"Children of Paradise" is closing (epitaph of regular customers). Varvara Turova: “I’m not going to do business in Russia anymore

Varvara Turova, co-owner of the Workshop club and theater, told how it all began and what will happen next.

How did you come up with the idea to create an establishment with such an unusual concept – the “Workshop”?

The story is this: my friend and colleague, theater director and playwright Alexei Paperny, has long wanted to make a club in which theater would be present in some form - for example, there were ideas to make just a cafe, and in the corner there would be a small, small stage on which something would happen once an hour: clowns, Opera singer, juggler, storyteller... It was impossible to find a room for this. Although, it’s not that we were actively looking: I was a journalist, Alyosha had “Chinese pilot Zhao Da”, musical group, theater. It’s not that we are, you know, restaurateurs, business sharks like Mitya Borisov.
And then a friend of his came to Alyosha, who had a club that he didn’t like for a number of reasons, and asked Alyosha to remodel this room. It was an amazing place - the windows were boarded up, there were some toilets on the floor, everything was painted in fluorescent colors. I felt like I was in the 90s. Was still here theater stage, where wonderful performances took place: for example, a man drinks some terrible chemical crap and at the end of the performance he vomits paint.
Everything had to be rebuilt, from floor to ceiling. And originally there were baths here. The tiles that are now on the walls remain from those times. And where the theater hall was - as people told me - there was a VIP steam room, supposedly belonging to Furtseva. Together with the artist Petya Pasternak, we began to figure out what to do in this place. Petya looked at these beautiful long windows, the high ceiling and offered us, as if for internal use, such a game - as if we had found an abandoned castle somewhere in the mountains or in the middle of a forest, which was once luxurious. Once upon a time, a long time ago. We found this castle in ruins, with some old velvet curtains, dishes, old tables forgotten by the owners, and we stayed in it, in this forest, to live. It’s funny that our forest is located in the most energy-challenging area of ​​Moscow - Lubyanka, but we manage to ignore all this. From our thicket Lubyanka is not very visible. And on the contrary, we are hiding here. In this imaginary world. We even have a mix of everything in the world in our interior. Here, for example, is a spinning wheel. Someone brought it to us, saying that it suits us very well. And this is a monstrous fake, a fake. The next day I asked her to take it to the trash. Two days later they returned it to us with the words: “How wonderful! We found her nearby! She is so yours! They threw it away again. When they brought it to us for the third time, I realized that it belonged here. Somehow I even fell in love with her, for all her monstrosity.

Who selects the repertoire for the “Workshop”?

At first we did it ourselves - me and Alyosha. It seemed to us that if we have two events a week, that’s a lot. Now we have several of them a day: theater hall, children's lectures, discussions, cinema, concerts, opera, discos, experimental jazz, poetry evenings... I'm sure I forgot something. And now we have art director Anna Hein and theater producer Stas Shapovalov. I, of course, have a terrible character, and I interfere in everything. I interfere with their lives. As for foreign music, this is mostly mine. I travel around Europe, negotiate with musicians and bring them to perform.

Are there any problems with importing artists?

That's enough. Very expensive tickets, very far away, many are afraid to come here. But the biggest problem is the Moscow public. Nobody is interested in anything except the promoted stars, which have long since deflated. People bring the same musicians 500 times - relaxed, not even trying to pretend that they are interested - pay them three times higher fees than in Europe, pamper them terribly. A crowd of people comes, they buy tickets for 2,000 rubles - and everyone is happy.

You really bring it interesting music, you get knocked off your feet, advertising everywhere you can - 30 people come, each of whom then writes on Facebook that “it was wonderful, it’s a pity that you didn’t come.” Of course, after every such concert you want to give up. It's not even about the money. Uncomfortable in front of musicians. There are 30 people in the hall, and they work as if they were in a stadium - with such energy, professionalism, and talent! And the answer was nothing. This is the most offensive thing. But we are trying to solve this problem.

What about the theater venue in this regard?

The theater hall is easier to fill - it is very small. And there are not performances every day.

Do you still have a modern theater?

We have very different theater. This is one of the very few truly independent theaters in the country. This is a vibrant theater. Alive, for sure. Sometimes operatic. Sometimes for children. Sometimes we find performances that we like and invite them to perform with us. And sometimes people themselves come and say: “We want to make a performance.” If we like them, we are happy to see them, we don’t charge any rent, but we warn them right away that we cannot invest anything. They can handle it themselves. Thus, we got a wonderful, very popular play “Lafcadio” by Svetlana Ivanova.

Please tell us about what will happen, what are your plans...

There is a sea of ​​plans. I have an idea that is slowly starting to come true - it’s very long and difficult - to create a festival of countries, so that throughout the year, once a month, a weekend will be dedicated to a certain country: the music of that country, cinema, poets - everything that is interesting. Now we meet with different embassies almost every day, because it is impossible to do without their participation.

There is an idea to create a festival of small operas. This is very fashion direction in Europe now they stage operas for two kopecks in small rooms. Nowadays, it is no longer possible to get to the bottom of where the rule came from that an opera must be for a million dollars, in the Bolshoi Theater, with columns, in evening dresses. But this needs to be corrected, because a huge amount of wonderful music, witty librettos, amazing stories, very good singers! I have an idea with puppet theaters... In general, a lot of things.

Do you think your public will form and grow?

It is already developing, of course. It’s just my character that I don’t have enough time, everything around me seems too slow, I want it even faster, even cooler. Again, I swear to you, not in terms of money - everything is fine with that. Namely in relation to interesting programs, concerts, tours. We want to introduce people around us to what we like and to each other. That’s why we have, for example, a weekly “Friend of a Friend” party, in which people who have never done this before act as DJs, and we introduce our friends to the friends of our other friends, arrange such a socio-cultural brew, systematically and consistently create a context , in which then, as if suddenly, but in fact not at all suddenly, performances, groups and interesting projects are born.

