House-Museum of N.M.Zinoviev

Two kilometers from Palekh, in the village of Diaghilevo, there is a memorial museum of the Hero of Socialist Labor, People's Artist of the USSR, laureate of the State Prize of the RSFSR named after I.E. Repin Nikolai Mikhailovich Zinoviev.

The house of N. M. Zinoviev stands on the right side of the village street, almost at its very end. In the center of the village there is a well-"crane", behind the edge there is an amazing view with expanses of fields, whimsically winding river, lowlands and overflows. In his autobiography, N. M. Zinoviev recalled: “My small village seems to have grown into a swampy area of three mouths of small rivers – Lulekh, Paleska and Demidovka.” Once this secluded place was a thicket of Diagil, from which, obviously, the name of the village originated.

The Zinovievs knew a lot: they carefully kept the house, took care of the manor plot, garden, apiary; they sewed different shoes, weaved canvas and floorboards - they did all that without which the life of a peasant is unthinkable. All the men in the family necessarily painted icons: for many decades it was the main craft for the inhabitants of Paleh and the surrounding villages.

The furnishings, the things preserved in the house, remind of the past of the artist’s family, her life and rural, native Russian way of life. From the seine entrance to the kitchen with a large Russian oven. The former maid served as a dining room, bedroom, and living room. A room in a burn, once intended for the wintering of bees, became the main place of work of the artist. Nikolai Mikhailovich called it an office, which sounded unusual to hear paleshans.

“It was all over here, all my life. And I wrote a lot here, said the master. The house of N. M. Zinoviev is always hospitable. The openness and kindness of Nikolai Mikhailovich attracted a variety of people. There were famous art historians, writers, artists, astronauts and ordinary paleshans. In memory of their stay in the house, many left gifts dear to Zinoviev's heart. The artist Y. Neprintsev wrote the sketch “The Porch of the Zinoviev House”, Leningrad restorers presented a humorous Decree of Peter I, recalling the participation of N. M. Zinoviev in the revival of the lacquer room in the Monplaisir Palace in Peterhof. The house of N. M. Zinoviev is still open to guests, already as a memorial museum dedicated to the bright memory of a remarkable artist and man.