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The Expedition Around Podmoskoviye

The State M.A. Sholokhov Museum-Reserve has got a good tradition of going on an expedition to exchange experience on preserving and restoring the historic appearance of the natural landscapes and planting trees in the memorial sites.

In 2007 the Museum workers became the participants of the all-Russia action “Green Oak-Grove”, they planted more than 1000 oak saplings in Kulikovo Pole, a chestnut alley in the park of Krapivna (the branch of the Museum Estate “Yasnaya Polyana”), lilac of the sort of “Mikhail Sholokhov” and maiden grapes in the Museum-Reserve of V.D. Polenov. In 2008 the lilac, brought from Sholokhov’s land, “settled” in Spasskoye-Lutovinovo, in the park of the ancestral estate of I.S. Turghenev. In 2009 during the expedition about Kazakhstan hundreds of pine-trees were planted in the village of Dariyinskoye, where the Sholokhovs lived in the evacuation period during the Great Patriotic war. This year the tradition goes on.

The Museum workers visited Zaraisk, where in the XVI-XIX centuries M.A. Sholokhov’s ancestors lived, visited the memorial sign on their burial place, attended the museum “The Zaraisk Kremlin”. On the territory of the museum branch (“The House of the Sculptor A.S. Golubkina”) in memoriam of M.A. Sholokhov the members of the expedition planted the lilac grown in the writer’s estate.

Then the members of the expedition went to the Estate of M.Y. Lermontov in Serednikovo, where the young poet had lived with his grandmother for four years. The director of the National Lermontov Centre Mikhail Yuriyevich Lermontov, the grandnephew of the great poet, was very kind to accommodate us in the wings of the estate house for our sojourn, and for several days the Museum workers had been admiring the fascinating beauty of the estate park, ponds, wide stone stairs leading down from the house to the piece of water, where young Lermontov would walk and compose his first poetry. Here, in the square, in front of the estate house, the workers of the M.A. Sholokhov Museum planted a privet hedge.

On the territory of the Museum-Reserve of A.A. Blok, the estate of Shakhmatovo, and in the village of Tarakanovo we admired the well-preserved, almost primordial, nature of Podmoskoviye, picturesque places of the Klin-Dmitrov Hills. In the reconstructed estate house we visited the exposition, which had been marked with a special diploma “For Precision of the Museum Interpretation of the Memorial Area” at the all-Russia festival “Intermuseum” in 2002.

On the scenic glade by the pond in the reviving estate park the workers of the two museums planted chestnut saplings and then we listened to the heartfelt  Blok’s poetry about Russia. In the village of Tarakanovo where in the church the famous poet wedded, the Tarakanov Museum Complex was established. For restoring its alleys lilac saplings of the sort “Mikhail Sholokhov” were sent.

Then we visited the museum of D.I. Mendeleyev, the “Boblovo” estate, which had served for a creative laboratory for forty years. We got greatly interested in the scheme on laying out a memorial and landscape exposition, which in 2006 gained for the museum a grant of the President of Russia. Now the estate of Mendeleyev will be decorated with “Sholokhov lilac” planted in the yard of the only preserved building – the house of professor N.P. Iliyin.

Along with it, we visited Melikhovo, where for seven years Chekhov had been doing his best in literary and social work and made a good writer. A particular pride of the  A.P. Chekhov Museum-Reserve is the garden exposition delighting the eye all year round. In the heart of the garden there is “a pearl” of the museum, a memorial wing, in which the famous “Seagull” was written. Several lilac bushes from Sholokhov’s estate, planted by the members of the expedition, became a fine addition to one of the alleys.

We plunged into the atmosphere of Pushkin’s time visiting the villages of Sakharovo and Bolshiye Vyazyomy, where the Museum-Reserve of A.S. Pushkin is located. Old parks with age-old linden-trees, ponds, the house of the poet’s childhood, a white-stone five-domed church with a unique belfry – everything reminds here about the great Russian poet.

In the museum of “Lenin Hills” we got acquainted with the history of the estate, observed the scenic neighbourhood.

During the expedition the museum workers visited the memorial places of Podmoskoviye, met with the colleagues, exchanged the experience, replenished the “Flowerbed of the Museum Friendship” laid during the days of celebrating the 100^th anniversary of M.A. Sholokhov: 14 museums of Moscow and the Moscow Region presented their flower compositions for planting in the native land of Sholokhov.

E. Malikova