Can you call the Workshop a fashionable place?

I love good music and theater, I’m interested in doing this. And I absolutely don’t care whether the music is fashionable or whether it will pay for itself. And I am absolutely sure that any model, including in business, is successful only when the person who is involved in it is interested in doing it.

In Moscow there is truly trendy places, Solyanka, Gipsy, for example, are great places! Or "Aldich" - one of best projects over the past few years, I have enormous respect for the people who make these places and love going there to have fun, but that doesn't mean The Workshop has to be the same.

Today in our column there is a singer, musician, journalist, actress, traveler, public figure and also a successful businessman. And beautiful girl And good man. And all this in one person, by the way. How Varvara Turova manages to do this, we don’t know. Because we talked with her today exclusively about her favorite brainchild - . This place is known and loved by many townspeople, it seems that it has always been there. The project will recently turn 4 years old. Truly a long-liver by Moscow standards! So, let's begin…

— Varvara, how and who came up with the idea to create such a place?

— We love theater very much, but there was not a single club in Moscow that was connected with it. Therefore, we have long wanted to open a place where he would somehow be present. We never even dreamed of a room with a separate theater hall. But there were ideas to build a club with a small stage on which small operas would be performed.

I've been making clubs all my life, but I've never built them myself. At one time I worked as a bartender, a waiter, a cleaner, a dishwasher, and a PR manager in the most different places. I’m generally a musician, but I had to earn money somehow, and for some reason it was always connected with clubs. And then Alexey Paperny said: “I found a room and there is a real theater hall there. Let’s come up with everything together and build it.” And then we began to come up with ideas and swear monstrously, just squabble about everything: walls, curtains, and so on. But it seems to me that out of these disputes grew the success of this place and its popularity, as well as a completely indescribable, but very recognizable style.

Many people tell me about the “Workshop” - “like home”, although, it seems to me, it is not at all similar to the usual understanding of the word “home”. It seems to me that people mean some kind of peace, and for me this is the most important, the most valuable thing about her.

When we came up with the name for the club, we had different variants- “The Game”, “Figaro”, etc. But we decided to call it “Workshop” because we wanted not only musicians to play here, but also some kind of brew going on all the time, like in a cauldron. We also had the idea of ​​introducing some people to each other and somehow bringing them together. This has already happened several times and quite successfully. When, for example, a person came to us with his performance, and we understood that the music of our familiar composer would be ideal for its production. It turns out to be such a secret production activity, mixing the right people together. But what didn’t work out from our plans was to arrange an “audition” once a week for everyone who wanted to theater hall, a kind of “talent search”, it turned out to be just an unbearable nightmare and we don’t do it anymore.

— A very diverse audience comes to the Workshop. What do you think attracts them and why should they come here?

“I think no one should come here.” I love how I feel here and I know that a lot of people feel the same way here and that's very important to us. I have a very difficult relationship with the word fashionable, they always tell me “You are not fashionable at all” and apparently it is implied that this is a disadvantage, but for me this is nothing. The Workshop has no intention of being a “hip place” because, frankly, I don’t quite understand what that is.

There are “fashionable places” in Moscow, for example, “Gipsy”, I really like them, it seems to me that this the best place in the city, even better than ours, and maybe there is also a Propaganda club. But this is completely separate genre, I admire them, but I don't want to be like that. I like what happens here, not always, but in a large percentage of cases. I like that the people who work here put their souls into it and don’t sleep at night. Probably, any club owner can say this, but for me it’s a child, without a doubt. I don’t have children, but, like any literary-minded girl, I imagine an ideal, pink baby who sleeps quietly, eats, sits in the bath, but in reality in life, I think, all this is very different from my ideas. Including, when a child grows up, he himself knows where to go, who to communicate with, who to marry. And you can't control it in any way, you have to accept it somehow.

When we built the “Workshop,” I knew exactly which table would be the most comfortable, where they would sit and what they would look at, but everything turned out completely differently than I imagined. And this is not even related, for example, to money, because, of course, there must be a business plan and it must be consistent with it, but as far as some emotional things are concerned, you never know what will happen. And “Workshop” is a child completely separate from me, who has his own own opinion, my own character, which sometimes infuriates me terribly. Like with a real child, sometimes you just want to hit him in the head: “I don’t like what kind of music you listen to, dear daughter,” but she’s like that, she doesn’t look like me or Alyosha (Alexey Paperny), we built together, almost like parents.

I like that the “Workshop” is somehow its own, that there is some kind of absolute chaos going on here, that there is no officialdom, it’s like being at your friends’ dacha: everything is in disarray, cramped, nothing can be found, but you had a great time and remember Then it’s like great happiness.

— Perhaps unusual stories often happen in such a place? Can you tell me one of them?

— Once I urgently needed to find a group of real black jazzmen for an event at the Reka club. I only had a week, and during this week I called all the musicians I knew from America to Australia, I found a lot suitable groups, but they were all busy, there wasn’t enough time to get a visa. And then, in complete despair, one night I went into the “Workshop” and found twenty beautiful black guys sitting there in some red tuxedos with diamonds in their ears and white furs, playing the piano, singing and dancing. And for the first fifteen minutes I simply could not move, because exactly what I had been looking for all week all over the world turned out to be in the “Workshop”. It was a certain group that came to a completely different concert, but we immediately brought them together with the organizers at Reka and they played a concert there too.

— What are your plans for this year? Will foreign musicians perform here?

— On March 7, “Workshop” has a birthday, it turns 4 years old. We're planning a really cool party here, but we won't say anything about it just yet. And as for the musicians, this year we have huge plans for weekend festivals different countries. One weekend it could be Sweden, another America, and so on.

Interview - Anastasia Narushevich. Photo - from the archive of V. Turova.

P.S. Well, we will still lift the veil of secrecy. The Workshop's holiday party theme is Chicago in the 20s and 30s. On stage is the retro team “26 Hertz”. A special holiday set will be played by djs Kogan & Goose (“Herring Ear”). Entrance 500 rub.

