One of the sections in the Saint Petersburg hall is dedicated to writer and memoirist Avdotya Panaeva. Avdotya Bryanskaya, Panaeva in her first marriage, was born in Saint Petersburg into a family of AlexandrInsky Theater actors. She was homeschooled. From a young age, she was considered one of the most beautiful ladies of the capital. In 1839, she married Ivan Panaev, a famous journalist, and got involved in the literary scene. Panaev served as the editor of the ‘Sovremennik’ (literally: Contemporary) magazine that interacted with the Russian literary elite of the time.

Around 1846, Panaeva became the common-law wife of poet Nikolay Nekrasov and spent the next 20 years with him. Their relationship is reflected in the poet’s “Panaeva Cycle.” In 1864, Panaeva married for the second time, her spouse was Apollon Golovachev, a publicist who worked for “Sovremennik”.  

She wrote under a pseudonym of N. N. Stanitsky. Her first and most significant work is an autobiographical novel “The Talnikov Family”. Together with Nekrasov, she wrote two novels “The Dead Lake” and “Three Countries of the World”.  

Among the people visiting her house were critics, writers, and poets: Vissarion BelInsky, Alexander Herzen, Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Goncharov, Nikolay Dobrolyubov, and Nikolay Chernyshevsky. Korney Chukovsky wrote about her: “There was hardly another person in Russia who could boast of such an extensive acquaintance with historical Russian figures. Many of them loved her. Poet Afanasy Fet dedicated his poem “On the Dnieper in the flood” to her, Fyodor Dostoevsky fell in love with her at the first sight, Nekrasov praised her in his love poems’. 

The museum exhibits the monthly historical and literary magazine ‘Istorichesky Vestnik’ (literally: Historical Chronicler) where Panaeva’s memoirs were published for the first time. The “Memories” describe the circle of Vissarion Belinsky and the members of “Sovremennik.” The first commented edition was published in 1927 in the Academia publishing house edited by Korney Chukovsky.

One of the chapters of “Memories” is dedicated to Fyodor Reshetnikov. In it, Avdotya Panaeva describes her meeting with the Urals writer, creates his portrait, and makes remarks about his personality. In particular, she quotes the words of Reshetnikov, which explain how Nikolay Nekrasov received his novel “PodlIpovtsy”: “But when I was leaving Nekrasov”s place, I almost started dancing on the street since I gave him my manuscript and pocketed an advance payment of 200 rubles”.