Description of the attraction
The Kshesinskaya mansion is one of the architectural monuments of St. Petersburg. It is located at the intersection of Kronverkskiy Avenue and Kuibyshev Street. It was built from 1904 to 1906 according to the project of the architect A. von Gauguin for the prima of the Mariinsky Theater, ballerina Matilda Kshesinskaya. The interior of the mansion was made according to the sketches of the architect A. I. Dmitrieva.
Matilda Feliksovna Kshesinskaya lived a long and eventful life, having died at the age of 99. Her talent was applauded by the whole world, she was the first of the Russian ballerinas who managed to do 32 fouettés. Among the admirers of Kshesinskaya's talent were the Grand Dukes of the Romanovs Andrei Vladimirovich, whom she married in exile, and Sergei Mikhailovich. The romance between Matilda and the heir to the throne, Nikolai Alexandrovich, lasted three years.
In the days of the February Revolution, Kshesinskaya, along with her son Vladimir, frightened of the riots, hastily left the house. The building was almost immediately occupied by soldiers of the armored divisions workshops. Then the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b), the city committee of the RSDLP (b), the editorial offices of the newspapers Pravda and Soldatskaya Pravda were transferred to the mansion. The ballerina's mansion turned, as the newspapers of that time wrote, into the main headquarters. For four months from April 3 to July 4 in 1917 V. I. Lenin.
Kshesinskaya tried to return the mansion. She turned to the prosecutor in the Petrograd judicial chamber with a request to expel strangers from her house, to give an opportunity to live in it and to find and punish those responsible for plundering property. As a retaliatory measure, the prosecutor turned to the command of the armored division with a request to vacate Kshesinskaya's house if possible and sent a request to the police to start an investigation into the embezzlement of property. The lawyer of Matilda Kshesinskaya V. Khesin began a lawsuit to evict the unauthorized people from the mansion. As a defendant, the plaintiff indicated V. AND. Ulyanov (Lenin). The defendants were represented by lawyer M. Kozlovsky.
Kshesinskaya won this case. Justice of the Peace Chistoserdov signed a decree on the eviction of all revolutionary organizations and the world-famous ballerina who had unauthorizedly moved in from the mansion for a period of 20 days. In relation to Ulyanov, the lawsuit was stopped, since he did not live in the mansion. The city and Central committees of the RSDLP (b) obeyed and announced their eviction, but the military party organization flatly refused to comply with the court order. Soon the St. Petersburg committee returned.
On July 6, 1917, after an armed conflict with supporters of the Bolsheviks, troops subordinate to the government took the mansion by storm. Now there was a scooter battalion. The soldiers did not consider it necessary to take good care of the property in the house. Valuables were looted, many decor elements and furniture were destroyed. By filing another lawsuit, Khesin estimated the material damage of Kshesinskaya at 3 million rubles. Matilda herself did not wait for the court's decision. On June 13, she left for Kislovodsk to her dacha to the Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich. In 1920, she left Russia forever for France, where in 1929 she opened a ballet studio.
In the Kshesinskaya mansion after the revolution until 1938, the organizations of the Petrograd Soviet, the Society of Old Bolsheviks (Leningrad branch), and the Institute of Nutrition were located. Then, until 1956, there was a museum of S. M. Kirov. Since 1957 it has been the Museum of the Revolution. Today it houses the Museum of Political History.
In the plan, the building of the Kshesinskaya mansion is asymmetrical, the composition contains elements of different heights. The exterior decor uses red and gray granite, majolica, decorative molding. Inside the mansion is divided into enfilades of rooms and halls overlooking the winter garden. The interior decoration in the Art Nouveau style echoed stylistically with the exterior. The appearance of the mansion has remained practically unchanged, but the original interior decoration has been almost completely lost. The entrance hall, staircase, lobby have survived to this day; in 1980, the White Hall was restored, in which F. I. Chaliapin, L. Cavalieri, L. V. Sobinov. The guests of the mansion at different times were A. Duncan, A. Pavlova, V. Nijinsky, T. Karsavina. During and after the revolution, A. Lunacharsky, A. Kollontai, K. Voroshilov, Y. Sverdlov worked here.
Reviews
| All reviews 5 Victor 2012-28-12 11:09:38 PM
A brief overview in a video about the mansion of the ballerina Kshesinskaya A brief overview in the video about the mansion of the ballerina Kshesinskaya
