Russian noble estates today. Wooden estates of the 19th century What is an estate in the 19th century

Vikulova V. P.

The word “provincial”, according to the explanatory dictionary of the Russian language, in a figurative sense means “naive” and “simple.” The image of the province in our minds is often associated with the image of childhood: carefree days spent surrounded by nature; simple, uncomplicated games and fun; remoteness from the bustle of the big city, giving rise to forever memorable thoughts and experiences. As adults, we are drawn to the provinces as a source of relaxation and inspiration. For people engaged in creative work, including writers, this is especially true. Therefore, it is no coincidence that many philological researchers tend to consider provincial estates as a kind of cradle of Russian literature, highlighting a special direction in literary criticism - literary local history.

The definition of this direction is given in the collection “Literary Moscow Region”, published in 1998:

“Literary local history is one of the ways of understanding literature, allowing one to touch the process of reflecting in a work of art the writer’s real impressions of the places where he was born, lived, stayed, and met with relatives and like-minded people.”

“This is true and eternal life, just as eternal is nature, which with its powerful beauty called our best writers from ancient times, inspiring them, warming them with the warmth of cozy estates, encouraging them to noble activity and pilgrimage mobility. The place of life of a writer and the writer's house in the minds of readers have a special atmosphere of spirituality. They help to understand the writer’s inner world, study his biography, creative connections, and artistic heritage.”

The study of manor life allows not only to reveal the origins literary work, but also explains a lot about the character, worldview of the author, his lifestyle and habits. The fates of poets and writers are inseparable from the Russian province, in particular, the Moscow region: A.D. Cantemira, P.A. Vyazemsky, N.M. Karamzina, A.S. Pushkina, E.A. Baratynsky, M.Yu. Lermontova, S.T. Aksakova, N.V. Gogol, I.S. Turgeneva, A.I. Herzen, F.M. Dostoevsky, M.E. Saltykova-Shchedrina, F.I. Tyutcheva, L.N. Tolstoy, A.P. Chekhova, V.G. Korolenko and others.

On the life and work of N.V. Gogol, for example, are directly related to Abramtsevo, Bolshiye Vyazemy, Volynskoye, Konstantinovo, Mozhaisk, Muranovo, Nikolskoye, Ostafyevo, Perkhushkovo, Serpukhov, Spasskoye, Podolsk, Trinity-Sergius Lavra, Trinity-Kainardzhi, Khimki, Black Mud and many other places.

IN AND. Novikov in his book “Ostafyevo: Literary Fates of the 19th Century” notes: “Russian classical literature - from Derzhavin to Bunin - is closely connected with the life of a noble estate. It was there that great writers (Pushkin in Zakharov, Lermontov in Tarkhany, Blok in Shakhmatovo) already in childhood became acquainted with the living source of nationality. They matured as individuals in the conditions of estate life and subsequently were associated with this life all their lives. The prototypes of their heroes lived in the “village”. We must not forget that many of the literary estates are themselves highly artistic works of art. Ostafyevo, Serednikovo, Muranovo represent a unique synthesis of architecture and poetry."

Most of the former estates are now state museum-reserves, in which the interiors and atmosphere of previous years have been recreated. They lead an active cultural life, constantly developing and expanding their collections. Everyone knows the museums in Abramtsevo, Muranov, Melikhovo, Serednikov, Zakharov, Darovoy, Spas-Uglu, etc. Memorial sites are distinguished by a high degree of spiritual harmony. This is the Abramtsevo estate, where in the 80s of the 19th century artists Vasnetsov, Polenov, Golovin, Korovin, Vrubel, Levitan, Serov, Kramskoy gathered and created in the artistic circle of Savva Mamontov.

O. Sheveleva writes: “The estate’s everyday culture changed and evolved along with the estate. In the second half of the 19th century, estate life acquired new features, which was associated with the gradual movement of estate artistic and cultural centers from large estates to estates that belonged to the artistic intelligentsia and simply creative people. In them, in the second half of the 19th century, a new type of estate world was formed, in which nature, art, communication of like-minded people, life structure and spiritual atmosphere merged into a single whole, and the architectural environment receded into the background. The nature of estate life was also affected by the mythologization of estate life, characteristic of that time, and the awareness of the estate as a kind of universal symbol of Russian life. The manor house with family portraits, old servants and the park, ancient legends appeared as living witnesses of history, connecting the past with the present.”

When talking about the past, we are used to idealizing it. Performance modern man O " magical world of an ancient landowner's estate" is often limited to museum exhibitions and poetic quotations from the classics. Behind this varnish hides the true, not always so poetic, but rather everyday life and customs of the Russian province. Let's look at them a little closer than the interior of any museum allows.

In a study by historian and museologist L.V. Belovinsky interprets the concept of “estate” as “the place of direct, permanent or temporary residence of the landowner,” in contrast to the “estate,” where the owner might not live at all.

According to art historical sources, the heyday of the Russian estate occurred in the second half of the 18th century and the first years of the 19th century. Intensive estate construction began after the promulgation of the “Law on the Liberty of the Nobility” in 1763. The nobles received the right not to serve and retired to their estates, where they began to settle down, displaying extraordinary artistic taste. The idea was simple: the landowner's estate was supposed to symbolize in miniature inviolability and power Russian Empire. Construction was especially widespread in the Moscow region, closest to the largest educational center in Russia - Moscow.

They tried to build a country estate close to a village or village that belonged to the owner, but not close to the huts, but several hundred yards away from them. The possessions of a wealthy landowner were quite extensive and could amount to 7 dessiatines (the state tithe was a little more than a hectare, and the economic tithe was one and a half times more). Manor houses of “old world” landowners, whose life and customs are well described by N.V. Gogol, they usually hid somewhere in the lowlands, surrounded by forests and gardens. They were built from oak and pine; they were, as a rule, one-story, cramped, but warm, durable, and cozy. The owner of 1000 or more serfs could build himself a stone house, two floors, but in the old days in Russia it was believed that housing should be made of wood, most importantly - durable and warm.

For example, the main house of the Abramtsevo estate, built at the end of the 18th century, is a characteristic monument of wooden classicism. The Aksakovs bought the estate in 1843. The impressions of their guest N.M. have been preserved. Pavlova (Bitsyna) o appearance estate: “From the highlands there was a view of the Vorya River, winding, in places the width of two horse leaps, and where from the dams and wider, the Vorya River, with swampy banks and countless barrels, was all covered in water grass and water flowers. Beyond its lowland the mountainous side rolled upward again; and up there, on the mountain, surrounded by a spruce grove, interspersed with sparse black forests, a spacious old landowner’s estate could be seen - this is the goal of our journey: Abramtsevo... A deserted wide yard, not planted to its full extent with either bushes or trees, and only in some places surrounded by a railing, received us onto his green grass. Our appearance caused the usual excitement. The front porch with a canopy, exactly like in a thousand other landowner estates of that time, opened its wide entryway to us. The wooden house, painted on planks, had a very long façade and was built in ancient times.”

A small one-story house in the village of Zakharovo under A.S. Pushkin was also made of wood, with a “red roof”. “Children with governesses and servants were housed in two outbuildings. The buildings were surrounded by a regular landscape park on the Sharapovka River - Pushkin really liked the large pond, there was a spruce forest all around, and there were only 10 peasant households with 74 serfs. Pushkin’s pre-police childhood is connected with these regions. Pushkin recalled how in his childhood he ran through fields and groves and, imagining himself as an epic hero, knocked down the tops of thistles with a stick.”

In the middle of the 19th century, estates were of various sizes: from very small ones with an area of ​​10 - 20 square meters. m. to huge ones, with many residential buildings designed for several hundred servants. L.V. Tydman writes: “The estate nature of housing determined the great similarity of urban and rural houses: in all cases, a residential building was a collection of premises with different functional uses.” In other words, each manor house had a residential, front and utility (service) part. They had different areas and were also located differently. Manor buildings were united by a number of mandatory requirements: suitability for everyday life, practicality, maximum efficient use of the living and utility space of the house, cheap local building materials.

In the first half of the 19th century, for the house of the middle-class nobility, merchants and townspeople, an established set of premises was necessary: ​​front rooms (hall, living room, hostess's room, and at the same time the front bedroom), usually located one after the other, and living rooms intended for the family of the owner of the house and usually located on another floor (usually the top) or behind the front interiors. They tried to make living rooms smaller in size - they had to be warm in winter and comfortable for living.

The Aksakovs' house in Abramtsevo was one-story, with a mezzanine (mezzanines and mezzanines became widespread in the first half of the 19th century). Sergei Timofeevich liked it for its location and convenience, but some changes were made to the layout. The front bedroom was divided into two halves and turned into living quarters, and the doors opened into a passage room. The living room and halls began to be used for the family's daily activities. The rooms inside the house were located in this way: on the western side there was a vestibule, an antechamber, then a dining room, into which the pantry window opened; Next came the office of S.T. Aksakov, two rooms of unknown purpose, separated by a small corridor from the next one, in which the daughters Nadya and Lyuba lived. Along the eastern facade there is the room of the daughters Vera and Olga, a bedroom, a living room and a hall. A corridor in the center of the house connected the lower part of the house with a mezzanine, divided into two large rooms. One of these rooms was Konstantin Aksakov’s office, and guests stayed in the room opposite. N.V. lived here during his visits to Abramtsevo. Gogol. Later this room became the office of Ivan Aksakov.

Historians distinguish two types of layout that developed by the end of the 18th century: centric and axial. In the first type, in the center of the building there were either dark closets and a staircase that led to the upper rooms, to the mezzanine or mezzanine, or in the center there was a large dance hall. The front and main living quarters were located around the perimeter of the building. Here is a description of his father’s house made by Afanasy Fet: “Having mentally climbed the steps of a wide stone porch under a wooden canopy, you enter a spacious vestibule... To the left of this warm vestibule, a door led to a footman’s room, in which a buffet was placed behind a partition with a balustrade, and on the right on the sides there was a staircase leading up to the mezzanine. From the front door a door led into a coal room of the same size with two windows, which served as a dining room, from which a door to the right led into a coal room of the same size on the opposite facade. This room served as a living room. A door led from it to a room that eventually became known as the classroom. The last room on this facade was my father’s office, from where a small door again opened into the hallway.”

Another type of layout is axial: along the longitudinal axis of the house (in some cases, transverse) there was a long corridor, which was completely dark or illuminated by one or two end windows, and on the sides there were living quarters and front rooms. Uncle Afanasy Fet’s “bright and tall house, with its front façade facing a wide courtyard and its back facing a beautiful orchard adjacent to the grove, was equipped with a longitudinal corridor and two stone porches at the ends.”

The interior decoration of the manor's house was also subject to certain standards. At the turn of the 18th - 19th centuries, comfortable and cheap furniture made from Karelian birch became fashionable in Russia, and instead of tapestries and damask, walls began to be covered with light-colored satin and English calico. The new principle of convenience and comfort in furnishings replaced the previous solemnity. Furniture in living rooms began to be arranged “according to interests”: cozy corners for several people. In such a corner there was usually a small sofa for two or three people (usually elderly ladies and important guests), a bean table, at which it was convenient to do embroidery, knitting and pinching lint (a dressing material, later replaced with cotton wool), armchairs with trough-shaped backs, chairs. Footstools with soft covers were very popular, since ladies at that time wore light satin shoes, and with enfilading rooms in houses, drafts were common. The fireplace, located in the living room, was covered with a screen to prevent the fire from blinding the eyes. A clock in a bronze or gilded wooden case was placed on the mantelpiece in the form of an allegorical scene, and on the sides were girandoles and candelabra. There were sconces hung above the sofa, tall floor lamps on the floor, and candles in candelabra on the tables. At the beginning of the 19th century, oil lamps—quenchets and carcels—also began to be used for lighting. The walls were covered with light fabrics and decorated with engravings, stucco bas-reliefs, and watercolors. Flowers and greenery helped create a cozy and joyful atmosphere in the living room. If there were several living rooms, then one of them was intended for card games. The gambling room had special card tables covered with green cloth. They were folding and were arranged by footmen before the guests gathered, with an appropriate number of chairs.

In the dining room, along the entire room there was a long centipede table with two rows of chairs. The host and hostess always sat at the “upper” end of the table opposite the entrance, at the head of it, with honored guests on their right and left. Next, the guests were seated “in descending order”, and everyone knew their place, and persons of lower status, including children with governesses and teachers, sat near the entrance.

Some of the customs common in manor houses of the 1st half of the 19th century are curious. For example, at dinner they drank not the vodka that they drink now, but many different vodkas distilled with buds, herbs, flowers and roots. These vodkas were called pennik, polugar, tertnoye, quaternary wine, the cheapest one was fusel, poorly purified from fusel oils. The strength of alcohol was then high, but it was not this that was valued, but the softness of vodka and its “convenience” for drinking. Displaying vodka on the table in damasks and bottles was considered the height of indecency, because... In rich houses, drinking a lot of alcohol was bad manners. Dishes at dinner parties alternated in strict order: first meat, then fish, and in the intervals between them the so-called “entreme” was served: cheeses, asparagus, artichokes, which were supposed to take away the taste of the previous dish. Wines were consumed according to the food: red with meat, white with fish, and champagne with any. The wine was not supposed to be mixed, the smell of the previous wine was not supposed to remain in the glass, and therefore a lot of different glasses and cups were placed with the dishes. Lackeys carried dishes around the guests, starting from the upper end, where persons of high status sat. The servants felt subordination, and if there was not enough food for everyone present, they could sneak some tasty dish past the not very respected guest. After dinner, the men went to the owner’s office to smoke and drink coffee and liqueurs, and the ladies retired to the hostess’s boudoir, where they also drank coffee.

In addition to dinner parties, guests were often invited to a tea party, which was most often held in a small living room or small dining room. The tea was poured by the hostess or the eldest daughter. The first cup was served to the guests by footmen, and then they left and the empty cups were handed over to the hostess for rinsing. A new portion of tea was poured by children or young people.

