“The estate is at the heart of all Russian culture. Abstract: Culture of the Russian noble estate

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federal state educational institution higher professional education

"Tyumen State Academy of Culture and Arts"

Institute of Service and Social and Cultural Technologies

Department of Cultural Studies

Test

On the ecology of culture

Topic: Culture of the Russian estate

Tyumen 2010

Culture of the Russian estate

This is where culture comes into play. Many philosophers see its purpose in the organization of social chaos. To do this, society develops some average ideals and values, which constitute its ideology. However, a particular person most often does not correspond to average social ideals. And a person perceives the values ​​imposed on him by society as a restriction of his freedom. So gradually culture, remaining a powerful means of regulating relations in society, becomes a mechanism for suppressing the individual.

Thus, the life of an individual person proceeds in two sharply demarcated plans. Social activity carried out during the so-called working hours. It is opposed (sometimes very sharply) by individual time, free time. In the psychological world of the individual, this difference is fixed in precise terms: I need and I want. For a person, the work that needs to be done is in a completely different world than the one that one wants to do. And "I need time", in contrast to "I want time", is filled with a completely different meaning.

Free time (time I want) cannot be spent in the same place where you usually work. Here, everything should be different, desired, not due. Other behavior is expressed in emphatically solemn, or emphatically free gestures, in special jokes. Other behavior expresses itself in gifts and joint meals, which is especially characteristic of Rus'. So everything - a special place, a special time, special objects and other behavior serve to create an ideal reality that is not like everyday life, the one that we only dream of. A reality that embodies our idea of ​​an ideal existence, of a bygone "golden age".

In the world of noble culture with its rigid hierarchy, this was felt especially sharply. That's why Catherine II said that "living in society does not mean doing nothing." This stage, extremely theatrical life was a real daily social work. The nobles served the "Sovereign and Fatherland" not only in departments, but also at court festivities and balls. Festive court life was the same "must" for a nobleman as serving in the sovereign's troops.

And the "ideal reality" was embodied for the Russian nobles of the 18th - 19th centuries by their family estates. Therefore, the main task of any, albeit "poor", manor construction is to create an ideal world, with its own rituals, norms of behavior, type of management and special pastime.

And the estate world was created very carefully and in detail. In a good homestead, nothing should be thought out. Everything is significant, everything is an allegory, everything is "read" by those initiated into the manor sacrament. Yellow of the manor house showed the wealth of the owner, being perceived as the equivalent of gold. The roof was supported by white (symbol of light) columns. The gray color of the outbuildings is a remoteness from active life. And red in unplastered outbuildings is, on the contrary, the color of life and activity. And all this was drowned in the greenery of gardens and parks - a symbol of hope. Swamps, cemeteries, ravines, hills - everything was slightly corrected, corrected and called Nezvanki, Shelters, Joy, becoming significant in the estate symbolism. Naturally, this ideal world was necessarily, although often purely symbolic, fenced off from the outside world with walls, bars, towers, artificial ditches - ravines and ponds.

Nature itself is the ideal garden of God, like garden of paradise. Every tree, every plant means something in the overall harmony. White birch trunks, reminiscent of white column trunks, serve as a stable image of the homeland. Linden trees in the driveways during the spring flowering hinted at the heavenly ether with their fragrance. Acacia was planted as a symbol of the immortality of the soul. For the oak, perceived as strength, eternity, virtue, special clearings were arranged. Ivy, as a sign of immortality, wrapped around the trees in the park. And the reeds near the water symbolized solitude. Even the grass was seen as mortal flesh, withering and resurrecting. It is characteristic that aspen, as a "cursed tree", is practically not found in noble estates.

So gradually the ideal world acquired reality in the estate. This ideality was akin to a theater, where ceremonial scenes lined up on the stage, and behind the scenes their own daily life flows. Therefore, the estate construction was carefully hidden from prying eyes. Construction sites were surrounded by a veil of secrecy. High fences were erected around them, access roads and bridges were dismantled, technical documents were destroyed. The estate was supposed to appear as if created overnight, by magic. The scenery was created in the theater of noble life. This is how Petersburg arose - overnight, on a deserted Finnish swamp. In an instant, a new stone Russia appeared to astonished Europe.

Each architectural structure imposes its own rhythm of life on its inhabitants. City gates open and close at certain time starting and ending city day. In the imperial palace, time flows differently than in a business office. So the noble estate formed its own rhythm of life. For about two centuries, the life of a nobleman began in the estate, flowed in it, and often ended here. The life cycle was supplemented by the daily one. Days in the estate were clearly divided not only temporarily, but also spatially. "The Dawn Twilight of the Lobby" continued with "Men's Study Early Morning", "Living Room Noon", "Theatre Night", and so on, all the way to "Deep Bedroom Evening".

Like the theatrical existence, life in the estate was clearly divided into front and everyday life. The men's study was the intellectual and economic center of the estate's everyday life. However, they furnished it almost always very modestly. "The study, placed next to the sideboard (buffet room), was inferior to him in size and, despite its seclusion, seemed still too spacious for the owner's scientific studies and the repository of his books," wrote F. F. Vigel. Throughout XVIII century When intellectual and moral work became the duty of every nobleman, the owner's office belonged to almost the most unofficial rooms of the estate. Here everything was designed for solitary work.

Accordingly, the office was furnished. The "Golan" or "English" cabinet was considered fashionable. Almost all of its furnishings were ascetic oak furniture, with very discreet upholstery, and a modest table clock. The desks didn't complain. Preference was given to secretaries, desks, bureaus.

The master's study, unlike the mistress's quarters, was almost undecorated and rather modestly decorated. Only an exquisite decanter and a glass for "morning consumption" of cherry or anise were considered indispensable (it was believed that this contributes to the prevention of "angina pectoris" and "stroke" - the most fashionable diseases of the 18th - early 19th centuries) and a smoking pipe. Smoking at the turn of the century became a whole symbolic ritual. “In our time,” E.P. Yankova recalls at the end of the 18th century, “rare people didn’t sniff, but they considered smoking very reprehensible, and women didn’t even hear of it; and men smoked in their offices or in the air, and if the ladies are around, then they always ask first: “let me.” In the living room and in the hall, no one ever smoked even without guests in his family, so that, God forbid, somehow this smell would not remain and that the furniture would not stink .

Each time has its own special habits and concepts.

Smoking began to spread in a noticeable way after 1812, and especially in the 1820s: they began to bring cigars, which we had no idea about, and the first ones that were brought to us were shown as a curiosity.

For smoking in the office, several still lifes on the theme of Vanitas (the transience of life) were specially placed. The fact is that for a whole century, "eating smoke" was associated in the mind of a nobleman with reflections on the topics of "vanity of vanities" and "life is smoke." This evangelical theme was especially popular in Russia. Children blew short-lived soap bubbles, adults blew ephemeral smoke from pipes and flew on fragile balloons- and all this was perceived at the turn of the century as symbols of the extreme fragility of existence.

It was here, in the office of the owner of the estate, that managers reported, letters and orders were written, dues were calculated, neighbors were simply accepted, projects of estate architects were discussed. Today, researchers often come to a standstill when discussing the authorship of certain estates. Who was their true creator? The architect who created the original design? The owner of the estate, who almost always remade it in his own way? A contractor who reckoned more with his skill than with the tastes of the architect and owner?

Since the men's office is designed for work, books played the main role in its interior. Some of the books were necessary for successful farming. The landlords did not disdain to carefully study the architectural works of Vignola or Palladio, especially at the beginning of new estate construction. Indeed, along with the French language, architecture was supposed to be known to every educated nobleman. Calendars containing advice for all occasions are an indispensable attribute of such offices. What was not here? "A list of the Order granted by Her Imperial Majesty...", "A sure way to breed Abolene dogs in non-hot regions", "Recipe for the fastest extinguishing of quicklime", "The simplest means of dyeing linden into mahogany and ebony", "About the most elegant and inefficient way of English to break parks", "about a cheap and true method of treating scrofula", "about making cherry early liquor" and much more.

In quiet estate offices, a fashion for reading was formed. "In the villages, who loved reading and who could only start up a small but complete library. There were some books that seemed to be considered necessary for these libraries and were in each. They were re-read several times by the whole family. The choice was not bad and quite thorough. For example , in every village library there were certainly already: Telemachus, Gilblaz, Don Quixote, Robinson Cruz, Ancient Vifliofika Novikov, Acts of Peter the Great with additions, History of wanderings in general La Harpe, World Traveler of Abbot de la Port and Marquis G., translation Iv. Perf. Yelagin, a clever and moral novel, but now ridiculed. Lomonosov, Sumarokov, Kheraskov were invariably among those who loved poetry. After that, the works of Mr. Voltaire began to be added to these books; and novels and stories by him; and The New Heloise The novels of August La Fontaine, Madame Genlis, and Kotzebue came into great fashion among us at the beginning of this century, but no one enjoyed such fame as Madame Radcliffe. Terrible and sensitive - these were, finally, the two kinds of reading most to the taste of the public. Reading of this kind finally replaced the old books. " So wrote M. A. Dmitriev in the middle of the 19th century.

Several generations of young nobles were brought up on such literature. From here, from the men's office of the estate, Russian enlightenment spread. Here the projects of the first Lancaster schools in Russia, new crop rotation systems, and women's education were drawn up. Here the capitalist economic system gradually matured. No wonder N.V. Gogol, describing in " Dead souls“The village of the “enlightened” Colonel Koshkarev, sarcastically remarks: “The whole village was scattered: buildings, restructuring, heaps of lime, bricks and logs along all the streets. Some houses were built, like offices. On one was written in gold letters: "Depot of agricultural implements"; on the other: "Main Counting Expedition"; "Committee of Rural Affairs"; "School of normal education of the villagers". In a word, the devil knows what was not.

In the same rooms, curious natural scientists conducted pneumatic, electrical, and biological experiments. Astronomical observations were made from here. Therefore, sometimes the office was literally lined with telescopes, terrestrial and celestial globes, sundials and astrolabes.

Complementing the rather modest, almost ascetic atmosphere of the men's office were two or three portraits of the owner's parents and children, a small picture with a battle or a seascape.

If the men's study was the private center of the estate, then the living room or hall served as its front face. Such a division into home and guest, everyday and festive was characteristic of the entire noble era. One of the consequences of such a division of the entire life of the nobility was the differentiation of manor interiors into "ceremonial apartments" and "rooms for the family." In wealthy estates, the living room and hall served different purposes, in most houses they are perfectly combined.

Contemporaries certainly perceived the hall or living room as a front door, and therefore officially - a cold apartment. "The hall, large, empty and cold, with two or three windows to the street and four to the courtyard, with rows of chairs along the walls, with lamps on high legs and candelabra in the corners, with a large piano against the wall; dances, ceremonial dinners and a place for playing "cards were her destination. Then the living room, also with three windows, with the same sofa and a round table in the back and a large mirror above the sofa. On the sides of the sofa are armchairs, chaise longue tables, and between the windows there are tables with narrow wall-length mirrors... During the years of our childhood, fantasies were considered unlawful and all living rooms were in the same way, "recalls P. A. Kropotkin.

Almost all memoirists recall this emptiness and coldness of the living rooms, where "always all the furniture was covered with covers." At first, the coldness of these halls was literal. Why heat them every day? And secondly, architecturally, it was not homely warmth that stood out here, but splendor. Often the hall was made double-height. The windows on one side of the hall overlooked the front yard - courdoner, and on the other - on the "main clearing" (the so-called central alley of the park). Views from large windows were carefully considered when designing the estate. The ever-changing nature organically entered the design of the front hall.

Description of work

Man is an extremely disorganized and chaotic being. In himself, in time, perhaps, he will figure it out. He will establish his values ​​and ideals, and learn to build actions in accordance with them. But there are many people and everyone is trying to establish their values ​​in the human community, to establish their ideals as the most important for all. If this is allowed, social chaos begins.

The time of the maximum power of the Russian feudal class was also the time of the heyday of the suburban noble estate. The "Charter on the Rights and Benefits of the Noble Russian Nobility" of 1785 repeated, summarized and finally legally consolidated its privileged position. The nobleman was declared free from corporal punishment and all types of taxes, it was now possible to deprive him of honor and title only by court and with the highest confirmation. The right of the nobility to freedom from compulsory public service, priority ownership of land and peasants was confirmed. The estate with subsoil and water, as well as forests “growing in noble dachas”, remained hereditary property that did not go out of line even in the event of serious crimes of the owner. The nobility was allowed to participate in production and trade. It was the representatives of the ruling class who received an education corresponding to the European level of enlightenment.

These circumstances gave a powerful impetus to the development of the estate culture and determined the characteristic features of the "classical" stage in its history, which falls on the last decades of the 18th - the first third of the 19th century. The era of the reign of Catherine II became the beginning of the rapid monumental construction of a suburban ensemble, when complexes appeared on estates where there had not even been a master's house before. The Empress in one of her letters noted the "mania of construction" that seized her subjects. recent decades 18th century Andrei Timofeevich Bolotov recalled: “... to tell the truth, our neighborhood was then so empty that none of the good and wealthy neighbors were close to us. The times then were not the same as the present; such a great number of noble houses, with their owners everywhere living in them, as now, were nowhere to be found: all the nobility were then in military service, and only elderly old people lived in the villages, unable to serve anymore or due to illness and decrepitude, according to left to some special occasion ... ". Already at the end of the century, estates appeared throughout the Russian Empire, expanding its borders, in those areas where landownership had long existed, and in those where Catherine's nobles received rich estates, for example, in Ukraine and in the Crimea. Particularly intensive manor construction unfolded in the area with the traditionally strong positions of the Russian feudal class, the center of which was Moscow. In "Journey from Moscow to St. Petersburg" A.S. Pushkin wrote: “Once in Moscow there was a wealthy, non-serving boyars, nobles who left the court, independent people ... once Moscow was a gathering place for the entire Russian nobility, which from all provinces gathered in it for the winter. Brilliant young guards flew there from St. Petersburg ... ". And in the summer, Moscow was empty: "... guests came to the dacha."

However, the creation of a network of manor ensembles cannot be considered a process typical of the entire nobility. The elite of the estate took advantage of the advantages of the dominant position in the first place. Noble estate culture is a unique phenomenon in all respects. It is enough to give simple calculations based on the data of the works of A. Romanovich-Slavatinsky, V.I. Semevsky, V.M. Kabuzana, S.M. Troitsky. The construction of even a manor ensemble with a manor house, a church, a landscape park and picturesque dams, which was not particularly luxurious, required the work of at least 200 people. By the beginning of the XIX century. only 2–3% of the 100,000-strong Russian nobility could afford country estates that differed from the peasant hut and demonstrated the elite life of the landowner. It was these 2-3 thousand "family nests" that created the phenomenon of estate culture, forever merging their classical outlines with the Russian landscape.

The genre features of the manor culture of the period of its heyday were determined by the suburban residences of the noble nobility, such as Kuskovo and Ostankino Sheremetevs, Arkhangelsk Yusupovs, Baturin Razumovskys, Nadezhdino Kurakins, Uman of the Ukrainian magnate Pototsky. The luxury of such ensembles was provided by powerful farms using the latest agricultural achievements. Country palaces were created by the best architects and park builders: N.A. Lvov, V.I. Bazhenov, I.E. Starov, M.F. Kazakov, D.I. Gilardi, K.I. Blank, they employed whole artels of decorators, painters, serf masters and civilian artisans. The estate complexes of the powerful elite had a practically professional theater, multi-volume libraries, the richest collections and collections of paintings. So, the life of Otrada near Moscow, one of the famous Orlovs, Count Vladimir Grigorievich, was served by more than two hundred people, among them - lackeys, coachmen, postilions, gardeners, artists, musicians, all kinds of secretaries and clerks. There was a home-grown poet and his own astronomer, who informed the count about the movement of stars and planets, the dignitary owner could not do without the estate "theologian", whose role was played by a learned valet. For such a large "servants" in 1806 and 1808. were specially drawn up “States and regulations for the courtyard people of His Excellency Gr. Vladimir Grigoryevich Orlov, volunteers) and churchmen who are at the Moscow and Otradnensky houses.

By the 20s. 19th century the active construction of representative country residences is gradually declining, which was associated both with the impoverishment of funds even among the highest nobility, and with the growing trend towards the intimacy of local life. At this time, the estates were more often rebuilt than rebuilt. Kuzminki, formerly called Blachernae, in the 20–30s. are also being reconstructed. The Ural factories of the owners of the estate of the princes Golitsyns made it possible to give shine to this suburban area, the luxury of which is evidenced by a series of lithographed views made in the first third of the century.

Country residences of dignitaries became an object of imitation for many landlords with more modest means, who also sought to improve their estates, build a manor's house and surround it with services, a park or a garden. The estate ambition of a nobleman, who owns 100 souls or less, did not allow him, however, to be content with the life of a single palace. “Four Doric columns glued to the hut with a pediment triangle above them” became a sign of belonging to the “noble caste”. But labyrinths of sticks, twigs and garden plants, a rough peasant interpretation of classical architecture, a simplified retelling of poorly understood artistic ideas did not yet create the atmosphere of the estate life of the “golden age” of the Russian nobility.

A suburban ensemble cannot be mechanically represented by a "property inventory" based on even the most reliable inventories. For example, the Menshikovs' estate Cheryomushki is not just a "suburban dacha, called with. Znamenskoye, with lands, forests, stone and wooden buildings, with furniture, with utensils, agricultural tools and machines of all ranks, with fire, blacksmith and carpentry tools and with horse harness ... ". Each estate had its own fate and its own way of life, which could not be replicated by naive imitation. The history of suburban ensembles was closely intertwined with the biographies of their owners, the personality of the person who created the complex, the way of the family that inspired the walls of the manor house.

Noble estate of the end of the 18th – the first third of the 19th century. - this is a special lifestyle, its own unique attitude, it is also a country entertainment residence, a miniature prototype of the royal court, a multifunctional, huge farm, a theater, a palace, a museum, a monumental ensemble of a dignitary; this is also a rural cultural salon, a shelter for a poet, scientist, philosopher, a unique garden of an agronomist-innovator, a circle of political like-minded people; it is also a patriarchal family hearth.

The many-sided specifics of the estate life could manifest itself in one ensemble, which, due to its versatility, appeared at the same time as a “family nest”, a luxurious residence of an aristocrat and an office of an enlightened nobleman. During the period under consideration, a "philosophy of rural life" gradually took shape, interfering with idleness, where there was a place for luxurious fantasies, ritualized tradition and poetic inspiration.

“It is clear that, with a very high degree of conventionality, it is possible to combine into one historical and cultural theme the palace country residences of large Russian nobles, representatives of the richest landowner families, on the one hand, and modest rural shelters of the small estate nobility, on the other,” writes G.Yu rightly . Sternin. Indeed, the flourishing of the manor culture of the late 18th-first third of the 19th century. was due to the activities of these "major Russian nobles, representatives of the richest landowner families", in other words, the history of the noble elite, or rather, elites, distinguished by a complex structure and the fragility of the power of individual clans.

The complex, interrelated world of the estate of the noble elite of the period under review arose as a product of the following processes of development of the privileged class of Russia:

- the formation of a hierarchy of the top of the nobility, including several intersecting elites: the power elite, i.e. major officials close to the court; the economic elite, which included wealthy landowners; enlightened elite, the first generations of the Russian noble intelligentsia and, finally, the elite of the past, fading families with a proud ancestral memory of former power. The composition of the noble nobility was unstable, for two or three generations they rose to the throne and individual families rapidly grew rich, then the clan became smaller, poorer, faded, and new dignitaries and magnates came in its place. The power of the political elite was challenged by the cultural and sometimes economic elite, which often did not have access to the throne;

- the emergence of a layer of enlightened nobility, who assimilated elements of Western European culture, which, falling into the Russian social context, often acquired a different meaning and function. The educated elite became the social base of the first generations of the Russian intelligentsia, who were opposed both to the throne and to the secular masses;

- the contradictory, never completed process of the formation of the class culture of the nobility (embodied, in particular, in the awareness of the value of ancestral memory, traditions, relics) was complicated by the formation of a self-determining “personality of the new European time among the educated elite of a socio-psychological type.

Intensive settlement of the territory of the estate, the construction of the manor house and the laying out of the park were associated with the departure of the owner from public service. So, Voronovo begins to rebuild only after his marriage and dismissal from the affairs of the President of the Votchinnaya Collegium I.I. Vorontsov. The next heyday of the estate is associated with the resignation of its other owner, F.V. Rostopchina. Link P.A. Katenina was only the beginning of his voluntary seclusion in the Kolotilovo estate of the Kostroma province, where the poet rebuilt his house. Communications of those years, spring and autumn thaws excluded the combination of rural freedom and public service, where long absences were not allowed. The official, who lived in the estate for months, was forgotten, he was bypassed, he lost patrons and could not count on a successful career. Cultivation of greenhouses and cultivation of exotic flowers in Uzsky near Moscow by infantry general P.A. Tolstoy, commander of the Fifth Infantry Corps stationed in Moscow and its environs, can be considered more a fortunate coincidence than the norm.

The government prudently tried not to appoint nobles to serve near their family estates, and thus put the official before a choice: either "enjoying one's property" or a career. Doctor of Philosophy, former adviser to the Gatchina city government under Paul I A.M. Bakunin was offered the position of trustee of Kazan University, but he preferred the family hearth in Premukhin and agreed only to the position of trustee of the Tver Gymnasium. In the period under review, such a characteristic of social status was possible: "a retired lieutenant captain, a landowner of the Oryol province."

The departure from court life was often accompanied by a move to the aristocratic unemployed Moscow, which was one of the reasons for such a brilliant flourishing of the famous “Moscow region”. From 1807 to 1810 Prince B.V. Golitsyn, having taken a temporary resignation, lives in Moscow and Vyazemy. N.S. Mentikov, also leaving the service with the rank of colonel of the guard, settled in Moscow and for several decades developed and improved the economy in Cheryomushki.

