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Abstract:

The article is devoted to the problem of preserving memorable places in Kazan connected with Maxim Gorky’s name. Undoubtedly, modern Kazan and the city where the future writer lived are two completely different places, and, at first glance, it seems that now here nothing reminds about writer’s “Kazan universities” except the Museum of A.M. Gorky and F.I. Chaliapin (the name appeared on March 7, 2018, before it was called the Literary and Memorial Museum of A.M. Gorky). Nevertheless, step by step going on a journey with the heroes of M. Gorky’s autobiographical works, you discover well-recognized preserved places: “Marusovka” and Staro-Tatarskaya sloboda, University and Spiritual academy, Fedorovsky bugor and zemsky hospital. Nowadays there are less than a half from twentysix once known Gorky places (we mean places visited by writer during his trip to Kazan in 1928). There is no more Andrew Derenkov’s grocery store that was located on the corner of the Old-Gorshechnaya and Professor’s Lane street, where the youth had met to read. There is also no second Derenkov’s bakery at the corner of Teatralnaya and Basseinaya streets and Spasso-Preobrajensky monastery on the territory of Kremlin, where the future writer worked. And the home of “General’s wife” Korne opposite the Quartermaster’s garden, where he worked as a gardener and janitor, as well as Mykolayivska Square, Derzhavinsky and Panayevsky Gardens does not exist. The house in the Sobachiy Lane, where writer printed leaflets together with his friend Guriy Pletnev is rebuilt to unrecognizable. And only Gorky’s texts, that became a truly documentary evidence of the past, make possible to restore his own Kazan, which entered into the world literature.

Keywords: Gorky places, Kazan “universities”, autobiographical works, documentary witness, the Museum of Gorky and Shalyapin.