Tram tracks on the Patriarch's Ponds. Patriarch's Ponds: mysticism and topography. The action of the novel "The Master and Margarita" begins on the Patriarch's Ponds

Did the tram run along the Patriarch's Ponds? Ile Bulgakov invented everything... Give the facts... and got the best answer

Answer from Dyudyuk[guru]
No tram runs on Patriarch's Ponds. It was not possible to reliably find out whether he went there at all or not. As I understand it, historians argue about this. True, we managed to find interesting information
“Many Moscow historians deny the existence of a tram on the Patriarchal and Malaya Bronnaya. One of them, Yuri Efremov, who wrote a book about Moscow, assures: “No trams have ever run near the fence of the park on the Patriarchal.” He lived in 1931 in the Bolshoy Patriarchal. Mikhail Afanasyevich first appeared in Moscow in 1921, maybe he knew better? There is no evidence of this anywhere, and if there is any, they don’t know, they don’t remember in the Moscow “tram” organizations, no matter how much I asked. they also don’t know and are only surprised: who needs to know and why, did a tram ever run at the Patriarch’s Ponds? But one person was found, Anatoly Kuzmich Zhukov, the chief engineer of the Moscow track facilities, promised to rummage through the home archives and ask some of them? old people. I called Zhukov on the appointed day with excitement. Of course, it doesn’t really matter whether there was a tram, but I want the Master to remain right to the end and make Zhukov happy in everything: “There was a tram on Malaya Bronnaya! "Went until the end of the twenties."
If Anatoly Kuzmich remembers everything correctly, then somewhere after the end of the 20s on the Patriarch's Ponds the tram could not have cut off Berlioz's head. There was no tram there
a note was found in the newspaper "Evening Moscow" dated August 28, 1929, from which it follows that in November of the same year it was planned to complete the laying of tram lines right on Malaya Bronnaya and Spiridonovka (Alexey Tolstoy), that is, near the pond itself
Source:

Answer from User deleted[guru]
Comrades! No use arguing!

Answer from Boris Fatyanov[expert]
There are trams there!!!

Answer from Marisha[guru]
When I was little, we lived on Mayakovka, huh. we went for walks to the ponds - beautiful white swans used to swim there, but there were no trams there (I don’t remember something)

Answer from Dinka[guru]
There is no such tram line on any of Moscow's transport schemes. And the old-timers of this area of ​​Moscow do not confirm this fact. In particular, N. Konchalovskaya, who lived with her parents since 1912 in the same house on Sadovaya where Bulgakov lived in the early twenties, categorically denies the movement of the tram at the Patriarch's Pond. But Moscow local historians seem to have discovered not only the remains of a rail track under the road surface, but also a trace from the ill-fated turnstile, the exit through which turned out to be fatal for Berlioz. It seemed that V. Levshin, who lived with him in the same house, brought final clarity to this issue with his memories of Bulgakov: “Sometimes, closer to the evening, he [Bulgakov] calls me for a walk, most often on Patriarch's Ponds. Here we sit on a bench near the turnstile and watch the sunset fragment in the upper windows of the houses. Behind a low cast-iron fence, trams nervously rattle around the square." There is a version that there were trams, but not in the 30s, but much earlier and not passenger, but... freight, so, naturally, they are not on the diagrams of passenger routes In general, Bulgakov has a lot of paradoxical things - the numbering of houses, for example http://menippea.narod.ru/master09.htm

