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Serpukhov

Serpukhov (Серпухов) is a city in Moscow Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Oka and the Nara Rivers, 99 kilometers (62 miles) south from Moscow and 72 kilometers (45 miles) from Moscow Ring Road on the Moscow—Simferopol highway. The Moscow—Tula railway passes through Serpukhov.

Serpukhov is at the centre of the Serpukhov Urban District which in turn lies at the heart of the Serpukhov metropolitan area with a population of more than 260,000 inhabitants.

In the 14th and early 15th centuries, Serpukhov was the capital of the principality. It was allocated to an independent administrative and economic unit with direct subordination to the executive committee of the regional council on September 14, 1939. Now a city of regional subordination, it is part of the municipal education of the city district of Serpukhov.

In the modern era, Serpukhov has become a local industrial center with textile, mechanical engineering, furniture, and paper-producing industries. The SeAZ factory produces the Lada Oka microcar since the 1980s. The Prioksko-Terrasny Nature Reserve sprawls within 12 km from the city. By a resolution of the Moscow Regional Duma of April 28, 2016, the city was awarded the honorary title "The Inhabited Point of Military Valor".

Geography
Serpukhov is located in the southern part of the Moscow region on the Nara River, 99km from the center of Moscow and 73km from Moscow. Two regional centres, Tula and Kaluga, are located at approximately the same distance (about 80km) from Serpukhov. The city is located on the border of 3 regions (Moscow Oblast, Tula Oblast and Kaluga Oblast).

There were two large landfills in the city. The landfill "Syanovo-1" was closed after a major fire in 2017. The landfill "Lesnaya" was closed in 2021. It was the last landfill in Moscow Oblast.

Climate
The climate is moderately continental. Conditions are determined by the impact of the transfer of air masses of western and south-western cyclones, the removal of Arctic air from the north and the transformation of air masses of different origins. The consequence of exposure to air masses from the Atlantic Ocean is the probability of winter thaws and wet cool periods in the summer. The influence of arctic cold masses affects in the form of severe cold snaps in the winter months and in the form of "return of colds" in the spring-summer period, in which the temperature drops down to frosts on the soil.

The coldest month of the year is January: The average temperature is 8.6 degrees C. The warmest month is July with an average temperature of 18.5 degrees C. Absolute maximum temperature is recorded on August 6, 2010: 39.4 degrees C. Days with frosts are recorded even in summer, except July and August. The average duration of a warm period is above 0 degrees Celsius, with an average daily temperature above 216 days per year. The growing season of plants is 180 days.

During the year, the southwest quarter winds prevail - south, southwest and west, the recurrence of which is 15%, 19% and 17%, respectively, and a total of 51%. The average annual wind speed is 3.0m/s. The average monthly wind speed is observed in winter, reaching a magnitude of 3.3m/s, the minimum in summer - 2.5-2.6m/s. In winter, the largest forces are the south-east and northwest winds (3.6m/s), in the summer - northern and north westerly (3.1-2.8m/s). Wind speed, the recurrence of which is 5% - 6m/s.

Precipitation is mainly determined by cyclonic activity. Precipitation associated with local circulation, even in summer, is a smaller proportion. The average long-term rainfall is 580–590mm. During the warm period falls the main (up to 70%) - the amount of precipitation.

The height of snow cover in open spaces is on average 38cm. In lowered and forested places the height of snow cover is much higher than specified, and it comes off later. The highest height of the snow cover reaches in March. The timing of the formation of a stable snow cover, as well as the timing of its appearance and convergence, vary greatly from year to year depending on the nature of the weather.

Etymology
The city in 1336 is referred to as The Serpokhov, only from the 16th century entered into use the modern form of Serpukhov. There is still no clear explanation of the origin of Serpukhov's place-by-point. There are several variants of the origin of the name, none of which, however, is generally accepted: - from the hypothetical name "Serpoch" (derived from "Serp") with suffix -; - from the name of the River Serpeiki; - from the sickle plant; - from the fact that the River Serpeika sickly skirted the Cathedral (Red) mountain; - from the fact that sickles were forged in the vicinity of the city; - from the canonical name Serapion; - different versions of the Finno-Ugric origin and other versions.

History
Serpukhov was established in 1339 to protect the southern approaches to Moscow. Two years later it was made a seat of the powerful princedom ruled by a cousin and close associate of Dmitry Donskoy, Vladimir the Bold. Town status was granted to it in 1374. The princedom continued until 1456, when the last prince escaped to Lithuania. The town frequently fell prey to the hordes of Tokhtamysh, Crimean Tatars, and other steppe conquerors. It was necessary to protect it with a stone citadel, or kremlin, which was completed by 1556 as part of the Great Abatis Belt.

Located on the Oka frontiers and serving as a fortress during the long struggle with the Mongol-Tatar and Lithuanian-Polish conquerors, Serpukhov, for a long time, remained a reliable outpost of the Moscow Principality. The Serpukhov principality, led by Prince Vladimir Brave, participated in the Battle of Kulikov. It was here that Tsar Ivan IV once conducted a large look at his military forces, here stood the camp of Boris Godunov with "rat people", in Serpukhov collected regiments "for the enemy of his Crimean tsar" Vasily Shuisky. One of the strongholds was the city for the peasant army of Ivan Bolotnikov.

In the mid-16th century Serpukhov maintained the role of an important strategic, administrative and economic center, experienced a revival in crafts and trade. The city consisted of three parts: the Kremlin, the posada and the suburb. Historically, Serpukhov's urban districts were formed from monastic suburbs and factory huts, and have been merged into a single whole already now.

Medieval period
There is no written evidence of Serpukhov's existence in the Domangol era. However, as a result of archaeological research of Serpukhovsky fortification, conducted in 1926-1927 by A.N. Voronkov, numerous remains of ceramics, glass, iron products of the 10th and 13th centuries were found. On the site of the fortification between the rivers Nara and Serpeika at the mouth of the last in the 14th century, there was already a city.

The first mention of Serpukhov in written sources is the spiritual letter of Ivan Kalita. In the will of the Moscow prince, the city is presented as one of his possessions. The text of the document exists in two versions with different dating. There are several opinions about the date of the will:

According to L. V. Cherepnin, both copies of the spiritual lettering were drawn up before Ivan Kalita's fourth trip to Orda in 1339. According to A. A. Simin, the document was created earlier than 1331 - either in 1327 or in 1328. A. V. Kuchkin believes that one copy of the will was made in 1336 (during the third trip of the prince to Orda), and the other - after this event. The official date from which the age of the city is counted is 1339, according to the first version.

According to spiritual literacy, the third son of Ivan Kalita Andrei Ivanovich inherited part of the land of the Moscow Principality, including Serpukhov, which became the center of the parish, and in the future - the basis of the new specific principality. In the middle of the 14th century, an epidemic of plague, known as "black death", swept across Europe. Prince Andrew fell to one of her victims in 1353. The deal is inherited by Prince Vladimir Andreevich. During the age of the prince's possessions are run by influential boyars. At this time in the history of the city is a significant event - Moscow Metropolitan Alexis in 1360 on the right bank of Nara founded the Monastery of The Lord. In 1367, in order to settle relations between Vladimir and his cousin Dmitry signed a contract, which confirms the subordination of the first second, as well as the right of Vladimir Andreevich to his fate and duties in relation to the Moscow prince. Soon Vladimir begins to pay considerable attention to the development of his possessions. Since the seventies of the 14th century, Serpukhov has been building a period of active construction. So in 1374, according to the chronicles on the Red (Cathedral) mountain begins the construction of a wooden kremlin, the city appointed the viceroy of the prince - Yakov Yuryevich Novosylets, established benefits to attract traders and artisans. In the same year, on the site of the Domongolian Slavic settlement of the High on the left bank of Nara, south of the Red Mountain, Prince Vladimir Andreevich founded a monastery named Vysotsky. The laying and consecration of the monastery was carried out by Sergiy Radonezki. Serpukhov's military, political and economic importance is growing, around which a full-fledged principality is formed, the core of which became parishes with centers in Lopasna, Darker and Rostovets. Since the end of the 14th century, the Serpukhov prince has been chasing his own coins.

As the main ally of Prince Dmitry (and part-time cousin), Vladimir help participate in the events of 1380. Serpukhov becomes one of the centers of preparation for the campaign against Mamaya. The Serpukhov militia, led by Prince Vladimir Brave, operates as part of the Ambush Regiment in the Battle of Kulikov, which was a turning point in Russian history. In honor of the victory in 1381, a stone cathedral and a church with a refectory are being built in the Vysotsky Monastery. Soon Serpukhov was ruined during a campaign to Moscow by Khan Tokhtamish (1382). There is an opinion that the Ordyn army deviated from the direct route to Moscow in order to commit an act of revenge for the participation of the local prince and militia in the Battle of Kulikov.

