Discover Russia’s Literary Heritage with iBestTravel
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Russia was home to towering figures of world literature, including Pushkin, Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Solzhenitsyn. Their former homes and places associated with these literary titans have been transformed into museums, offering a unique insight into the inspirations behind their prose, poems, and plays.
Moscow
The legacy of poet Alexander Pushkin looms large over Russia’s literary landscape. The author of Eugene Onegin was born in Moscow, where you can visit two museums dedicated to his life, alongside the statue on the square named in his honor and the nearby haute-russe restaurant that also bears his name. Make sure to visit the Pushkin Literary Museum, which provides a thorough overview of the historical events that influenced the writer, showcasing his personal effects. Enthusiasts may also want to explore the Pushkin House-Museum, where the poet lived with his wife, Natalia Goncharova, for three months after their marriage in 1831.
Similarly, novelist Leo Tolstoy is celebrated in Moscow with two notable museums: the humble Tolstoy Estate-Museum, where he spent winters with his family between 1882 and 1901, and the Tolstoy Literary Museum, filled with manuscripts, letters, and artworks related to the writer.
A contemporary of Tolstoy, playwright Anton Chekhov lived in a red-painted house in the city for four years before moving to a country estate in Melikhovo. This was where he penned works like The Seagull and Uncle Vanya. Additionally, Boris Pasternak, the Nobel Prize–winning author of Doctor Zhivago, found inspiration in the outskirts of Moscow. His house-museum is located in Peredelkino, a village filled with colorful dachas (summer houses), where the poet is also buried.
In central Moscow, statues of two mischievous characters from The Master and Margarita greet visitors at the Mikhail Bulgakov Museum. Bulgakov lived here with his wife, Tatyana Lappa, in apartment 50 during the 1920s. Nearby, visitors can enjoy a stroll around the lovely Patriarch’s Ponds, which features at the beginning of The Master and Margarita as the place of the devil’s appearance in Moscow.
St Petersburg
The writer most closely associated with St Petersburg, the former imperial capital, is Fyodor Dostoevsky. Walking tour companies have created itineraries based on the author’s residences and the locations depicted in his novels, including Crime and Punishment and The Idiot. A museum occupies Dostoevsky’s final home near Vladimirskaya metro station, where a statue of the writer stands. Visitors can pay their respects at his grave in Tikhvin Cemetery within the grounds of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, a historically rich site where Dostoevsky rests alongside famous composers like Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky.
Less known in the English-speaking world but highly revered in Russia is the 20th-century poet Anna Akhmatova. Her tragic life under communism greatly influenced her work, as can be discovered at the exceptional Anna Akhmatova Museum at the Fountain House, located in the apartment where she lived between 1926 and 1952. Nathan Altman’s famous portrait of a regal Akhmatova from 1914 hangs in the Russian Museum, and several statues of the poet are scattered throughout the city, including one that gazes forlornly across the Neva River towards Kresty Prison, where both Akhmatova’s son and common-law husband were imprisoned during Stalin’s repressive era.
St Petersburg is also linked to Pushkin; visitors can explore the site of the Romantic poet’s fatal duel on 8 February 1837, as well as the flat where he died later that day. A statue of Pushkin, often adorned with pigeons, is located in Arts Square.
Western European Russia
“Happy is he who is happy at home,” wrote Leo Tolstoy. He found considerable contentment at his country estate of Yasnaya Polyana, located 14km south of Tula. This idyllic estate, where Tolstoy was born and embraced the “bath of country life,” remains preserved as it was when the writer passed away in 1910. His unmarked grave can be found in the nearby forest, and within the estate’s main house, visitors can view artifacts of his aristocratic family.
The model for the fictional town of Skotoprigonyevsk in The Brothers Karamazov, Staraya Russa is a picturesque town on the banks of the Polist River. It was here that Dostoevsky spent multiple summers and created much of his celebrated novel. The dacha that served as his working base is preserved as a museum; also in town, the Dostoevsky Cultural Centre hosts temporary exhibitions and organizes tours.
Ivan Turgenev’s most famous work, Fathers and Sons, faced a hostile reception upon its 1862 release, prompting him to leave Russia. In happier years, the writer grew up and resided at Spasskoe-Lutovinovo, an estate originally granted to his family by Ivan the Terrible, located 65km north of Oryol. The charming lilac-painted wooden villa served as the family home. In Oryol itself, visitors will find several literary museums dedicated to local authors, with the most renowned being the Nobel Prize winner Ivan Bunin.
More Nobel Prize Winners
Scattered across the north and south of Russia are two notable locations associated with Nobel Prize-winning writers. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea as the “mother of the gulag.” These remote islands, which host a 15th-century World Heritage-listed monastery, were long used for exile, later becoming prime spots for Stalin’s forced labor camps. The islands feature prominently in Solzhenitsyn’s significant work, Gulag Archipelago.
Opened in 2015, the Sholokhov Museum-Reserve in Rostov-on-Don is dedicated to Mikhail Sholokhov, the 1965 Nobel laureate. His renowned works, And Quiet Flows the Don and The Don Flows Home to the Sea, depict Cossack life during WWI and the Russian Civil War. The Don River flows through this beautiful gateway to the Russian Caucasus, with promenading along its banks remaining a key highlight of Rostov-on-Don.
In the deeper Caucasus regions lie the spa towns of Pyatigorsk and Kislovodsk, both linked to the passionate, Romantic 19th-century writer Mikhail Lermontov, who spent time in these areas before dying in a duel at just 26 years old. Visitors can explore the duel site in Pyatigorsk, which also features a museum in the thatched cottage where Lermontov lived. A monument in Kislovodsk’s Kurortny Park further celebrates Lermontov; peering into the grotto reveals a red-eyed demon featured in one of his poems.
