The Alexandrovo estate in the village of Dolgolyadye was created at the end of the 18th century for retired Major General Prince Alexander Urusov (1729-1813). The architects are not known for sure; it has been suggested that R. R. Kazakov, a master of Russian pseudo-Gothic, participated in the design. Work began with the construction in 1776-86. late Baroque church, consecrated in honor of the namesake saint, Alexander Nevsky.
A linden alley led to the estate house of Prince Urusov. On either side of it stood white stone obelisks and (at the entrance to the front courtyard) paired Gothic turrets. The master's two-story house with a portico with four columns and a belvedere was visible many miles around. It was connected by galleries with lower wings, covered with a plank belvedere with a spire. At the same time as the manor's chambers, a manager's house and a business office were built.
After the death of Prince Urusov, the village of Aleksandrovskoye became the property of his stepson Nikolai Nikolaevich Muravyov (1768-1840). He approached management very responsibly and started a dairy yard - a prototype of future dairies. Muravyov headed the School of Column Leaders, which served as a hotbed of freethinking: 22 graduates became Decembrists. In May, the column leaders, led by Major General Muravyov himself, left Moscow for the banks of the Ruza for practical training. The son of the owner of the estate, Alexander, discussed plans for the reconstruction of Russia with his comrades in Ostashev. There is a well-known legend that Muravyov’s handwritten draft of the constitution is buried on one of the hills.
In addition to the founder of the Union of Salvation, another son of the major general, Nikolai, who commanded the capture of Kars in 1855, came to Ostashevo. Church historian Andrei Nikolaevich Muravyov, whose name is named after St. Andrew's gazebo over the river, spent his youth here. After the death of his father, the estate, burdened with debts, went to Alexander, who settled in Ostashevo and began to carry out economic improvements in the hope of repaying the debt. He built a monumental equestrian yard in a pseudo-Gothic style, unusual for his time, with a high tower above the entrance, with lancet windows and architraves. Despite all efforts, the estate did not generate income and in 1859 it was sold under the hammer.
In post-reform times, the estate was owned by the energetic entrepreneur N.P. Shipov, General A.A. Nepokoichitsky, and merchant A.G. Kuznetsov. The first of them not only put the disordered farm in order, but also ensured that his barnyard began to be considered exemplary throughout Russia. He introduced extensive ten-field crop rotation. To process dairy products obtained from the 200 cows of improved northern breeds kept on the estate, a cheese factory was set up, entrusted to a specialist invited from Switzerland. At the same time, Shipov undertook to rebuild the estate Alexander Church into a tomb, destroyed the old bell tower and distorted the appearance of the 18th century temple. In 1899, it was jointly owned by the Ushkovs, the heirs of K.K. Ushkov.
The grandson of Nicholas I, Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov, in 1903 decided to retire to the outback from the vicious temptations of metropolitan life. He liked Ostashevo as an estate, exemplary in economic terms, very remote from Moscow and spacious enough to accommodate his large family. On August 28, 1903, Grigory Konstantinovich Ushkov issued an earnest money receipt, and on September 13, 1903, a deed of sale was completed for the purchase of the estate.
Driving through the fork in the village of Ostashevo along the road going through Ruza to Volokolamsk and connecting the Minskoye and Riga highways, a rare driver and not every passenger will pay attention to the obelisk, perched forlornly on the side. Meanwhile, the obelisk marks the entrance to the alley of the once famous estate - without a doubt, one of the most famous in the Moscow province.
To say that Ostashevo is now forgotten would be an exaggeration. Information about the estate is invariably included in local history and tourist guides, but this place is visited infrequently, and few know its history. The village of Ostashevo - now the Volokolamsk district of the Moscow region, and once the Mozhaisk district of the Moscow province - is located seventeen kilometers from the Volokolamsk railway station.
This village had other names: Uspenskoe (in the 17th century a church with a chapel of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary was built here), Staroe Dolgolyadye. In the 17th century, the estate was owned by Fyodor Likhachev, who served as clerk of the Local Prikaz in the militia of Prince Dmitry Pozharsky and Kuzma Minin. Then its owners were the princes Prozorovsky and Golitsyn. The estate ensemble began to take shape at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries, under Major General Prince Alexander Vasilyevich Urusov (1729-1813). Before him, the buildings were located on the opposite bank of the Ruza River. Urusov built a temple in memory of the blessed prince Alexander Nevsky, and the estate began to be called Aleksandrovskoye.
