Peredelkino, Outside Moscow, USSR, 1949–1960

Peredelkino is the “writer’s colony” created by Stalin to house the nation’s most famous and respected writers (21). Boris lives here with his wife, Zinaida, and children in their dacha, “a reddish-brown wooden house with large bay windows” and a “large garden” (21). Boris writes only his dacha. Zinaida does not allow Olga in their dacha, so Boris keeps his affair separate from his home life. For this reason, Boris reads his work to crowds in Peredelkino without Olga’s presence. Boris watches over the decades as his writer friends in Peredelkino disappear from the colony at the hands of the State during the Purges and the Great Terror. When Boris falls ill, he does not allow Olga to enter the dacha and see him as he actively dies. He passes away there and during the funeral procession, they stop with his casket at his...