The famous tram route near the Patriarch's Ponds (for the uninitiated, we are talking about M.A. Bulgakov's novel "The Master and Margarita" and the tram that cut off M.A. Berlioz's head in Chapter 3 "The Seventh Proof") was deliberately invented by M.A. himself. Bulgakov, which quite obviously follows from the discussions about him by authoritative philological experts. And this fits well into the system of relationships between the writer and his readership. The entire sunset novel is stuffed by the author with false logical dead ends in order to create confusion in the thoughts of specially trained encyclopedist censors.
So in the episode with a hypothetical tram route (on the physical site of which, especially gifted readers have probably not done archaeological excavations), M.A. Bulgakov, having inserted a certain dubious (mystical) tram into the text of the novel, forces his readers to argue until they are crazy, delving into archives of Moscow transport, not noticing the sedition of the content...
I wouldn’t even be surprised if the fact suddenly surfaced in M.A. Bulgakov’s biography that he personally destroyed the real documents available to him about the tram route that existed in Moscow near the Patriarch’s Ponds for a short period of time.
Perhaps the Patriarch's Ponds were chosen by Bulgakov as a subject for his work due to the presence of such a route, little known in reality?..
However, this is just my guess.
In reality, of course, M.A. Bulgakov invented this whole story with the tram to conceal the murder prepared and organized by Woland-Stalin, which will later be established in the novel as a result of the investigation. But most readers do not like or do not want to notice this official statement from the Epilogue of the novel “The Master and Margarita”.
Meanwhile, Bulgakov himself emphasizes that during those events there were also those killed, including “One can say for sure about two: about Berlioz and about that ill-fated employee in the Bureau for introducing foreigners to the sights of Moscow, the former Baron Meigel...”. This means that Woland-Stalin administers his “fair judgment” through criminal means, and not in a way more suitable for Satan, attracting for this the forces of a mystical, inevitable fatal accident...
More.
For some reason, readers do not see the contradiction in the phrase “Cautious Berlioz, although he stood safely, decided to return to the slingshot, shifted his hand on the turntable, took a step back...” - after which the writer ends up under a tram.
If Berlioz stood safely, then who pushed him under the wheels, because he is retreating back, not forward?..
The inertia of movement should save him, not kill him!
This means there is no accident in his death, but obviously there is a specific culprit! And the author uses the word “backhand” to indicate it to readers, because the characteristic expression of the Russian language is to hit backhand, and not to remove the headdress!
In general, the entire episode with the tram incident is characterized by a mass of special contradictory events and expressions, which I spoke about in great detail in my extensive research on the sunset romance.

Once upon a time, this place was the location of the Goat Swamp (from which the Bolshoi and Maly Kozikhinsky lanes got their name). According to one version, this swamp was called the Goat Swamp from the nearby Goat Yard, from which wool was sent to the royal and patriarchal courts. The Chertory stream flowed from the Goat Swamp.

At the beginning of the 17th century, Patriarch Hermogenes chose this place for his residence and the Patriarchal Sloboda appeared on the site of the swamp. In 1683-1684, Patriarch Joachim ordered the digging of three ponds to drain the swamps and breed fish for the patriarchal table. Such ponds - fish cages - were dug in different parts cities.

In Presnya, in the Presnensky ponds, expensive varieties of fish were bred, and in the Goat Swamp, cheaper varieties were bred for daily use. With the decline of the Patriarchal Settlement, associated with the abolition of the patriarchate, the ponds were abandoned and the area became swampy again. And only in the first half of the 19th century they were buried, leaving a single decorative pond, and a park was laid out around it.

In 1976, a monument to Ivan Andreevich Krylov by sculptors A. A. Drevin and D. Yu. Mitlyansky was erected on the Patriarch's Ponds. The fabulist sits surrounded by the animated heroes of his works.

In 1945, a residential building for senior military leaders of the USSR was built on Ermolaevsky Lane according to the design of architects M. M. Dzisko and N. I. Gaigarov (workshop of I. V. Zholtovsky), currently known as the “House with Lions”.

As we remember, at this very place Berlioz’s head was cut off by a tram. However, there have never been tram tracks here. The tram closest to the Patriarch's Ponds ran along Sadovaya Street.

In 2002, on the Patriarch's Ponds at the intersection of Malaya Bronnaya Street and Ermolaevsky Lane, an elite residential building "Patriarch" with 28 apartments was built according to the design of the architect S. Tkachenko.

According to the architect and architectural historian V.Z. Paperny, the Patriarch house is one of the worst examples of “Luzhkov architecture” in Moscow.

Painters Vasily Surikov and Vasily Polenov photographed their studios near the ponds. Not far from the Patriarchs lived: Vladimir Mayakovsky, Lyudmila Gurchenko.

The Shekhtel Mansion in Ermolaevsky Lane is the house of the architect Fyodor Osipovich Shekhtel in Moscow at Ermolaevsky Lane, building 28, building 1.

An object cultural heritage federal significance. Currently, the mansion houses the Embassy of the Republic of Uruguay.

The mansion of Zinaida Morozova is a luxurious mansion of Savva Morozov’s wife, Zinaida Grigorievna, built according to the design of Fyodor Shekhtel in Moscow on Spiridonovka, 17. Subsequently it belonged to the Ryabushinskys.