1389 was marked by feudal conflict: Vladimir severed relations with the Moscow prince, who did not satisfy the demands of his cousin for new possessions. At the height of the quarrel, the grand prince captured the boyar of Serpukhov's prince, Vladimir, in turn, carried out the seizure of land belonging to Dmitry. The quarrel ended with the signing of another contract between feudal lords.

In the 15th century Serpukhov was twice ruined: in 1408 by the army of Edigea and in 1409 by Lithuanians under the leadership of Prince Svidrigailo. After the death of Vladimir the Brave in 1410, the principality was divided between five sons. Serpukhov went to the eldest - Ivan Vladimirovich. Later, Vladimir's descendants participated in feudal wars on the side of The Moscow Princes until the independent principality was liquidated in 1456, when Prince Vasily Yaroslavich, grandson of Vladimir the Brave, was imprisoned. Serpukhovsky brigade as part of the Moscow army participated in the campaign to Novgorod in 1478, and in 1480 in standing on the Egre.

Period between the Tatar-Mongolian yoke and the Time of Troubles
Between 1496-1502, the former Kazan khan Mohammad-Amin of the Ulu-Muhammad dynasty, who was given Serpukhov, Hatun, and Kashira, was in the service of the Moscow ruler. This period in the history of the city is characterized by the oppression of local residents and violence by the henchman Ivan III. The next time Serpukhov was fed in 1532-1533 at another exiled Khan from Kazan, Shigale, who belonged to the Astrakhan dynasty of the Kasimov rulers. Shigalei, who was found to be in contact with Kazan, who violated feeding conditions, was exiled to Beloozeroin January 1533.

From the end of the 15th century, a period of grueling raids of Crimean Tatars, who were dependent on the Ottoman Empire, began. The main of their routes to Moscow was Muravsky nobility, who walked from Perekop to Tula between the upper rivers of two basins - Dnipro and North Donets. A key element of the system of protection against raids was a line of fortifications along the banks of the Oki, where up to 65,000 warriors, annually assembled in Moscow, were held in the deep autumn. The most important part of the line of protective structures was the Tarus-Serpukhov-Kashir-Kolomna section. Thus, in 1512 there was a threat of a breakthrough of the Crimeans to Moscow, and in Serpukhov were concentrated troops led by The brother of Vasily III, Yuri Ivanovich, which became a barrier on the way of nomads to the capital. Five years later, in 1517, the Russian army stood up to the enemy. As a result of this campaign, the enemy was defeated the losses of the Crimeans amounted to 15,000 people. The campaign of Mehmed I Girey in 1521 led to the ruin of Serpukhov, Borovsk, Kashira and the central counties of the state. The result of the disaster was the decision of Basil III on the construction of stone fortresses on the southern borders. In 1556, the construction of the white-stone Serpukhov Kremlin. In the same year in Serpukhov Ivan IV held a large viewing of serving people.

In 1565, after Tsar Ivan the Terrible divided the Russian state into an oprichnina and the land, the city became part of the last. With the construction of the new fortress Serpukhov increases its role in the defensive system and since 1572 the Grand Regiment of the Russian Army has been located here.

In 1571 there was a campaign of The Virgin I Giret. In April, the Crimean army crossed the Oma in the area of Orla, and in May it was already near Serpukhov, where the Volynsky detachment was defeated by J. F. Vosodo, led by Ivan IV, but could not gain a foothold in it. As a result, a retreat to Moscow was undertaken, the tsar fled to the Alexandrov suburb. Devlet I besieged Moscow and burned it. On the way back, the Crimeans ravaged several counties, including Serpukhovsky. Crimean troops in the described campaign were helped by traitors, among whom was Serpukhovich Rusin, one of the children of the Boyar Shishkins. In 1572, Devlet I Girey prepared a second raid on the Russian state. A regiment of up to 10,000 men was sent to meet the enemy, led by Prince Mikhail Vorotynsky, who was stationed in Serpukhov. On June 25, 1572, the Crimean army approached Eke. Crossing the river and breaking several guard Russian detachments, the 120,000-year-old army of Devlet Gireya headed to Moscow. Vorotynsky organized the pursuit of the advancing troops, which ended with a convincing victory of the Russians in the Battle of the Young.

The last breakthrough of the Crimean Tatars to Moscow dates back to 1581, when the army of Gaza II Gireya, crossing under Serpukhov through Alone and destroying the city plantation, moved to Moscow, where it failed and was pushed south. The leadership of the Russian army was conducted from Serpukhov by the tsarist governors. Boris Godunovtook an active part in the persecution of Gaza. This moment was one of the key moments in his political ascent.

A significant event in history was the Serpukhov campaign of Godunov in 1598. The Russian army, which came to meet the Tatars, was located on the shore of Oki near Serpukhov. Boris Godunov's camp is located in a meadow near the Vlad monastery. Several weeks in a row were conducted inspections of troops and demonstration of force in front of the enemy. As a result, the ambassadors of Gaza Gireya recognized Godunov's royal title and passed offers of friendship and peace. By this time, significant donations to local monasteries on the part of the king, which began stone construction. The Temple of the Great Martyr George the Victorious, the Gated Temple of the Martyr Theod of Ankirsky and the wall of the Lord's Monastery were built.

Time of Troubles
The famine of 1601, the increase in the number of robber gangs, the uprising of peasants in 1603 did not bypass Serpukhovsky county. In a heated environment, false Dmitry I is on a trip to Moscow. In May 1605 the population of Serpukhov accepts False Dmitry I as king. The imposter's army, preparing to enter the capital, sets up a camp near the Monastery of The Lord.

After the murder of False Dmitry I and the election of Vasily Shuisky by Tsar in 1606, Serpukhov again housed a large regiment of the tsarist army, the city became the center from which the siege of southern cities, not controlled by the official authorities, was under control. At this time, the uprising led by Ivan Bolotnikov was gaining momentum. After the Battle of Krom, the rebels advanced to Moscow, taking Kaluga and Alexin along the way. In October 1606, Bolotnikov approached Serpukhov, and the locals voluntarily surrendered the city. As a result of the unsuccessful assault of the capital, the rebels retreated to Serpukhov and then to Kaluga. In the summer of 1607, Serpukhov once again became a base for the tsarist army, which on July 5–7 participated in the battle on the River Eight between Serpukhov and Kashira, where the rebels were defeated. On June 21, Shui's captive rebels were tried here. In honor of the victory of the Lord's Monastery,the king was presented with a miraculous image of St. Dimitri Uglichsky, placed in a specially constructed aisle in the Vvedensky Cathedral (later attached to the Temple of the Great Martyr George the Victorious).

During the Polish intervention, Serpukhov also did not escape military action. In January 1610 near the city a detachment of Cossacks led by Bezzubtsev defeated the Poles of Mlotsky. Soon the Cossacks left Serpukhov, who the next night was occupied by Poles. As a result, a large part of the civilian population was burnt down and a large part of the civilian population was killed.

In 1610-1611, the residents of Serpukhov participated in the First Land Militia of Lyapunov, in 1612 - in the Second Militia of Minin and Pozharsky.

As a result of the weakening of the state, which occurred during the Troubles, the nomads were again able to attack cities in Central Russia.

In 1613, Serpukhovsky County was ruined by the Nogai Tatars along with Borovsky and Kolomensky.

In 1618, hetman Piotr Sagaidachny, anally of the Polish king Vladislav, retreating with the army from Moscow to Kaluga, burned the Serpukhovsky plantation, but the fortress could not take. In 1633, the neighborhood of Serpukhov was ruined by the Crimean Tatars.

17th Century
The consequences of the events of the Troubles for Serpukhov were a sharp decline in the population and the decline of the economy. Residents, trying to reduce the tax burden, move to the monastic suburbs. The state forcibly, by the forces of a detective order, returns the population to the city plantation.

During the 17th century, Serpukhov continued to play the role of an important military center. At the beginning of the century the fortress survived a fire, after which it was restored and expanded. The head of the city administration at this time is appointed for a period of one to three years governor. In 1633, the urban suburbs of Serpukhov were ravaged by the Crimean army of Prince Mubarak-Gerai, who could not take the city Kremlin, however. In the "rebel age" the unrest could not bypass Serpukhov. In 1648, peasant riots engulfed the county. The estate of Kryvtsov's boyar son was burned down. As a result of the adoption in 1649 of the Council's settlement, the population reversed from monasteries to planting, which leads to the growth of the city and its population by 70-80%. In 1669 there is a big fire, Serpukhov burns almost to the ground.

