Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818–1883) spent his early years on the estate of his mother, V.P. Lutovinova, in the village of Spasskoye-Lutovinovo, Oryol province. In these regions, memorable to the writer from childhood, the action of the story “Bezhin Meadow”, included in Turgenev’s famous collection “Notes of a Hunter” (1852), takes place.

As a child, I had the opportunity to visit the night more than once. The charm of a summer night around a fire, the interest and horror of stories about all sorts of devilry... I wanted to depict this poetry of childhood, the appearance of my friends, similar to Turgenev’s boys in the similarity that is in people who constantly live in the village, in the drawings for “Bezhin Meadow” ".A. F. Pakhomov.