For relaxation and quiet conversations, the house could also have a so-called sofa room, where along the walls there were leather sofas with many pillows, 2-3 small tables, armchairs and soft chairs. It could also be called coal (that is, corner) and bosquet. This room was richly decorated with greenery. For example: “We passed a lilac living room, filled with furniture from Elizabethan days, were reflected in a high wall mirror, a bronze gilded cupid, leaning on the same clock, followed us with a smile, and we found ourselves in a small but very cozy room; Along its two walls, in the shape of the letter G, stretched a solid green sofa... “Sofa, sir...” said the clerk...”

Among the features of the estate interior, the personal libraries of the owners are interesting. Sometimes these were huge, tastefully selected collections, compiled by specially hired educated people or second-hand book dealers. Professionals created book catalogs for such libraries, in some cases even printed in a printing house. At Prince M.A. Golitsyn had an extensive collection of rare old printed books, adjacent to 132 paintings housed in the mansion. In the manor houses there were also original fake libraries, where the cabinets were closed with doors with the spines of books cut out and painted on them, and behind them were stored shoe lasts, wine bottles and other rubbish. Sometimes decoys served as decoration for real libraries, which, in addition to books, could contain scientific instruments (globe, telescope), folders with engravings, geographical maps, etc.

It is curious that memoirists, when describing the everyday life of estates, rarely mention icons. It was not customary to keep them in the front rooms; portraits of ancestors, watercolors, engravings, bas-reliefs on patriotic themes, and children's drawings were placed there. The icons were hidden in personal chambers - the owner’s office and the hostess’s bedroom. In an ancient house there could be small figurative ones with many family icons, but usually there were two or three, mostly family ones. In the 30s of the 19th century, imitations of icons became very popular: a large three-part engraving from Raphael’s “Sistine Madonna” can also be seen in Yasnaya Polyana by L.N. Tolstoy, and in P. Fedotov’s painting “The Breakfast of an Aristocrat”. Athanasius Fet recalled an oil copy of Raphael's Madonna, sitting in a chair with a baby in her arm, John the Baptist on one side and St. Joseph in another way: “My mother explained to me that this is the work of the greatest painter Raphael and taught me to pray to this image.”

The decoration of the front rooms was sculpture - marble originals and good plaster copies, bronze and porcelain miniatures. In the second quarter of the 19th century, plaster sculpture imitating porcelain and bronze appeared in middle-income homes, replacing expensive Sevres, Saxon or Gardner porcelain. Previous antique themes in interior design gave way to patriotic themes. In the 40s, daguerreotypes became widespread; they, along with photographs, were hung on the walls and placed on special shelves on desks. At the same time, paper wallpapers, which were hand-painted with watercolors, also began to come into fashion. The rooms were decorated with gilded bronze candelabra, sconces, chandeliers - Elizabethan, Catherine, Pavlovian, Alexander, Nicholas, as well as mantel clocks in bronze or gilded wooden cases, often standing on special tables under glass covers. Lush lambrequins hung on the high windows. The parquets were inlaid and their ornamentation matched the painting of the ceilings.

In a separate private office, the landowner indulged in mental pursuits and received close male friends. The office could serve the owner at the same time as a bedroom. An indispensable accessory of this room is a large desk with a bronze writing utensil and a lamp. The device consisted of a sandbox (a tin box with sand for blotting ink), a penknife, a knife for cutting books (it could be silver, bronze, steel, bone or wood), a stick of sealing wax for seals and a seal for envelopes. The lamp was a high rod with two symmetrically located candles and a transparent paper screen sliding along the rod so that the fire would not blind the eyes. Over time, oil lamps, kenkets and karsels, began to take the place of dim candles. The usual components of the office interior were a bookcase and a stand for smoking pipes. By the way, some ladies smoked back then. Around 1815, cigars brought by the Russian army from foreign campaigns came into use, and by the middle of the 19th century, ladies' paquitoskis appeared - thin long cigars made of cut tobacco, wrapped in a maize leaf. At home they smoked mainly pipes with long cherry stems and large cups. They were usually smoked by house servants - for example, a Cossack woman. Guests, in addition to pipes, were treated to Havana or Manila cigars.

In addition to the items described above, in the office there was a large leather sofa, on which the valet made the master’s bed in the evenings. At that time, the spouses did not sleep together; each of them had a separate bedroom. The husband visited his wife in her boudoir, dressed in a dressing gown, but then returned to his place. A. Fet testifies that “father mostly slept on the couch in his study...”. Above the sofa there was usually a carpet with weapons hanging on it, most often Turkish and Caucasian. Adjacent to the office was the owner's dressing room, which was in charge of the valet. In addition to clothes - dresses, linen and underwear, there was a shaving table with all accessories, a bedside table, a basin for washing, a jug, soap and towels. In the dressing room there was also that device that we now call a “toilet” and “convenience”, but then called a “outhouse”. This “convenience” was a large chair, sometimes made of mahogany, with a seat in the form of a blank box with two lids. One of the covers was solid, and under the second there was an oval hole. In the box under the lids there was a night vase, which was periodically taken out by footmen to the latrine. Since not all gentlemen went to the bathhouse to wash, if necessary, the hostess brought a huge vat into the dressing room or boudoir and fetched water from the kitchen.

The lady's boudoir was located not far from the owner's office. There was a double bed in it, partitioned off with screens, and at its feet was a huge rectangular basket for bed linen. In the boudoir there was also a secretary with drawers for letters and writing materials, and there were several armchairs and chairs. The ladies' restroom, adjacent to the boudoir, was an analogue of the owner's dressing room. There was also “convenience” here and there was a toilet - an elegant ladies table with a mirror and a lifting table top, under which there were drawers for toiletries.

The interiors of the premises where the great writers of the 1st half of the 19th century lived and worked were atypical for rich manor houses of that time. The main room of the writer in the manor house was, of course, his study. There is a description of the office of the historian and writer N.M. Karamzin in Ostafiev - on the second floor of the house, with a window to the park. Contemporaries were struck by the ascetic decor of the room, for a long time remained intact. M.P. Pogodin visited Ostafyevo in 1845 and left detailed memories. He found in the office “bare plastered walls painted white; by the window there is a large pine table, uncovered, and a wooden chair next to it. On trestles with boards against the opposite wall, manuscripts, books, notebooks and just papers were laid out in disarray. In the room there was no wardrobe, no bookcase, no music stand, no chair, much less a carpet or pillow. Only a few shabby chairs stood haphazardly in the corner. Truly nothing superfluous, everything is just for work. Any little thing that could distract or dispel thought has been removed. In a word, noble simplicity." The environment in which N.V. lived and worked was just as harsh. Gogol in Moscow on Nikitsky Boulevard: on a simple painted floor there is a carpet, by the window there is a work desk covered with green cloth, in the corner behind a screen there is a narrow hard bed.

The writer N. Pavlov left in his memoirs a description of the office of Konstantin Sergeevich Aksakov in Abramtsevo. “Pavlov emphasized that the simplicity and efficiency of the office surprisingly corresponded to the character of the owner. The main place was occupied by a huge desk, all littered with books, notebooks, and folios. Above the table is a portrait of M. Lomonosov made of ivory.”

Thus, the general property of the interior of a writer’s office is its functionality, rigor, even asceticism: nothing superfluous, everything is just for work and concentrated reflection.

Life in the old estate “flowed along a long-established channel, undisturbed by anything.” The district aristocracy lived for its own pleasure: the landowners went hunting, supported numerous servants, jesters, hangers-on, organized holidays, picnics, played cards, played off village boys, yard dogs, roosters and geese; they poisoned bears and bulls caught and raised in pits with huge, specially bred Medellan dogs. Provincial boredom was partly compensated for by long and hearty meals, receiving guests, lengthy interviews with the village headman, and the analysis of conflicts between servants.

The Russian landed nobility was extremely diverse: from the “old world” to the new bureaucratic aristocracy. Manor life was just as varied. Some landowners in the 1st half of the 19th century still preserved the ancient Russian way of life, as, for example, in the Aksakov family. Others took a more secular tone. Little by little, ancient customs and entertainment in the form of Christmas fortune-telling and mummers began to fall out of use. Only Y.P. Polonsky you can find a mention of fortune telling on things with subliminal songs in the maiden's room and that the grandmother, sitting in the living room and playing solitaire, listened to these songs. Many memoirists recall picnics in nature, with carpets, pillows and samovars (carpets were not cherished in noble circles at that time due to the fact that they were imported in large quantities from Turkey, Persia, the Caucasus, Khiva, and Bukhara). Bare picked mushrooms themselves, fished, and went berry picking.

As mentioned above, in the Abramtsevo house of the Aksakovs, the way of life bore the imprint of patriarchy. The Aksakovs emphasized the ancient character of their estate, without trying to remodel it, and limited themselves to the most necessary changes: repairing the main house and building a residential outbuilding (in 1873, Hartmann’s “Workshop” was built in its place). According to the recollections of contemporaries, the busiest rooms in the house were the dining room, S.T.’s office. Aksakov and the living room. The first half of the day was usually spent in individual studies; by lunchtime, the hosts and guests gathered in the dining room and in the evenings they gathered in the living room, where readings, games of chess, and proverbs were held. The occupations of the inhabitants of the estate also included village concerns. The estate was not profitable, but the owners were not too keen on organizing the economy, maintaining only relative order in the affairs of the estate. The family's range of concerns included monitoring the vegetable garden, berry fields, and, from the second half of summer, making jam, syrups, pickles, and drying mushrooms. And although the hospitality of the Aksakovs was well known, the main charm of the estate was the possibility of privacy. The Aksakovs often spent not only the summer, but also the winter months in Abramtsevo, which was explained by both material difficulties and an unwillingness to depend on the secular conventions of the city. In the village of S.T. Aksakov, as you know, indulged in his favorite pastimes - fishing, picking mushrooms, daytime and evening festivities in the forest and estate park and, of course, literary creativity. He wrote to his son Ivan about his house in Abramtsevo in January 1844: “A wonderful, peaceful, secluded corner where there is everything we need.”

Many landowners in provincial estates did not completely trust the elders and managers, who often stole from their masters, but personally delved into the intricacies of economic life: they went to the fields and to the threshing floor to supervise the work, planted gardens, attended the breeding of horses in their stud yards, looked into the cowsheds and to poultry houses. Quite a few landowners themselves were involved in the design and construction of mills, constructing beehives, threshing machines, and winnowing machines, which were then “introduced” in the nearest counties. Owners of large estates sometimes went to their “outside” villages to check how things were going and wrote instructions to the managers. The ladies made jam and marshmallows, salted cucumbers and dried mushrooms, but they did not do it themselves, but only supervised the work. An indispensable activity was meetings with managers and elders, receiving reports, keeping entries in work journals, and settling accounts in the mornings or evenings. Doing housekeeping on the estate meant exercising control and accounting. Small-scale nobles, who had to think about a piece of bread, could themselves go out into the field with the peasants and wander around the tithes; another landowner could mow a row or two with his own hands. Some people practiced crafts at home. Turning, introduced into fashion among the nobility by Peter I, was especially popular.

Such mundane concerns were also not alien to creative people. For example, the poet E.A. Boratynsky, even in his childhood and youth, showed a keen interest in agriculture - gardening and vegetable gardening. In 1841, he dismantled a small and cramped house in Muranova and began building a new one. At this time, the poet and his family moved to the neighboring estate of the Palchikovs, Artemovo, three kilometers from Muranov. While working on preparing for publication a new collection of his poems, “Twilight,” Boratynsky did not forget about economic concerns. With the onset of warm weather, every morning he went to Muranovo to observe the construction, returned for lunch, and in the evening he went there on foot again with his older children. In addition to building the house, Boratynsky in 1841-1842 was intensively involved in the arching of the forest and the construction of a sawmill. His letters to Nikolai Vasilyevich Putyata are full of considerations and calculations regarding the sale of timber. When a saw mill was installed in Muranovo, Boratynsky proudly wrote to Putyata: “Yesterday, March 7, on my name day, I sawed the first log at my saw mill. The boards are distinguished by their cleanliness and correctness."

The Muranovsky house differs in its architecture from the traditional manor buildings of that era with the inevitable portico and mezzanine. Since the time of Boratynsky, it has not undergone significant alterations. The building consists of three parts: a two-story main building, a one-story extension and an adjacent two-story tower. The entire structure is wooden, constructed from vertically placed logs, but its main part and tower are lined with brick.

The Boratynskys settled in the new Muranovo house in the fall of 1842. The routine of life was unchanged: children still had classes with teachers, evenings were devoted to reading the latest Russian and foreign literature, creative ideas were ripening in the poet’s head, but before the onset of cold weather, household worries distracted Boratynsky from writing.

Since that time, much has changed in the decoration of the rooms of the Muranovo house. Furnishings that belonged to the first inhabitants of the house were mixed with the belongings of its later owners. But family portraits of the Engelhardts still look out from the walls of the hall and the green living room; in the dining room, in the old place, there is a round sliding centipede table. In the room that was previously E.A.’s office. Boratynsky, there is a desk-bureau made of simple birch, the work of Muranovo serf craftsmen. According to legend, the poet himself made the drawing for it. On the table there is an inkwell, a writing pad and various small items that belonged to Boratynsky. On the walls are his portraits, images of his relatives and friends; among them is a portrait of A.S. engraved by Utkin. Pushkin. When, after the death of Boratynsky, Muranovo fell to Sofia Lvovna Putyata (nee Engelhardt), the estate became the provincial center of literary life. Husband S.L. Putyati Nikolai Vasilyevich was not a good business executive, like Boratynsky, he gave preference to cultural interests. His first literary guests in Muranov were N.V. Gogol and S.T. Aksakov. Since the time of Putyata, one of the rooms on the top floor of the house has been called “Gogol”: the writer spent the night in it. The comfortable squat “toad” sofa on which the creator of “Dead Souls” rested has been preserved here. Above the sofa hangs a little-known portrait of Gogol that belonged to Putyata - a lithograph by Shamin from 1852.

Daughter N.V. Putyati Olga Nikolaevna recalled how S.T. Aksakov motionless and intently caught pike perch, sitting with his fishing rods on the shore of the Muranovsky pond. The writer was a big fan of fried pike perch and called them “lean beef.” I visited Putyata in his estate near Moscow and F.I. Tyutchev. After the poet’s death, his youngest son Ivan Fedorovich, married to Olga Nikolaevna Putyata, moved the furnishings of his father’s office and bedroom to Muranovo.

