Life of nobles in the 19th century. Life and customs of the nobles in the 19th century. How the kings of a new dynasty tried to turn a medieval city into a European capital

Nobility The nobility arose in the Russian state in the 12th–13th centuries. In the 14th century, nobles began to receive lands and estates for their service. Gradually these lands became hereditary, being the economic base of the landed nobility. In the 14th–15th centuries, and in the 16th century right up to

Nobility. In the first half of the 19th century, the topic of the wealth of the nobles was closely related... In the first half of the century, noble children received home education. ... A strict subordination was maintained in the houses, similar to the requirements of Domostroy. The noble family at all times had a certain, traditional way of life, regulated at the legislative level.

We have already briefly reviewed these regulations, and now it is our turn to look at the noble family through the eyes of its members.

For this purpose, I selected sources of personal origin, namely diaries and memoirs of nobles, covering both the first and second half of the 19th century.

Family structure is a style of family behavior. The family structure depends on the position of the family, its class and level of well-being. Family structure is the rhythm of family life, the dynamics of its development, the stability of spiritual and moral principles, the psychological climate, and emotional well-being.

What were the general features of the noble family structure?

In the first half of the 19th century, the noble family was dominated by patriarchy and hierarchy.

The head of the family was always recognized as the father - through whose efforts the family lived, secured in many ways precisely by his efforts in financial and moral terms.

In the notes of P.I. Golubev, a St. Petersburg official of the 30s, we find that he served diligently, and brought all the means and favors to the family. He called his wife “you” and by her first name and patronymic, but she, in turn, treated him with respect and followed him everywhere.

While he was away at work, his wife took care of the house and children.

They had two children - a boy and a girl. As P.I. writes Golubev:

“I only worked with my son, the mother worked with her daughter.” In the evenings, the family loved to have conversations, they also went to church, diligently invested energy and resources into the future lives of their children - their son was given a university education, their daughter was married off.

The division of the family into male and female hierarchies can be traced in women's memoirs. M.S. Nikoleva and A.Ya. Butkovskaya constantly mentions in her memoirs that their social circle always consisted of either sisters, or cousins, or numerous aunts and acquaintances of their mothers, mothers-in-law, etc. In the family home or at a party, the rooms allocated to them always meant a “female half” and were distant from the men’s quarters.

But this does not mean at all that they shunned male relatives; brothers and cousins ​​also formed their social circle, but to a very small extent. It's all about the role of men - they were busy with business, or were absent on duty. Brothers M.S. Nikoleva spent quite a long time away from her family, as she was in the active army and fought against the French. A similar situation developed among Nikoleva’s other relatives. This is what she writes about her aunt’s son, cousin Pyotr Protopopov:

“Peter Sergeevich, having spent 30 years in the service, was unaccustomed to female society and therefore seemed like a savage and an original. Until the age of 45, he visited his family only occasionally for short periods of time. “The second brother, Nikolai Sergeevich, served in the ministry in St. Petersburg, was devout, belonged to the Masonic lodge, and rarely visited his parents.”

After the death of her husband A.Ya. Butkovskaya wrote:

“In 1848, my husband, who held the rank of lieutenant general engineer and director of the Naval Construction Department, suddenly died of apoplexy. Of course, in the past years we had heavy family losses, but this event was especially sensitive to me and completely changed my life.

I retired to my estate and began to take less part in public life. During the Hungarian campaign, eastern war, two of my sons were in the active forces, and I was unwillingly interested in the course of military events.”

Young women, unlike their male relatives, were almost always under the shadow of their parents' home, under the care of their mother, or older relatives or companions, nannies, and governesses. And only after marriage did they throw off such harsh shackles of excessive guardianship, although they came under the wing of their mother-in-law or their husband’s relatives.

Patriarchy in relation to women also had its exceptions to the rules. If a man is the head of the family, then after his death this leadership passed, as a rule, to his widow, or to the eldest son, if he was not busy in the service.

“The behavior of widows, who were entrusted with the responsibilities of the status of head of the family, was freer. Sometimes, having transferred actual control to their son, they were satisfied with the role of the symbolic head of the family. For example, the Moscow general-governor Prince D.V. Golitsyn, even in small things, must ask for the blessing of his mother Natalya Petrovna, who continued to see a minor child in the sixty-year-old military leader.”

