I was always interested in the Secret of Old Times, where it disappears and what happens to the people who inhabited it. I think the old city with a great historical past is significantly different from a city that has not been more than a hundred years old. In a more ancient city, so many people were born, loved and hated, suffered and rejoiced so much that the ocean of their spiritual and nervous energy could not get lost without a trace
Recently, I feel that the people who lived before us have not gone anywhere. They stayed where they were, we just exist in different time measurements, and we go with them along the same streets, invisible to each other. At the same time, we live in the houses they built, listen to the music they created, read their poems or books. Former generations exist for us, and we are not for them; we know about them, but they are nothing about us. And to the city in which they lived, too, there is no business to us today. This city knew and saw many people, probably, they were the best of us, at least to our city were treated carefully, with love, as eloquently speaking, houses of works of architectural art. Pay attention: with what fantasy and artistic taste homeowners decorated their homes.
It’s hard to recognize now. In the photo house of the College of Culture and Arts named after Ohienko on Ivan Franko Street.
I have somewhat funny but a pleasant train: in the evening, when the half-bright, tired city falls asleep, street noise drops, to get from the bookcase an old album with pictures, and plunge into thoughts in ancient times, foolishly deceiving oneself, as if everything was all right then: and people, And life and relationships …
I imagine what the city was in ancient times, its inhabitants, their everyday life, and there is a desire to tell about some of them – I have in my archive wonderful pictures for illustration.
In the photo on the left is the wife of the notary Ivan Filipov – Bulgarian Olena Zheinova. In their house on Velyka Berdychivska Street is now the Ukrainian house. In 1902 the lady became the winner at the city event, which today would be called “Beauty contest”. Receiving a significant cash prize, he immediately transferred it to the fund for the assistance of sick children from poor families.
In the photo on the right there is Maria Preobrazhenska, a teacher of French in gymnasia. She was in love with the pilot Petro Nesterov, the very one who performed the famous “Nesterov’s loop”. The pilot was in the Preobrazhenskyis’ building, which has survived to this day on Pushkin Street.
On the photo in the luxurious big hat is the wife of a doctor Krasnov, Olha Ivanovna, with her daughter Lydia. For many years, her husband Vasyl Yosypovych was the chief physician of the city hospitals. He started a skin dysplaster in Zhytomyr, which operates till this day.
One more picture should be said more in detail. In an awesome car in the little light bonnet Anna Pavlovna Moscaliova, the mother of the world-famous musician Sviatoslav Richter and at the wheel – her brother Nikolai Pavlovich.
Accidentally it happened that the main characters in the photo are beautiful Zhytomyr citizens, and therefore it was thought another time to tell how the women of our city dressed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century’s.
S. Sobchuk
Member of the National Union of Regional History of Ukraine
A. Sobchuk
Translated by Aliona Matushevich