In the room, no time former office E.A. Boratynsky, comfortable upholstered furniture is placed, conducive to rest and reflection. Although some of the original furnishings have been preserved, the items of F.I. predominate here. Tyutcheva. A desk, an inkwell, a quill pen with traces of ink, a pad made of worn leather, a green lampshade - all this is Tyutchev’s. In the blotter there is an envelope from a letter to Tyutchev from his son-in-law I.S. Aksakova.

The main value of Muranov is that it is a one-of-a-kind example of an average estate, introducing us to the life of cultural representatives of the Russian nobility.

When talking about the life and morals of a provincial estate, we must not forget about the servants, since it was they who provided their masters with everyday comfort.

"Room" servants lived in the master's house. They ate in the so-called “dining room,” and none of them had their own rooms or even beds. An exception was made for a few, primarily the valet, who was considered the first person among the servants and could occupy a room of about 8 square meters. m. The cook and his assistants slept right in the kitchen. Other room servants did not have their own housing and at night they lay down on the floor, spreading felt next to the masters' rooms in order to be at their fingertips. “Everyone slept on the floor, on felts,” wrote Ya.P. Polonsky. - Felt at that time played the same role for the servants as mattresses and feather beds do now, and the old woman Agafya Konstantinovna,... my mother’s nanny, and our nannies and footmen - all slept on felt, spread out, if not on the floor, then on the chest or on the chest."

In the house of A.A.’s father. Feta, from the small maid’s room, “having opened the door to the frosty attic, one could see between the steps of the stairs the felt and pillow of each girl, including Elizaveta Nikolaevna, stuffed. All these beds, full of frost, were brought into the room and spread out on the floor...”

Next to the master’s bedroom there was also a “maid’s room”, where unmarried female servants had to sew, embroider, knit and carry out various household tasks for the mistress. The “maid’s room” was considered to be both a living and working room, and the “footman’s room”, which often served as an overnight place for footmen, was one of the front rooms; its second name was “entrance living room”. If in a city mansion a doorman always had to be on duty in the hallway, then in a village setting there was no such order: the owners heard the approach of the carriage from afar and themselves saw the guests through the window.

Room servants were called “people” in the plural, “man”, “boy”, “girl” in the singular, and the servants could remain in the rank of “girls” and “boys” until old age. They were rarely called by name, but if a person was elderly, distinguished and distinguished by some skill, he could also be called by his patronymic: Dormidontych, Stepanych, Yevseich. House servants, unlike servants, did not have specific duties and carried out minor household tasks and whims like “give me a handkerchief” and “run for kvass.” The servants were called by a bell: in the servants' quarters there was a bell, from which a wire ran to a sonnet, a long embroidered ribbon with a tassel at the end, which had to be pulled. There could also be an improved bell with a spring, located on a table or night table near the bed. They called it by pressing a button.

There were enough servants on the landowners' estates. “At that time they kept a lot of servants,” recalled Afanasy Fet. . Poet Ya.P. Polonsky wrote about his grandmother’s Ryazan house: “This hallway was full of footmen. There was Login, with an earring in his ear, a former hairdresser... and Fedka the shoemaker, and the tall, pockmarked Matvey, and my uncle's valet, Pavel... The whole girl's room... was divided into corners; In almost every corner there were icons and lamps, chests, folding felts and pillows... Food was carried to the table across the courtyard. There lived a butler and his wife, Login’s wife and daughters, Pavel’s wife and daughters, a cook, a coachman, a postilion, a gardener, a poultry worker and others... I don’t remember how many of my grandmother’s servants there were, but I believe that together with the girls. There were at least sixty people as shepherds and boners who came from the villages.” Household servants had a different status than house servants. They were specialists, and each was entrusted with a specific task: the black cook prepared food for the serfs, the gardener and his assistant worked on the flowers, the gardeners, the cowgirl, the janitor, the coachmen, the grooms, the huntsmen, the postilions, and the carpenter also performed a narrow range of duties. They lived in a human hut, or less often in small separate huts. Such servants were needed and, to a certain extent, protected. Of the room serfs, only the cook was valued; he was bought for a lot of money, sent to study, and, to a certain extent, his insolence and drunkenness were forgiven.

According to contemporaries, house servants on estates often stole and drank, robbed serfs, essentially their own comrades in misfortune. But there are other examples - for example, Pushkin's Savelich and Aksakov's Evseich (the prototype of the latter was a real person). These servants took care of their young masters in a fatherly way. Some of the serfs saw themselves as part of the noble family, and the owners often treated them as respectable and respected, not allowing their children to be rude to the same nanny. Afanasy Fet noted: “Of course, any impoliteness on my part towards any of the servants would not have been in vain.” It is noteworthy that the higher the position of the nobleman, the more polite he was with the lower ones. Memoirists, recalling genuine nobles, note their even attitude towards people of any position, even servants. A real aristocrat could even say “you” to a lackey. This did not humiliate him, since he did not need to prove his position. On the contrary, the lower a person’s position, the more contemptuous he was towards those who stood at a lower level. The most demanding and capricious clients in taverns were footmen.

Devoted servants - nannies, valets, maids, housekeepers - grew old along with their masters and took their last breath or died in their arms, bitterly mourned, like close relatives. The gentlemen had a special spiritual closeness with their nurses, as well as with their foster brothers and sisters. S.T. Aksakov left the following words about his nurse: “The nurse, who loved me passionately, again appears several times in my memories, sometimes in the distance, furtively looking at me from behind others, sometimes kissing my hands, face and crying over me. My nurse was a peasant peasant and lived thirty miles away; she left the village on foot on Saturday evening and came to Ufa early on Sunday morning, having looked at me and rested, and returned on foot to her Kasimovka to catch up on corvée. I remember that she came once, and maybe even came sometime, with my foster sister, a healthy and red-cheeked girl.”

The age of Russian estate life with all its nuances has long passed, but the words of Academician D.S. are true. Likhacheva: “An indicator of culture is the attitude towards monuments.” As long as literature exists, researchers will turn to memories of bygone times in order to trace the path of development of the classic, to identify important details of his life, and the origins of the creation of a literary work. According to D.S. Likhachev, the material atmosphere in which the writer lived “also becomes a literary document and, accordingly, an affiliation of our national culture. The writer’s house, household items, the surrounding landscape - all these are necessary components of his “artistic universe”. Material monuments are the connecting link between the writer and the modern reader. Often, thanks to acquaintance with them, much of what otherwise requires special analysis becomes clear.”

Interest in people is always higher than interest in dead things, therefore, of the literary estates for our contemporaries, the most attractive are those that, although not always shining with special architectural merits, preserve for us the images of the classics and the unique spiritual atmosphere of the era of the first half of the 19th century. This is not only Abramtsevo, Muranovo, Ostafyevo, Serednikovo, but also Mikhailovskoye, Tarkhany, Yasnaya Polyana, and many other memorable places in the Russian outback. They all need our special, caring attitude.

Literature:

1. 1. Aksakov S.T. The childhood years of Bagrov the grandson. - Collection op. In 4 volumes - T. 1. - M., 1955.
2. 2. Belovinsky L.V. Hut and mansions: From the history of Russian everyday life: Scientific and educational publication. - M.: IPO "Profizdat", 2002. - (Ser. "History of Everyday Life". Issue 1).
3. 3. State Historical, Artistic and Literary Museum-Reserve Abramtsevo: Photo Guide / Comp. I.A. Rybakov. - M.: Planet, 1991.
4. 4. Grech A.N. Wreath for estates. - In the book: Monuments of the Fatherland: Almanac, 1994, No. 3 - 4 (Issue 32). — P. 5.
5. 5. Noble nests of Russia: History, culture, architecture: Essays. - M.: Publishing house "Giraffe", 2000.
6. 6. Literary Moscow Region: Textbook. allowance / Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation; Moscow ped. univ. - M.: Publishing house "VEK", 1998.
7. 7. Museum-reserve "Abramtsevo": Essay-guide. — 2nd ed. - M.: Image. art, 1988.
8. 8. Museum-Estate “Abramtsevo”: Guide / USSR Academy of Sciences; Institute of Art History. - M., 1960.
9. 9. Muranovo: Album. - M.: Moscow. worker, 1986.
10. 10. Novikov V.I. Bolshie Vyazemy. - M.: Moscow. worker, 1988. - (Monuments of the Moscow Region).
11. 11. Novikov V.I. Ostafyevo: Literary destinies of the 19th century. - M.: Knowledge, 1991.
12. 12. Pakhomov N.P. Abramtsevo. - M.: Moscow. worker, 1969.
13. 13. Pakhomov N.P. Abramtsevo Museum. - M.: Sov. artist, 1968.
14. 14. Pechersky M.D. Ostafyevo. - M.: Moscow. worker, 1988.
15. 15. Pigarev K. Muranovo. - M.: Moscow. worker, 1948.
16. 16. Polonsky Ya.P. Prose. - M., 1998.
17. 17. Tydman L.V. Izba. House. Palace: Residential interior of Russia from 1700 to 1840s / GUOP; Research Methodological Center for Population Protection; Research Museum of Russian Architecture named after. A.V. Shchuseva. - M.: Progress-Tradition, 2000.
18. 18. Fet A.A. Memories. - M., 1983.
19. 19. Sheveleva O. Manor life of the late XIX - early XX centuries. in the memoirs of contemporaries (using the example of the Mikhailovskoye estate) // Sheveleva. htm.

Among some of our “spiritual” intelligentsia, there are many myths around the concept of a “Russian noble estate”. Sometimes you are amazed, reading or listening, what people say about this phenomenon (φαινόμενον - phenomenon). They'll tell you such a story, you won't have time to cross yourself. And why all? And all because they simply don’t want to think and look at things simply. What did Seraphim of Sarov say? That’s right: “Where it’s simple, there are up to a hundred angels, but where it’s sophisticated, there’s not a single one.”

So let's talk about this phenomenon, without any aspiration, but simply standing on solid ground with both feet, especially since the Russian estate stood on the ground in the most literal sense, i.e. in the village. Yes, when I say “let’s talk,” I mean not only myself, but also you, dear readers, for I do not have the unfortunate habit of Russian publicists of the 19th century, who came from commoners, to call themselves “we.” Only the monarch can call himself "WE". But, alas, we don’t have a monarchy.

What estates are we going to talk about? And we will talk about average and above-average estates, which in the middle of the 19th century brought income from 1 thousand to 10 thousand rubles in silver. Not in banknotes, but in silver. We will only talk about estates where people live for at least six months a year. Those. the estates of the rich and the serving nobility (officials and military) fall out. Those. We will talk about estates where the owner has oversight when carrying out basic agricultural work.

Where do we start? Let's start with the roads. They are expensive, or rather their condition is very important. Why? You'll understand a little lower. What were the roads like in Russia? Let's go from top to bottom:

1) Defiled highways. The most famous such highway is St. Petersburg-Moscow. Pushkin updated it. They were similar in principle to the imperial roads in France, only there such roads were also paved. Such roads were surrounded by ramparts along the side of the road (the road passed through a defile, i.e. a gorge). This was very convenient in winter, because... It was almost impossible to stray from such a road, plus the shafts protected travelers in open sleighs from the piercing wind in winter. But there was one big "BUT". In France, imperial roads became impassable for several days in the spring, as melting snow turned the spaces between the ramparts into rivers. But that was in France, where there was little snow and the roads were paved, but in Russia the road turned into an impassable swamp for three weeks. In the fall, too, such highways were impassable. In summer the ride was ok, if not heavy rains and the highway did not become soggy, but there was one inconvenience - awesome clouds of dust that stood over the road all day, settling only in the evening, when traffic on the highway stopped (the defile did not allow the wind to blow away the dust from the road). You can read about the suffering of the French who were advancing on Moscow along the “New Smolensk Road”. The main problem was this very dust, which literally mowed down the French regiments on the march, sending soldiers and officers in batches to the hospitals. But for winter driving, defile highways were just what the doctor ordered. And these highways were built primarily for the transportation of grain, which was produced in Russia after the harvest, i.e. exactly in winter. That’s why these roads were simply clogged in winter with endless trains (as civilian convoys were called then), sometimes consisting of hundreds of sleigh carts loaded with grain. It is clear that no one cleared these roads of snow in winter, there were ruts, but by spring the thickness of the snow on the road could exceed an arshin, or even more.

2) Provincial roads. Well, in principle, these were roads without any special tricks. But there was also improvement. Firstly, such roads were wide, “big”, as they said then, i.e. double track. There was no problem with two oncoming crews passing each other. And secondly, there were milestones there, and in the fall, milestones and special palisades were placed along the sides for protection from blizzards, so that the road would not be too swept away. No one cleared the roads of snow either, but milestones and milestones helped them not to go astray, which greatly helped travelers. In spring and summer, these roads also became muddy. But there was less dust on them.

3) Other roads. That's how it turns out. Where there are two ways, where there is one, Gogol in “Dead Souls” well describes how Chichikov on such a road could not pass the carriage where one young lady was sitting. Most often there were no milestones or milestones on such roads. No one cleaned them in winter, so getting lost on the road in winter was a common occurrence. These roads were also poorly traveled in the spring and fall.

There was an expression: “When the road stops.” Those. when it either freezes or dries out.

Crossings. There weren't that many bridges. More often there were ferries across the river, and in winter they simply crossed over the ice. This also limited the mobility of the population. In autumn and spring we had to wait either for the rivers to freeze, or for the ice drift and flood to end.

Wolves and robbers. This also limited the mobility of the estate's inhabitants, especially in winter. Few people dared to leave the estate without four, and sometimes even six, pistols. I'm not joking.