Besides the role of the wife, the role of the mother was considered the most important. However, after the birth of a child, a distance immediately arose between him and the mother. This began from the very first days of the baby’s life, when, for reasons of decency, the mother did not dare to breastfeed her child; this responsibility fell on the shoulders of the nurse.

P.I. Golubev wrote that due to the custom of weaning a child from his mother’s breast, he and his wife lost two babies. The first daughter died from improper feeding while they were looking for a wet nurse, the second son died after contracting a disease from his wet nurse.

Taught by bitter experience, they moved away from the custom and his wife, contrary to decency, herself fed the subsequent children, thanks to which they remained alive.

But the custom of weaning children from their mother’s breast continued until the end of the 19th century.

The cooling towards the child as an individual was determined by his social role in the future. The son was alienated from his mother, since he was being prepared to serve his homeland and his circle of interests, activities, acquaintances was under her jurisdiction only until he was seven years old, then he went to his father. The mother could only monitor her son's progress. The girl was seen as a future wife and mother, and this resulted in the family’s special attitude towards her - they tried to make an ideal out of her.

V.N. Karpov wrote in his memoirs:

"In those years" women's issue“(the question of changing the role of women, including in the family) did not exist at all. A girl was born into the world - and the task of her life was simple and not difficult. The girl grew and developed so that at the age of seventeen she could blossom into a magnificent flower and get married.”

From this follows another characteristic feature of the noble family structure of the first half of the 19th century - the chilled relationship between children and parents. The generally accepted goal of the family is to prepare its children to serve the fatherland or the family of the spouse. The relationship between parents and children was built on this goal. Duty to society became more important than parental feelings.

In families of wealthy nobles leading a secular lifestyle, where spouses were found either at court, or the spouse held a high-ranking position, visits with children became a rare occurrence. Such children were either left in the care of nannies or sent to prestigious educational boarding schools.

A.H. Benckendorf writes in his memoirs about how his parents (father is a prime minister, mother is a former courtier) first sent him to a boarding school in Prussia, then, dissatisfied with his educational success, sent him to a private boarding school in St. Petersburg. In his youth he remained in the care of his father's relatives:

“I lived with my uncle, my father’s brother; my aunt, an excellent woman, took all the care of me personally.”

The practice of transferring care of their child to relatives was quite common among the nobility. This happened for various reasons - orphanhood, social life, or the plight of the parents.

M.S. Nikoleva described the following incident in her aunt’s family:

“Among the Protopopovs’ relatives was a certain Kutuzov with nine daughters and a son. The daughters were all good-looking. The mother, a capricious, self-willed woman, remained a widow, did not like one of her daughters, Sofya Dmitrievna, and did not give her shelter, except for the girls' room, where, in the company of servants, she sat on the window and knitted a stocking. My aunt, seeing the mother’s dislike for the child, took her into her house. Her cousins ​​fell in love with her and began to teach her everything she could...

When brother Peter retired, he found Sonechka, 15, living in his family for years, like her own...

Her mother completely forgot her and did not see her, so even after her aunt’s death she remained in the Protopopovs’ house.”

We can come to the conclusion that during the period of time we are considering, the essence of noble children was inevitable service in the social hierarchy. Patriarchy dictated which unwanted and undeserving emotions of the child should be suppressed. “Not a single emotion - fear, pity, even maternal love - was considered a reliable guide in education.”

Therefore, marriages between nobles were concluded both for love and for convenience. What remained constant was the fact that marriage issues were controlled by parents, guided only by practical benefits and not by the feelings of their children. Hence the early marriages of girls with men two or even three times older.

K.D. Ikskul in “The Marriage of My Grandfather” gives the age of the groom as twenty-nine years old, and the bride as twelve.

M.S. Nikoleva writes that her cousin Peter, out of strong love, married their mother’s pupil Sophia, who was only fifteen years old, but he was twice as old.

AND I. Butkovskaya, in her “stories,” describes how her thirteen-year-old sister became the wife of the chief prosecutor, who was forty-five years old.

In noble culture, marriage was considered a natural need and was one of the meaningful structures of life. Celibate life was condemned in society; it was looked upon as inferiority.

Parents, especially mothers, approached their daughter’s upbringing with full responsibility, both in matters of behavior and in matters of marriage.

Countess Varvara Nikolaevna Golovina wrote in her memoirs regarding her daughter Praskovya Nikolaevna:

“My eldest daughter was almost nineteen years old at that time, and she began to go out into the world...

