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# Only in Moscow could this happen: you stroll along a boulevard of an evening and find yourself at an open meeting with a writer
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/tolko-v-moskve-takoe-vozmozhno-kogda-prosto-progulivaeshsia-vecherkom-po-bulvaru-i-okazyvaeshsia-na-otkrytoi-vstreche-s-pisatelem/
- Published: 2025-05-29T06:02:34.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:29:57.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Architecture, Books, Moscow, Observations, Reportage

Only in Moscow could this happen: you stroll along a boulevard of an evening and find yourself at an open meeting with a writer. Yesterday that is precisely what befell me. Passing the monument to Sholokhov, I heard Alexandr Tsypkin say something like "what if the cultural capital is in fact not Petersburg, but Moscow?" Well, well, this is getting interesting, I thought, and it suddenly transpired that, on the occasion of the opening of a book pavilion right there on Gogolevsky Boulevard, an open creative meeting was under way.

I am sure everyone will agree that a cultural programme which fits itself into your own routine must on no account be missed. So I gladly took a seat in the auditorium beneath the clear Moscow sky, listened to a Petersburger's lecture on Moscow, Muscovites and all the joys of our life, and afterwards inspected the new architectural object beside the historic vestibule of Kropotkinskaya metro station.

The colossal white queen, opened only today, turned out to be the "Chess Piece" book pavilion, part of the "Made in Moscow" project. Inside, as in the good old days, is a bookshop with books published in the capital. The selection pleased me: educational and popular-science books, on history and the arts and, above all, a great deal of literature on Moscow studies. Allow me to seize the occasion and tell you about my purchases:

📕"Moscow Architecture. Shchusev"  
📙"Once Upon a Time in Moscow… Lermontov, Gogol, Chekhov and Tolstoy"  
📘A serious album, "Television as Art: 111 Years of History"  
📗"An Englishman's Impressions of the Character and Manners of the Russians, with a Detailed Description of Moscow in the Early 19th Century"  
📔"VDNKh. The Dream of the Beautiful and the Unattainable. A Living History of the Exhibition"

Since the pavilion is open until autumn, one can drop in from time to time and choose something new

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