The main occupations of Serpukhov's population in the 17th century: iron production, blacksmithing, pottery, shoe production, food, clothing. More than 40 people were engaged in trade outside Serpukhov. The 17th century is also characterized by the rise of stone construction in the city. In different years were built: the Church of Nikola (on the site of the current cathedral), the gated Three-Sacred Church, the walls and towers of the Monastery, the Baroque Church, the church of Athanasius Athos (disassembled in 1878), the new building of the Trinity Cathedral. In 1627, the Cathedral of conception was rebuilt in the Vysotsky Monastery.

18th Century
In Petrov's times, the population of Serpukhov actively participated in the construction of the fleet, new cities, and fortresses. Local craftsmen were made to participate in the king's projects. In the third decade of the 18th century, Serpukhov became one of the largest cities in the suburbs. Blacksmith production is being phased out. Trade is developing. In 1708, Serpukhov was part of the Moscow province formed. In the 1730s, one after another, linen factories began to open. In the forties, the main ones are the enterprises of Vasily and Nikolai Kishkin (the largest in the city), Vasily, Stepan and Ivan Gerasimovich Serikov, Ivan Andreevich Serikov. By the sixties, Ivan Andreevich Serikov's company was taking the leading position in Serpukhov. In addition to linen, silk and cloth factories were also opened in the city.

In 1761, 30% of the sails exported from Russia were of Serpkhov's origin. The city comes in fourth place in Russia in linen production after Yaroslavl, Kostroma and Moscow. The number of people employed in the textile industry is growing from 3,000 in the 1950s to 5,500 at the end of the century.

In addition to textiles in Serpukhov in the 80s there are eight tanners, seven brick and nine malt factories. The main areas of trade are the port of St. Petersburg (textile, leather), Moscow (food products).

19th Century
In 1812, the population of Serpukhov and the county participated in the defense of the Russian Empire following the French invasion of Russia in 1812. The militia of the Moscow province consisted of 2,246 residents of Serpukhov county. The war did not affect the city directly. The industry continued to produce most of the canvas produced in the region. At that time there were 14 factories with 855 textile mills in Serpukhov. During this period, the industry is reoriented to the production of cotton products. If in 1812 the first cotton enterprise of Alexey Ignatieff appeared in the city, in 1814 eleven factories were functioning. The largest of them were the enterprises of A. Serikov, Ignatius Shilkin, I. Serikov, Maxim Konshin. There were also three tannery factories in Serpukhov, and a paper factory was operating in the Alexandrov suburb (now the village of Borisovo).

Between 1810 and 1840, the number of people employed in urban enterprises increased to five thousand, with 950 employees employed in suburban factories in the fence, and the number of workers in other enterprises in the county to 2,000. The largest factories are owned by the Families of Konshin and Tretyakov. The leading industry of the Serpukhov industry is the production of cotton products. Thus, 4500 people are employed in seven paper-weaving and sitzenabive enterprises, 493 people are employed in ten linen. The main products of the industry: sith, mitkal, padded headscarves, canvas.

Between 1840 and 1860, Serpukhov experienced a period of intense industrial growth. By the mid-1850s, the number of people employed in the city's enterprises reached 8,500, along with the suburbs - 10,400 people. In the rest of the county, the number of workers has been reduced to one thousand, indicating an increase in the territorial concentration of production. The average size of cotton mills has grown from 487 to 742 since 1843, bringing the total number of people employed in the industry to 8,900. The leaders of the Serpukhov industry were the enterprises of N.M. Konshin (later transformed by his son into the N. N. Konshin), which owned the paper-tinget and sitzenabative factory "Old Cape" (founded by Maxim Konshin in 1814), spinning enterprise (opened in the north of the city in 1846), a paper office The New Cape weaving factory (opened in the late 1850s near the village of Glazechnya) made up the complex, which allowed to perform a full cycle of processing from spinning raw materials to finished padded products. Other sub-sectors of the textile industry include the hornets operating in Serpukhov at the same time. The production of the canvas by the middle of the 19th century is in decline: the four remaining factories in 1843 employed 126 people. From a technical point of view, Serpukhov's enterprises of that time were not highly developed: most of them used manual labor, as a motor force used horse drive and water wheels. In the 1850s, steam engines appeared.

Trade was an important part of the urban economy of the first half and mid-19th century. In the volume of trade operations Serpukhov took the second place in the province after Kolomna. The key trade routes were the road connecting Kharkiv with Moscow and the waterway along the Ska. The main items of trade - bread, wood, textiles. A significant role in the life of the city was occupied by craft production, which by 1861 employed more than 600 people. Key craft professions of the time: bakers, butchers, cobblers, tailors, fashionistas, blacksmiths, carpenters, carvers, stoves.

1901-1917
The city's industry in 1913 consisted of 27 plants with 17,057 people working for them, and the volume of production reached 49.6 million rubles.

1917-1941
In the first days of the war, several thousand Serpukhovich went to the mobilization front as volunteers. Air defense posts were set up. The militias assembled in Serpukhov joined the division of the People's Militia of the Bauman district of Moscow after two weeks of training. At the city's enterprises, directors were given the right to introduce overtime from one to three hours a day. Donor points were organized.

In October 1941, the front line came close to the city. In the Serpukhov direction, the German-fascist troops were on the offensive as part of the 13th Army Corps, the 4th Field Army and the Motorized Units of the 2nd Guderian Tank Group. Defensive positions west of Serpukhov were occupied by the 49th Army of the Western Front under the command of Lieutenant General Saharkin, whose name is currently one of the city streets. German troops were located to the west of the city half-ring at a distance of 6-7 kilometers. The headquarters of the 49th Army was located in the village of Buturlino, east of Serpukhov. General Antipenko, the head of the army's rear, Nikolai Aleksandrovich, who was the head of the city's garrison, was in the city along with his headquarters. Serpukhov was directly defended by the 60th Infantry Division, which consisted of militias from the Leninsky district of Moscow. On October 25, 1941, the 5th Guards Rifle Division on the outskirts of Serpukhov took the line of defense of Upper-Shahlovo-Novylov-Kalinovo. On October 29, the division stopped the enemy at the turn 14 kilometers west of Serpukhov, east of Tarusa, the western outskirts of Aleksin. Parts of the 194th Infantry Division held the defense along the border of Borovna-Kremenki-Drakino. In the morning of 17.12.1941 parts of the division went on the offensive with the task of breaking through the defense on the right bank of the Protva River, on the Kremenka-Drakino section. By 25.12.1941 the division broke through the eight-kilometer defensive strip of the enemy. The air cover was carried out by the pilots of the 178th Fighter Aviation Regiment of the 6th Fighter Aviation Air Corps. The air regiment carried out a combat mission in the area of responsibility of the Southern Sector of the Moscow Air Defense Area,the leadership of which was entrusted to one of the deputy commanders of the 6th Air Defense Corps, Colonel Trifonov N.K. 178th IAP was based in the Oki border area, near the village of Lipitsa. The pilots of this regiment carried out 1695 sorties, conducted 59 air battles, shot down 22 enemy aircraft, destroyed 19 anti-aircraft guns. The regiment's commander, Lt. Col. Rakov Roman Ivanovich, personally flew 65 times on combat missions. One of Serpukhov's streets is also named after him.

The most fierce battles were fought on the Line of Drakino - Kremenka - Pavlovka. At the end of November 1941, the German offensive was halted.

In battles with the enemy also distinguished units and parts of the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps under the command of General Belov and military units of the 112th Tank Division under the command of Colonel Hetman. During the fierce battles, they thwarted the offensive of the 13th Wehrmacht Army Corps, inflicting heavy losses on it, liberated seven settlements and kept Serpukhov from encirclement and capture.

During the Mozhai-Maloyaroslavets operation, the compound and parts of the 49th Army managed to significantly weaken parts of the advancing units of the Wehrmacht, causing them significant defeat and by early December completely stopped the enemy's offensive at the border west of Serpukhov - Sukhodol (20 km southeast of Alexin).

Also in November, the evacuation of equipment of enterprises, workers, women and children began. Among the destinations were: Biysk, Ufa, Tyumen, Tashkent, Fergana. At the same time, six defensive districts are being created in Serpukhov: the Red Textile Maker, Novotkatsky, the Sitzenabive Factory District, Noginsky, the southern part of the city, and the Fence. Defensive structures are being erected: anti-tank ditches, slabs, barricades, crevices, bomb shelters, gas shelters. Hospitals were established on the basis of the surgical hospital, textile college, Semashko hospital, rabfak, schools No. 3, 11, 13, 22, 26, 28 hospitals where wounded fighters were received.