The mansion was built in 1893-1898 by the wealthy industrialist and philanthropist Savva Morozov for his wife Zinaida on the site where in 1815 A. L. Vitberg built a house for the poet I. I. Dmitriev. Then the Aksakovs lived here until Morozov acquired it in 1893.

You can see sculptures of gargoyles on the building. According to legend, before a war or revolution, these gargoyles emit a loud, hoarse howl at night.

Now here is the reception house of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Another building of F. Shekhtel on the Patriarchal is Vspolny Lane. 9 - mansion of I. I. Mindovskaya. In 1919, the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal was located here, in the 20s and 30s the chairman of the tribunal lived, people's commissar Justice of the USSR N.V. Krylenko, prosecutor at Stalin's trials. Nowadays one of the offices of the Indian Embassy in Russia is located here.

Malaya Nikitskaya 28/1 - mansion of S. A. Tarasov (1884, architect V. N. Karneev), now the Tunisian Embassy. L.P. Beria lived in the mansion, which is why among Muscovites this house is called “Beria’s House”. This house has a very bad reputation, and at night local residents try to avoid it.

In 1999, on the initiative of the head of the Spasskie Vorota insurance company, Boris Khait, a competition was held to design a monument to Mikhail Bulgakov on the Patriarch's Ponds.

Out of 28 options, the design of sculptor Alexander Rukavishnikov was chosen. The sculptor proposed not just to erect a monument to the writer, but to create a whole sculptural ensemble around it, consisting of Bulgakov sitting on the shore of a pond, Yeshua Ha-Notsri walking on the water, and a 12-meter bronze primus-fountain.

In addition, Rukavishnikov planned to place other heroes of the famous novel on the shore of the pond - the cat Behemoth, Azazello, Koroviev, Pontius Pilate, the Master and Margarita.

However, numerous protests from local residents and cultural figures forced the sculptor and the Moscow authorities to abandon the idea of ​​​​installing a monument.

But Rukavishnikov managed to do something. On Sadovoy, near the Kursky station, we can see a car with a rook driver, in which Margarita flew to the ball, and the Master and Margarita hugging, who, according to the author’s idea, are soaring in the air.

The Patriarch's ponds in The Master and Margarita turn out to be directly connected with Woland. Not far from here is Styopa Likhodeev’s apartment, where he settled, the Variety Theater, where he gave a performance... If you think about it, most of Woland’s stay in the capital takes place here...

And, of course, it is in the park on the Patriarch's Ponds that Woland first appears on the pages of The Master and Margarita. Let's try to reconstruct "on the ground" the events of that memorable evening. So,

Here question 1 arises: where did these two citizens come from?

Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz was the chairman of Massolit. He worked in the Griboedov House, very close to the Patriarch's - most researchers consider the prototype of the Griboedov House, where Massolit was located, the Herzen House, located at 25 Tverskoy Boulevard. It is logical to assume that Berlioz came to the Patriarch's after work - to rest before the evening meeting and, at the same time, give a lecture to the hapless poet. From the Gentzen House you can get there either through Maly Kozikhinsky Lane or through Malaya Bronnaya - either one or the second street will lead to the eastern corner of the pond.

Possible walking routes from Massolit to Patriarch's.

It turns out that Berlioz and Ivanushka entered the park on the Patriarchs through this entrance.

Somewhere here there was a “Beer and Water” booth.

Let me clarify a little about the late start time of the meeting - by today's standards, a meeting scheduled for 22.00 is too much. But in Stalin's times this was quite normal. Stalin worked until three or four o'clock in the morning, and large state institutions, willy-nilly, learned to stay awake with him: in anticipation of a possible call to Himself, ministers did not close their eyes; so that time would not be wasted, they pulled out workplace their deputies; they, in turn, were their own subordinates, and this chain stretched further and further.

Having spent the first half of the working day at the workplace, in the evening the employees went home for several hours to take a nap before the second, night part. And at ten in the evening the windows of large institutions, which included Bulgakov’s Massolit, lit up again.

So, we figured out the entrance. Now question number 2: in which direction did Berlioz and Ivanushka go - straight or left? Bulgakov answers this question quite clearly:

Not only at the booth, but in the entire alley parallel to Malaya Bronnaya Street, there was not a single person. ... Passing by the bench on which the editor and poet were seated, the foreigner glanced sideways at them, stopped and suddenly sat down on the next bench, two steps away from his friends.
...
- May I sit down? - the foreigner politely asked, and the friends somehow involuntarily moved apart; the foreigner deftly sat down between them and immediately entered into conversation.

