Rakit biography
Nikolai Rakitsky was born on November 11 in Yevpatoria. A large family was not affordable to pay for his son’s studies, but the leadership of the gymnasium went towards, and the talented boy was allowed to study for free. Subsequently, he received a higher philological and philosophical education at Kiev University and graduated from an agricultural academy in Bavaria. Rakitsky was unusually gifted, he had extensive knowledge in various fields: in Italy he studied the history of art, took six languages ...
After studying, Rakitsky returned to Evpatoria, where he devoted several years to scientific research. There, fate brought him to his future wife Sofia Zakharovna Fedorchenko, a writer, one of the ancestors of documentary prose in Russia. Her "front -line recordings" was praised by Maximilian Voloshin, to whom Fedorchenko came to Koktebel in the years. Sergei Eisenstein compared her book “The People in War” with Joyce Ulysses.
Soon the young family moved to Moscow. Living in the basement of the “Tolstoy” house, they often saw Mikhail Bulgakov and his wife Belozerskaya’s love: they went to visit each other, arranged literary evenings.
In those days, the married couple talked a lot with the creative intelligentsia. Subsequently, Rakitsky wrote the memoirs “Meetings with M. In the year Sofu Fedorchenko were accused of hoax and falsification of folk statements. The devastating performance of Demyan Poor is known: "Mystifiers and falsifiers are not writers." The writer hardly experienced attacks that fell upon her.
Legs were taken away, a serious illness riveted to bed. A special stage in the life of Fedorchenko and Rakitsky is connected with Tarusa. Here they built a house and began to improve the adjacent wasteland. Working in Tarus for more than one year, Nikolai Rakitsky became an outstanding agronomist. Applying his scientific knowledge, in practice he carried out what seemed impossible for many.
On the allocated land, outlandish plants appeared, which no one had previously seen in these parts. In the archives of Nikolai Petrovich, an alphabetical list of plants from the names was found. Frequent business trips allowed the agronomist to bring seedlings from other climatic zones. Thanks to his zeal and patience, the Siberian cedar, the Amur lilac, Rumelian pine, Japanese barbaris, the Tatar maple gradually turned into a unique dendrosad appeared in Tarusa.
Rakitsky was very friendly with the Polenov family. In October, in his house there was a summer Fedor's grandson of the artist Vasily Polenov with his aunt. The boy studied at a Tarus school. His parents were repressed. After the war, Rakitsky continued to create a "paradise" for his beloved wife. But peaceful happiness interrupted her death. Sofya Zakharovna Fedorchenko passed away on June 12.
Nikolai Petrovich was left alone. With difficulty cope with his grief, in the year he initiates the creation of a picture gallery in the target. Its first exhibits are things from the personal collection of the agronomist: more paintings by Polenov, Aivazovsky, Borisov-Musatov, Kustodiev, Vrubel and other masters, old porcelain, lace, glass products ...
Nikolai Rakitsky survived his wife for 20 years. With his murmur in the year, the house and the unique garden began to come into desolation. Only in the year, the decorator of Yevgeny Zhdanova began to restore the memorial place. After two years of hard work, the house was noticeably transformed. Now its doors are open to everyone who wants to plunge into history and feel the spirit of the Tarusa of the first half of the twentieth century.