Summer routes

Visiting Dmitry Mendeleev and Alexander Blok

In early July, the employees of the Museum of History of Science and Technology visited the Museum-Reserve of D.I.Mendeleev and A.A.Blok - the estates of Boblovo, Tarakanovo and Shakhmatovo.

This surprisingly beautiful corner of nature of the Klinsky District of the Moscow Region is simply created for poetry. Three outstanding families - the Mendeleevs, the Beketovs and the Bloks chose these places in order to live here in summer, to create and to love. It was here that their fates became closely intertwined.

In 1903, in the Church of the Archangel Michael in the estate of Tarakanovo, the wedding of Alexander Blok and the daughter of D.I.Mendeleev Lyubov Dmitrievna took place. The Prince on a white horse found his Beautiful Lady.

The history of the estates that today are part of a single museum complex, is full of drama. After the revolution, one of the houses of D.I.Mendeleev was dismantled, in 1919, the second house, as well as the barn-theater, on the stage of which young Sasha and Lyuba played in amateur performances, burned down. In 1922, the surviving resident of Dmitry Ivanovich's friend Nikolay Ilyin in Boblovo housed a school that lasted until the 1960s. In 1987, a museum of D.I.Mendeleev was founded here.

In the year of the death of A.A.Blok, from a deliberate or accidental fire, a house in Shakhmatovo burned down along with the poet's favorite library. The church, a witness to the poet's wedding with L.D.Mendeleeva, was destroyed during the Great Patriotic War. Today, the estates of Boblovo and Shakhmatovo have been restored according to drawings, paintings and memoirs. True, not completely, but quite enough to welcome visitors and to organize cultural events. Every year, on the first Sunday of August, the Lilac Festival and Poetry Day are held in Shakhmatovo, dedicated to A.A.Blok. The Boblovo estate hosts excursions, seminars, lectures that popularize the personality of D.I.Mendeleev, the scientific heritage of the great scientist. This year, Directorate of the Museum-Reserve invited representatives of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research to take part in the Mendeleev Festival of Science and Arts on 13-14 September.

Our delegation from among the employees of the JINR Museum was very warmly welcomed by Directorate of the Museum-Reserve, we were introduced to the exposition of all three estates, told about the life of the Mendeleev, Beketov and Blok families.

We agreed on mutual contacts, on holding joint popular science events related to the name of D.I.Mendeleev, on the exchange of tourist groups. It is very important that our museum and the museum in Boblovo can perfectly complement each other - we preserve the memory of the scientific achievements of the great chemist and talk about the achievements of our scientists in the field of synthesis of new chemical elements and in Boblovo - about the multifaceted talents of Dmitry Ivanovich and his personal life. Both create a complete picture of everything he has managed to do in his life. He loved Boblovo, here he welcomed friends, colleagues, wrote scientific articles and books, carried out laboratory research. Such a definition as a "place of power" for Mendeleev can be fully attributed to this estate.

During a visit to colleagues in Boblovo, we confirmed our intention to expand cooperation and invited them to visit our museum and Institute.

Nadezhda KAVALEROVA