M. GORKY AND THE HISTORY OF THE RESTORATION OF THE PUSHKIN NATURE RESERVE

The article presents the unknown facts related to the fate of the Pushkin Nature Reserve on the eve of 1937, when the 100th anniversary of A.S. Pushkin’s death was celebrated. The plan of anniversary events for this date included the restoration of the Mikhailovskoye estate, where the poet spent two years in exile. However, the implementation of this project encountered great difficulties. The article talks about the difficult situation of the Pushkin Nature Reserve and the reasons that caused this situation. The big problem of the Reserve was its double subordination: in the 1930s, the land of the Reserve was under the jurisdiction of the Academy of Sciences and the state farm printing house named after Lokhankov. New archival documents from the A.M. Gorky Archive (Moscow, IMLI RAS), Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (RGANI), press materials of the 1930s, are being used to show that administrative obstacles, bureaucratic inertia, indifference of senior party officials, and lack of funding brought Pushkin’s estate to the brink of extinction. A.M. Gorky took part in the fate of the Reserve in 1934-1935. As a result, obstacles to the development of the infrastructure of the Pushkin Mountains were removed, restoration work was carried out, and on January 18, 1937, the A.S. Pushkin House-Museum of was opened. It is concluded that Gorky contributed greatly to the restoration of Mikhailovsky.