Central Russia. Ostashevo Estate - Romanovs

“Weary son of the earth, in days of vain worries,
Among petty insults and social excitement,
I’m looking for solitude by a lake in the forest.”

Konstantin Romanov.

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 itself had other names: Uspenskoye (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 order in the militia of Prince Dmitry Pozharsky and Kuzma Minin. Then its owners were the princes Prozorovsky and Golitsyn. The current buildings standing on the banks of the Ruza Reservoir are associated with the name of retired Major General Prince Alexander Urusov, by whose order a manor complex was created here in the 1790s.
It is believed that the Moscow architect Rodion Kazakov (not to be confused with his namesake and teacher, the famous architect Matvey Kazakov), who was working at that time in the Moscow house of the prince, was involved in the development of the general project. Work began with the construction in 1776-86 of a late-Baroque church, consecrated in honor of the namesake saint, Alexander Nevsky.

From the main square of the village of Ostashevo, a linden alley leads us past the only remaining obelisk to the former entrance gate of the front yard. What remains of them are pseudo-Gothic two-tier towers, very similar to the entrance towers of the Petrovsky Palace in Moscow. The rooms are square on the outside and octagonal on the inside, covered with a closed vault. The cylindrical top was once crowned with a crown of teeth.
At the same time, at the end of the 18th century, two outbuildings (an office and the manager’s house) with lancet windows and pseudo-Gothic towers resembling observation towers were built on either side of the gate. The L-shaped outbuildings that close the corners of the front yard once imitated fortifications, which is typical of the Romantic era.
From the entrance gate one could walk along the alley to the main house. Imagine, behind the trees, a two-story majestic building with a belvedere and a four-column Tuscan portico, to which an elegant staircase leads from the courtyard.

The house was connected by passages to two modest residential outbuildings from the late 18th century, extensively rebuilt in the 1950s. Their clear, precise volumes and strict simplicity of external processing are characteristic of the stage of classicism, transitional to the Empire style. The only decoration of the walls are the relief window sill inserts and the crowning cornice with an energetic profile. The former windows with an outer quarter, without platbands, have been enlarged. At the end of the 19th century, a second floor made of wood was erected above the right wing. The closed transition galleries are treated with a false arcade, into which small lancet windows are inserted. On the transverse axis of the galleries, elegant entrance pavilions were placed, which simultaneously served as a passage from the courtyard to the park. Each of them was crowned with a wooden belvedere with a high spire.

In 1813, the estate came into the possession of the stepson of A. Urusov, a Russian commander, participant in the Patriotic War of 1812, Major General Nikolai Muravyov. Under him, a huge pseudo-Gothic equestrian yard was built. The construction is amazing in its scale. The one-story courtyard building consists of two long wings connected at right angles. The side facade, stretched along the entrance alley, is decorated with pseudo-Gothic details. The wall consists of three identical sections with a gate in the center and windows on the sides. The main facade is also a one-story building, the flanks of which are decorated with risalits with gables. The dominant feature of the entire ensemble is undoubtedly the huge gate tower with a clock, decorated with openwork arches, lancet platbands, and battlements. Now it houses the local cultural center.
On May 22, 1791, Nikolai Muravyov married Alexandra Mordvinova, the daughter of the Russian engineer-general Mikhail Mordvinov. Among the largest buildings erected under his leadership are the Marble and Chesme palaces in St. Petersburg, as well as the Neva embankment. The couple had five sons and one daughter.

N. Muravyov was the founder of the Moscow School of Column Leaders (General Staff officers). In Ostashevo they underwent summer internship. In May, the column leaders, led by the major general 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, future Decembrists. There is a legend that the handwritten text of the draft constitution of Russia by Muravyov is buried on one of the hills.
In addition to the founder of the Union of Salvation, another son of the major general, Nikolai, came to Ostashevo, who in 1855 commanded a military operation to capture the Turkish fortified city of Kars. Church historian Andrei Muravyov spent his youth here, whose name, alas, was borne by the no longer preserved gazebo over the river.
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. But, despite all efforts, the estate did not generate income and in 1859 it was sold under the hammer.

