Peredelkino is a dacha

Dacha

Dacha is a Russian word for seasonal or year-round second homes often located in the exurbs of Soviet and post-Soviet cities. Cottages or shacks serving as family's main or only home are not considered dachas, although many purpose-built dachas are recently being converted for year-round residence...

 complex situated just to the southwest of Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

, Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

.

History

The settlement originated as the estate of Peredeltsy, owned by the Leontievs (maternal relatives of Peter the Great

Peter I of Russia

Peter the Great, Peter I or Pyotr Alexeyevich Romanov Dates indicated by the letters "O.S." are Old Style. All other dates in this article are New Style. ruled the Tsardom of Russia and later the Russian Empire from until his death, jointly ruling before 1696 with his half-brother, Ivan V...

), then by Princes Dolgorukov

Dolgorukov

Dolgoroukov is the name of a princely Russian family Dolgorukovs of Rurikid stock. Descendants of Mikhail of Chernigov, they took their name from one prince of Obolensk, whose sobriquet was Dolgorouky, or "Long-Armed" in Russian, alluding their lineage to the ancient Persian monarchy. Among its...

 and by the Samarins. After a railway passed through the village in the 19th century, it was renamed Peredelkino. In 1934, Maxim Gorky

Maxim Gorky

Alexei Maximovich Peshkov , primarily known as Maxim Gorky , was a Russian and Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.-Early years:...

 suggested handing over the area to the Union of Soviet Writers. Within several years, about fifty wooden cottages were constructed in Peredelkino by writers to German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 designs.

Among the littérateurs who settled in Peredelkino were Boris Pasternak

Boris Pasternak

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian language poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russia, Pasternak's anthology My Sister Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language...

, Korney Chukovsky

Korney Chukovsky

Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky was one of the most popular children's poets in the Russian language. His poems, Doctor Aybolit , The Giant Roach , The Crocodile , and Wash'em'clean have been favourites with many generations of Russophone children...

, Arseny Tarkovsky

Arseny Tarkovsky

Arseny Alexandrovich Tarkovsky was a prominent Soviet and Russian poet and translator. He is considered one of the great 20th century Russian poets. He was also the father of influential film director Andrei Tarkovsky.-Origin:...

 (all three buried at the local cemetery), Ilya Ehrenburg

Ilya Ehrenburg

Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg was a Soviet writer, journalist, translator, and cultural figure.Ehrenburg is among the most prolific and notable authors of the Soviet Union; he published around one hundred titles. He became known first and foremost as a novelist and a journalist - in particular, as a...

, Veniamin Kaverin

Veniamin Kaverin

Veniamin Alexandrovich Kaverin was a Soviet writer associated with the early 1920s movement of the Serapion Brothers. The immunologist Lev Zilber was his older brother, and the critic Yury Tynyanov was his brother-in-law....

, Leonid Leonov

Leonid Leonov

Leonid Maximovich Leonov was a Soviet novelist and playwright. He has been dubbed the 20th-century Dostoyevsky for the deep psychological torment of his prose.-Early life:...

, Ilya Ilf

Ilya Ilf

Ilya Ilf was an extremely popular Soviet author of the 1920s and 1930s, who worked in collaboration with Yevgeni Petrov. See Ilf and Petrov for more info....

, Vsevolod Ivanov

Vsevolod Ivanov

Vsevolod Vyacheslavovich Ivanov was a notable Soviet writer praised for the colourful adventure tales set in the Asiatic part of Russia during the Civil War.-Biography:...

, Nikolay Zabolotsky

Nikolay Zabolotsky

Nikolay Alexeyevich Zabolotsky - a Russian poet, children's writer and translator. He was a Modernist and one of the founders of the Russian avant-garde absurdist group Oberiu.-Life and work:...

, Boris Pilnyak

Boris Pilnyak

Boris Pilnyak was a Russian author. Born Boris Andreyevich Vogau in Mozhaysk, he was a major supporter of anti-urbanism and a critic of mechanized society. These views often brought him into disfavor with Communist critics...

, Lilya Brik

Lilya Brik

Lilya Yuryevna Brik is known best as a muse of Vladimir Mayakovsky. She was an older sister of Elsa Triolet and wife of Osip Brik. Pablo Neruda called her "muse of Russian avant-garde"...

, Konstantin Simonov

Konstantin Simonov

Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov was a Russian/Soviet author, known especially as a war poet.-Early years:He was born in Petrograd. His mother was born Princess Obolenskaya, of a Rurikid family. His father, an officer in the Tsar's army, left Russia after the Revolution in 1917. He died in Poland...

, Alexander Fadeyev, and Mikhail Bakhtin

Mikhail Bakhtin

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin was a Russian philosopher, literary critic, semiotician and scholar who worked on literary theory, ethics, and the philosophy of language...