On December 16, Soviet troops went on the offensive. After the breakthrough, the German defense were released Tarus and Alexin. By January 1942, the front line was more than 150 kilometers away from Serpukhov. Since 1942, the restoration of the urban industry begins. The capacity of the city's enterprises produces tools for tank and mechanized units, motorcycle equipment, ammunition, food concentrates. In 1944, the construction of a condenser plant began. Industrial production reaches 80% of the pre-war level. In the premises of the former textile enterprises are deployed metal processing plants, the share of which in the industry of the city by 1945 was 35% against 23.4% in the textile industry.

During the war in Serpukhov, 597 buildings were destroyed and damaged, 202 civilians were killed and 317 wounded. In the early period of the war, 140 airstrikes were carried out on the city, 500 high-explosive and 35,000 incendiary bombs were dropped.

Symbolism
Based on the results of N.A. Soboleva's research, the main version of Serpukhov's coat of arms is the following. Serpukhov's coat of arms was designed by his friend (deputy) heroldmaster Franz Matveevich Santi in the mid-twenties of the 18th century. A questionnaire has been sent to the cities of Russia in order to obtain information that can be taken into account when creating the coat of arms for each particularcity. The peacock became an element of the coat of arms on the basis of a message sent to the heroldy from Serpukhov, which said that not far from the city "in the monastery one peacocks will be born".

The first coat of arms of the city was approved simultaneously with other coats of arms of the cities of the Moscow province on December 20, 1781. It was subsequently reviewed four times. The first time the coat of arms was changed on March 16, 1883, in accordance with the rules developed by Bernhard Vasilyevich Koene and introduced in 1857 with the rules of the city's coats of arms. In Soviet times, Stepan Marukhin developed a new coat of arms, approved on May 30, 1967. On July 2, 1992, a version of the coat of arms from 1883 was restored. The current version was approved on 6 October 1999 and is listed on the State Heraldic Register of the Russian Federation under No.564. It is based on the coat of arms, approved in 1883, which includes the coat of arms of 1781.

Attractions
There are a significant number of attractions in Serpukhov. In total, there are 108 monuments of history and culture, of which 57 are objects of Russian Orthodox culture. There are 26 federal cultural heritage sites in the city: 39 of regional significance; 24 monuments of military glory, history and culture; 17 objects of cult architecture, and 2 monasteries, which are the main objects on display for tourists. The citadel commands a steep hill where the small Serpeyka River enters the Nara. However, during the 19th century, parts of the citadel were demolished by the town's inhabitants, who used its limestone for their private residences. Even now the vast majority of basements in nearby houses are built from this material. In the Kremlin, the chief monument is the Trinity cathedral, built in 1696 in Moscow Baroque style.
 * Serpukhov Historical and Art Museum
 * Vysotsky Monastery
 * Vladychny Convent
 * The monument to Vladimir the Bold (installed in 2009 in front of the city administration building)
 * Lenin Square (an ensemble of historical buildings, monuments and a modern urban space with a pedestrian street)
 * Sobornaya Gora and Orthodox Churches
 * The building of the railway station, the square in front of it and the monument to Dmitry Donskoy and Vladimir the Bold
 * A series of monuments to peacocks - a symbol of the city
 * Monument to the Liberator Warrior (a mock-up of the Soviet War Memorial in Treptow Park in Berlin, sculptor Vucetich)
 * Merchant buildings of the 19th century
 * Factory buildings of the late 19th-early 20th
 * Constructivist architecture

The Vysotsky Monastery features a cathedral and refectory dating from the late 16th century, as well as the allegedly miracle-working icon Inexhaustible Chalice. Another important cloister is called Vladychny, with the Presentation cathedral and a tent-like St. George's church, both erected during Boris Godunov's reign. The latter monastery is named after the honorary title of Russian bishops, as it was founded by the holy metropolitan Alexis in 1360.

Parks and squares
Serpukhov is quite a green city, within its borders there are about 50 gardens and squares. There are 5 big parks in the city:Prinarsky Park, Pitomnik Park, Komsomolskiy Park, Zhemchuzhina Park, and Oleg Stepanov's City Park of Culture and Recreation. The favorite resting place of the townspeople is "the boron," which is located within the city limits.

Theatres and palaces of culture
These include the Musical-drama theatre, Chamber Theatre "The Looking Glass," Palace of Culture "Russia," The Palace of Culture "Istok," Korston Cinema, and the B-Class Cinema.

Museums
These include the Museum and Exhibition Centre, The Serpukhovsky Historical and Art Museum (opened in 1920), The Museum of Printing, the first in the suburbs, opened in September 2019 in an old printing house built on Hay Square in 1890, and The Bread Museum opened in September 2019 in a renovated 19th-century room in the Provincial Hotel and Restaurant Complex.

Libraries
Serpukhov's centralized library system was established in December 1977. Currently, the SCBS consists of nine libraries. These are the Central City Library of Chekhov, the Central Children's and Youth Library and branches of the library located in different parts of the city. The single fund of the system is 268,000 copies of documents, an extensive repertoire of periodicals, a unique collection of sound recordings, a local history fund of unpublished materials. Librarians serve more than 36.5 thousand readers a year. Library coverage is 29.1%.

Monasteries
Primarily Orthodox, those being, The Lord's Convent (founded in 1360), Vysotsky Men's Monastery (founded in 1374), and in 1665-1764 in the city there was a Rasutsky monastery.

On the site of the future monastery for a long time was the wooden Church of the Nativity (mentioned in the Hundred Thon Book of 1552). The brick-laden Cathedral of the Crucifixion of Christ was built in 1719 at the expense of Princess Nazareth Mikhailovna Gagarina; at the same time the monastery changed its name.

Closed during the time of Catherine II during the secularization of church and monastic lands.

Temples and chapels

 * Elijah Church of the Prophet
 * Church of the Assumption of Our Lady
 * Temple of the Savior of the Unmanual
 * Temple of All Saints
 * Nicola White Cathedral
 * Trinity Cathedral
 * Sreten Church
 * Epiphany Church
 * Temple of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God
 * Crucifixion Church

Since 2012, the Chapel of the Great Martyr Panteleimonhas been operating on the territory of Semashko Hospital. There are also chapels of Tikhvinskaya and Iberian Icon of the Mother of God.

Orthodox churches of the city and the district are united in the Serpukhov deanery (dean's district) of the Russian Orthodox Church. The benefactor is the priest Igor (Chaban).

Shrines
Icon of Our Lady "The Unstoppable Bowl" In the Vysotsky monastery Serpukhov collected many shrines, including about three hundred particles of relics of saints. A special place is occupied by the list of the icon of the Mother of God "The Unstoppable Bowl",which, according to believers, heals from a painful addiction to alcohol, drugs and smoking (the original, which was in the Monastery of The Lord was lost after the revolution). The relics of the Rev. Athanasius Vysotsky, the younger one, are also being rethroned in the Vysotsky Monastery.

In the Monastery of The Lord is the tomb of the Rev. Varlaam Serpukhovsky.

In 1993, in Serpukhov,the icon of the Virgin"Help for Childbirth"(revered by the miraculous) was revealed. Currently, the icon is located in the cathedral of St. Nicholas of Serpukhov.

In Serpukhov is also a miraculous list of the icon of the Mother of God "The Recovery of the Dead", which, according to legend, twice saved the city from the epidemic of cholera.

Universities
There are two universities in Serpukhov:
 * Moscow Aviation Institute (branch)
 * Peter the Great Military Academy of the Strategic Missile Forces

From 1961 to 1975, the Serpukhov Artillery Technical School existed for the RVSN.

There are also a number of colleges.

Secondary schools
The city is home to a number of secondary vocational schools.

There are 21 comprehensive schools in the city, including the Lyceum, education center, 2 gymnasiums, "Orthodox classical gymnasium in the name of the Reverend Varlaam Serpukhovsky"; a large number of kindergartens and other institutions of pre-school education (including a municipal educational institution for children in need of psychological, educational and medical-social assistance, a diagnostics center and a "Chance"). The active construction of schools continues.

Municipal Budget
In 2018, the budget of the Serpukhov city district by income grew by 48.5% and amounted to 6.377 billion rubles and retained its social orientation: 3.252 billion rubles or 52.9% of all expenditures were allocated to the social sphere, which is 615.3 million rubles more than in 2017.

Employment
The number of employed in the economy - 54.5 thousand people or 43% of the total population of the city, of which 20,000 people work in large and medium-sized enterprises, the rest in small businesses, for hire from individuals engaged in business without the formation of a legal entity, or are engaged in personal farms.

Labour market indicators
The local unemployment rate is 0.44%, with the number of officially registered unemployed people being 298.

