The Baikal.

Though the blog was named after Moscow (Moskvoved means "Moscow regional historian") and supposed to be devoted to the capital city, I couldn't help focusing on the most famous Russian place of interest, which is without question Siberia. Last summer I decided to put a two-week vacation to good use by venturing there in order to explore Lake Baikal, that is considered to be "the Pearl of Siberia" or "the great, holy sea".

I'm gonna write about the trip in series of posts here. 

Captain Obvious prompts me that Baikal is the world’s deepest lake – over 1600 meters at its deepest – and it contains about 1/5 of the world’s fresh water. But today I'd like to tell you about another Baikal, which is actually 'the Baikal'. The latter was much smaller than Lake Baikal but also great. 

Here's the description:

"The Baikal ... is of over 4,000 tons, close on 300 feet long, and has nearly 60 feet beam. She has three triple expansion engines of 1,250 horse-power, two amidships and one in the bow. This power is required in the ice-breaking. She will break through ice 36 inches thick, and her bow is made with a curve, so that when the ice is thicker she can be backed and then go full steam at the ice, partly climb on it with her impetus, and then crush it with her weight. This means that the Baikal sometimes takes a week to cross the lake." 

(From John Foster Fraser’s "The Real Siberia")

Yes, it's a vessel as you have guessed by now. And to my mind it was the most interesting landmark of the region in the beginning of the 20th century untill it was destroyed by burning during the Civil War.

 The Baikal appeared in Siberia while the section of the Trans-Siberian railway to the south of the lake was under construction. Then the Russian government placed an order in Newcastle, England, for a ferry/ice-breaker, which could hold 24 cars and one locomotive on its middle deck.

Three years later after the Baikal, an ice-breaker Angara was also built in England for carrying cargo  and passengers. Both of these Baikal giants were assembled in Listvyanka, on the southwestern shore of  the lake, where a shipyard was built especially for this purpose.
I think I'll write the entire story about this ferry later. And now just have a look at some pics.

Solovyov house.

There are lots of art nouveau buildings in Moscow. This style was mostly used for construction private houses and commercial apartment building. The domestic architecture of the early XXth century in Moscow was created by famous architects F. Shekhtel, L. Kekushev and W. Walcott.
But my favourite mansion was built by S.U. Solovyov. The building, completed in 1902, was designed by architect Sergey Solovyov as his private home. It was a part of an upper-class new development area on the northern side of Povarskaya Street. The architect, who worked mostly for public charities and colleges, was usually constrained by his clients, and his own home was his only venture into pure decorative art.
This house is full of nice details and symbols.
The decoration uses sculpture and ceramic tiles.  All the sculptures were designed by famous Russian artist Nikolay Andreev. He used animals and birds in decoration of the building. For example, owls were particularly used in northern Europe Art Nouveau (called National Romanticism) because of the large place of owls in northern mythologies and legends.

 

Owls are also connected with night, the time of mystic and miracles. Bats are night animals too.

Dostoevsky's architectural guide to Moscow.

Yesterday I mentioned Dostoevsky. And today while reading a book on architecture I found an interesting quote by him. It seems to be a very short introduction to Russian architecture of the XIX century.
I wasn't going to start my blog only with Dostoevsky. But what can I do? He follows me.
Then meet an architectural guide to Moscow by Fyodr Mikhailovitch. 
"In these buildings you can read as in a book all the currents of all the great and trivial ideas that, appropriately or accidentally, have landed here from Europe and that gradually overcame and captured us.
Here we see the pallid architecture of churches of the last century;

 

here is a pitiful imitation in Roman style from the beginning of our century;

here we see a building that seems to have come from the Renaissance era; and there is an example of the ancient Byzantine style, supposedly discovered by the arcitect Ton during the reign of Nicholas I.

November's coming.

Standing in the Tikhvin cemetery in St. Petersburg ("if you're immortal, you'll have been buried here") Michael Palin was talking to Dostoevsky: 'How did you cope with it? All the book signings, press launches? What did you write? "Sincerely yours. Sorry about the sad bits”, "Sorry it's a bit gloomy. Yours, Fyodor"?'
Of course Dostoevsky is associated with discouragement and misery. And I like November but consider it to be the dullest month.
That's why this November photo taken last year is quite pessimistic.