Since 1813, Ostashev was owned by Nikolai Nikolaevich Muravyov (1768-1840), major general, participant in the Patriotic War of 1812 and foreign campaigns against Napoleon of 1813-1814. Muravyov was the first chairman of the Mathematical Society at the Imperial Moscow University. He was one of the founders of the Society of Agriculture and the Agricultural School, and was the author and translator of numerous works on agriculture. But most of all, the Ostashevo landowner is remembered as the founder of the School for Column Leaders (organized in 1816), which trained army officers.
Later, the school was transformed into the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff. In the warm season, from May to October, in 1816-1823, future officers were engaged in geodesy, military formation and fortification in Ostashevo. Among the students of the School are twenty-two Decembrists. Ostashevo was visited by members of the secret society Ivan Yakushkin and Mikhail Fonvizin (nephew of the creator of Nedoroslya), Nikita Muravyov (one of the ideologists of the Northern Society, creator of one of the constitutional projects), Matvey Muravyov-Apostol (brother of the executed Sergei Muravyov-Apostol).
Here, according to legend, one of the owner’s sons, Alexander Muravyov (1792-1863), who also belonged to the circle of Decembrists and participated in the creation of the first secret freedom-loving society - the Union of Salvation, drew up and then, fearing a search, buried a draft of the Russian Constitution. He became the owner of the estate in 1840, after the death of his father.
A more noticeable mark on Russian history was left by Nikolai Muravyov’s other sons, the Alexander brothers, who spent part of their lives in Ostashevo. Mikhail Muravyov-Vilensky (1796-1866) - count, infantry general, minister of state property, governor-general of the North-Western Territory in 1863-1865. With measures that some considered decisive and others considered executioner, he suppressed the Polish uprising, for which he received from the emperor an honorary addition to the surname “Vilensky”, formed on behalf of the Polish-Lithuanian city of Vilno, present-day Vilnius.
Mikhail Muravyov-Vilensky is the hero of two poems by Nekrasov - “Reflections at the Front Entrance” (the prototype of a sybarite nobleman, callous and indifferent to the disasters of the people) and the so-called Muravyov ode, in which he was glorified as the winner of the Polish rebels. (The poet wrote his panegyric to Muravyov, hoping to gain the patronage of an influential nobleman and thereby save the Sovremennik magazine he published from the censorship ban; the hope was in vain.) In his youth, Muravyov was involved in the Decembrist case, and in his declining years he proudly said of himself that he is not one of those Muravyovs who are hanged, but one of those who are hanged.
His equally famous brother Nikolai Nikolaevich Muravyov-Karsky (1794-1866) was a general and commander-in-chief of the Caucasian Corps during the Crimean War. Under his command, troops took the Turkish fortress of Kars (1855). In memory of this feat, he received the honorary addition “Karsky” to his surname. The youngest of the brothers is now half-forgotten, although he was once also very famous. Andrei Nikolaevich Muravyov (1806-1874) - church historian, spiritual writer.
In the second half of the 19th century, the estate changed owners twice. Under the new owner Nikolai Pavlovich Shipov, who replaced Muravyov Jr., a horse yard was built. Shipov turned the debt-ridden estate into a profitable enterprise: a stud farm began to generate income. Horses from the Ostashevsky factory have won prizes at the races more than once.
From 1903 to 1917 Ostashevo belonged to Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov and his heir. Grand Duke Constantine (1858-1915), grandson of Nicholas I and cousin of Nicholas II, fought the Turks on the Danube in the war of 1877-1878, and later served as inspector general of military educational institutions. For more than half a century, until the end of his life, he was president of the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
The Grand Duke is the author of many poems and the drama about Christ “The King of the Jews,” which was reflected in the “Yershalaim” chapters of Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita.” His poem “The Poor Man Died in a Military Hospital...” (1885) about the plight of a soldier became a folk song. The Grand Duke translated Shakespeare and Goethe; Caesar Cui, Anton Rubinstein, Sergei Rachmaninov and Pyotr Tchaikovsky wrote romances based on his poems. Konstantin Konstantinovich, who modestly signed his works in print with the letters “K. R.”, corresponded with Tchaikovsky, with the poets Afanasy Fet and Apollo Maykov.