Serpukhov's population, which is engaged in the economy of Moscow,providing a significant pendulum migration, the balance of which is 5.8 thousand people.

Industry
There are about 150 large and medium-sized enterprises and organizations in all sectors of the economy, and more than 1,600 small business organizations (including micro-enterprises) operate in Serpukhova. The city's industrial enterprises produce electric motors of various purposes, electric cars of low power, gyroscopic devices and precision mechanics products for navigation systems, systems of orientation and stabilization of aircraft, chemical fibers and filaments, insulation materials, reinforced concrete products, metal structures, alarm systems, capacitors, medical equipment, food.

In the first nine months of 2015, large and medium-sized manufacturing companies shipped their own products at actual prices of 13,255.3 million rubles, which is 14% more than in the same period last year.

Serpukhov's construction complex consists of about 52 construction organizations, including more than 40 small enterprises engaged in design, industrial, housing- civil and communal construction. The area of built-up land is 2.24 thousand hectares, of which 26% are occupied for production facilities, 65% for housing. Serpukhov's housing stock is represented by more than 1,136 apartment buildings with a total area of more than 3319086.22 m2.

The Serpukhov region is operated by the Serpukhov Chamber of Commerce and Industry (STPP). It is a non-governmental non-profit organization established in 1995 to promote the development of all forms of entrepreneurship in the southern suburbs. It brings together about 200 organizations and individual entrepreneurs.

Trade
Serpukhov has stores of many Russian retail chains.

There are three major shopping malls in the city:

 * Korston
 * B-Class
 * Atlas

Serpukhov has fast food chains: McDonald's, Burger King, KFC. There are also several pizzerias.

In addition, there are a variety of cafes, bars and canteens.

The city also has a number of restaurants. Some of them are concentrated on the pedestrian street opened in 2020, where the veranda is located.

Transport
Serpukhov is conveniently located at the intersection of transport routes and has a developed infrastructure. Serpukhov's transport hub focuses on railway, road and waterways, which allows local and transit services.

Rail
Serpukhov is connected by regular train service with Moscow (Electric trains go to Tsaritsyno station - 1.5 hours, to Kursky railway station - 2 hours). There is also a railway connection with Tula. Moreover, trains to Oryol, Kursk, Belgorod stop at Serpukhov station

 * Serpukhov railway station, opened in 1865.
 * Oka railway platform.

On the square near the Serpukhov station is the city bus station, from which most city, suburban and long-distance bus routes depart.

Road transport
Directly next to the city are the M2 "Crimea" motorway and highway A 108 "Moscow Big Ring", near the highways of federal importance M4 "Don" and M3 "Ukraine" are.

There are about 600 kilometres of public roads in Serpukhov and the region. The main carrier of passengers on both urban, suburban and long-distance routes is the convoy 1790 of the Ministry of Defense "Mostransavto". Commercial trucking companies also operate in the city. In total, there are 25 city bus routes in Serpukhov. Serpukhov station is the final stop and stop for most routes.

The network of long-distance bus routes, which includes in addition to Moscow, many small towns and villages.

The maintenance of municipal roads and inter-municipal roads is handled by the enterprises of Serpukhovsky DRSU and Serpukhovsky Avtodor, respectively. Serpukhov's road transport is concentrated with basic freight traffic - it accounts for 97% of all cargo, the railway - about 3%.

Water transport
Port Serpukhov, a subsidiary of the Moscow River Shipping Company, is present in the city. The port was founded in 1858 and is located on the Nara River, two kilometres from its entry into Oka. It carries out passenger and freight transport. Main passenger lines: Serpukhov - Gardens, Serpukhov - Polenovo, Serpukhov - Tarusa, Serpukhov - Velegozh. According to the official data of the shipping company, the annual passenger flow is about 30,000 people. The port produces mineral building materials (gravel, sand, soils) in the Oki water area. It carries out loading and unloading work, transportation of goods and serves three sites: Alexinsky, Serpukhovsky, and Kashirsky.

Media
Only the newspaper "Communist" was present from the local media for a long time, later renamed "Serpukhovsky Vesti". The rapid development of the media began in the 1990s, when a significant number of new print publications, local television, opened, and in the 2000s it was time for radio stations. From 2004 to 2019, the city published a weekly newspaper called Oka Info.

Stadiums
Those being Trud Stadium, Spartak Stadium, Start Stadium, Olymp Sports Center, Typhoon Sports Centre, Physical and health complex (FOK) "Russian Bear," Ice Arena, and the Waterpark in B-Class.

There are many sports sections, amateur and professional clubs in the city.

In Serpukhov was based professional football club of the Second Division, zone "Center" and "Zvezda" Serpukhov. FC Zvezda played at the Trud Stadium. It accommodates 5300 spectators, has a field with artificial turf, lighting system, a total area of the complex 29591 m2.

Notable people

 * Herman of Alaska, missionary to Alaska
 * Viktor Grishin, politician
 * Oleg Menshikov, actor and entertainer
 * Vladimir Shkolnik, politician

Administrative and municipal status
Within the framework of administrative divisions, Serpukhov serves as the administrative center of Serpukhovsky District, even though it is not a part of it. As an administrative division, it is incorporated separately as Serpukhov City Under Oblast Jurisdiction, an administrative unit with the status equal to that of the districts. As a municipal division, Serpukhov City Under Oblast Jurisdiction is incorporated as Serpukhov Urban Okrug.

Twin towns – sister cities
Serpukhov is twinned with:

 * 🇺🇦 Balakliia Raion, Ukraine
 * 🇫🇷 Bobigny, France
 * 🇲🇩 Ceadîr-Lunga, Moldova
 * 🇹🇷 Çeşme, Turkey
 * 🇲🇪 Danilovgrad, Montenegro
 * 🇫🇮 Forssa, Finland
 * 🇧🇬 Pravets, Bulgaria
 * 🇺🇸 Richmond, United States
 * 🇺🇦 Sievierodonetsk, Ukraine
 * 🇧🇾 Slutsk, Belarus
 * 🇧🇬 Vratsa, Bulgaria
 * 🇧🇾 Zaslawye, Belarus
 * 🇨🇳 Zhanjiang, China

title: Serpukhov


text:
Djuna Barnes

Djuna Barnes (, June 12, 1892 – June 18, 1982) was an American artist, illustrator, journalist, and writer who is perhaps best known for her novel Nightwood (1936), a cult classic of lesbian fiction and an important work of modernist literature.

In 1913, Barnes began her career as a freelance journalist and illustrator for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. By early 1914, Barnes was a highly sought feature reporter, interviewer, and illustrator whose work appeared in the city's leading newspapers and periodicals. Later, Barnes's talent and connections with prominent Greenwich Village bohemians afforded her the opportunity to publish her prose, poems, illustrations, and one-act plays in both avant-garde literary journals and popular magazines, and publish an illustrated volume of poetry, The Book of Repulsive Women (1915).

In 1921, a lucrative commission with McCall's took Barnes to Paris, where she lived for the next 10 years. In this period she published A Book (1923), a collection of poetry, plays, and short stories, which was later reissued, with the addition of three stories, as A Night Among the Horses (1929), Ladies Almanack (1928), and Ryder (1928).

During the 1930s, Barnes spent time in England, Paris, New York, and North Africa. It was during this restless time that she wrote and published Nightwood. In October 1939, after nearly two decades living mostly in Europe, Barnes returned to New York. She published her last major work, the verse play The Antiphon, in 1958, and she died in her apartment at Patchin Place, Greenwich Village in June 1982.

Early life (1892–1912)
Barnes was born in a log cabin on Storm King Mountain, near Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York. Her paternal grandmother Zadel Barnes was a writer, journalist, and Women's Suffrage activist who had once hosted an influential literary salon. Her father, Wald Barnes (born Henry Aaron Budington), was an unsuccessful composer, musician, and painter. An advocate of polygamy, he married Barnes's mother Elizabeth J. Barnes (née Chappell) in 1889; his mistress Frances "Fanny" Clark moved in with them in 1897, when Barnes was five. They had eight children (five from Elizabeth: sons Thurn, Zendon, Saxon and Shangar and daughter Djuna; four from Fanny: sons Duane and Brian and daughters Muriel and Sheila), whom Wald made little effort to support financially. One half-sibling died in childhood. Zadel, who believed her son was a misunderstood artistic genius, struggled to provide for the entire family, supplementing her diminishing income by writing begging letters to friends and acquaintances.

As the second oldest child, Barnes spent much of her childhood helping care for siblings and half-siblings. She received her early education at home, mostly from her father and grandmother, who taught her writing, art, and music but neglected subjects such as math and spelling. She claimed to have had no formal schooling at all; some evidence suggests that she was enrolled in public school for a time after age ten, though her attendance was inconsistent.

