Since the 18th century, Moscow has been administratively divided into quarters, each of which reports to a separate local police department. The Kremlin and Kitay Gorod constituted the First, or “Town” part of Moscow. Each area was divided into quarters. All of Zaryadye — from Varvarka in the north and Moskvoretsky embankment in the south, from the Kitaygorosky road in the east to Moskvoretsky Street in the west — belong to the Fourth city quarter, according to the official documentation of those years. By the middle of the 18th century, this neighborhood had acquired a rather dubious reputation, primarily due to the social distribution of residents.
The southern side of Varvarka — home to ornate churches, renovated chambers, and commercial buildings — almost acts as a protective buffer between the financial “Town” district and Zaryadye, which is overpopulated by small-time traders, craftsmen, and menial servant staff. Zaryadye, unlike the Khitrovka district, never had a reputation as a criminal neighborhood, however, drunkenness, debauchery, fights, and minor crimes were regular occurrences among the residents in the mid 19th and early 20th century. The situation was further exacerbated after the abolishment of serfdom in 1861: a large number of villagers poured in Zaryadye in search of a better life, but did not find it.
According to the memoirs of the self-taught poet and write Ivan Belousov, who was born in Zaryadye in 1863 to a family who owned a small sewing business, many workshops were rented in the neighborhood, and many “tailors, shoemakers, bootmakers, hat makers, spinners, fur skinners, wallet makers, button makers, brush makers, glove makers, craftsmen who covered crowns with gold, and company uniform makers” lived here. Belousov’s father was a tailor who left the countryside and became an owner of a small sewing workshop for 6-7 tailors and 5-6 apprentices brought from the villages. Belousov’s father rented out a room in the house on the corner of Pskov and Mokrinsky streets, and the family lived on the upper floors of the building.
The house where Belousov Sr. worked and where his family lived belongs
to the well—known Moscow
merchant and textile manufacturer Vasily Vargin, who made his money from selling
food rations and canvas cloth to the Russian Army during the Napoleonic wars. In addition to the
house in Zaryadye, Vargin owned much more valuable real estate in Moscow at various points in
time: the site where the current day Maly Theater stands, a large house on Ilyinka, prestigious
furnished rooms on Tverskaya opposite the present-day Moscow City Administration, the residences
of the Governor General, as well as houses in the Zamoskvorechie and Lefortovo neighborhoods,
and finally a large plot of land at the corner of Kuznetsky Most and Bolshaya Lubyanka streets.
At this intersection, a building designed by Leonitius Beno was erected in 1905 and housed the
People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs; today it is a large commercial building.
Such vast land holdings concentrated in the hands of one owner, as in the case of Vargin, were commonplace in Moscow after the destruction of the 1812 fire. Rich noblemen and merchants bought plots for tenement apartments to rent out. In the Moscow archives, there is a bill of sale preserved dated April 13, 1817, in which the down and out merchant children Ivan and Alexander sold a large plot of land between Ershov and Mokrinsky streets to another merchant’s children Jacob and Ivan Kuzmin. The “courtyard on white land with one stone building and a wooden non-residential building” was sold for 52,000 rubles, paid in state bank notes. On the southern part of the property that overlooks Mokrinsky, an 18th century stone house with one large chamber was still standing at the time of purchase. The new owners kept the chamber and completed the house, building a cheap two-story apartment concealed by a simple ornamental plaster facade. Apartment buildings in Zaryadye were owned by wealthy and prominent people in society. Some examples include collegiate assessor Nikifor Vasilenko, Anna Belova, the wife of a Moscow merchant, court advisor I.Y. Kudryavtsev, a retired collegiate secretary by the name of Mitkov, the wife of state advisor N.Y. Arsenyev, the reputable Shaposhnikov and Spiridonov families, princess A.G. Volkonskaya, the “rich and famous” Berg and Tolokonnikov, and other families at the top of the social hierarchy. Like Vargin, the owners lived in other parts of Moscow, and conducted business with many of the tenants through their agents, and only visited Zaryadye if it was absolutely necessary. The spaces the owners rented out were cheap and of low quality, so in order to compensate and make a profit, the owners rented out every square yard, including the basements and attics.
Being a cheap neighborhood in the very center of the city, Zaryadye — aside from the former peasants — was a destination for the urban proletariat: petty traders, artisans, craftsman, and attracted people with dubious reputations and occupations. “There were many fortune tellers in the dark and filthy basements in Zaryadye,” an excerpt from Belousov’s memoirs reads. The most successful fortune teller was famous all over Moscow, and wealthy merchants and sometimes even noblewomen form the Zamoskvorechye neighborhood would come to get their fortunes told. The fortunetellers had their saloons in the basement apartments and “practiced their craft openly by bribing the police”.
Another notable social class in Zaryadye during the mid-nineteenth century was a group of professional beggars. A large “gang” of beggars lived in a house on the territory of the men’s Znamensky Monastery on Varvarka. The rundown building was rented out by the monastery’s administration. In the afternoons, the beggars went into the “Town” i.e. the trading stalls on Red Square, Gostiny Dvor, and Toluchy market — which were all located in the old and new parts of Kitay Gorod. Many of the more experienced beggars who had mastered the art could make up to 3 rubles a day, while the working wage at the time was 20 to 25 kopeks per day.
According to Belousov’s account, workers would go to the tavern to get drunk would send their younger apprentices to “lay out nearly new and sturdy boots and then before giving them to the money lender, switch with older and more worn pair and get 1.5 rubles. When this money was spent on booze, the first worker was again sent to the money lender; she gave the second worker an even worse pair of boots and just a few kopeks. And so on and so forth until the last “swap” was a destroyed and tattered pair of boots. The same thing was done with jackets and shirts.”
Sewage waste was deposited into pits, and the owners or tenants had to pay for sewage disposal.
But in poorer areas, several disingenuous land lords didn’t pay for the sewage to be removed,
but instead hired laborers who buried the sewage in their yards. All of these practices led to
the development of unsanitary conditions, infectious diseases, and increased mortality.
Many people who lived in Moscow at the time confirm the lack of sanitation. Pavel Bogatyrev, a well-known folklore singer, ethnographer, and fiction writer, gives the following description of Zaryadye in the 1860s and 1870s in his essay The Muscovite Old Believer: “Zaryadye itself — the streets, alleys, houses, and apartments — was filthy to the extreme and saturated with wretched air. It was a great habit to spend an hour in Zaryadye so that you could come, then escape and enjoy fresh air.”
and economic.
Soviet novelist Leonid Leonov, a third-generation resident of the neighborhood, recalled everyday scenes from his childhood in his essay, The Demise of Zaryadye (1935). “People and their families lived in close quarters among fiendish and consumptive lowly craftsmen. Their lives were grim and short-lived. In Zaryadye, there was a fine art of performing grueling work with out breaking any bones. It was hard to citizen these pugnacious and yellow-skinned workers who were going mad with 12-hour work days. It was hard to judge these rascals who spent their time on this Earth like this. The way they hit their wives or brought up their children was perhaps memorable for long-time Zaryadye residents. Their only joy was to drink on days off and forget about life — I remember this pattern from the very beginning of my sweet childhood. The neighborhood kazenok — a state wine and vodka shop — was sufficient for otherworldly drunkenness to flourish, drinking into oblivion to the point of delirium and tremors. And this is how I remember my uncle, Sergey Andreyevich: sitting on a stone window-sill, dangling his feet, calling the devils to take him to his happy place.”