Her tender and sensitive affection for me protected her from the hobbies so characteristic of youth. Outwardly, she was not particularly attractive, was not distinguished by either beauty or grace and could not inspire dangerous feelings, and her strong moral convictions protected her from everything that could harm her.”

Countess M.F. Kamenskaya, remembering her cousin Varenka, wrote:

“I loved Varenka very much, and she and I were very friendly for many years in a row, but I didn’t like my aunt’s shy, distrustful manner of treating her daughter at all. Ekaterina Vasilievna kept Varenka near her as if on a string, did not let her go one step away from her, did not allow her to speak freely with anyone, and for whole days did not stop training her in a high-society manner.”

E.A. Gan described in her work “The Court of Light” the whole essence of a woman in marriage:

“God gave a woman a wonderful destiny, although not as glorious, not as loud as he indicated to a man - the destiny of being a domestic penate, a comforter to a chosen friend, the mother of his children, to live the life of loved ones and to march with a proud brow and a bright soul towards the end of a useful existence »

While women's attitudes toward marriage changed, men's attitudes remained unchanged throughout the 19th century. A man started a family in order to find heirs and a mistress, a warm friend or a good adviser.

The fate of Lieutenant General Pavel Petrovich Lansky is noteworthy. His first marriage was concluded in 1831 with the ex-wife of a colleague, Nadezhda Nikolaevna Maslova. Lansky's mother was categorically against this union and after the wedding broke off relations with her son. And ten years later, having given birth to two children, his dear wife ran away from him, with her lover, to Europe. It is known that the divorce process lasted about twenty years. And having become free, Pavel Petrovich marries for the second time a poor relative of his former wife, the elderly Evdokia Vasilievna Maslova. The motive for the marriage was the noble heart of Lansky, who wanted to brighten up the loneliness of the old maid.

A.S. Pushkin, in a letter to Pletnev, wrote the famous lines after his marriage to Natalya Nikolaevna Goncharova:

“I’m married and happy; My only wish is that nothing in my life changes - I can’t wait for anything better. This state is so new to me that it seems that I have been reborn.”

A. H. Benckendorff described his feelings in connection with his marriage no less eloquently:

“Finally, nothing else stood in the way of my plans to get married; I had time to think them through during the eight months that I was separated from my betrothed. I often hesitated, fear of losing the freedom to choose love that I had previously enjoyed, fear of causing unhappiness to a wonderful woman whom I respected as much as I loved, doubt that I possessed the qualities required of a faithful and thoughtful husband - all this frightened me me and fought in my head with the feelings of my heart. Nevertheless, a decision had to be made. My indecision was explained only by the fear of causing harm or compromising the woman, whose seductive image followed me along with the dream of happiness.”

“Too two weeks have passed that I have not written to you, my faithful friend,” wrote I.I. Pushchin to his wife.

“My dear friend,” S.P. Trubetskoy and I.I. Pushchin addressed their wives in letters.

If we do not take into account matters of the heart, then for a man, family is also a very expensive matter, since it required considerable material investments. He had to provide his wife and children with shelter, food, clothing and a proper environment. Such was his duty, in the eyes of society.

Therefore, parents always preferred a wealthy candidate with a good reputation.

M.A. Kretchmer in his memoirs describes a similar incident that happened to his father and mother in his youth:

“...I met my mother’s family, people of a good family, the Massalskys, and very rich ones at that. This family had two sons and three daughters; two of them are married, the third is my mother, a girl of 16 years old, with whom my father fell in love and who answered him in the same way. My father planned to get married, but since he led a most extravagant and, at the same time, not entirely commendable life in Krakow, my mother’s parents flatly refused him.”

Relationships in the family were rarely built on mutual respect; they were mainly based on the subordination of the younger to the elders and the veneration of these elders.

The eldest in the family was the father, followed by the mother; we must not forget about the authority of grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts and uncles, as well as godparents; the youngest were always children. Controlling the destinies of children in the hands of irresponsible fathers turned into nightmarish realities, so colorfully picked up by writers.

And if men had at least some chance to deviate from parental care - to enter the service, to leave their father's house for education, then girls in the first half of the 19th century did not have such a chance. They remained in the care of their parents until the very end and did not dare to resist their will, and sometimes sacrificed their personal lives out of deep devotion to their relatives.

