Kamenshchiki Streets (Great and Small): Stonemasons Streets, named for the stonemasons who lived there in the seventeenth century.
several Krutitsky Lanes: Moscow has four such lanes (1st Krutitsky, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th), all in the neighborhood of Krutitsky Tower.
Kuskovo: The summer residence of the Sheremetevs.
No. 29 Tverskaya: In 1792, Nikolai Karamzin rented a room from a blacksmith in the yard behind the house at No. 29 Tverskaya Street; there he wrote “Poor Liza.”
Dolidze: Viktor Dolidze (1890–1933), a Georgian-born composer.
Karamzin: Nikolai Karamzin (1766–1826), a poet, short-story writer, and historian; the author of the sentimental love story “Poor Liza” about a good peasant girl who, seduced and abandoned by a sincere but feckless nobleman, drowns herself.
Liza’s Pond: Near the Simonov Monastery in southeast Moscow; it was known as Lisiy Prud (Fox Pond). After the appearance of “Poor Liza” (1792), people began calling it Lizin Prud (Liza’s Pond), which became its official name.
Church of the Georgian Mother of God at Nikitniki: Nikitnikov Lane, 3. A two-story stone confection financed by the Yaroslavl merchant G.L. Nikitnikov. In 1654, during a plague, a Georgian icon of the Virgin was brought to Moscow and placed in the church; those who prayed before it were reportedly spared. The church was closed in 1920 (and partially reopened in 1991).
Simon Ushakov: An innovative icon painter (1626–1686) who treated traditional subjects in an untraditionally realistic manner.
The Annunciation with Acathistus (1659): By Simon Ushakov, Yakov Kazanets, and Gavrila Kondratiev. A central panel surrounded by twelve smaller ones. Ushakov painted the most important parts of the images: the faces.
The Mother of God by the Tree (1668): Formally known as The Virgin of Vladimir or the Tree of the Russian State; now in the Tretyakov Gallery. Ivan Kalita (see note below) and Metropolitan Peter are shown planting a tree whose branches are decorated with medallion portraits of political figures in ancient Russia; the central portrait is of the Vladimir Virgin.
Nikola Big Cross: A two-story church (1680–1688) on Ilinka Street named for Saint Nicholas the Miracle Worker and for the seven-foot carved wooden cross inside; razed in 1933.
Alexander Ostrovsky: A dramatist and occasional prose writer (1823–1886).
Zamoskvorechye: A large loop of land on the south side of the Moscow River (opposite the Kremlin) inhabited in the nineteenth century by merchants and minor civil servants.
a new country—Zamoskvorechye: In his Zapiski Zamoskvoretskogo zhitelya (Notes of a Zamoskvorechye Resident, 1847), Ostrovsky exults at having discovered a country about which nothing is known, save its name and location: “As for its inhabitants, that is, their way of life, language, manners, customs, and level of education—all that has been shrouded in mystery.” This world apart within Moscow provided the material for many of Ostrovsky’s plays.
Tolstoyans: A rationalist sect (less concerned with religious questions than with how to organize a sensible and virtuous life) that came out of Tolstoy’s teachings in the 1880s.
No. 21 Khamovnichesky Lane: Leo Tolstoy’s house in Moscow (1882–1901).
Plutarch: A Greek biographer (c. 46–120); the author of Parallel Lives.
Sylvester: An adviser to the young Ivan the Terrible; the editor of Domostroi (Domestic Order), a sixteenth-century compendium of religious, social, and household rules.
its orbi is only urbi: An allusion to the papal blessing Urbi et Orbi—“For the city (of Rome) and for the (entire Catholic) world.”
idealism: In its philosophical sense, the belief that reality is entirely shaped by one’s mind, that anything outside one’s mind (e.g., matter) is suspect.
materialism: The theory that matter alone exists.
“school of Moscow idealism”: Its most influential members were Vladimir Solovyov (1853–1900), Sergei Trubetskoi (1862–1905), and Lev Lopatin (1855–1920); all three taught philosophy at Moscow University.
the building on Mokhovaya Street: Moscow University.
Kalita: Ivan Danilovich Kalita (1304–1341), Prince of Moscow, Grand Prince of Vladimir; called “the first gatherer of Russian lands.”
Saint Sergius: Sergius of Radonezh (1314–1392), the founder and father superior of the Holy Trinity Monastery in Sergiyev Posad (near Moscow).
Ivan IV: Ivan the Terrible (1530–1584).
Basil the Blessed: Holy fool (d. 1552); his relics are buried in the Cathedral of the Intercession (Saint Basil’s) on Red Square.
landsknecht: A mercenary soldier in German and other armies (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries).
strelets: A member of a military corps in Muscovite Russia (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries).
Olearius: Adam Olearius (c. 1599–1671), a German traveler and scholar; a member of two embassies sent by the Duke of Holstein to the court of the first Romanov tsar in the 1630s. Olearius’s account of his visits to Russia was first published in 1647.
Herberstein: See note on same for “Autobiography of a Corpse.”
Korb: See note above.
Professor Yurkevich: Pamfil Yurkevich (1827–1874), a philosopher-idealist and teacher. At Moscow University, Yurkevich taught Vladimir Solovyov (see note above), who became a lecturer there.
Sukharevka: A famous old flea market. After the Moscow Fire of 1812 and the retreat of Napoleon’s army, the Moscow governor-general Count F.V. Rostopchin declared a rule of finders, keepers. Whoever found whatever (wherever) could keep it or sell it—only on Sundays on the square by Sukharev Tower. The market was closed in 1925.
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