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Rural Ruses: Illusion and Anxiety on the Russian Estate, 1775–1815

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Thomas Newlin
Thomas Newlin*
Affiliation:
Russian at Oberlin College
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Extract

Among the scores of unpublished manuscripts in fond 89 (“Bolotovykh”) of the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg is a partially filled album spanning a forty-year period from the early 1780s to the early 1820s. One of the many long-term projects of the multitalented memoirist, landscape designer, and agronomist Andrei Timofeevich Bolotov (1738-1833), the album was initiated at Bogoroditsk, the crown estate where he worked as bailiff from 1776-1797, and continued to garner new contributions for several decades after he retired to Dvorianinovo, his estate and birthplace in northern Tula province. It has been summarized by one of the few scholars who has studied it as “an extremely interesting mirror of provincial byt.” The pretty and seemingly mimetic reflection of rural life that it provides is deceptive on a number of levels, however: for on the Russian estate during this period— and, as it turns Out, on the pages of the album itself—there is a good deal more going on than first meets the eye.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 57 , Issue 2 , Summer 1998 , pp. 295 - 319
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1998

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References

Research for this article was made possible by grants from the International Research and Exchanges Board, the Fulbright-Hays Foundation, and Oberlin College. My thanks to Gitta Hammarberg, Hilde Hoogenboom, Marcus Levitt, Irina Reyfman, and Nancy Workman for their invaluable comments, and to Dmitrii Antonov, Olga Glagoleva, and Hilde Hoogenboom for their kind help in obtaining various materials that were essential for completing this article.

1. Andrei Bolotov, Al'bom ego s risunkami i avtografami otdel'nykh lits, 1781–1821, Rossiiskaia natsional'naia biblioteka, St. Petersburg (hereafter RNB), f. 89, d. 57.

2. John Halit Brown, “A Provincial Landowner: A. T. Bolotov (1738–1833)” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1976), 228.

3. The closest we come to any sort of verbal play is a panegyric acrostic marking Bolotov's seventieth birthday in 1808. This acrostic has been reproduced in O. E. Glagoleva, Russkaia provintsial'naia starina: Ocherki kul'tury i byta Tul'skoi gubernii XVIII-pervoi poloviny XIX w. (Tula, 1993), unnumbered plate. On the poetics of Russian domestic albums during this period, see Hammarberg, Gitta, “Flirting with Words: Domestic Albums, 1770–1840,” in Goscilo, Helena and Holmgren, Beth, eds., Russia–Women–Culture (Bloomington, 1996), 297–320 Google Scholar; and Kornilova, A. V., Mir al'bomnogo risunka: Russkaia al'bomnaia grafika kontsa XVIII–pervoi poloviny XIX veka (Leningrad, 1990).Google Scholar

4. zhba kotoroiu ia vsegda polzovalsia / … vovek nachertano / … iat onoe blagodar / … ia esm’ / … luga / … [indecipherable signature].

5. On this shift in gardening tastes, see Priscilla Roosevelt's superb Life on the Russian Country Estate: A Social and Cultural History (New Haven, 1995), 74–101; as well as Likhachev, D. S., Poeziia sadov: K semantike sadovo–parkovykh stilei: Sad kak tekst, 2d rev. ed. (St. Petersburg, 1991)Google Scholar; Vergunov, A. P. and Gorokhov, V. A., Russkie sady i parki (Moscow, 1988)Google Scholar, which has an appendix with extensive excerpts from the horticultural articles that Bolotov published in his journal Ekonomicheskii magazin; Liubchenko, O. N., V Bogoroditske est'park (Tula, 1984)Google Scholar, which contains a useful list of Bolotov's articles on landscaping; E. P. Shchukina, “Natural'nyi sad russkoi usad'by v kontse XVIII veka,” in Alekseeva, T. V., ed., Russkoe iskusstvo XVIII veka (Moscow, 1973), 109–18.Google Scholar

6. On the spiritual and allegorical significance of the eighteenth–century natural garden, see Shulz, Max F., “The Circuit Walk of the Eighteenth–Century Landscape Garden and the Pilgrim's Circuitous Progress,” Eighteenth–Century Studies 15, no. 1 (Fall 1981): 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. See Roosevelt, Life on the Russian Country Estate, 94.