The famous lawyer Alexander Koni came to Ostashevo. Here he had a long conversation with the son of the Grand Duke Oleg, a passionate admirer of Pushkin’s poetry.
Ostashev’s owners did not belong to the outstanding “progressive” cultural figures, and memories of the great prince-poet were simply undesirable in the Soviet years. The estate did not have the fate of being turned into a sanatorium or rest home and thereby avoid destruction. None of the previous owners would have recognized their lovely estate.
The main house was demolished, and in its place, exactly in the middle of the last century, a music school building was built in the “Stalinist Empire” style. Little has survived: two one-story residential wings of the late 18th century - they were connected by a passage to the main house, a one-story office and the manager's house, horse and cattle yards.
The stone horse yard, built in the 1840s, is one of the last neo-Gothic buildings in Russian estates. The courtyard is an L-shaped structure of two one-story wings with a multi-tiered entrance clock tower, decorated with pointed architraves - arches, battlements and pinnacles - small pointed decorative turrets. Looking closely, you can see that the clock dial with hands is painted. A pathetic replacement for the old, present. The spire that once crowned the tower has been lost.
The two-tiered entrance towers at the front courtyard (pseudo-Gothic of the 18th century), two fence towers of one of the side courtyards and the already mentioned white stone obelisk at the entrance to the estate escaped destruction. The newest of the estate buildings, the church-tomb in the name of the blessed Prince Oleg of Bryansk and the Venerable Seraphim of Sarov, suffered the least from the barbarity of people and time. Only the roof of the temple was replaced - from lobed to hipped. The four-pillar, single-domed cross-domed church with a separate belfry was erected in 1915 in memory of the son of Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich Oleg, who was mortally wounded on the German front at the very beginning of the war.
The temple was built over Oleg’s grave according to the design of architects M.M. Peretyatkovich and S.M. Cheshova, he was not consecrated. Already in Soviet times, vandals broke stones with the names of members of the imperial family who were present at the foundation. The robbers more than once tried to get to the grave of Prince Oleg: their criminal greed was fueled by rumors that jewelry was placed in the coffin of the Grand Duke’s son...
In 1969, by decision of local authorities, the body of Prince Oleg was secretly buried at night in a village cemetery across the Ruza River. But rumor insists that the remains of the Grand Duke’s son were simply thrown out like unnecessary garbage.
In Soviet times, a fence made of stone pillars with bars was destroyed, which separated the front yard from the outbuildings of the horse and cattle yards, connecting the entrance towers, the office and the manager’s house. The park once had separate sections, tracts - each with its own special composition and mood - that bore the names of glorious foreign cities: “Baden”, “Philadelphia”. Now they can't be found. The abandoned park has grown and now looks more like a forest. But you can still find a pond with an island in the middle.
A three-tiered tower-shaped church in the village of Brazhnikov, located on the other, left bank of the Ruza River, has survived. This temple, the Church of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, was built on the estate of Prince Peter Ivanovich Prozorovsky in 1713-1715. The tiered composition of the church is characteristic of its time and resembles the structure of the famous Church of the Intercession in Fili. But the Brazhnikov church is simpler and more austere; it lacks the stucco and carved patterns characteristic of the Filyo church, which reflected the trends of the “Moscow Baroque.” Brazhnikovsky Church has been restored.
During Soviet times, the bell tower built in 1859 was lost (only the lower tier remained). The wide windows of the lower, four-tiered tier of the church do not belong to the 18th century, but to later times: the window openings were hewn out in 1863. You can get to the temple by driving or crossing the river via a road bridge. Under Shipov and Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, Brazhnikovo was part of the Ostashevo estate.
Those who expect to see a holistic architectural and park landscape will not only be disappointed by Ostashevo, but will be deceived. Ostashevo is not Arkhangelskoye, not Kuskovo, not Ostankino and other luxurious palace ensembles. And among the lesser-known estates near Moscow you can find better preserved ones with more famous former owners - for example, Lermontov's Serednikovo or the Goncharovs' Yaropolets, which owes its fame to a couple of Pushkin's visits.