Refusal, even if temporary, from a career followed "failure in service", loss of favor, disgrace or a desire to leave the world, i.e. hidden or obvious, internally motivated or situational conflict with the bureaucratic environment. Willingly or involuntarily, the estate became a refuge, a psychological niche, a kind of rear that needed to be strengthened. Any, even small, failure in the official field caused a saving thought of fleeing to the estate. The ideal of a quiet, calm country life, which relieved the tedious vanity of the big world, was firmly entrenched in the mind of a nobleman, supporting his often illusory hope for the ever-existing possibility of leaving.

So, the event that immediately preceded the creation of the estate complex, the revival of the previously empty estate, was the resignation of the owner, his transformation, albeit, as a rule, temporary, from an official into a landowner or even rather a patrimony. It was possible to manage the household quite successfully and collect dues through the manager and clerk. Nobles in some of their scattered villages in various provinces have never been at all. But it turned out to be much more difficult to carry out estate construction in absentia, to create a park through correspondence and to think over the interiors of the manor house, and it was simply pointless to collect collections and organize an orchestra. Life in the estate without a master faded instantly. Stepan Borisovich Kurakin began rebuilding his famous Stepanovskoye-Volosovo after his retirement in 1789 with the rank of major general. Death overtakes the owner in 1805, and the unfinished complex passes to his brother Alexander Borisovich, ambassador to the Vienna, and then to the French court. The constant absences of the owner of the estate become the reason for the extremely protracted construction. The estate acquired its final form only under Alexei Borisovich, who sincerely loved Stepanovskoye and even captured its views in oil paintings.

Leaving the service was often temporary. A certain flexibility of the social possibilities of the ruling class allowed the owner of the estate to leave the now rebuilt suburban ensemble and again find himself in a bureaucratic environment.

Moving to the estate, leaving the service, moving away from city life inevitably led to a decrease in the significance of official status and secular prestige in the mind of a nobleman. Rural freedom weakened the regulation of the bureaucratic world and the conventions of custom. The estate became a place for home theater, amateurish literary experiments, turning into a world of free eclecticism. In original manor clubs, card parties were held, billiards were played, and music was played. The ritual of manor life was the annual hunt. Homestead is a way of life, a special way of life, a style of behavior. A.A. Fet wrote: “What is a Russian noble estate from the point of view of moral and aesthetic?” “This is a “house” and a “garden” arranged in the bosom of nature, when the human is one with the “natural” in the deepest organic flowering and renewal, and the natural does not shy away from ennobling cultural cultivation by man, when the poetry of native nature develops the soul hand in hand with the beauty of graceful arts, and under the roof of the manor house, the special music of domestic life does not dry out, living in the change of labor activity and idle fun, joyful love and pure contemplation.

Sukhanov's owner, Prince P.M. Volkonsky, a brilliant general, a participant in the Patriotic War of 1812, greatly appreciated the quiet days spent in his suburban area. In June 1824 he wrote to Count A.A. Zakrevsky: “I live just like in paradise, I’m not in a hurry, I’m not responsible, I do what I want, I do various housework, in the garden all day, I finish the road to the park.”

The way of village life of a nobleman was not formed spontaneously. The owner of the estate, taking advantage of the relative freedom and remoteness from officialdom, created his own style and social circle, his own routine of life, his own sphere of habitation, his own small unique world. At a distance of only 60 versts from Moscow, N.I. Novikov spent more than 20 years in his ancestral Tikhvin. Here he lived “with three children, with a faithful friend, with the wife of a deceased friend and with a short friend Lekar”, “became a gardener”, exercised “according to his favorite matter”, received “regularly on his birthday and name day according to the translated manuscript” from S. AND. Gamaleya and stayed up past midnight for a friendly conversation.

The country house turned into a social periphery of the noble empire. It's social. The estates were located not far from the capitals or large cities; the architecture of the ensemble cannot be called provincial in any way. The estate became a periphery in the sense of a certain independence and remoteness from the epicenter of the domination of bureaucratic values ​​and therefore a place where other orientations and aspirations were formed. A private, say, an unofficial person retired to his estate: either a landowner who started an abundant economy, or a free poet, or a failed dignitary. The charm of manor culture was created not by an occasional prosperous nobleman, but by a nobleman who moved away from the official hierarchy and lived in the village all the time or most of the year, returning to the city only after the first snow.

The efforts of these luxurious nobles, retired officials and exiled writers, aimed at creating the estate, were motivated by various aspirations. The style of life in the estates was determined by the preferences of their owners. Amusement country ensembles have become a great place for a prestigious demonstration of wealth and the implementation of expensive undertakings. In such estates, hunting gave way to balls, dinners, walks in the park were followed by fireworks, boat rides, and card evenings. “In the summer, one holiday, as a rule, passed into another,” writes B.C. Turchin, - the owners and guests moved from one estate to another; and so on for months." For example, in Marfino, when the Saltykovs owned the estate, the congress of guests from Moscow reached two hundred people. The enlightened nobleman, however, could not confine himself to crowded amusements. Permanent theaters and orchestras appeared in the estates. At the same time, high aesthetics was almost never sacrificed for practicality.

The residences of dignitaries became a visual embodiment of the power not only of the owner, but also of the very power to which he was involved. Monumental ceremonial ensembles appear at this time in the regions of Poland, Belarus, Crimea, and Ukraine annexed to Russia. So, the Gomel estate of the Rumyantsevs in 1834 was bought out by the royal governor in Poland, Prince I.F. Paskevich. He carried out the reconstruction of the palace and created a front building designed to accommodate military trophies and the highest gifts. As researcher V.F. Morozov, in the guise of Paskevich's house, the reference to the monument of Polish classicism - the court of Stanislav-August is obvious, than the architect and the customer wanted to show the identity of the position of the royal governor and the Polish king.

The estates of the landowners could also become the sphere of their agricultural hobbies. Figures of the "legalized" in 1820 Imperial Moscow Society of Agriculture S.I. Gagarin in Yasenevo, P.A. Tolstoy in Uzsky, N.S. Menshikov in Cheryomushki, A.I. Gerard in Bolshoi Golubino built rich greenhouses and greenhouses, bred unique plants. So on the Russian plains Voltaire's formula was embodied: "everyone must cultivate his own garden."

The suburban noble estate was a place not only for theatrical life, the owner's elegant undertakings and the representation of his official status. In his fiefdom, a retired feudal lord could devote his measured days to scientific pursuits. An office in nature, where thought is free from vain worries, was presented by researcher S.S. Katkov house of the poet. P.A. Katenin in the Kostroma province. The Kolotilovo estate included a minimum number of services, it is difficult to imagine life in it big family: it was intended for the solitary occupation of the owner and infrequent receptions of friends. In the suburban Marfino N.P. Panin built almost an alchemist's laboratory for the study of the occult sciences and magnetism. And the former director of the Academy of Sciences, the already mentioned Count V.G. Orlov had physical and geological offices in his Otrada, carefully kept the library, archive and some personal belongings of M.V. Lomonosov, acquired from the scientist's widow by brother G.G. Orlov.

The free world of a rural estate, inspired by the close proximity of nature, turned into an Arcadia of poets, a literary salon, a circle of political like-minded people. Meetings of the "Union of Salvation" and "Union of Welfare" took place in the Premukhin's house of the Bakunins, Schelling, Kant, Hegel were read, the piano sounded, members of the circle N.V. Stankevich. The suburban cultural centers of the second capital were Bolshie Vyazemy of the Golitsyns, Ostafyevo Vyazemskys and many others near Moscow.

The noble estate is, of course, the closed world of the family, like Premukhin A.M. Bakunin, where ten children grew up. It is no coincidence that A.T. Bolotov wrote: “I will tell you how, upon my arrival from the service in retirement, I became stricter in my small house, learned how to manage and got used to rural economy, ... how I got to know my neighbors ... then I got married, made children, built a new house , started the gardens; became an economic, historical and philosophical writer ... what fun ... ". The "family nest" was both the most important sphere of socialization of the nobleman's personality, and a sacred place of family memory, captured in family portraits, tombs, and obelisks.

Behind the many-sided and complex estate world was an equally complex interweaving of motives and views of its creator. The estate was an expression of the owner's personality, a visual realization of his values ​​and tastes. The nobleman financed and organized the construction, looked for an architect, acted as both the customer and the implementer of the project; life, it was he who determined the whole way of life on the estate. “If I fail to use this house and live in it,” wrote A.B. Kurakin, - let him remain here as a lasting decoration and a monument to me.

L.A. Perfilyeva, in her article about the palace in Ostafyevo, explores in detail the question of the “authorship” of A.I. Vyazemsky, the father of the poet, and his participation in the creation of the project of the manor house, which was mainly built in five years, from 1802 to 1807, the year of the death of the prince. For certain types of work, the owner of Ostafyevo entered into contracts with contractors. His intervention in the activities of a "professional architect" and his contribution to the overall process of creating a palace was the intervention of a "customer" - an erudite, active, influencing the will of the executing architect. And this influence should have been strong enough for both the prince himself and his descendants to consider the project of the palace “his own”.

Plans and drawings of the project of the manor house, signed by the customer after the necessary notes and corrections, were often carefully kept in the archives of the estate or family collections. The walls in the office and halls were decorated with picturesque images of the old manor house.

The owner of the ensemble was not bound either by architectural canons or by the more tangible pressure of depersonalizing officialdom in the city. In his native "fatherland" he did not even think of hiding his individual beginning. So, the family Borisoglebskoye of the same Kurakins, under Prince Alexander Borisovich, is renamed Nadezhdino, each house, each path is given a name indicated on the board, paths dedicated to the brothers Stepan and Alexei appear. The images of the prince's friends and affections, the events of his complex emotional life literally splash out onto the alleys of the park. “These names evoke in me,” wrote Kurakin, “pleasant and interesting memories: they denote the nature of feelings and the names of people who occupy my heart. They will often make me sad, but it will always be accompanied by peace of mind... ". “Through a cloud of tears” the guests of Nadezhdino read the names of the paths dedicated to them.

Typical compositions of country houses, the style of an English or French park, the characteristic interiors of a living room and an office became only an excuse for the nobleman's imagination, were processed and transformed by the owner in accordance with his ideas about the family way of life and life values. Within the framework of the prevailing architectural, construction, artistic, landscape gardening traditions, manor complexes arose, each of which had its own unique identity. The unique synthesis of nature, architecture, sculpture, painting, achieved in a noble estate, had to have one author, and it was the owner. Apparently, it was important for the nobleman not only to inherit the manor's house and park, but to embody his passions, to breathe his living principle into the architecture of the ensemble. From generation to generation, each representative of the noble Sheremetev family rebuilt their own estate, with their own way of life and style. Companion of Peter I, Field Marshal B.P. Sheremetev builds Meshcherinovo in the spirit of Dutch architecture, his son Pyotr Borisovich embodies the Elizabethan rococo and its transition to classicism in Kuskovo, Nikolai Petrovich at the end of the 18th century. leaves the creation of his father and gives his whole fate to the unique theater in the classical Ostankino, and now again the luxurious palace is abandoned by his heirs, and along the Peterhof road Dmitry Nikolaevich finishes the Ulyanka dacha, faithful to the traditions of the family already at the beginning of our century S.D. Sheremetev arranges his Mikhailovskoye.

The change of owners of one estate complex could sometimes lead to a bizarre combination in the ensemble of various architectural styles, reflecting free aesthetic preferences and tastes. So, Bykovo near Moscow at the end of the 18th century belonged to M.M. Izmailov, head of the Expedition of the Kremlin structure, where V.I. Bazhenov and his assistant M.F. Kazakov. It is not surprising that the landscape park of the country residence of the Catherine nobleman was decorated with the creations of V.I. Bazhenov. A gazebo on one of the islands of a vast pond has survived to this day. Several decades will pass, and the cozy Bykovo will go to the Vorontsov-Dashkovs. New owners in the middle of the XIX century. they will rebuild the manor house inherited from the former owners into a richly decorated building, reminiscent of Renaissance palaces.

The whole family of the owner, trusted persons managing the estate, and regular guests joined the creation of the estate ensemble. In this “domestic creativity”, it was important not only to discuss the project together, but also to settle in the master's house in the first winter season, and then “finish it”. This is how the ideal world of the estate arose, the high semiotic saturation of its space was determined, a special coordinate system in which each element, in interconnection with others, carried its semantic load. “Garden place,” wrote A.T. Bolotov, - you can consider it a canvas on which the gardener paints his picture.

The manor culture was generated by the personality of a nobleman, striving to build his ideal world, to realize his "I", to equip the land at his own discretion, and finally, to create a special microclimate, surrounding himself with close people.

Undoubtedly, the nobleman's estate, where the manor's house surrounded by a park, was an economic organism, which included arable land, hayfields, forests, wastelands, where brick factories were created, cheese-making, linen, cloth production was organized, mills and trading piers, sawmills and dams were built. Retired officials and the military, having become landowners, started exemplary farms. The owners of large estates could afford the use of agricultural innovations, unique greenhouses and greenhouses, stud farms, numbering several dozen thoroughbred horses. So, Senator F.I. Glebov-Streshnev at the end of the 18th century. introduced a more economical grass-field system with clover sowing instead of the traditional three-field system in Znamenskoye-Rayek. Having retired as a rather young man of 33 years old with the rank of colonel of the guard, N.S. Menshikov joined the Moscow Society of Agriculture and organized a developed industrial gardening in his Cheryomushki. In the 40s. 19th century The Bakunins opened the Premukhinskaya estate manufactory. The estate had a cheese-making and stationery production, typical for the Novotorzhsky district. big landowners, long time those living in the village had their own architects, painters, carpenters, staff of cooks, lackeys, secretaries, etc. Canvas, woolen fabrics, carpets, and furniture were made on the spot.

The landowner was interested in the regular and increasing receipt of dues, "addition of income", getting rid of "unprofitable circumstances" and maintaining his "household in every order". The Russian feudal lord unshakably believed that the well-being of his lands depended on a strict organization of work, the mobilization of all the resources of the patrimony, and the maximum use of peasant labor. He tried to delve into all the details of his diversified economy, strictly followed the processing, storage and commercial sale of the crop, and often showed awareness of the agrarian customs of a particular locality. Many landowners rightly saw one of the most important reasons for low yields in "cultivating the land without manure, from which the land degenerates and from year to year bears worse fruit." Representatives of the "noble" class have mastered the science of economy well and have learned to take into account the possibilities of "unprofitable circumstances". These sources testify to the inconsistency of the myth about the supposedly "elitist ambition of the idle class", contemptuously avoiding participation in production and trade. On the contrary, the Russian nobleman was able to start a kennel and cattle yards, set up a tile factory, establish a distillery and sell products.

However, large farms with the latest technology were the privilege of only the wealthiest elite of the nobility, insignificant in number. The reliable economic basis of luxurious manor life continued to be an elite phenomenon, often situational and opportunistic. Brilliant country palaces and huge landscape parks cannot be considered an integral feature of Russian noble culture. Many large estate owners managed their villages scattered over many counties through clerks. The possessions of medium and small landowners in the period under review often fell into decay, were mortgaged, remortgaged, sold for debts and revived in the hands of new owners. The Russian nobleman, in his own consciousness, was more of a landowner than an patrimony, despite the fact that the conditional nature of land holding was eliminated as early as the beginning of the 18th century. and confirmed by the Manifesto on the Liberty of the Nobility. The dependence of the growth of manorial dachas on royal favor and a successful service career did not allow even a large landowner to treat his villages as eternal and hereditary property. The rights of the land holder were challenged not only by the state and the community, but also by the rising bourgeoisie.

The language of memoirs and letters from the nobility at the end of the 18th - the first third of the 19th century suggests that in the mind of the owner the concepts of "estate" and "estate", "patrimony" and "estate" merged. The nobleman wrote about the "house" or "garden" when it came to the purposeful improvement of the life of his possession. On the whole, in the sources of personal origin, broad and unifying terms prevailed, identifying the master's house itself, the buildings surrounding it, the park, services, and the entire estate. Speaking about the "village", "volost", "dacha", "economy", "locality", the author had in mind the estate. Such word usage testified, on the one hand, to the insufficient reflection of the Russian landowner, and, on the other hand, to the complex motivation for the development of the estate culture, which is not reducible only to the economic needs of the nobleman.

The material preferences of the nobility are distinguished by a strange, at first glance, equal interest in owning lands and a snuffbox with a portrait of the empress, villages and a service. The absence of a purely pragmatic, economically prudent attitude to wealth presupposed the existence of a special specific measure of prosperity, which lay outside the sphere of exclusively economic needs and interests. The level of claims of government officials was determined by the desire to possess wealth, not inferior to the prosperity of the representatives of the social environment to which the nobleman considered himself. “About our friend Carrot, I’ll say that he submitted a note so that they would give him up to 5,000 souls, counting that as a small amount. I wish him to receive them, thinking that his destiny and for me can serve as a scale, - wrote A.A. Bezborodko, - but he will still be dissatisfied, having a claim to catch up with us.

Wealth was not the main criterion determining the position of the individual in the system of the noble hierarchy. There were class values ​​that were quoted higher than material wealth. The location of the secular environment was provided, first of all, by noble origin, friendly and family ties with the highest official nobility, prestigious acquaintances and, of course, the rank of Wealth without an appropriate status and the so-called "plebeian wealth" did not guarantee the nobleman social viability and secular recognition. The presence of a measure of prosperity that was not fixed in any way, but generally accepted among the ruling class, oriented the nobleman to the conspicuous consumption of material values.

In the 17th century landowners did not build luxurious manor houses on their estates, did not set up parks, as a rule, lived in cities. By the middle and especially the end of the XVIII century. palace and park ensembles with performances, balls, fireworks already constituted the “glory”, “dignity” and “pleasure” of the nobleman. Count N.P. Sheremetev wrote: “Having decorated my village Ostankino and presenting it to the audience in a charming way, I thought that, having accomplished the greatest, worthy of surprise and accepted with admiration by the public, in which my knowledge and taste are visible, I will enjoy my work calmly” . They talked about the Sheremetevs themselves. “Luxury can be respectable when it has as its goal the public benefit and pleasure.” At the same time, under the “public benefit”, the nobleman of the first third of the 19th century. could mean a variety of life values: devotion to the interests of the imperial service, honesty of the independent position of a state dignitary, "valor of a secular person", self-improvement, etc., even playing the special role of a soul owner, to whom God and the sovereign entrusted the care of the peasants. But only a few thought about the responsibility to the Fatherland of the owner of the land, called upon to organize a prosperous economy on it.

The charm of the noble estate culture, so dear to us, which eventually turned into its death, consisted in the fact that the estate had never been and was not perceived simply as an aesthetically designed administrative center of the estate, a patrimonial office. The architecture of the suburban complex and the entire local life did not meet the interests of economic expediency in any way. From the main village in the estate, the manor's house moved to a more isolated place, a garden and park ensemble surrounded by a fence arose around it. Cellars were built, crowned with gazebos, for a stable or carriage house a type was chosen. Greek temple, and the barnyard was erected according to the laws of classical orders, artificial hills were poured, festivities with numerous guests did not subside. The construction of human, pantries, barns was often entrusted to outstanding architects. So, the cellar-pyramid and the buildings of the distillery in Mitino, Novotorzhsky district, were designed by the owner D.I. Lvov, his distant relative N.A. Lvov. Even in the development of the economy, the nobleman often saw an "undertaking". Suffice it to mention the attempts to acclimatize the mulberry tree, the cultivation of pistachio trees and the deer brought from England for the nature of the landscape park.

The well-established life of the estate was not perceived at all as a condition for managing the economy - on the contrary, profitable possessions were supposed to provide the luxury of country life. In the brilliant Arkhangelsk Prince N.B. Yusupov in every possible way developed artistic crafts that did not have industrial significance and were designed only to satisfy the high aesthetic tastes of the owner. Engravings by students of the Yusupov drawing school hung on the walls of the palace. The manor manufactory produced faience and porcelain dishes, which were then painted with underglaze cobalt. In Kupavna, by order of the prince, expensive artistic silks, tablecloths, shawls, belts, and wallpaper shtofs were made. In wealthy estates, serf girls wove carpets and even entire paintings, conveying views of regular parks with gentlemen and ladies strolling among the sheared alleys and with animals and birds placed among the grass and foliage.

Noble estates appear to be an ideal, artificially created space, rare oases of a vast feudal country. “Nowhere did the estate world turn out to be so little connected with the ancient traditions of rural life,” writes D. Shvidkovsky, “nowhere were economic considerations sacrificed so often to realize the ideal as in Russia. On our plain, in the era of Catherine and Alexander, the most grandiose and beautiful provincial cozy pastoral was played out.

In the impoverished Tikhvin, which was threatened by inventory and auction, N.I. Novikov "continuously struggled with needs, shortcomings, was forced to feed the courtyards and peasants with purchased bread." However, he did not allow "these sad circumstances" to thin his spiritual strength. He thought a lot, restored the devastated library, maintained an intellectual theosophical correspondence and rightly believed that "we will never survive the troubles, but the troubles will outlive us." The owner of a poor estate tried to keep "fresh and calm thoughts." In his perception of nature there was no pragmatic tenacious look of an agronomist. “We have a real spring in our village, the river has flowed, the water has been drained, there is absolutely nothing snow, greenery and mosquitoes have appeared, but in the mornings there are the lightest frosts. That's how early spring began! To some extent, the special spiritual mood of the Russian landowner is conveyed by the observations of N.I. Novikov for the future harvest: “The beaten rye with hail, by the goodness of the Lord, has grown from the root and has already sprung up. How marvelous is the Lord our God in all his deeds!!! ... Do not complain, dear friend, that you do not soon succeed in your good desires. Look at wheat and rye: have they suddenly reached their perfection? .