8. Bolotov, A. T., Zhizn’ i prikliucheniia Andreia Bolotova, opisannyia samim im dlia svoikh potomkov, 4 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1870–1873 Google Scholar; supplement to Russkaia starina), vol. 3, col. 1137. All subsequent references to Bolotov's memoirs will be to this edition and will be indicated by volume and column number (3: 1137) within the text. On Hirschfeld and his influence, see Immerwahl, Raymond, “The First Romantic Aesthetics,” Modern Language Quarterly 21 (1960): 3–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. Likhachev, Poeziia sadov, 197 (emphasis added).

10. “Prodolzhenie zhizni Andreia Bolotova, opisannoi samim im dlia svoikh potomkov,” part 37 (1826), Institut Russkoi Literatury (Pushkinskii dom), St. Petersburg (hereafter IRLI), f. 537, d. 6, p. 395 (I use Bolotov's own page numbers rather than the archivist's list numbers when citing passages from his manuscripts).

11. Ibid., pp. 399–403. The full account of this sham takes up thirty manuscript pages (375–405).

12. F. Glinka, “Pis'ma k drugu iz g. Pavlovska,” Russkii vestnik, 1815, no. 13: 26–28 (quoted in Likhachev, Poeziia sadov, 269–70). For further background on Gonzaga's sham, see Massie, Suzanne, Pavlovsk: The Life of a Russian Palace (Boston, 1990), 89–90.Google Scholar

13. Gukovskii, Grigorii, Ocherki po istorii russkoi literatury i obshchestvennoi mysli XVIII veka(Leningrad, 1938), 243–44.Google Scholar

14. Aleksandr Sumarokov was one of the few eighteenth–century Russians to show any real interest in Locke's epistemology. He published a brief summary of Locke's views ( “O razumenii chelovecheskom, po mneniiu Lokka “) in the May 1759 issue of Trudoliubivaia pchela; this has been reprinted in Malyshev, I. V., ed., N. N. Novikov i ego sovremenniki: Izbrannye sochineniia (Moscow, 1961), 350–51Google Scholar. See also Levitt, Marcus, “Was Sumarokov a Lockean Sensualist? On Locke's Reception in Eighteenth–Century Russia,” in Di Salvo, M. and Hughes, L., eds., A Window on Eighteenth–Century Russia: Proceedings of the V International Conference of the Study Group on Eighteenth–Century Russia, Gargano, 1994 (Rome, 1996), 219–27.Google Scholar

15. See Raeff, Marc, “The Enlightenment in Russia and Russian Thought in the Enlightenment,” in Garrard, J. G., ed., The Eighteenth Century in Russia (Oxford, 1973), 42.Google Scholar

16. Fliegelman, Jay, Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolution against Patriarchal Authority, 1750–1800 (Cambridge, Eng., 1982), 21.Google Scholar

17. On both high– and low–culture forms of eighteenth–century illusionism, see Stafford, Barbara Maria, Artful Science: Enlightenment, Entertainment, and the Eclipse of Visual Education (Cambridge, Mass., 1994), 73–130.Google Scholar

18. A. T. Bolotov, “65oi god moei zhizni ili podrobnoe opisanie vsego proiskhodivshagosia so mnoiu s 7 chisla oktiabria 1802 g.,” part 1, IRLI, f. 537, d. 11, p. 123.

19. Nemirovskii, I. V., “Shveitsarskaia tema v ‘Vestnike Evropy’ N. M. Karamzina,” XVIII vek 16 (1989): 271–80.Google Scholar

20. Vestnik Evropy, 1803, no. 17; reprinted in Karamzin, N. M., Izbrannye sochineniia v dvukh tomakh (Moscow and Leningrad, 1964), 2: 294.Google Scholar

21. The following is a typical example: “Now nobody should take it into his head that the landscaping of this deliberately sizable space and the transformation, so to speak, of raw nature into something with an entirely new look, entails any sort of extraordinary expenditures of labor or money. The cost required was extremely small and amounted to practically nothing; the time expended was not more than three or four weeks; not more than 200 [!] men were employed to do the work.” “Nekotorye prakticheskie zamechaniia o sadakh noveishago vkusa,” Ekonomicheskii magazin, part 20 (1784): 30.