So, Ivanushka and Berlioz settled somewhere on an alley parallel to Malaya Bronnaya.

There is no precise indication of a specific bench in The Master and Margarita. However, Bulgakov’s friends lived in house No. 32 on Malaya Bronnaya, and knowing the writer’s love of tying the fictional realities of his works to some significant objects from the real world, some researchers place “that very Woland bench” in front of their entrance.

Woland's bench.

She's from a different angle.

The third question that usually occupies Bulgakov lovers: where did Berlioz run to “ring the phone”? Bulgakov also points out this quite directly:

Berlioz... rushed to the exit from the Patriarch's, which is located on the corner of Bronnaya and Ermolaevsky lane. ... Immediately this tram flew up, turning along the newly laid line from Ermolaevsky to Bronnaya. Turning and going straight, it suddenly lit up from the inside with electricity, howled and charged.

So, Berlioz runs forward along the alley parallel to Malaya Bronnaya towards Ermolaevsky Lane.

Here it is, the exit from the Patriarch's on the corner of Ermolaevsky Lane and Malaya Bronnaya.

Here it is, the turn.

But there is no place for the tram to “go straight and push” here. In this regard, some researchers suggest that there was a gap in the Patriarchal fence directly opposite the perpendicular Malaya Bronnaya Alley. It was here that the ill-fated turnstile was located.

The location of the proposed exit on the diagram...

THE MYSTERY OF THE FLYING PETERSBURG
OR
CLASS A DETECTIVE

"Tram Line" in "The Master and Margarita"
...........

1. Was there a tram?
Oh, dear reader, serious passions are blazing around the modest Moscow tram of route “A” - the famous “Annushka”! In fact, the majority of historians and local historians of Moscow have long been firmly established in the opinion that no tram has ever run along Ermolaevsky Lane (according to the novel, it was from there that the carriage under whose wheels Berlioz died turned out), much less along Bronnaya!

As for the old-timers, there are very different opinions. Some testify with full confidence: there have never been any Patriarchal trams! Yuri Efremov, who lived in Bolshoy Patriarchal in 1931, assures: “No trams have ever run near the fence of the square at Patriarchal.” Natalya Konchalovskaya, who lived with her parents since 1912 in the same house on Sadovaya where Bulgakov settled in the early twenties, also categorically denies the movement of the tram at the Patriarch's Pond.

Bulgakov’s first wife, Tatyana Lappa, directly stated in a conversation with Leonid Parshin:

“...The tram didn’t go there. I walked along Sadovaya, but not at the Patriarch’s. We lived there for several years... There was no tram there. I’m telling you, by God, that there was no tram.”

But other “natives” do not agree with them. Writer V. A. Levshin recalls: “Sometimes, towards evening, he [Bulgakov] calls me for a walk, most often to the Patriarch’s Ponds. Here we sit on a bench near the turnstile and watch the sunset fragment in the upper windows of the houses. Behind the low cast-iron fence, the trams circling the square rattle nervously.”

These meetings and gatherings between Bulgakov and Levshin date back to 1923-1924, when Bulgakov was 33 years old and Levshin was 20. The memoirs were written by Levshin almost 40 years after the events described. S. Pirkovsky, in a thorough study “Virtual Reality, or Tram on the Patriarchs”, perceived this evidence skeptically and even ironically: “What attracts attention and what does this fragment evoke in memory? Of course, the beginning of the novel. There is evening, and a bench, and the setting sun in the windows of the houses, and a pond. Only the “low cast-iron fence” and “nervously rattling trams bending around the square” are new touches in a recognizable picture... In Levshin’s memoirs, published in 1971, shortly after Bulgakov’s novel was published, “trams bending around the square” could have fallen involuntarily, most likely under magical influence of the chapters read for the first time.”

Tatyana Lappa-Kiselgof generally stated about Levshin’s memoirs: “He lied about everything there. He and Bulgakov didn’t even know each other, because we moved into their apartment because he moved out and the room became vacant. And not in the winter of 1922, as he writes, but in the summer of 1924, after we divorced. And three months later, Bulgakov left this house altogether, and Levshin only returned to this apartment a year and a half later.” And then Tatyana Nikolaevna gave examples of Levshin’s inventions and absurdities. So - congratulations, citizen, having lied...