The heyday of the noble estate sparkled for no more than half a century. Therefore, most estates can be called "family nests" only metaphorically. In a village that has belonged to a family at best since the middle of the 17th century, or even bought at the beginning of the 19th, often there was no manor house at all. The construction of the ensemble began at the end of the 18th century. and ends in the first quarter of the XIX. The estate is in the possession of a family, as a rule, for two or three generations and is sold, parting forever with the family that created its splendor. In two decades, a manor's palace was built, a park was laid out, a system of cascading ponds appeared, services grew, a church was consecrated, a family cemetery was included in a single, well-thought-out complex, and the first tombstone was erected on the fresh grave of the owner of the rebuilt estate. Such a bright and lightning-fast story can be told with various variations about many ensembles.

The Kurakin family owned the village of Volosovo in the Tver province according to official documents from the 17th century, and according to family legends from the 15th century, however, the monumental construction of the estate ensemble in it became a reality only in 1792 under Prince Stepan Borisovich, whose childhood, by the way, passed in another estate, Gatchina, acquired by the Empress herself from the Kurakins for a gift to Grigory Orlov when Stepan was 10 years old. The complex in Stepanovsky-Volosov acquired its final form already under the nephew of the childless Stepan Borisovich Boris Alekseevich in the first quarter of the 19th century. The Vvedenskoye Lopukhins, received from Paul I in 1798 and passed to the Zaretsky no later than the 30s, are being built even more rapidly. XIX century. Znamenskoye-Gubailovo went to V.M. Dolgoruky from the Volynsky family as a dowry of his wife. The active construction of the estate complex took place at the end of the 18th century, in 1812 the estate caused significant damage, and in 1836 it already passed into the hands of the court adviser N.S. Demenkov. Znamenskoye-Raek is the estate of almost one generation of the Glebov-Streshnev family. A wonderful ensemble, a gift from Senator F.I. Glebova to his wife E.P. Streshneva, was never completed during the life of the owner. His widow no longer went to Raek, living in her family Pokrovsky, which the Streshnevs owned from the end of the 17th century. The heirs were not slow to sell the estate. Voronovo falls into the Vorontsov family as a dowry. I.I. Vorontsov rebuilds it in the 60s. XVIII century, the creation of the estate complex is continued by his son. He builds a truly luxurious palace, as a result, it goes bankrupt and loses everything erected, transferring to the wrong hands the cemetery with the graves of his parents. At the very beginning of the nineteenth century. Voronovo buys F.V. Rostopchin, who burned it before the threat of the French invasion in 1812, and in the middle of the century the estate also left this family.

The study of estate ensembles shows how unsteady was the fate of the "family nests" in Russia. Sometimes all the children came into the rights to the estate, and one village could have two, and sometimes more co-owners. So, the state of I.V. Novikov, 700 souls of peasants, partly in the Kaluga and partly in the Moscow provinces, passed to the widow and then to four children. The village of Tikhvinskoye, where N.I. returned in 1796 Novikov after imprisonment, was in his joint possession with his younger brother Alexei Ivanovich. “You know that we have only one village,” wrote N.I. Novikov A.F. Labzin. - The brother is already accustomed to the economy and manages everything; and I already avoid everything, therefore, completely without any business, I live almost like a stranger ... These circumstances, in order to give myself some kind of occupation and outdoor exercise, turned me to gardening. After the death of Novikov, Avdotino-Tikhvinskoye was sold at auction and went to P.A. Lopukhin, and then moved to the Committee for the analysis and charity of beggars.
There are known cases of bequeathing the estate to grandchildren. In the history of Cheryomushki, this became a tradition repeated three times by grandfathers. Count V.G. Orlov, having lost both sons, also presented his Joy to the son of his youngest daughter, named after his grandfather Vladimir. Sometimes the choice of an heir was motivated by the interests of the estate economy itself. General of Infantry PA Tolstoy spent the last years of his life in the Uzskoye estate, devoting them to his passion - flowers. He bequeathed luxurious gardening, and with it the entire estate, to his fourth son Vladimir, since it was he who adopted his father's agricultural hobbies and skills.

However, often there were no wills at all, and the estate became the object of litigation between heirs. Ekaterininsky nobleman V.A. Vsevolozhsky acquired the village of Serednikovo in 1775, in 1796 the owner died without signing off the estate to anyone, which as a result was plundered by the nephew of the deceased. Only in 1801 did the court decide the case in favor of the brother of the deceased, Lieutenant General S.A. Vsevolozhsky, who owned the estate only until 1806. In 1814, Serednikovo passed to Count G.A. Saltykov, and in 1824 it was already bought by D.A. Stolypin, grandmother's brother M.Yu. Lermontov. The instability of the tribal tradition of local life was manifested in the curious testament of the estate ... to the rank. Well-known collector N.P. Rumyantsev, having a brother, bequeathed to transfer his Gomel property, built with love and taste, only to the chancellor or field marshal, and to bury himself in the city's Peter and Paul Cathedral. After his death in 1826, his brother nevertheless owned the estate for some time, although he never lived in it, and soon sold it to the treasury, from where it was transferred to the military department. In 1834, Prince I.F. bought the Gomel estate. Paskevich.

However, despite the interruption of noble families, inheritance through the female line, the impoverishment of some surnames and the rise, sometimes short-lived, of others, the indifference of children to the “local undertakings” of their fathers, the owners of the estates sought to transfer their creations into reliable hands and keep the estates in family ownership. When the poet, bibliophile and lieutenant general of the Russian army B.V. In 1803, Golitsyn inherited the estate of Vyazema from his uncle Alexander Mikhailovich, the general’s mother, Princess Natalya Petrovna, happily wrote to her husband’s brother: “Between news related to my children, even to you, father, I will tell you proof of friendship, Prince Alexander Mikhailovich Nashev in memory of a friend evavo and brother to their dead father. Vyazema refused his village after himself to our son Prince. Boris, so that the village could never weave out of our family, and so that his desire could be stronger, he submitted a letter to the Sovereign.

The family ambition of these “family nests” reminds of itself in the coats of arms on the pediment of the manor house, collections of portraits, obelisks, memorial plaques on the walls of the temple, in the whole atmosphere of the estate life. At the same time, without knowing the history of the ensemble, it is difficult to determine the status of the estate in which the estate was built, whether it was a major inheritance passed down from generation to generation or recently acquired land, or maybe a gift to a favorite. Both the Stepanovskoe Kurakins, which for several centuries belonged to the ancient family of the Gediminoviches, and Otrada, granted by the suddenly rising Orlov, were rebuilt in a single sign system as family estates.

A typical example of a visual representation of the family prowess of the Golitsyn family can be considered the main entrance to the Kuzminki estate, which the princes owned only from the middle of the 18th century. At the beginning of the linden alley, leading straight to the manor's house, there was a cast-iron gate in the form of a Doric colonnade. It is characteristic that the same gates were cast at the Ural factories of the Golitsyns according to the project of K. Rossi for Pavlovsk. Only in Kuzminki they end not with a double-headed eagle, but with the coat of arms of the princely family.

Family memory turned out to be not a long-term accumulated cultural layer of the old estate with its unhurried traditionalism, but an architectural and stylistic realization of the idea of ​​family pride that exists in the mind of the owner. The collection of portraits or the melancholy of the family cemetery reflects the nobleman's reflection on the fate of his ancestors. In the estate, which was often incomparably younger than the owner's name, family memory was not inherited, but embodied and updated. The concept of “family nest”, poeticized in Russian literature, does not mean the ancient history of the estate, but the installation of the landowner living in it, the prestige of deep family roots. The process of forming the class culture of the nobility did not go without a vain fashion for generosity. The architectural complex of the estate and carefully preserved collections could be either a whitewashed tradition of a boyar family, or an imitation of the nobility of a nobleman who had just approached the throne. “Ancient surnames fall into insignificance,” wrote Pushkin. - New ones rise and in the third generation disappear again. States merge, and not a single surname knows its ancestors. Under these circumstances, the rapid change in the composition of the elites of the Russian nobility was also considered valor simply by the presence of a more or less long family history.

The manor complex became not only a representation of the idea of ​​a noble family, but also a social sphere where it developed, where a noble memory of one’s roots became integral part owner's identity. The very fact that V.M. Dolgorukov-Krymsky, having rebuilt Znamenskoye-Gubaylovo, received as a dowry, expressed a desire to be separated from his wife after death and be buried in the Volyn region, where the Dolgorukov family tomb already existed, testifies to the gradual increase in the value of family memory in the mind of a nobleman. The son of Vasily Mikhailovich, who survived the years of disgrace in Znamenskoye, also chose the Volyn region as the place of his last refuge. His descendants, who sold in the 30s. 19th century Gubailovo, carefully took the family heirlooms to the Dolgorukov family estate.

Let's take a closer look at the manor complex itself, linger in the front backs, stand in the living rooms, look at family portraits, walk along the alleys of the park, try to imagine the departed owners of these walls and overgrown gardens. Let's trace the whole way to the estate, which began not from the entrance alley and not from the highway, but also in the city - from waiting, gathering and forebodings.

The days of a nobleman, as a rule, took place either in the city or on the estate, but the style and way of life in these two most important spheres of existence of the Russian ruling class were fundamentally different. During the period under review, the government is increasingly striving to streamline urban development, the state idea is embodied in the external appearance of both the capital and provincial cities. Even in the old Russian cities, manor buildings are gradually being replaced. The system of exemplary and standard projects introduced by the government prevented the private initiative of the owner of a city house in the design of his home. The monumental city mansions of dignitaries were not only residential buildings, but also the residences of representatives of the tsarist government with functions public institutions, nearby office space, relevant staff and office hours. The palaces of major officials were often erected at public expense, and the personal taste of their inhabitants could manifest itself only in the decoration of the interiors of the house. A typical facade, as it were, turned into a means of expressing allegiance. The city was guided by regularity, symmetry, subordination, here the power of the state was most clearly expressed, based on the normative style. Even a non-serving nobleman felt himself a person responsible to the authorities. But the very fact of the landowner's permanent residence in the city suggested his inclusion in the official hierarchy, his close connection with the urban secular environment.

In the estate, the nobleman was the owner and creator of his own ideal world. He could even give a name to the ensemble he built, expressing his attitude to the oasis he created in such poetic names as Joy, Raek, Neskuchnoe, Refuge. Meadows, ravines, copses stretched behind the overgrown landscape park of the estate. Urban development inexorably reduced the park and garden near the mansion, the windows of which opened onto the square or street. The gentleman in the estate was surrounded by completely different sounds than in the city. He was not awakened by the sound of horseshoes on the stone pavement, the creak of a tarantass, the cry of a cabman. In the city, lonely walks through the fields were impossible; a person, shackled by conventions, could only afford promenades along the embankment or preshpekt with crowds of people and the idle glances of passers-by. The estate did not announce office hours and did not set time for business visits, but friends, relatives and neighbors visited every week.

The manor atmosphere involuntarily formed a special attitude, different priorities, different relationships in the family, set a more natural rhythm, determined by close contact with nature and seasonal cycles. So the city turned for the nobleman into the space of the state, and the village into the world of an independent person. “Manor self-awareness of a local inhabitant,” writes G.Yu. Sternin, is a major force in the spiritual formation of the Russian man of the New Age. A special cultural space arose, saturated with philosophical reflections on the basic values ​​of life, manor mythology was born, which had outlets both into the Christian space, and into the pagan picture of the universe, and into the general ideological formulas of Russian reality, and into poetic ideas about the meaning of being.

Each meeting with the estate, where the nobleman spent his childhood, where he acquired his first life impressions, where on the walls there are portraits of ancestors, and in the family cemetery - their graves, each such meeting became a stage, a meeting with his former self, a powerful stimulus for self-reflection. “Having passed the white gateposts, having entered the park and seeing through the trees the familiar outlines of the outbuildings or the portico of the central house, the person was once again included in the once interrupted and very personally colored time stream” . This is how N.N. recalls the meeting with the childhood home. Muravyov, an associate of A.P. Yermolova, a person close to the Decembrists both in spirit and in origin: “We arrived in the city of Luga, from where we turned to the left with a blueberry to visit our father's ancestral estate Syrtse. We, the two elders, were very glad to see this place, where we spent our childhood: I until the seventh year from birth, my brother until the ninth. Still remained in my memory after a ten-year absence, where what pictures hung, the arrangement of furniture, the cuckoo clock, etc. Our first movement was to scatter in all the rooms, examine everything, avoid the stairs and even the attic, as if they were looking for something. .

The Russian noble estate was distinguished by a layout thought out to the details, with great taste chosen position on the high bank of a river, lake or cascade of ponds. It was not only the park around the manor house that was formed, but the entire area surrounding the estate was re-created, which was sometimes perceived as a landscape skillfully arranged in the picture. They even tried to pave the way to the estate through the most picturesque places. The customer and the architect, starting to create the ensemble, first of all, took care of the organic connection of future buildings and the natural landscape. “I brought the best architect at that time,” wrote V.T. Orlov about his Joy, - and he pointed me to a place on a high mountain - to build a three-story manor castle and a church here. I liked the plan, however, I did not execute it exactly. He built a church on a high mountain, in a place open from the forests, and to build a house he sank lower, to the bank of the river, between the forests. Having received at the very end of the XVIII century. as a gift from Paul I Vvedenskoye, P.V. Lopukhin invited N.A. Lvov to inspect the area. Noting the picturesque location of the estate, the architect remarked: "Nature has done its job in it, but left a fair lesson for art."

Each estate included a master's house, to which an entrance alley led, ending, as a rule, with a semicircular courtyard, where the front facade of a manor's dwelling, usually with two outbuildings on the sides, went out. The rear façade with a terrace faced the park. Not far away, in many estates, there was a church with a family cemetery. The master's house was surrounded by services. The most traditional outbuildings include servants' houses, a manager's wing, a carriage shed, a horse yard, a forge, greenhouses or greenhouses, cellars, barns, storerooms. An integral part of the manor complex was a park and an orchard, as well as a hydraulic system of varying degrees of complexity.

Manor of the bibliophile A.I. Musina-Pushkina Valuevo is interesting because it included many elements of a suburban complex. The manor's house, connected by galleries with two outbuildings, horse and cattle yards, two outbuildings at the entrance gate, a fence, towers, a landscape park with a "Hunting Lodge", a grotto and cascading ponds, have survived to this day.

Despite the commonality of the main elements of the ensemble, each estate was distinguished by its unique originality of buildings and overall composition. So, belfries, ancestral mausoleums or tombs, theater buildings were erected in rich suburban complexes. In the Stepanovsky Kurakins, along the avenue leading to the master's house, a whole town was built, where there were numerous houses for people, a hospital, a fire tower. Of course, the noble estates differed in their material capabilities. There were poor properties located not far from the peasant huts, there were also magnificent complexes of nobles. However traditional feature The Russian noble estate was an organic combination of residential and office buildings into a single architectural ensemble, surrounded by a park and a garden. “Old economic services,” wrote A.N. Grech, - very beautiful in their architecture, gave the estate the appearance of a real and solid house-keeping.

The creators of suburban complexes cared not only about scenic view from the windows to a wide entrance alley or to the expanse of ponds, but they also focused on the view of the estate, which opened behind the parted foliage of the park in front of the long-awaited guest, attracted the eyes of the traveler on the highway and the bell ringer on the monastery bell tower. A wide avenue lined with birches or lindens, an evening lamp in front of the icon above the arch of the gate - all these details of the estate ensemble created a special quivering state in the soul of a weary traveler. Art historians note the "calculation for distance", "increased central volume" in the architecture of many noble estates. “A house with a semicircular ledge, decorated with Ionic semi-columns, is framed by outbuildings of greenhouse buildings that are far forward,” wrote A.N. Greek about Arkhangelsk. “There is a long distance between them - but from here, from a distance, everything is hidden, merges into one architectural organism, and the three terraces of the Italian park, with their parapets, statues, vases, gatherings, fountains, seem to be the foundation of a grandiose and monolithic palace.”

The master's house, the "venerable castle" was the focus of life in the estate and the compositional center of the entire architectural complex, which, as a rule, had an axial layout. The main axis was determined by the entrance alley and passed through the center of the building, the spatial orientation of which continued in the breakdown of a regular park near its walls. So, the oval hall of the Ostafievsky Palace of the Vyazemskys was located at the intersection of the longitudinal and transverse planning axes of the estate ensemble as a whole. “The connection of the oval hall with the space of the park was carried out by its semicircular ledge in the form of a semi-rotunda ... the seven arched windows of which were supposed to give direction to the seven alleys of the park, rays diverging from the facade of the palace.” At the same time, the axes of the enfilades in the city mansion turned out to be a kind of continuation of the axes of the regular city, which, as it were, do not recognize walls and permeate the space of the building and the space of the city in one order. In the manor estate, the layout of the manor house was connected with the layout of the park and the entire composition of the architectural and landscape complex, which often without visible boundaries turned into forests, meadows, and ended at the river bank. “Possessing great centrifugal force directed towards the master's house,” writes G.Yu. Sternin, - the manor space was open to the outside. Such a layout, of course, created a different attitude for the landowner than for a city dweller.

Experts consider the second half of the XVIII century. and the entire reign of Alexander I was a period of dominance of a style that reproduces the architectural canons of classicism. The Greek porticos and pediments of the estate buildings have forever merged with the landscape of the Central Russian plain under the low gray sky. The master's house was, as a rule, 2-3 storey, wooden, covered with a layer of plaster. The facade ended with a triangular pediment supported by capitals of Ionic, Doric or Corinthian columns. The lower floor, the basement, was sometimes finished with rustication, the mezzanine had high windows, behind which one could guess the suite of front rooms, on the mezzanines there were children's rooms and teachers' rooms with almost square windows. From the house in a semicircle or along the line of the facade there were galleries leading to two outbuildings, repeating the classical style of the main building. With one or another variation, such a description can be attributed to the manor dwellings in the Stepanovskoye Kurakins, Vvedenskoye Lopukhins, Rozhdestveno Kutaisovs, Znamenskoye-Rayok Glebov-Streshnevs, Ostankino Sheremetevs and many other estate complexes. The idea of ​​the noble dwellings of most estates is connected with the ideas of the Italian architect of the 16th century. Andrea Palladio, who created a model of a country villa that took on the architectural forms of an ancient Roman villa, "the only example of a private person that classical culture had." Art critic G.I. Revzin believes that "pure Palladianism", this new example of estate building, appears in Russia from the work of C. Cameron in Pavlovsk. It was important for the crowned mother of Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich to emphasize that her son is a private person, has the most indirect relation to state affairs.

The famous author of many manor buildings dating back to the "Palladian model" was N.A. Lvov, whom A.N. Grech called "the indefatigable Russian Palladio." Lvov was well acquainted with the works of the Italian Renaissance architect and even translated his treatise into Russian. Works by D. Quarenghi, N.A. Lvov, V.I. Bazhenov, M.F. Kazakova, I.E. Ogarev, they set the style of noble manor architecture, which was simplified and modified by more modest masters, adjusted to the owner's requests. A curious anecdote from the book of 1808 "Inscriptions of Arts" is cited by N.N. Wrangell. “One Russian artist drew a plan for a building for a wealthy landowner and redrawn it several times ... “Yes, let me ask you,” the architect says, “what rank or order do you want the building? “Of course, brother,” the landowner answers, “what is my rank, headquarters, but we still have to wait for the order, I don’t have it.” Further, the author reports on a curious case of the construction by the landowner Durasov in Lyublino, near Moscow, of a house, with a plan in the form of the Order of St. Anna and with a statue of this saint on the dome - in memory of his long-desired distinction.

The nobleman declared his particularity and his predilections not only through the architectural forms of the Palladian villa, but also through the pseudo-Gothic elements of the ensemble. Pseudo-Gothic in Russian architecture of the late 18th–early 19th centuries. experts almost entirely associate it with the country estate. City mansions during this period were deprived of such a bizarre decor. The heyday of pseudo-Gothic in manor art begins in the 1760s, but such buildings continued to live and inevitably influenced the worldview of the individual in the 19th century. It is important to interpret the psychological and ideological meaning of this artistic trend. The house in the form of a castle, with towers, window openings, a garden fence reproducing feudal fortifications - all this was not an accidental "undertaking". Behind the pseudo-Gothic motives, behind the whimsical violation of any order, complex motives of the owner-customer are seen, connected, in particular, with the seigneurial ambition of the independence of feudal castles that did not take place in Russia, attempts at least in architectural forms to revive the former boyar power of the clan. In these buildings, we again meet the mood of the individual, internally defending himself from the all-pervading statehood.

The windows of the manor house opened onto the park, which in itself was the most complex artistic unity of various types of art. It is well known that there are several types of parks, among which one can distinguish primarily the French regular park and the English landscape park. Quite popular in Russia, Francesco Militia compared a regular park with a city, where “squares, intersections, rather wide and straight streets are necessary.” Indeed, the geometric and architectural park was closely connected with the urban order and, in relation to Russia, expressed a regular state idea. Accordingly, in a landscape English park one can see a manifestation of a personal, particular beginning. Strictly speaking, in the manor, this sphere of the private man, the idea of ​​regularity was never fully embodied. Small flower parterres were planned only as a part adjoining the house. In addition, and regularly broken fragments of the park inevitably had elements of free violation of style. In Arkhangelsk and Ostankino, in addition to grand prospects, you can always find picturesque side paths.

The regular part of the park, as a rule, turned into a landscape part, which then imperceptibly merged with the natural landscape. So, the classic Palladian mansion continued in symmetrical flowerbeds, and the landscape park opened, as it were, into the endless space of nature. The estate became part of the world.

A landscape park cannot be reduced only to the imitation of nature, simplicity and naturalness. Winding paths, waterfalls, log bridges, grottoes, picturesque outlines of lake shores and dilapidated romantic pavilions hiding in a thicket of trees influenced the consciousness and mood of a person. The landscape park of a Russian noble estate appealed primarily not to reason, but to feeling, giving preference to intuition rather than the canon.

Forest and mountains, river and steppe, gloomy gorges and plains warmed by the sun - all these living pictures of nature are quickly replaced thanks to the thoughtful irregularity of the park. A small area can be visually expanded by purely artistic means. Emotional time and space in a landscape park transcend real ones. Before us is not an attempt to copy the natural landscape, but something more - the recreation of Nature in its diversity and originality, at least the formulation of this concept.

