The House on the Embankment

Just across the river from the Kremlin stands one of Moscow’s largest apartment complexes with a dark past. Built between 1928-1931 to accommodate the Soviet elite, it housed hundreds of victims of Stalin’s Great Terror whose tragic fate was immortalized in Yuri Trifonov’s novel “The House on the Embankment.” The author himself lived in the building as a child from 1931-1939 when his own father was executed at the height of Stalin’s purges. A small museum was opened in 1989 on the first floor of the building, containing exhibits about its history, as well as providing a more general social history of the 1930s and 1940s. There are 25 memorial plaques on the facade of the building. Visitors can peruse display cases, photo collages, book collections, and antique objects related to the building and its former residents.