St Petersburg Special, Part 5

The Mikhail Zoshchenko Museum

There are museums that are spectacular shrines to their former occupant's creative or spiritual existence and that reach out, through proud blue plaques or through elegantly tailored guide book entries to the keen searcher of knowledge or indeed to the sympathetic passer-by. And there are other, apparently functioning establishments that seem content to skulk away in urban backwaters, in shadowy yards or on remote tracts of forgotten scarlands, daring the curious few to cross the forbidding threshold.

St Petersburg's shrine to one of its most controversial and influential writers, Mikhail Zoshchenko (1895 - 1958), whilst being smack-bang in the centre of this rich land of Russia past, does indeed recede into a mundane apartment block - no sign, no guidebook inset, no light to guide the twenty-first century's wayfarers in this land of not-so-plenty.

Armed with a friend and guide with a lifetime's savvy in these parts I wandered up, feet awash with the entrails of the city's pulsating torso - in all probability not at all different from that which Shostakovich would have seen and heard during his visits in here - through this door and up the dank stairs into a vibrant world of art, poetry and music.

Yet if certain writers deserve elegant gable ends or spacious libraries, nothing could be more appropriate than the sight of Zoshchenko's 1954 communal apartment - rooms leading to rooms leading to lives spent in a microcosm of stark Russianness. Crossed hands over the stove, glances through doors ajar with the smell of smoke and vodka. The writer revelled in situations he extricated from the daily life of the "common new-Soviet man" - be it buying a train ticket, mailing a parcel, fixing a stove or offering firewood for a birthday...

As writer Gleb Strove declared:

"At his best Zoshchenko reminds one simultaneously of two great masters of Russian literature, Gogol and Chekhov; so dissimilar on the whole, but so alike in their keen vision of the mean vulgarity and insipidity of life... One can sense a deep feeling of tragedy beneath and beyond the humorous and grotesque presentation of a humdrum, vulgar existence. The most hilarious of Russian writers was at heart a thorough pessimist, and for a discerning reader his comic stories must inevitably leave an after-taste of sadness."

It could well have been his monstrously untypical outlook on the lot of the Soviet artist, and indeed of that of life in general, that rendered Zoshchenko seemingly impervious to the ever-tightening grip of the State's censorial activities during the 1930s and well into the 1940s. His popularity with his readers peaked at this time, as did his apparent pro-Soviet stance reflected in his activities with the All-Russian Union of Soviet Writers. Yet, and as more than one biographer has put it - it seems that the whole thing was no more than a hoax.

And this impression is starkly reinforced the moment you set foot in Zoshchenko's Gallery. Its gate keeper is clearly astonished to greet a non-Russian today: and is that a mischievous look I see in those wide, smoky eyes? Kanyeshna! [Of course] And the challenge is - to be allowed to dwell and to linger, to drink in the myriad artefacts that, individually amount to little yet which, collectively, tell stories of artists' lives during those terrifying times of inspiration quelled by a State machine fearful of independent thought and deed.

Eventually myself and my Russian guide (essential, as nothing - at all - is provided for those ignorant of the Cyrillic script) break away, clutching a hastily negotiated copy of Zoshchenko cartoons (see page overleaf), and stroll over to the outer reaches of this compact tribute to the writer. The walls and ceilings are bedecked with a cornucopia of memorabilia including photographs, newspapers, books, long-playing records, a radio, a bottle, a typewriter; a veritable identikit. More so in the adjacent bedroom - featuring a single iron bedstead, a single wardrobe, a bedside table, a writing desk and a much-used typewriter. The sprouting pot-plant that adorns the window sill was, I assume, recent. It was here that the core of many of Leningrad's famous artists, including Shostakovich, spent time in discussion or argument, their burning creative voices filling these blank walls, ringing freedom, albeit hidden and disguised.

Verdict - what the place lacks in esotericism is more than made up for through its raw aura of creative artefacts - a glimpse into a complex world of survival, of contradictions and of artistic ingenuity.

Opening times are a little complex - better, then, to ring before setting out to visit - and don't forget your Russian-speaking friend!

The Mikhail Zoshchenko Literary-Memorial Museum is located at 4/2 Malaya Konyushennaya Ul. Flat 119, 3rd floor (Russian-style): it is open 10.30 to 18.30 except Mondays and the last Wednesday of each month

Telephone - St Petersburg 311 7819