Kuntsevo Dacha

Coordinates: 55°43′28″N 37°29′09″E / 55.72444°N 37.48583°E / 55.72444; 37.48583

The Kuntsevo Dacha was Joseph Stalin's personal residence near the former town of Kuntsevo (then Moscow Oblast, now part of Moscow's Fili district), where he lived for the last two decades of his life and died on 5 March 1953, although he also spent much time inside the Kremlin, where he possessed living quarters next to his offices. The dacha is located inside a forest not far from the modern-day Victory Park.[1]

The so-called "nearer dacha" (Ближняя дача) was built in 1933-34 to Miron Merzhanov's designs. One storey was added to the original building in 1943. It was in Kuntsevo where Stalin lived during World War II. It was there that he played host to such high-profile guests as Winston Churchill and Mao Zedong.[1]

The grounds included lemon and apple trees, a rose garden, a small pond and a watermelon patch.[2] There was a sports ground for playing gorodki.[1] Its defenses included a double-perimeter fence, camouflaged 30-millimeter antiaircraft guns, and a security force of three hundred NKVD special troops.[3] There was a veranda off the main corridor on the ground floor.[4]

The Soviet leader seldom left his study, let alone visited the second storey (although a lift was installed on his orders). Stalin's study had his wartime desk, a radio that was a gift from Churchill and a sofa where he often slept. The dining room was decorated with images of Lenin and Gorky and rose carpets. Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliuyeva recorded that the famous painting Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks was hung on the ground floor but not clear on where.[5]

After Stalin's death the Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin Institute set up a commission to make arrangements for a Stalin museum at Kuntsevo.[6] Nikita Khrushchev discarded the idea, and the dacha stood unoccupied for several decades. The building is still shrouded in secrecy. The grounds are fenced and closed to ordinary visitors.

References

  1. 1 2 3 http://www.kuntsevo.org/obnovlenia/book/Part2Glava15_18.htm
  2. ↑ Rubentein, Joshua (31 May 2016). The Last Days of Stalin (Kindle ed.). Yale University Press). |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  3. ↑ http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/russia/kuntsevo.htm
  4. ↑ Rubentein, Joshua (31 May 2016). The Last Days of Stalin (Kindle ed.). Yale University Press). |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  5. ↑ Rubentein, Joshua (31 May 2016). The Last Days of Stalin (Kindle ed.). Yale University Press). |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  6. ↑ Zhores Medvedev, Roy Medvedev. The Unknown Stalin. ISBN 978-1-85043-980-6. Page 61.
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