The museum’s collection includes a small pillow with a black satin pillowcase.
This item accompanied the writer Arkady Petrovich Gaidar on many trips, including to the village of Solotcha.
Konstantin Georgievich Paustovsky was the first writer to frequently visit Solotcha. After some time, children’s writer and journalist Ruvim Isaevich Fraerman began to come there as well. Soon, Arkady Petrovich Gaidar joined him.
The satin from which the pillow was sewn tore, and Arkady Petrovich himself made a new pillowcase from black satin. This small pillow, along with a thin patched wool blanket, accompanied Arkady Petrovich on many trips. He always brought them to Solotcha, where he stayed with the Fraerman family. He also took the pillow with him when he went to the Black Lake. He often lent it to Konstantin Georgievich Paustovsky, who enjoyed relaxing there with his wife.
According to the memoirs of Valentina Sergeevna Fraerman, the wife of Ruvim Isaevich, when Gaidar visited Solotcha for the last time in 1939, he sometimes stayed overnight on the balcony of their house, under the shade of a sprawling oak tree. He would cover himself with the blanket and use the pillow to rest his head.
The Fraermans, Paustovskys and Gaidars often went to the meadows for overnight stays. Arkady Petrovich always brought his pillow and blanket, as it was damp and cold near the bank of the Prorva, a tributary of the Oka River, where they slept.
In the summer of 1939, in the garden of the estate of engraver and artist Ivan Petrovich Pozhalostin, Arkady Petrovich planted an apple tree. The tree still grows there to this day.
Konstantin Paustovsky recalled,
