The National Pushkin Museum houses a lithograph “Kyiv. Khreshchatyk” created by Ivan Ivanovich Seleznyov. It was based on a drawing from life by Vadim Vasilyevich Passek and made for the magazine “Essays on Russia”.
“Essays on Russia” was a periodical published in 1838–1840. It was established on the initiative of local lore specialist, historian, folklorist and ethnographer Vadim Vasilyevich Passek (1808–1842). In addition to the publisher himself, Alexander Fomich Veltman, Tatiana Petrovna Passek, Izmail Ivanovich Sreznevsky, and Amvrosy Lukyanovich Metlinsky wrote ethnography-related articles. In the foreword, Vadim Passek formulated his goal as follows — “to develop and strengthen with knowledge a fervent feeling of love for the Fatherland and reverence for its great destiny.”
The material that covered many regions was supplemented with lithographed pictures published in a separate Atlas. Several artists worked on it, including Ivan Ivanovich Seleznyov, who also owned a lithographic workshop. The author of the essay “Kyiv-Pechersk Monastery” was Passek himself. The poetic mood of his text corresponds to the character of the lithograph, which presents a picturesque view of a narrow and deep valley running from the St. Michael’s Monastery to the Dnieper. Back then there was a spring called Khreshchatyk. Legend has it that the sons of Prince Vladimir, the Baptizer of Rus, were baptized there, while the inhabitants of Kyiv were christened in the Dnieper itself. A monument was erected there in 1805 to commemorate the great Baptism of Rus.
It is established that Alexander Pushkin visited
Kyiv twice. The first trip took place in May 1820 on the way from St.
Petersburg to Yekaterinoslav. The poet stayed in the city for two days. The
second visit happened at the beginning of 1821, when Pushkin, accompanied by
his friends the Davydovs, stayed in Kyiv for two weeks. The poet loved to
wander around the old city, was at Askold’s grave, in St. Sophia Cathedral, in
the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, and probably walked along the earthen rampart of the
Pechersk fortress. A kind of symbol of Pushkin’s poetic perception of the local
nature are the lines from “Poltava”,
