“Here silence flourishes…” Blok’s city suburbs

The exhibition is dedicated to the 132 anniversary of the birth of Alexander Blok. It presents photographs and postcards of the early XX century from the collection of the State Museum of History of St Petersburg, which captured the favorite places in the suburbs of St. Petersburg for walks and poet’s sociable meetings: Shuvalovo, Ozerki, Lahta, Olgino, Strelna, Lesnoy, Kolomyagi, Terijoki and other. Such exhibited itema as poems of Alexander Blok, fragments of his letters, diaries and notebooks along with other exhibits will help to recreate the image of St. Petersburg suburbs of Blok’s time.

According to the contemporaries of Blok “he could feel the nature like no one else. Tiny, various types of flora of central Russia were close to him each in its own way”. Blok’s love for St. Petersburg suburbs was not only connected with choosing places for walks, but was a manifestation of his spiritual need, a contact with native land seemed to bring the poet back from his distant life wanderings to himself.

The exhibition introduces the poet’s walking routes in the suburbs of St. Petersburg, including the history of summer resorts in the early XXth century. The exhibition shows photographs and postcards with views of the suburbs of St. Petersburg, maps and site plans of the early XXth century. Almost all suburbs of St. Petersburg where Alexander Blok used to wander have changed beyond recognition. Lesnoy, Kolomyagi, Staraya and Novaya Derevnya, Ozerki and Ligovo became modern urban areas and there is almost nothing left to remind about the quiet suburbs they once use to be. Now only old post cards help to recreate the image of those places that fascinated and inspired the poet. Many postcards from the Tagrin collection are exhibited for the first time.

A whole set of exhibits of the early XXth century from the collection of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg helps to recreate the atmosphere of a resort-town life of St. Petersburg at that time. Train schedules, tickets: for rail, to travel by a horse tram, for a trolley and steam tram, which was affectionately called by Petersburgers “parovichok”. Summer dresses, light lacy parasols, ladies gloves and mittens, men's bathing suits. A hammock and bike (Blok had almost the same bicycle named “Vaska”). Posters of summer theaters and aviation weeks as well as a rare ehxibit – propeller of the first airplane of Yakov Gakkel.