Gilyarovsky’s Reportorial Method: The 1926 and 1931 Editions

Vladimir Gilyarovsky’s book Moscow and Muscovites grew out of several layers of work: newspaper assignments, relationships cultivated over many years, sketches of old Moscow and later reworking as memoir. The extensive text familiar to modern readers brings together observations and versions written in different years rather than capturing the city at a single point in time. Distinguishing between the date of an event, its first publication and its revised book version reveals the origins of each part of this body of work.

In 1926, the 126-page book Moscow and Muscovites: Memoirs was published in a print run of 4,100 copies; it comprised five chapters; in 1931, the Federatsiya publishing house released the 237-page Notes of a Muscovite, the result of revisions made between 1928 and 1930. Gilyarovsky’s journalistic method remained the foundation of both books, but he broadened the scope from a handful of hard-hitting sketches to a more complex portrait of urban life. Comparing the editions published during the author’s lifetime reveals the scale of the transformation.

This perspective is especially timely in September 2026, when the Museum of Moscow Centre is running the programme “Superguide: A Local History Laboratory”. From 1 to 24 September, participants explore neighbourhoods, seek out stories and devise routes. This contemporary laboratory returns to a question that Gilyarovsky also faced: how can a detail discovered on the street be turned into a well-substantiated account of the city?

Why Moscow and Muscovites Was Not Written All at Once

The idea for the book emerged from accounts that Gilyarovsky had gathered over decades, and he began compiling the volume in the early 1920s. The Museum of Moscow’s digital project dates the start of work on the material to 1922. By then, the journalist had already passed through several stages in his career: breaking-news reporting, feuilletons, sketches of urban life and memoir.

Newspaper work taught Gilyarovsky to see events as they unfolded. The Museum of Moscow identifies his report on the fire at the Morozov factory in Orekhovo-Zuyevo in May 1882 as his first major success. In June of that year, the correspondent travelled to the scene of the Kukuevka railway disaster, where he spent two weeks helping to clear the wreckage and telegraphing news to Moskovsky Listok. These episodes reveal the professional skill at the heart of his work: reaching a place before the facts had settled into a ready-made account, observing people at work, and verifying the story through his own presence at the scene.

In 1884, Gilyarovsky joined Russkiye Vedomosti. His attention then turned to Khitrov Market and the lodging houses around it. He returned to the area for many years and knew the local intermediaries, policemen, establishment owners and people without permanent homes. A single visit would have yielded only a superficial description. Repeated visits enabled him to distinguish the roles, internal terminology and rules of a world closed to the casual observer.

The next layer consisted of retrospective sketches. From 1912 to 1914, Gilyarovsky published a column entitled Old Moscow in several newspapers, chronicling the city in the final quarter of the nineteenth century. By then, he was writing at a historical remove: familiar places remained, but the events required selection and careful composition. The story of the book Moscow and Muscovites began long before its first edition and continued beyond 1926.

What the First Edition of 1926 Was Like

The first edition was a compact volume comprising five chapters: ‘The Slums of Khitrov Market’, ‘Sukharevka’, ‘Moscow Taverns’, ‘The Pit’ and ‘Stakeouts’. Its contents are corroborated by a description of a 1926 copy and an academic study of the language of Gilyarovsky’s urban prose. This selection immediately establishes the book’s perspective: the author focuses on a market, a tavern, a secluded establishment and the professional methods of a reporter, rather than taking the reader on a sequential tour of Moscow’s landmarks.

The title of the first chapter links the 1926 edition to an earlier project. In 1887, Gilyarovsky collected fifteen stories previously scattered across various periodicals and prepared a 240-page book entitled Slum People. The Moscow Censorship Committee had the collection under review from November 1887; on 22 February 1888, the print run was confiscated and burned. The printers helped preserve a single copy by assembling it from loose sheets. The later chapter on Khitrov Market grew out of many years of work in which magazine publications, a banned book and new observations accumulated in successive layers.

The bibliography of the Gilyarovsky Centre makes it possible to reconstruct the intermediate stages of publication. The essay ‘The Slums of Khitrov Market’ appeared in the magazine Leningrad in 1924; that same year, Izvestia published ‘At the Bottom’, while 1926 saw the publication of ‘Khodynka’ in Prozhektor and ‘Sukharevka and Smolensky Market’ in Nasha Gazeta. Gilyarovsky did not simply transfer the finished text directly from the newspaper page, but continued to revisit these subjects in both periodicals and book form.