This woman, for example, writes to me: “How much can you throw mud at the country that raised you.” Another woman writes: “Doesn’t your heart hurt when you write - just like that, with an I - such things about the country that gave you your education.” The third (or is it all the same?) writes: “This country gave you everything, and this is what you pay it with.”

I'm just trying to be precise. I was educated by Natalya Mikhailovna Smirnova, a wonderful music teacher, pianist, student of Yakov Vladimirovich Flier, who studied with Konstantin Nikolaevich Igumnov, who studied with Alexander Ilyich Ziloti, who studied with Franz Liszt, who studied with Karl Czerny, who studied with Beethoven, and I could go on, but I won't.

My father, Sasha Turov, an art critic, art history teacher, journalist, editor, gave me an education, he gave it to me when he played Handel and the Beatles over my crib, when they brought me from the maternity hospital, or when we rode along the Golden Ring in childhood and he he told us about the churches that were closed at that time, and we walked through some half-abandoned, dilapidated temples and fields.

My education was given to me by my literature teacher Tatyana Andreevna Bonch-Bruevich, young beautiful woman, the lessons of which, at school, I still remember. My education was given to me by Vadim Abramovich Berezovsky, the legendary teacher of solfeggio and music theory, when I came to their apartment in Karmanitsky Lane, 3 times a week, oh horror, at 8.30 in the morning, for classes. Alexey Alekseevich Kandinsky gave me my education, Difficult person, who amazingly taught our course “History of Piano Art”.

My mother, Alice Tille, a lawyer, gives me education every day, with her wisdom and example. Education Alexey Vasilyevich Parin, musicologist, playwright, and producer, conveys tons of valuable information to me at every meeting. My friend Misha Fichtengolts, telling me for years about Handel, and about the best opera singers and conductors in the world, gives me an education. The outstanding opera singer Larisa Anatolyevna Gogolevskaya has been teaching me 2 times a week for a year and a half, and each lesson is a meeting with a great master, a great actress.

It was not the Country that gave me the so-called “everything”. This is my family, my loved ones gave me everything, and this was in no way, is not and will not be connected with the name of the part of the land where all this happened and is happening. In some cases, I was given an education not thanks to this country, but in spite of it, contrary to its will, its actions, despite the way the best professors left for the darkness (I was very lucky in this darkness, the city of Elektrostal, to study for a year , and meet there the best teachers music that I have seen in my life, most of were simply expelled from the Moscow and St. Petersburg conservatories, each various reasons, including political ones).

I don't know what "country" is. I know that here now there is less and less freedom, and I am scared, bitter and hurt by this. Because if we talk about “The Country That Gave You Everything,” then we cannot help but talk about “The Country That Took Everything,” from Rachmaninov, Bunin, Kharms, Meyerhold, or, for example, Pestel, Muravyov-Apostol, Bestuzhev-Ryumin , Ryleev and others. Why then should I be in some kind of serf bow of gratitude to the waist for the good that happened here (these early mornings in Vadim Abramovich’s house, when you listen to a 4-voice dictation in your sleep), but for some reason I should not take into account the hell that happened here too? What a flawed position, what a slavish way of thinking, well, it’s okay, it’s okay that the master flogs him with rods, but last year he beat him not 15, but 20 times, so it’s better, our good gentleman, tell him thank you, the one next door hits to death.

When will serfdom be abolished?

“We have had a very difficult two years. Fire. Flood. No alcohol license (not our fault). Broken sidewalk. Then the buried sidewalk. Then the sidewalk was dug up again. Now the building is in the woods. On some days people were physically unable to get to us. Then the “Revizorro” program, and the revenue dropped three times after their visit. Then the journalists of the “Revizorro” program wrote a statement against us to Rospotrebnadzor (this, apparently, is their mission - to save the townspeople from us). And so on. In general, we are ruined and closing.”...

This is the third club created and closed by musician, theater director and poet Alexei Paperny and singer, social activist Varvara Turova. There was a “Workshop” where those artists, poets and public figures who, for a number of reasons, did not really want to see at other Moscow venues had the opportunity to perform; there was “Lady Jane”, where they brought donations to people in need of help and where they gave free tea to the frozen participants of the “Return of Names” campaign at the Solovetsky Stone. Now “was” and “Rayok”...

Sergei Nevsky, composer:

The team of “Workshop” and “Children of Paradise” managed to create not just places “for our own people”, places where people went by default. These were the points where many good and good deeds began, from organizing the famous opposition march on December 24, 2011 on Sakharov Avenue to countless charity campaigns, readings and book presentations. I am very grateful to Vara Turova and Alexey Paperny for supporting some very important projects for me personally, and I think that these places will remain in the memory of the city as amazing islands of humanity in the anonymous sterile world of the new Moscow.

Lyubov Arkus, director, Chief Editor"Seance" magazine. Founder and President of the Foundation “Exit in St. Petersburg”, creator of the Center for Education, Social Rehabilitation and Creativity for People with Autism “Anton Is Here”:

In 2014, Varvara Turova literally saved the “Anton is Near Here” Center - with words. She wrote them and wrote them on Facebook, put links to our crowdfunding, asked, promised, gifted, threatened, lured. And - she formulated - how, why, why, right now, immediately, this very second, everyone together, everyone individually needs to immediately help the Center and not let it disappear. Oh, how she phrased it! Where did she find these words and thoughts in such quantities? How did she do it? The fact remains that the money was collected during the most difficult, most critical moment. And now Varya’s “Children of Paradise” is closing. And I can't help her. I have no money, no connections in the mayor's office, and I don't understand anything about the restaurant business. I can only remember that April 2014, say “thank you” to Varya again and remind her that if she knows how we can help, we are here, nearby. Lyuba and Zoya

Anna Narinskaya, literary critic:

