Pasternak in the Urals: Vsevolodo-Vilva - Perm
Today, routes related to the life / activities of a famous person are becoming popular. If we are talking about writers, then excursion routes can include places mentioned in their work directly or indirectly.
One of these places is the Perm Territory, where Pasternak came: the space of individual settlements of the Kama region served as a prototype for the artistic space of Doctor Zhivago, as well as the early lyrics of the poet.
In his autobiographical essay People and Conditions (1957), Pasternak talks about his visits to Kama, including Vsevolodo-Vilva. In the mid-1910s, during the formation of his creative manner, the poet admired the Ural nature for a long time, about which he wrote to his parents in 1916: “Dear Mommy!” Have you received my cards yet? I'll be here for a week. It's wonderful. ... peculiar, uncharacteristic for Russia beauty of the area, the savagery of the climate, distances, desert ..." and "here there is provincialism and - more! - uyezdism, and - more! - deaf Urals uyezdovshchina not settled density and long-term infusion." The famous photo of Pasternak on shihan was made in the vicinity of Vilva. In addition, at this time, the young poet organizes the creative association “Serdard”, which includes not only novice poets, but also artists and musicians.
Today, the B. Pasternak Museum is opened in the village, which is an exact copy of the house where the poet stayed. Fortunately, some things that belonged to the house have been preserved, other exhibits also date back to the beginning of the XX century. In front of the house is an old cedar, the same one in the photo from the archive, below the height of a human being. In the library of the village you can see unique photos associated with the stay of Pasternak in Vilva. 
To be fair, it is worth noting that before Pasternak, Chekhov came to Vsevolodo-Vilva (the house in which the writer stayed was not preserved). This circumstance influenced Pasternak’s perception of space, which he wrote in a letter to his father, drawing attention to the provinciality of Ural life: “... much has already been caught by Chekhov, although, I must say, often with the specific narrowness of a humorist who promised the reader to make him laugh.” This spirit is not in my genre, and literaryly I hardly use my observations here. Indirectly, of course, all these shadows and types will enter and remain in my foggy costume room.”
The Pasternak Museum in Vilva has a website (http://www.dompasternaka.ru/), but the section “how to get there” is not sufficiently complete. For example, it is worth adding that if you get by rail, it is most convenient to get off at the station Kopi (Alexandrovsk), from which buses leave every half hour to Vsevolodo-Vilva (travel time is about 20 minutes).
As mentioned above, the Ural chapters of Doctor Zhivago reflect the nature of the Perm region. The well-known Perm philologist V. Abashev, head of the Yuryatin Foundation, studying the Perm text, suggests that Perm is a prototype of Yuryatin, Kama is the Rynva River, and Varykino is located near Vilva, in the Ivaki area. This mythologization of space attracts a significant number of tourists and opens a niche for the creation of new routes and projects.
Perm and Yuryatin, first of all, are related to the “House with Figures”, opposite which in the novel is Lara’s house. The novel descriptions and modern appearance of the house, where the RAS branch is located today, reveal significant similarities. In addition, the landscape and the approximate location of fictional and real items on the map coincide. You can also find a long staircase mentioned in the novel, climbing on which you can see a panorama of Motovilikha factories - one of the important loci in the novel.
Probably, the list of correspondences is unfinished, and interested tourists will make a couple of discoveries, if you walk around the city and surroundings with a novel in hand.
Anna Menshchikova