Frost and blizzard. The current city dweller, who is accustomed to walking without a hat in 20-degree frost (and what use is it if you can only run to a car-bus?), cannot even imagine that even now in winter, in a light frost of five degrees in a Russian village, you can you will freeze if you ride in an open sleigh for about an hour without a sheepskin coat, especially if there is a good breeze. Of course, you can give advice that you need to get off the sleigh and jump. It’s possible now, but not everywhere. You go on a sleigh to some Novgorod village, which is five kilometers from you, and on a snowy road it’s exactly an hour’s drive, sometimes a little more, and you’re afraid to get off the sleigh, because Horsepower It goes almost knee-deep into the snow, and you’ll just fall waist-deep. And where will you jump then? The situation was exactly the same back then.

Considering wolves, robbers, blocked roads, and frost and blizzards, people of that time in winter, unless there was a special need, preferred not to stick their noses out of the outskirts of the estate. However, some had covered sleighs with stoves. But it was a special chic and an expensive thing. And it was easy to get burned out or burn out in such an innovation.

Now about such a feature of manor life as rhythm.

The rhythm was set primarily by the range of agricultural and household work. Firstly, the landowner, if not some kind of innovator-reveler, had to control the most important work: sowing, mowing (the very beginning of mowing), harvesting and threshing, i.e. bringing the product (grain) to marketable condition.

Those. Even those landowners who, for some reason (more on this below) rushed to the cities for the winter, always returned to the estate for sowing work. One is connected with sowing work interesting point. Everyone is used to gasping and groaning that the head of the All-Russian Society of Walking Barefoot with a Stick, L.N. Tolstoy himself plowed. Well, yes, I plowed. But there was nothing great about it. The fact is that most of the estate residents, landowners, if they did not know how to plow themselves, then knew how it should be done. For example, one of the Vorntsov counts was also a noble plowman, but he did not work for the public. He simply learned to plow so that he could know whether a man was deceiving him in the corvee or not.

The sowing season began, as it does now, somewhere closer to Easter (somewhere earlier, somewhere later). Those. the landowner is bleeding from the nose, and by this time you need to be at the estate, otherwise you will be left with nothing. So we left St. Petersburg at the end of the first week of Lent, spending two or three days at the shrine of St. Alexander Nevsky. We made it before the roads became muddy and before the ice drifted. Sometimes we drove along already weak ice, sometimes even falling through the ice in places. Even part of the train was sometimes left on one bank until the end of the ice drift, while they fled home.

When the sowing season was underway, the master had no time for guests or social events. At about four o'clock he got up, sat in the gig, which he himself drove, and rode through the fields, watching the man plow and sow. This is where the ability to plow or knowledge of how it should be done came in handy. A simple glance at the furrow, and the master knew whether the man was fooling him or not. If a man was fooling around, a whip was used; if he worked well, a glass was poured. Sowing was usually completed by Nikola Veshny. More often earlier. We tried to make it to Krasnaya Gorka in time.

Here, it would seem, the time for the lordly revelry has come. It’s true, of course, but you also need to get some sleep. And the roads are not yet dry enough for the neighbors to come to the sejmik. So it turned out that before Trinity there were no more than two sejmiks. Sometimes three. And there was Peter’s fast, and during fasts they didn’t organize partying, except for the district or provincial diet to elect the leader of the nobility (I write “sejmik” and “seim” for a reason, I’m basing this on the memoir of my direct ancestor, where life is very vividly described estates of the Smolensk gentry, and these are all entirely descendants of Kremlin inmates, including the same Glinka who wrote the opera “A Life for the Tsar”). But more often the seimas, by choice of the leader, were held after Peter's fast. Sometimes after Uspensky. However, Mikhalkov’s “Unfinished Play” very vividly shows a neighbor’s sejmik before Trinity, albeit among an already impoverished nobility falling into insignificance.

After Petrovka the party began. Haymaking is organized, the elders, and sometimes even the manager, have received a blessing in the snout with the master's hand, and there is nothing special to do. But still there is one thing. We need to go to the fair. Sell ​​some of the surplus and buy some. The main thing is not to fall into the excitement of gambling, because card sharpers flocked to the fairs from everywhere. And as soon as they returned from the fair and the Diet, so began the visits. Why not? The weather is wonderful, the roads are dry, you don’t need to take special care of the mowing, everything else is still getting fat and filling with juices, and that’s it.

We walked thoroughly. Usually a sejmik lasts three or even four days. Did you play cards? They played, but not much. They didn’t lose more than fifty rubles, not in St. Petersburg for tea. They drank and ate to their heart's content. They organized promenades. They drugged each other with cunning liqueurs. My ancestor loved to serve such pepper vodka with honey that the person who drank a glass of it would have his eyes pop out of his head.

Then came the Assumption Fast. Again the whole revelry was cancelled. For... For, firstly, fasting, and secondly, there is no time for revelry. Now these are all sorts of early ripening varieties of berries and everything else, but then these varieties were not needed. Until the 70s-80s. In the 19th century, sugar was an expensive product, and jams were made mainly with honey. And the honey was just in time for the Honey Savior. Now it's time for homemade preparations. And then the housewives, regardless of the titles and ranks of their husbands, tucked their skirts and began to cook, salt, ferment and dry. There were a lot of apples and plums, you couldn’t eat them all, even if you burst, so they made vodka out of them. Vodkas are different.

As soon as the woman's suffering ended, the real suffering began. And again the master got up at four in the morning, sat in the buggy, and drove through the fields, observing everything with his master's eye. For harvesting, of course, there were sejmiks again, but not as wild as in the summer, and the harvest had to be arranged, so we went to the buyers and traded. They traded and traded in provincial cities. Where there were bread stores.

Then we quickly returned to the estate before the roads became muddy. And this is where that same estate life began, from which all Russian literature grew, and with it Russian culture.

The leitmotif of life on the estate was boredom. If in the summer it dissipated at the sejmiks, then from October to May those who did not go to St. Petersburg or Moscow for the winter howled with boredom in their estates. Hence the huge, mostly unsystematic libraries, hence the knowledge of two or even three languages ​​- there were few Russian books, and translations were often poor. One of my ancestors bought four carts of books in St. Petersburg. So I just took it, went and bought four carts of books at some property liquidation, without even bothering to study what kind of library it was.

There were also those who were engaged in compiling “wine collections”, only not wine ones, but liqueur ones. They made forty or even more varieties of liqueurs for the winter. They make it, and then spend all their time tasting them from October to May.

By the way, the same local boredom is responsible for card sprees. People sit on their estates for several months and cannot go anywhere because of the weather and roads. And then boom, the courier calls the nobility to the sejmik or the governor calls.

Then everyone from the surrounding area gradually gathers in one estate to travel by common train to the district or provincial town. So they start playing cards out of boredom. While they are playing among themselves, they are playing half-and-half. Well, they will lose fifty rubles, and then almost for fun, the winner will also be on his knees begging for his neighbor-in-law to take the winnings back, because otherwise his wife, upon returning home, will give him a beating for this winnings from her brother, and her hand heavy, like Vasilisa Kashporovna’s. But as soon as they got onto the main road, all sorts of cheaters began to “pinch” them.

Romance and adventure were mostly in the summer. And in winter they sat around the estates, reading or drinking vodka.

Someone wrote memoirs. And the companies were only in the summer. Or you had to go to St. Petersburg or Moscow to get company. But often the desire to go there was thwarted by cards, and not a lack of funds. In St. Petersburg and Moscow, and even in provincial cities, the “giant” man could not put himself on the right foot without cards. And the thing with cards is that you can blow everything, so we didn’t go out of our way.

After all, sometimes people don’t even imagine that the same Speransky and Arakcheev were terrible gamblers, prone to cheating, and Derzhavin generally cheated at one time, even fled from the investigation at night...

This is what life was like on the estate.

But yes, Russian literature owes its appearance to the estate, because this very literature was mainly consumed there. All Russian literature of the 19th century was mostly magazine, not book, precisely because this way it was possible to extract more money from the subscriber (landowner). The first person to seriously understand this was Pushkin. Well, he knew how to sell Our Everything manuscripts.

If he had not played cards, he would have been one of the richest people of his time. By the way, Speransky was a champion in gambling; after his death, it turned out that he had debts, not card debts, but promissory notes, which he took out to pay off gambling debts, amounting to almost half a million. A terrible, mind-blowing figure for those times. Arakcheev still had two hundred thousand debts left, so Nashe still played very carefully.

The garden is a place with amazing atmosphere, where the spirit of antiquity has been preserved. Famous owners, architectural masterpieces, ancient parks, alleys with centuries-old trees, secrets of the past - all this invariably attracts tourists. And even ruins can be interesting, because in these stone remains of former days the energy and history have been preserved. Today we will talk about 10 estates. Perhaps you spent your school holidays near these places as a child, but you had no idea what kind of people left their mark here. We move to Polenovo, Voronovo, Serednikovo, Vinogradovo, Yasnaya Polyana, Abramtsevo, Ostafyevo, Marfino, Gorki and Olgovo.

Polenovo

A wooden plastered two-story house, built in 1911–1912 by the architect Karst according to the design of Ivan Rylsky and connected by a glazed passage with a kitchen outbuilding, has been preserved here; a converted and built-on horse yard, a cattle yard consisting of three two-story buildings. On the other side of Dmitrovskoye Highway there is a church complex. It includes the Vladimir Church of 1772–1777 (the alleged architects of the temple are Vasily Bazhenov or Matvey Kazakov), a modern bell tower and a clock tower - all in the style of classicism; remains of a cemetery with tombstones from the 18th–19th centuries.

Yasnaya Polyana

In Yasnaya Polyana, to this day there is a two-story house of Leo Tolstoy from 1800–1810 with an extension from 1871 (the author is the Tula architect Guryev). Nature is also preserved: a birch alley starting from two entrance towers; linden park of the late 18th century; landscape “Lower Park” of mixed tree species with cascading ponds; apple orchards. Adjacent to the estate are an old oak and linden grove, spruce and birch plantations that were part of the estate, planted by Lev and Sophia Tolstoy.

The writer's grave is also located here. Not far from the estate, in the village of Kochaki, near the St. Nicholas Church, founded at the end of the 17th century and completely rebuilt in the second half of the 19th century, there is a necropolis - the Tolstoy family cemetery.

Ostafyevo

In Ostafyevo, built in 1801–1807 in the classicist style, presumably according to the design of the architect Ivan Starov, and possibly Prince Andrei Vyazemsky himself, the two-story main house and side wings connected to it by colonnades have been preserved. Here is also the Trinity Church built in 1778–1781, built in the classicist style; landscape linden park with a main alley and a pond formed by the dam of the Lyubuchi River. There are granite monuments in the park - Nikolai Karamzin, Vasily Zhukovsky, Alexander Pushkin, all monuments were created according to the design of the artist Nikolai Panov. Nearby there is a complex of buildings of a cloth factory from the mid-18th century, rebuilt in the 1820s by the architect Fyodor Shestakov.

Abramtsevo

Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Turgenev, Ilya Repin, Valentin Serov visited the estate over the years. The wooden one-story main house with a mezzanine from the last third of the 18th century in the classicist style with extensions from the 1870s has been preserved; a wooden workshop from 1873 (architect Viktor Hartman), a mansion from 1878 (architect Ivan Ropet), a one-story house for the manager, a wooden one-story dacha by Vasily Polenov; Spasskaya Church of 1881–1882 in the neo-Russian style, erected by the architect Pavel Samarin according to a sketch by Viktor Vasnetsov with the participation of Polenov; a chapel adjacent to the church, created according to Vasnetsov’s design; a park of mixed tree species with ponds on the banks of the Vori River.

Marfino

The writer Nikolai Karamzin, whose plays were staged at the Marfinsky Theater, visited the estate. In 1763–1780, under Field Marshal Count Pyotr Saltykov and his son, Governor General of Moscow Count Ivan Saltykov, the estate was redesigned and rebuilt; after ruin in 1812, it was restored by the serf architect Fyodor Tugarov; The central part was reconstructed in 1832–1846 by the architect Mikhail Bykovsky, who gave the estate the appearance of a complete ensemble in the English Gothic style. The main house and two outbuildings have reached us; entrance gates from 1837–1839; two two-story kennel buildings from the second half of the 18th century in the classicist style; a two-story manager's house from the early 19th century in the Empire style; abandoned 18th-century horse yard and coach house; Church of the Nativity of the Virgin from 1701–1707 in the Baroque style. Here is a linden park, landscaped at the end of the 19th century by park builder Arnold Regel, with gazebos, ponds and a “Gothic” bridge over the pond.

Gorki

In Gorki you can see a two-story main house and paired outbuildings; greenhouse; a utility building built at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries by the architect Fyodor Kolbe, consisting of a stable, carriage house and laundry with a water tower; linden park of the late 18th century; landscape park of the 19th–20th centuries on the slope to the Turovka River made of mixed tree species with Small and Large ponds, a grotto, bridges and two rotunda gazebos. A little to the side there is a two-story wooden plastered outbuilding. It was used as a school in the 1920s and 30s.

Olgovo

Leo Tolstoy once visited here. This is a very beautiful place, especially in autumn, when the entrance to the temple is decorated with fallen leaves. The ruined main house remains, based on an early 18th-century building extended in 1786 by the architect Francesco Camporesi. The Vvedenskaya Church of 1751 with a bell tower and chapels of 1828, enlarged in 1892 by the architect Ivan Meisner, is incredibly majestic. Some linden trees planted in the second half of the 18th century have survived.

Preface

The Russian noble estate has a special place in the national cultural heritage. Without attention, understanding and love for this phenomenon there is and cannot be understanding national history, love for Russia.

Russian estate is an amazingly capacious concept. It is this that, being well studied, gives a visual representation of literally all the processes that took place in the history and culture of Russia in the 17th – 19th centuries. Just as the entire world around us is reflected in a drop of water, so is the entire world reflected in a noble estate. Russian history, the whole world of Russian culture.

One of high manifestations Architecture is rightfully recognized as part of Russian estate culture. However, she is not the only one who “makes the face” of the Russian noble estate.

The Russian estate is a unique center of economic, political and cultural life for several generations of our compatriots in its social functions.

Figures have appeared in the press more than once to help evaluate, if not the qualitative, then at least the quantitative characteristics of this unique phenomenon of world culture. Some researchers believe that there were 50 thousand estates, others call the figure twice as large. The truth, apparently, is somewhere in the middle.

