Bibliography
| Russian original title | «Легенды и мифы Дома на набережной» |
| English translated title | “Legends and Myths of the House on the Embankment” |
| Author | Larisa Kaftan (special correspondent) |
| Publisher | Komsomolskaya Pravda |
| Date | 4 December 2011 (22:00 in the paper’s metadata) |
| Original language | Russian |
| Occasion | eightieth anniversary of the House on the Embankment / House of Government |
| Archive type | external journalism + published interview (secondary source) |
| Access | external link only; article body is not copied onto this site |
| Checked | 2026-08-03 (URL live; canonical without UTM) |
Original (Russian): “Legends and Myths of the House on the Embankment” — kp.ru
Original article in Russian. The newspaper does not provide an English edition of this piece.
Why the family archive keeps this source
In 2011 Tatyana Timofeevna was about eighty-five. Komsomolskaya Pravda published a long feature on the house built in part around a walk and conversation with her. She is not background colour: she is the interlocutor — courtyards, early-1930s childhood, neighbours, her father Timofey Petrovich , how the building changed under repression, and family memory of her mother Eva Konstantinovna .
Three reasons it matters here:
- Independent print — her voice is fixed not only in the notebook but in an external newspaper.
- Layers of time — the manuscript narrates the 1930s from inside family chronicle; the 2011 interview is spoken memory decades later, already public.
- Echoes of the notebook — move, settlement commission, courtyard and clubs, neighbours who disappeared — overlap with diary chapters, so the paper is read beside the manuscript, not instead of it.
The article complements “Our genealogy: the Samsonovs” but does not replace it and is not treated as an official archival file for offices, tenant lists, or every neighbour’s fate.
How the text is layered
| Layer | What it is | How this site reads it |
|---|---|---|
| Journalist’s frame | title, house portrait, “legends and myths”, bridging copy | editorial context; not biography by itself |
| Tatyana’s account | childhood, courtyards, clubs, flat, father, repression, mother | published memory; cross-checked with the notebook |
| Other residents’ stories | famous neighbours, others’ arrests | place context; no new person entities from the paper alone |
| Address detail | historical vs later entrance | historic house yes; later residential coordinates no (privacy) |
Crosswalk with the notebook
| Theme | In the 2011 interview (paraphrase) | In the family notebook |
|---|---|---|
| Move while Tatyana is a child | parents brought her into the new house | ch. 02 : 1931, Serafimovich St.; birth 1926 — not “in swaddling clothes” |
| Early-1930s atmosphere | children, clubs, music, no “elite” language | ch. 03 , ch. 13 : yard, club, circles, games |
| Settlement commission | father on the commission; commission leadership named | ch. 02–03: father as member; ch. 03 names the commission chair (as daughter’s memory) |
| Large flat, part given away | father gave up half the flat | ch. 02–03: six rooms → two separated off |
| Repression, sealed apartments | sealed doors by morning; families vanished | ch. 13: classmates and neighbours disappearing in 1937–38 |
| Mother’s role | mother listened in fear at night | in the paper — via the daughter; other mother episodes in ch. 01 |
Neighbour names in the newspaper and the notebook do not always match (different people, spelling, confidence). The site cares more about the type of memory (house, yard, disappearances) than turning a press list into a tenant registry.
What it supports (with confidence)
- Fact of the 2011 publication with Tatyana Timofeevna — document_confirmed (kp.ru metadata).
- Childhood life in the house, clubs, courtyards — family_testimony_published; corroborated by ch. 03 and 13.
- Atmosphere under repression, sealed apartments — family_testimony_published; echoes ch. 13.
- Father on the settlement commission and giving up part of the flat — corroborated (notebook + interview) as family memory, not a state-archive act.
- Commission chair named in memory — in notebook ch. 03 and the interview; published here only as the daughter’s recollection, not as reconstructed administration.
- Father’s office around 1931 — the archive has two readings: ch. 02 uncertain “TsIK[?]…”, ch. 03 “administrator of affairs of the Central Committee of the VKP(b)”; the paper tracks the second. We do not fix one wording as personnel truth without external archives.
Cautions / non-use
| Do not | Why |
|---|---|
| Treat “born with the house” / “still in swaddling clothes” as biography | Birth 2 Sep 1926, move 1931 (~age five) |
| Put “Babiy” in Person.alternateName | Form appears in the notebook and the paper; not on the public name card without independent archives |
| Build A. D. Krivoshein ’s career/arrest/prize from this | Not the subject of the piece |
| Create neighbour person entities from the paper alone | Needs separate verification; spelling risk |
| Publish later entrance/flat from the article | Privacy policy |
| Copy paragraphs, KP photos, or hotlink images | Copyright; external_link_only |
Where to go next
- Tatyana Timofeevna’s biography — where the interview sits in her life
- Serafimovich Street / House of Government — the place entity
- Notebook: ch. 02 · ch. 03 · ch. 13
- T. P. Samsonov · Eva Konstantinovna
- Timeline (2011) · Documents · About Tatyana Timofeevna
“Word of a Living Fate” is not the publisher of the Komsomolskaya Pravda article and does not reprint its text. This card navigates to the original and to family sources.