Orhan Pamuk, a subtle researcher of the interaction of the soul and memory, speaks about the connection between violence against the city and violence against our “I”: “Every time something is destroyed in the city, we have to face the bitter truth: along with this, part of our memories When the view blocked by a new building is destroyed, or a store operating in one place is closed forever long years- part of our memory is dying." The memory of Muscovites is constantly being killed. In our city, something is being destroyed all the time. And not only historical Buildings, but also places that concentrated the energy of the city. All the establishments of Varvara Turova and Alexey Paperny had a special atmosphere, a special, completely human character. Now, going down from Okhotny Ryad from Children's world To Bolshoi Theater I deliberately turn away, don’t look into the courtyard where the “Workshop” once was, I don’t want to admit that it no longer exists - not because I went there so often, but because I liked living in the city where it the sit is here. And I don’t know at all how I will now walk around Nikitsky, where there will no longer be painted panels of “Children of the Paradise”. It was special place, a meeting place - Moscow and European, bohemian and home, artistic and spree. In a smart city, they are helped with such a place, they are shaken over, they are pulled out of difficulties. In a stupid city they indifferently let it close. We live in a stupid city.

Viktor Shenderovich, writer:

“Children of Paradise” on Nikitsky Boulevard has closed. This is how the soul disappears, this is how it becomes a map native landscape, and the mailing address is a warm place; Strangely enough, such cutoffs measure the change of times... Varya Turova and Lesha Paperny, thank you - it was good! I can’t vouch for the sky in diamonds, but we will certainly see something good; You yourself will probably come up with this good thing. But this will clearly happen at other times. However, I hope soon.

Ekaterina Margolis, artist, publicist:

Now it’s hard to remember when that was. Talk about an imminent opening, randomly seen scraps of sketches... This is one of those places that has always been there. This happens with real books, meetings, songs, films. It’s as if they already existed somewhere, and then through the inspiration and work of the artist they are called out of forced non-existence and instantly become classics. This happens in places too, when a subtle innate feeling, absorbed by generations hometown crosses with the creativity of friendship. "Children of Paradise" all of the above. And much more. This is not just one of the newfangled "establishments". This place. A place instantly permeated with millions of meetings, saturated with memories, illuminated by thought and creativity, voiced by the hum of so many voices and a living, never-ending musical path that would wind and wind for generations. How to imagine the corner of the boulevard without this sign, how to pass by without waving to your friends in the window. This is the fabric of the city, the fabric of life, which is now being torn alive by the teeth of excavators and rolled under gravestones and granite.

Maria Shubina, friend and visitor:

In "Children of Paradise", with its amazing, rare façade, so many significant and good things happened that it is very, very pity. Here you could work for a few hours with a cup of coffee, or you could celebrate a big birthday. Here it was always possible to help someone - the responsiveness of the owners of “Children of Paradise”, their participation in charitable projects gave us the opportunity to join and help the sick, the needy, and prisoners of conscience. It’s a shame that with the closure of “Children of Paradise” there will be less of a special place in Moscow, unlike any other.

Peter Seybil, antiquarian:

"Children of Paradise" in a strange way they collected everything that I love and, like a prism, refracted and amplified it. Things, friends and comfort in the very center of Moscow. It all started before they opened, when Lesha Paperny called me from an ad on Avito and asked me to bring a couple of nice sconces that I had previously brought from Lvov. Sconces have found their place on the wall, nearby are herbariums from Kyiv and shelves from Moscow, chairs from St. Petersburg are behind the tables, and “Children of Paradise” is in my soul. On the first evening of meeting Lesha, we agreed on a concertMonica Santoro (and how many evenings Masha and I racked our brains about who else to tell about our new girlfriend), Mona’s friend Stefano came from Italy and immediately entered the kitchen of “Raika”, and a few months later I was already working at “Lady Jane” - a friend of Leshin and Varya’s place. Sometimes work is not just work, a cafe is not just a cafe, and acquaintances are not just acquaintances. It happens that every small event in your life that attracts new people and seems to reveal and crystallize something inside you. And here is “Heaven”, where you wanted to come for no reason, not to arrange to meet someone, but to meet by chance, where you wanted to go tired or wet in the rain. It became clear a long time ago that in Moscow you move in dashes from cover to cover. From OGI to "Bilingua", from "Bilingua" to "Workshop", from "Workshop" to "Apartment 44", from "Apartment 44" to "Raika". Now there's one less place to go. Just when you need it most. And also, of course, very personal. Something that makes your city completely your own. You can measure the places where your children fell asleep tired (and it turns out they grew up). One day after a Nalich concert. We went to "Raek" with five-year-old Varya. Varya still remembers how she didn’t wait for her pancakes and fell asleep right on the sofa. While Masha and I were chatting with friends whom we (naturally!) met by chance.

Dear Varya Turova and Lyosha Paperny, thank you for putting this off for so many years. Hugs to you both.

Vladimir Mirzoev, director, State Prize laureate:

Here they made appointments for friends and girlfriends, they came here to warm up during filming in the winter, or just dropped in for fun; birthdays or a business meeting in “Children of the Paradise” became a tradition, thanks to the special atmosphere - democratic, intelligent, homely. And, of course, thanks to the geniuses of the place Lyosha and Ira Paperny and Varya Turova. It's a shame that this won't happen in Moscow anymore. But maybe “Children of Paradise” will be reborn in some other area or another city, or on another planet. I want to believe in it, I really want to.

Alexandra Astakhova, photographer:

The first time I went to “Children of Paradise” was five years ago. I didn’t know that my beloved Papernys had anything to do with this club. I just really liked the painted facade. Then we had a delicious meal there in a cozy atmosphere. My son and I sat by the window and looked at Nikitsky Boulevard, which had not yet been dug up. I caught myself thinking that I was not quite in modern Moscow, where I urgently needed to run somewhere, fuss - I went on vacation, for example, to Paris, I don’t have any urgent matters, I can sit for hours with a book and tea or cider, meet friends, listen to music and leave only at night.

