Exhibition: Department "Lermontov's Cottage"

About exhibition

A modest, cleanly whitewashed cottage with a reed roof once stood on the outskirts of Nagornaya Street, which leads to the very foot of Mashuk. Visitors learn that roughly in the same area Lermontov’s character Grigory Pechorin also found lodgings: “Yesterday I arrived in Pyatigorsk, I rented an apartment on the edge of town, at the highest point, at the foot of Mashuk.” Externally the annex resembles a typical peasant clay-walled hut (mazanka), of which there were many in the surrounding Cossack stanitsas at that time. The cottage has four living rooms; there are also a front entry (seni), an entrance hall and a small pantry, while the kitchen was located in the basement. Stolypin occupied two rooms, and the other two, with windows facing the garden, were taken by Lermontov. Household affairs were tended by the peasants from Tarkhany who accompanied the poet, Ivan Sokolov and Ivan Vertyukov, assisted by Khristofor Sanikidze, the serf of Vasily Chilaev. Everything here recalls the typical dwelling of a Caucasian officer of those years: low plank ceilings, black-painted furniture of simple soldierly workmanship, and rugs on the walls. The cottage’s furnishings are modest and correspond exactly to how they were during the poet’s lifetime. They were able to restore it based on surviving plans and descriptions. The most detailed account was left by the Russian man of letters Petr Martyanov, who devoted a series of articles to Lermontov’s final days. He visited the cottage three decades after the poet’s death, met with Vasily Chilaev, and recorded an account of the poet’s stay in Pyatigorsk and his way of life.