Moscow and Muscovites

16 hrs. 30 min.

Language Russian

Author Vladimir Gilyarovsky

Narrator Vladimir Shevyakov

Description

Moscow is the central theme in Gilyarovsky’s work. For many years he studied the city’s slums and the life of its inhabitants. The idea to write a book about Moscow’s past came to him in the early 1920s, when from the face of the city Khitrovka, Grachevka, and Arzhanovka began disappearing. The first edition of “Moscow and Muscovites” was published in 1926. The book contained only five chapters. A few years later, Gilyarovsky returned to work on the book. In 1931, a second edition of “Moscow and Muscovites” was released, called “Notes of a Muscovite,” and only one chapter from the first book made it into it. It was a book written anew…

A century later, Vladimir Gilyarovsky’s book “Moscow and Muscovites” is used to study the history of Moscow. Gilyarovsky is incredibly observant, and the types he describes are so precise that their images stand before your eyes like living figures. These are the bakery workers and hairdressers, the traders at Okhotny Ryad, and the firemen with the writers… Sociable and cheerful, generous and kind, always full of curiosity about life, Gilyarovsky could make anyone feel at ease—whether the poor from Khitrovka or the wealthy landlords from Lubyanka.