Afterwards, we began to drop into Rayok regularly, celebrated birthdays, came after rallies, and came specifically for intimate, stylish concerts. And the audience always made me happy, and I began to like the interior even more: if I suddenly arrived before my friends, I could start looking at the pictures on the walls, listening to unobtrusive French chanson. But this is not the main thing. The main thing is the atmosphere, the spirit of the Moscow that I love. European, cultural, intelligent Moscow, where everyone knows each other, if not through one handshake, then certainly through two. This is all my family. My home club. And that’s why it hurts so much now that this place will no longer exist, that after the clinic on Arbat it will be impossible to run into Rayok.

There will probably be more delicious cafes, and cheaper ones, and now there are probably people who somehow run their businesses more successfully, who know how to bargain with the Moscow Sobyanin authorities, who do not give discounts to all their friends (and the Children of Rajk had many friends ), in general, there are businessmen who do not close clubs. But all these are not my places, I don’t feel comfortable in these successful spaces, they are about some other Moscow, foreign to me. And “Children of Paradise” were MINE. And I am ashamed and offended that we, visitors and admirers of this wonderful club-cafe, could not come more often, could not financially defend Raek. Again, we can only provide moral support...

Elena Koreneva, theater and film actress, director, screenwriter:

There are houses where they are waiting for you. You just don’t realize it for the time being. Right from the door, come in and speak your choking monologue: about the weather, about the tiles, about traffic jams, about the crisis in your pocket and the crisis in your soul. They will listen to you and even pat you on the shoulder: everyone in this house, sooner or later, pronounces their own monologue. And if you crawl there as a shadow, they will grab you by the elbow and lead you to the farthest corner - sit unnoticed by anyone, be sad, drink your bitter glass, looking sideways at those who are happier than you. They dance as if in an open field - free and carefree, to the accompaniment of a guitar and a song thin man at the microphone. His head is silver, and his body is slender and flexible, the voice and face of a boy. Not a singer, but a shaman. The words of his song hit the spot your heart, - these are the words that you hid deeply, deeply, afraid to say them out loud, and now this gray-haired man is singing them to the strumming of a guitar - for you. Before you know it, you suddenly get up from your chair and crawl out of the corner. It doesn’t matter that now you are visible to everyone, you dance and sing along with the one with the guitar at the microphone, you are also now in an open field. And there are more and more people like you. They chant the words of the songs, like an oath: to always be children, get out of the shadows, expose your face and chest to the light, laugh until you cry, make noise and cry, together, together, together - you are not alone, you are saved, you are not afraid. What is the name of this house? This mirage? Was he really there? Witnesses say that the last such house is named “Children of Paradise”. And soon he will disappear. Others talk about the “Workshop” and “Lady Jane”, where they always warmed up the frozen ones - those who once a year came to the gray stone in the square to say aloud the names of the victims of the terrible time. In these houses, money was collected for the most desperate and despairing. There they searched for the truth in disputes, found it and lost it again, but then argued again to revive it, renewed. And also, in the “Workshop”, they sheltered two outcasts, in front of whom all other doors were closed, to play their wedding, celebrating unconventional love. They never raised their hand to love here. In our very old and strange city there are many houses where you can still hear the echo of once living voices and disputes - maybe that’s why they demolish them in the dark of night, lock the doors with a heavy padlock, erase their names in order to drown out these voices. But the wisest among us say that “houses are mirages” do not disappear, we just stop seeing them for a while. And we have to look for them again in order to continue the conversation.

From the editor

The easiest way is to blame the owners of Raika for trying to combine the incompatible - catering business with “humanitarian aid” in all its non-commercial forms and therefore, they say, went bankrupt. However, the simplest analysis shows that catering in Moscow has been the most vulnerable business over the past 30 years - from the moment the first cooperative cafe opened in the capital.

All of Moscow was rushing there, to Fedorov, they took foreign tourists and ministers there, showing with barbaric amazement: there is ONE place in the USSR as a whole where you can eat delicious food!

Never mind. Having earned money, Fedorov left for America...

And after him, hundreds and thousands of restaurateurs, old and young, who knew how to negotiate with everyone and were complete suckers when it came to communicating with the authorities and bandits, got down to business. A year or two passed - and in the place of their projects something different and new opened up. In any case, to imagine that in Moscow there are establishments that are passed down by inheritance, in which husband and wife, their children and grandchildren serve the same clients every day and for many decades - it is impossible, unthinkable! Everything is temporary, rented, on a thin thread and until the first angry auditor...

It’s as if the city is rejecting the real owners, the masters of anything - be it apartments and houses that are being demolished, or businesses that live only until the first shout from the boss... And only officials in Moscow sit for long decades. Luzhkov ruled for 18 years, Sobyanin for 7 years and, it seems, is going to sit in the chair until the end of the 20-year renovation. And the former head of all capital’s catering and trade, Vladimir Malyshkov, ruled the most “grain” places for as much as 26 years - from 1987 to 2013!!

Finally, we present the main points from the martyrology article of Moscow catering about the results of 2016.

2016, like the previous one, turned out to be rich in sacrifices - everything was closed.

2016 is the year of the death of many of Kirill Gusev’s establishments. Once upon a time, this businessman treated the Moscow fat with excellent super-Tuscany, Japanese Tajima bulls with Chilean wagyu, but the oligarchs with cutlets of dollars are a thing of the past, and it seems that Gusev - in himself a bright sign of those years - did not have time to adapt. There is no hope of settling somewhere in the vicinity of Forte dei Marmi - the restaurateur tried in vain to breathe life into dead areas with stillborn ideas. Debts grew, investors became tense, we did not have time to remember the name of the next tavern - their life was short and dull. Here's just the latest of the terrifying: B.I.G.G.I.E. on the site of Beefbar Junior in the Ukraina Hotel; Funky Food in partnership with Ksenia, for a second, Borodina, in the place of “Turkish Gambit” (in place of “Kebaberia” and “Kazan”, respectively); “Walking Walking” in place of the “Golden Kid”. All this is no longer there.

