-Danchenko helped her, mindful of donations in favor of the Moscow Art Theater founded by him. Morozova was destined to outlive her two children: the eldest, Timofey, was shot in 1921, her daughter Maria went crazy and, they say, drowned herself in a pond. Elena was saved by emigration, but her life was short, the younger Savva was repeatedly repressed, but he lived longer than the rest and rested next to his mother at the Rogozhsky Old Believer cemetery. But the estate of Gorki, which Zinaida Grigoryevna so diligently equipped, remained almost untouched. Like a monument to a past high-society life, over which, in the era of the Silver Age, an inevitable end was already looming. Lenin, thanks to whom this island of pretentious “paradise” was preserved, also experienced blows of fate here: not only illness, but also disappointment in his comrades-in-arms and ideas. Shortly before his death, he says: “It is impossible to change the psychology of people, the habits of their age-old life. You can try to drive the population into a new system by force, but the question is whether we would have retained power in this all-Russian meat grinder “…