In the second half of the 19th century, the estate changed several owners. The first was Nikolai Shipov, an innovative landowner, member of the Moscow Society of Agriculture, Mozhaisk district leader of the nobility, and actual state councilor. He not only put the disordered farm in order, but also ensured that his barnyard began to be considered exemplary throughout Russia. To process dairy products obtained from the 200 cows of improved northern breeds kept on the estate, a cheese factory was built, entrusted to a specialist invited from Switzerland. At the same time, Shipov undertook to rebuild the Alexander estate church into a burial vault, destroyed the old bell tower and distorted the appearance of the temple.
Then the estate was owned by the Russian general, participant in the Caucasian campaigns, the Crimean War and the Russian-Turkish War of 1877-1878, Arthur Nepokoychitsky, merchant and tea magnate Alexander Kuznetsov and the heirs of the Moscow millionaire and theater philanthropist Konstantin Ushkov. The pre-revolutionary period in the history of Ostashev is associated with the name of the grandson of Russian Emperor Nicholas I - Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov, who acquired the estate in 1903.

The personality of the Grand Duke himself is interesting and unusual: a professional military man, a hero of the Russian-Turkish war, commander of the Life Guards of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, president of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, he is known to us by the pseudonym “K.R.” This is how the only good poet of the royal family of the turn of the century, a Pushkin Prize laureate, signed his poems, dreaming of the peace and tranquility that he found, at least for a short time, in Ostashevo.
Now Konstantin Konstantinovich’s poems are included in the anthology of poetry of the “silver” age. The music for his work was written by composers Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Sergei Rachmaninov, Reinold Gliere. The poem “The Poor Man Died in a Military Hospital” became a popular song. It is interesting that the largest work of the “most august poet” - the mystery play “King of the Jews” was banned from production by the Synod. Only with the personal permission of the tsar was the play staged by an amateur court theater; Konstantin Konstantinovich himself performed one of the roles. The Grand Duke died in 1915 after the death of his son in the war, who bequeathed to be buried under the church on his father's estate. Oleg also wrote poetry, but his literary career did not have time to take shape. The First World War began, and he volunteered for the front. He took part in the fighting on the North-Western Front. Initially, he was offered to become an orderly in the main apartment, but he obtained permission to remain in the regiment. On September 27 (October 10), 1914, Prince Oleg, who commanded the platoon, was seriously wounded near the village of Pilvishki in the Vladislavov area (the current Lithuanian city of Kudirkos-Naumiestis).
On the evening of the next day, Oleg’s father arrived in Vilna, who brought him the Order of St. George,
belonged to Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich. This award was pinned to the shirt of the dying prince, who died that same evening. On October 3 (16), 1915, Oleg Konstantinovich was buried in Ostashevo on Vasyutkina Hill.

According to the recollections of one of her contemporaries, several thousand people took part in the funeral procession. Along the way, the coffin of the deceased prince was accompanied by a mass of peasants. People cried, knelt, and carried his coffin on their shoulders from Volokolamsk station to Ostashev. He was buried with a golden sword. When the revolution began, they began to destroy the estate, rob everything, plundered the grave, pulled him out of the coffin, stole the saber, the remains lay on the road for five or six days, until someone compassionate returned them to their place.
Vandals already in Soviet times tried to get to Oleg’s grave more than once. For some reason, they believed that jewelry remained in the burial of the Grand Duke’s son... In 1969, by decision of local authorities, the body of Prince Oleg was secretly buried at night somewhere in a village cemetery across the river.
Soon, the October revolution brutally dealt with the relatives of the Grand Duke: the three remaining sons (John, Igor and Konstantin), along with the other Romanovs, were thrown into a mine near Alapaevsk. Konstantin Konstantinovich himself thought that his family would find eternal peace in Ostashevo...

On the very shore of the Ruza Reservoir, above the grave of Oleg Konstantinovich, the last building of the estate stands sadly. Here, according to the design of the architect Marian Peretyatkovich, the author of the famous St. Petersburg Church of the Savior on Water, and the engineer Sergei Smirnov, a Romanov church-tomb was built in 1915-1916 in the power of Russian Art Nouveau with Pskov-Novgorod traditions. The composition of this structure is very simple. A massive two-span belfry adjoins the cubic, four-pillar, single-domed cross-domed church on the southeastern side. Under the building there is a basement with a beamed ceiling. There are no paintings preserved inside the church; there were none. The tombstones embedded in the masonry have also been lost. The sparse exterior decoration emphasizes the severity of the forms of the entire building. The almost completed church in the name of the holy faithful Prince Oleg of Bryansk, Grand Duke Igor of Chernigov and St. Seraphim of Sarov the Wonderworker was never consecrated - revolutionary events prevented this.
And the poems of K.R. himself seem like an involuntary prophecy:
“When there is no strength to bear the cross,
When the melancholy cannot be overcome,
We raise our eyes to heaven,
Saying prayer day and night,
May the Lord have mercy."