You need the ability to peer into the scattered buildings - the remains of the former Ostashev and an effort of imagination in order to feel the discreet beauty of the place and touch the memory stored by these ruins and dilapidated ruins. See pearls in the mud. And then the effort and time spent will not be in vain.
Restoring the estate is difficult, maybe even impossible, the ensemble is so badly destroyed. However, even in this form it remains a historical monument. It would be good if the Ostashevo buildings could be preserved, although this is hard to believe.
Text by Doctor of Philology Andrey Ranchin
proof
Original taken from dimon_porter V
Driving through the fork in the village of Ostashevo along the road going through Ruza to Volokolamsk and connecting the Minskoye and Riga highways, a rare driver and not every passenger will pay attention to the obelisk, perched forlornly on the side. Meanwhile, the obelisk marks the entrance to the alley of the once famous estate - without a doubt, one of the most famous in the Moscow province.
To say that Ostashevo is now forgotten would be an exaggeration. Information about the estate is invariably included in local history and tourist guides, but this place is visited infrequently, and few know its history. The village of Ostashevo - now the Volokolamsk district of the Moscow region, and once the Mozhaisk district of the Moscow province - is located seventeen kilometers from the Volokolamsk railway station.
This village had other names: Uspenskoe (in the 17th century a church with a chapel of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary was built here), Staroe Dolgolyadye. In the 17th century, the estate was owned by Fyodor Likhachev, who served as clerk of the Local Prikaz in the militia of Prince Dmitry Pozharsky and Kuzma Minin. Then its owners were the princes Prozorovsky and Golitsyn. The estate ensemble began to take shape at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries, under Major General Prince Alexander Vasilyevich Urusov (1729-1813). Before him, the buildings were located on the opposite bank of the Ruza River. Urusov built a temple in memory of the blessed prince Alexander Nevsky, and the estate began to be called Aleksandrovskoye.
Since 1813, Ostashev was owned by Nikolai Nikolaevich Muravyov (1768-1840), major general, participant in the Patriotic War of 1812 and foreign campaigns against Napoleon of 1813-1814. Muravyov was the first chairman of the Mathematical Society at the Imperial Moscow University. He was one of the founders of the Society of Agriculture and the Agricultural School, and was the author and translator of numerous works on agriculture. But most of all, the Ostashevo landowner is remembered as the founder of the School for Column Leaders (organized in 1816), which trained army officers.
Later, the school was transformed into the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff. In the warm season, from May to October, in 1816-1823, future officers were engaged in geodesy, military formation and fortification in Ostashevo. Among the students of the School are twenty-two Decembrists. Ostashevo was visited by members of the secret society Ivan Yakushkin and Mikhail Fonvizin (nephew of the creator of Nedoroslya), Nikita Muravyov (one of the ideologists of the Northern Society, creator of one of the constitutional projects), Matvey Muravyov-Apostol (brother of the executed Sergei Muravyov-Apostol).
Here, according to legend, one of the owner’s sons, Alexander Muravyov (1792-1863), who also belonged to the circle of Decembrists and participated in the creation of the first secret freedom-loving society - the Union of Salvation, drew up and then, fearing a search, buried a draft of the Russian Constitution. He became the owner of the estate in 1840, after the death of his father.
A more noticeable mark on Russian history was left by Nikolai Muravyov’s other sons, the Alexander brothers, who spent part of their lives in Ostashevo. Mikhail Muravyov-Vilensky (1796-1866) - count, infantry general, minister of state property, governor-general of the North-Western Territory in 1863-1865. With measures that some considered decisive and others considered executioner, he suppressed the Polish uprising, for which he received from the emperor an honorary addition to the surname “Vilensky”, formed on behalf of the Polish-Lithuanian city of Vilno, present-day Vilnius.