It is possible that at the age of 16 she was raped, either by a neighbor with the knowledge and consent of her father, or possibly by her father. However, these are rumors and unconfirmed by Barnes, who never managed to complete her autobiography. What is known is that Barnes and her father continued to write warm letters to one another until his death in 1934. Barnes does refer to a rape obliquely in her first novel Ryder and more directly in her furious final play The Antiphon. Sexually explicit references in correspondence from her grandmother, with whom she shared a bed for years, suggest incest, or overly familiar teasing, but Zadel—dead for 40 years by the time The Antiphon was written—was left out of its indictments. Shortly before her 18th birthday she reluctantly "married" Fanny Clark's brother Percy Faulkner in a private ceremony without benefit of clergy. He was 52. The match had been strongly promoted by her father, grandmother, mother, and brother, but she stayed with him for no more than two months.

New York City (1912–1921)
In 1912 Barnes's family, facing financial ruin, split up. Elizabeth moved to New York City with Barnes and three of her brothers, then filed for divorce, freeing Wald to marry Fanny Clark. The move gave Barnes an opportunity to study art formally for the first time; she attended the Pratt Institute for about six months from 1912 to 1913 and at the Art Student's League of New York from 1915 to 1916, but the need to support herself and her family—a burden that fell largely on her—soon drove her to leave school and take a job as a reporter at the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Upon arriving at the Daily Eagle, Barnes declared, "I can draw and write, and you'd be a fool not to hire me", words that were inscribed inside the Brooklyn Museum.

Over the next few years her work appeared in almost every newspaper in New York, including the New York Press, The World and McCall's; she wrote interviews, features, theatre reviews, and a variety of news stories, often illustrating them with her own drawings. She also published short fiction in the New York Morning Telegraph's Sunday supplement and in the pulp magazine All-Story Cavalier Weekly. Much of Barnes's journalism was subjective and experiential. Writing about a conversation with James Joyce, she admitted to missing part of what he said because her attention had wandered, though she revered Joyce's writing. Interviewing the successful playwright Donald Ogden Stewart, she shouted at him for "roll[ing] over and find[ing] yourself famous" while other writers continued to struggle, then said she wouldn't mind dying; as her biographer Phillip Herring points out, this is "a depressing and perhaps unprecedented note on which to end an interview." For "The Girl and the Gorilla", published by New York World Magazine in October 1914 she has a conversation with Dinah, a female gorilla at the Bronx Zoo.

For another article in New York World in 1914, she submitted to force-feeding, a technique then being used on hunger-striking suffragists. Barnes wrote "If I, play acting, felt my being burning with revolt at this brutal usurpation of my own functions, how they who actually suffered the ordeal in its acutest horror must have flamed at the violation of the sanctuaries of their spirits." She concluded "I had shared the greatest experience of the bravest of my sex."

While she mocked conservative suffrage activist Carrie Chapman Catt when Catt admonished would-be suffrage orators never to "hold a militant pose", or wear "a dress that shows your feet in front", Barnes was supportive of progressive suffragists. Barnes suggested that Catt's conservatism was an obstacle to the suffrage movement when Catt tried to ostracize fellow suffragists Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, who sought the vote for women through media attention directed at their strikes and non-violent protesting. It was their mistreatment that motivated Barnes to experience for herself the torture of being force-fed.

Barnes immersed herself in risky situations in order to access experiences that a previous generation of homebound women had been denied. Writing about the traditionally masculine domain of boxing from the ringside, Barnes explored boxing as a window into women's modern identities. In 1914, she first posed the question "What do women want at a fight?" in an article titled "My Sisters and I at a New York Prizefight" published in New York World magazine. According to Irene Gammel, "Barnes' essay effectively begins to unravel an entire cultural history of repression for women". Barnes's interest in boxing continued into 1915 when she interviewed heavyweight champion Jess Willard. In 1915 Barnes moved out of her family's flat to an apartment in Greenwich Village, where she entered a thriving Bohemian community of artists and writers. Among her social circle were Edmund Wilson, Berenice Abbott, and the Dadaist artist and poet Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, whose biography Barnes tried to write but never finished. She came into contact with Guido Bruno, an entrepreneur and promoter who published magazines and chapbooks from his garret on Washington Square. Bruno had a reputation for unscrupulousness, and was often accused of exploiting Greenwich Village residents for profit—he used to charge tourists admission to watch Bohemians paint—but he was a strong opponent of censorship and was willing to risk prosecution by publishing Barnes's 1915 collection of "rhythms and drawings"

Despite a description of sex between women in the first poem, the book was never legally challenged; the passage seems explicit now, but at a time when lesbianism was virtually invisible in American culture, the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice may not have understood its imagery. Others were not as naïve, and Bruno was able to cash in on the book's reputation by raising the price from fifteen to fifty cents and pocketing the difference. Twenty years later Barnes used Bruno as one of the models for Felix Volkbein in Nightwood, caricaturing his pretensions to nobility and his habit of bowing down before anyone titled or important. Barnes was a member of the Provincetown Players, an amateur theatrical collective whose emphasis on artistic rather than commercial success meshed well with her own values. The Players' Greenwich Village theater was a converted stable with bench seating and a tiny stage; according to Barnes it was "always just about to be given back to the horses." Yet it played a significant role in the development of American drama, featuring works by Susan Glaspell, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Wallace Stevens, and Theodore Dreiser, as well as launching the career of Eugene O'Neill. Three one-act plays by Barnes were produced there in 1919 and 1920; a fourth, The Dove, premiered at Smith College in 1925, and a series of short closet dramas were published in magazines, some under Barnes's pseudonym Lydia Steptoe.

These plays show the strong influence of the Irish playwright J. M. Synge; she was drawn to both the poetic quality of Synge's language and the pessimism of his vision. Critics have found them derivative, particularly those in which she tried to imitate Synge's Irish dialect, and Barnes may have agreed, since in later years she dismissed them as mere juvenilia. Yet in their content, these stylized and enigmatic early plays are more experimental than those of her fellow playwrights at Provincetown. A New York Times review by Alexander Woollcott of her play Three From the Earth called it a demonstration of "how absorbing and essentially dramatic a play can be without the audience ever knowing what, if anything, the author is driving at ... The spectators sit with bated breath listening to each word of a playlet of which the darkly suggested clues leave the mystery unsolved."

Greenwich Village in the 1910s was known for its atmosphere of sexual as well as intellectual freedom. Barnes was unusual among Villagers in having been raised with a philosophy of free love, espoused both by her grandmother and her father. Her father's idiosyncratic vision had included a commitment to unlimited procreation, which she strongly rejected; criticism of childbearing would become a major theme in her work. She did, however, retain sexual freedom as a value. In the 1930s she told Antonia White that "she had no feeling of guilt whatever about sex, about going to bed with any man or woman she wanted"; correspondence indicates that by the time she was 21 her family was well aware of her bisexuality, and she had a number of affairs with both men and women during her Greenwich Village years. Of these, the most important was probably her engagement to Ernst Hanfstaengl, a Harvard graduate who ran the American branch of his family's art publishing house. Hanfstaengl had once given a piano concert at the White House and was a friend of then-New York State Senator Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but he became increasingly angered by anti-German sentiment in the United States during World War I. In 1916, he told Barnes he wanted a German wife; the painful breakup became the basis of a deleted scene in Nightwood. He later returned to Germany and became a close associate of Adolf Hitler. Starting in 1916 or 1917, she lived with a socialist philosopher and critic named Courtenay Lemon, whom she referred to as her common-law husband, but this too ended, for reasons that are unclear. She also had a passionate romantic relationship with Mary Pyne, a reporter for the New York Press and fellow member of the Provincetown Players. Pyne died of tuberculosis in 1919, attended by Barnes until the end.

Paris (1921–1930)
In the 1920s, Paris was the center of modernism in art and literature. Barnes first traveled there in 1921 on an assignment for McCall's. She interviewed her fellow expatriate writers and artists for U.S. periodicals and soon became a well-known figure on the local scene; her black cloak and her acerbic wit are remembered in many memoirs of the time. Even before her first novel was published, her literary reputation was already high, largely on the strength of her story "A Night Among the Horses," which was published in The Little Review and reprinted in her 1923 collection A Book. She was part of the inner circle of the influential salon hostess Natalie Barney, who became a lifelong friend and patron, as well as the central figure in Barnes's satiric chronicle of Paris lesbian life, Ladies Almanack. The most important relationship of Barnes's Paris years was with the artist Thelma Wood. Wood was a Kansas native who had come to Paris to become a sculptor, but at Barnes's suggestion took up silverpoint instead, producing drawings of animals and plants that one critic compared to Henri Rousseau. By the winter of 1922 they had set up housekeeping together in a flat on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. Another close friendship that developed during this time was with the Dada artist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, with whom Barnes began an intensive correspondence in 1923. "Where Wood gave Barnes a doll as a gift to represent their symbolic love child, the Baroness proposed an erotic marriage whose love-child would be their book." From Paris, Barnes supported the Baroness in Berlin with money, clothing, and magazines. She also collected the Baroness's poems and letters.