The imagination suggests what the “cultural landscape” of our country looked like 100–150 years ago. Along with towns and cities, villages and villages, fortresses and monasteries, estates played almost the main role in this landscape. Where there is an estate, there are mansions and offices, outbuildings and greenhouses, parks and ponds, alleys and piers.

Each estate complex includes both a historical, cultural and natural component, which has a rather complex structure. Its elements are regular and landscape parks, gardens and flower beds.

In addition, greenhouses where exotic southern plants were grown became widespread. In some estates, such as, for example, Arkhangelskoye or Kuskovo, there were menageries that became the prototypes of zoos in Russia.

The recreational opportunities of Russian estates were valued back in the 19th century. Representatives of the noble class, with the help of the best Russian and foreign architects, park organizers, and gardeners, created ideal conditions for everyday life, creative activity and good rest. The Russian estate was not only attractive due to the beauty of its architectural structures and shady parks and the care it took for its guests. The owners were distinguished by their hospitality and hospitality. Many estates had “guest houses” - nothing more than small hotels, the cult of Russian cuisine flourished, and there were ideal conditions for sports and hunting. In a word, if you study domestic traditions of recreation, sports, recreation, hotel and restaurant management, then you need to look for them in the history of the Russian noble estate.

Every noble estate is to a certain extent a museum, since enormous historical and artistic values ​​have accumulated within its walls for centuries - paintings, books, engravings, furniture, porcelain, family archives. All this was collected and carefully stored for centuries. In the mansions of the lords there were hidden countless collections of books, manuscripts, paintings, furniture, weapons, porcelain, compiled by several generations of enlightened people... Real “rural hermitages”!

And the people who lived in estates! There were so many truly talented writers, poets, composers, and artists among them! Just honest, decent, energetic people!

Meanwhile, the estates themselves, estate buildings, parks, and ponds are becoming fewer and fewer. Traces of estate culture, which reached its peak by the middle of the 19th century, were diligently erased during the post-reform era and were mercilessly destroyed during the years of the first Russian revolution, in the twenties. Every decade of the 20th century contributed to this crazy and merciless process.

There is no one to defend the Russian estate. Deprived of real owners, it is doomed to final destruction. And no “measures”, no “spells” will help her, alas. The estate cannot be saved. But it can be studied.

And this study, once begun, will apparently continue forever.

At first, it is tempting to at least mentally reconstruct the world of the estate that is gone forever. Sometimes it seems that this is impossible: the whirlwind of the 20th century wiped out many estates from the face of the earth, leaving no drawings, drawings, or photographs.

Of many of the mansions, as they say, no trace remains. But, fortunately, libraries, museums, and archives have been preserved, which contain many monuments of the former estate culture. Moreover, many of these monuments do not just “gather dust in oblivion,” but live with us, feeding us with the most important thing - spiritual food, instilling in us pride in the deeds of past generations, allowing us to experience the incomparable joy of contact again and again with works of talented architects, artists, sculptors, poets, musicians, actors - all those for whom the Russian estate was not so much an “architectural monument” as a home, a “small homeland”.

It is the estates that largely determine the “national face” of our country in the global tourism market. Nowhere in the world does estate culture occupy such a place of honor as in Russia. You can say: “If you want to get an idea of ​​the great Russian culture, get an idea of ​​ten to fifteen noble estates.”

The book that the reader holds in his hands is good because it focuses attention on the “living” Russian estate and strives to show different aspects of its existence. It is replete with interesting factual material. This material is necessary for studying the former estate culture. And if you have knowledge, the opportunity will open up to truly deeply appreciate and love this phenomenon. For you cannot love what you don’t have the slightest idea about.

In the end, the Russian estate was destroyed not so much by wars and revolutions as by ordinary darkness and ignorance, inability and reluctance to see something significant very close by: “You can’t see a face face to face.”

Before us is a fascinating story about the everyday life of a Russian noble estate of the century before last.

What is this story based on? On numerous testimonies eyewitnesses. The estate was lucky: dozens of talented Russian writers witnessed its flourishing and diverse life: N.V. Gogol, A.S. Pushkin, M.Yu. Lermontov, L.N. Tolstoy, F.M. Dostoevsky, M.E. Saltykov -Shchedrin, I.S. Turgenev... It would not be an exaggeration to say that the estate not only sheltered them, but became the powerful impulse that accompanied them throughout their creative lives... The estate is a kind of cradle of Russian classical literature, and with careful attention studying - Russian poetry, Russian drama, and Russian painting.

The life of a Russian estate is a striking phenomenon of Russian culture, nurtured on Russian soil, a living embodiment of national cultural traditions. At the same time, it is also the cultural heritage of all humanity.

Probably, this book should be regarded not as a result, but as a stage in the study of Russian noble nests. And it should be emphasized that this is a very important and responsible stage.

A. I. Frolov

More than thirty years have passed since the Great Reform, but those old expressions, figures of speech, sayings and the ceremoniously majestic tone of greetings at meetings were still heard. Particular attention then, at the end of the 19th century, was, of course, attracted by the people themselves of that ancient time. These are thinning islands of a completely different worldview.

So how were they different from subsequent generations? Such a gentleman always knew how to behave perfectly in any life situations. He was friendly, shy and kind.

The youth of such people occurred in the pre-reform era. Over these decades, many events have passed that have changed not only the world, but also the people themselves, and not for the better. But this small cohort, carefully and wisely nurtured by their fathers and grandfathers, who knew the smoke of Borodin and the joy of taking Paris, was somehow easily and gradually able to convey this “radiant delight of existence” to their own children.

“Grandfather, as far as I remember, was already over 60 years old, but how cheerful and fresh he was then! I definitely see him, invariably cheerful, playful, laughing and ready to joke: he was tall, thick-set and beautifully built, and had nothing senile in his whole handsome person; dressed respectably, but almost dapper. Looking at his beautiful, open face, framed by silver-white hair, you can’t help but admire this type of old gentleman who no longer exists.

Grandfather could not be called a serf owner; he did not oppress, oppress or torment anyone; no one suffered under his roof; and he, the landowner, in the midst of his lordly surroundings, surrounded by a host of serfs Levka, Fomok, Vasek, used to laugh himself and want everyone around him to laugh: both the old man Levka and the Cossack Vaska.

Only during a thunderstorm did grandfather not laugh; sad, depressed by melancholy, he could not find a place for himself in the whole house and was somehow childishly helpless and pitiful. He was no longer amused by jokes, had no fun, and was burdened by society; but even at such moments his spiritual mood did not manifest itself outwardly as nervous irritation, whims or senile grumbling: he only retired to his room, where he was heard walking back and forth with heavy steps; at times he let out heavy sighs and prayed loudly. But the thunderstorm passed, and grandfather shook off his despondency and weakness and with the first rays of the sun came out of his room, pink, smiling, healthy, with a joke on his lips.

Grandfather's whole house was full of homeless, familyless, destitute, idle people living here, looking for work or daily bread. Grandfather placed them all with him, fed, watered and clothed them, teased and rewarded them; he knew how to give and do good, and his piece of bread was not bitter, his good deeds were not painful. All these who lived with him: old women, orphans, hungry and defenseless, came together under his roof, because need, grief or inability to work drove them to his warm hearth; they were accepted without questioning, fed, watered, clothed, shod and placed in a warm corner for indefinite residence - and they immediately felt like they were under the wing or, as they say, under Christ’s bosom.

They lived well with their grandfather, and he also enjoyed being among all these brethren, who had gathered here from different parts of the world and amused him with their various conversations. And how many homeless old women were buried by grandfather at his own expense, how many orphans he looked after and raised and placed, how many noblemen he assigned to a place, always continuing to subsequently receive them in his house along with other guests and household members, never letting them feel his favors and not ceasing to support them. For all this one could rejoice in his joy and rejoice in his amusement, excusing his jokes.

Here is an example of my grandfather’s fun: among the boarders from a family of poor nobles who lived with him, there was, by the way, one ordinary midwife. One evening, earlier than usual, she went to her room, where she, looking out the window, anxiously listened to the slightest rustle, waiting for a messenger from a neighboring landowner who had invited her in advance for her birth. According to the grandmother, the birth was going to be difficult. Grandfather, as usual, was privy to these worries and decided to play a joke for general amusement. It was a winter evening, endless, no new guests arrived, but they managed to get bored with their own; and a blizzard was howling in the yard, it was impossible to see anything. Suddenly they report that they have come to pick up the grandmother-midwife from the mother in labor. The old woman carefully folded her stocking, which she had been caught knitting, prayed in front of the icons and even made several prostrations; I slowly got dressed, wrapped myself up and went out to the entrance to get into the sleigh. She did not notice, behind the blizzard that blinded her eyes, that the sleigh, the people, and the horses were grandfather’s; Crossing herself and groaning, she sat down, buried her nose in her old cloak and drove off, whispering a prayer for a successful outcome of a good deed.

She didn’t notice how she was driven around the house three times and dashingly rolled up to the front, brightly lit entrance, where her grandfather, beaming with pleasure, met her and helped her out of the sleigh, surrounded by numerous servants, with lanterns and candles in their hands, while one of the musicians played on the violin the famous march at that time: “You have returned, gracious, our gentle Angel, friend of hearts,” composed in honor of Emperor Alexander I. The fun ended with the grandmother laughing, threatening her grandfather with her finger, and calling him an old sinner .

However, it was not only the poor and homeless who huddled around the rich and hospitable master: the grandfather was smart and extremely loved the company of intelligent people. Without noticing it himself, he was a true philanthropist of his time, instinctively finding talented people and giving them the opportunity to emerge from the darkness of ignorance and obscurity. He valued poetry and literature, arts and crafts, and had a sympathetic and warm attitude toward talent, valuing them in his guests above ranks and titles. Many writers, musicians, poets, and artists visited his house; They all stayed with their grandfather for a long time, taking advantage of his sweet company and wide hospitality.

Among the many outstanding personalities who took a break from the bustle of the world in my grandfather’s house was the famous Little Russian writer Kotlyarevsky, who became close not only with the hospitable host himself, but also with his entire staff. Here he wrote his “Natalka-Poltavka”, like an artist creating all the characters based on the models of those around him. The entire operetta is taken directly from life; all the characters acting in it are artistic portraits of grandfather’s servants and his household. But nothing amused my grandfather more than in the evenings when Kotlyarevsky himself read the famous poem Aeneid, in the Little Russian language, written by him here.

This is how my grandfather spent his time on his family estate in Shadeev, having retired after long and useful service to the fatherland. In addition to pleasant conversations and reading, musical evenings were also held in the winter, very often ending with dancing, in which everyone took part, not excluding the owner himself; choirs were formed, sometimes dramatic works were performed on the stage of a home theater by a troupe of home-grown actors; and in conclusion - dinner, the abundance of dishes is not inferior to lunch, with a libation of liqueurs, casseroles and all kinds of stumbling" (Melnikova A Memories of the long past and recently past. From a notebook 1893-1896. Poltava; M., 1898) [Here and Further, the spelling and style of the author are completely preserved. (Author's note)].

However, in addition to the mentioned gentlemen - smart, pleasant to talk to and kind in business, there were also the most ordinary people, quite colorless in their own lives. At the same time, some of them, living a simple life, tried to somehow decorate it. For example, they often received guests. But even with great cordiality and wonderful food, they could offer them little except card games and stories told from ancient times, when they were too young and too flighty, which could now be doubted.

Others, despite their colorlessness, were also distinguished by their stinginess. We tried not to host anyone at home. In the area, among landowners and peasants, they were known as misers and did not arouse any respect. But if, out of necessity, they found themselves in public, they demanded increased attention to their own person. Some funny things happened: while in public places, they proclaimed their ranks and titles in a loud and well-trained voice (and to complete strangers).

The economy of these landowners, although it was not conducted in the best way, still provided some income, but there was no talk of innovation. There was no intelligence, no scope, no culture.

There were relatively many restless landowners in Russia, grasping at new ideas for land use. However, they clearly lacked daily persistence: everything was left to chance. If in the pre-reform years there were many solid, well-organized mediocre landed estates, by the end of the 19th century most estates were eking out a miserable existence. But, surprisingly, the recklessness of doing business, leading to single-family ownership and then to poverty of the landowner, did not at all reduce his ambitions. And the rapidly collapsing lordly economy did not change his attitude to life. He still remained ruff, dapper and arrogantly cocky.

