The area was where the dachas of Lenin, Stalin were located, as well as the summer residences of all the subsequent general secretaries, from Nikita Khrushchev to Mikhail Gorbachev. Their sidekicks also settled here (Anastas Mikoyan, Felix Dzerzhinsky, Nikolai Yezhov) – side-by-side with famous scientists, artists and writers (Mstislav Rostropovich, Andrei Sakharov, Dmitry Shostakovich), and foreign diplomats. And they all lived on a small stretch of highway that is only 35 kilometers long. During the Soviet period, General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev may have gone for a walk and encountered Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who was being hunted by the KGB and hiding out at Mstislav Rostropovich's dacha. "Now President Vladimir Putin should he wish to venture beyond the wall of his residence and take a walk in the park, could well bump into the wife of Khodorkovsky, the mutinous oligarch that he has left to rot in jail".