D.S. Likhachev wrote about the "semantics of feelings", mental states that are conveyed by various corners, "locuses" of the manor garden. Inexplicable anxiety, despondency and, at the same time, vague aspirations visited a person at the sight of sad ruins, tombs and urns, fallen stones, slabs rooted into the ground, and other architectural details of melancholic gardens, as if descended from the canvases of David Friedrich or Hubert Robert. Engineer T. Metiel in Uman, the estate of the Ukrainian magnate Count F. Pototsky, implementing the incredible ideas of the customer, created not only caves and waterfalls, but even the underground river Styx. Gardens also gave rise to a feeling of light sadness, poetry, expectation, sometimes they reminded of the mysterious and mysterious Middle Ages. Joy and a life-affirming mood emanated from the ancient temples in the sun-drenched glades.

The landscape park absorbed not only the diversity of nature and the richness of human feelings, its whimsical eclecticism was able to unfold before the concentrated gaze the widest expanse of history, the planetary geography of the Earth. In the parks of the Russian noble estate, pavilions for scientific and musical studies, observatories, Russoev huts, Radcliffe castles, arbors of Trefil, the ruins of Troy, Roman dungeons are being built, Darya, Magomedov or Eloisina groves grow, hills called Kurgan, Mount Sinai, Parnassus are poured. In landscape parks you can find an Italian house, a Persian tent, a mosque, an antique colonnade, murals imitating Pompeian ornaments. According to B.C. Turchin, with “a similar “semantic inventory”, a person felt like a citizen of the world” .

Regular elements were introduced into the picturesque composition of landscape landscapes of manor parks, classicism was combined with "planters", fish ponds of the late Russian Middle Ages. All these "garden follies" corresponded perfectly to the free village life, the development of a sense of independence of a private person.

Complex semiotics, richness of images, meeting of epochs and cultures also distinguished the space of the manor house of the estate. The ceremonial halls of rich estates with typesetting floors were filled with palace furniture, bronze lighting fixtures, and porcelain. The owners of wealthy estates had a penchant for collecting. The most typical was the collection of paintings, minerals, ancient reliefs, sculptures, coins, medals, chubukhov, ancient weapons. However, we learn more about the owners, their interests, habits, tastes, their way of life from the furnishings of living quarters, children's rooms. Unlike the front cold halls, they were more modest and comfortable.

“In every landlord library, Racine and Corneille, Molière, Boileau and Fénelon, the encyclopedists Diderot, Montesquieu, D'Alembert, Duval, the sentimental Jesner, the elegant Chevalier de Bouffler, Lafontaine, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and, of course, the inevitable Voltaire constituted the obligatory filling of book And next to these classic authors, tall lines lined up the gold-embossed spines of the Great Encyclopedia and the Bibliotheque des Vojages - lengthy descriptions of travels to Asia, America, India, the Pacific Islands of La Perouse, Chardin, Chappe, letters and memoirs of Madame de Sevigne , Count Segur, Necker, works of Latin and Greek authors translated into prose and verse, research on ancient mythology, archeology, art, and other departments often settled works on botany, engineering, fortification by Linnaeus, Laplace ... Countless authors, the whole world thoughts, ideas and images are enclosed in these volumes of beautiful printing, bound in leather, ... with engraved book signs ". This is how A.N. Greek Collections of books, as a rule, were placed in the office, in specially designated rooms. Luxurious editions could also decorate the main halls.

Painting collections were represented not only by Flemish still lifes and Italian landscapes. First of all, portraits of the owners and their ancestors, giving an idea of ​​the complex genealogy of the family, made up the art galleries of the estates, which sometimes numbered up to two hundred canvases. These canvases could remind of kinship noble family with the Rurikovichs, the Moscow boyars, the Polish magnates, and sometimes with the reigning Romanovs. So, in the estate of F.I. Glebova Znamenskoye-Raek, the images of the chroniclers Nestor and Pimen, opening the portrait gallery, seemed to declare the direct involvement of the owners and their ancestors in the history of Russia. The ambition of ancient families also sounded in the family coats of arms carved on the walls of the front rooms, on the facade of the manor house, at the entrance to the estate. The landowner's own dwelling was also included in the family memory. pencil drawings, gouaches and engravings convey the history of its creation, reproduce the old building, interiors. In the archives of the estate, one could find drawings of a house that had long been dismantled, on the site of which a classical building was erected.

“The constant presence of the past in the present unusually sharpened the eyesight, turning even the most ordinary household items into a guide to human destiny. Such a special kind of spiritualization of the objective environment is an essential part of the estate mythology. The image of the estate for its inhabitant doubled, existing on the verge of the real, quite tangible, and the mysterious, receding into the distance of time.

Understanding the most complex semantics of the Russian noble estate is impossible without visiting the church and the family cemetery. I note that in the Western European feudal seigneuries, as a rule, chapels were built for the owners, while the temples visited by the peasants were located in the villages. In Russia, the landowner prayed with his people in a church built right on the estate. Marble plaques were installed on the walls of the manor temple, telling about its founder, about the names of relatives and friends with whom the history of the estate was connected. The family cemetery is perhaps the most touching and heartfelt part of the local ensemble. Family graves, as it were, connected generations, reconciled life and death. In his rural seclusion, a Russian nobleman erected obelisks and urns in honor of people close to his heart, as a sign of friendly affection. Such monuments of "sensitive architecture" can be found in many estates. In poetic inscriptions and dedications, one can hear the sorrow of a disappointed heart, the fatigue of the soul, and the wisdom gained through suffering. We will not see in the estate tombstones the vain glorification of the ranks of the deceased.

The image of state power, however, was also reflected in the space of the estate, and its presence was not limited to portraits. Columns and obelisks were erected in the gardens, the highest granted to the owner, boards were installed in memory of the visit of the monarch. In Russia, however, there was no tradition of constant travel of the crowned person to the "castles" of his vassals. We will not find in the Russian "noble nests" the "king's room", the most sacred premises of any more or less large Western European seigneury. The "Imperial Room" was not a living room cleaned in case of a sudden appearance of the monarch, but, as, for example, in Arkhangelsk, a hall with portraits and sculptures of dead and living representatives of the Romanov dynasty.

However, the nobleman did not just glorify the name of the ruling emperor, he sought to stand next to the most famous characters of all eras, and in this context, the owner of the estate lost in the Russian expanses became not a zealous official, but a participant in world history. Next to the portraits of the owner's ancestors and the obelisks on their graves, the artistically rendered image of the king not only personified the autocrat, but served as a symbol confirming the dignity and pride of the family.

So, libraries collected by generations, art collections and family portraits, family cemeteries, a church, a main entrance alley, a shady park - all these invariable attributes of an aestheticized manor life created a rich world of images, turned a nobleman's estate into a space that makes it possible to feel all the charm and diversity of nature. , which concentrated history, culture, family memory. An independent-minded person was formed not by rural freedom proper, but by the entire estate complex with its most complex sign system.

The ideal world of the “family nest”, the creation of which was immediately preceded by the resignation of the owner and the removal from the leveling influence of the bureaucratic hierarchy, became a symbol of belonging to the Russian noble class, and not to the state of loyal servants of the monarch. The manor complex turned into a kind of pastoral artificial sphere, full of allegory, which was not equal to the depicted one and thereby greatly expanded the semantic space of the ensemble. The sign system of the "family nest" appealed to the past and at the same time rushed into the future through the world of interests of growing children. Along with the understanding of their roots and their continuation, there was a growth and complication of the personality. Apparently, this was what Pushkin had in mind when he wrote:

And this “independence” of a person, not reducible to the arrogance of a well-born descendant or the power of the “new nobility”, nurtured in the spiritual oasis of the estate, rather quickly led to the loosening of the self-consciousness of the nobility that had not yet strengthened. The opposing intellectual will declare spiritual, and not consanguineous kinship; he will oppose demonstrative luxury with the charm of a neglected garden. And now the owners of country residences (the heroes of Woe from Wit) will talk with hostile bewilderment about a non-serving nobleman who

And Pushkin himself will write AL. Bestuzhev: “Our writers are taken from the upper class of society, their aristocratic pride merges with the author's pride; we don't want to be patronized by equals; ... a Russian poet ... appears with a demand for respect as a six hundred year old nobleman.

The Russian estate was characterized by almost universal multifunctionality, therefore the impoverishment of the nobility and the emergence of the first generations of the Russian intelligentsia led not so much to the decay and decline of the estate culture, but to its functional change.

The short period of prosperity of the noble estate absorbed the complex evolution of the worldview that dominates in it - from the triumph of receptions to the closed world of like-minded people. Through the diversity of destinies and situations, there is a tendency towards a gradual evolution of the life of pompous residences. Wealthy suburban ensembles have never been opposed to more modest estates. In turn, in personal sources and literary monuments, the perception of an overgrown garden and a dilapidated manor house as symbols of the spirituality of the manor culture sounds more and more clearly.
In the poem "Osuga", dedicated to the river on which Premukhino is located, A.M. Bakunin writes:

The Scottish traveler, artist Robert Core-Porter, who visited Ostafyevo in 1806, noted that the Vyazemsky house was adapted “both for a fun pastime and for the deepest mental work ...”. The second trend in the history of estate culture won and left the deepest mark. The prestige of the dignitary's country palace is replaced by the peace of the "remote abode" of the writer seeking solitude, and now it is no longer the sparkling luxury that is sung in odes, but the charm of the old alley brings a feeling of light sadness to the poetic line.

Thus, another phenomenon will be born in the history of the nobility - a small, poor estate with an extremely intense spiritual life, where in a modest master's house, without "vacant quarters", the most penetrating pages of Russian literature will appear.

Without becoming the stronghold of the feudal lord and the center of an economically powerful latifundia, the estate turns into the spiritual stronghold of the nobleman. On the lands of the autocratic state, oases of intellectual and moral independence arose. Even a forced exile in the estate, forced removal from the big world was perceived in an enlightened environment as a purifying experience of contact with rural Arcadia. If in Western Europe at that time a sensitive person fled from the disharmony of growing urbanization and industry, then in Russia the role of such an octopus, corroding the soul of an intellectual, was performed by an all-pervading bureaucracy. The world of the countryside is opposed not to the capital or the province, but to the world of "seekers", court lackeys, reception mob.

The tired heart of the poet longed for rest, which he could find in someone else's estate, owned by a friend or an educated philanthropist. On the banks of the Yauza in the village of Leonovo, the patron of sciences and arts I.G. Demidov visited N.I. for a long time. Novikov; in the summer the poet N.I. Polezhaev and novelist I.I. Lazhechnikov, author of the famous Ice House. N.M. Karamzin, who worked for months on his works in Znamensky A.A. Pleshcheev, admitted in one of his letters: “People do not want to believe that a person who led a rather pleasant life in Moscow could, out of good will, conclude in a village, and, moreover, a stranger! And besides, in autumn!” .

The estate, turning into a rival of the city salon, unites poets, writers, artists, and intellectuals of its time. The estate of an enlightened nobleman was seen as an ideal place for creative inspiration, a safe haven where you can, without fear, make seditious speeches among friends and like-minded people. The atmosphere of understanding and approval further strengthened oppositional sentiments. By the end of the reign of Alexander I, these idyllic circles became the main nerve points through which Russian intellectual life pulsed.

The summer dachas of the exiled Decembrists on the Angara can also be attributed to the phenomenon of Russian estate culture. The grandson of Sergei Volkonsky tried to restore the atmosphere in which the participants in the uprising on Senate Square lived in Siberia.

“In a picturesque place on the banks of the beautiful Angara, among rocky hillocks wrapped in forest, they built a summer cottage for themselves. "Kamchatnik" was her name. ...Settlements became cultural nests, centers of spiritual light. Each family lived and raised several children of local residents. ... They often gathered, had conversations, lectured and were very fond of arguing; they subscribed to books, magazines, arranged reading rooms together. All this lived a brisk life, especially in the summer... The move usually took place on Spirit Day. Volkonsky and Trubetskoy left together, in one convoy ... A whole popular movement lived on these words - "princes left", "princes arrived". The vindictiveness of Nicholas I unwittingly created a unique phenomenon of the elite way of the noble estate, free from the deforming soul of the owner of serfdom. It is no coincidence that one of the local residents, the son of an enlightened merchant, in the future a well-known doctor N.A. White-headed, wrote: “And how fun it was to live in this charming, although deaf and so terribly remote corner from European life! ... Subsequently, I heard more than once from the Decembrists themselves, already upon their return to Russia, with what grateful memory and with what pleasure they recalled their stay in the Siberian wilds.

It should not be forgotten that this relatively isolated territory was also inhabited by peasants following the familiar term “noble estate”. It was the estate that became, as it were, the intersection of the lives of the two most important Russian estates. The theme of folk idyll entered the architecture of noble residences as early as the 18th century, when pavilions made of branches and bark, thatched huts of woodcutters, and mills appeared in parks. But it was not the sham rural pastoral that turned the estate into a kind of meeting place for refined Europeanized life and folk elements. Next to the manor's house there were pantries, barns, a servants' quarters, stables, and kennels. Unique systems of artificial reservoirs, bulk mountains and bizarre ruins were erected by the hands of serfs. The owner and his people prayed in the same church; the peasant and lordly worlds in the atmosphere of the "rarefied air" of the Russian estate came into contact hourly. However, they were immeasurably far apart.

The disgrace of soul ownership could be highlighted when a deviation from the pretentious requirements of the customer cost the life of the screwed-up creator of ancient ruins in a landscape park. But completely different examples of relations between a titled dignitary and serf masters are known. Hospitals, churches, schools, and schools for courtyard people were built at the expense of the landowner.

Servants played a special role in creating the poetics of manor life. N.N. Muravyov recalled his meeting with the people who surrounded him in childhood: “The old servants of the father were delighted with the young masters; some we found gray-haired, others introduced us to their children, whom we had not seen before, and soon boys of all ages and sizes gathered around us, who stuffed our pipes and fought among themselves for the honor of serving the master. Old men and women also came running, bringing gifts of chickens, eggs and vegetables. It was these people who were often the true guardians of the family hearth, connoisseurs and champions of the tradition of the older generations, who were lost by the careless young owners of the estate.

The more subtle the nobleman felt, the richer the library he surrounded himself in rural solitude, the more acutely he experienced the destructive disharmony of his small homeland. Behind the house with slender columns and architectural beauties of the park, as far as the eye could see, impoverished Russia, copses, swamps and everywhere heavy unyielding land, swallowing the exhausting labor of generations. Philosophical utopia and romantic images came into conflict with the reality of serfdom, and the educated owners of estates to remove this contradiction tried in different ways. Someone, indignant against the ethics of slavery, replaced the “yoke of corvée with an old quitrent”, someone consoled himself with a humane attitude towards the household, and someone deceived himself in the hope of finding peace in his artificially created ideal world.

In the second half of the XIX century. the noble estate continued to occupy one of the key positions in Russian culture. Being the center of many characteristic features spiritual self-consciousness of its time, it was a special world in which various phenomena of the cultural and social life of Russia were reflected and acquired new features.

Meanwhile, until recently, the estate culture of the second half of the 19th century. largely out of the field of view of researchers. The well-known Society for the Study of the Russian Estate, which functioned in the 1920s, focused on the estate of the second half of the 18th - early 19th centuries, the period of its highest prosperity and rise. . Acquaintance with the noble estate began to be limited for the most part to its architecture and landscape gardening art.

The first steps towards the study of the culture of the Russian estate in a broader perspective were outlined in the book by V.S. Turchin and M.A. Aniksta (1979), illustrated with visual materials highlighting different facets of estate life. The monographs by D.S. Likhachev (1982, 1991), A.P. Vergunova and V.A. Gorohova (1988, 1996) identified a qualitatively new approach to the coverage of historical and cultural processes on the example of the study of one of the constituent parts of the estate culture, in conjunction with the general problems of the development of artistic culture and the cultural environment, the realities of estate life. The attention to the estate mythology and its poetic perception, which distinguishes the work of D.S. Likhachev.

Significant progress towards a comprehensive study of problems related to the history of the estate culture, considered in all their diversity and with special attention to the person who created this culture, contains the materials of collections of scientific works of the Society for the Study of the Russian Estate, recreated in 1992.

Interesting lighting experience a peculiar picture Russian estate life, its social and cultural history was produced by P. Roosevelt, the author of the already mentioned monograph. However, in this work, despite its broad chronological framework, relatively little space is allocated to the estate of the second half of the century.

History of the Russian estate in the second half of the 19th century. began somewhat earlier than its rigid chronological boundaries. Its origins are seen in the 30-40s. It was the time of the flourishing of romanticism in the culture of the Russian estate, and first of all in its architectural and park environment. Romanticism, as it were, supplanted the classicism that preceded it, opened a new era in the evolution of the estate culture, indicating the emergence of fresh ideas in it.

Many phenomena of estate culture were not only typical of Russian artistic culture as a whole, but in some cases had a great influence on it. This had a particularly visible effect on the provincial culture: in essence, the noble estate served as a kind of "guide" of the metropolitan culture to the culture of the province.

Provincial cultural life, especially artistic life, was characterized by an increase in its level in those cities in the immediate vicinity of which significant estate centers were located. This was characteristic both of the epoch of serfdom and of the decades that followed the peasant reform of 1861. The impact of estate culture on culture provincial town determined primarily by the natural connections that arise between them. Many, as a rule, larger landlords had comfortable houses in county and provincial towns, in which they often lived, especially during the winter months, indulging in socializing and secular entertainment. The social circle was sometimes the same as in the estate. Moreover, some landlords, not wanting to change their usual way of life, adhered to a similar layout of living quarters in the city and the countryside, the same arrangement of furniture, everyday items and even decorative and applied arts, creating the illusion of the identity of the living space formed in such a different in its own way. nature environment.

In addition, the status of the landowner allowed the owners of the estate to participate in the public life of the provincial town as leaders of the nobility, trustees educational institutions and charitable institutions. After the abolition of serfdom, the sphere of social activity of the landowner in the city expanded through participation in the work of the world courts, zemstvo organizations, in the construction of schools and hospitals, people's houses and tea houses, museums, theater buildings and reading rooms.
On the other hand, the noble estate had a significant impact on the culture of the village: one of its manifestations was the training of peasants in various crafts and arts. Developing in line with modern professional art, serf peasant art, according to P.K. Lukomsky, "stood at a huge ... almost at an unattainable height" .

Educational activities in the peasant environment were also expressed in teaching peasant children to read and write, organizing rural primary and vocational schools, hospitals, etc.

Orthodoxy contributed to the deepening of the ties between the estate culture and the life of the peasants. The poetic influence of nature in the manor environment sharpened the perception of the spiritual and moral values ​​preached by the church. At the same time, the simplicity of human relationships in the countryside and the religious mood that arose during the divine service to some extent could soften the social contrasts between parishioners of different classes and created a spiritual atmosphere that united and, as it were, equalized them, according to the well-known Christian postulate, in the face of God.

At the same time, the role of the church in establishing ties between the landowner and the peasants had another aspect. Usually the temple served as a family tomb for the owners of the estate, who in this capacity attached special importance to it. Wherever and at what time of the year a nobleman would die, his body was destined to rest here. There were frequent cases of temporary burial of the deceased at the place of death in anticipation of the winter journey and the subsequent transportation of the body to the family estate. Therefore, often the construction of a temple in the estate preceded the construction of a manor house. But in order to take care of the spiritual and moral enlightenment of the peasants, the temple was usually located at some distance from the main estate buildings, in order to facilitate access to it for everyone. In the second half of the XIX century. churches built at the expense of the landowners not on the territory of the estate, but in the villages, multiplied, however, they retained their functions of estate or estate churches, especially as a family burial place. Such temples, according to contemporaries, were very revered by the peasants.

In turn, nourishing the urban culture and contributing to the enlightenment of the village, the noble estate was directly influenced by folk art - visual, song, architectural, musical. permeated artistic ideas, generated by folk art, the estate culture became one of the ways in which these ideas flowed into the culture of the capital.

Occupying a kind of "intermediate" position between the city and the countryside, gravitating towards both types of culture and nourishing them with new juices, the estate world created a typologically independent kind of culture on their basis. G.Yu. draws attention to this feature of landowner culture. Sternin, emphasizing that she attached to the estate "the meaning of a certain universal symbol of Russian life, deeply rooted in its history" .

Indeed, the estate, as one of the most important and, moreover, connecting components of Russian life, for more than half a century, in the minds of many generations belonging to various circles of Russian society, personified the fatherland, its natural, spiritual and cultural values. The estate was in all respects "of its own kind", in the words of one of the characters of the writer-People's Will P. V. Yakubovich. The scale of the distribution of such a perception of the estate world is evidenced not only by the memoirs and individual statements of contemporaries, but also by the unquenchable desire of potential landowners to acquire an estate. This equally applied to the nobles, who for various reasons lost their family estates, and the intelligentsia, approaching in their spiritual worldview the most educated nobility, and the bureaucracy and merchants, who especially launched estate construction in the last third of the 19th century.

The self-sufficient and closed world of the Russian noble estate, by the nature of its social, economic and household structure, was a kind of picture of a state within a state. This was especially pronounced in the pre-reform decades, when the owner of the estate, independent of the bureaucratic system of government, considered himself a sovereign in his estate, the arbiter of people's destinies and the ruler of their souls. However, the best of them, who had a sense of justice and responsibility for their neighbors, made a lot of efforts to ensure not only the establishment of landowner economy and estate life, but also to improve and ensure the life of the ward peasants; the fine appearance of the peasants and the houses in which they lived was a matter of special pride for such landlords.

The relationship of many landowners to the peasants retained the features of patriarchy. “Love for a peasant,” recalled Prince. With E. Trubetskoy - by no means populist admiration for him! - I absorbed the feeling of a particularly close connection with the peasantry from my environment from my very birth. To some extent, my feelings for the peasant bore some kind of vague imprint of kinship ... Such a perception was not my individual feature: the same was the feeling of my peers, who grew up in the same atmosphere as me.

