Songbird traders, 200 Turkmen children and Solzhenitsyn at the state dacha

At the beginning of the 16th century. on the site of Trinity-Lykov there was the village of Cherevkovo, which Vasily Shuisky, during his short tenure as Moscow Tsar, granted to Prince Boris Mikhailovich Lykov. Lykov built a temple in Cherevkovo in the name of the Life-Giving Trinity and renamed the village New Trinity. “Old” Trinity, which stood two miles to the south, received, in turn, the name Cherev(p)kovo.

In 1690, the young sovereign Peter I donated the village of Troitskoye, along with the villages of Cherepkovo, Rublevo, Myakinino and Ostrogino, to his uncle Martemyan Kirillovich Naryshkin - under the Naryshkins, a stone one appeared in place of the wooden church.

In the second half of the 18th century. Trinity-Lykovo began to grow rapidly, and, despite the plague epidemic of 1771, by 1800 its population reached 340 people. Some of its residents were engaged in agriculture, others sold songbirds in Moscow in Okhotny Ryad, others floated timber along the Moscow River or served river crossings. Women knitted caps and stockings and wove lace.

From the Naryshkins the village passed to the Razumovskys, then to the Buturlins and, finally, in 1876, to the merchants Karzinkins. Yulia Matveevna Karzinkina gave the estate building as an almshouse, and built herself a three-story house with 47 rooms according to the design of the architect Ivan Ropet.

After the revolution, the estate was nationalized. In March 1922, Lenin rested here, and soon after that the estate was transferred to the Moscow Zoo, which, however, never used the gift. For some time, the estate was used as a holiday home for employees of the GPU, and in 1924 its place was taken by the Turkmen House of Education: more than two hundred Turkmen children were brought here, who were planned to be educated and used for the construction of socialism in Central Asia.

The local population was outraged by the arrival of “Busurmans” settled on the territory of three Orthodox churches. On one of the days of Maslenitsa, a huge fight broke out in Trinity-Lykovo, which reached such intensity that they began to sound the alarm in churches. Gradually, however, passions subsided - the villagers made friends with the Turkmens, and the House of Education was transformed first into a Turkmen workers' faculty (working faculty), and later into a Turkmen rest home. The memory of these institutions is preserved in the name of Turkmensky Proezd.

In 1942, the estate was transferred to the Suvorov Music School, and in the 1980s they began to create a dispensary for the Institute of Atomic Energy named after. Kurchatov - but it ended with Karzinkina’s house burning down in the fall of 1990.

In 1960, the village became part of Moscow and has been remarkably preserved to this day. Since the mid-1990s. and until his death in 2008, Alexander Solzhenitsyn lived there (at the state dacha Sosnovka-2).

Houses with mezzanines, lilacs, a cottage community, golden skulls and the remains of a helicopter

Trinity-Lykovo is the largest among Moscow villages and, of course, one of the most picturesque. It has its own grocery store, private car repair shops and stables, and even a small showroom for the metal coating company IMP Gold, where you can admire shining gold skulls and car rims. In the near future, it may be possible to have its own metro station.

The houses stand along three main streets: 1st and 2nd Lykovsky and Odintsovskaya - ancient wooden houses with mezzanines and carved platbands are interspersed with country houses, upholstered with clapboards, stone palaces behind two-meter fences and very miserable sheds. It is striking that some areas are divided between two owners - one inserts double-glazed windows into the windows of his half of the house and covers the roof with metal tiles, and the second leaves everything as is - old wooden frames and sheet iron on the roof.

In Turkmensky Proezd there is the only apartment building in the village (No. 20) - two-story, yellow, with eight apartments.

Across the road from the private sector, on the high bank of the Moscow River, is the territory of the former Karzinkin estate. In the middle of the neglected park there are two patterned and carved white stone churches - the Assumption and the Trinity, and next to them are the ruins of manor buildings, old wooden huts, a new Sunday school building, warehouses for building materials, a livestock farm and who knows how the remains of a helicopter ended up here.