During the construction of the Ruza Reservoir, the lower part of the linden park with ponds was flooded, and now the shore comes close to the estate and the temple. Its overgrown eastern half turned into a forest. Now no one knows where the secluded corners of the park were located under the strange, perhaps Masonic names “Baden”, “Philadelphia”... They disappeared forever.
Nowadays, the ensemble of the Ostashevo estate is a sad sight. The manor's house was dismantled due to its disrepair. On its foundation in the mid-1950s, a similarity to the previous one was built, with a belvedere and a four-column portico. And these days it greets the traveler with empty window sockets. A local history museum was originally located here, and then some kind of children's institution. However, the driveway linden alley is nice, as it harmoniously organizes the development of the front yard. It is gratifying to see that the tomb church is being restored. This gives hope that over time the rest of the buildings on this estate will also return to their original appearance.

You can get to the estate of Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov either by car or by train from the Rizhsky station to Volokolamsk, and from there by bus. There is another way. From the Belorussky railway station by train to Tuchkovo station, from there by minibus to the city of Ruza, and then by bus to Ostashev. Theoretically, when traveling by car, you can combine a tour of the estate with the architectural monuments of Volokolamsk and Ruza, but I would advise not to “gallop across Europe”, but to devote two or three days to such a trip.

Konstantin ★★★☆☆

(8-10-2018)

In general, everything is sad. The central building continues to deteriorate. Some of the outbuildings are adapted for private housing. The fence with turrets is being destroyed. The horse yard is relatively intact, but it has been painted the color of feces. The separate temple-tomb has just been brought into decent shape.

Irina ★★★★★

(29-05-2015)

And what a shame to call these objects of cultural heritage - architectural monuments of federal significance! If the state cared about preserving our history and culture, then before allowing cottage communities to be built around them, they would oblige these developers to restore the most beautiful and significant things nearby! Still subject to restoration, they built it conscientiously. Such a wonderful place can be used as a holiday home or as a forest school - it is not necessary to set up a museum. After the war, my father was a pioneer in a camp in this place and all his life he remembered it with pleasure. ... continuation src="/jpg/plus.gif">

And now this is a national disgrace!

An example of the results of the vandalism of our people and the indifference of the state. A very interesting estate, which is in very poor condition. It's a pity... We couldn't get to the church - the grass and thickets of hogweed were taller than our heads.
You can enter the house, the stairs are still strong. Inside there is a local landfill + mountains of broken glass, it looks like drinking vodka and beer and then breaking the bottles inside is a favorite attraction of the local population.
The horse yard is impressive, there are no analogues, built in 1840 by the then owner... continuation src="/jpg/plus.gif">

Muravyov's estate.

On the occasion of our arrival at the dacha, we visited the nearest estates
(and Yaropolets-two, Fedorovskoye, Volokolamsk). There are practically no changes here (from last year)! The main house was cleared from the ground, but a new problem is that the entire floor, on both floors, is covered with a thick layer of broken glass (bottles
damn!), well, there are MUCH more inscriptions. And the view from the landing of the stairs, through the exposed window, is still the same
MAGNIFICENT! The horse yard is still held in high esteem! It seems freshly painted (although not a fact). You can't get through to the tomb - it's thick. ... continuation src="/jpg/plus.gif">

The tower with the attached house is still alive! The entrance turrets are behind....! But supposedly people live nearby (center)!

A visit is strictly recommended for lovers of estates, abandoned buildings and fragments of ancient architecture. A large territory, quite a lot of farm buildings have been preserved. The house, of course, is in a deplorable state, but the horse yard is something. I must admit, at first I thought it was a church;)

I’m not a fan of ruined estates, but one cannot help but admit that this one is very, very interesting - I can’t define the style for sure, but there are obvious elements of pseudo-Gothic. First of all, this applies to the tower of the horse yard (pictured). Everything else is in terrible ruin, with no prospects for restoration in sight. Only the nearby church is being actively restored - well, this is always the case in today's Russia. They find money for churches, for estates, with the exception of the most famous - figurines.

Everything is abandoned unfortunately. There are empty beer containers all around and other signs of the human factor, sad. Unfortunately, it is not the only estate in this condition in the Moscow region with a famous history. You need to stop by if you find yourself in these places.

Anya ★★★★★

(15-07-2011)

We were recently in Ostashevo. The estate, of course, is very outdated, but it was still interesting to see. Nearby is the Ruza Reservoir - a very beautiful place! We stayed at the Ostashevskaya hotel - a cozy hotel 500 meters from the reservoir. We were barbecuing and there was fresh air. IT WAS good)))

Travel by car: in Volokolamsk, from the M9 highway, go down at the road junction under the bridge and follow towards the village. Privokzalny to Ostashevo is approximately 21 km south of the city.

