This old Moscow Street runs from Lubyanskaya Square to the Garden Ring at Krasniye Vorota (Red Gates). In the 16th and 17th centuries this area was inhabited by butchers (myasniki), which is what gave the street its name. There were cattle sheds next to the butchers' houses. This area was the site of the old Church of Sts. Flor and Lavr, who were regarded as the patron saints of cattle. At that time there was a direct road from Myasnitskaya to the Spasskiye Gates in the Kremlin, and so up to the mid-17th century these gates were called Frolovskiye Gates.
In the early 18th century Peter the Great's carriage passed along it on his frequent visits to the German Settlement (Lefortovo). People close to the Tsar then started to settle along the street, and also members of the aristocracy. Soon there was nothing left in the street to indicate that it had once been the residence of butchers, and in the second half of the last century major businesses opened offices here, and important shops were located here.
In early December 1934 the funeral procession for S. Kirov, a Soviet politician. passed along the street. He had been killed on I December in Leningrad, and in memory of this event the street was renamed. At the beginning of the street on the right there is a house with an archway.
The courtyard hides a four-storey house built at the end of the last century by Burgovskyfor the rich timber merchant Stakheyev. It was in one of the rooms of this house that Vladimir Mayakovsky killed himself on 14th April 1930. A memorial museum is now open in the flat where he lived for more than ten years.
Further down. at the junction with Bolshoi Zlatoustinsky Lane, is No. 8/2 which now houses one of the city's best shops for china and crystal. It was built in 1898 by the architect Shekhtel for the owner of the famous Dulevskv china factory. In this building in 1907 the first exhibition of the artistic association 'Blue Rose' was held, with financial support from Nikolai Ryabushinsky, who was the son of the well-known industrialist Pavel Ryabushinsky. He was a major patron of Russian painting - Ryabushinsky was impressed bysymbolism and he tried hard to rival the Petersburg artistic association 'The World of Art' patronised by Alexander Diaghilcv. Ryabushinsky set up the journal 'Golden Horn' - all the participants had to rally to the common cause like the ancient argonauts. It was headed by Alexandra Benva. Ryabushinsky was surrounded by his artist friends - Kuznetsov, Sapunov and Krymov, Sudeikin and Saryan - all alumni of the Moscow School of Art, Sculpture and Architecture situated at No. 21 Myasnitskava.
The 'Blue Rose' opened in this house on 18 March 1907 was not only Ryabushinsky's first art exhibition, but also the first exhibition in the history of Russian art of the Silver Age. Its name, suggested by the poet Valery Bryusov, symbolised the mystic, unreal beginning of life, and a fantastic world which has never been seen on earth.
The exhibition was surprising for its unusual setting. Everything was decorated in flickering blue tones, the rooms were covered in woolly carpets, and within the rooms were armchairs and tables with elegant curved legs. The pictures on display were complemented by enormous numbers of flowers, which were especially pleasing for Ryabushinsky. Ryabushinsky's project was hugely successful, and the-young artists whose works had been exhibited soon became famous.