“...First, I will describe to you retired Major General Vyacheslav Illarionovich Khvalynsky. Imagine a tall and once slender man, now somewhat flabby, but not at all decrepit, not even outdated, a man in adulthood, in his prime, as they say. True, the once correct and now still pleasant features of his face have changed a little, his cheeks have drooped, frequent wrinkles are located radially around his eyes, other teeth are no longer there, as Saadi said, according to Pushkin; brown hair, at least all those that remained intact, turned purple thanks to the composition purchased at the Romny horse fair from a Jew posing as an Armenian; but Vyacheslav Illarionovich speaks smartly, laughs loudly, jingles his spurs, twirls his mustache, and finally calls himself an old cavalryman, while it is known that real old men themselves never call themselves old men. He usually wears a frock coat, buttoned to the top, a high tie with starched collars, and gray trousers with a sparkle, military cut; he puts the hat directly on his forehead, leaving the entire back of his head exposed. He is a very kind person, but with rather strange concepts and habits. For example: he cannot in any way treat nobles who are not rich or unofficial as equals. When talking to them, he usually looks at them from the side, leaning his cheek heavily into the hard and white collar, or suddenly he will illuminate them with a clear and motionless gaze, remain silent and move all his skin under the hair on his head; He even pronounces words differently and does not say, for example: “Thank you, Pavel Vasilich,” or: “Come here, Mikhailo Ivanovich,” but: “Bold, Pall Asilich,” or: “Come here, Mikhail Vanich.” He treats people at the lower levels of society even more strangely: he doesn’t look at them at all, and before he explains his desire to them or gives them an order, he repeats several times in a row, with a preoccupied and dreamy look: “What’s your name? ., what is your name?”, striking unusually sharply on the first word “how,” and pronouncing the rest very quickly, which gives the whole saying a fairly close resemblance to the cry of a male quail. He is a terrible troublemaker, and a bad master: he took as his manager a retired sergeant, a Little Russian, an unusually stupid man... He likes to play cards, but only with people of lower rank; They say to him: “Your Excellency,” but he pushes them and scolds them as much as his heart desires. When he happens to play with the governor or some official, an amazing change occurs in him: he smiles, and nods his head, and looks into their eyes - he just smells like honey. .. He even loses and doesn’t complain. Vyacheslav Illarionich reads little, while reading he constantly moves his mustache and eyebrows, first his mustache, then his eyebrows, as if he were sending a wave up and down his face... He plays a rather significant role in the elections, but out of stinginess he refuses the honorary title of leader. “Gentlemen,” he usually says to the nobles approaching him, and speaks in a voice full of patronage and independence, “I am very grateful for the honor; but I decided to devote my leisure time to solitude.” And, having said these words, he will move his head several times to the right and to the left, and then with dignity he will place his chin and cheeks on his tie... and General Khvalynsky himself does not like to talk about his official career, which is generally quite strange; It seems he had never been to war either. General Khvalynsky lives in a small house, alone; he had never experienced marital happiness in his life; and therefore is still considered a groom, and even a profitable groom... At road trips, crossings and other similar places, Vyacheslav Illarionich’s people do not make noise or shout; on the contrary, when pushing people aside or calling for a carriage, they say in a pleasant throaty baritone: “Let me, let me, let General Khvalynsky pass,” or: “General Khvalynsky’s crew...” The crew, however, has a rather strange uniform for Khvalynsky; on the footmen the livery is rather shabby (the fact that it is gray with red piping seems to hardly need to be mentioned); the horses also lived well and served their time; but Vyacheslav Illarionich has no pretensions to panache and does not even consider it proper for his rank to show off... At home he does not receive anyone and, as you can hear, lives as a miser...” (Turgenev I.S. Two Landowners).

Introduction

2.1 Arkhangelskoe

2.2 Kuskovo

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

Russia has preserved a great cultural heritage for its descendants. One of the most important components of Russian culture is country estates with their art, architecture, way of life and way of life. This was the name of the smallest cell of the urban organism, which combined residential and outbuildings, a garden and a vegetable garden, which allowed such a formation “fenced” from the environment to exist quite separately. The family estates embodied an ideal reality for Russian nobles. To create an unusually fabulous, harmonious world is the main task of any estate construction. This world had its own traditions, passed on from generation to generation; a special style of behavior of household members, a style of “living”.

The topic of my course work was not chosen by chance. Manor culture has always remained for all subsequent generations the creator and brainchild of that refined and at the same time elegant, which to this day attracts us with its exciting beauty and eternal novelty. For almost a whole century, this cultural layer was consigned to oblivion, while it carried within itself phenomena characteristic of the process of development of Russian society as a whole. Nowadays, an increasing number of researchers are beginning to become interested in this subculture, which is unusually rich in its content and invaluable in its contribution to Russian culture.

In Russia, work is underway to study and preserve the cultural heritage created by the labors of many generations (in particular, the Russian noble estate). Cultural heritage is the most important form in which continuity in the historical development of society is expressed. The creation of a qualitatively new culture is impossible without careful attitude to the culture of past eras, without preserving the wealth that was created in various areas of culture. The relevance of the study is dictated by the very time of the return of national values ​​to the domestic culture, which undoubtedly includes estate culture, which represents special forms of life, communication, and housing construction.

Purpose of the study: to consider the culture and life of noble estates of the 18th-19th centuries.

Research objectives:

Select and research literature on the topic "Russian estates of the 18th-19th centuries."

Consider the life and way of life of Russian estates.

Research influence architectural styles for the development and establishment of estate culture.

Consider the history of estates and the fate of their owners using the example of famous noble estates of the 18th-19th centuries.

A variety of literature sources were used in writing this work.

Among them is a book by Andrei Yuryevich Nizovsky, in which the author pays special attention to the estate of the second half of the 18th - early 19th centuries, the period of its greatest prosperity and rise, and also emphasizes the novelty and relevance of the study of estate culture. V.I. dedicated his work “The History of Russian Architecture” to the architectural style of manor houses. Pilyavsky, revealing the development of stylistic preferences of the owners and their influence on the formation of the estate spatial and living environment. We also used books by Yu.V. Trubinov "Estate culture of the 18th - 19th centuries" and V.G. Glushkova "Estates of the Moscow Region", which presents historical, local history and architectural and artistic material about almost 170 former estates of the Moscow Region.

However, the leading place in the list of references used is occupied by scientific work R.P. Aldonina “Russian Estate”, where the estate complex is considered as an integral “organism”, a unique combination of elements of architecture, decor, interior and landscape gardening environment. It shows the history of the estates, which still attracts the attention of many historians and researchers.

1. Life and way of life of Russian estates of the 18th-19th centuries

1.1 History of the origin of the noble estate

The term "estate" (in a sense close to the modern one) can be traced back at least to the 17th century. In documents such as scribes and census books, the expressions “yard of patrimonial owners” and “court of landowners” are more often used, depending on the forms of land ownership that existed at that time (until 1714, patrimonies were distinguished - family or acquired estates and estates given to nobles for the duration of their service ). Usually the owners tried to buy out the estates, which thus became fiefdoms. Most often, in everyday life and in letters, any estate, with the exception of country yards, was called a village, regardless of the real status of the settlement in which it was located. In everyday practice, the term “estate” was often used to refer to peasant households; in addition, since 1839, in Moscow and other provinces there were specific model estates in which graduates of the Specific Agricultural School were settled. A study of domestic dictionaries and reference books showed that the first attempts to define an estate as a concept date back to the post-reform era. This phenomenon is quite natural, since it was at that time that the Russian estate, unchanged for several centuries, which was a reality and did not require comment, acquired new features that were not previously characteristic of it, having undergone a significant transformation. In 1867, in the Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language by V.I. Dahl defined an estate as “a master’s house in a village, with all the manicures, a garden and a vegetable garden,” i.e. housing and surrounding areas. Of the modern interpretations of the term “estate,” the most successful is the following: “an estate is a type of housing.” Some include in this concept only the main architectural ensemble with a park, others include outbuildings in it, and others, on the contrary, extend it to the entire territory that previously belonged to the owners of the estate. The appearance of the first estates dates back to the distant past. Even Moscow at the early stage of its existence was just an estate. After it became the princely residence, courtiers' estates appeared next to the princely palace, which initially did not extend beyond the Kremlin walls. However, soon the nobility, who felt crowded there, began to build mansions outside Moscow, seizing new territories in its environs. This is how country yards appeared. We can say that these are estates in their purest form, where agricultural production, reduced to a minimum, played a more decorative role than was actually aimed at satisfying the immediate needs of the owner. The city owes its historical “manor” layout to the country courtyards, the remains of which have survived to this day. In parallel with country courtyards, there were estates, located on estates and estates, from where agricultural products were delivered to the city. Visits by owners to their country estates were usually caused only by checking the economic activities of the clerk or manager, and sometimes by the desire to have fun with hounds or falconry. Since it was unsafe to live far from city fortifications, country estates were owned only by people belonging to the highest nobility who had the means to support a large number of armed servants, although this did not always save them, since Tatar raids and riots by Moscow rulers were commonplace . Therefore, not a single ancient estate has been completely preserved; only stone churches and manor houses have survived from some of them.

1.2 Culture of the noble estate of the 18th-19th centuries

“Living in society does not mean doing nothing,” said Catherine II. This stage, extremely theatrical life was a real daily social work. The nobles served the “Sovereign and the Fatherland” not only in departments, but also at court festivities and balls. A festive court life was necessary for a nobleman, as was service in the sovereign’s troops. The ideal reality was embodied for Russian nobles of the 18th-19th centuries by their family estates. Therefore, the main task of any, even “bad”, estate construction is to create an ideal world, with its own rituals, norms of behavior, type of management and special pastime. The manor world was created very carefully and in detail. In a good estate, everything should be thought out to the smallest detail. For example, the yellow color of a manor house, like gold, showed the wealth of the owner. The roof was supported by white (symbol of light) columns. The gray color of the outbuildings signifies distance from active life. And red in unplastered outbuildings is, on the contrary, the color of life and activity. All this was drowned in the greenery of gardens and parks - a symbol of health and joy. This ideal world, becoming significant in the symbolism of the estate, was fenced off from the surrounding world by walls, bars, towers, artificial ditches, ravines and ponds.

“In addition to the estate, the estate could have a number of other elements, the main of which is economy, i.e. the part aimed primarily at farming. This term has been known since the second half of the 18th century. An emphasis on the concept of “economy” is necessary, because in practice without sufficient grounds, economy buildings are also classified as estates: horse and cattle yards, barns, greenhouses and greenhouses, citing their functional and stylistic unity. Meanwhile, the purpose of economy buildings was to serve the needs of the estate, not the estate. One of the reasons contributing The formal consolidation of all closely located main buildings of the estate into a single whole called an “estate” is the division of the estate plan into utility and walking zones used by architects.” It is actually quite arbitrary, since a number of outbuildings, such as a barnyard, barns and sheds, have nothing to do with the estate, belonging to the economy. The actual economic zone of the estate, which exists for its direct maintenance, is usually quite small.

So gradually the ideal world became reality in the estate. For about two centuries, the life of a nobleman began in the estate, proceeded in it and often ended here. The circle of life was divided not only temporally, but also spatially. In manor life there is always great importance paid to the interior and decoration of premises. Very often, the "predawn twilight in the lobby" continued into the "early morning in the men's office," and the "afternoon in the drawing room" usually ended with a "theater evening."

This conventional division left its mark on life itself in the estate, which at the beginning of the 18th century was divided into front and everyday life. The intellectual and economic center of the “everyday” life of the estate was the men’s office. However, it was almost always furnished very modestly. Moreover, throughout the entire 18th century, when intellectual and moral work became necessary for every self-respecting nobleman, the owner’s office belonged to almost the most unceremonious rooms of the estate. Everything here was intended for solitary work.

The office was furnished accordingly. An English-style office was considered fashionable. Almost all of its furnishings consisted of oak furniture, with very discreet upholstery, and a modest table clock. The master's office, in contrast to the mistress's chambers, was almost unadorned and was decorated very modestly. Only an exquisite decanter, a glass for the “morning consumption” of cherry or anise (it was believed that this would help prevent “angina pectoris” and “stroke” - the most fashionable diseases of the 18th century) and a smoking pipe were considered indispensable. Smoking became a special symbolic ritual in the 18th century. It began to spread in a special way at the time when the first “cigars” began to be brought from Europe, which many had no idea about and perceived them as a curiosity. For smoking, several still lifes on the theme of Vanitas (the frailty of life) were specially placed in the office. The fact is that for a whole century, “eating smoke” was associated in the minds of the nobleman with reflections on the themes of “vanity of vanities” and “life is smoke.” This essentially evangelical theme was especially popular at that time in Russia. The office of the owner of the estate was also intended for work, so books played the main role in its interior. Some books were necessary for successful farming. The landowners did not hesitate to carefully study the works of the famous architects Vignola or Palladius, because along with the French language, every educated nobleman was supposed to know architecture. An indispensable attribute of such offices were calendars containing advice for all occasions.

A fashion for reading was formed in quiet manor offices. Every self-respecting nobleman had to have a small but complete library. There were some books that were considered necessary for these libraries and were found in almost every one. They were re-read several times by the whole family. The choice was not bad and quite thorough. For example, the following works must be included in a book collection: “Don Quixote”, “Robinson Crusoe”, “Ancient Bethliofika” by Novikov, “The Acts of Peter the Great” with additions. Lomonosov, Sumarokov and Kheraskov were certainly among those who loved poetry. Soon bookshelves were replenished with novels, stories and works by Mr. Voltaire. A special occupation of the nobles in the 18th century was conducting pneumatic, electrical and biological experiments in the same rooms, as well as astronomical observation. Therefore, sometimes the office was literally filled with telescopes, terrestrial and celestial globes, sundials and astrolabes. The rather modest furnishings of the men's office were complemented by two or three portraits of the owner's parents and children, and a small painting of a battle or seascape. If the men's office was the private center of the estate, then the living room or hall served as its front face. This division into home and guest, everyday and festive was characteristic of the entire noble era. One of the consequences of this division of the entire life of the nobility was the differentiation of estate interiors into “state apartments” and “rooms for the family.” In rich estates, the living room and hall served different purposes, but in most houses they were perfectly combined. Contemporaries, of course, perceived the hall or living room as a state apartment. “The hall is large, empty and cold, with two or three windows onto the street and four into 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; dancing, formal dinners and a place for playing cards were her destination. Then the living room, also with three windows, with the same sofa and round table in the back and a large mirror above the sofa. On the sides of the sofa there are armchairs, chaise longue tables, and between the windows there are tables with narrow mirrors covering the entire wall."

The emptiness and coldness of these halls was literal, since they were almost never heated and, moreover, architecturally, it was not homely warmth that stood out here, but splendor. The living room was dominated mainly by cool tones - white, blue, greenish, emphasizing its special color. The carved gilded wood of the walls and furniture added solemnity to the front hall. The ceiling of the hall was certainly decorated with a lush lampshade, and the floor was decorated with parquet inserts with a special pattern. Orders were often used in wall decoration. Ionic and Corinthian columns separated small loggias from the common hall, allowing one to feel both “in the people” and in the “privacy of the people.” The mythical “antiquity” of the nobility was certified by numerous marble “antiques” that necessarily decorated the living room. Everything ancient was considered antique: both Roman originals and modern French or Italian sculpture. The center of the hall was almost always a large ceremonial portrait of the currently 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 became warmer. Now they are painted in warm pinkish or ocher tones. Lush gilded furniture is replaced by more austere mahogany furniture. And in the previously cold fireplaces, a fire is lit every evening, fenced off from the hall by embroidered fireplace screens.

