To some, Rubinshteyna is the restaurant street; to others, it is Dovlatov's street. He lived at number 23 from 1944, when his mother brought him back from evacuation, until he emigrated in 1978, with breaks for the army and Tallinn. A communal flat on the fourth floor, a courtyard well, a beer kiosk on the corner and Five Corners beyond — The Suitcase, Ours and half of the notebooks are made of this. There is no museum, but there is the house, the monument and a route.
The house where Dovlatov lived for almost thirty years. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Number 23
A late-nineteenth-century apartment block with the courtyard well typical of the street. The Dovlatovs had rooms in a communal flat; according to Kultura.rf, his childhood passed here, he lived here after university and the army, and he left for Tallinn and returned here. The flat is private and the entrance is locked. What you can see is the facade, the archway and, if the gate happens to be open, the courtyard.
The monument
In September 2016, for the writer's 75th anniversary, a monument by Vyacheslav Bukhaev was unveiled beside the house: a life-size bronze Dovlatov standing in a doorway, with a desk and typewriter alongside. It stands right on the pavement, and nobody walks past it now. The unveiling coincided with the first "D Day" festival, held in the city every September since.
The bronze Dovlatov in the doorway of number 23. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Rubinshteyna as text
Read The Suitcase before the walk: the street in it is recognisable down to the doors — the corner with Nevsky, Five Corners, Zagorodny. The street has changed since the 1990s, restaurants instead of kiosks, but the buildings and the courtyards are the same.
The street Dovlatov described down to the doorways. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
A two-hour route
Start at the monument. Walk Rubinshteyna to Five Corners, the famous junction with its flat-iron building. Continue along Razyezzhaya and Zagorodny, where the editorial offices were that he worked in and carried his stories to. Turn to the Fontanka at the Lomonosov Bridge — the embankment was his walking route. Finish at Vladimirskaya Square with the cathedral and the Dostoevsky museum: two writers of Kuznechny Lane in one block.
Five Corners, straight out of Dovlatov's prose. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The Fontanka embankment, the writer's walking route. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