The first edition of Moscow and Muscovites formed the carefully selected core of the body of work familiar to readers today. The five chapters are united by their focus on places where Moscow’s social divisions were particularly stark. The author’s principal techniques were already at work in this selection: following in the footsteps of a witness, capturing precise details of the setting and the language of the streets, and moving from an individual case to the workings of an entire social milieu.

How Gilyarovsky Gathered Material on Location

Gilyarovsky based his reporting on prolonged first-hand presence and personal connections. He did not confine himself to official comments after an event. The correspondent ventured into hard-to-reach places, entered doss-houses, accompanied firefighters, and spoke with policemen, cab drivers, innkeepers and people who were rarely interviewed by newspapers.

The sheer scale of his work at the scene of the Kukuevka disaster is revealing: spending two weeks there meant that both his tasks and his range of sources changed over time. The initial report was followed by coverage of the clearing of the wreckage, clarification of the circumstances and new information. The telegraph demanded brevity and speed, but sustained observation yielded a wealth of material that could not be exhausted in a single dispatch. In his later essay, the accumulated details helped him reconstruct the disaster and the actions of those involved.

The Khodynka tragedy of 1896 reveals another characteristic of his work. Gilyarovsky was present at Khodynka Field and prepared a report for Russkiye Vedomosti analysing the causes of the disaster. His most powerful passages generally rested on two foundations: he had witnessed the events himself and sought to explain how a series of decisions had led to the outcome. The emotional force of his writing did not diminish his interest in the mechanics of the event.

In the chapter ‘Stakeouts’, the author brought a professional reporter’s term into literature. It referred to the readiness to wait until the right person appeared or a hidden aspect of the story came to light. For Gilyarovsky, a place served as a working vantage point for observation, while a city address acquired meaning through people and recurring actions. From these observations, he constructed a topography in which Truba, Sukharevka and Khitrovka are associated with specific people and recurring actions.

Why Personal Connections Were Part of the Method

Gilyarovsky’s extensive network of acquaintances gave him access to Moscow’s different social worlds. Writers, artists and actors visited his home; in the streets, he spoke with firefighters, caretakers and market traders. In stories about the all-knowing ‘Uncle Gilyai’, it is easy to overlook the practical value of these connections: the people he spoke to recognised the journalist and shared details they would never have disclosed to unfamiliar reporters.

The flat in Stoleshnikov Lane was also part of this information network. In the late nineteenth century, it housed the editorial office of a sports publication and ‘V. Gilyarovsky’s Advertising Bureau’. Through the bureau, private individuals and commercial and industrial firms placed notices in newspapers in the capital and the provinces. Domestic life, editorial work, publishing contacts and a constant stream of visitors all converged in a single flat.

Personal connections increased the wealth of information available, but also made verification more difficult. An acquaintance’s account might contain an accurate detail of everyday life, an exaggeration or a well-rehearsed tall tale. Gilyarovsky valued vivid oral storytelling and often preserved its theatrical energy. Readers should bear in mind that a character’s distinctive voice attests to the writer’s powers of observation, but is no substitute for documentary evidence.

In his books, the journalist combined several perspectives. He appeared as a witness, a participant in conversations, an expert in the city’s codes and an elderly narrator reconstructing the past. These roles may shift within a single chapter. A simple question helps to distinguish them: is the author describing his own actions, recounting someone else’s words or offering a general reflection decades later?

How the Language of the City Became Evidence of Its Social Milieu

Gilyarovsky recorded words together with the situations in which they were used. To him, vocabulary revealed a group’s occupation, status and internal hierarchy. A study of the language of Moscow and Muscovites cites terms whose meanings become clear only within a particular milieu: a special room in a gambling house was called a ‘mill’, the morgue in Khitrovka a ‘chapel’, and workers in the night-soil service ‘night-time Brocards’.

These words are more precise than the general description ‘old Moscow atmosphere’. The reader discovers how a group divided up its space and what name it used to denote the function of a room or a person’s occupation. Such an insider term might be ironic, cruel or based on a play on the name of a well-known company. It records a community’s shared speech habits, although its meaning must still be verified from the context.

The author conveyed pronunciation and forms of address used within particular trades, weaving slang into the narrative. This technique created the effect of hearing the street itself without turning dialogue into a verbatim transcript. Gilyarovsky selected the words, determined the order of the phrases and placed them within a scene. His literary shaping is particularly evident where a brief exchange immediately defines a character and advances the essay’s narrative.