Of course, what has been said should not create an idealized idea of ​​the relationship between landowners and peasants. Without touching on the extreme aspects of the psychology of the feudal lord, which produced the “saltychi”, two circumstances should be borne in mind. The first of these is due to the fact that, with a few exceptions, the estates belonging to such landowners did not represent any significant cultural center, since it could only be formed in a more or less harmonious environment that excluded cruel forms of violence. The second is due to the relatively lower prevalence of such estates than it seemed in the literature of the post-October years. Much more relevant is the issue of small estates, which numerically prevailed in the total number of noble estates and for the most part were not "examples" of cultural life. An exception in this regard are the estates of the creative intelligentsia, the conversation about which is ahead.

The reform of 1861 became the most important milestone in the development of the Russian noble estate. It not only shook the foundations of an isolated and self-sufficient patrimonial world, but also destroyed the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe unlimited power of the landowner over the peasants, deprived him of numerous servants and the fruits of the free labor of serf masters, as well as peasants engaged in field work, the barnyard, etc. The growth of industrial production negated the need for the manufacture of household items and arts and crafts by the hands of former serfs. In the landlord economy, wage labor began to be involved.

However, the changes in the estate culture did not happen overnight, but stretched over several decades. The architectural and artistic image of the Russian noble estate, formed in the 18th - early 19th centuries. was not erased during the entire subsequent time. For many years, it was perceived as an unattainable ideal belonging to the era that remained in the past, later acquiring the value of a symbol of noble culture. It received its final symbolic comprehension at the very end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries, when, under the influence of the magazine “World of Art” and the association of artists involved in it, interest in architecture and art of the era of classicism intensified, and neoclassicism began to form in architectural style.

Not interrupted, in essence, throughout the 19th century. and many traditional lines that emerged in the Russian estate at the beginning of the century. The owners of estates, despite many attempts to overcome the established life of the estate, actually continued to adhere to the patriarchal way of life, traditional views on the architectural and park environment of the estate and traditional forms of cultural life. Actually, the patriarchal nature of the estate life, well-established and measured, indispensable wide hospitality, the need for a habitual, habitable, even if modest, but balanced residential architectural environment, planned according to the laws of symmetry, in the usual set of furniture and household items, were an expression of the persistent traditional foundations of the estate culture. . It is noteworthy that with all the changes in the stylistic features and layout principles of manor structures and the penetration of new trends into the manor culture, the feeling of the traditional nature of the manor culture did not leave either the owners of the estates or their guests, which was reflected in fiction, periodicals, dramaturgy and fine arts that time.

Perhaps it is precisely the persistence of traditions that to a certain extent explains the phenomenon of Russian estate culture in the second half of the 19th century. This fidelity to traditions (it is no coincidence that of the manor buildings that have miraculously survived to our time, the largest percentage falls on the classic), and sometimes a kind of game in tradition in the second half of the century, increasingly manifested itself as something that opposes the general flow, which later probably contributed to organic penetration into the minds of neoclassical architects of the ideas of classicism.

However, it should be emphasized the dual nature of the attitude to the problems of traditions in the estate culture of the second half of the 19th century, in which an openly sarcastic attitude towards it and an internal, often veiled adherence to the same traditions coexisted at the same time.

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In the 1930s and 1940s, the most freely, organically and, perhaps, consistently, the aesthetics of romanticism, which developed in a certain opposition to the complex and contradictory socio-historical conditions of the Nikolaev time, expressed itself in the estate artistic culture, and, above all, in the formation of the architectural and park environment. . Moreover, it seems that the ideas of romanticism affected the estate much earlier than they received theoretical formulation in literature, fine arts, theater, music and architecture. The penetration of romantic tendencies into the estate culture at an earlier stage was prepared by the manifestations of sentimentalism and pre-romanticism characteristic of the estates of the era of classicism. Convincing judgment D.S. Likhachev that “individual romantic elements in landscape parks appeared much earlier than romanticism itself in literature and only subsequently received their understanding in the spirit of the aesthetics of romanticism”, it seems quite legitimate to extend to the architecture of estates, inextricably linked with their park environment.

If from the end of the XVIII century. gradually took place, according to the scientist, “consolidation of the signs of Romanticism into a single romantic style landscape gardening art”, then it could take place only in conjunction with the architecture of “small” forms of manor and landscape gardening architecture, as well as with the general decorative processing of the facades of manor buildings. It is characteristic that "pseudo-Gothic" in the work of V.I. Bazhenov, M.F. Kazakova, Yu.M. Felten, V.I. Neyolova was used only in manor architecture. “Pseudo-Gothic” developed in line with classicism, was formed mostly according to the canons of the order system, using “Gothic”, as they were called at that time, forms not built according to the rules of “true architecture”, with the involvement of certain motifs of Western Russian medieval architecture.

In the manor construction of the 1830–1850s. the use of medieval forms in their original positions acts as a certain tradition in Russian estate culture. In this sense, the perception of stylization on the themes of European medieval architecture was also traditional. And just as in the previous era, "Gothic taste" meant not a certain grand style, but only a hint of it. With the help of such stylization, a theatrical architectural environment was created in the estates, which, in interaction with the “primordial” nature, was able to awaken romantic moods. But this environment was perceived in the era of romanticism differently than in the 18th century, since in the then prevailing ideas it corresponded to the spiritual ideals of a person and answered his aspirations for beauty. In contrast to the era of classicism, in the style of architectural forms in the “Gothic taste”, architects turn to motifs that were established by that time in modern residential architecture, based on new principles for organizing living space and translating images of the national Middle Ages into the composition and decoration of castles and cottages. In the manor architecture of those years, buildings are distributed that are marked with the seal of "English taste" and look like a castle or a cottage. Such architecture corresponded to the aesthetic principles of romanticism and at the same time met the tasks of comfort, coziness, and the well-known simplicity of a country dwelling. The English way of life is elevated to a model worthy of imitation. In Russian society, Anglomania is becoming fashionable, which manifested itself in a particularly curious way in the estate culture.

In the architecture of estates, the type of cottage is becoming popular. The earliest and most characteristic example of the use of English Gothic motifs in Russian romanticism of the 19th century. was the palace of Nicholas I "Cottage", built in Peterhof by A.A. Menelas. But it was still a building of the palace type, erected in one of the largest royal estates, near the capital. In this context, manor houses built in medium-sized estates are of greater interest. Like the Peterhof "Cottage", they were distinguished by the principles of symmetry on which the composition of these structures was built, as well as by a larger size compared to the English prototypes.

One of the first such buildings was the manor house in Lyubichi, Kirsanovsky district, Tambov province, built in the 1830s. its owner N.I. Krivtsov on his own project. N.I. Krivtsov is far from an ordinary person who left a noticeable mark on the history of Russian culture. A close friend of A.S. Pushkin and P.A. Vyazemsky, a participant in the Patriotic War of 1812, who lost his leg in the battle of Kulm, Krivtsov not only did not succumb to his misfortune, but also made a lot of efforts to expand his education in the hope of benefiting the fatherland. He undertook a three-year trip around Europe, during which he met with prominent people, studied the organization of schools, courts and other institutions, and was fond of the ideas of Rousseau. He used his stay in England as an employee of the Russian embassy to replenish their knowledge. Krivtsov paid special attention to the English way of life and architecture. After retiring, he settled in the Tambov province, where, according to his first biographer Ya.I. Saburov, "unfolded his amazing taste in horticulture, architecture and agriculture" and "was known as an Anglo-lover" . B.N. Chicherin, whose parents were close friends of Krivtsov, noted that in England "he was especially captivated by the English way of life, life in castles, which seemed to him the ideal of a private existence."

N.I. Krivtsova Lyubichi was located on the bend of the Vyazhly River, where, among the bare steppe, an “Anglo-Russian” estate soon arose with a large manor house in the English style, with a high tower on which a flag fluttered, and a small church attached to the house; separately, in the steppe, far from the habitation, Krivtsov built a chapel-tomb, which later served as the burial place for himself, his wife, who died in St. Petersburg, and his brother, diplomat P.I. Krivtsov. By the beginning of our century, none of these buildings, except for the tower, survived.

“Captured by the English way of life,” wrote B.N. Chicherin, - he took from him what could come to the Russian environment and what constitutes a need for an educated person ... The way of life he created became a model for the whole region. It was a new enlightened element introduced into Russian landlord life.

It is impossible to judge the architectural appearance of the buildings in Lyubichi, as well as the park surrounding them, laid out, probably with the help of the Penza garden master, the Englishman Magzig (?). Some idea of ​​the master's house can be given by V. A. Baratynsky, that the house he built in Muranov near Moscow was "improvised little Lyubichi".

Krivtsov's Anglomania touched not only the principles of the architectural design of the estate ensemble he created, but also permeated the life of his family and all his activities. The estate of his brother P.I. served as the implementation of his extensive agronomic plans. Krivtsov - Tamala of the Saratov province, which he ruled. In addition to taking care of his own estate and Tamala, he found time to introduce new ideas that captivated him among the surrounding landowners. There is evidence that he built houses for many of his neighbors.

Lyubichi, together with the estates of friends and neighbors of Krivtsov - N.I. Chicherin and S.A. Baratynsky (the poet's brother) formed, as it were, a single cultural center, although each of the estates had independent significance.

Family home of SA. Baratynsky Mar was founded at the end of the 18th century, with a classicist house and a park full of lordly "futures" that fell into disrepair. Like Krivtsov, the owner erected in the "Gothic style" according to his own drawings a summer house in the park, above the grotto, sung by his brother.

At the heart of the project of the manor house in Karaul (in the same district) N.V. Chicherin, according to his son B.N. Chicherin, lay the plan drawn up by N.I. Krivtsov for the house of the Bologovskys, relatives of the Chicherins. The house was built in the 1840s. designed by a Moscow architect (presumably A.S. Miller) also like a cottage, on the high bank of the Vorona River, surrounded by a large landscape park - the creation of the same Penza garden master Magzig. The anglicized architecture of the manor house in Karaul, seemingly alien to all the traditions of Russian architecture and inadequate to Russian nature, turned out to be possible due to the laconicism of forms, naturally inscribed in this nature.

The interiors of the house, which constituted a comfortable and cozy living environment, are known to us only from photographs of the beginning of the 20th century, which depict the almost century-old collecting activity of the Chicherins. Each room was a kind of museum, with a lovingly selected exhibition of porcelain, bronze, lamps, fabrics. The walls of the three rooms of the lower floor - the dining room, the living room, the "White Hall" - were filled with the most significant paintings from their collection: works of the Velazquez school, Veronese, originals by Jan van Goyen, Palma the Younger, N. Mas, G. Terborch, as well as Russian painters – V.A. Tropinina, V.K. Shebueva, I.K. Aivazovsky, F.A. Vasilyeva and others.

The circle of friends of the Krivtsovs, Chicherins, Baratynskys, Khvoshchinskys - the owners of the neighboring estate of Umet, also included the inhabitants of Zubrilovka (Balashevsky district of the Saratov province, - the princes Golitsyns and their neighbor on the estate Ya.I. Saburov.

The type of cottage, in terms of architectural and spatial composition and rational foundations of internal planning, apparently met the requirements that had developed in the advanced circles of Russian society under the influence of their complex life filled with intellectual pursuits. Almost simultaneously with the mentioned estates of the Tambov province, in different parts of Russia there are estates in which, in addition to the interpretation of architectural structures close to them in a romantic anglicized spirit, similar features are found in the organization of cultural life. Among them is the already mentioned Muranovo. Creating this estate, the poet E.A. Baratynsky was hardly limited to the intention to achieve similarity with the Lyubichs only in the architecture of the master's house. It seems that his plans were much broader and extended to the way of life that he may have been captivated by in the estate of N.I. Krivtsov. In any case, simultaneously with the construction of the house, he took up economic affairs, among which the reproduction of timber sold for export was by no means the last place. In architectural work, Baratynsky's main attention was focused not on the design of the facade of the house, but on its internal structure, in which two seemingly contradictory principles interacted - the use of an enfilade system in the planning of the premises on the ground floor and at the same time the free construction of an internal space not bound by canons. In the center of the house, a three-part living room was arranged, overlooking the main and garden facades with faceted ledges. The originality of such a decision and the feeling of peace it causes are noted by everyone who has ever written about these interiors. The living room acquired a special coziness in the evening, when the whole family gathered here, oil lamps and candles were lit, music sounded.

The determining factor in the organization of Muranov's cultural life was the upbringing of children. Classroom classes here alternated with walks with parents and family evenings in the living room, with music playing, indispensable reading aloud, drawing, needlework, etc. Due to teachers, people not only educated, but sometimes very gifted, a rather closed intellectual circle of the inhabitants of the estate expanded . “Our house is now very reminiscent of a small university,” wrote E.A. Baratynsky mother in the summer of 1842 - We have five strangers, among whom fate brought us an excellent drawing teacher. Our little extravagant life and the income we hope to derive from forestry allow us to do much for the education of children, while they and their teachers enliven our loneliness.

The architectural and park environment, nature, everyday, economic and cultural life were combined in Muranovo into a simple, reasonably organized and coherent world, which also favored Baratynsky's literary works. However, this world was soon destroyed. In the autumn of 1843 E.A. Baratynsky with his wife and older children went on a trip to Europe, during which he died in Naples in June of the following year.

The fascination with English Gothic also affected those landlords who did not want to rebuild their manor houses, built during the years of classicism (a tribute to traditions and respect for antiquity!) and possessing significant artistic merit. In these cases, the owners of the estates erected, at some distance from the old manor houses, among the picturesque landscapes of the park, new houses in the English style, more comfortable, cozy and modest. The summer house in Mare S.A. has already been mentioned here. Baratynsky, which was built in the same way. But even more interesting in this regard is Avchurino Poltoratsky near Kaluga.

Avchurino by the 1840s was in the possession of the Poltoratsky for almost 50 years (since 1792). The construction of the second stone manor house, with lancet windows, battlements and phials characteristic of romanticism, complemented by a high octagonal tower, giving the structure the appearance of an old English castle, corresponded to the Europeanized economy of Avchurin, who was known as exemplary and applied the latest achievements of agricultural technology of that time. The stud farm and the “experimental practical farm” of D.M. Poltoratsky; the facades of these buildings, by the way, were also processed in "Gothic" forms.

The cultural life of Avchurin was distinguished by a high level. Among the friends of the builder of the "Gothic" house S.D. Poltoratsky were such outstanding figures of Russian culture as P.A. Vyazemsky, V.F. Odoevsky, N.I. and I.S. Turgenevs The owner himself was a passionate bibliophile. Bookcases stood in all the front rooms of the "Gothic" house; in fact, for the library, which included the book collection of grandfather S.D. Poltoratsky, the famous bibliophile P.K. Khlebnikov, the tower was built.

The new tastes of society also influenced the nature of the requirements of a wealthy customer for the stylistic and figurative interpretation of the estate ensemble. It is known, for example, that on the fulfillment of one’s desire “to give the main house of the estate a look medieval castle” insisted Count A.Kh. Benckendorff during perestroika in the 1830s. his estate Fall (on the shores of the Baltic Sea, near Reval). All buildings of this ensemble, from the palace to the park bench, were designed by the architect A.I. Stackenschneider in "Gothic" motifs. The interior decoration of the palace, including its furniture, was made in the same style.

The main element of the ensemble of the Fall estate was a vast landscape park with chestnut and larch alleys, with many secluded "neglected" corners, decorated with light "Gothic" pavilions and ruins, with a waterfall arranged in the immediate vicinity of the house - in front of its terrace, with accentuated drops relief. A particularly romantic impression was made by the panorama unfolded towards the sea, which created the effect of the “authenticity” of a mysterious medieval castle, protruding with its towers and battlements above the dark clumps of trees.

Almost at the same time, when Fall was being landscaped, the motifs of English castle architecture found application in the Panin's Marfin estate near Moscow. The estate was in the possession of the Panins in the 1830s; architect M.D. Bykovsky. The work was carried out in 1831–1846. A striking example of the architecture of romanticism is a magnificent, representative ensemble, subtly connected with nature, created by M.D. Bykovsky. According to the researcher of the work of this master E.I. Kirichenko, the architect, retaining the basics of the regular layout of the Marfinsky ensemble, shifted the accents, which muffled this regularity, based on a symmetrical-axial composition. At the same time, “other features came to the fore - picturesqueness, picturesqueness, landscape ... the composition, designed for instant visibility, gained versatility and mobility” . Despite the presence of the front courtyard, flanked by two outbuildings and located on the side of the front (access) facade of the palace, opposite the pond, M.D. Bykovsky organized a picturesque entrance to it from the side of the pond. This entrance assumes a consistent acquaintance of the traveler with the pier, the griffins and the fountain, the panorama of the palace, erected on a high hill, processed with terraces and stairways, a narrow "Gothic" bridge, solemn "Gothic" gates in the English style.

The romantic perception of the Marfino estate is facilitated by two churches towering near the main ensemble - Rozhdestvenskaya (1707), built by the fortress architect V.I. Belozerov in the forms of Peter the Great Baroque, and Petropavlovskaya (1770s) in the style of classicism.

The tendencies of romanticism manifested themselves not only in estates, where architecture and the surrounding nature themselves gave rise to this. In many cases, the owners of the estates stubbornly preserved the old ensemble of the estate, which developed in the era of classicism, took care of it, avoided reconstruction, limiting themselves to ordinary repairs. The landowners were aware that classicism had outlived itself as a style, but it still seemed beautiful to them. Romanticism was also indirectly manifested in these sensations. Romanticism could also be reflected in the impression that the estate world made on an outside observer. Finally, the very life of such an estate could be permeated with the ideas of romanticism.

In the last third of the XIX century. in Russia, the influence of romantic moods, somewhat muted in previous years, on manor architectural and park complexes is increasing. In the very attraction of man to nature, ties with which were increasingly lost in the era of rapid modernization of society, a romantic worldview was embedded. But similar tendencies in the estate construction of this time manifested themselves in different ways. One of the manifestations new wave Romanticism was a renewed fascination with Gothic. In a number of large estates, buildings of the palace type appear, evoking associations with French castles of the Renaissance (Sharovka Königov in the Kharkov province, Allatskivi Nolkenov near Lake Peipus). Their architecture was built on a combination of volumes of different sizes, complemented by numerous turrets, pediments, battlements.

The interpretation of medieval motifs in smaller estates was different, where rational requirements for suburban housing prevailed over the desire for romantic images, and the simple outlines of architectural masses were brightened up with stingy attire - just a hint of the motives of the distant past.

Romantic motives also dictated the desire for approval in Russian architecture of that time and, especially, in the country estate architecture of the national style. Not the last role in this process was played by populist ideas, under the influence of which there is an interest in peasant folk art in all its forms and the idea of ​​​​using its original motives in professional art is born. The founders of this trend in the architecture of the last third of the XIX century. were V.A. Hartman and I.P. Ropet (Petrov), who in their practice refused to turn to ancient prototypes and drew their ideas from peasant applied art. It was perceived by many contemporaries as advanced and was especially supported by V.V. Stasov. In addition to the well-known Abramtsevo buildings, one can name "Teremok" in Olgin, Novgorod province, a house in Glubokoye, Pskov province, an extension to the manor house in Ryumina Roshcha, Ryazan province, made using forms interpreted in this way.

In general, the manor architecture of the second half of the XIX century. was affected by all the trends that were characteristic of Russian architecture of that time. Particularly fashionable were the eclectic trends of the Western persuasion, which in manor construction turned out to be in line with the traditions that had developed in the era of classicism. On the other hand, perhaps it was the richness of stylistic searches that contributed to the diversity of artistic images, which saved the estate architecture from boring monotony.

Significant changes also affected the social composition of the owners at this time. country estates. The process of the transition of the old noble estates into the hands of the merchants, which had been outlined even in the pre-reform years, intensified after the abolition of serfdom.

At first, asserting themselves, the new owners sought to preserve the old architectural and park environment of the estate intact and left the interior of the manor house intact, trying to reproduce the way of life that once existed here. But as the years passed, this protective attitude towards the art world of the estate began to give way to commercial interests. At first, relatively rarely, but later on, more and more often there are cases of rebuilding old manor structures, redevelopment and cutting down parks. In their place, as a result of the fragmentation of estates and estate territories, summer cottages began to appear. So, the beautiful well-maintained Volkonsky Kamenka estate near Moscow (Bogorodsky district) by the end of the 1880s. was divided into seven separate estates, owned by various owners, mainly from the merchant class. The Cherry Orchard situation, therefore, took shape in real life long before it was reflected in fiction.

A curious example of the "dacha" use of the estate territory is Kuntsevo, the Naryshkin family estate (since 1690), divided in the middle of the century between the Solodovnikovs and the Soldatenkovs (however, the latter retained the old manor house of the end of the 18th century and a significant part of the landscape park). The rest of the territory was turned by them into a holiday village.

Notes:

Cit. Quoted from: Shamurin Yu. Podmoskovnye. M., 1914. Prince. 1. Issue. 3. S. 52.

Bolotov A. T. The life and adventures of Andrei Bolotov, described by himself for his descendants. T. 1. M., 1993. S. 127–128

See: Romanovich-Slavatinsky A. The nobility of Russia. 2nd ed. Kyiv, 1912; Semevsky V.I. Peasants in the reign of Empress Catherine II. SPb., 1903; Kabuzan V.M., Troitsky SM. Changes in the number, proportion and placement of the nobility in Russia in 1782–1858. // History of the USSR. 1971. No. 4

See: Korobko M.Yu. Narrow // Manor necklace of the South-West of Moscow. M., 1996. P. 112 See about this: Kirichenko E.I. Russian estate in the context of culture... P. 55

Baratynsky E. Letter to mother, A.F. Baratynskaya. Summer 1842 // Baratynsky E. Poems. Prose. Letters. M., 1983. S. 194

Burnt down in 1997

Baratynsky E. Decree. op. pp. 193–194

Petrova T.A. Andrey Stackenschneider. L., 1978. S. 15

Kirichenko E.I. Mikhail Bykovsky. M., 1988. S. 144

Russian manor - as a factor of cultural formation of spiritual and aesthetic

outlook of the nobility.