The purpose of living rooms is gradually changing. Now family and quiet holidays are held here. Household members spend most of their time here reading works of famous writers. “The whole family sat in a circle in the evenings, someone read, others listened: especially ladies and girls. The fact is that during this reading, at these moments, the whole family lived with their hearts or imagination, and were transported to another world, which during these minutes seemed real; and most importantly, I felt more alive than in my monotonous life."

Naturally, an official ceremonial portrait in the new setting was no longer conceivable. Portraits of reigning persons are becoming more modest and inconspicuous. And soon they are replaced by portraits of people dear to the owners’ hearts. It was precisely this kind of quiet and cozy living room that entered Russian literature of the 19th century.

In the second half of the 18th century, a women's office appeared in the manor house. This was required by the sentimental age, with its images of a gentle wife and a businesslike housewife. Now, having received an education, the woman herself shaped the spiritual image of not only her children, but also the courtyard people entrusted to her care. The day of a noblewoman, especially in a rural estate, was full of worries. Her morning began in a “secluded” office, where they went to get orders with a report, money and the day’s menu.

However, as the day goes on, the purpose of the women's office changes. The morning is always busy. 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 audience exchange each other, where “talks about everything and nothing” are held and where celebrities are invited, was formed at the end of the 18th century.

One of the most interesting salon entertainments is when the hostess fills out an album. Today these “albums of lovely ladies” contain poems and drawings by Batyushkov and Zhukovsky, Karamzin and Dmitriev. In these albums, perhaps, the atmosphere of a women's estate office was most clearly manifested. In her manor office, the hostess received her closest relatives, friends, and neighbors. Here she read, drew, and did handicrafts. Here she conducted extensive correspondence. That’s why the women’s office has always been distinguished by its special comfort and warmth. The walls were painted in light colors and covered with wallpaper. Floral decor and the same floral painting covered the ceiling. The floor was no longer made of brightly patterned parquet, but was covered with a colored carpet. The warmth of the conversation in the women's office was complemented by the warmth of the fireplace. The stoves and fireplaces here were richly decorated with faience tiles with reliefs on themes of ancient mythology.

But the main role in the women's office, undoubtedly, was played by artistic furniture. The spaces between the windows were occupied by large mirrors resting on elegant tables. They reflected portraits, watercolors, and 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 variegated colors. Small round tables and bobby tables, armchairs and bureaus allowed the owner of the office to create 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. Miniature bean tables for needlework, writing and tea drinking became especially popular at the beginning of the 19th century. They got their name from the oval shape of the tabletop. And after the overweight and sedentary Catherine II gave preference to these light tables, the fashion for them became ubiquitous. They were rarely decorated with bronze, preferring to be decorated with pastoral scenes made using the marquetry technique (wood mosaic). A significant part of the furniture was made right there, in the estate workshops, by “our own” craftsmen. Products began to be covered with thin plates (veneer) of Karelian birch or poplar. Fabrics played a major role in shaping the image of the women's office. Curtains, draperies, upholstery, floor carpets - all this was carefully selected. Here, against a light background, there were realistically painted flowers, wreaths, bouquets, cupids, doves, hearts - a sentimental set of the turn of the century. Often it was here, in the women’s office, with its special homely comfort, that family tea parties took place - this special Russian form of home communication.

Art in the estate was by no means limited to the creation of parks, collecting libraries and all kinds of collections. Musical activities played a significant role in the life of the estate. Choirs, orchestras and theaters were an integral part of estate life. “There was not a single rich landowner’s house where orchestras did not thunder, choirs did not sing, and where theatrical stages did not rise, on which home-grown actors made all possible sacrifices to the goddesses of art.” Theater buildings were specially erected in estates, and “air” or “green” theaters were created in open-air parks. Music in the estate existed in two forms - as festive performance and as chamber music-making at home. The fortress choirs began to sing already during the meeting of the guests. Country dances, minuets and polonaises were performed at the ball. Folk songs and music accompanied those walking through the park. During ceremonial lunches and dinners, instrumental music was played, ceremonial choirs and Italian arias were sung. Afternoon card games and conversations also took place to the sound of music. And in the evening, during the illumination, choirs sang and brass bands played in the garden.

Horn orchestras became a specific musical phenomenon in Russia in the 19th century. Playing the horns is extremely difficult. A musician must have considerable strength to blow a sound from a horn. But an even greater difficulty is the consistent sound of the horn orchestra. The fact is that each of the tools allows you to get very limited quantity sounds, and the melody was 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.

The dining room occupied a particularly honorable place among the state rooms of the estate. It was here that the family felt united. However, the dining room, as a separate room for shared meals, was formed at European courts only in the middle of the 18th century. Even in the first half of the century, tables were set in any suitable room of the palace. In Russian palace ritual, on especially solemn occasions, tables were set right in the throne room. Gradually, the dining room becomes on a par with the ceremonial premises of the noble estate, so they begin to decorate it in a special way. The walls of this bright room are usually not decorated with tapestries or fashionable silk fabrics - they absorb odors. But paintings and oil paintings were widely used. In addition to still lifes, paintings on historical themes or family portraits were often placed here, which further emphasized the splendor of the room. In estates where several generations have passed, dining rooms often became places for storing family heirlooms. They tried to place as little furniture in the dining rooms as possible - only what was necessary. The chairs were, as a rule, very simple, since the main requirement for them was comfort - lunches sometimes lasted for a very long time. Tables were often made extendable and taken out only during lunch, 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.

Porcelain had a special place in Russian dining rooms of the 18th-19th centuries. Not a single estate could be imagined without him. It performed not so much a domestic as a representative function - it spoke of the wealth and taste of the owner. Therefore, good porcelain was specially mined and collected. Specially made-to-order porcelain sets were rare even in very rich houses, and therefore the entire set of dishes was assembled literally from individual items. And only at the beginning of the 19th century did porcelain sets take a firm place on the dining tables of the Russian nobility. Metal utensils were practically not used in estates; they were made of gold or silver. Moreover, if gold dishes told guests about the wealth of the owner, then porcelain - about refined tastes. In poorer houses, pewter and majolica played a representative role.

The table itself in the first half of the 19th century could be served in three ways: French, English and Russian. Each of these methods reflects national characteristics of dining etiquette. The French system was the oldest. It was formed under Louis XIV. It was he who introduced dinner into several courses into dining etiquette. The number of such changes varied depending on the wealth of the owner of the house and the purpose of the dinner. Thus, the daily lunch of the French nobility at the end of the 18th century consisted of eight changes. However, in Russia at the turn of the century, lunch with four changes became a classic. After each change of dishes, the table was set anew, even to the point of changing the tablecloth. Noble Russia had its own Russian table setting system, which gradually spread to Europe as the most rational. Here the guests sat down at a 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 extreme theatricalization of noble life in the 18th century led to the appearance of several bedrooms in estates in the next century. The front bedrooms and living rooms were never used. These were executive rooms. During the day they rested in the “everyday bedchambers”, and at night they slept in the bedrooms, which were located in the personal chambers of the owner, his wife and children. Here, in the bedroom, the day of the owners of the estate began and ended. According to Orthodox tradition, going to bed always began with evening prayer. In general, before the spread of Enlightenment ideas in Russia, the nobles were very pious. In all the rooms of the estate, not counting the special prayer room, icons with lamps were always hanging. This rule applied to both the state halls and private chambers. Numerous draperies made of expensive fabrics (satin) served as a natural decoration for the manor bedrooms. They were used to make lush curtains for windows and canopies, decorated with bouquets of feathers (“feather bouquets”). The Baroque era left abundant floral ornaments in noble bedrooms. They tried to upholster upholstered seating furniture with the same fabric, thus creating a set. In the very center of the boudoir part of the bedroom there was a small tea table, on the marble tabletop of which there were small “egoist” (for one person) and “tete-a-tete” (for two) sets.

So, a noble estate is a special world. It was the interior that played a huge role in the formation and formation of estate life, being a symbol of calm, regularity and heavenly nature. It represented a whole system of internal volumes, each of which and all as a whole had a certain meaning. The estate interior is an original combination of elements of Russian and Western European, medieval and modern (for a specific time), secular and church culture. Over the years, interior decoration in manor houses and family estates has become one of the most striking external expressions of estate culture.

2. Famous Russian estates of the 18th-19th centuries

2.1 Arkhangelskoe

Since ancient times, Russia consisted of estates. This was the name of the smallest cell of the urban organism, which combined residential and outbuildings, a garden and a vegetable garden, which allowed such a formation “fenced” from the environment to exist quite separately. An estate is a place where a person decided to “settle down, make a home and put down roots.” Arkhangelskoye is probably the most famous of the Moscow estates. The most famous because it is the only surviving palace and park ensemble in the Moscow region (not counting Ostankino and Kuskov, which long ago became part of Moscow). Once upon a time there were many such museum-estates in the Moscow region and throughout Russia, but in the 1920s and 1930s they were all destroyed and looted. An outstanding architectural and artistic ensemble, a remarkable monument of Russian culture at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries, has been preserved in Arkhangelskoye. Several generations of outstanding craftsmen worked on its creation. To this day, the estate has retained all the main elements of planning and development. Despite all the uniqueness of the artistic techniques used in Arkhangelskoye, this estate concentrates all the best that was created in Russian estate art of the 18th-19th centuries. The first mention of Arkhangelsk dates back to 1537. In the 17th century, the Odoevsky princes became its owners, under whom a boyar court with mansions and the stone Church of Michael the Archangel (1667) was erected on the steep bank of the Moscow River. It was built by the famous architect Pyotr Potekhin under the then owner of the Arkhangelsk boyar Ya.N. Odoevsky and partly resembles the church in nearby Nikolsky-Uryupin.

From 1681 to 1703 the estate belonged to Prince M.Ya. Cherkassky. In 1703, Arkhangelskoye became the possession of Prince D.M. Golitsyn, an associate of Peter I, and later a member of the Supreme Privy Council, who ruled the state after the death of Peter. In 1730, after an unsuccessful attempt by the “sovereigns” to limit the autocratic power of Empress Anna in their favor, D.M. Golitsyn went into deep opposition to the court, retired to Moscow and focused exclusively on organizing his estate. Under him, a regular park was laid out in Arkhangelskoye and a new manor house was built, about which it is only known that it had 13 rooms and a hall with a fireplace. Finish the arrangement of the estate of D.M. Golitsyn did not succeed: in 1736, by order of Empress Anna Ioannovna, he was arrested and imprisoned in the Shlisselburg fortress, where he died. In the 1780s, his grandson Prince N.A. Golitsyn started the reconstruction of his grandfather’s estate. Under him, extensive greenhouses, stone terraces, and pavilions in the park were built in Arkhangelskoye. On the site of the old house, a magnificent palace was built according to the design of the French architect Chevalier de Guern. The decoration of its premises was completed under the new owner of Arkhangelsk - Prince N.B. Yusupov. A wealthy nobleman, a famous collector and art lover, Yusupov bought Arkhangelskoye in 1810 to house his collections. Finishing work in the estate was carried out under the leadership of serf architect V.Ya. Strizhakova. He also had to make repairs to the estate after it was plundered by Napoleonic troops in 1812. In addition to Strizhakov, famous architects of that time O.I. worked in Arkhangelskoye. Bove, S.P. Melnikov, E.D. Tyurin. The latter, with the participation of Italian craftsmen, restored the palace after a fire that occurred in 1820. “The entrance to the front courtyard is framed by a triumphal arch with forged, elegantly designed, French-made gates. In the center of the courtyard there is a flowerbed with the sculpture “Menelaus with the body of Patroclus” - a copy of the ancient original. The courtyard is surrounded by powerful colonnades that unite the majestic two-story palace topped with a belvedere with side wings. The facade of the palace is decorated with a four-column portico. Colonnades of galleries flanking the front courtyard on the sides give it the appearance of a miniature Roman forum." At the entrance to the palace there is a vestibule, painted using the grisaille technique - painting that imitates bas-relief modeling. Through the lobby you can enter the main Oval Hall, intended for balls, receptions and concerts. The high choir, supported by sixteen Corinthian columns, housed the orchestra. There are 16 rooms in the palace in total. The upper floor was residential and family, the lower floor was the front floor, intended for receiving guests. Here, in particular, there was a rich collection of works of art collected by N.B. Yusupov. It includes paintings by Western European artists of the late 17th - early 18th centuries. The leading place in Yusupov's gallery was occupied by French painting - J. Tassel, A. Mange, G.F. Doyen, A.Sh. Caraff, F. Boucher, N. de Courteil, panels and paintings by Claude Joseph Vernet and Hubert Robert - artists with whom Prince N.B. Yusupov met while accompanying the heir Pavel Petrovich and his wife Maria Fedorovna in 1782, who were traveling around Europe under the name of Count and Countess of the Severnykh. Among the Italian painters you can see paintings by J.B. Tiepolo, G. Gandolfi, F. Trevisani, P. Rotari, F. Tironi, from the Dutch - Van Dyck, C. Berchem, F. Wouwerman. There is little Russian painting in Arkhangelsky's collection. The rooms furnished with palace furniture, bronze, hung with paintings, decorated with porcelain, small souvenirs, and lighting fixtures tell about the owners of the estate, about the old noble life with its tastes and interests. Of great interest is the collection of sculpture, including antique, furniture and unique collections of porcelain and earthenware from the 17th - 19th centuries. In addition to Seversky and Meissen porcelain, you can see here porcelain from the Yusupov factory in Arkhangelsk, which worked in 1818 - 1839. This porcelain factory, of course, had no industrial significance - it was one of the luxurious undertakings that satisfied the high taste of a European-educated prince. For the same purpose - not for income, but “for the soul” - carpets were woven in carpet workshops, rare plants and flowers were planted in the garden. Even small rooms or living rooms of the palace in Arkhangelskoye have been turned into complete ceremonial rooms, furnished with the rarest furniture, imbued with the spirit of majesty and solemnity. On the second floor there were living rooms and a library, which contained 24 thousand volumes. At the end of the 1920s, some of the books were removed from the estate and transferred to the collections of the State Library of the USSR (now the Russian State Library). The two side wings were originally one-story. Under the Golitsyns, a serf theater was located in the right wing. Under Yusupov, an art gallery was established here, and then a library. The left wing was occupied by the kitchen. The extensive Arkhangelsk park brought the estate the glory of “Versailles near Moscow”. According to the design of the Italian architect D. Trombaro built three terraces with marble balustrades in front of the palace in the 1790s. Flower beds are laid out on the terraces, the balustrades are decorated with vases, statues, busts of ancient gods, heroes and philosophers. From the upper terrace, the house, standing on a low foundation, seems to grow directly from the greenery of the mowed lawn. Along the sides of the central path, larches are planted symmetrically and large white marble vases are placed. A staircase from the terrace descends into a vast formal park. Here, above the coastal cliff of the Moscow River, there once stood gazebos - “cutes”, from which a distant view of the meadows and forests across the river, the Lemon and Laurel greenhouses, destroyed in 1937, opened up. On the right side of the main palace there is an elegant small palace “Caprice”, decorated with a four-column portico, built at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries for the wife of Prince N.A. Golitsyn and later added one floor. Nearby are the “Tea House” pavilions (1829) and the “Catherine Temple” built in 1819 with a bronze statue of Catherine II in the image of Themis, the goddess of justice. On the left side of the park, above the fountain with the marble group “Boy with a Goose,” the Pink Gazebo, decorated with artificial marble, was built in the 1850s. Here, on one of the alleys, in 1890 a monument to A.S. was erected. Pushkin. In the eastern part of the estate, designed by architect R.I. Klein in 1916, the majestic tomb of the Yusupovs was built - the so-called Colonnade. Its appearance brings to mind the image of the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg. Behind the tomb there is a ravine, behind which on the mountain stands the oldest building of the estate - the Church of the Archangel Michael, built under the Odoevskys. Near its walls were the graves of some of the owners of the estate. In the western part of the estate, in a pine grove, there is the building of the famous Yusupov Theater. It was designed by the famous Moscow architect O.I. Beauvais with the participation of the Italian architect and decorator P.G. Gonzago, whose name is inextricably linked with the history of imperial theaters of the late 18th century. The owner of Arkhangelsk, due to his position, had close contact with the artistic world of the late 18th - early 19th centuries. The last productions were staged on the stage of the Arkhangelsk Theater in 1896. The wooden building, plastered and treated to look like stone, is placed on a high brick ground floor. The theater hall is very beautiful, made in the Palladian spirit, surrounded by columns and two rows of boxes. The theater's fame was brought by the scenery, the work of Pietro Gonzago, which created the extraordinary illusion of vaulted rooms. Of the twelve changes of scenery, four have survived to this day. A curtain made from Gonzago's design has also been preserved. The estate theater in Arkhangelskoye, which has gone down in the history of theatrical art, is a monument of world significance. Of the service buildings of the estate, only two have survived: the so-called Gate over the ravine - a two-story outbuilding of the late 18th century, reconstructed after Patriotic War 1812, and the Office wing (1822 - 1823), which was once crowned by an 18-meter-high tower. The estate was badly damaged in 1812 during the French occupation. After the war, most of its buildings underwent reconstruction taking into account new trends in architecture. By 1830, the estate ensemble in Arkhangelskoye was finally completed. A year later, old Prince N.B. Yusupov died. His heirs paid much less attention to the estate and even removed some of the paintings and sculptures from here. The botanical collection was sold, the orchestra and theater troupe were dissolved. Only under the last owner of Arkhangelsk, Prince F.F. Yusupov-Sumarokov-Elston, the estate returned to its former glory. At this time, artists A.N. came here. Benois, V.A. Serov, K.A. Korovin, K.E. Makovsky, pianist K.N. Igumnov and many other figures of Russian culture.