Through a character’s speech, Gilyarovsky pinpoints their place in society. A person’s words reveal where they come from, what they do and whom they seek to impress as one of their own. Bold visits to dangerous places were only one part of his reporting method; he gathered a wealth of material simply by listening, discerning nuances of language and preserving them for the reader.

How the Disappearance of the Markets Changed the Book’s Conception

In the 1920s, Khitrovka and Sukharevka ceased to be the distinct urban worlds they once were, and Gilyarovsky chronicled their closure for Izvestia between 1923 and 1925. Two time frames emerged in his writing. The reporter witnessed the transformation taking place in his own day, while the observer of old Moscow understood which customs, occupations and forms of social interaction were disappearing from everyday life along with the markets.

It was during this period that working on the book became a way of preserving the fabric of a place that could no longer be observed directly as it once had been. The author reconstructed its routes, entrances, rooms, types of establishment and connections between people. His map preserved the social organisation of a vanishing space: where people looked for work, where they spent the night, where they struck deals and where they found an intermediary.

Descriptions of Khitrovka and Sukharevka cannot simply be applied to the modern city. A street or square may retain its name, an individual building and its layout, even though the function of the space and the composition of its population have long since changed. Gilyarovsky’s text helps us read the historical layers of the city when his account is considered alongside the date of each episode and the district’s subsequent redevelopment.

The closure of the old markets also affected the tone of the narrative. An urgent newspaper report addresses what is happening at that moment; a later memoir selects from the past the details that the author considers worth preserving. Gilyarovsky turned urban change into an opportunity to reorganise his own archive of observations. The account of the past therefore bears both the imprint of his earlier reporting and the perspective of a man writing in the 1920s.

What changed in the 1931 edition of ‘Notes of a Muscovite’

Between 1928 and 1930, Gilyarovsky revised the book and renamed it Notes of a Muscovite. The Museum of Moscow quotes his explanation: ‘Moscow defies description; it is too much for one person.’ With the new title, the author relinquished any claim to comprehensiveness and emphasised his personal perspective. What the reader encountered was a Muscovite with an immense wealth of observations, rather than the compiler of a definitive encyclopaedia of the city.

The bibliographical data provide a measure of the expansion’s outward extent. The 1926 edition ran to 126 pages, while the 1931 edition of Notes of a Muscovite had 237 pages. The books differed in format, so a simple comparison of their page counts does not accurately reflect the volume of text. Nevertheless, together with the museum’s chronology, it confirms that the work underwent substantial revision.

The five-part core of the 1926 edition focused on Khitrovka, Sukharevka, taverns, ‘The Pit’ and reporters’ ‘stakeouts’. In the new book, the panorama of the city acquired a richer web of social and cultural connections: it encompassed clubs, restaurants, and literary and artistic circles alongside markets and dosshouses. Gilyarovsky showed how Moscow’s different social strata crossed paths in newspaper offices, taverns, charitable societies, theatres and private homes.

The expansion did not result in a uniformly comprehensive encyclopaedia. Gilyarovsky retained his episodic approach, moving from person to person, from incident to address. Some scenes drew on his first-hand work as a reporter, while others came from the stories of those he spoke to and from his own memories. The title Notes of a Muscovite reflected the book’s open-ended form: the author could add to his personal archive of the city, reshape it and rearrange the episodes.

How the 1926 and 1931 editions differ in the perspective they offer readers

The 1926 edition focuses on several social milieus that Gilyarovsky had studied for a particularly long time. In Notes of a Muscovite, the author broadens his perspective and more often acts as an intermediary between the city’s different groups. The compact volume brought together the strongest thematic sketches, while the subsequent edition assembled a wider network of Moscow acquaintances and places.

The first five chapters can be read as a model of his method. ‘Khitrovka’ demonstrates his long immersion in a closed community; ‘Sukharevka’, his ability to see a market as a system of trades and exchange; ‘Taverns’, the social geography of public establishments; ‘The Pit’, his interest in a place governed by its own rules; and ‘Stakeouts’, his technique for gathering material. Together, they explain how Gilyarovsky wrote Moscow and Muscovites: first accumulating observations in different genres, then bringing them together in chapters with a clearly defined geography of action.

The 1931 book changes the scale of the relationship between individual episodes and the city. A character may lead the reader from a newspaper office to a restaurant, from a club to an exhibition, or from theatrical circles out onto the street. Gilyarovsky constructs Moscow as a network of acquaintances and recurring encounters. This structure reflects the author’s life, in which he combined the roles of correspondent, editor and publisher with active involvement in the arts.