22. Bolotov, M. P., “Andrei Timofeevich Bolotov,” Russkaia starina 8, no. 11 (November 1873): 473–74, 476.Google Scholar

23. “Prodolzhenie opisaniia zhizni Andreia Bolotova,” part 36 (1822–1825), IRLI, f. 537, d. 5, pp. 349–51.

24. On the notion of “soft” versus “hard” primitivism, see Arthur O. Lovejoy and George Boas, Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity (Baltimore, 1935), 10–11.Google Scholar

25. Shimanov, V. A., ed., “Pis'ma Bolotovykh o Dekabristakh i Pushkine,” Literaturnyi arkhiv, 1938, no. 1: 275.Google Scholar

26. Slovtsov, Petr Andreevich, “Iz propovedi, proiznesennoi 10 noiabria 1793 goda,” in Shchipanov, I. Ia., ed., Izbrannye proizvedeniia russkikh myslitelei vtoroi poloviny XVIII veka (Leningrad, 1952), 1: 402.Google Scholar

27. The Kiiasovka peasants did, however, remain restive for some time and, early the following year, “revolted” against Bolotov when he carried out orders to raise their obrokpayments. See 3: 492–96.

28. Another instance of “mask-wearing” on the part of Bolotov's peasants can be found in 4: 1034–37. For a discussion of some of the other forms that the peasants’ “silent revolt” took, see Rodney Bohac, “Everyday Forms of Resistance: Serf Opposition to Gentry Exactions, 1800–1861,” in Esther Kingston–Mann and Timothy Mixter, eds., with the assistance of Burds, Jeffrey, Peasant Economy, Culture, and Politics of European Russia, 1800–1921 (Princeton, 1991), 236–60Google Scholar; and Hoch, Steven L., Serfdom and Social Control in Russia: Petrovskoe, a Village in Tambov (Chicago, 1986), 184–86.Google Scholar

29. Fielding, Henry, “An Essay on the Knowledge of the Characters of Men,” in Henley, William, ed., The Complete Works of Henry Fielding (New York, 1967), 14: 283.Google Scholar

30. Dmitriev, I. I., Vzgliad na moiu zhizn’ (St. Petersburg, 1895), 15 Google Scholar. Dmitriev wrote this memoir in the mid-1820s.

31. Ibid., 16.

32. See also 3: 434, 490, 549–50, 637.

33. Blok, Aleksandr, Sobranie sochinenii v 12–i tomakh (Moscow, 1934), 11: 20.Google Scholar

34. Ivan Mikhailovich Dolgorukov, Kapishche moego serdtsa, ili slovar’ vsekh tekh lits s koimi ia byl v raznykh otnosheniiakh v techenii moei zhizni, 2d ed. (supplement to Russkaia starina, 1890), 337.

35. “Neskol'ko izvestii o penzenskom pomeshchike Struiskom,” Russkii arkhiv, 1865, no. 4, cols. 483–84. Struiskii's acute paranoia toward his peasants is abundantly evident in the ukaz he addressed to them in August 1774. See Minuvshie gody, 1908, no. 12: 63–68.

36. See Hammarberg, Gitta, From the Idyll to the Novel: Karamzin's Sentimentalist Prose (Cambridge, Eng., 1991), 5–6 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on the importance of the “sympathetic principle” in sentimentalism.

37. On the reception and assimilation of the English Gothic novel in late eighteenth–century Russia, see V. E. Vatsuro, “Literaturno–filosofskaia problematika povesti Karamzina ‘Ostrov Borngol'm, '” XVIII vek, 1969, no. 8: 190–209.