Lyubov Evgenievna Gorodnova - Tambov State Museum of Local Lore

Abstract: the article discusses the uniqueness of the provincial noble. This is due to the fact that real monuments of manor construction are still preserved - elements of the cultural code of the estate: architectural and palace complexes, residential areas, religious buildings, garden and park ensembles.

Key words: province, Russian estate, cultural formation, cultural center, spiritual self-realization.

In the 20th century, the provincial noble estate, as a unique socio-cultural object, practically fell out of sight of culturologists, historians, and art historians. This was the result of the denial of the creative role of the nobility for several decades, and the estate culture was interpreted as a decadence of a national culture. And the propaganda carefully inflated for half a century - “war on palaces” - destroyed at one time tens and hundreds of noble estates. The theme of the uniqueness of the provincial noble estate in modern historical and cultural conditions is very relevant. This is due, first of all, to the fact that real monuments of manor construction are still preserved - elements of the cultural code of the estate: architectural and palace complexes, residential areas, religious buildings, garden and park ensembles.

The estates are many-sided and diverse in their essence; for centuries they served in the provinces as mini-outposts of Russian culture. The manor culture combined both the culture of the advanced nobility and folk culture. When arranging the estate, all the achievements of world art - painting and architecture - were used in the decorations of buildings and interior design. But at the same time, the internal potential of the estate was also actively involved - the abilities and talent of serfs. The owner, using peasant labor, thereby contributed to the development of the craftsman's talent - both of them became accomplices in the creative process.

An important role in the organization of the estate space was assigned to mental stereotypes: estates were arranged with the strictest discipline, in the manner of military settlements (A.A. Arakcheev - the Gruzino estate, Tver province); built oriental palaces with appropriate interiors, surrounded themselves with "home-grown" araps and serf odalisques (I.D. Shepelev - Vyksa factories, Nizhny Novgorod province). Noble Masons reflected their spiritual and philosophical views in the architecture, decorations and interiors of manor buildings. The theme of the philosophy of "free masons", after several decades of an unspoken ban, is again being addressed by researchers. But the theme of Masonic estates remains little studied so far because of the former diversity, there is practically nothing left at the present time. a shining example This kind of estate, with powerful Masonic symbols that have survived to this day, is the Zubrilovka estate of the princes Golitsyn-Prozorovsky (Penza region). Interest in Masonic philosophy was a deeply private side of life, but it was reflected in the realities of the estate world - the design of the temple, the architecture and the location of the buildings of the estate - the palace, church, bell tower.

The church in Zubrilovka, as in any other noble estate, was a spiritual center, embodied an independent world, the meaning of which was equally addressed to heaven, and to God, and to the inhabitants of the estate. Examples of an attempt to familiarize the inhabitants of the estate with the highest ideals are the wall painting of the chapel - the suffering of the Holy Martyr Barbara and the icon of the Archangel Michael. The grisaille murals of the temple are also ambiguous in their essence. The symbolism and coloring of the murals allow us to assume that the owners of Zubrilovka belonged to the Ioannovsky degree of Freemasonry, in particular, to the lodge of the Russian Eagle. The Ioannovsky degree is the three lower levels of the order (student, comrade, master), which made peaceful idealists out of brothers. It was dominated by the symbolism of ethical principles - equality, brotherhood, universal love. The coloring of the Ioannovsky degree is bright and clear, the color scheme is corresponding - gold, azure, white. The Russian Eagle Lodge was founded on March 12, 1818, its main symbol is the Kleinod double-headed eagle, whose presence

we observe in the murals of the Zubrilovsky temple. The postulates of the lodge "freemasons" star (sun) - a symbol of the Great Architect of the Universe; the cross and the crown of thorns are symbols of the martyrdom of Christ; bible - Foundation stone Masonic philosophy; the wand is a symbol of the power of the supreme master of the lodge; segments of columns - a symbol of stability, the fundamental nature of Masonic teachings; pincers and a hammer - tools for processing wild stone (wild stone - the human soul); knots - a symbol of the fortress of the Masonic brotherhood; lilies - a symbol of the Virgin Mary; three-candlestick - a symbol of the third stage of the order; the double-headed eagle - the symbol of the Russian Eagle lodge - is present not only in the murals of the chapel, but also in the altar parts of the chapel churches.

The arrangement of the estate was partly a tribute to the fashion for country palaces, but it was not a simple improvement of the everyday life of a nobleman away from the capital. Important and paramount importance was the fact that every owner dreamed of building a “family nest”, the essential attributes of which are a manor house, a church, greenhouses, gardens, parks, cascades of ponds, flower beds, utility yards, etc. In a word, everything that later the young offspring will associate with the concept of "small Motherland". Born on the estate, they served in the capitals, receiving ranks and awards, traveled the world in search of new experiences and ideals, and the last shelter was found, as a rule, in the family necropolis of their native estate. The eternal love for the “native ashes”, sometimes even inexplicable, in this case is a feeling of a high philosophical order, which, leveling class differences, in fact, is an implication of the spiritual unity of the nobility and the common people. The color of manor life was determined by the spiritual space, history, traditions, which were reverently guarded and passed down from generation to generation, with significant events imprinted forever in family heirlooms, with a family gallery, library, collections, family albums, tombstones near the church. Continuity family traditions- “it is so customary with us”, adherence to patriarchal foundations, living with a large family, warm relationships - determined the behavior model of the inhabitants of the estate. More than one generation of the nobility was raised on tribal values, on the “traditions of ancient times,” for whom nobility, duty, honor, and responsibility were integral features of an educated person. The value system of the nobility underwent a transformation over time, but the eternal ones remained - "for the Faith, the Tsar and the Fatherland."

After the peasant reform of 1861, the provincial estate went through a period of decline, but, retaining the status of an independent cultural space, it continues to serve as a source of inspiration for poets, artists, and composers. Here creative person fully understood the futility of the vain world, experienced, lacking at all times, a sense of freedom. The spirit of the estate attracted, fascinated, inspired. The best works of the “golden age” were created in the conditions of a prosperous noble estate. It was after arriving in his native Mara that Yevgeny Boratynsky wrote the following lines:

chains imposed by fate

Fell from my hands, and again

I see you, native steppes,

My initial love.

Nikolai Krivtsov, enjoying rural landscapes, wrote, imitating A.S. Pushkin:

I lived long and enjoyed long,

But since then I only know bliss,

How the Lord brought me to Lubichi.

G. Derzhavin and M. Lermontov admired the idyll of rural life. V. Borisov-Musatov was inspired by Zubrilovka, the estate of the princes Golitsyn-Prozorovsky, to create his best paintings. Sergei Rachmaninov created everything significant in his work in Ivanovka -

family estate of his wife. I. Bunin sang the “Swan Song” to the estate when the estate culture suffered the fate of the “cherry garden”.

At the beginning of the 20th century, old Russia collapsed under the pressure of nihilistic revelry - “we will destroy the whole world of violence”. Disappeared forever, burned in the furnaces of cynicism and lack of spirituality, estate values ​​- books, paintings, collections of arts and crafts. A blatant paradox of vandalism - built for several generations, centuries - destroyed in a few months. The names of noble estates disappeared from the map of Russia, palaces were destroyed, estate churches, parks, family necropolises were destroyed. The ties with the past, with the origins of our culture, have been severed. But the history and culture of the Russian state cannot be imagined without the noble families of the Sheremetevs, Rumyantsevs, Naryshkins, Golitsyns, Stroganovs, Prozorovskys, Volkonskys, Chicherins, Boratynskys and others. Best Representatives the nobility in the diplomatic field or on the battlefield were involved in significant milestones in world and national history. These events were reflected in the creation of the image of the estate, which brought progressive ideas into the spiritual, cultural and social environment of the province. The Russian provinces, due to their poverty, could not afford either a rich cultural life or monumental architecture - this was the prerogative of the capitals. The noble estate, both urban and suburban, was the only source of transformation of the appearance of the province. Manor complexes organically fit into the surrounding landscape, emphasizing the harmonious fusion of nature and human creation. The culture of the noble estate must be accepted as a phenomenon of a national character. Representatives of many noble families, brought up in the estate, turned out to be scattered all over the world by the will of fate - artists, poets, composers, they enriched the culture of foreign countries.

The study of the phenomenon of a noble estate is a complex direction in the national

without studying the features of the living space of the estate, its influence on environment We have lost it financially. The history of the Russian provincial noble estate is currently being studied by researchers based on the surviving fragments, and these are, at best, the ruined remains of palaces, temples, outbuildings and small park areas. Only with their help it is possible to judge the architectonics of the manor culture, its features, the symbolism and semantic content of the palace and park complexes. The culture of a provincial noble estate must be studied in the complex of all problems - theological, cultural, historical, art history, environmental. Only then will we be able to fully comprehend and appreciate the contribution that the Russian estate made to the development of not only Russian, but also world culture.

"The houses are slanted, two-story And right there is a barn, a barnyard, Where important geese are at the trough. They carry on a non-silent conversation. In the gardens of nasturtiums and roses, In ponds of blooming crucian carp. Old estates are scattered All over mysterious Rus'."

N. Gumilyov

Man is an extremely disorganized and chaotic being. In himself, in time, perhaps, he will figure it out. He will establish his values ​​and ideals, and learn to build actions in accordance with them. But there are many people and everyone is trying to establish their values ​​in the human community, to establish their ideals as the most important for all. If this is allowed, "social chaos" begins.

This is where culture comes into play. Many philosophers see its purpose in the organization of social chaos. To do this, society develops some average ideals and values, which constitute its ideology. However, a particular person most often does not correspond to average social ideals. And a person perceives the values ​​imposed on him by society as a restriction of his freedom. So gradually culture, remaining a powerful means of regulating relations in society, becomes a mechanism for suppressing the individual.

Thus, the life of an individual person proceeds in two sharply demarcated plans. Social activities are carried out during the so-called working hours. It is (sometimes very sharply) opposed by individual time, "free time". In the psychological world of the individual, this difference is fixed in precise terms: "need" and "want." For a man a job to do necessary, is in a completely different world than the one you do I want to. And "I need time", in contrast to "I want time", is filled with a completely different meaning.

Free time ("time I want") cannot be spent in the same place where you usually work. Here everything should be different, desired, and not due. "Other" behavior is expressed in emphatically solemn, or emphatically free gestures, in special jokes. "Other" behavior expresses itself in gifts and joint meals, which is especially characteristic of Rus'. So everything - a special place, a special time, special objects and other behavior serve to create an ideal reality unlike everyday life, the one that we only dream of. A reality that embodies our idea of ​​an ideal existence, of a bygone "golden age".

In the world of noble culture with its rigid hierarchy, this was felt especially sharply. That is why Catherine II said that "living in society does not mean doing nothing." This stage, extremely theatrical life was a real daily social work. The nobles served the “Sovereign and Fatherland” not only in departments, but also at court festivities and balls. Festive court life was for a nobleman the same "must" as serving in the sovereign's troops.

And the "ideal reality" was embodied for the Russian nobles of the XVIII-XIX centuries by their family estates. Therefore, the main task of any, albeit “bad”, estate construction is to create an ideal world, with its own rituals, norms of behavior, type of management and special pastime.

And the estate world was created very carefully and in detail. In a good homestead, nothing should be thought out. Everything is significant, everything is an allegory, everything is “read” by those initiated into the manor sacrament. The yellow color of the manor house showed the wealth of the owner, being perceived as the equivalent of gold. The roof was supported by white (symbol of light) columns. The gray color of flygnley is a remoteness from an active life. And red in unplastered outbuildings is, on the contrary, the color of life and activity. And all this was drowned in the greenery of gardens and parks - a symbol of hope. Swamps, cemeteries, ravines, hills - everything was slightly corrected, corrected and called Nezvanki, Shelters, Joy, becoming significant in the estate symbolism. Naturally, this ideal world is a must. although often purely symbolic, it was fenced off from the outside world with walls, bars, towers, artificial moats, ravines and ponds.

Nature itself is the ideal garden of God, like the Garden of Eden. Every tree, every plant is something mean in general harmony. White birch trunks, reminiscent of white column trunks, serve as a stable image of the homeland. Linden trees in the driveways during the spring flowering hinted at the heavenly ether with their fragrance. Acacia was planted as a symbol of the immortality of the soul. For the oak, perceived as strength, eternity, virtue, special clearings were arranged. Ivy, as a sign of immortality, wrapped around the trees in the park. And the reeds near the water symbolized solitude. Even the grass was seen as mortal flesh, withering and resurrecting. It is characteristic that aspen, as a “cursed tree”, is practically not found in noble estates.

So gradually the ideal world acquired reality in the estate. This ideality was akin to a theatre, where ceremonial scenes lined up on the stage, and behind the scenes their own daily life flows. Therefore, the estate construction was carefully hidden from prying eyes. Construction sites were surrounded by a veil of secrecy. High fences were erected around them, access roads and bridges were dismantled, technical documents were destroyed. The estate was supposed to appear as if created overnight, by magic. The scenery was created in the theater of noble life. This is how Petersburg arose - overnight, on a deserted Finnish swamp. In an instant, a new stone Russia appeared to astonished Europe.

Each architectural structure imposes its own rhythm of life on its inhabitants. The city gates open and close at specific times, starting and ending the city day. In the imperial palace, time flows differently than in a business office. So the noble estate formed its own rhythm of life. For about two centuries, the life of a nobleman began in the estate, flowed in it, and often ended here. The life cycle was supplemented by the daily one. A day in the estate obviously

divided not only temporally, but also spatially. "Pre-dawn twilight of the vestibule" continued "early morning of the men's study", "noon of the living room", "theater evening", and so on, until "deep evening of the bedroom."

Like the theatrical existence, life in the estate was clearly divided into front and everyday life. The men's study was the intellectual and economic center of the "everyday" life of the estate. However, they furnished it almost always very modestly. “The study, placed next to the buffet (buffet room), was inferior to him in size and, despite its seclusion, seemed still too spacious for the owner’s scientific studies and the repository of his books,” wrote F.F. Vigel. Throughout the 18th century, when intellectual and moral work became the duty of every nobleman, the owner's office belonged almost to most informal rooms of the estate. Here everything was designed for solitary work.

Accordingly, the office was furnished. The "Golan" or "English" cabinet was considered fashionable. Almost all of its furnishings were ascetic oak furniture, with very discreet upholstery, and a modest table clock. The desks didn't complain. Preference was given to secretaries, desks, bureaus.

The master's study, unlike the mistress's quarters, was almost undecorated and rather modestly decorated. Only an exquisite decanter and a glass for "morning consumption" of cherry or anise were considered indispensable (it was believed that this contributes to the prevention of "angina pectoris" and "stroke" - the most fashionable diseases of the 18th - early 19th centuries) and a smoking pipe. Smoking at the turn of the century became a whole symbolic ritual. “In our time,” E.P. Yankova recalls at the end of the 18th century, “rare people didn’t sniff, but they considered smoking very reprehensible, and women didn’t even hear of it; and men smoked in their offices or in the air, and if the ladies are around, then they always ask first: “excuse me.” In the living room and in the hall, no one ever smoked even without guests in his family, so that, God forbid, somehow this smell would not remain and that the furniture would not stink .

Each time has its own special habits and concepts.

Smoking began to spread in a noticeable way after 1812, and especially in the 1820s: cigars began to be brought, about which We had no idea, and the first ones that were brought to us were shown as a curiosity.

For smoking in the office, several still lifes on the theme of Vanitas (the transience of life) were specially placed. The fact is that for a whole century, "eating smoke" was associated in the mind of a nobleman with reflections on the topics of "vanity of vanities" and "life is smoke." This evangelical theme was especially popular in Russia. Children blew short-lived soap bubbles, adults blew ephemeral smoke from pipes and flew on fragile balloons - and all this was perceived at the turn of the century as symbols of the extreme fragility of existence.

It was here, in the office of the owner of the estate, that managers reported, letters and orders were written, dues were calculated, neighbors were accepted "simply", projects of estate architects were discussed. Today, researchers often come to a standstill when discussing the authorship of certain estates. Who was their true creator? The architect who created the original design? The owner of the estate, who almost always remade it in his own way? A contractor who reckoned more with his skill than with the tastes of the architect and owner?

Since the men's office is designed for work, books played the main role in its interior. Some of the books were necessary for successful farming. The landlords did not disdain to carefully study the architectural works of Vignola or Palladio, especially at the beginning of new estate construction. Indeed, along with the French language, architecture was supposed to be known to every educated nobleman. Calendars containing advice for all occasions are an indispensable attribute of such offices. What was not here? "A list of orders granted by Her Imperial Majesty ...", "a sure way to breed Abolene dogs in non-hot regions", "a recipe for the quickest slaking of quicklime", "the simplest means of dyeing linden into mahogany and ebony", "about the most elegant and inefficient method smashing English parks", "about a cheap and sure method of treating scrofula", "about making early cherry liqueur" and much more.

In quiet estate offices, a fashion for reading was formed. "In the villages, who loved reading and who could only start up a small but complete library. There were some books that seemed to be considered necessary for these libraries and were in each. They were re-read several times by the whole family. The choice was not bad and quite thorough. For example , in every village library there were certainly already: Telemachus, Gilblaze, Don Quixote, Robinson Cruz, Ancient Vifliofika Novikov, Acts of Peter the Great with additions.The story of the wanderings in general La Harpe, the World Traveler of Abbé de la Porte and Marquis G., translation Iv. Perf. Yelagin, a clever and moral novel, but now ridiculed. Lomonosov, Sumarokov, Kheraskov were invariably among those who loved poetry. Later, the works of Mr. Voltaire began to be added to these books; and novels and stories by him; and The New Eloise. At the beginning of this century, the novels of August Lafongain, Madame Genlis and Kotzebue came into great fashion with us. But no one enjoyed such fame as Madame Radcliffe. Terrible and sensitive - there were, finally, two the kind of reading most to the taste of the public. Reading of this kind finally replaced the old books. "So wrote M.A. Dmitriev in the middle of the 19th century

Several generations of young nobles were brought up on such literature. From here, from the men's office of the estate, Russian enlightenment spread. Here the projects of the first Lancaster schools in Russia, new crop rotation systems, and women's education were drawn up. Here the capitalist economic system gradually matured. No wonder N.V. Gogol, describing in "Dead Souls" the village of the "enlightened" Colonel Koshkarev, sarcastically remarks:

"The whole village was scattered: buildings, rebuildings, heaps of lime, bricks and logs along all the streets. Some houses were built, like government offices. On one it was written in gold letters; "Depot of agricultural implements", on the other: expedition"; "Committee of rural affairs"; "School of normal education of the villagers". In a word, the devil knows what was not."

In the same rooms, curious natural scientists conducted pneumatic, electrical, and biological experiments. Astronomical observations were made from here. Therefore, sometimes the office was literally lined with telescopes, terrestrial and celestial globes, sundials and astrolabes.

Complementing the rather modest, almost ascetic atmosphere of the men's office were two or three portraits of the parents and children of the owner, a small picture with a battle or a seascape.

If the men's study was the private center of the estate, then the living room or hall served as its front face. Such a division into home and guest, everyday and festive was characteristic of the entire noble era. One of the consequences of such a division of the entire life of the nobility was the differentiation of manor interiors into "ceremonial apartments" and "rooms for the family." In wealthy estates, the living room and the hall served different purposes, but in most houses they were perfectly combined.

Contemporaries certainly perceived the hall or living room as a front, and therefore officially cold apartment. "The hall, large, empty and cold, with two or three windows to the street and four to the courtyard, with rows of chairs along the walls, with lamps on high legs and candelabra in the corners, with a large piano against the wall; dances, ceremonial dinners and a place for playing "cards were her destination. Then the living room, also with three windows, with the same sofa and a round table in the back and a large mirror above the sofa. On the sides of the sofa are armchairs, chaise longue tables, and between the windows there are tables with narrow wall-length mirrors... During the years of our childhood, fantasies were considered unlawful and all living rooms were in the same way, "recalls P.A. Kropotkin.

Almost all memoirists recall this emptiness and coldness of the living rooms, where “these times all the furniture was covered with covers”. First, the coldness of these halls was literal. For what their heat every day? And secondly, and architecturally, it was not homely warmth that stood out here, but splendor. Often the hall was made double-height. The windows on one side of the hall overlooked the front courtyard - courdoner, and on the other - to the "main clearing" (the so-called central alley of the park). Views from large windows were carefully considered when designing the estate. The ever-changing nature organically entered the design of the front hall.

The ceiling of the hall was certainly decorated with a magnificent ceiling, and the floor with parquet inserts with a special pattern. In the design of the walls, an order was often used. Ionic and Corinthian columns fenced off small loggias from the common hall, allowing you to feel both "in people" and in "solitude of people". The solemnity of the front hall was given by the carved gilded wood of the walls and furniture. Cold - white, blue, greenish tones throughout the living room were only slightly supported by gold and ocher.

Emphasized solemnity and numerous lamps. “The chandeliers and lanterns hanging from a height, and gilded lamps from the sides, some burn like heat, while others shimmer like water, and, copulating their rays into a cheerful solemn radiance, cover everything with holiness,” wrote G.R. Derzhavin. Contributed to this "holiness" and numerous mirrors, which have become an indispensable attribute of the main hall. "Purity", "righteousness" of the owners of the estate were read in their smooth shiny surfaces.

The mythical "antiquity" of the nobility was confirmed by the numerous marble "antiques" that always decorated the living room. Everything ancient was considered antique: both Roman originals and modern French or italian sculpture. The center of the hall almost always turned out to be a large ceremonial portrait of the current reigning person in an indispensable gilded frame. It was placed deliberately symmetrically along the main axis of the living room and was given the same honors as the sovereigns themselves.