Mikhail Muravyov-Vilensky is the hero of two poems by Nekrasov - “Reflections at the Front Entrance” (the prototype of a sybarite nobleman, callous and indifferent to the disasters of the people) and the so-called Muravyov ode, in which he was glorified as the winner of the Polish rebels. (The poet wrote his panegyric to Muravyov, hoping to gain the patronage of an influential nobleman and thereby save the Sovremennik magazine he published from the censorship ban; the hope was in vain.) In his youth, Muravyov was involved in the Decembrist case, and in his declining years he proudly said of himself that he is not one of those Muravyovs who are hanged, but one of those who are hanged.
His equally famous brother Nikolai Nikolaevich Muravyov-Karsky (1794-1866) was a general and commander-in-chief of the Caucasian Corps during the Crimean War. Under his command, troops took the Turkish fortress of Kars (1855). In memory of this feat, he received the honorary addition “Karsky” to his surname. The youngest of the brothers is now half-forgotten, although he was once also very famous. Andrei Nikolaevich Muravyov (1806-1874) - church historian, spiritual writer.
In the second half of the 19th century, the estate changed owners twice. Under the new owner Nikolai Pavlovich Shipov, who replaced Muravyov Jr., a horse yard was built. Shipov turned the debt-ridden estate into a profitable enterprise: a stud farm began to generate income. Horses from the Ostashevsky factory have won prizes at the races more than once.
From 1903 to 1917 Ostashevo belonged to Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov and his heir. Grand Duke Constantine (1858-1915), grandson of Nicholas I and cousin of Nicholas II, fought the Turks on the Danube in the war of 1877-1878, and later served as inspector general of military educational institutions. For more than half a century, until the end of his life, he was president of the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
The Grand Duke is the author of many poems and the drama about Christ “The King of the Jews,” which was reflected in the “Yershalaim” chapters of Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita.” His poem “The Poor Man Died in a Military Hospital...” (1885) about the plight of a soldier became a folk song. The Grand Duke translated Shakespeare and Goethe; Caesar Cui, Anton Rubinstein, Sergei Rachmaninov and Pyotr Tchaikovsky wrote romances based on his poems. Konstantin Konstantinovich, who modestly signed his works in print with the letters “K. R.”, corresponded with Tchaikovsky, with the poets Afanasy Fet and Apollo Maykov.
The famous lawyer Alexander Koni came to Ostashevo. Here he had a long conversation with the son of the Grand Duke Oleg, a passionate admirer of Pushkin’s poetry.
Ostashev’s owners did not belong to the outstanding “progressive” cultural figures, and memories of the great prince-poet were simply undesirable in the Soviet years. The estate did not have the fate of being turned into a sanatorium or rest home and thereby avoid destruction. None of the previous owners would have recognized their lovely estate.
The main house was demolished, and in its place, exactly in the middle of the last century, a music school building was built in the “Stalinist Empire” style. Little has survived: two one-story residential wings of the late 18th century - they were connected by a passage to the main house, a one-story office and the manager's house, horse and cattle yards.
The stone horse yard, built in the 1840s, is one of the last neo-Gothic buildings in Russian estates. The courtyard is an L-shaped structure of two one-story wings with a multi-tiered entrance clock tower, decorated with pointed architraves - arches, battlements and pinnacles - small pointed decorative turrets. Looking closely, you can see that the clock dial with hands is painted. A pathetic replacement for the old, present. The spire that once crowned the tower has been lost.
The two-tiered entrance towers at the front courtyard (pseudo-Gothic of the 18th century), two fence towers of one of the side courtyards and the already mentioned white stone obelisk at the entrance to the estate escaped destruction. The newest of the estate buildings, the church-tomb in the name of the blessed Prince Oleg of Bryansk and the Venerable Seraphim of Sarov, suffered the least from the barbarity of people and time. Only the roof of the temple was replaced - from lobed to hipped. The four-pillar, single-domed cross-domed church with a separate belfry was erected in 1915 in memory of the son of Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich Oleg, who was mortally wounded on the German front at the very beginning of the war.
The temple was built over Oleg’s grave according to the design of architects M.M. Peretyatkovich and S.M. Cheshova, he was not consecrated. Already in Soviet times, vandals broke stones with the names of members of the imperial family who were present at the foundation. The robbers more than once tried to get to the grave of Prince Oleg: their criminal greed was fueled by rumors that jewelry was placed in the coffin of the Grand Duke’s son...