The estate was founded at the end of the 18th century. A.V. Urusov, in the first half of the 19th century. belonged to N.N. Muravyov and his heirs, then successively - the chamber cadet, the district leader of the nobility N.P. Shipov and his son, General A.A. Nepokoinitsky, from 1890 to 1903 - industrialist A.G. Kuznetsov, then until 1917 Grand Duke K.K. Romanov to his family.

On the main square of the village there are two obelisks made of gray stone, indicating the way to the abandoned and now dilapidated estate.

The architectural complex was created by order of Alexander Vasilyevich Urusov, around the 1790s. It is possible that the author of the ensemble was R.R. Kazakov (nephew of M.F. Kazakov), who built a house in Moscow for a retired major general during this period of time.

In 1813, after the death of Urusov, the estate passed into the hands of his stepson, Nikolai Nikolaevich Muravyov, who founded an educational institution for training General Staff officers.

Of the five sons of Muravyov, the eldest Alexander (1792-1863) and the third Mikhail (1796-1866) took direct part in secret societies. The second son Nikolai (1794-1867), in 1816, driven to despair by an unsuccessful matchmaking, went to serve in the Caucasus with Ermolov for many years and remained outside the Union of Welfare. But even earlier, he organized one half-childish community with the utopian goal of creating a free republic on Sakhalin and involved future conspirators in it, and, in addition, painted in his notes a picture of the environment in which real political unions then arose. The childhood of all three brothers is closely connected with Ostashev. They began their service with the military campaigns of 1812 and subsequent years and moved to the forefront of modern youth, among whom secret societies arose.

After the death of N.N. Muravyov Ostashevo went to Alexander, who developed vigorous economic activity on the estate in the forties.

The two younger brothers belonged to a different era and did not distinguish themselves in any way in the field of state and political activity. Andrei (1806-1874), who left a memory in Ostashevo with the name of a now defunct gazebo over the river, gained great fame as a writer on religious issues, the younger Sergei (1809-1874), despite his outstanding mind, did not leave anything behind.

Horse yard

Ostashevo is memorable in the Decembrist movement through the “Educational Institution for Column Leaders” created by the Muravyovs, in which future officers of the so-called quartermaster unit, which was later transformed into the general headquarters, received training. The Muravyov school existed until 1823 and graduated about one and a half hundred officers, of whom at least 15 were members of secret societies. For the summer, from May to October, the school moved from Moscow to Ostashevo, the students were housed in apartments in peasant houses, and the stay of several dozen young people with their military exercises and training sessions, conversations and hobbies, of course, affected the life of the entire village.

Semi-legendary information has been preserved that secret meetings of the Decembrists took place here and conspiracies were hatched, and in the park, on one of the hills, the “Constitution” of the rebels was buried.

The ensemble of classicism style with pseudo-Gothic elements has a symmetrical composition with a pronounced longitudinal axis running from the entrance obelisks to the main house. In the 1950s, a two-story manor house with a belvedere, decorated with a four-column Tuscan portico, stood in the depths of the courtyard. was replaced by a new building. With two one-story wings, each topped with a faceted wooden turret with a high spire, the house was united by closed galleries. The courtyard, according to symmetry, is closed by the office and the manager’s house, and between them there are pseudo-Gothic towers of the entrance to the front courtyard. All the buildings in the front part, as if bound by a single chain, were connected to each other by wooden bars on stone foundations. They were interrupted by white stone side gates with abutments made of paired Tuscan columns; the road from the gate led to the now lost outbuildings.

At some distance from the central core of the estate there were four pentagonal pavilions - the remains of the Masonic hobbies that took place in Ostashevo.

The estate's most impressive structure is the pseudo-Gothic style equestrian yard, dating from the 1840s. Such a building has no analogues in the Moscow region!

The one-story building consists of two long wings connected at right angles. The axis of symmetry of the main façade, facing the center of the estate, is marked by a multi-tiered passage tower, the flanks by risalits with gables. The side facade, stretching along the entrance alley, is actually a wall with projections decorated with pseudo-Gothic forms and details.

The artistic center of the equestrian yard is the gate tower of a stepped silhouette, decorated with belts of slit-like niches, lancet platbands, battlements and pinnacles. Most likely, this tower is inspired by those “beffrois” that decorate the town halls of the ancient cities of Flanders. All elements emphasize the vertical orientation of the building, its upward direction. Now the building is occupied by several institutions, including a branch of the Volokolamsk Museum of Local Lore and a branch of Sberbank.

Pseudogothic style also prevailed in other outbuildings of the estate, erected here in the middle of the 19th century by the entrepreneur Shipov.