Go ahead. A small tombstone: “Ducks and Waffles” by chef Dmitry Shurshakov (and Co.) in the place of the good Osteria Montiroli. Few people managed to look at the “Ducks” before they flew off to distant lands and a lock appeared on the doors.

We say goodbye - with a salvo from the state military band - to the Beefbar restaurant, beloved by officials. They will no longer serve you rare steak there. And the crab salad on the floor below is not served at Nabi. The mansion on Prechistenskaya was taken by Ginza, and the property, they say, was seized by the Chechens.

Another mastermind of a bygone era, Andrei Dellos, closed Orange Tree and Manon. And the famous frayed velvet sofas “Manon” went to a well-deserved rest (in the place of the former dances on the table there is an excellent restaurant “Kaz Bek”). “Orange” has become a symbol of Nordic cuisine that has not taken root on Moscow soil.

We move further along the alley of the restaurant cemetery. To your right is a pair of mounds. Let's take a closer look. What's on the wooden signs? One Pot on Bolshaya Dmitrovka (also known as “khryuchevo from the pot”) did not survive the summer season. Neither the green thickets at the entrance, nor the annoying PR, nor the Condé Nast publishing house in the neighboring courtyard saved it. .

What about market monsters like Ginza? All year, Ginza took oversized sites and fertilized them in vitro. Not everything took root. Here is Mad Cook with a young but already insane cook. When asked why another Italian restaurant was needed thirty meters from the canonically delicious Probka, not one of the stream of endlessly flashing PR people could answer. Well, the answer was empty tables and sad hostesses.

“Ginza” also sat on the square of the deceased “Yulina’s Kitchen” on Bolshaya Gruzinskaya. The business people in the vicinity of Belorusskaya Square did not want to eat eclairs in the shape of swans and the signature puree of the host of the “Eat at Home” program. Another media personality, Elena Chekalova, also suffered a loss this year. “Let's go,” a restaurant on Petrovka, which, through the efforts of Leonid Parfenov’s family, visited, without exaggeration, the entire intelligentsia of Moscow, closed until Easter.

The symbol of Moscow's gastronomic revolution - Ragout on Bolshaya Gruzinskaya - left us on the first day of the new year. The cafe and school of the same name on Olympiysky Prospekt remained open until the summer. There are many reasons for closure. The team of gastro-revolutionaries scattered to cities and villages, legends were made about the project’s debts and management troubles, and there was simply no need to eat food in the absence of the boss.

To summarize: in the year two thousand sixteen we missed many projects. They broke into closed doors“Piazza Rossa” in the “National” (soon there will be a “Beluga” bar). With appetite we ordered the best tartare in the city at Max's Beef for Money on the site of the deceased "Kladovaya". We shrugged our shoulders when Ah!Beatrice ordered to live long (with all our sympathy for the owners and in general everyone who does at least something in the Moscow restaurant industry , we predicted his death a year ago - and they were offended at us. In vain). We sighed when the sign of the Montalto pizzeria was changed to Corner Burger. We humbly went for banana pudding at Upside Down when Magnolia Baker stopped working on Kuznetsky. We shed a tear when “Rulet "on Trubnaya turned into Pipe.

At Nikanor's factory

The fire burns all day long:

Lizaveta tramples clay,

Nikanor is cutting pots.

Such ditties were sung in the village about the parents of my mother’s father Nikolai Nikanorovich Kazankov. From this occupation of his parents (pots - cauldrons) the surname Kazankov came from: when Nikolai came to St. Petersburg to work in his youth, he did not have a surname. His owners asked him where he was from and who his parents were, and they came up with a last name. He became a great painter. Worked in Winter Palace. They also sang about his hard work:

Grandfather Nikolai and grandmother Alexandra

Under Kazanochka's window

The bird cherry blossomed

Curly Kazanochek

Don't get up before the sun.

Nikolai was born in 1880. His wife, Alexandra Petrovna, was the same age as him. There were 12 children in the family, mother was the youngest. Born in the village of Zapolitsy, Galich district, Kostroma region, on July 1, 1921. The date of birth, of course, is not exact, since in the summer, during the holy season, there was no time to baptize children, and in the fall, when they went to church, exact number They didn’t even remember anymore. This is probably why the holiday has always been the day of the angel “Faith, Hope, Love”, September 30th.

In the village household, in addition to horses and cows, there were chickens, cats, and sheep. Sheepskin coats were made from sheepskin: for this they hired a tailor, who lived and worked in the house for some time. It was bad with shoes: there weren’t enough felt boots for everyone, not to mention boots. That's why mom caught a cold in her feet. I studied in the village for only one year: my leg hurt and I couldn’t walk. In the Kostroma hospital, bone tuberculosis was diagnosed. On the advice of brother Sergei, we moved to Kramatorsk to live with our older brother Alexei. In Kramatorsk, my mother spent three months in a cast, and then she was taken to the Slavyansk children's tuberculosis sanatorium, where she spent another six months. Upon returning from there, they gave me a referral to a Kyiv hospital. Treatment there continued for 8 months. As a result of the disease, one leg was 10 cm shorter than the other. I went to school on crutches, then wore very ugly prosthetic shoes, which were ordered in Kharkov.

In 1938, my mother met Nadya Konyagina, who also suffered from bone tuberculosis, but she underwent surgery on the hip joint in Kharkov, as a result of which her leg lengthened. Nadya wore ordinary shoes, and the defect was almost invisible. I told my parents about this, and they asked the doctor, Yakov Grigorievich Puznyansky, to give a referral to Kharkov for such an operation. He himself undertook to operate on my mother and did it successfully. Since then there has been no pain in my leg. The doctor died in the Finnish war.