In 1918, on the initiative of I.E. Grabar Arkhangelskoye was taken under state protection, and in 1919 a museum was opened here.

In 1934, two sanatorium buildings were built in Arkhangelsky Park, distorting the appearance of the ensemble and blocking the view from the palace to the Moscow River.

2.2 Kuskovo

Kuskovo was first mentioned at the end of the 16th century and already as the possession of the Sheremetevs. In 1623 - 1624 there was a wooden church with two chapels, a boyar courtyard, and “an animal courtyard where business people lived.” After I.V. Sheremetev Kuskovo was owned by his son Fyodor - an active figure in the Time of Troubles, who consistently served all impostors and pretenders to the throne, one of the members of the “Seven Boyars” and one of the initiators of the election of Mikhail Romanov to the kingdom. Kuskovo remained in the possession of the Sheremetevs for more than three hundred years, until 1917 - a rather rare case in the history of estates. The heyday of the estate is associated with the name of Pyotr Borisovich Sheremetev, the son of the famous Peter the Great field marshal B.P. Sheremetev. In the 1750s - 1770s, a vast estate with a palace, many “entertainment” buildings, a large park and ponds was created in Kuskovo. The area in which the family Sheremetyevo estate was located could not be called picturesque: a flat, swampy plain overgrown with an unsightly forest. All the more amazing is the beauty and splendor of the local magnificent palace and park ensemble, which contemporaries compared with Versailles. The creation of the Kuskovo ensemble is closely connected with the names of serf architects Fyodor Argunov and Alexei Mironov. The designs for the park pavilions are believed to have been developed by Yu.I. Kologrivov. The Kuskovskaya estate is one of the earliest estate complexes that has survived to this day. It was created in the Baroque style of the mid-18th century. Buildings of this style are located mainly in the vicinity of St. Petersburg (the most striking of them is Oranienbaum). In Moscow and its environs, Kuskovo is the only example of this kind. This estate is also unique in that it has reached us without significant changes, especially its central core. Although it must be said that in the 18th century Kuskovo was significantly richer. The landscape park with many pavilions has practically disappeared. The estate itself was intended not so much for living in it, but for receptions and entertainment. Kuskovo was called that way - “the summer pleasure house of Count Pyotr Borisovich Sheremetev.” On the shore of a huge pond-lake, in the middle of which rises an artificial island, in 1774, according to the design of the French architect Charles de Vally, a palace (Big House) was built - a relatively small building built on a “human scale”, that is, not overwhelming in its size, but creating a chamber atmosphere of human habitation, harmony and comfort. The same scale, set by the size of the palace, is preserved by the halls, living rooms, library, dining room, study, and owners’ rooms. They are decorated with elegant furniture, damask wallpaper, tapestries, portraits, paintings, engravings, marble busts by F.I. Shubina. And only one room in the palace unexpectedly captivates the visitor with its size and splendor - the White Dance Hall, with its gilded decorative details, crystal chandeliers and girandoles, mirrors and a huge picturesque ceiling by the French artist L. Lagrene. In front of the house there are green lawns and alleys of a large regular park with a strictly geometric grid of paths. When they converge, they form multi-rayed stars. In the 18th century, it was fashionable to trim trees in the shape of funny figures: “men bacchus”, “sitting dogs”, “lying dogs”, “geese”, “hens”, etc. White marble statues are placed along the central alley. An obelisk and a column with a statue of the goddess Minerva are also installed here. The alley leads to a large greenhouse building (1761 - 1763), topped with a turret. Exotic plants were grown here. Once upon a time, the Kuskovo park had many different “ventures” and pavilions. Some of them have not survived to this day. To the left of the palace, on the shore of a small pond, there is a cozy Dutch house (1749), built of brick, with a high stepped pediment. Picturesque, reflected in the calm waters of the pond, it creates a feeling of home, peace and quiet. Only two such structures have survived in estates near Moscow - in Kuskovo and Voronovo. The magnificent Baroque pavilion topped with a dome (1765-1767) is an almost necessary element of all estate ensembles of the first half of the 18th century. This pavilion served for secluded friendly meetings and conversations. Another park pavilion of Kuskov - the Italian House - resembles Italian villas in its appearance. The modestly decorated building is decorated with medallions with images of Roman soldiers. Not far from it, on the shore of the pond, is the so-called Grotto (1771). The “Grotto”, rather in name only, is in fact a “magnificent” pavilion built in the Baroque style with a dome, a figured terrace and numerous columns. Inside it is decorated with sculptures, mother-of-pearl shells, colored glass, tuff and marble. As in Peter’s Kunstkamera, in Kuskovo there was a collection of “curiosities”, which included mammoth bones, preparations, minerals, botanical exhibits and mechanical “curiosities”. The ensemble of the Kuskovo estate includes a small Spasskaya Church, built in 1737-1739, standing on the shore of the pond, next to the palace. On the Kuskovo pond there was a small flotilla of rowing vessels, including a yacht equipped with six cannons. On the opposite bank of the pond, strictly opposite the center of the palace, a canal once marked by two obelisks goes deep into the large landscape park. Its surface was illuminated by numerous lights of the evening festivities held in the Kuskovo park. Behind the canal there was a menagerie, where 12 wolves, 120 American and 20 German deer were brought. Next to the menagerie in the park, a Hunting Lodge was built, reminiscent of a small Gothic castle. In addition to it, in the park there were gazebos with names characteristic of that era: “Find tranquility here”, “A refuge for good people”, “Philosophical House”, “Temple of Silence”, “House of Solitude”, “Haystack”, “Lion’s Cave”, "Hut", "Turkish Kiosk". In Kuskovo, Count P.B. Sheremetev received Empress Catherine II. “I happened to see a magnificent holiday, which was given to the Empress by Count Pyotr Borisovich Sheremetev in his village of Kuskovo,” recalled one of the guests. “What surprised me most of all was the plateau that was placed in front of the Empress at dinner. It represented a cornucopia on an elevated platform. , everything was made of pure gold, and on the dais was the empress’s monogram made of rather large diamonds.”

Owner Kuskova P.B. Sheremetev died in 1788. His son, N.P. Sheremetev was fascinated by his Ostankino, where after the death of his father he took the serf theater troupe, craftsmen and many furnishings from Kuskov. Ostankino replaced Kuskov - and the old estate began to gradually fall into oblivion. In 1812, Kuskovo was occupied by French units of Marshal Ney's corps, who plundered the estate and destroyed much. A traveler who visited in 1822 saw already flying gilding, “blackened ceilings decorated with coats of arms and stars, faded tapestries and damasks.” In the 19th century, Kuskovo became a popular holiday destination. “Dacha buildings with permanent mezzanines are sufficiently protected from the rays of the scorching sun by dense forest plantations,” the pre-revolutionary leader advertised the amenities of these places. The last owner of Kuskov was Count S.D. Sheremetev (1844 - 1918) - Chairman of the Archaeographic Commission, a famous chronicler of Russian estates. In particular, he authored the work “Kuskovo until 1812” published in 1899.

Since 1918, a museum has been opened in Kuskovo.

Russian estate Arkhangelskoe Kuskovo

Conclusion

A striking episode in the history of Russian culture was the life of a noble estate. It absorbed the spirit of enlightenment and the desire for economic prosperity, and was imbued with a sense of nature never before manifested with such strength. It gave birth to wonderful architectural and landscape ensembles. In its way of life, which combined the features of patriarchy with sophisticated Europeanism, an important role belonged to the family, traditions of piety, and hospitality. The rise of estate culture began in the second half of the 18th century. and fell on the reign periods from Catherine II to Alexander I. The personality of the nobleman in all the diversity of his free existence determined the formation of estate culture in the second half of the 18th century. He was an independent-minded man, proud of his clear understanding of reality. It is no coincidence that it was during this period that the nobleman developed a particularly refined sense of nature, a need for systematic reading, and a taste for the fine arts. The richest libraries are being established in the villages, and home museums of works of art are being created. The estate turns from a simple household farmstead into an artistically organized ensemble. To the cultural portrait of the nobleman who created the estates, it is necessary to add such features as a passion for theater and music, a sense of memory, manifested in his church construction, the arrangement of memorial corners of the park, and portrait galleries of ancestors. The natural Russian desire for beauty and grace, combined with the use of Western values, leads to the formation of a special way of life, which is based on original Russian customs: hospitality, cordiality, sociability.

The existence of “noble nests” laid the foundation for a universal humanistic tradition, which included certain civic foundations and original ethical and aesthetic ideas about spirituality. Noble estates were not only “nests” where domestic talents matured, they were the “support”, the “root system” of Russian culture as a whole. The capital's university education, constant communication with the best minds of Europe would not have given that amazing effect if not for the atmosphere of special spirituality, in which music, painting and poetry inextricably merged with folk art, the original architecture of the estates - with their ancient libraries and home theaters. The estate of the 18th-19th centuries is a decoration of the brilliant period of Russian culture, called the “Russian Enlightenment”. Estate culture is a complex synthetic integrity that has absorbed the peculiarities of the national worldview and way of life, the charm of the Russian landscape and the variety of arts and crafts through which its reverent man-made world of things, permeated with home creativity, was formed. Russian noble estates are a whole world. He left us, but it is impossible to forget him. In this world there are beautiful buildings, sculptures, paintings, many famous Russian people were born here. Without knowing the world of the Russian estate, it is impossible to know the history of Russia.

Bibliography

1. Aldonina R.P. Russian estate. St. Petersburg: White City, 2006.

Glushkova V.G. Estates of the Moscow region. M.: Veche, 2006.

Likhachev D.S. Poetry of gardens: towards the semantics of gardening styles. St. Petersburg: Grifon, Russian Cultural Foundation, 1991.

Lotman Yu.M. Conversations about Russian culture: Life and traditions of the Russian nobility (XVIII - early XIX centuries). St. Petersburg: Art-SPB, 1994.

Nizovsky A.Yu. Estates of Russia. M.: Veche, 2005.

Pilyavsky V.I. History of Russian architecture. L.: Lenizdat, 1990.

Punin A.L. Manor interior of the 18th-19th centuries. St. Petersburg: Palitra, 1994.

Trubinov Yu.V. Estate culture of the 18th-19th centuries. M.: Nauka, 1987

Anikst M.A., Turchin V.S. etc. In the vicinity of Moscow. From the history of Russian estate culture of the 17th-18th centuries. M., 1979.

Collections of the Society for the Study of Russian Estates. M., 1927 - 1928.

Tikhomirov N.Ya. Architecture of estates near Moscow. M., 1955

Artistic culture of the Russian estate. M., 1995.

To prepare this work, materials were used from the site http://www.portal-slovo.ru/

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