For an accurate comparison, the chronological boundary of 1931 must be preserved. Following Gilyarovsky’s death in 1935, a new book appeared under the title “Moscow and Muscovites: Sketches of Life in Old Moscow”. Subsequent editions established the extensive canonical body of work familiar to readers from later reprints. The contents of a modern volume cannot automatically be attributed either to the slim book of 1926 or to the 1931 “Notes of a Muscovite”.

What the bibliography adds to the comparison of the two books

The official bibliography of the Gilyarovsky Centre records the publication dates of the book editions and shows how long Gilyarovsky continued to work with the same urban subjects. Half a century separates his first major success in reportage in 1882 from his 1932 article “Underground Moscow”. The resulting body of work emerged from his repeated return to stories gathered over the years.

Publications illustrating how long Gilyarovsky worked on Moscow themes

Year	Publication	What it reveals about the book’s history
1882	‘From the Scene of the Disaster on the Kursk Railway’ in ‘Moskovsky Listok’	His early working method centred on the correspondent’s presence at the scene and the rapid transmission of information to the editorial office.
1902	‘Gleb Uspensky at the Khitrov Market’ in the magazine ‘Narodnoye Blago’	Khitrovka had already become an established vantage point for observing its people and the place’s literary memory.
1908	‘War on the Slums’ in the illustrated supplement to ‘Moskovsky Listok’	The theme of the city’s outskirts and slums received extensive treatment in magazines long before the book was published in 1926.
1924	‘The Slums of the Khitrov Market’ and ‘The Lower Depths’	Material about old Moscow reappeared in periodicals during the years when the book was being prepared.
1926	‘Sukharevka and the Smolensk Market’ in ‘Nasha Gazeta’	The newspaper publication and the first book edition appeared at the same time: the boundary between current journalism and memoir remained fluid.
1932	‘Underground Moscow’ in the magazine ‘For the Socialist Reconstruction of Cities’	Even after ‘Notes of a Muscovite’ was published, the author continued to explore individual Moscow themes outside the book.

This sequence confirms the recurrence of certain themes and sustained engagement with urban material, but it does not prove that a particular newspaper paragraph was transferred verbatim into a particular chapter. Such a conclusion would require a page-by-page comparison of publications, manuscripts and proofs. A matching title or location gives the researcher a line of enquiry, not a ready-made conclusion about the text’s origins.

The bibliography also changes our understanding of the chronological distance involved. The essay on Khitrov Market may have drawn on visits to the site, newspaper assignments spanning several years and later knowledge of the district’s fate. These layers sit side by side in the book, although they originated at different times. Its journalistic authenticity rests on the accumulation of observations; this does not mean that all the details are contemporaneous.

Why consider the 1935 edition when comparing those of 1926 and 1931?

The 1935 edition provides an essential reference point, preventing the 1931 book from being mistaken for the final form of the collected work. The National Electronic Library catalogue records ‘Moscow and Muscovites: Sketches of Life in Old Moscow’, published by Soviet Writer: 391 pages and four plates of illustrations. The Library’s online project notes that this completed edition appeared only after the author’s death.

The pagination of the three books—126 pages in 1926, 237 in 1931 and 391 in 1935—confirms the existence of distinct versions of the book. Physical length is no measure of literary quality, nor does it reveal which passages were rewritten. The body of work familiar to modern readers corresponds neither to the first edition nor to the intermediate version of 1931.

The main comparison in this article therefore ends in 1931: it is at this point that the transformation of a short, five-part book into a broader memoir map becomes especially clear. The 1935 edition marks the next stage and guards against the misleading formula of ‘first and final versions’. Describing its internal structure would require a separate comparison of the contents and texts, rather than a conclusion based on page count alone.

Where testimony ends and memoir composition begins

Gilyarovsky’s testimony carries particular weight when he identifies his own actions, the location and the circumstances of his observations. Memoir composition is more evident in scenes shaped decades later into complete episodes with dialogue and a striking conclusion. Both forms are valuable, but they answer different questions.

Reporting helps reconstruct what the correspondent saw and learnt around the time of an event. Memoir reveals how the author later understood that experience and the place he assigned to it in his portrayal of Moscow. Memory preserves details selectively; editing for book publication connects disparate episodes and reinforces thematic threads. The vividness of a scene should therefore not be treated as a measure of its documentary accuracy.

A reliable reading begins with establishing the dates. An episode may have taken place in the 1880s or 1890s, first appeared in a periodical at a later date, entered the 1926 book and been revised again in 1931. Each date adds context: the city, genre and audience changed, as did the author’s distance from his subject.

