OrlOvskaya street is one of the central streets of our city. It begins from the Ascension Cathedral and goes to the west to the exit out of the city. The City Garden and the Children’s Park, the fire tower, the hospital and the prison, the fence and the bell tower of the former Trinity Monastery are all situated in this street.
In his famous novel, Bunin calls it, apparently because of its length, Dolgaya street (Dolgaya means “long” in Russian), and gives a description of this street in a warm Saturday evening: “Dolgaya street was straight as an arrow, it was leading out of the city - up to the prison and the monastery, it was sinking in the dust and the blinding glare of the sun, which was going down just at the end of its span, and in this dusty gold flows there are people walking and riding, returning from the trotting races for which the city is also famous — and how many dandies are there, among calligraphists and clerks, how many young ladies dressed up like paradise birds, how many smart carriages, in which there are young merchants sitting next to their young wives and holding back their trotters! And in the Cathedral the bells are ringing for the Vigil, and bearded, dignified coachmen sitting on the heavy and quiet carriages, …are carrying old merchant wives with wax candles in their hands, looking strange either because of their yellow plumpness and abundance of jewelry, or with their sepulchral whiteness and thinness… “
Bunin I.A. “Arseniev”s Life”
Nataly, a home-serf maid from Sukhodol, whom her lords sent to a distant farm as a punishment, saw this street looking like this: “What she could remember were the places in the city streets paved with stones, on which the carriage was rattling in a strange way, and the smell of iron roofs all over the streets… Natasha was sitting sat motionlessly, and kept looking at the dome of the newly built cathedral, which burned like a huge silver star somewhere far behind the houses … Ahead there was a white, bare street, white pavement, white houses — and all this was enclosed with a huge white Cathedral under a new white-tin dome, and the sky above it became pale blue, dry…. And Natashka was looking astonishingly at all those well-dressed people walking up and down the stones near the houses, gates, and shops with their doors open… “And why did Yevsei decided to go here, ” she thought, “ how did he decide to make so much noise with his rattling carriage here?”
Bunin I.A. “Dry valley”
In the evening there usually were festivities in the city park: “… I was stunned by the huge crowd, slow-moving along the main alley with, smelling with dust and cheap perfume, meanwhile in the end of the alley, inside a shell-shaped pavilion there was a military orchestra playing waltz, with its snarling and rattling copper pipes and drums”.
Bunin I.A.“Arseniev’s Life’
In various Bunin’s stories the Orlovskaya street was mentioned under different names - Cathedral street, Monastery street, Prison street.
