Margarita Morozova

Margarita Kirillovna Morozova (née Mamontova; She was the wife of art critic and collector Mikhail Morozov, and a socialite whose portraits were painted by Valentin Serov and Nikolai Bodarevsky, among others.

Biography

19th century Margarita Kirillovna Mamontova was born at Pokrovka Street in Moscow, into a well-established merchant's family. Her father Kirill Nikolayevich inherited a vast fortune but proved incapable of making good use of it. Having squandered all of his money and most of the family's property, he shot himself, leaving his wife Margarita Ottovna (née Loewenstein) with two young daughters and without any means. She survived by doing needlework and later launched her own dress-making courses and a sewing factory.

Much publicized at the time was her romance with the poet Andrey Bely who recognized some mystical reasons behind his infatuation with her (which started in 1901) and signed his early love letters as "Your Knight". For Bely Morozova has become what Lydia Mendeleeva (as a Beautiful Dame) was for Alexander Blok; this love has shaped his whole artistic world and inspired his best known works (like "First Rendes-vous", 1921). Through Bely she became close to brothers Emiliy and Nikolai Medtners, the music critic and composer, respectively. In March 1910, Morozova launched Put (The Path) publishing house which specialized in religious and philosophical literature (Vladimir Solovyov, Berdyayev, Bulgakov, Trubetskoy himself, Pavel Florensky). Mikhail Gershenzon published here works by Pyotr Chaadayev and Ivan Kireevsky. In the 1930s the sisters, forced to leave the house, moved to their dacha in Lianozovo, nearby Moscow. By this time most of her children (excepting son Mikhail) have emigrated, the last one to leave was Maria, in 1927. During the Great Patriotic War Mikhail and the Morozova sisters shared one room in a house at Pokrovka, not far from the place where Margarita was born.

In 1950s Morozova wrote essays on Scriabin, as well as some memoirs on Bely, Scriabin and the Medtner brothers. Only fragments of them appeared in the USSR (notably, pieces on Scriabin in 1972); they were published fully only in the post-Soviet times. Margarita Morozova spent her last years in poverty, relying only upon the financial help of friends. She died on 3 October 1958, of a stroke, and is interred in Vvedenskoye Cemetery in Moscow. and Vitaly Malkin , who became a member of the Federation Council, which then passed to Anatoly Motylev . After Roscredit's license was revoked by the Central Bank of Russia on 24 July 2015, the Office of the Presidential Affairs managed the Morozov house.

With Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISI) under the leadership of Mikhail Fradkov, which began on 4 January 2017, the Morozov house at Smolensky Boulevard, 26/9, building 1, underwent improvements under the Office of the Presidential Affairs, (Mikhail Fradkov's son Pavel Fradkov is the deputy head of the Office of the Presidential Affairs.) In 2019, the restoration was completed.