On June 21, 1941, I was at school prom, walked until late at night. And on the morning of the 22nd, my grandmother woke me up and said that the war with the Germans had begun. Mom, as a graduate of school with honors, had the right to enter any institute without exams. I had already chosen a medical one a long time ago, in Stalino (now Donetsk). I sent the documents there, and soon a call came. I didn’t want to go, since the war was already in full swing, but my grandmother said: “Go.” Stalin will not give up Donbass to the Germans." I had just arrived when the railway station was bombed. At the institute they sent me to dig trenches, but my mother was released because of her leg, and she returned home.

The Germans have arrived. Komsomol class organizer Zoika Nemtsova handed over the list of Komsomol members to the Gestapo. Since then, I have been required to regularly come to the mark. The passports were taken away. One winter they sent us to clear the snow from the railroad tracks. They worked together with their friend Anya Merenkova (after marriage - Brazhko). They took advantage of the fact that the Germans were not watching and fled. The Romanian guards fired after us. Youth is fearless: nephew Kostya found and brought home a parachute, although advertisements posted around the city threatened to shoot him for this. After the war, my mother happily wore a blouse made of durable parachute silk.

There was nothing to eat. They said about the soup back then: “Wheat chases wheat after wheat with a club.” I remember how Kostya and I dreamed about pasta. Sometimes he hunted for frogs, but even hunger did not turn them into a delicacy. To feed themselves, they went to work with the Ukrainians. They weeded and did everything they said. For work they received a little food, sometimes corn grain or flour. Many, believing German propaganda, went to work in Germany, then began to steal by force. My mother was saved from being hijacked by her bad leg, and my grandmother by her age. First of all, healthy, able-bodied, young people were needed. Some girls from the class left. All the boys went to war, none of them returned. They also took my older brother Sergei. A message later came from the Kursk region that he had gone missing (apparently on the Kursk Bulge).

Part-time students. In the first row: third from left is Vulis, second from right is mom

After the Germans left in 1943, she went to work as a draftswoman at a cement plant in the department of the chief mechanic, which was headed by Timofey Petrovich Rastorguev. With a dream about medical institute I had to break up - I had to live on something. In 1945, she entered the mechanical engineering college in the evening department. A few months later, I asked the school to make a copy of the certificate and submitted the documents to the All-Union Correspondence Institute of Building Materials. I started studying there too. The director of the Kramatorsk branch of the institute, Vulis, invited Moscow teachers to Kramatorsk to give lectures and take exams, so they only went to Moscow for the final exams.

Sometimes I had to miss classes at the technical school due to studying at the institute and being busy at work. Mom taught a technical minimum in welding for students, and also supervised their industrial practice. She was also responsible for organizing the repair of equipment in the workshops. When I came to class after another absence, the mathematics teacher tried to call me to the blackboard for educational purposes, but she successfully coped with problems that were incomparably easier than those at the institute. In the city library she was always pestered by students asking for help in solving problems.

With Nina Balan

The meeting of the parents took place in 1951. Dad came to Kramatorsk on a business trip with the task of establishing the cause of problems with the mill equipment that was produced at ``Uralmash''. I went into the chief mechanic's department - in an open fur coat - to get acquainted. Mom was tasked with writing out passes for him and his friend. I went to do it, but returned halfway: ``I remembered the surname ``Zemskov'', but forgot the second one." Then she showed him the plant and took him around the workshops.

Dad immediately liked the pretty, slender girl, who captivated me with her competence in production matters and determination in her studies. Soon we met by chance in the library, which was located in the same building as the rooms for visitors. One evening we went to the cinema. We watched a film about Bogdan Khmelnitsky in Ukrainian, and my mother translated incomprehensible passages. After the session I went to see him off. We went up to the apartment, met my grandmother and sat down to drink tea. They sang on the radio: “Under the city of Gorky, where the dawns are clear, a friend lives in a workers’ village...” Everyone sang along. My grandmother liked the handsome, emotional young man so much that after he left she exclaimed: “Mother Vera, where did you find such a guy?!”, to which my mother replied: “He’s a newcomer, he’s not here for long.”

And after my father’s departure, a correspondence began.

First row: Aunt Asya, Uncle Fedya, Dad, Uncle Zhenya.

Second row: great-grandmother Anna, grandmother Fekla, grandfather Akim.

My father's great-grandfather on my father's side, Timofey, was a grain grower. We lived in the village of Malo-Turovo, Klenovsky village council (the nearest village that has survived to this day is Klenovka, the nearest city is Vereshchagino, Perm region). Grandfather Mikhail, father Akim (born in 1888) and uncle Egor (born in 1886) themselves built a water mill and successfully operated it, which is why the family was almost dispossessed in the 30s.

Mother - Fekla Antipyevna Korlyakova (born 1899) - from the village of Karely. Having graduated from parochial school, like her father, she worked as a primary school teacher before her marriage.

My father’s grandmother on my mother’s side was devout, and sometimes her daughter and grandchildren got it from her for not revering God enough. But she was never able to convey her faith to them. And the time was such that churches and prayers were not welcomed.

Akim Mikhailovich and Fekla Antipyevna got married in 1922. In addition to mill work, together they were engaged in the manufacture of uluchki - beautiful sleighs, into which the best horses were harnessed. Elegant outfits were in great demand. Akim Mikhailovich acquired the skills of plumbing and carpentry during his army service, when he worked at the Kazan Arms Factory.

In 1932, fleeing dispossession, they handed over the mill against a receipt to the village council and went to look for work in Siberia. We were leaving Vereshchagino station. The trip was long. At the Siberian grain farm, Akim Mikhailovich was hired as a toolmaker. The state farm was also engaged in cattle breeding - dad, then completely a little boy, was afraid of the bulls running around the village.

But the search better life It didn’t end there: we took a trip to Tashkent - the “city of grain.” They haven’t settled down there either - no housing, no work, they’re hungry. I remember the Uzbek children at the stations picking up watermelon rinds.