Pirkovsky also cites another testimony - the writer Sergei Yesin, who “remembered” the tram on the Patriarchs in the post-war years, when he was a schoolboy: “As a boy<...>I crawled all the nooks and crannies<…>and I remember not only these same Patriarch’s ponds<…>But I also remember the famous turnstile on these ponds, near which Woland first appeared to Muscovites. I remember evrything<… >and I realize that these are not grown-up and matured literary reminiscences, but<…>meaningfully seen in childhood. I would even dare to say<…>statement that I even remember the creaking of this turnstile<…>I even undertake to say: everything happened. I saw, I saw, I saw! And the turnstile, and the turn of the tram, and a wooden box-box with the inscription “Beware of the tram!”... For example, there was an inscription on the tram tracks on Sivtsev Vrazhek, in the same box it sparkled like a star above the tram arch: “Beware of falling leaves.” .

Isn't it so visible and convincing? But, alas, all this is nothing more than a figment of the memoirist’s imagination. Or, to put it mildly, the result of forgetfulness. Here is how Pirkovsky comments on Esin’s colorful description: “When, in what year, did a ten-year-old boy on the Patriarch’s Ponds see a “tram turn” and a “box-box”? If we temporarily disagree with the classic statement “calendars all lie” and believe the reference book, then it will turn out that in 1945! But there were no “sparkling” inscriptions on the “boxes” above the tram arches. There were inscriptions, but on flat plates mounted on supports contact network, and read: “Caution, leaf fall,” simply “Leaf fall,” or even simpler, “Yuz.” “Boxes” with a red and white inscription “Beware of the tram!” were installed on special posts along the tracks along the Boulevard Ring. The posts stood in front of the side exits beyond the fence, where the tram line ran. The warning sign lights turned on only when a tram approached. “Above the arc” they did not “sparkle.” In this year, 1945, as in subsequent years, the boy Yesin could not see the trams on the Patriarch's Ponds. They were not there and therefore could not be seen. And of course, you can imagine what you saw. Just not near the park on Malaya Bronnaya, but closer to the house on Tverskoy Boulevard.”

By the way, Pirkovsky himself, who in 1945 was also a Moscow boy, recalls his walks: “Then, in 1945-1946, I discovered my hometown, traveling around Moscow on foot and on trams... Having risen from the basement, we walked We walked along Ermolaevsky to the frozen pond and turned onto Malaya Bronnaya towards Sadovaya. There was no snow. I remember that there were no traces of rails along our route. Neither in Ermolaevsky, nor at the intersection with Malaya Bronnaya.”

The same is confirmed by native Muscovite Yuri Fedosyuk in his memoirs about Moscow in the 1920s and 1930s, “The morning paints with a delicate color...”. The author, without any regard to Bulgakov’s novel at all, recalls how in the summer of 1932, as a boy, he specially followed tram route “A”: “... although “Annushka”, which had left our stop, returned to the same place about 40 minutes later, I wanted to check its circularity line personally, and not with the help of a tram, God knows how it was laid there, for which it was best to walk its entire route.” According to the description, “Annushka” did not pass either along Ermolaevsky or Malaya Bronnaya.

Pirkovsky conducted a thorough investigation using numerous reference books and archives. As a result, he came to the conclusion: there is no documentary evidence that the tram on Ermolaevsky and Bronnaya ever ran! I will not give all the author’s arguments (for those who are not familiar with the topography of Moscow, this argumentation does not mean anything). I will highlight only one thing - laying a tram line along Bronnaya was a monstrous senselessness, which no municipality (neither tsarist times, nor post-revolutionary) would ever agree to: “... The tram line could not exist on the Patriarch's. The reason... is the lack of a targeted need for its installation. IN otherwise we will be faced with an insoluble mystery: how, for almost ten years of its existence, and perhaps more, this line did not appear in the transport directories published annually in Moscow until 1941?”

THERE IS, TRUE, ANOTHER EXPERT - Anatoly Zhukov, former chief engineer of Moscow track facilities. He told one of the Bulgakov scholars (allegedly based on his home archives): “There was a tram walking along Malaya Bronnaya! I walked until the end of the twenties.” However, Zhukov did not provide a single document, fact or reference to the existence of the mysterious tram line. But Glavmotrans answered the researcher of Bulgakov’s work B. Myagkov very clearly: “Never in the area of ​​the Patriarch’s Ponds<...>tram traffic was not organized.” And all the necessary archives are there! Such a tram line did not exist in any reference book or on any of the Moscow transport maps.

