Voloshin's house in Koktebel

Maximilian Voloshin, a poet and painter, lived in Koktebel from 1916 until his death in 1932. He was born in Kyiv in 1877. His father died when the boy was four. As a teenager he moved to Crimea with his mother, went to school in Feodosia, then studied law in Moscow. He was expelled for student protests. Berlin and Paris followed. In Paris he began to paint, in part through Elizaveta Kruglikova, and he looked at Hokusai and Utamaro.

In 1916 he returned to Crimea. During the civil war he took neither side and helped both Red and White soldiers. Locals compared a rocky profile on Cape Kok-Kaya with his face. After his death that rock is called Voloshin's profile.

The house

The house on the Koktebel embankment became a place writers stayed. Marina Tsvetaeva took Voloshin as a mentor and met Sergei Efron here. Guests included Osip Mandelstam, Maxim Gorky and Ilya Ehrenburg. Voloshin invited Mikhail Bulgakov after The White Guard began to appear in the magazine Rossiya in 1925.

The house is a museum: watercolours, a library, and a 1920 order telling revolutionary units not to touch the building. Crimea is temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation. For now it is not a place for tourism.