In 1969, by decision of local authorities, the body of Prince Oleg was secretly buried at night in a village cemetery across the Ruza River. But rumor insists that the remains of the Grand Duke’s son were simply thrown out like unnecessary garbage.
In Soviet times, a fence made of stone pillars with bars was destroyed, which separated the front yard from the outbuildings of the horse and cattle yards, connecting the entrance towers, the office and the manager’s house. The park once had separate sections, tracts - each with its own special composition and mood - that bore the names of glorious foreign cities: “Baden”, “Philadelphia”. Now they can't be found. The abandoned park has grown and now looks more like a forest. But you can still find a pond with an island in the middle.
A three-tiered tower-shaped church in the village of Brazhnikov, located on the other, left bank of the Ruza River, has survived. This temple, the Church of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, was built on the estate of Prince Peter Ivanovich Prozorovsky in 1713-1715. The tiered composition of the church is characteristic of its time and resembles the structure of the famous Church of the Intercession in Fili. But the Brazhnikov church is simpler and more austere; it lacks the stucco and carved patterns characteristic of the Filyo church, which reflected the trends of the “Moscow Baroque.” Brazhnikovsky Church has been restored.
During Soviet times, the bell tower built in 1859 was lost (only the lower tier remained). The wide windows of the lower, four-tiered tier of the church do not belong to the 18th century, but to later times: the window openings were hewn out in 1863. You can get to the temple by driving or crossing the river via a road bridge. Under Shipov and Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, Brazhnikovo was part of the Ostashevo estate.
Those who expect to see a holistic architectural and park landscape will not only be disappointed by Ostashevo, but will be deceived. Ostashevo is not Arkhangelskoye, not Kuskovo, not Ostankino and other luxurious palace ensembles. And among the lesser-known estates near Moscow you can find better preserved ones with more famous former owners - for example, Lermontov's Serednikovo or the Goncharovs' Yaropolets, which owes its fame to a couple of Pushkin's visits.
You need the ability to peer into the scattered buildings - the remains of the former Ostashev and an effort of imagination in order to feel the discreet beauty of the place and touch the memory stored by these ruins and dilapidated ruins. See pearls in the mud. And then the effort and time spent will not be in vain.
Restoring the estate is difficult, maybe even impossible, the ensemble is so badly destroyed. However, even in this form it remains a historical monument. It would be good if the Ostashevo buildings could be preserved, although this is hard to believe.
Text by Doctor of Philology Andrey Ranchin
Original taken from dimon_porter V
Driving through the fork in the village of Ostashevo along the road going through Ruza to Volokolamsk and connecting the Minskoye and Riga highways, a rare driver and not every passenger will pay attention to the obelisk, perched forlornly on the side. Meanwhile, the obelisk marks the entrance to the alley of the once famous estate - without a doubt, one of the most famous in the Moscow province.
To say that Ostashevo is now forgotten would be an exaggeration. Information about the estate is invariably included in local history and tourist guides, but this place is visited infrequently, and few know its history. The village of Ostashevo - now the Volokolamsk district of the Moscow region, and once the Mozhaisk district of the Moscow province - is located seventeen kilometers from the Volokolamsk railway station.
This village had other names: Uspenskoe (in the 17th century a church with a chapel of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary was built here), Staroe Dolgolyadye. In the 17th century, the estate was owned by Fyodor Likhachev, who served as clerk of the Local Prikaz in the militia of Prince Dmitry Pozharsky and Kuzma Minin. Then its owners were the princes Prozorovsky and Golitsyn. The estate ensemble began to take shape at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries, under Major General Prince Alexander Vasilyevich Urusov (1729-1813). Before him, the buildings were located on the opposite bank of the Ruza River. Urusov built a temple in memory of the blessed prince Alexander Nevsky, and the estate began to be called Aleksandrovskoye.
Since 1813, Ostashev was owned by Nikolai Nikolaevich Muravyov (1768-1840), major general, participant in the Patriotic War of 1812 and foreign campaigns against Napoleon of 1813-1814. Muravyov was the first chairman of the Mathematical Society at the Imperial Moscow University. He was one of the founders of the Society of Agriculture and the Agricultural School, and was the author and translator of numerous works on agriculture. But most of all, the Ostashevo landowner is remembered as the founder of the School for Column Leaders (organized in 1816), which trained army officers.
