Kolby. Memorable places of Alexander Blok.

The first poet of the silver age of Russian poetry, Alexander Blok, was brought to Polesie by the First World War. He stayed here from July 1916 to March 1917. Alexander Blok began his service as a timekeeper of the 13th engineering and construction squad of the All-Russian Union of Lands and Cities, then became head of the department, under whose leadership there were more than 2,000 workers engaged in the construction of Russian fortifications along the front line, encircling Pinsk from three sides.

The poet did not write a single poem here, but from here he sent about 70 letters – to his wife in Petrograd, to his mother in the Moscow region, to literary friends, to the editorial office, to theaters where rehearsals of his plays were taking place. According to these letters, literary critics subsequently traced the "Polesie path of Alexander Blok". In the Pinsk region, the poet visited the villages of Kamen, Pogost-Zagorodsky, Novy Dvor, Parokhonsk, Kolby, Lopatino. He spent most of his time in the village of Parokhonsk, in the old manor house of Princes Lyubetsky-Drutsky, which was destroyed back in the 50s of the last century.

In Parokhonsk, there is a memorial plaque on the station building dedicated to the meeting of Alexander Blok with the writer Alexei Tolstoy, who arrived in 1916 at Polesie as a war correspondent.

Another memorial plaque dedicated to Alexander Blok is installed in the village of Kamen, near Lake Pogost. Previously, Blok poetry festivals were held here.

The Alexander Blok Literary Museum is located in the village of Lopatino.

Alexander Blok compared Pinsk in his letters with the legendary Kitezh-grad. He liked to watch the majestic buildings of huge churches appear out of the morning mist.

In the small village of Kolby, which is located between Pripyat and the Styr River, an engineering squad was stationed, in which Alexander Blok served. A mighty "Blokovsky" oak tree has been preserved on the village square, which had a hitching post during the First World War, and under which, according to rumors, the poet loved to rest very much. There is also a tiny chapel in the same place, which Alexander sketched twice, and these drawings were later often found in illustrations of his poems. This chapel reminded the poet of the church in the village of Tarakanovo, where he was married to Lyubov Dmitrievna Mendeleeva.

But the Lemeshevsky hut, where Blok lived, has not reached our days.