The source of the knowledge expressed in a sentence can be identified from its wording. Phrases such as ‘I saw’ and ‘I came’, or a description of the author’s own route, indicate the perspective of a participant. A reference to an acquaintance’s account denotes oral testimony. A generalisation about an entire group requires external verification against reference works, municipal records, maps and other contemporary sources.

The book serves as a document of its era, filtered through the author’s perspective. This qualification does not diminish Gilyarovsky’s value. It helps us make more precise use of the strengths of his prose: his observation of everyday life, knowledge of human relationships, ear for speech and ability to depict action within a specific setting.

What the newly discovered archive adds to the discussion of Gilyarovsky’s method

Gilyarovsky’s work with drafts and press cuttings can now be studied through an archive discovered in 2024. Moscow historian Filipp Smirnov found the material in an antiquarian bookshop; the papers were stored in bundles wrapped in newspapers dating from 1959. In February 2025, the collection was transferred to the Museum of Moscow for attribution, preservation and further research.

The authors of the museum publication reported that the archive contained several hundred handwritten and printed items. These included notebooks, autograph manuscripts of essays and poems, photographs, books, more than 150 personal letters, and periodicals bearing the author’s annotations, notes and press clippings. For tracing the transition from newspaper publication to book form, the annotations on cuttings and the manuscript variants are especially valuable: they may reveal the sequence of Gilyarovsky’s work more accurately than his later recollections.

The museum’s public announcement lists the contents of the archive, but provides no grounds for declaring the origins of any particular chapter proven in advance. Such a conclusion would require comparisons of handwriting, paper, dates, the newspaper publication and the author’s revisions. For now, researchers can speak with confidence about the collection that has been found, while leaving open the question of precisely which editorial decisions it may allow them to reconstruct.

The exhibition ‘Gilyarovsky’s Line’, held at the Gilyarovsky Centre from 1 October 2025 to 31 May 2026, presented part of the new collection for the first time. The museum structured the exhibition around the house in Stoleshnikov Lane where the writer settled in 1896. Through this single address, the curators connected his private life, editorial office, business premises, circle of visitors and publication history.

How to read Gilyarovsky as a source on the history of Moscow

Five checks help distinguish direct observation from later literary construction and prevent a scene from a memoir being transferred literally into a historical account.

1. Identify the edition. Check whether you are reading the five chapters from 1926, the 1931 ‘Notes of a Muscovite’, the posthumous 1935 edition or a later compilation.
2. Distinguish between the dates. Note when the event described took place, when it first appeared in a newspaper and when it was reworked for the book.
3. Establish the author’s position. He may have witnessed the episode, taken part in it, recounted the words of an interlocutor or summarised impressions gathered over many years.
4. Verify the place name. A single address could change owners, functions and even configuration; the modern façade does not confirm the layout of the site in the late nineteenth century.
5. Check any striking detail. A number, official position, date or name requires an independent source, especially if the entire conclusion rests upon it.

By comparing the text with other documents, readers avoid two extremes. Without verification, the book is treated as a comprehensive reference work on old Moscow. With excessive scepticism, its rare testimony to gestures, voices, working habits and informal connections is lost. The text’s historical value lies in carefully comparing the author’s observations with other documents.

It is useful to consult a digital copy of the relevant edition alongside the museum’s bibliography of periodicals. This reveals recurring titles, early publications and the difference between a theme’s first appearance and its later arrangement in book form. A seemingly decorative word may prove to be the name of an occupation or a type of room; a colourful story may be a reworking of newspaper material to which the author returned several times.

How to distinguish levels of evidence when comparing editions

Each question requires a different type of source. A catalogue record documents a copy’s publication details, a table of contents records the composition of the book, periodicals reveal a theme’s early history, and a manuscript or the author’s proofs show the process of revision. A single document rarely answers all these questions at once.

Bibliographical fact

The title, publisher, year, physical extent and distinctive features of a particular copy. These details are checked against the title page and library record, with the shelf mark or permanent link retained.

Textual observation

The appearance of a chapter or a change in its position, title or wording. Two texts must be compared to make such an observation; a difference in page count is not sufficient.

Historical interpretation

An explanation of why the author returned to the episode and how changes in the city influenced the composition. Dated publications and contemporary documents support the interpretation but do not turn it into an established fact.

