Bolshoy Sampsoniyevsky Ave, 4, Saint Petersburg, Russia, 194044
In 1926, the family moved to Leningrad: Natan Zalmanovich worked in the press and censorship authorities, and since then the Strugatskys lived on K. Marx Avenue, in house No. 4, in communal apartment number 16. Alexandra Ivanovna even managed to get permission to separate, and the Strugatskys had a separate two-room apartment for several years before the war. It was here on April 15, 1933, seven years, seven months, and eighteen days after Arkady, that the younger son of the Strugatskys was born, named Boris. Natan Zalmanovich Strugatsky had just been appointed a research fellow at the State Russian Museum. Boris’s mother, Alexandra Ivanovna Litvinchyova (born in 1901), worked as a primary school teacher; the age difference between Boris and the older Strugatsky son Arkady was seven years, seven months, and eighteen days. According to relatives’ recollections, Natan Zalmanovich Strugatsky was impractical, helpless in everyday life, earned little; his wife claimed that he wanted to become a writer. His work in censorship and cultural institutions was compensated by a “book ration” (“any fiction published in Leningrad at that time—for free”), which formed a large home library occupying two cabinets. According to Arkady Strugatsky himself, it was his father who introduced him to literature, including science fiction, telling him in childhood an “endless novel created by himself based on the plots of books by Mayne Reid, Jules Verne, Fenimore Cooper.” The elder of the brothers, Arkady, attempted to write science fiction prose as early as the late 1930s (according to Boris Strugatsky, this was the story “Major Kovalyov’s Find,” copied into school notebooks). Such plots were composed orally and discussed together with a friend and neighbor in the stairwell, Igor Ashmarin. According to Mikhail Shavshin’s assessment, Ashmarin’s personality apparently had a great influence on the life of the elder brother, as he served as a prototype for characters in many literary works. Sometimes the younger brother Boris was also admitted to the “literary feast.” During his school years, Arkady showed great abilities and planned to become an astronomer, building homemade telescopes and receiving an assignment at the House of Entertaining Science to process statistics on sunspots.
An elite residential complex "Montblanc" was built on the site of the house and neighboring houses.
Sources:
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strugatsky,_Boris_Natanovich
https://ru.ruwiki.ru/wiki/Strugatsky,_Arkady_Natanovich
https://www.citywalls.ru/house9917.html