At the beginning of the 19th century, living rooms "warm up". Now they are already painted in pinkish or ocher warm colors. Lush gilded furniture is replaced by more austere mahogany. Needlework is transferred here from ladies' offices. And in the previously cold fireplaces, a fire is lit every evening, fenced off from the hall by embroidered fireplace screens.

And the purpose of living rooms is changing. Now family holidays are held here, quiet. Often households gather for family reading: “I also remember the village readings of novels. The whole family sat in a circle in the evenings, someone read, others listened: especially ladies and girls. What horror the glorious Mrs. Radcliffe spread! Ms. Genlis! "The Sufferings of the Ortenberg Family" or "The Boy by the Stream" Kotzebue decisively drew tears! The fact is that while reading this, at those moments the whole family lived by heart or imagination, and was transferred to another world, which at that moment seemed real ; and most importantly, it felt more alive than in its monotonous life, "wrote M.A. Dmitriev.

Naturally, the official ceremonial portrait in the new environment was already unthinkable. Portraits of royalty are becoming more and more modest. And soon they are replaced by portraits of people dear to the heart of the owners "I remember asking her why, when she is at home, she always sits under the portrait of Mrs. Eltsova, like a chick under the wing of her mother? "Your comparison is very true," she objected, "I would never I didn’t want to get out from under her wing "(I.S. Turgenev" Faust "). It was this quiet and comfortable living room that entered the Russian literature of the 19th century.

At the very end of the 18th century, a women's office appeared in the manor house. This was demanded by the sentimental age, with its images of a tender wife and a businesslike hostess. Now, having received an education, the woman herself shaped the spiritual image not only of her children, but also of the courtyard people entrusted to her care. The day of a noblewoman, especially in a rural estate, was filled to the brim with worries. Her morning began in a "secluded" office, where they went for an order with a report, for money, with a daily menu.

However, over the course of the day, the functions of the women's office change. Business is always morning. And during the day, and especially in the evening, the hostess's office turns into a kind of salon. The very concept of a salon, where performers and the audience change each other, where “talks about everything and nothing” are held, where celebrities are invited, was formed at the end of the 18th century.

One of the most interesting salon entertainments was filling in the album of the hostess. These "albums of lovely ladies" today store poems and drawings by Batyushkov and Zhukovsky, Karamzin and Dmitriev. In these albums, perhaps, the atmosphere of the women's manor office was most clearly manifested.

In her manor office, the hostess received the closest relatives, friends, and neighbors. Here she read, drew, did needlework. Here she carried on extensive correspondence. Therefore, the women's office has always been distinguished by special comfort and warmth. The walls were painted in light colors, covered with wallpaper. Floral decor, the same floral painting covered the ceiling. The floor was no longer made of bright type-setting parquet, but was covered with a colored carpet. Fireplace warmth was added to the warmth of communication in the women's office. Furnaces and fireplaces here were richly decorated with faience tiles with reliefs on the themes of ancient mythology.

But leading role Artistic furniture was undoubtedly playing in the women's office. The walls between the windows were occupied by large mirrors resting on elegant tables. They reflected portraits, watercolors, embroideries. The furniture itself was now made of Karelian birch, in which they tried to preserve the natural texture, without covering it with gilding and colorful coloring. Small round and bobbin tables, armchairs and bureaus allowed the mistress of the office to build the necessary comfort herself. At the same time, they tried to divide the single space of the office into several cozy corners, each of which had its own purpose.

Especially popular at the end of the 18th century were miniature bean tables for needlework, writing, and tea drinking. They got their name for the oval shape of the tabletop with a cutout. And after the overweight and inactive Catherine II gave preference to these light tables, the fashion for them became widespread. They were rarely decorated with bronze (unlike in Western Europe), preferring to decorate them with pastoral scenes made using the marquetry technique (mosaic made of wood). A significant part of the furniture was made right there, in the manor workshops by "own" craftsmen. It was they who, first in separate drawings, and then the whole product, began to be covered with thin plates (veneer) from Karelian birch, poplar or capo-root, which soon became a sign of the Russian style in furniture.

Fabrics played an important role in shaping the image of the women's office. Curtains, draperies, furniture upholstery, floor carpets - all this was carefully selected. Here, on a light background, realistically drawn flowers, wreaths, bouquets, cupids, doves, hearts flaunted - a sentimental set of the turn of the century. They were echoed by the same cupids to bouquets of porcelain painting, textile and beaded patterns.

Interestingly, the turn of the century (XVIII-XIX) was a "golden age" not only for Russian literature, but also for Russian beads. Enthusiasm im in aristocratic circles has become so endemic that it has become an integral part of everyday culture. Unlike Europe, in Russia, almost no beadwork was made for sale. It was purely homework. And only in some monasteries they organized commercial production of beadwork. So A.B. Mariengof recalls "night shoes, embroidered with beads and bought back in Nizhny Novgorod from a needle-worker-monk of the Pechersk Monastery."

Yes, right at monk, not nuns! The sentimental ethics of the turn of the century "forced" not only women, but also men to do needlework. Icon frames, various panels, handbags, purses, belts, hats, shoes, pipe stems - everything could become a "delicate souvenir". Very young M.Yu. Lermontov writes to his aunt NA. Shangirei in 1827: “To Katyusha, as a token of gratitude for the garter, I am sending ... a bead box of my work.”

In the manufacture of large products, assistants from the serfs were involved. As a rule, they embroidered the background, while the hostess (owner) - luxurious bouquets and birds. This is how the three-meter beaded upholstery of the sofa, now stored in Historical Museum in Moscow.

What was not made of beads! Children's toys, purses and cases, covers and cases, icons and genre paintings, entire tapestries in royal palaces. Beads were tied around canes, smoking pipes, caskets, vases, glass holders, and chalk cases. Today, reading in Gogol's "Dead Souls" that in the Manilovs' house "surprises were being prepared for the birthday: some kind of beaded case for a toothpick", we laugh at the author's amusing fantasy. Meanwhile, the Hermitage keeps just such a “toothpick case” with an ornament and a lid, crocheted in the 1820s and 1830s. Even domestic quadrupeds used beadwork. “Milka ran merrily in a beaded collar, tinkling a piece of iron,” wrote L.N. Tolstoy in the story "Childhood".

At the beginning of the 19th century, "bead fever" spread throughout the province. And by the end of the century, when inexpensive beads appeared, they began to be engaged in peasant houses as well.

Often, it was here in the women's office with its special homeliness that family tea parties were held - this is a special purely Russian form of home communication.

Art in the estate was by no means limited to the creation of parks, the collection of libraries and all kinds of collections. Musical lessons played a significant role in the estate life. Choirs, orchestras and theaters were an integral part of manor life. “There was not a single rich landowner’s house where orchestras would not thunder, choirs would not sing, and where theater stages would not rise, on which home-grown actors made feasible sacrifices to the goddesses of art,” wrote the researcher of noble life M.I. Pylyaev. Theatrical buildings were specially erected in estates, "air" or "green" theaters were created in open-air parks.

The theater building was located, as a rule, separately from the main house, often in an outbuilding. Perhaps the only exception was the theater hall in Ostankino, where, in accordance with the plan of N.P. Sheremetev, it became the core of the manor house. Theatrical performances were an indispensable part of estate celebrations, especially those that came into fashion in the 1780s-1790s. For them, special programs were developed in such a way that one event followed another without interruption. The holiday began with a meeting of guests, the culmination of which was the meeting of a particularly honored guest. This was followed by a mandatory inspection of the house, the owner's collections. Walking in the park preceded the gala dinner. And only then there was a theatrical performance (often consisting of several plays), a ball, dinner, fireworks in the evening park and a solemn departure of guests.

The theatrical repertoire of noble estates was compiled in dependencies from whether the performances took place in the park's "green" theater or in the internal theater hall. The performances in the park, along with the nobles, could be attended by the most diverse audience - peasants, merchants, artisans. Therefore, the plays were chosen to be simple in staging, with an entertaining, often comic, plot. In the "closed" or "real" theater, mainly operas and ballets were staged. Moreover, as a rule, opera and ballet were presented as a single pair. Often pantomime was performed instead of ballet. It is clear that only a select audience could appreciate the merits of these genres. Moreover, the task of theatrical performances, according to the concepts of the Enlightenment, was "to give the public pleasure for the mind, sight and hearing."

It must be admitted that theatrical performances in the estate theaters at the turn of the century were quite at the level of the best European professional theaters. Many operas and ballets, before getting on the imperial stage, were staged here. A large number of works were written specifically for them. Such productions were especially carefully prepared for the arrival of an eminent guest or for the opening of a new theater hall.

If the owner of the wealthy owner of the estate managed to get an outstanding decorator, then the productions turned into colorful enchanting performances with almost no actors. It was a kind of theater of scenery. Such were the scenes of the assault on Izmail in N.P. Ostankino. Sheremetev, or the famous productions with scenery by P. Gonzago in the Arkhangelsk N.B. Yusupov.

Music in the estate existed in two forms - as a festive performance and as chamber music at home. The fortress choirs began to sing already during the meeting of the guests. Conrdances, minuets, polonaises sounded at the ball. Folk songs and dance music accompanied the walkers in the park. During ceremonial lunches and dinners, instrumental music sounded, solemn choirs and Italian arias were sung. Afternoon card games and conversations also took place to the sound of music. Yes, and in the evening in the garden during the illumination, choirs sang and brass bands played. “At that time, the singers and musicians set up in the grove sang and played a huge choir, which echoed and repeated in the distance,” wrote a participant in the estate festival.

specific musical phenomenon Russia XVIII century became horn orchestras. Playing the horns is extremely difficult. A musician must have considerable strength to blow a sound out of a horn. But even more difficult is the coordinated sound of the horn orchestra. The fact is that each of the instruments allows you to get a very limited number of sounds and the melody is often distributed among several instruments. But all the difficulties were redeemed by the unique sound of the horns. They made long, booming sounds that had a special effect in the open air. “In one place, in the open air, beautiful music was heard. This was played by an excellent horn chapel hidden in the baskets, which belonged to the count, ”recalls an eyewitness.

As for home music-making, the newly written quartets, trios, symphonies, opera arias played only in a home concert. Moreover, such music-making was the only form of semi-professional existence of music in Russia at that time. It was here that one could hear the music of Haydn, Mozart, Bortnyansky. Moreover, they always played a lot. By today's standards, one such performance fits into two or three concert programs. “At first, various symphonies and concertos were played with solos of various instruments ... After that, various things were played, such as: Heiden concertos and so on ... All this was listened to by those present with great applause and very worthy ... When the orchestra was brought out, then they played concertos on the clavichord... and then everyone followed to a quietly prepared dinner...”, recalls A.T. Bolotov.

The dining room occupied a special place of honor among the front chambers of the estate. At the same time, a dining room and the necessary daily space. It was here that the family felt unity. However, the dining room, as a separate room for joint meals, was formed at European courts only in the middle of the 18th century. Back in the first half of the century, tables were laid in any suitable room of the palace. In the Russian palace ritual, on especially solemn occasions, tables were generally set right in the throne room.

The ceremony of the royal dinner, which all the nobles tried to adopt in their estates, developed at the French court of Louis XIV. The best nobles of France took part in this magnificent performance. The procession of the royal dinner began its daily journey at one o'clock in the afternoon from the lower chambers of the palace. Headed the procession of the metro-d hotel. Behind him moved courtiers, kitchen servants with large baskets, in which forks, knives, spoons, salt shakers, other utensils and food were laid out. On huge trays, richly decorated dishes were carried past the always numerous spectators. The procession slowly, with dignity, went around the whole palace. Therefore, in the hall where the king dined, the food got completely cold. Here, the meter-d "hotel gave orders for table setting, and a nobleman who was especially close to the king tried all the dishes, checking whether they were poisoned.

At the court of Louis XIV, the fork was finally put into use, which had previously been a rarity even in the richest houses. People sincerely did not understand why it was necessary to put some kind of instrument in their mouth, if they had their own hands. But in the era of the nobility, with its extreme theatricality, culture, ritual, and artificial means always became between nature and man. Not without reason, eating with hands continued, and in many respects continues to be cultivated only "in nature" - on a hunt, a country picnic.

And in Russia on everyone throughout the 18th century, the nobility in food etiquette focused more on French fashion, how for a court dinner. The fact is that the table of Peter I was not distinguished by particular sophistication. The king valued plentiful and very hot food most of all. Elizabeth ate, although magnificently, but randomly and at the wrong time. In addition, she very strictly monitored the observance of fasts. Catherine, on the other hand, was emphatically moderate in food. Therefore, the manor hospitants could not orientate themselves towards their emperors and empresses.

It is curious that since ancient times, the dinner ritual included very bizarre forms of reminders of death. This emphasized the value of life in general and a magnificent dining table in particular. "As long as the golden hours flow

And evil sorrows did not come, Drink, eat and be merry, neighbor?”, - wrote G. R. Derzhavin.

Not without reason, numerous still lifes painted on the themes of life's abundance or memento pyup (remember death) quickly find refuge in noble canteens. In addition, certain dishes of the dinner table were often associated with the signs of the zodiac. Beef dishes were perceived as a sign of Taurus, crayfish and fish - Pisces, food from the kidneys - Gemini, African figs - Leo, hare - Sagittarius. In the center of such a symbolic serving, there were honeycombs with honey on a piece of turf - gifts earth.

After the dining room becomes on a par with the most ceremonial premises of the noble estate, they begin to decorate it in a special way. The walls of this bright hall were not usually decorated with tapestries or fashionable silk fabrics - they absorb odors. But murals and oil paintings were widely used. In addition to still lifes, natural in the dining room, paintings were often placed here on historical themes or family portraits, which further emphasized the splendor of the room. In estates where several generations have changed, canteens often became a place to store family heirlooms. Sometimes the same placed entire collections.

But the furniture in the dining rooms tried to put as little as possible - only what is needed. The chairs were, as a rule, very simple, since the main requirement for them was convenience - dinners sometimes lasted quite a long time. Tables could never stand at all. They were often made sliding and taken out only during dinner, depending on the number of guests. However, in the middle of the 19th century, a huge table already occupied almost the entire space of the dining room.

In the canteens of the 18th century, sideboards-slides are obligatory, on which various objects made of porcelain and glass were displayed. Small console tables attached to the wall served the same purpose. With the accumulation of family collections, such sideboards and tables were replaced by large glazed cabinets, which housed collectibles.

Porcelain occupied a special place in Russian canteens of the 18th-19th centuries. Not a single estate was conceived without him. He performed not so much a household as a representative function - he spoke about the wealth and taste of the owner. Therefore, good porcelain was specially mined and collected. Specially made to order china services were rare even in very rich houses and therefore the entire set of dishes was assembled literally from individual items. And only by the end of the 18th century, porcelain sets firmly took their place on the dining tables of the Russian nobility.

Large sets included many items. In addition to plates, bowls and dishes, trays, croutons, baskets, gravy boats, vessels for spices, salt shakers, cups for cream, etc., were produced in all shapes. The need for them was great, since they were placed separately for each device. Indispensable in such services were all kinds of fruit slides, flower vases and small table figurines.

Metal utensils were practically not used in estates; they were gold or silver. At the same time, if gold dishes spoke to the guests about the wealth of the owner, then porcelain - about refined tastes. In poorer houses, pewter and majolica played the same representative role.

Noble etiquette demanded that the dinner itself begin long before the guests arrive. First, a detailed program was drawn up. At the same time, it was taken into account that every real dinner should be “artistic”, have its own “composition”, its own symmetry, its own “culmination”. This was followed by an invitation to dinner, which was also perceived as a solemn and highly theatrical ritual. Often they spoke about dinner in hints, invited to the estate not for him, but for a walk, or begged to taste this or that dish.

After the program was drawn up and the guests were invited, it was time to give orders to the cook. On ordinary days, this responsibility lay entirely with the hostess. But on solemn occasions, it was always the host himself who gave orders for dinner. Moreover, in the second half of the 18th century, purely men's dinners were in vogue. In such a society, it was said that "if a woman eats, she breaks her charms, if she does not eat, she destroys your dinner." But it was more about city dinners.

The table itself in the first half of the 18th century could be served in three ways: French, English and Russian. Each of these methods reflects the national characteristics of dining etiquette. The French system was the oldest. It was formed under Louis XIV. It was he who introduced into the table etiquette a dinner in several courses. Before him, dishes were served on the table all at once, stacked in monstrous pyramids. Now only one change was put on the table at once. After the guests had admired the exquisite serving, each dish was carried back to the kitchen, where it was warmed up and cut.

The number of such changes varied depending on the wealth of the owner of the house and the appointment of dinner. So the daily dinner of the French nobility at the end of the 18th century consisted of eight changes. However, a four-course dinner became a classic in Russia at the turn of the century. After each change of dishes, the table was laid anew, until the tablecloth was changed.

By the way, the tablecloth, like the table napkin, appeared not at all from a predilection for cleanliness, but from the requirements of prestige. Initially, only the owner of the house used a large napkin. If a noble guest visited the house, then he was also served a napkin, but smaller. As with all prestigious things, it was customary to embroider the owner's monogram on a napkin. At first, the napkin was hung over the left shoulder. And when the fashion for large collars spread, they tied them around the neck. Even at the beginning of the 19th century, one long napkin was often laid on the edge of the table so that everyone sitting at the table could use their own area.

The first course in the French table setting system consisted of soup, light cold and hot appetizers, and hot dishes prepared differently than the hot next course (if, for example, there will be meat later, then fish was served in the first course). The second course should contain two opposing dishes:

for example, roast (finely chopped roasted meat) and meat roasted in large pieces, game or whole poultry. The third change is salads and vegetable dishes. The fourth is dessert. At the very end, cheese and fruit were served.

The English serving system, which began to spread in Russia from the middle of the 19th century, requires that all dishes be served on the table immediately without discrimination. Then only roast and cake are served. However, before each

the participant of the feast put a dish, which he had to lay out for everyone. It turned out some kind of “spontaneous hosting” with the transfer of plates and serving the ladies sitting next to them, in a completely modern manner.

But nevertheless, most of all, it was adopted in noble Russia its own, Russian table setting system. Here the guests sat down at the table, on which there was not a single dish at all. The table was decorated exclusively with flowers, fruits and whimsical figurines. Then, as needed, hot and already cut dishes were served on the table. The author of "Cookery Notes" argues at the end of the 18th century: "It is better to serve dishes one at a time, and not all of a sudden, and bringing food straight from the kitchen at the same time, then fewer attendants would be needed, and the dress would be doused less often." Gradually the Russian system, How the most rational, has become widespread in Europe.

Outstanding artists took part in the creation of the Russian festive table setting. The initial decoration was especially carefully built. It was based on the so-called "dessert slides", which occupied the entire center of the table. They were made from colored sugar, papier-mâché, silver, minerals and precious stones. In the second half of the 18th century, such decorations (they were called “fillets” in French) were made together with the entire table service. Of the individual porcelain figurines that adorned the table, groups of child gardeners were especially popular. They were often sold pure white, unpainted, to naturally blend in with white tablecloths and white china cutlery.

Purely Russian dinners did not start right at the table. There was always an appetizer before dinner. The French called this custom "food before food." They ate not in the dining room, but in the pantry, or on a separate buffet table, or (in France) served on separate trays. Here, as a rule, there were several varieties of vodka, cheeses, caviar, fish, and bread. It was customary to first have a snack for men without ladies, so that the latter would not be embarrassed. them in the use of strong nagoggs. And only some time later, the ladies, led by the mistress of the house, also join the snackers. Oysters were a special delicacy during appetizers. Often the whole feast was arranged for the sake of this dish. The boundless love of oysters was considered something of a fashionable disease.

And the dinners did not end immediately, gradually. At the very end of the feast, "small cups of colored crystal or glass" were served for "rinsing after dinner in the mouth." Then everyone moved into the living room, where a tray with cups, a coffee pot and liquor was already prepared.

In general, they drank a little at the table. In many houses, at daily dinners, in which, for example, "five men, for a month they drink a bottle of bitter English and half a shtof - rarely a damask - sweet." Therefore, for a Russian traveler of the 19th century, the British and, especially, the Americans looked like unrestrained drunkards. In France, it was customary to drink diluted wine at dinner. In Russia and England, wines were not diluted. In addition, they always drank undiluted especially rare wines, which, before dessert, were poured by the owner himself to each guest individually.

Each wine had its place in the order of the solemn table. Fortified wine was served with soup and pies (“pastes”). For fish - a white table (moreover, for each type of fish - its own). Back to main meat dish(or game) - red table wine (medoc or château lafite; with roast beef - port wine, with turkey - Sauternes, with veal - Chablis). And after coffee, for dessert - liqueurs. Sweet Spanish and Italian wines were considered coarse by connoisseurs and were almost always excluded. In addition, no gourmet will drink red wine, as it is more tart, to white, so as not to spoil the taste. Champagne was generally revered as a symbol of the holiday and drank during the entire dinner.

The extreme theatricalization of noble life in the 18th century led to the appearance of several bedrooms in the estates. The front sleeping-living rooms were never used. These were purely executive rooms. During the day, they rested in "everyday bedchambers." At night they slept in private bedrooms, which were located in the private chambers of the owner, mistress and their children.

Here, in the bedroom, the day of the owners of the estate began and ended. According to Orthodox tradition, going to bed was always preceded by evening prayer. In general, before the spread of the ideas of the Enlightenment in Russia, the nobles were very devout. In all rooms of the estate, except for a special prayer room, icons with lamps hung. And this rule extended to the main halls and private quarters.

In the bedroom, there were icons especially revered in the family. Most often these were icons with the image of the Mother of God. The piety of the owners was expressed in the rich decoration of the icons. For them, they ordered expensive silver and gold salaries, trimmed with chasing, engraving, and stones. Particularly expensive icons were preferred to be personally decorated with embroidered beads or freshwater pearls (oklad). Often among the serf estate masters were their icon painters. And the landowner, as a rule, supported the local church and all its ministers at his own expense.