From the north, residential areas of the Strogino district approach the village closely - new houses on Tvardovsky Street literally crush the narrow streets of Troitse-Lykova. Signs for sale of plots hang on fences, houses are half-collapsed, and rural streets line with staircases leading to the doors of skyscrapers. There you can also find the best view in the village: on Tvardovsky Street, in the ravine between the Azure Blues and Azure Blues - 2 towers, a tiny oasis of rural development has been preserved - this place, the northwestern tip of Trinity-Lykov, is called Sokolinaya Gora : behind rickety fences, lilac bushes and village roofs, church bell towers are visible, and all this is against the backdrop of a large-scale construction project looming over the surrounding area.

In the west there are industrial zones, auto centers and the Metro hypermarket. The wide Avenue of Marshal Zhukov (behind the Moscow Ring Road - New Riga) goes underground, a little before reaching the village, and emerges already in Krylatskoye, in the area of the Zhivopisny Bridge.

From the southern borders of Trinity-Lykov, the Rublevsky forest begins, which stretches all the way to the Rublevsky highway. In the forest near the river there are numbered Sosnovka state dachas; In addition, a healthy piece of forest was taken over by the Russian Railways OJSC holiday home. 2nd Lykovskaya Street in the south begins with impregnable palaces behind blank fences. Nearby, between the forest and the industrial zone, there is a cottage community, built, according to rumors, on the site of an old helipad. Opposite they are building a complex of townhouses for large families. The view of the chimneys of the Stroginsk power plant, together with the desolation reigning around and the noise of the invisible highway, aggravate the joyless atmosphere of the southern tip of the village.

Gennady, auto repair shop owner:

“Our house is old, post-war. Our entire extended family lives in it. I have my own small auto repair shop next to my house, “for my own people,” so to speak. Across the road is a larger car service center (the garage there is painted green), run by Caucasians. This is what has probably changed here in recent years - there are a lot of visitors. In general, we live as we lived. The proximity of Moscow has not changed anything special. Life in the village is very ordinary, unremarkable. Except that islands of nature are still preserved here. Under the hill there is the Moscow River. I don’t know whether it’s clean or not, but I swim in it and catch fish for the table. There is a lot of fish here - roach, perch, bream, asp, pike and even sterlet. Rublevsky forest is magnificent. As soon as the ground dries up, you walk through the forest - it smells of pine needles, lilies of the valley are blooming around you. You go and get high."

Timur, works in Moscow:

“My wife is local, and I am from Georgia; I moved to Trinity-Lykovo in 1997. The houses here 10-15 years ago were simpler - just rural huts, no cottages for you. And the village used to be larger: the houses stood on the site of the Rosneft gas station and further on, to Tvardovsky Street. This was the case in the 1970s, and then they began to build Strogino and that part of the village was demolished. At the other end, they also cleaned up some things to build cottages for large families. As for the rest, we live as we lived. No telephone, gas or sewerage. We heat the house with wood and coal. We have been registering land ownership for many years. The authorities don’t need this - they are pulling as best they can, leading by the nose.

I used to work in a car repair shop. Once upon a time there were two houses in its place, and then a Jew bought them and set up a car service there. He demolished one house, the second burned down, the Jew went bankrupt, but the car service continues to live. There is no advertising, people find out through word of mouth.

In Trinity-Lykovo, local clans have been preserved - the Gorbyshevs, the Krutovs, the Shevaldyshevs. Their ancestors lived here before the revolution.

We hardly communicate with each other. In this regard, it’s like in the city: you only say hello to your neighbor, and only through the fence. We don't visit each other. Everyone for themselves. And there is almost no work in the village.”

Vladimir Alekseevich, retired:

“Ten years ago, a woman from the Karzinkin family, no longer young, came to Trinity-Lykovo from America, a direct relative of those who owned the estate. And about the former owner of the estate, Karzinkina, they said that when mowing time came, the local men were really looking forward to her inviting them to work on her meadows - firstly, she paid well for the work, but most importantly, she poured a glass of vodka every evening . So the men walked around in circles every year, asking each other: “When are we going to mow?”