True, Myagkov immediately invented a new version. Based on the “memories” of unknown “old-timers,” he came to the conclusion: “There was a tram, but not a passenger one, but a freight one. The tram tracks in the area of ​​the Patriarch's Ponds, in addition, at the end of the day were filled with empty trams, forming a kind of night depot during the warm season. In the novel<…>Apparently, just such a tram was described, heading for rest in the evening: it was without passengers and clearly not a freight one.”

Now it seems to be clear why the mysterious line was not included in reference books and transport diagrams: it was a freight line and was not intended for passenger transportation. But this version explains absolutely nothing. It remains unclear: why did a PASSENGER tram appear on the Patriarch's Street? Well, a freight train was running - so what? Converting it into a passenger car and throwing Berlioz under its wheels is practically the same as inventing a passenger car from scratch! All the same, Bulgakov had to create a stop in his imagination and take Misha Berlioz there (after all, he was not heading to a freight tram stop)!

And then, on top of everything else, it turns out that the invention of the “freight tram” is also nonsense. The skeptic Pirkovsky, already known to us, asks a simple question: “Which strategic cargoes and to which facilities were transported along this line in the center of Moscow? Who built it if they didn’t know about it at 22 Raushskaya?” Raushskaya, 22 - the address of the Office of Tram and Trolleybus Transport under the Moscow City Executive Committee and the Moscow Tram Trust, which under Bulgakov were in charge of everything related to tram traffic. And Pirkovsky finally finishes off Myagkov with the following argument: “It must be emphasized that in the pre-war years (and to this day) trams in Moscow were not left overnight on the city streets even “in the warm season.” All tram cars "spent the night" in their parks under the roof, where they were inspected, repaired (if required), washed and prepared for the next working day. There were no exceptions to this rule. Probably, “authoritative” old-time witnesses confused the trams with trolleybuses, which even now crowd in dozens, filling the streets and alleys around their parks day and night.”

And FINALLY, Myagkov, who has been quoted more than once, provides “scientific” evidence as an “iron” argument. It turns out that in the 1980s, the “dowsing method” was used to establish the presence of “rail routes” that were in the area of ​​the Patriarch’s Ponds. The dowsing method is used in various fields of science and technology, when it is necessary to detect an object hidden under a layer of earth rock, soil: water sources, mineral deposits, etc. As a result of such searches in the area, the rails of that same mysterious tram were allegedly found under the asphalt line: “The rails were turning towards Malaya Bronnaya<…>and walked along it along the fence of the Patriarch's Ponds<…>and further to Tverskoy Boulevard<…>A gap was also discovered in the fence where the turnstile had previously been located. At the same time, the area where the tram could “howl and push” was clearly identified, and the place of death of Bulgakov’s ill-fated hero was determined with an accuracy of one meter.”

But the same insidious Pirkovsky dispels this “evidence” to smithereens: “For the biolocator to “feel” the tram rails, they had to be under a layer of asphalt. And this is impossible to believe. How did the city’s public services not stumble upon these rails during their almost annual “excavations” of the roadway for almost forty years? And why, in all the time that has passed, have they not bothered to dismantle the line and hand over the rails to Vtorchermet? Incredible. And if so, then the tram line, which remained under a layer of asphalt, could not have existed. This means that it is impossible to detect something that was not there, even by dowsing. The same can be said about the discovery of a gap in a long-defunct fence (“where is the sidewalk now”), the site of the “accelerating” section of the line and the fatal turnstile. We have to admit that the conclusions from dowsing searches, unfortunately, should be attributed to the case that often occurs in such a situation when wishful thinking is taken as reality.”

STOP-STOP! But here I allow myself to disagree with Pirkovsky. There REALLY WAS a turnstile at the Patriarch's! Even two turnstiles. And it is in their place that those very “gaps” that Myagkov wrote about exist. Only the searcher for the non-existent tram line did not take into account one thing: similar turnstiles were available at the entrance to most boulevards and parks in Moscow - as well as at the exit from them! This happened even before the revolution. Thus, M. Popov’s “Complete Dictionary of Foreign Words”, published in 1907, reports: “TURNIQUE is a cross that rotates freely on a low pole, which is installed in the middle of a narrow passage; it prevents the passage of large animals into public gardens, boulevards and etc., interferes with the passage of crews, etc.”