38. See under the column “chitano” for the month of June in the section titled “Kratkie zapiski moikh uchenykh i drugikh uprazhnenii a imenno chto kogda chital pisal i delal i kakimi knigami vnov’ umnozhil svoiu biblioteku,” in A. T. Bolotov, “Nastol'nyi zhurnal 1791 goda,” Biblioteka Akademii Nauk, St. Petersburg (BAN), f. 69, d. 10. This volume provides a fascinating running record of Bolotov's literary and intellectual intake and output for the years 1791 and 1792.

39. See Glagoleva, O. E., “Biblioteka A. T. Bolotova,” in Bubnov, N. Iu., Zaitseva, A. A., et al., eds., Kniga v Rossii, XVI–seredina XIX v. (Leningrad, 1987), 82–83 Google Scholar; and Bolotov, “Nastol'nyi zhurnal 1791 goda,” 18–20 September. The Recess appeared in Russian translation in 1794.

40. N. Guberti, “Andrei Timofeevich Bolotov, kak kritik i retsenzent literaturnykh proizvedenii,” Bibliograf September 1885, no. 9: 37–38.

41. “Podnevnoi zhurnal A. T. Bolotova s 1 ianvaria 1801 g. po 31 dekabria 1802 g.,” IRLI, f. 537, d. 12, p. 321. On Radcliffe's immense popularity in Russia, see Dmitriev, M. A., Melochi iz zapasa moei pamiati (Moscow, 1869), 47–48.Google Scholar

42. Bolotov, “65oi god moei zhizni,” 92–93.

43. On the thin line between sentimental solipsism and the “bleak and anarchic moral nihilism” and cruelty epitomized by de Sade, see Brissenden, R. F., Virtue in Distress: Studies in the Novel of Sentiment from Richardson to Sade (London, 1974), 26.Google Scholar

44. Utekhi melankholii: Rossiiskoe sochinenie A. O. (Moscow, 1802).

45. I. Iu. Vinitskii, Utekhi melankholii, in Uchenye zapiski Moskovskogo kul'turologicheskogo litseia no. 1310. Seriia: Filologiia, 1997, no. 1–2: 176, 180–86.

46. Ibid., 176.

47. The author of Utekhi melankholii reports reading part 9 (1796) of Priiatnoe i poleznoe preprovozhdenie vremeni with his friends (7). Starting later that year, Bolotov published four pieces in this same journal: “Pesn’ k vezdesushchemu,” part 11 (1796), 269–71; “Utrennee raspolozhenie dukha” and “Okanchivaiushchaiasia zima,” part 13 (1797), 271–72 and 289–98; “Vremia sozrevaniia plodov,” part 15 (1797), 385–98, 401–9. For further examples of Bolotov's prose and poetry from this period, see his Pis'ma o krasotakh natury (early 1790s) and Zhivopisatel’ natury (1794–98), published in their entirety in Bolotov, A. T., Izbrannoe (Pskov, 1993)Google Scholar; and his “Sobranie melkikh sochinenii v stikhakh i v proze,” vol. 1–3 (1794–1806), RNB, f. 89, dd. 65, 66, 67.

48. “Na bregakh Sknigi raznezhilos’ serdtse moe.—V sel'skikh tumanakh vnimaiu melankholicheskomu zhurchaniiu strui eia, i v prostom krugu poselian s udovol'stviem sretaiu skromnoe utro, idu v pole, voskhishchaius’ nevinnostiiu moikh uprazhnenii, rassmatrivaia okrestnosti” (Utekhi melankholii, 69–70). See also the fragment “Sumer'ki i mgnovenie luchshago est’ dar neba” (sic), which is signed “Na bregakh Sknigi” (75–76).

49. Bolotov, “65oi god moei zhizni,” 32–33. Also in “Iz literaturnogo naslediia Bolotova,” Literaturnoe nasledstvo 9–10 (1933): 172.

50. “Protokol zasedaniia Aleksinskogo uezdnogo suda ot 20. 11. 1802 g. po delu ob ubiistve pomeshchika A. P. Orlova i dvorianina I. G. Lysenko,” Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Tul'skoi oblasti (hereafter GATO), f. 14. op. 1, d. 16, 11. 216–45. I am extremely grateful to Dmitrii Antonov for obtaining this and other information regarding Orlov from GATO and the State Historical Archive of Moscow (Gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv Moskvy, hereafter GIAM) for me.

