On late Thursday night a fire broke out in the “writers’ house” behind metro Aeroport in Moscow. According to initial reports, the fire started in one apartment on the top floor of 4 Ulitsa Chernyakhovskovo and almost immediately set the roof on fire. The fire spread across the roofs of two more houses before being contained with the use of helicopters and fire trucks about 3 a.m. Friday.
More than 400 residents and their pets were evacuated, first to a small shopping mall near the house and then to a hotel.
The house is one of several apartment buildings that housed writers in the Soviet era. Over the decades several more houses were added here for professionals working in the theater and cinema. Bella Akhmadulina, Yuri Nagibin, Vasily Aksyonov, Konstantin Simonov and Alexander Ginsburg were just some of the members of the “creative intelligentsia” who lived here.
It was here that Vladimir Voinovich set his comic novel “Ivankiada,” the story of a writer’s fight with a more privileged comrade to get the larger apartment he is entitled to.
