Bulgakov described this area in Forty Fourties, ‘I dream of how I’ll fly up to Vorobyovy in the summer, to the place where Napoleon saw how the forty forties on the seven hills burned, how Moscow breathes and glitters. Mother-Moscow’. Many years later, Woland and his retinue leave Moscow from here at the end of The Master and Margarita. From 1935 to 1999, the hills were known as ‘Leninskie Hills’.

In one version of the book’s manuscripts (1934, in the chapter ‘The Quarrel on Vorobyovy Hills’), the characters’ farewell whistle was completely justified – Behemoth and Korovev repel an attack from their pursuers – agents in gas masks (one of the towers of the Novodevichy Convent is destroyed along with the embankment). ‘Armed people poured out onto the embankment from all three boats and at the command, “Quickly! Advance!” rushed to storm the hill. Their faces were monstrous, with enormous, grey, lifeless eyes and trunks instead of noses.
-“Umm… oh, they’re wearing masks”, grumbled Azazello. Their arrival annoyed Behemoth most of all. Beating his paws against his chest, he shouted how he had had enough, that he could not even sit on a horse peacefully and that all these masks were no use, that he was annoyed!’