Catalogue records confirm three states of the book. The National Electronic Library describes the 1926 ‘Moscow and Muscovites: Memoirs’ as comprising 126 numbered pages and one unnumbered page; the 1931 ‘Notes of a Muscovite’ is listed as having 237, [2] pages and a separate page of advertisements; and the 1935 edition as having 391 pages and four leaves of illustrations. The table of contents of the 1926 book records five parts. These details establish the boundaries of the comparison but do not explain the history of each chapter.

How to verify the origins of a particular episode

For a particular episode, researchers prepare a working record containing four dates: the event itself, the earliest publication found, its inclusion in a book and the author’s final revision. Alongside these, they record the title, publication, newspaper or journal issue, page numbers and form of the byline. In Gilyarovsky’s case, the final entry is especially important because of the pseudonyms and abbreviated signatures listed in the museum’s bibliography.

The function of the passage is then compared. A newspaper text might report news, a magazine essay might develop a character, while a memoir chapter might connect an incident to a portrait of a vanished Moscow. A matching storyline confirms that the material is related. Proving that a passage was carried over requires the same sequence of details and an examination of the author’s variants. Without such a comparison, it is accurate only to say that the author returned to the theme.

An address is checked against a map and directory from the relevant year, an official position against an official list, and the date of an incident against a contemporary newspaper or administrative document. Gilyarovsky’s recollection is treated as a separate account of what the author saw and heard.

Which conclusions have differing degrees of certainty

Firmly established are the titles, years, publishers and physical extent of the three books, as well as the five parts of the 1926 edition. The Museum of Moscow’s bibliography confirms Gilyarovsky’s repeated return to Moscow themes over many years: it includes an 1882 report, essays on Khitrov Market from 1902, 1912 and 1924, a 1926 publication about Sukharevka and the 1932 ‘Underground Moscow’. The origins of each paragraph and reconstructed line of dialogue will remain an open question until an archival inventory is published and the manuscripts, press cuttings and book editions are compared page by page.

What comparing the two books published during Gilyarovsky’s lifetime reveals

A comparison of the 1926 and 1931 books reveals Gilyarovsky as the editor of his own experience. He selected five powerful essayistic episodes for the first book, then returned to the material and expanded it in ‘Notes of a Muscovite’. His urban reporting retained the specificity of place and speech, while his memoir writing brought separate observations together into a personal history of the capital.

The familiar ‘Moscow and Muscovites’ exists in several book forms: the five-part edition of 1926, the 1931 ‘Notes of a Muscovite’ and the posthumous collection of 1935. Their differences show how the journalist returned to earlier texts, changed their scale and acknowledged the limits of his own knowledge of the capital.

Gilyarovsky left a record of his many years of studying the city. His accuracy is most evident in observed actions, material details and words he heard. Historians supplement these with dates, publication variants and independent documents; the attentive reader gains a multidimensional picture without the myth of an omniscient chronicler.

After comparing the sources the ‘Uncle Gilyai and His Times’ tour can be followed as a sequence of sources—from Sukharevskaya Square, Grachevka and Truba to the Sanduny Baths, Stoleshnikov Lane and addresses associated with the theatre—distinguishing the locations of Gilyarovsky’s reporting from the topography of his later memoirs. If such a reading of the city is required Moscow tour guide, it is worth mentioning your interest in the history of Gilyarovsky’s newspaper publications and book editions in advance.

Sources

1. The Gilyarovsky Line — an online project by the Museum of Moscow
2. The Complete Bibliography of Vladimir Gilyarovsky — Museum of Moscow
3. V. A. Gilyarovsky. Moscow and Muscovites: Memoirs. Moscow, 1926 — a digital copy from the Russian State Library in the National Electronic Library
4. V. A. Gilyarovsky. Notes of a Muscovite. Moscow, 1931 — a digital copy from the Russian State Library in the National Electronic Library
5. Notes of a Muscovite, 1931 — Elektronekrasovka
6. Khitrovka: Catalogue of the Book and Illustration Exhibition — State Public Historical Library of Russia
7. A. A. Okhremenko. The Language of the City in V. A. Gilyarovsky’s Creative Practice
8. A unique archive of the writer Vladimir Gilyarovsky has been donated to the Museum of Moscow
9. The Gilyarovsky Line — an exhibition at the Museum of Moscow
10. Superguide. Local History Laboratory — Museum of Moscow
11. V. A. Gilyarovsky. Moscow and Muscovites: Sketches of Old Moscow Life. Moscow, 1935 — a digital copy from the Russian State Library in the National Electronic Library