. Turkish poet Nâzım Hikmet

Nazim Hikmet

Nâzım Hikmet Ran , commonly known as Nâzım Hikmet , was a Turkish poet, playwright, novelist and memoirist. He was acclaimed for the "lyrical flow of his statements"...

 spent the early years of his self-imposed exile in the USSR at Peredelkino. More recently, Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko is a Soviet and Russian poet. He is also a novelist, essayist, dramatist, screenwriter, actor, editor, and a director of several films.-Early life:...

, Andrei Voznesensky, Bella Akhmadulina, Robert Rozhdestvensky

Robert Rozhdestvensky

Robert Ivanovich Rozhdestvensky was a Soviet poet who in the broke with the Social Realism in 1950s–1960s and, along with such poets as Andrey Voznesensky, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, and Bella Akhmadulina, pioneered a newer, fresher, and freer poetry in the Soviet Union.-Life:Robert Rozhdestvensky...

, and Zurab Tsereteli

Zurab Tsereteli

Zurab Konstantines dze Tsereteli is a Georgian-Russian painter, sculptor and architect who holds the office of President of the Russian Academy of Arts.- Life :...

 moved into the area as well.

The arrest of author and playwright Isaak Babel, one of the most notorious events of Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

's Great Purge

Great Purge

The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...

, took place in Peredelkino on May 15, 1939. Babel was then taken by automobile to the Lubyanka Prison

Lubyanka (KGB)

The Lubyanka is the popular name for the headquarters of the KGB and affiliated prison on Lubyanka Square in Moscow. It is a large building with a facade of yellow brick, designed by Alexander V...

, tortured, and shot by the NKVD

NKVD

The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....

.

Peredelkino is presumably the source for the name of Mikhail Bulgakov

Mikhail Bulgakov

Mikhaíl Afanásyevich Bulgákov was a Soviet Russian writer and playwright active in the first half of the 20th century. He is best known for his novel The Master and Margarita, which The Times of London has called one of the masterpieces of the 20th century.-Biography:Mikhail Bulgakov was born on...

's Perelygino. But, Bulgakov places his Perelygino on the Klyazma, Bolshevo, which is where another writers' colony was. The village is also featured in John le Carré

John le Carré

David John Moore Cornwell , who writes under the name John le Carré, is an author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and the 1960s, Cornwell worked for MI5 and MI6, and began writing novels under the pseudonym "John le Carré"...

's spy novel The Russia House

The Russia House

The Russia House is a novel by John le Carré published in 1989. The title refers to the nickname given to the portion of the British Secret Intelligence Service that was devoted to spying on the Soviet Union. A film based on the novel was released in 1990, starring Sean Connery and Michelle...

.

In 1988, the cottages of Chukovsky and Pasternak were proclaimed memorial houses, while the area of Peredelkino was designated a "historical and cultural reservation". A decade later, the dacha of Bulat Okudzhava

Bulat Okudzhava

Bulat Shalvovich Okudzhava was a Soviet and Russian poet, writer, musician, novelist, and singer-songwriter. He was one of the founders of the Russian genre called "author song"...

 was also opened to the public as a museum. After the collapse of the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, Peredelkino was taken over by the Russian new rich. Many new apartment buildings were constructed in Novo-Peredelkino district nearby.

, the most notable resident of Peredelkino was Alexy II, Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia. The summer residence of Lukino (originally built in the Russian Revival

Russian Revival

The Russian Revival style is the generic term for a number of different movements within Russian architecture that arose in second quarter of the 19th century and was an eclectic melding of pre-Peterine Russian architecture and elements of Byzantine architecture.The Russian Revival style arose...

-style for Baron de Bodé) adjoins the 19th-century church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour. Alexy II died there on December 5, 2008.

The territory of the complex is divided between three administrative units: its eastern portion is located in jurisdiction of Western Administrative Okrug

Western Administrative Okrug

Western Administrative District, or Zapadny Administrative Okrug , is one of the ten administrative okrugs of Moscow. The district was founded in 1991 and has an area of...

 of Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

, its northwestern portion—in jurisdiction of Odintsovsky District

Odintsovsky District

Odintsovsky District is an administrative and municipal district , one of the 38 in Moscow Oblast, Russia....

 of Moscow Oblast

Moscow Oblast

Moscow Oblast , or Podmoskovye , is a federal subject of Russia . Its area, at , is relatively small compared to other federal subjects, but it is one of the most densely populated regions in the country and, with the 2010 population of 7,092,941, is the second most populous federal subject...

, and its southwestern portion—in jurisdiction of Leninsky District

Leninsky District, Moscow Oblast

Leninsky District, Moscow Oblast is an administrative and municipal district , one of the 38 in Moscow Oblast, Russia....

of Moscow Oblast.