M.S. Nikoleva even describes two cases in the family of her relatives, the Protopopovs:

“The Protopopov brothers were, of course, at war; Of the men, only my father and a sick uncle remained with us, with whom, in addition to his wife, the eldest daughter Alexandra was inseparable. She did not leave her father either day or night, and if she left for a minute, the patient began to cry like a child. This went on for many years, and my poor cousin did not see youth (her uncle died when she was already thirty-five years old).”

“Of the five Protopopov sisters, not one married; although the corresponding suitors were approaching, they chose not to separate and live together as one family, and when Pyotr Sergeevich (their brother - S.S.), being a retired colonel, got married, they devoted themselves to raising his children.”

The family structure of the noble family was built not only on patriarchal foundations, but also on reverence for traditions. So, any self-respecting family attended church, was religious, organized family celebrations and gatherings, and also quite often visited relatives living far away, staying with them for months.

Patriarchy, hierarchy, traditionalism, subordination to elders and authorities, the sanctity of marriage and family ties - this is what formed the basis for intra-family relations of the nobility in the first half of the 19th century. The dominance of duty prevailed over feelings, parental power was not unshakable, like the power of the spouse.

But what happens to the family structure in the second half of the 19th century?

The memoirs of nobleman S.E. Trubetskoy vividly depict this junction at the turn of generational change:

“Father and mother, grandfathers and grandmothers were for us in childhood not only sources and centers of love and untouchable authority; they were surrounded in our eyes by some kind of halo that was not familiar to the new generation. We, children, have always seen that our parents, our grandfathers, not only ourselves, but also many other people, primarily numerous household members, are treated with respect...

Our fathers and grandfathers were, in our children’s eyes, both patriarchs and family monarchs, and mothers and grandmothers were family queens.”

From the second half of the 19th century, a number of innovations penetrated the noble family. The role and authority of women increased, the search for new, profitable sources of livelihood increased, new views on marriage and children developed, humanism penetrated into the sphere of family relations

Natalya Goncharova-Lanskaya (widow of A.S. Pushkin), in a letter to her second husband writes regarding the marital fate of her daughters:

“As for settling them down, marrying them off, we are more prudent in this regard than you think. I rely entirely on the will of God, but would it be a crime on my part to think about their happiness? There is no doubt that you can be happy without being married, but this would mean passing by your calling...

By the way, I prepared them for the idea that marriage is not so easy and that one cannot look at it as a game and connect it with the thought of freedom. She said that marriage is a serious responsibility, and one must be very careful in choosing.”

Noble women began to be actively involved in the upbringing and education of their daughters, encouraging them to move away from the traditionally assigned role of a wife, closed in the environment of family relationships, awakening in them an interest in social and political life, and instilling in their daughters a sense of personality and independence.

As for parental attitudes in general, society advocated

Partnership, humane relations between parents and children.

The child began to be seen as an individual. Corporal punishment began to be condemned and prohibited.

O.P. Verkhovskaya wrote in her memoirs:

“The children no longer felt the same fear of their father. No rods

There was no trace of any punishment, much less torture. Obviously, the serf reform also had an impact on the upbringing of children.”

Relations between spouses began to acquire an egalitarian character, that is, based not on subordination, but on equality.

However, the old generation, brought up in patriarchal traditions, came into conflict with the new generation - their own children, who adopted advanced European ideas:

“...during this period of time, from the early 60s to the early 70s, all intelligent strata of Russian society were occupied with only one issue: family discord between old and young. No matter what noble family you ask about at that time, you will hear the same thing about each:

Parents quarreled with children. And it was not because of any material, material reasons that quarrels arose, but solely because of questions of a purely theoretical, abstract nature.”

Freedom of choice influenced the foundations of noble society - the number of divorces and unequal marriages increased. During this period, women had the opportunity to marry at their own discretion, which was quite often used by noblewomen as a means of achieving independence within the framework of a fictitious marriage.

Marriage gave girls the opportunity to leave the care of their parents, travel abroad, and lead the life they wanted, without being burdened with marital responsibilities.

Noblewoman E.I. Zhukovskaya, in her memoirs, notes that both she and her sister married for convenience, wanting to escape from the care of their parents, but did not live with their husbands.

According to the intra-family structure, relations between spouses could be classified into three types - along with the still dominant “old noble family”, a “new ideological noble family” based on the ideas of humanism, and a “new practical noble family” practicing egalitarianism appeared.