Barnes arrived in Paris with a letter of introduction to James Joyce, whom she interviewed for Vanity Fair and who became a friend. The headline of her Vanity Fair interview billed him as "the man who is, at present, one of the more significant figures in literature," but her personal reaction to Ulysses was less guarded: "I shall never write another line ... Who has the nerve to after that?" It may have been reading Joyce that led Barnes to turn away from the late 19th century Decadent and Aesthetic influences of The Book of Repulsive Women toward the modernist experimentation of her later work. They differed, however, on the proper subject of literature; Joyce thought writers should focus on commonplace subjects and make them extraordinary, while Barnes was always drawn to the unusual, even the grotesque. Then, too, her own life was an extraordinary subject. Her autobiographical first novel Ryder would not only present readers with the difficulty of deciphering its shifting literary styles—a technique inspired by Ulysses—but also with the challenge of piecing together the history of an unconventional polygamous household, far removed from most readers' expectations and experience.

Despite the difficulties of the text, Ryder's bawdiness drew attention, and it briefly became a New York Times bestseller. Its popularity caught the publisher unprepared; a first edition of 3,000 sold out quickly, but by the time more copies made it into bookstores, public interest in the book had died down. Still, the advance allowed Barnes to buy a new apartment on Rue Saint-Romain, where she lived with Thelma Wood starting in September 1927. The move made them neighbors of Mina Loy, a friend of Barnes's since Greenwich Village days, who appeared in Ladies Almanack as Patience Scalpel, the sole heterosexual character, who "could not understand Women and their Ways."

Due to its subject matter, Ladies Almanack was published in a small, privately printed edition under the pseudonym "A Lady of Fashion." Copies were sold on the streets of Paris by Barnes and her friends, and Barnes managed to smuggle a few into the United States to sell. A bookseller, Edward Titus, offered to carry Ladies Almanack in his store in exchange for being mentioned on the title page, but when he demanded a share of the royalties on the entire print run, Barnes was furious. She later gave the name Titus to the abusive father in The Antiphon.

Barnes dedicated Ryder and Ladies Almanack to Thelma Wood, but the year both books were published—1928—was also the year that she and Wood separated. Barnes had wanted their relationship to be monogamous, but had discovered that Wood wanted her "along with the rest of the world." Wood had a worsening dependency on alcohol, and she spent her nights drinking and seeking out casual sex partners; Barnes would search the cafés for her, often winding up equally drunk. Barnes broke up with Wood over her involvement with heiress Henriette McCrea Metcalf (1888–1981), who would be scathingly portrayed in Nightwood as Jenny Petherbridge.

1930s
Much of Nightwood was written during the summers of 1932 and 1933, while Barnes was staying at Hayford Hall, a country manor in Devon rented by the art patron Peggy Guggenheim. Fellow guests included Antonia White, John Ferrar Holms, and the novelist and poet Emily Coleman. Evenings at the manor—nicknamed "Hangover Hall" by its residents—often featured a party game called Truth that encouraged brutal frankness, creating a tense emotional atmosphere. Barnes was afraid to leave her work in progress unattended because the volatile Coleman, having told Barnes one of her secrets, had threatened to burn the manuscript if Barnes revealed it. But once she had read the book, Coleman became its champion. Her critiques of successive drafts led Barnes to make major structural changes, and when publisher after publisher rejected the manuscript, it was Coleman who pressed T. S. Eliot, then an editor at Faber and Faber, to read it.

Faber published the book in 1936. Though reviews treated it as a major work of art, the book did not sell well. Barnes received no advance from Faber and the first royalty statement was for only £43; the U.S. edition published by Harcourt, Brace the following year fared no better. Barnes had published little journalism in the 1930s and was largely dependent on Peggy Guggenheim's financial support. She was constantly ill and drank more and more heavily—according to Guggenheim, she accounted for a bottle of whiskey per day. In February 1939 she checked into a hotel in London and attempted suicide. Guggenheim funded hospital visits and doctors, but finally lost patience and sent her back to New York. There she shared a single room with her mother, who coughed all night and who kept reading her passages from Mary Baker Eddy, having converted to Christian Science. In March 1940, her family sent her to a sanatorium in upstate New York to dry out. Furious, Barnes began to plan a biography of her family, writing to Emily Coleman that "there is no reason any longer why I should feel for them in any way but hate." This idea would eventually come to fruition in her play The Antiphon. After she returned to New York City, she quarreled bitterly with her mother and was thrown out on the street.

Return to Greenwich Village (1940–1982)
Left with nowhere else to go, Barnes stayed at Thelma Wood's apartment while Wood was out of town, then spent two months on a working ranch in Arizona with Emily Coleman and Coleman's lover Jake Scarborough. She returned to New York and, in September, moved into the small apartment at 5 Patchin Place in Greenwich Village where she would spend the last 41 years of her life. Throughout the 1940s, she continued to drink and wrote virtually nothing. Guggenheim, despite misgivings, provided her with a small stipend, and Coleman, who could ill afford it, sent US$20 per month (about $310 in 2011). In 1943, Barnes was included in Peggy Guggenheim's show Exhibition by 31 Women at the Art of This Century gallery in New York. In 1946, she worked for Henry Holt as a manuscript reader, but her reports were invariably caustic, and she was fired.

In 1950, realizing that alcoholism had made it impossible for her to function as an artist, Barnes stopped drinking in order to begin work on her verse play The Antiphon. The play drew heavily on her own family history, and the writing was fueled by anger; she said "I wrote The Antiphon with clenched teeth, and I noted that my handwriting was as savage as a dagger." When he read the play, her brother Thurn accused her of wanting "revenge for something long dead and to be forgotten". Barnes, in the margin of his letter, described her motive as "justice", and next to "dead" she inscribed, "not dead".

After The Antiphon, Barnes returned to writing poetry, which she worked and reworked, producing as many as 500 drafts. She wrote eight hours per day despite a growing list of health problems, including arthritis so severe that she had difficulty even sitting at her typewriter or turning on her desk lamp. Many of these poems never were finalized, and only a few were published in her lifetime.

During her Patchin Place years, Barnes became a notorious recluse, intensely suspicious of anyone she did not know well. E.E. Cummings, who lived across the street, checked on her periodically by shouting out his window "Are you still alive, Djuna?" Bertha Harris put roses in her mailbox, but never succeeded in meeting her; Carson McCullers camped on her doorstep, but Barnes only called down "Whoever is ringing this bell, please go the hell away." Anaïs Nin was an ardent fan of her work, especially Nightwood. She wrote to Barnes several times, inviting her to participate in a journal on women's writing, but received no reply. Barnes remained contemptuous of Nin and would cross the street to avoid her. Barnes was angry that Nin had named a character Djuna, and when the feminist bookstore Djuna Books opened in Greenwich Village, Barnes called to demand that the name be changed. Barnes had a lifelong affection for poet Marianne Moore since she and Moore were young in the 1920s.

Although Barnes had other female lovers, in her later years she was known to claim "I am not a lesbian; I just loved Thelma."

Barnes was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1961 and was awarded a senior fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1981.

Barnes was the last surviving member of the first generation of English-language modernists when she died in her home in New York on June 18, 1982, six days after her 90th birthday.

The Book of Repulsive Women
Barnes's chapbook The Book of Repulsive Women (1915) collects eight "rhythms" and five drawings. The poems show the strong influence of late 19th century Decadence, and the style of the illustrations resembles Aubrey Beardsley's. The setting is New York City, and the subjects are all women: a cabaret singer, a woman seen through an open window from the elevated train, and, in the last poem, the corpses of two suicides in the morgue. The book describes women's bodies and sexuality in terms that have indeed struck many readers as repulsive, but, as with much of Barnes's work, the author's stance is ambiguous. Some critics read the poems as exposing and satirizing cultural attitudes toward women.

Barnes came to regard The Book of Repulsive Women as an embarrassment; she called the title "idiotic," left it out of her curriculum vitae, and even burned copies. But because the copyright had never been registered, she was unable to prevent it from being republished, and it became one of her most reprinted works.