It is possible that in the Ostashev estate ensemble the architect tried to embody the image of a feudal town of the Middle Ages, which is why towers of outbuildings, services and horse yard of various shapes and heights, sometimes completed with weather vanes, were so repeatedly used here.

In 1903, the estate was bought by Grand Duke K.K. Romanov. His son Oleg (1892-1914), dying from a wound received on the German front, asked to be buried under the church. For the tomb they chose a place almost on the very bank of the Ruza, on a high hillock - “Vasyutkina Mountain”. The design of the church-tomb, presumably in the name of St. Seraphim of Sarov, was carried out by the architect M.M. Peretyatkovich, author of the famous St. Petersburg Church of the Savior on Water, and S.M. Cheap. The almost completed church was never consecrated - revolutionary events prevented this.

The composition of this structure is very simple. A massive two-span belfry adjoins the cubic, four-pillar, single-domed cross-domed church on the southeastern side. Under the building is a basement with a beamed ceiling, uncovered by local treasure hunters.

Manor Church

It’s sad, but the Ostashov Church can serve as an example of sophisticated vandalism: instead of portals, there are huge gaps, the ceilings are open, the roof is torn off, tombstones embedded in the masonry are broken out of the walls. Someone's hands were diligently breaking the stones of its foundation, especially those where the names of the persons present at the foundation were carved.

So the fresh river wind would have been blowing under the gloomy arches of the tomb, and wild pigeons were cooing under the leaky dome, but oblivion for the Ostashovsky temple had apparently ended - its restoration had just recently begun.

- this is not just a territory that unites several central regions of the country: Vladimir, Kaluga, Moscow, Ryazan, Smolensk, Tver, Tula, Yaroslavl.

is a land of picturesque and truly Russian nature: coniferous and deciduous forests, clean lakes and rivers, fresh air and a harmonious climate familiar to us since childhood.

- These are slow-flowing rivers with wide floodplains, occupied by water meadows. Thick, dark, overgrown with moss, like enchanted spruce trees. Magnificent broad-leaved forests consisting of huge oaks, ash trees, maples. These are sunny pine forests and cheerful, pleasing birch forests. Dense thickets of hazel on a carpet of tall ferns.

And beautiful clearings, strewn with flowers emitting intoxicating odors, are replaced by huge islands of impenetrable thickets, where tall fluffy spruces and pines live their measured, centuries-old life. They seem like incredible giants who slowly make way for uninvited guests.

In the thicket you can see old dried driftwood everywhere, so intricately curved that it seemed like there was a goblin lurking behind the hillock, and a pretty kikimora was peacefully dozing near the stone.

And endless fields, going either into the forest or into the sky. And all around - only the singing of birds and the chirping of grasshoppers.

This is where the largest rivers of the Russian Plain: Volga, Dnieper, Don, Oka, Western Dvina. The source of the Volga is a legend of Russia, the pilgrimage to which never stops.

IN middle lane more than a thousand lakes. The most beautiful and popular of them is Lake Seliger. Even the densely populated Moscow region is rich in beautiful lakes and rivers, sometimes even intact cottages and high fences.

The nature of the middle zone, glorified by artists, poets and writers, fills a person with peace of mind and opens his eyes to the amazing beauty of his native land.

It is famous not only for its literally fabulous nature, but also for its historical monuments. This - the face of the Russian province, in some places, in spite of everything, even preserving the architectural appearance of the 18th-19th centuries.

In the middle zone there are most of the cities of the world famous Golden Ring of Russia - Vladimir, Suzdal, Pereslavl-Zalessky, Rostov Veliky, Uglich, Sergiev Posad and others, ancient landowner estates, monasteries and temples, architectural monuments. Their beauty cannot be described; you have to see it with your own eyes and, as they say, feel the breath of deep antiquity.

But the most fruitful and happy thing for me was my acquaintance with central Russia... It captured me immediately and forever... Since then, I have not known anything closer to me than our simple Russian people, and nothing more beautiful than our land. I will not exchange Central Russia for the most famous and stunning beauties of the globe. Now I remember with an indulgent smile my youthful dreams of yew forests and tropical thunderstorms. I would give all the elegance of the Gulf of Naples with its feast of colors for a willow bush wet from the rain on the sandy bank of the Oka or for the winding Taruska River - on its modest banks I now often live for a long time.

Wrote by K.G. Paustovsky.

Or you can just climb into some remote village and enjoy nature far from civilization. The people here are very welcoming and friendly.

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, sitting 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 turned out to be in vain.) In his youth, Muravyov was involved in the Decembrist case, and in his declining years he proudly said about 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 equestrian 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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