The Museum of Moscow told the amazing story of Ochakovo-Matveevsky

“Very musical, bold, prone to experimentation and creativity, a complex puzzle”

History exists not only in the historical center of Moscow, cut like a patchwork quilt from the destinies of people overlapping each other for centuries. Each district has its own character, temperament and spirit, which is also woven from the personal stories of people, geography, infrastructure and architecture. The seventh project from the Museum of Moscow series “Moscow without Outskirts” tells the story of Ochakovo-Matveevsky, where music and scientific discoveries, the enthusiasm of hiking tourism and the spirit of contradictions are intertwined.

A small but significant exhibition at the Museum of Moscow is designed in bright purple and orange colors. It is with these colors that the name is handwritten on the notebook where the project of the local history museum in Matveevsky is described. Historian Mikhail Prostov (born 1936) moved there in 1974. At that time, new housing began to be built on the western outskirts of the capital, which became part of the city in the 1960s, and old villages began to disappear. The historian made an attempt to preserve a piece of Matveevsky’s passing life. In the late 1990s, he proposed a museum project in one of the last village houses – No. 73, which belonged to the brothers Boris and Vyacheslav Soldatov. This house with a stable, a farmyard and a barn was built in 1898 by their great-grandfather, Nikolai Samarin, a bailiff, and in the last years of his life – a church warden. Through the efforts of Mikhail Prostov, the historical building was registered with VOOPIK. But soon the house suddenly burned to the ground, and the idea of ​​the museum went along with it.

The A4 notebook is displayed in a “cell” with a purple background of a large wooden shelving unit that occupies one of the walls. There are two of them, they are located opposite each other, and on the wall between them is a conventional map of the Ochakovo-Matveevskoye district. The zones are shown in purple, transport arteries are in orange, and white are the nearby Moscow Ring Road, the Setun, Navershka and Ochakovka rivers, and ponds. In the center of the exhibition is a model with a map of the future development plan. It just so happened that from the 1950s to this day, Ochakovo-Matveevskoye has been constantly being rebuilt. Interesting buildings are going under the knife. For example, the legendary Ochakov “house with a turret,” which became the architectural symbol of the workers’ village, was demolished in 2000. Once there were a lot of Stalinist monoliths here, but now there are none left.

Of the architectural rarities, only the “round house”, built in 1972 on Nezhinskaya Street on the eve of the 1980 Olympics, has survived. This was the first of such projects in Moscow. The ring house was invented by architect Evgeny Stamo and engineer Alexander Markelov. Their project can be seen on a separate wall – in old publications and photographs. It was an architectural experiment – with the expectation of subsequent replication. The second such ring house was built in 1979 on Dovzhenko Street in the Ramenki district. The project turned out to be unreasonably expensive and did not go into circulation. Five-story buildings fan out from the house on Nezhinskaya; it is no coincidence that the nearby street was named Veernaya. “Local residents say that there is a slight distortion of dimensions in the “round house,” says Polina Zhurakovskaya, senior researcher at the Museum of Moscow, one of the curators of the exhibition. “The roundness of the walls is not felt, since the house is made up of standard nine-story buildings, but if the rack is moved from one corner to another, then there is a discrepancy.”

Polina, together with other museum researchers, spent several months putting together the history of the area like a puzzle, interviewing local residents. All exhibits in the exhibition are their personal belongings, next to which there is a short story and information about the objects. In one of the purple cells you can find discs with rare recordings by Edison Denisov and Georgy Sviridov. Their compositions are performed by the Moscow New Choir under the direction of Elena Rastvorova, which appeared in 1991 and disappeared at the end of the twentieth century. Elena Rastvorova lived in Matveevsky. One day she accidentally met Natalya Romanova, a resident of the “round house,” and invited the musician to join her team. Natalya told the unknown history of the choir to the museum staff. Despite the personal support of Sviridov and Denisov, the musical group had difficulty making ends meet. The choir members were forced to sell vodka in a kiosk near the Matveevskaya station. There, in a nearby tent with vegetables, Natalya and her husband, international journalist Alexander Romanov, accidentally met mathematician Christoph Wenner, and three years later they visited him in Switzerland, when the choir was there on tour. This is the unpredictable reality: today in a stall – tomorrow on the world stage.

Fate is a witch, often intricately intertwining people’s destinies. Natalya Romanova taught at local music schools, where Elena Khitruk, the wife of Andrei Khitruk, a teacher at the Gnessin Moscow Music School, also worked. His students have conquered all world stages, many now work in different countries – from Vietnam and the USA to Spain and the Netherlands. The legendary animator Fyodor Khitruk, the father of a musicologist teacher, also visited their Ochakovo house more than once.

Polina Zhurakovskaya notes that the region is distinguished by a special musicality – here they write music, learn to play, listen, and dance. The exhibition contains object evidence – a rare violin, records, photographs of street concerts that the entire region came to listen to. The locals are also avid hikers. One of the cells contains tourist equipment from the 1960s, old photos from trips that local residents took to nearby and remote natural places. The park around the Setun River and all the local nature are conducive to wild recreation. A special exhibit belongs to Victoria Bashkirova, a resident of Ochakovo-Matveevsky: the model of the corner reflector “Alma” – a laser device for correcting the course of a submarine – resembles a chandelier. You could write a novel about how Bashkirova came up with a device and looked for parts for it.

— This is already the seventh project in the “Moscow without Outskirts” series. We have already “walked” through Taganka, Kapotnya, Arbat, Preobrazhenka, Filyam, Nagatin. Each area has its own character and temperament, which is influenced by people and which is reflected in people. This is always a very personal story, but at the same time it forms our common history. Ochakovo-Matveevskoe is synonymous with the phrase that became the subtitle of the exhibition – “part of the whole.” The fact is that the area is divided into parts by transport arteries and industrial zones, which complicates communication and exacerbates disagreements. But it is still a single organism – very musical, bold, prone to experimentation and creativity, a complex puzzle. There were a lot of local residents at the opening; as they say, there was nowhere for the apple to fall.