Fekla Antipyevna Korlyakova

All this time, they were in correspondence with Fekla Antipyevna’s brother, Yakov (born 1897), who settled in Sverdlovsk and, although he himself lived in a dugout, agitated to go to him. And so they did. My father went to work at the Uralmashplant, and almost immediately he was given a room in a wooden house, then two rooms on the 2nd floor of a house on 40 Letiya Oktyabrya Street, formerly st. Molotov (these houses have already been demolished).

Not all children became adults. In 1931, his elder brother Victor died. He was only 12 years old. He was buried in the cemetery in the village of Seven Keys. Grandfather Mikhail, who in last years lived with Uncle Yegor. Grandfather was 84. She died in 1937 infant sister Lyuba. Later, another Lyuba will be born - the youngest of the children.

Before the war, we received a 2-room apartment on the street. Kirovogradskaya, 54. This three-story house has survived to this day. Around him in war time They were on duty at night, sometimes going up to the attic. All supporting structures in the attic were coated with clay in case lighters hit them.

From school years I remember playing billiards made by my father. The balls were metal and smaller than standard ones. In this game, dad often emerged victorious. We enjoyed playing lapta in the yard. The rules of the game are as follows: the order of players is established, then the first player hits the ball with a spatula, trying to get into the marked area, and runs to the team; the team tries to intercept the ball and hit the runner with the ball, and if this succeeds before the player reaches the team, then the striker returns to his original position, and everything is repeated all over again; If the team misses, then the next player begins to shoot. We went ice skating and skiing, again homemade. One day he was unlucky: not having time to dodge his fallen older brother, dad threw himself into the snow, and the ski that flew off “rammed” his wife’s cheek. A reminder of this incident remained with Evgeniy for the rest of his life in the form of a small scar.

Excerpt from a letter from Akim Mikhailovich.

Dad received a certificate of completion of seven classes in 1941. Despite the outbreak of the war, he entered the electromechanical technical school on the street. Decembrists (later the University of Marxism-Leninism was located in this building). But in the same year, a government decree was issued to suspend the work of technical schools, and studies did not take place.

On February 9, 1942, dad went to the Uralmash plant to work with his father on the workbench. The workbench stood in a booth fenced off inside the steel-shaping workshop. We repaired gearboxes that regulate gas pressure in a metal cutter. There were about 10 gas cutters who had to be provided with tools without interruption. They worked 12 hours: the father - on the 1st shift, the son - on the 2nd shift. The steel-shaped workshop produced turrets for tanks: they were molded according to the model, then cast. The parts of the tank that were not cooled down and not cleared of molding soil had a completely peaceful use - workers baked potatoes on them. Then the earth was knocked out by lifting half of the flask (frame with molding earth) using a crane. During casting, a burn was formed, which was the task of the choppers to cut off with a chisel and a pneumatic hammer. To do this, they climbed inside the tower. All experienced choppers fell ill with silicosis of the lungs and died early.

Akim Mikhailovich Turov

In 1942, a decree was issued on the restoration of technical schools. Entered the Uralmash Evening Mechanical Engineering College. Classes at the technical school began at six in the evening. He was friends with Kostya Tishkov, who also worked at the plant. I still have his letter from the construction site. Aswan Dam in Egypt. Thesis on the topic ``Design of a workshop for the production of broaches'' defended in 1947 with ``excellent marks''. A broach is a tool for expanding holes to the desired size.

I wanted to study further. I chose the correspondence mechanical engineering institute at the plant. I had to take exams again, and some of the school curriculum It was already forgotten, so the entrance exam in mathematics was passed by the “freshly trained” Fedor at school for dad. After graduating from college, he went to work in workshop 82 in the technological department for cold metal cutting. The department of 4 people was led by the “fighting man” Yuri Mikhailovich Koshcheev. He worked there until 1948. Then I became interested in assembling excavators (workshops 29, 30). I learned about the external installation shop and joined it as a chief installer. We went on calls to install various equipment. The salary - 1000 rubles - was considered very good. If you passed an object with an “excellent” rating, you received a 100% bonus. The evaluation included quality and timing. Basically, we installed excavators. The first excavator was assembled under my father’s leadership in Pervouralsk at a magnetite mine.

On his plot near the house at Uralmash

Then there were Lipetsk, AngarGESstroy near Irkutsk, Kantagi in Uzbekistan, Volsk in the Saratov region, Orsk in Southern Urals, Blagoveshchensk in the Far East, where 5 excavators were installed together with Fedor Ivanovich Pimenov. He worked in Volgodon, near the city of Krasnoarmeysk. The journey there - from Stalingrad - was made by steamship along the Volga. We also returned along the river - to Perm. The 5 excavators installed over the summer were supposed to excavate the bottom of the Tsimlyansk reservoir or, as they said then, the “sea.” Accidents also occurred due to casting defects. For example, when a brake pulley burst, they sent a telegram to Uralmash, and from there they sent a new one. All 5 excavators were delivered on time. The chic of operating an excavator is driving a nail into a sleeper with a bucket.

In 1956, my mother and I went from Kramatorsk to Rostov-on-Don to look at this man-made sea, but we didn’t get there because the Volga-Don Canal was closed due to ongoing work. The length of the Volga-Don Canal is 92 km, completed in 1952.

I also visited the North, at Svir-Stroy (not far from Ladeinoye Pole). At that time, a hydroelectric power station already existed and a canal was being dug. Lived in wooden houses, nearby are gardens. There I heard the first nightingale. In 1951, dad went on a business trip to Kramatorsk, to a cement plant, where he met my mother. Then there will be almost 10 months of correspondence, marriage and moving to Kramatorsk, admission to the All-Union Correspondence Institute of Building Materials.

First row: grandmother Fekla, aunt Lyuba, grandfather Akim. Second row: Uncle Fyodor, Aunt Asya, Dad, Aunt Valya, Uncle Zhenya.

Father-student of the All-Union correspondence institute building materials