51. Vinitskii, Utekhi melankholii, 178–80. Although I will not attempt to make a full case for Orlov's authorship here, I do want to note the following. First, Vinitskii deduces that “A. O.” is married and has an infant son Aleksandr ( “Sashen'ka,” 3); Obrezkov fits this bill. In actual fact, however, “A. O.” never states that he is married or that Sashen'ka is his son; rather he simply has fatherly feelings toward him. Sashen'ka could well be Orlov's ward and nephew Aleksandr, the son of his deceased brother Vasilii Orlov (see “Delo po prosheniiu opekuna Karla fon Fere o zaloge imeniia maloletnikh [detei] umershego Orlova. 12 maia-1 okt.1803 g.,” GATO, f. 51, op. 1, d. 915, 11. 1–10). Second (and most significantly), Vinitskii does not connect Obrezkov in any way with the village Nikol'skoe “on the banks of the Skniga” or with any other place cited in The Comforts of Melancholy. The parish records for Nikol'skoe for this period make no mention of any Obrezkov. The evidence tying Orlov to the particular locales named in the book is, on the other hand, quite substantial. Two of the final “fragments” of The Comforts of Melancholy—one dated 8 July 1801 (67) and the other evidently from May 1802 (76–77) are signed “Tula,” where Orlov lived before moving to Nikol'skoe. The one other geographical clue mentioned in the volume is the village (dereunia) where “A. O.” grew up: Gothic Island (Goticheskii ostrov, 1)—a name that, for our present purposes, is almost too good to be true! Although I have not been able to pinpoint its exact location, Gothic Island (this appellation was almost certainly of a private, family nature) was situated on the Lama river (41), which flows through the Volokolamskii and Klinskii districts of Moscow province. Two of the peasants implicated in Orlov's murder hailed from the village Klusovo in the Volokolamskii district; a third accomplice (Orlov's coachman) was from the village Kodinovo in the Klinskii district ( “Protokol zasedaniia Aleksinskogo uezdnogo suda ot 20. 11. 1802 g.,” GATO, f. 14, op. 1, d. 16, 11.186, 218). Both these villages were located on the Lama River: see Spiski naselennykh mest Rossiiskoi imperii, sostavlennye i izdavaemye Tsentral'nym statisticheskim komitetom Ministerstva vnutrennikh del, no. 24 (1862), entries 1939 and 3596. Yet a fourth accomplice, one of Orlov's household serfs, named the village (sel'tso) Ostrov in the Klinskii district as his place of origin. According to the service record (formuliarnyi spisok) of Aleksandr Orlov preserved in GIAM, Orlov's property included the village (selo) Orlov Ostrov in the Volokolamskii district (f. 4, op. 10, d. 1537, 11. 6–7). It is quite possible that these villages were one and the same, and simply straddled, somewhat ambiguously, the boundary of the two districts.

52. Bolotov, “65oi god moei zhizni,” 265a–268.

53. “The creator is always depicted in his creation, and often—against his will. In vain does the hypocrite contrive to deceive the reader and hide an iron heart under the gold cloak of verbal finery; in vain does he speak to us of charity, compassion, and virtue! All his exclamations are cold and soulless and lifeless; never does a nourishing, ethereal flame pour from his creations into the gentle soul of the reader.” Karamzin, N. M., “Chto nuzhno avtoru,” in Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh (Leningrad, 1984), 2: 60–62 Google Scholar. This piece was first published in Aglaia (part 1) in 1794. Interestingly enough, Bolotov, who was highly suspicious of what he viewed as Karamzin's free–thinking liberalism, turned Karamzin's own words against him in his 1795 critique of Aglaia, claiming that in his “Letter from Philalet to Melodor” Karamzin “had even tried deliberately to conceal himself behind a more becoming mask” (dazhe staralsia umyshlenno prikryt’ sebia luchsheiu lichinoiu). See N. Guberti, “Andrei Timofeevich Bolotov,” 37–38.