Ryder
Barnes's novel Ryder (1928) draws heavily on her childhood experiences in Cornwall-on-Hudson. It covers 50 years of history of the Ryder family: Sophia Grieve Ryder, like Zadel a former salon hostess fallen into poverty; her idle son Wendell; his wife Amelia; his resident mistress Kate-Careless; and their children. Barnes appears as Wendell and Amelia's daughter Julie. The story has a large cast and is told from a variety of points of view; some characters appear as the protagonist of a single chapter only to disappear from the text entirely. Fragments of the Ryder family chronicle are interspersed with children's stories, songs, letters, poems, parables, and dreams. The book changes style from chapter to chapter, parodying writers from Chaucer to Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Both Ryder and Ladies Almanack abandon the Beardsleyesque style of her drawings for The Book of Repulsive Women in favor of a visual vocabulary borrowed from French folk art. Several illustrations are closely based on the engravings and woodcuts collected by Pierre Louis Duchartre and René Saulnier in the 1926 book L'Imagerie Populaire—images that had been copied with variations since medieval times. The bawdiness of Ryder illustrations led the U.S. Postal Service to refuse to ship it, and several had to be left out of the first edition, including an image in which Sophia is seen urinating into a chamberpot and one in which Amelia and Kate-Careless sit by the fire knitting codpieces. Parts of the text were also expurgated. In an acerbic introduction, Barnes explained that the missing words and passages had been replaced with asterisks so that readers could see the "havoc" wreaked by censorship. A 1990 Dalkey Archive edition restored the missing drawings, but the original text was lost with the destruction of the manuscript in World War II.

Ladies Almanack
Ladies Almanack (1928) is a roman à clef about a predominantly lesbian social circle centering on Natalie Clifford Barney's salon in Paris. It is written in an archaic, Rabelaisian style, with Barnes's own illustrations in the style of Elizabethan woodcuts.

Clifford Barney appears as Dame Evangeline Musset, "who was in her Heart one Grand Red Cross for the Pursuance, the Relief and the Distraction, of such Girls as in their Hinder Parts, and their Fore Parts, and in whatsoever Parts did suffer them most, lament Cruelly." "[A] Pioneer and a Menace" in her youth, Dame Musset has reached "a witty and learned Fifty"; she rescues women in distress, dispenses wisdom, and upon her death is elevated to sainthood. Also appearing pseudonymously are Élisabeth de Gramont, Romaine Brooks, Dolly Wilde, Radclyffe Hall and her partner Una Troubridge, Janet Flanner and Solita Solano, and Mina Loy.

The obscure language, inside jokes, and ambiguity of Ladies Almanack have kept critics arguing about whether it is an affectionate satire or a bitter attack, but Barnes loved the book and reread it throughout her life.

Nightwood
Barnes's reputation as a writer was made when Nightwood was published in England in 1936 in an expensive edition by Faber and Faber, and in the United States in 1937 by Harcourt, Brace and Company, with an added introduction by T.S. Eliot, Barnes's editor. The avant-garde novel, written under the patronage of Peggy Guggenheim, made Barnes famous in feminist circles.

The novel, set in Paris in the 1920s, revolves around the lives of five characters, two of whom are based on Barnes and Wood, and it reflects the circumstances surrounding the ending of their relationship. In his introduction, Eliot praises Barnes's style, which, while having "prose rhythm ... and the musical pattern which is not that of verse, is so good a novel that only sensibilities trained on poetry can wholly appreciate it."

Due to concerns about censorship, Eliot edited Nightwood to soften some language relating to sexuality and religion. An edition restoring these changes, edited by Cheryl J. Plumb, was published by Dalkey Archive Press in 1995.

Dylan Thomas described Nightwood as "one of the three great prose books ever written by a woman," and William Burroughs called it "one of the great books of the twentieth century." It was number 12 on a list of the top 100 gay books compiled by The Publishing Triangle in 1999.

The Antiphon
Barnes's verse play The Antiphon (1958) is set in England in 1939. Jeremy Hobbs, in disguise as Jack Blow, has brought his family together at their ruined ancestral home, Burley Hall. His motive is never explicitly stated, but he seems to want to provoke a confrontation among the members of his family and force them to confront the truth about their past. His sister Miranda is a stage actress, now "out of patron and of money"; her materialistic brothers, Elisha and Dudley, see her as a threat to their financial well-being. Elisha and Dudley accuse their mother Augusta of complicity with their abusive father Titus Hobbs. They take advantage of Jeremy's absence to don animal masks and assault both women, making cruel and sexually suggestive remarks; Augusta treats this attack as a game. Jeremy returns with a doll house, a miniature version of the house in America where the children grew up. As she examines it, he charges her with making herself "a madam by submission" because she failed to prevent Titus from orchestrating Miranda's rape by "a travelling Cockney thrice [her] age." The last act finds Miranda and Augusta alone together. Augusta, at once disapproving and envious of her daughter's more liberated life, exchanges clothes with her daughter and wants to pretend she is young again, but Miranda refuses to enter into this play. When Augusta hears Elisha and Dudley driving away, she blames Miranda for their abandonment and beats her to death with a curfew bell, falling dead at her side from the exertion.

The play premiered in 1961 in Stockholm in a Swedish translation by Karl Ragnar Gierow and U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld.

The play was translated into French and set at the Odeon Theater in Paris by the "Comedie Française" in March 1990.

Creatures in an Alphabet
[[Image:Madame Récamier painted by Jacques-Louis David in 1800.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Jacques-Louis David's [[portrait of Madame Récamier]]. In Creatures in an Alphabet, Barnes wrote:

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Barnes's last book, Creatures in an Alphabet (1982), is a collection of short rhyming poems. The format suggests a children's book, but it contains enough allusiveness and advanced vocabulary to make it an unlikely read for a child: the entry for T quotes Blake's "The Tyger," a seal is compared to Jacques-Louis David's portrait of Madame Récamier, and a braying donkey is described as "practicing solfeggio." Creatures continues the themes of nature and culture found in Barnes's earlier work, and their arrangement as a bestiary reflects her longstanding interest in systems for organizing knowledge, such as encyclopedias and almanacs.

Unpublished non-fiction
During the 1920s and 1930s, Barnes made an effort to write a biography of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and edited her poems for publication. Unsuccessful in finding a publisher for the Baroness's poetry, Barnes abandoned the project. After writing a number of chapter drafts of the biography, she abandoned that project, too, after submitting the first chapter to Emily Coleman in 1939, whose response was not encouraging. Barnes's efforts at writing the biography are detailed in Irene Gammel's Baroness Elsa biography.

Legacy
Barnes has been cited as an influence by writers as diverse as Truman Capote, William Goyen, Karen Blixen, John Hawkes, Bertha Harris, Dylan Thomas, David Foster Wallace, and Anaïs Nin. Writer Bertha Harris described her work as "practically the only available expression of lesbian culture we have in the modern western world" since Sappho.

Barnes's biographical notes and collection of manuscripts have been a major source for scholars who have brought the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven forth from the margins of Dada history. They were key in producing Body Sweats: The Uncensored Writings of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (2011), the first major English collection of the baroness's poems, and a biography titled Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada and Everyday Modernity (2002).

Fictional portrayals
Cynthia Grant and Svetlana Zylin co-wrote the play Djuna: What of the Night based on Barnes's life and works. The play premiered in 1991.

Emmanuelle Uzan played Barnes in a brief cameo role with no dialogue in Woody Allen's 2011 film Midnight in Paris.

Archives

 * Djuna Barnes papers (102 linear ft.) are housed at the Hornbake Library at the University of Maryland
 * Barnes family papers (13 linear ft.) are housed at the Hornbake Library at the University of Maryland
 * Saxon Barnes papers (1.75 linear ft.) are housed at the Hornbake Library at the University of Maryland. Saxon Barnes was the brother of Djuna Barnes. His papers includes correspondence, photographs, and other materials of and by Djuna Barnes
 * Irwin Cohen collection, which consists of artwork, clippings, manuscripts, proofs, photographs, and publications by and about Djuna Barnes and her era at the University of Maryland libraries
 * Emily Holmes Coleman papers at Special Collections, University of Delaware Library

Other links

 * James Joyce by Djuna Barnes: Vanity Fair, March, 1922
 * House of Incest: Exile from the Family in Modernist Women's Literature — about the women of the Left Bank
 * House of Incest: Exile from the Family in Modernist Women's Literature — about the women of the Left Bank

Online works

 * The Book of Repulsive Women at A Celebration of Women Writers
 * "The Confessions of Helen Westley" — an interview
 * Selections from interviews by and with Barnes
 * "What Do You See, Madam?" — one of Barnes's early newspaper short stories
 * "What Do You See, Madam?" — one of Barnes's early newspaper short stories

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title: Djuna Barnes