The same thing remained true before the war in Moscow (as well as in other Soviet cities). Georgy Andreevsky in the study " Everyday life Moscow in the Stalin era" writes about 1921:

“Unknown vandals knocked off the corner of the pedestal of the Gogol monument, trampled the lawns of public gardens, and damaged the revolving gates on the boulevards within Sadovaya, which protected pedestrians from accidents. (Remember such a gate-turnstile on the Patriarch's Ponds, for which Mikhail Aleksandrovich Berlioz from Bulgakov's novel "The Master and Margarita" "Took your last step towards the tram?)".

This is what Alexey Panteleev (Erofeev) writes in the story “Lyonka Panteleev”:

“He rushed to the right, noticed a cast-iron turnstile turntable in the boulevard fence, hit it with his stomach... successfully jumped through the second turnstile.”

The story takes place in the first years of Soviet power, and the story was published in 1939.

But the memories of Zoya Borisovna Afrosina are already about the 30s of the last century:

"I was born in Moscow. I spent my childhood and youth in house No. 8 Tverskoy Boulevard. This is the center of Moscow, the former boulevard ring of tram "A". The house was separated from the boulevard by a wide sidewalk, cobblestones and rails. Opposite our entrance there was an entrance gate-turnstile. It was a metal pole with rotating ears made of 20mm reinforcement and was used by children as a carousel."

Turnstiles existed at the entrance to ANY BOULEVARD, regardless of whether trams were passing by or not. Moreover, special caretakers were on duty here to regulate the occupancy of the boulevards and prevent crowding. But pandemonium did happen, and often! This is what Moscow old-timer Yuri Fedosyuk recalls about Pokrovsky Boulevard at that time:

“During the day, one life was going on on the boulevard, in the evening - another. The daytime regulars of the boulevard were mothers with children and pensioners... In the evening, the poorly lit boulevard turned into a promenade... Ten people of both sexes sat on one bench, acquaintances were quickly established, those sitting were divided into couples. From treating them to seeds, contacts turned into hugs, kisses and very explicit touches.”

Afrosina also recalls:

“In the evenings and on Sundays there were no places left on the boulevard benches. Mom sent me to take a seat in advance. I hated it, because I was very shy.”

It is no coincidence that Bulgakov notes the “first strangeness” of the “terrible May evening”: “... in the entire alley parallel to Malaya Bronnaya Street, there was not a single person... no one came under the linden trees, no one sat on the bench, the alley was empty ". It really is strange.

By the way, the same Fedosyuk also writes about turnstiles: “Turnstiles at the exits, with the sign on the board flashing when a tram approaches: “Beware of the tram.” Why the turnstiles were needed is still unclear to me. My father explained: so that carts would not enter the boulevard and carriages with horses."

So, turnstiles operated on all boulevards, and their presence can in no way indicate the presence of a tram line nearby. And where this line actually ran, there was a warning sign.

Thus, this “evidence” of Myagkov does not work.

Leonid Parshin also showed extreme meticulousness about the ominous tram:

“I spent many days in Leninka, studying transport schemes and route guides of those years. There was no tram. In the photo library of the Moscow Museum of Architecture we managed to find pre-war photographs of the Patriarch's Pond and Malaya Bronnaya. There was no tram... last hope(after all, I myself would like to have a tram) – archive of the transport department. On May 13, 1981 I received a response:
“The Department of Passenger Transportation Organization has considered your letter with a request to inform you about the work of the tram in the twenties on the street. Zheltovsky, M. Bronnaya and st. Adam Mickiewicz.
We inform you that according to available archival documents and city line diagrams railways tram traffic on the streets you are interested in was not organized.
Head of Department I.M. Komov.”
K.M., who dealt with my request. Bartolome showed maximum conscientiousness. He checked both the cargo and auxiliary lines, and even found and questioned old employees of the Department. There was no tram. True, the tram line ran very close, along Sadovaya, past Bulgakov’s house.”

Let's summarize: all the facts indicate that no tram has ever run along Malaya Bronnaya Street (as well as along Ermolaevsky Lane).

In the photo: Moscow boulevard, 1920s.

CONTINUED HERE -