Later, the school was transformed into the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff. In the warm season, from May to October, in 1816-1823, future officers were engaged in geodesy, military formation and fortification in Ostashevo. Among the students of the School are twenty-two Decembrists. Ostashevo was visited by members of the secret society Ivan Yakushkin and Mikhail Fonvizin (nephew of the creator of Nedoroslya), Nikita Muravyov (one of the ideologists of the Northern Society, creator of one of the constitutional projects), Matvey Muravyov-Apostol (brother of the executed Sergei Muravyov-Apostol).
Here, according to legend, one of the owner’s sons, Alexander Muravyov (1792-1863), who also belonged to the circle of Decembrists and participated in the creation of the first secret freedom-loving society - the Union of Salvation, drew up and then, fearing a search, buried a draft of the Russian Constitution. He became the owner of the estate in 1840, after the death of his father.
A more noticeable mark on Russian history was left by Nikolai Muravyov’s other sons, the Alexander brothers, who spent part of their lives in Ostashevo. Mikhail Muravyov-Vilensky (1796-1866) - count, infantry general, minister of state property, governor-general of the North-Western Territory in 1863-1865. With measures that some considered decisive and others considered executioner, he suppressed the Polish uprising, for which he received from the emperor an honorary addition to the surname “Vilensky”, formed on behalf of the Polish-Lithuanian city of Vilno, present-day Vilnius.
Mikhail Muravyov-Vilensky is the hero of two poems by Nekrasov - “Reflections at the Front Entrance” (the prototype of a sybarite nobleman, callous and indifferent to the disasters of the people) and the so-called Muravyov ode, in which he was glorified as the winner of the Polish rebels. (The poet wrote his panegyric to Muravyov, hoping to gain the patronage of an influential nobleman and thereby save the Sovremennik magazine he published from the censorship ban; the hope was in vain.) In his youth, Muravyov was involved in the Decembrist case, and in his declining years he proudly said of himself that he is not one of those Muravyovs who are hanged, but one of those who are hanged.
His equally famous brother Nikolai Nikolaevich Muravyov-Karsky (1794-1866) was a general and commander-in-chief of the Caucasian Corps during the Crimean War. Under his command, troops took the Turkish fortress of Kars (1855). In memory of this feat, he received the honorary addition “Karsky” to his surname. The youngest of the brothers is now half-forgotten, although he was once also very famous. Andrei Nikolaevich Muravyov (1806-1874) - church historian, spiritual writer.
In the second half of the 19th century, the estate changed owners twice. Under the new owner Nikolai Pavlovich Shipov, who replaced Muravyov Jr., a horse yard was built. Shipov turned the debt-ridden estate into a profitable enterprise: a stud farm began to generate income. Horses from the Ostashevsky factory have won prizes at the races more than once.
From 1903 to 1917 Ostashevo belonged to Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov and his heir. Grand Duke Constantine (1858-1915), grandson of Nicholas I and cousin of Nicholas II, fought the Turks on the Danube in the war of 1877-1878, and later served as inspector general of military educational institutions. For more than half a century, until the end of his life, he was president of the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
The Grand Duke is the author of many poems and the drama about Christ “The King of the Jews,” which was reflected in the “Yershalaim” chapters of Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita.” His poem “The Poor Man Died in a Military Hospital...” (1885) about the plight of a soldier became a folk song. The Grand Duke translated Shakespeare and Goethe; Caesar Cui, Anton Rubinstein, Sergei Rachmaninov and Pyotr Tchaikovsky wrote romances based on his poems. Konstantin Konstantinovich, who modestly signed his works in print with the letters “K. R.”, corresponded with Tchaikovsky, with the poets Afanasy Fet and Apollo Maykov.
The famous lawyer Alexander Koni came to Ostashevo. Here he had a long conversation with the son of the Grand Duke Oleg, a passionate admirer of Pushkin’s poetry.
Ostashev’s owners did not belong to the outstanding “progressive” cultural figures, and memories of the great prince-poet were simply undesirable in the Soviet years. The estate did not have the fate of being turned into a sanatorium or rest home and thereby avoid destruction. None of the previous owners would have recognized their lovely estate.
