Information about the building

From the late 19th century until the October Revolution, the small house No. 14 on Tverskoy Boulevard, including the outbuildings and services, belonged to the Kirikov family. After the revolution, the owners had to give up part of the space: the house and outbuildings were divided into apartments, which began to be occupied by workers and employees.

In 1924, the writer and translator Vsevolod Ivanov, who moved with his family from Petersburg to Moscow, received a three-room apartment in the semi-basement of one of the buildings. The poet Yesenin often visited him. Ivanov recalled: "The apartment was dark and dreary. I wallpapered it with expensive washable wallpaper, spending all my money, slept on the floor, and wrote manuscripts on a piece of plywood that I held on my lap." Yesenin was delighted with such living conditions: "A writer should not have an apartment. If you sleep on the floor, it means you are a true writer. A poet should live unusually," he said.

Memories of Mikhoels

In the 1930s, the outstanding actor and artistic director of the GOSSET theater, Solomon Mikhoels, settled in one of the apartments. The theater was nearby, on Malaya Bronnaya.

"It is hardly possible to name another house that was both a home and a thoroughfare, like Mikhoels' house," recalls his wife A. Pototskaya. On his days off, Mikhoels would play pranks on his neighbors in the communal apartment. He could follow a neighbor, exactly mimicking her every move, and along the way, he would cheerfully scare her beloved cat.

Once, Mikhoels stopped at a stall with confectionery and spent about five minutes buying sweets while pretending to be deaf-mute. The scene with the money and change lasted particularly long. When the act was over, Mikhoels looked with satisfaction at the gathered "audience" and, lifting his cap, said in a loud voice: "Thank you very much."

Not only people helped Mikhoels play. He loved dogs very much. "His last dog, writes Pototskaya, received by him at the CDRI during the New Year meeting of 1947, was a source of boyish interest, fun, and joy. The puppy was not then restricted by the city management's regulations, so he was taken out for walks wearing a collar with a number. Sometimes he would return home, and sometimes to the theater gates, where we often met the owner in the evenings. You had to see how tired Mikhoels would start running along the boulevard or playing at home with the dog. You had to see how interested he was in the new 'achievements of his development'! The puppy, tied in various ways with a scarf, had to play either a sick hare, an old woman, or a person with bad teeth."

Remarkable memories of Mikhoels were left by the GOSSET artist Alexander Tyshler. He writes: "Often, while walking along Tverskoy Boulevard, he read me Peretz's fairy tales, Gogol's 'Night Before Christmas,' and, as it seems to me, many improvised compositions."

But Mikhoels' true partner in games was his friend V. Zuskin. Alexander Tyshler recalls: "Thinking of Mikhoels, I see Zuskin, a talented actor who was inseparable from Mikhoels, and Mikhoels from him. They jumped, danced, cried, and laughed together, making the audience experience the same joys and sorrows. The fate that connected Mikhoels and Zuskin accompanied them throughout their acting lives and did not leave them until the tragic demise."