My mother is from Tatarovo, and my father is local, from Troitsk. I have lived in Trinity-Lykovo for about twenty years. People live here differently. In our house, for example, there is electricity and running water, but many indigenous people still do not. We don't have gas either. Once there was a meeting dedicated to this issue: in order to make gas, the residents of Trinity-Lykovo were asked to chip in seven thousand dollars. We thanked him and refused such a pleasure. Dmitry Medvedev promised to build a gas main here, from which everyone could arrange a branch to their home. While we wait.

Many locals sell and resell their homes. And there are a lot of visitors - sometimes you feel like you’re in Central Asia.”

Ekaterina, stable owner:

“We were born and raised in Trinity-Lykovo. What do the locals do? They work in Moscow and spend their free time in their gardens. Many people keep chickens and goats, some even keep sheep. And also horses. We have our own stable. We organize horseback riding, teach how to properly handle horses, and treat animals damaged by illiterate handling. Private horse owners bring their horses to us to restore their health and psyche. Our stable is not the only one in Trinity-Lykovo. There are several at the other end of the village, about a dozen horses live there. Some who live in cottages have their own mini-stables. In a word, there are enough horses in Trinity-Lykovo. This is our local specialty.

The birth rate of children here - be healthy. There are sixteen people in our family alone. We all live in the same house. Our life is rural. We have to do everything ourselves. No gas, no running water, no central heating. The only city amenities are electricity. Although street lighting here is also the same name. At our end of the street there is a single lamp burning, and next to it there is a construction site, and the corresponding population: migrant workers, gypsies. It's scary to walk. Gypsies used to live here in a camp, and it was quiet horror. Then they were driven somewhere, it seems, to the other end of the village. They do laundry right in the Moscow River, swim without clothes, and do not respond to comments. They drive around the village in old Zhiguli cars without mufflers. Where is this good?

Of the recent changes, the most outrageous thing is the construction of residential complexes a stone's throw from our house. Developers don't seem to care about local residents. The roads at this end of the village are completely destroyed by construction equipment - previously it was possible to drive normally from the gas station, but now only in hot weather, when the dirt turns to dust. They are supposed to repair the roads, but instead they throw construction waste into the ravine. At the same time, the new houses look directly at the cemetery - nothing to say, a great view. On the site of the orange towers there used to be a path along which villagers walked to the city and back. Now, instead of a path, there is a bypass path, which in winter turns into a skating rink; people, sorry, are sliding into a ravine on their asses. There used to be garages at the construction site, and we liked them better. They were not visible because of the trees. And behind the garages all the way to the Moscow Ring Road there was a large field, we went there for a walk. And from the construction there is only noise, dirt and desolation.

It's also a shame that the park was closed. We used to go there with the whole family. And now there are fences and dogs all around. Where else can you go? To the forest or to the beach. But all sorts of drunks always gather on the beach, it’s not very pleasant.

And no one lives in the houses in the ravine under Tvardovsky Street. There are plots left there where someone raises rabbits, someone keeps household equipment. The southern end of our village, on the contrary, is elite. Rich people live there in luxurious cottages. And no one will build anything there, much less throw garbage into the street. By the way, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, when he lived in Trinity-Lykovo, was always on the side of ordinary residents: he sought to have gas supplied to us, to make the park accessible to the public. And you know, his influence was felt - life was truly calmer.

And yet, despite everything, it’s wonderful to live on your own land. This is probably the only advantage of rural life. You can go outside in your pajamas and with a cup of coffee and not think about how they will look at you. Then your own economy, your own way of life. What, tell me, should I do in the city, within four walls?”

How to get there

From metro station "Shchukinskaya": by bus No. 137 to the final stop "Troitse-Lykovo".

From Strogino metro station: exit the last car, then walk to the nearest bus stop on Tallinskaya Street. From there take bus No. 137 to the final stop “Trinity-Lykovo”.

Moscow villages. Trinity-Lykovo