The main house was demolished, and in its place, exactly in the middle of the last century, a music school building was built in the “Stalinist Empire” style. Little has survived: two one-story residential wings of the late 18th century - they were connected by a passage to the main house, a one-story office and the manager's house, horse and cattle yards.
The stone horse yard, built in the 1840s, is one of the last neo-Gothic buildings in Russian estates. The courtyard is an L-shaped structure of two one-story wings with a multi-tiered entrance clock tower, decorated with pointed architraves - arches, battlements and pinnacles - small pointed decorative turrets. Looking closely, you can see that the clock dial with hands is painted. A pathetic replacement for the old, present. The spire that once crowned the tower has been lost.
The two-tiered entrance towers at the front courtyard (pseudo-Gothic of the 18th century), two fence towers of one of the side courtyards and the already mentioned white stone obelisk at the entrance to the estate escaped destruction. The newest of the estate buildings, the church-tomb in the name of the blessed Prince Oleg of Bryansk and the Venerable Seraphim of Sarov, suffered the least from the barbarity of people and time. Only the roof of the temple was replaced - from lobed to hipped. The four-pillar, single-domed cross-domed church with a separate belfry was erected in 1915 in memory of the son of Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich Oleg, who was mortally wounded on the German front at the very beginning of the war.
The temple was built over Oleg’s grave according to the design of architects M.M. Peretyatkovich and S.M. Cheshova, he was not consecrated. Already in Soviet times, vandals broke stones with the names of members of the imperial family who were present at the foundation. The robbers more than once tried to get to the grave of Prince Oleg: their criminal greed was fueled by rumors that jewelry was placed in the coffin of the Grand Duke’s son...
In 1969, by decision of local authorities, the body of Prince Oleg was secretly buried at night in a village cemetery across the Ruza River. But rumor insists that the remains of the Grand Duke’s son were simply thrown out like unnecessary garbage.
In Soviet times, a fence made of stone pillars with bars was destroyed, which separated the front yard from the outbuildings of the horse and cattle yards, connecting the entrance towers, the office and the manager’s house. The park once had separate sections, tracts - each with its own special composition and mood - that bore the names of glorious foreign cities: “Baden”, “Philadelphia”. Now they can't be found. The abandoned park has grown and now looks more like a forest. But you can still find a pond with an island in the middle.
A three-tiered tower-shaped church in the village of Brazhnikov, located on the other, left bank of the Ruza River, has survived. This temple, the Church of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, was built on the estate of Prince Peter Ivanovich Prozorovsky in 1713-1715. The tiered composition of the church is characteristic of its time and resembles the structure of the famous Church of the Intercession in Fili. But the Brazhnikov church is simpler and more austere; it lacks the stucco and carved patterns characteristic of the Filyo church, which reflected the trends of the “Moscow Baroque.” Brazhnikovsky Church has been restored.
During Soviet times, the bell tower built in 1859 was lost (only the lower tier remained). The wide windows of the lower, four-tiered tier of the church do not belong to the 18th century, but to later times: the window openings were hewn out in 1863. You can get to the temple by driving or crossing the river via a road bridge. Under Shipov and Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, Brazhnikovo was part of the Ostashevo estate.
Those who expect to see a holistic architectural and park landscape will not only be disappointed by Ostashevo, but will be deceived. Ostashevo is not Arkhangelskoye, not Kuskovo, not Ostankino and other luxurious palace ensembles. And among the lesser-known estates near Moscow you can find better preserved ones with more famous former owners - for example, Lermontov's Serednikovo or the Goncharovs' Yaropolets, which owes its fame to a couple of Pushkin's visits.
You need the ability to peer into the scattered buildings - the remains of the former Ostashev and an effort of imagination in order to feel the discreet beauty of the place and touch the memory stored by these ruins and dilapidated ruins. See pearls in the mud. And then the effort and time spent will not be in vain.
Restoring the estate is difficult, maybe even impossible, the ensemble is so badly destroyed. However, even in this form it remains a historical monument. It would be good if the Ostashevo buildings could be preserved, although this is hard to believe.
Text by Doctor of Philology Andrey Ranchin
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