Numerous draperies made of expensive fabrics (damask brokatel, satin, grodetur) served as a natural decoration for the manor bedrooms. From the same fabrics were made lush curtains for windows, canopies over the bed, decorated with bouquets of feathers (“feather bouquets”). Abundant floral ornamentation was left in the noble bedrooms of the Baroque era. Upholstered seating furniture was upholstered with the same fabric, thus creating a suite.

Such a set was logically complemented by graceful armchairs and small "buff" (night) tables. On them is a candlestick, a rare edition of the Evangelion, a volume of a sentimental novel. In the very center of the boudoir part of the bedroom, a small tea table was placed, on the marble top of which there were small sets - “egoist” (for one person) and “tete-a-tete” (for two).

Yu.A. Vedenin,
Doctor of Geography, Director of the Russian Research Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage named after D.S. Likhachev of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation

O.A. Borsuk,
Candidate of Geographical Sciences, Faculty of Geography, Lomonosov Moscow State University M.V. Lomonosov

RUSSIAN ESTATE - A PHENOMENON OF WORLD CULTURE

The history of the formation of manor and park complexes began in Russia in the 16th century. The patrimonial lands with the peasant people were transferred to serving boyars and nobles already during the reign of Ivan the Terrible for services to the tsar and the Fatherland. Their place of stay was Moscow near the sovereign. Holidays were given to them rarely, but they were short-term. Therefore, the owners did not seek to equip their suburban possessions. The estates near Moscow, as the estates around Moscow with a radius of about 150-180 kilometers were called before, for many owners were food producers for their owners, who came to them for a short time to have fun with dog and falconry, to relax. Initially, the estates were not subject to sale, exchange, inheritance. Gradually, the estates become hereditary, and from 1714 - the property of the landowners.

The 18th century gave many indulgences to the lays serving the tsar, a decree of 1727 allowed 2/3 of the officers and conscripts to be released to their estates to put the economy in order. Since 1736, the service life of the nobility was limited to 25 years, it was allowed to leave one of the heirs on the estates to conduct business on the estates. In 1740, the nobles were allowed to choose between military and civil service. The formation of a layer of the local nobility begins, living permanently in their estates.

The Manifesto of February 18, 1762 "On the Liberty of the Nobility" completely freed the nobles from the obligatory military service. The legal registration of this nobility was finally completed by the provincial reform of 1775 and the Charter of the nobility of 1785, which gave the nobility significant personal, property and estate privileges. The concept of nobility is defined in it as “a consequence flowing from the quality and virtue of the men who ruled in antiquity, who marked themselves with merits, by which, turning the very service into dignity, they acquired a noble denunciation for their offspring.”

The main part of the nobles owned 20 souls of serfs and less - 59%, the owners of 20-100 souls - 25%, 16% were landlords, in whose households there were 100 souls of serfs.
By the middle of the 19th century (according to the population census of 1858), the well-being of the nobility had increased significantly. The share of nobles of the first group decreased (39%), the number of nobles of the second group (20-100 souls) increased to 34%, as well as those who owned from 101 to 1000 souls (21%). Very wealthy large landowners were only 1.3%. The stateless nobles made up 3.5% of the nobility.

The end of the 18th - the middle of the 19th centuries was the time when the estate turned into a special phenomenon of Russian and world culture. Nobles of average income were most interested in culture - literature, theater, painting, history, socio-political theories. The golden age of Russian culture is largely fueled by precisely this layer of the nobility in 18-19 thousand families from whose ranks the talents came out.

Direct communication with the peasants was very important - folk songs, dances, nourished the noble culture, which was reflected in the work of A.S. Pushkin, P.I. Tchaikovsky and many others. It should be noted that the fading of the estate culture was also reflected in the work of painters. The brightest of them was V.E. Borisov-Musatov.

Let's return to the manor and park complexes near Moscow. The nearest of them are now included in the city, the distant pearls of landscape gardening art are strung on river valleys. There are more of them near the capital, the presence of roads and features of the natural landscape also played a role in the arrangement of manor and park complexes. So, in Meshchera near Moscow, they are rare, and the elevated, with diverse landscapes of the territory - the Smolensk-Moscow Upland and the Klin-Dmitrov Ridge - are densely dotted with very picturesque manor and park complexes. A significant number of estates arose south of Moscow on the Moscow-Oksky slope, dissected by numerous rivers.

During the construction of the estate and park complex (as a rule, in river valleys - up to 85% of all estates of the Moscow region were located precisely in them or on their sides), a significant transformation of the landscape and its individual components - vegetation, hydrogeographic network, i.e. rivers, lakes , ponds. The smallest changes concerned large landforms, architectural and planning solutions for the construction of estates and their parks adapted to its features, although small and medium landforms could change, build on or be cut off depending on the circumstances.

Manor construction in the 18th-19th centuries was a significant factor in the transformation of nature at the local level. The change in all natural components in the estates followed the path of increasing natural diversity. The results of these changes during the creation and subsequent development of estate and park complexes are noted in the form of two trends in the development of landscapes: an increase in the landscape diversity of the territory and an increase in the fragmentation of natural components with an increase in aesthetic and landscape diversity within the estates. The successive transformations of landscapes, its "inspiring" resources, transformed the natural landscape into a cultural one.

cultural landscape- a specific territory with certain natural conditions, for a long time mastered by a person who has changed it as a result of his economic social and intellectual and spiritual activities. The space of the cultural landscape is always filled with symbols and meaning. Its surroundings - forests, meadows and fields - were often preserved as a natural setting.
Erected on the borders of several landscapes - valley, glacial, etc. in the most picturesque places of their possessions, the estates pleased the eye not only with original monumental buildings, but also with a skillful combination of natural and man-made.

The master's house, as a rule, was built in the most elevated place, the temple was also located here, a river flowed nearby or there was a system of ponds. The parks were famous for their collections of various tree species. In the estate of Uvarovka-Porechye in the upper reaches of the Moskva River in the park there were several hundred trees and shrubs, often very exotic, such as arborvitae, cypress and others. Some of them were carefully wrapped in horn-jars during the cold season.

The world of the Russian estate is made up of the ratio of natural, landscape motifs and spatial, artistic, architectural and planning. In cases where the monotony of the natural landscape did not allow the use of structural elements of the relief, artificial reliefs were created - hills, ridges, and the like.

Among the estates near Moscow, and there were more than a thousand of them in the Golden Age of the heyday of the estate culture, at present there are over 700 ruined buildings and parks, from which one alley has been preserved, and even that is not completely, there are over 700. Some of them can be judged from the paintings of artists ( for example, the image of the Grigorovo estate in the painting by A.K. Savrasov).

The estates of the Moscow region bore the features of urban and rural cultures, were a kind of "information centers". The estates that arose near the capital differed greatly from each other in terms of the nature of the building scope, artistic design techniques and their purpose. Many features of the future complex were determined in advance: whether it would be a recreational estate or an estate adapted to more or less permanent housing and housekeeping. In the Moscow region, the pleasure estates of Ostankino, Kuskovo, Kuzminki, Arkhangelskoye crowded closer to the city. On the contrary, the farther from Moscow, the more economic estates appeared, the architecture and parks of which had a relatively simple appearance. It is obvious that there were a majority of such estates.

The classical estate of European Russia was formed at the end of the Petrine era, and its specificity was determined in the process of abandoning the form that was cultivated near St. Petersburg. As a rule, the Moscow region freely combined several functions that balanced each other: it was both a pleasure residence and a place of quiet solitude and an economic enterprise of an active owner. Despite all the variety of estates collected in the suburbs, one can easily find their common features. So, the center of the estate was residential buildings: the master's house and outbuildings, for young people, for guests, for the servants serving the master's house. Next to them were outbuildings intended only to serve the household needs of the owner and his family. Nearby was a church, often older than manor buildings.

An old aphorism - the theater begins with a hanger, you can add - the estate begins with a park. On the manor plans, carefully drawn by the obliging architects of that time, a geometric network of orthogonal, intersecting at right angles, diagonal alleys, radiating from the main house in rays, appeared. There were alleys, the intricate curves of which were more reminiscent of wide paths, emphasizing the features of the relief. The alleys led to viewpoints of the landscape. From them, the distances and the expanse of immense spaces, so beloved by the Russian people, were opened. It is impossible not to recall two aphoristic statements by D.S. Likhachev: “Russian man is a landscape man” and “Russian estate is a gate to nature”.

The destruction of estates did not begin in 1917, but much earlier - with the abolition of serfdom in 1861. The free labor force disappeared, the nobility became impoverished. He was replaced by merchants-entrepreneurs. They bought estates for their needs, tried to manage the economy "with profit." They cut down forests, saved on the maintenance of gardens and parks. The change of owners and its results are beautifully described in classical Russian literature (The Cherry Orchard by A.P. Chekhov).

The beginning of the destruction and plunder of the estates took place in the first years of the 20th century. The first Russian revolution set millions of peasants in motion. "In fairness", "equally" to divide and distribute. At the head of the defeat, arson and looting of estates were often wealthy peasants - kulaks, most of all dragging furniture, icons, paintings, and various utensils from the estates. They took it according to the principle - everything in the economy will fit.

The instability of the power of the Provisional Government also dealt a blow to the estates of the Moscow region. At the same time, the manor house of A. Blok in Shakhmatovo was fired. Decrees of the Soviet government on the preservation of the legacy of the past played a certain positive role - giving the best estates for rest houses and sanatoriums for the party and economic nomenclature. The attention of the public to the state, preservation and use of values ​​inherited from the accursed "past" was attracted by the Society for the Study of the Russian Estate (ORU), established in 1922, one of the leaders of which was A.N. Greek In 1930 he was arrested and convicted. His remarkable work, dedicated to the estates of the Moscow region - "A wreath of estates" - was published as a separate volume in one of the issues of the anthology "Monuments of the Fatherland".

It was difficult to save the estates during the years of the civil war, the poverty of a huge part of the country's population, who even saw in the museums of the noble estates "people's bloodsuckers", and not people of culture who collected and preserved many valuables, including icons, paintings, etc., it was difficult. There were no funds for the maintenance of museums in the estates, the money was needed for the industrialization of the country. The removal of objects of interest from estates to local centers and Moscow, with the intention of placing them later in museums, did not give much effect, although some of the art treasures were thus preserved, but a very significant part of them was nevertheless plundered and disappeared. A positive example is provided by the Dmitrov Museum. The future academician, historian A.K. Tikhomirov and items from the Olgovo estate adorned the museum. He created a series of remarkable works on the historical geography of Muscovy, widely known in Russia and abroad.

The removal of things and archives from the estates forever deprived them of their materialized cultural content, living life generations, the manor culture collapsed. The placement of children's and recreational institutions in the estates, their employment for the needs of peasant farms led to the destruction of architectural, planning and economic features, as well as the interiors of the estates.

Nowadays, the former manor and park complexes - "noble estates" serve the inhabitants of the country as rest houses, sanatoriums, museums, government residences. Some of them were bought by individuals. The transfer of estates to private hands is possible, a perfect example is the Serednikovo estate. Today this estate is leased from a descendant of Lermontov - his namesake - Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov. The authors managed to visit the main house of the estate. Here, in the central hall of the manor house, seminars and classes are held for students of the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute on philosophical and cultural topics.

Estate-museums, for example, Muranovo, are in excellent condition. Even many years of restoration did not ruin this estate. The descendants of the Tyutchev family headed this museum and estate complex. Many estates near Moscow keep the memory of great personalities or significant events in the life of Russian culture.

Today, many people have a question, what will remain in the 21st century from the Russian estate as the greatest phenomenon of world and national culture. The century that has just passed can be characterized as a time when the role of the estate was waning, first as an active participant in a living culture, and then as a heritage phenomenon. Attempts to somehow involve it in modern socio-cultural processes have not yet brought much success. After the disappearance of the Russian estate as a naturally occurring living institution, which was characterized by such features as the presence of an owner - a landowner interested in the fate of this estate, as a variety of functions that relied on traditions and, at the same time, showed interest in innovation, as an institution , which determined the special attitude of Russian society to nature. Then, already at the end of the 19th-beginning of the 20th century, many began to consider the estate as a source of nostalgic moods. This was the reason for the emergence of the literature of the estate history of the Silver Age, and in the post-revolutionary period - for the transformation of many estates into museums. On the other hand, there were people who quickly appreciated the practical value of the estate. These are the functions of the estate that were associated with the organization of various spheres of social life and, above all, recreation. At the same time, if at the beginning of the 20th century dacha settlements arose on the territory of many estates or they were split into many smaller estates, then in Soviet times, rest houses, sanatoriums, art houses and pioneer camps began to be located in old estates.

Museums remained only in a few estates. The rest were handed over to the workers as trade union health resorts. However, most of them remained unclaimed. Naturally, such estates quickly collapsed. What is happening today with Russian estates? Museum-reserves and museum-estates are best kept. At present, there are about 40 estate museums in Russia, and the same number of estates are preserved in the form of reserve museums.

The use of a number of estates in the form of sanatoriums, rest houses, boarding houses, hospitals and children's camps continues. This form of protection of historical monuments has always been not very sparing towards them. The example of the majority of estates near Moscow, where sanatoriums and resorts were located, testifies to this trend. Estates: Mikhailovskoye (Sheremetievs), Glinka (Bryus), Vysokoye (Volkovs). This list is extremely large. However, in the 1990s, when most departments and enterprises went bankrupt or were unable to maintain such institutions, the massive destruction of estates began. Let's name two of the most striking cases. These are Vysokoye in the Smolensk region and Pavlishchev Bor in the Kaluga region.

The third traditional form of using old estates is to use them for offices of state farms and collective farms, school institutions and clubs. As a rule, these estates are the first candidates for destruction.

And what are the new forms of using estates? Most often only one is named. This is the transfer of estates to private or corporate ownership. The tagoka is often referred to as a public-private partnership. At the same time, either a long-term lease or the introduction of a trust form of management similar to a national trust is meant. All this is supposed to be done in the absence of regulations.
And now I would like to return to the Russian estate as a remarkable phenomenon of world and Russian culture. To begin with, it is necessary to determine the scale of the phenomenon, so some statistics.

A brief table on the change in the number of landlord estates (in thousands), obtained by scientists from the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, testifies to the following quantitative indicators: 1550 - 16; 1600 - 17; 1650 - 21; 1700 - 23; 1737 -32; 1800 - 35; 1858 - 50; 1877 - 59; 1895 - 61; 1905 - 55; 1917 - 39(40). Of course, if we take into account all the estates, and not just noble ones, then the number of estates by 1917 remained close to their number at the end of the 19th century. The clear leaders in the number of estates were: Smolensk, Ryazan, Tula, Tver, Moscow, Yaroslavl, Kursk, Kaluga, Kostroma, Pskov and Novgorod regions. The number of estates located there varied from 3 to 1300.

After 1917, the number of estates was constantly decreasing. These are mass arsons and their devastation in 1918. Let's at least remember sad fate all the estates associated with the name of Pushkin and his friends in the Pskov region: Mikhailovskoye, Petrovsky, Trigorskoye, Voskresenskoye, Deriglazovo. Then - collectivization, wars, the absence of real owners, most often, oblivion and uselessness. Now we can hardly name several hundred, or even dozens of estates, where not individual estate buildings or the remains of a park have been preserved, but integral ensembles.

For most of the public, former estates appear as cluttered territories. Places where wonderful palaces once stood, surrounded by gardens and parks, are perceived today as "badland", as objects that not only do not represent any interest for tourists, but also cause irritation with their desolation and the resulting sense of hopelessness.

Fortunately, in recent years, interest in the estates has revived again. In 1992, the Society for the Study of the Russian Estate was recreated. The estate has become an object of study not only for art historians and architects. Much attention began to be paid to the history of the formation and development of estates, manor landscapes, the economy of the estate, libraries and art collections, the relationship of the owners of the estate with the church, with neighbors and peasants.

It should also be noted that quite a few first-class manor ensembles are still preserved. Many of them have become museums. In Moscow, these are Kuskovo and Ostankino (Sheremetevs), Lyublino (Durasovs), Kuzminki (Golitsyns).

Many rich, perhaps even luxurious estates created by large landowners, representatives of the most distinguished Russian families, have been preserved in the Moscow region. Among them: Arkhangelsk (Yusupov), Sukhanovo Volkonsky, Valuevo (Musin-Pushkin). All these estates are by no means less significant than Kuskovo, Ostankino, Kuzminki, Cheryomushki, which entered the boundaries of Moscow. There are many wonderful manor complexes in provincial Russia. These are Znamenskoye-Raek in the Tver region, Aleksino in Smolensk, Maryino in the Kursk regions, etc.

But Russia was famous not only for large and significant estates. Small estates located there gave a special charm and charm to the Russian national landscape. Unfortunately, only a few of them have survived to this day. The most fortunate were those estates owned by prominent representatives of Russian culture, which made it possible to organize museums in them. An example of such an estate is Muranovo, the estate of E.A. Baratynsky and F.I. Tyutchev. It was here that one of the first literary estate museums was created. Not far from Muranovo is located Abramtsevo, the estate of Aksakov and Savva Mamontov, a place associated with the names of remarkable Russian writers, artists, composers. No less famous is Melikhovo, the estate where A.P. lived for several years. Chekhov.

In the developed Research Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage named after D.S. Likhachev’s strategy for the development of the system of reserve museums, it is planned to significantly expand the network of estate museums associated with the life of remarkable Russian artists, writers, poets, statesmen. It has already been said that memorial houses-museums and estates are traditional objects on the basis of which museum-reserves are created. And this is very important, because within the museum-reserve (museum-estate) not only the memorial house or the estate itself with its buildings is preserved, but also the manor park, the surrounding landscape with forest areas and agricultural land located in it. This makes it possible to preserve the entire memorial historical landscape, which has absorbed the memory of the life and work of people who had a fundamental influence on the development of the Russian state, Russian culture and science. This trend is clearly seen in the processes of transformation of well-known estate museums into large museum reserves, which currently include not only the memorial estate itself, but also a significant surrounding area, neighboring historical rural settlements.

In accordance with this strategy, the development of the State Memorial Historical, Literary and Natural Landscape Museum-Reserve of A.S. Pushkin "Mikhailovskoye", the State Memorial and Natural Reserve Museum-Estate of L.N. Tolstoy "Yasnaya Polyana", the State Memorial and Natural Museum-Reserve I.S. Turgenev "Spasskoe-Lutovinovo", the State Museum-Reserve M.A. Sholokhov and a number of others.

At the same time, despite the creation of a number of museum-reserves of this type, their number is still not enough. Many prominent politicians, cultural figures, scientists of Russia, who are the pride of the country, do not yet have their own museums (although there are sufficient prerequisites for this - memorial houses, remains of estates, park ensembles and other historical objects have been preserved). It is also very important to preserve the surviving amazing layer of national heritage associated with the estate culture. The creation of museums and museum-reserves in them is, perhaps, the only way to save and socio-economic use of these heritage sites.

The manor-park cultural landscape should be separated from the modern surrounding landscape by a buffer zone. The cultural landscape pleases the eye, it does not tire with monotony and monotony. This is the same video ecology that designers and architects are striving for. Undoubtedly, it is necessary to preserve not only the estate itself, but also its natural surroundings. This requires a zone of transition from the manor-park cultural landscape to the surrounding spaces. To study and preserve the heritage of the country estate culture is our patriotic duty and one of the parts of the national idea, over the formulation of which politicians rack their brains. As noted above, landscape gardening landscapes can today be used not only as museums, but also as museum and protected areas, as well as tourist and recreational areas. Belonging to various municipalities, they should serve as resting places for residents of settlements, as well as places where unobtrusively, on stands and shop windows, the way of folding manor and park complexes is shown.

Based on the proposals of the regions, the recommendations of scientists and specialists involved in designing in the field of culture, a list of promising territories for the formation of memorial estate museums and museum reserves was proposed. Among them, it is worth highlighting the places associated with the life of the composer A.P. Borodin and the founder of Russian aviation N.E. Zhukovsky in the Vladimir region, the Lotarev estate "Vladimirovka", where Igor Severyanin often visited and worked (Vologda region).

In the Kaluga region, the Gorodnya estate, associated with the life of the Golitsyns and the work of the architect Voronikhin, as well as Troitskoye, the owner of which was the first President of the Russian Academy of Sciences E.R. Dashkov.

The Kursk region keeps the memory of the remarkable Russian poet A.A. Fete (the valley of the Tuskar River and the environs of the village of Vorobyovka) and about the estate of E.E. Lansere, an interesting artist and representative of a wonderful family that gave Russian culture excellent painters and graphic artists.

Of particular note are the places where once there were estates of such remarkable figures of Russian culture as G.R. Derzhavin (Zvanka estate in the Novgorod region), E.A. Boratynsky (the estate of Mara in the Tambov region), N.A. Lvov (the estate of Nikolskoye-Cherenchitsy in the Tver region), N. Gumilyov and A. Akhmatova (the estate of Slepnevo in the Tver region) and many other remarkable figures of Russian art. Of particular interest are areas large areas and associated with the lives of many cultural figures. Among them, one should mention the Udomelsky district of the Tver region, where many remarkable Russian artists worked: A.G. Venetsianov, I.I. Levitan, S.Yu. Zhukovsky, A.V. Moravov, A.S. Stepanov, N.P. Bogdanov-Velsky, V.K. Byalynitsky-Birulya. Of particular interest is also the Staritsky district of the Tver region, where there is a whole network of estates and villages associated with the name of Pushkin (Bernovo, Pavlovskoye, Malinniki, Glinkino, Kurovo-Pokrovskoye, Krasnoye, Bratkovo, etc.).

Of course, this list is far from complete. It only testifies to the fact that there are the most serious reasons not only for preserving the existing estates, but also for recreating the lost ones, associated with names glorious for Russian culture and history.

"Geography for Schoolchildren". - 2013 . - No. 1 . - S. 23-30.