The crisis of generational contradiction also gave rise to three types of parental attitudes - “old parents”, “new ideological” and “new practical”.

We can conclude that the second half of the 19th century is characterized by a crisis of the patriarchal family. The noble family evolves and is divided into “new” and “old”. With the modernization of life, new ideological trends have shaken traditional foundations, forcing most of society to move away from patriarchal norms in family relationships.

The nobility served society, and the family was a means of serving the fatherland. The personality of one family member was lower than the family in the hierarchy of values. The ideal throughout the 19th century remained self-sacrifice for the sake of the interests of the family, especially in matters of love and marriage.
For many centuries in Rus' there were no detailed rules of etiquette for girls. The basic requirements could be summarized in a few lines: to be pious, modest and hardworking, to honor your parents and take care of yourself. In the famous “Domostroy,” which for several centuries was the main instruction on family and household relations, the main requirements for ensuring the proper behavior of girls were placed on the father and, to a much lesser extent, on the mother.

“Domostroy” demanded from the head of the family: “If you have a daughter, and direct your severity towards her, then you will save her from bodily harm: you will not disgrace your face if your daughter walks in obedience, and it is not your fault if, out of stupidity, she violates her virginity, and it will become known to your friends as a mockery, and then you will be put to shame before people. For if you give your daughter immaculate, it’s as if you’ve accomplished a great deed; you’ll be proud in any society, never suffering because of her.”

Even during the period of reforms carried out in the country by Peter I, there were no fundamental changes in the formation of etiquette requirements for girls. In the manual for young nobles “An Honest Mirror of Youth, or Indications for Everyday Conduct,” prepared and published by order of Peter in 1717, recommendations for the behavior of girls remained at the level of the patriarchal “Domostroy.”

The lack of proper regulation of the behavior of girls in society, by the way, did not correspond to the current situation. Thanks to Peter's innovations, the girls received immeasurably more freedoms than they had just a few years ago. They dressed in fashionable European dresses with a low neckline, learned to dance, and began to actively attend various entertainment events and assemblies. Naturally, they now have significantly more opportunities to communicate with gentlemen.

Perhaps, it was during the Peter the Great period that girls were the most liberated, since new rules for the behavior of girls in society had not yet been invented, they were just beginning to emerge, and fathers of families were obliged to take their daughters out into the world, otherwise they could be seriously harmed - the tsar did not tolerate it when the orders were not carried out, and he was quick to punish. There were no age restrictions at that time; Berchholz, describing the St. Petersburg society of the time of Peter, noted that girls 8-9 years old took part in assemblies and entertainment on an equal basis with adults.

The young gentlemen were undoubtedly pleased with the innovations in the behavior of women and girls. But the older generation greeted them with caution. MM. Shcherbatov, who published the book “On the Corruption of Morals in Russia” in the 18th century, noted: “It was pleasant for the female sex, who had almost until now been slaves in their homes, to enjoy all the pleasures of society, to adorn themselves with robes and headdresses that multiply the beauty of their faces and render them good.” camp ... the wives, who had not previously felt their beauty, began to recognize its power, began to try to multiply it with decent attire, and more than their ancestors they spread luxury in decoration.”

For girls, imitation of European rules of behavior was exciting game, since significant remnants of patriarchal morals still remained in the domestic circle. Only by breaking away from the home circle to a social reception or assembly could the girl behave as required by European rules. Although in an exaggerated form, this was very accurately noted in the film “The Tale of How Tsar Peter Married a Blackamoor.”

Since for girls and ladies behavior in society has become a kind of game, it was filled with actual game elements. For communication, “languages” appeared: fans, flies, bouquets, poses, a lot of various small conventions that were not regulated by generally accepted rules, but which everyone knew about and tried to follow. It is worth noting that there was no particular effort to officially regulate the behavior of women and girls in society. These rules developed largely spontaneously in imitation of European etiquette. This happened especially actively during the reign of Russian empresses. It is curious that these rules nevertheless intertwined both European courtliness and Russian patriarchy.

Count L.F. Segur, who spent several years in Russia during the reign of Catherine II, wrote that Russian “women have gone further than men on the path of improvement. In society one could meet many elegant ladies, girls of remarkable beauty, who spoke four and five languages, who knew how to play various instruments and were familiar with the works of the most famous novelists of France, Italy and England.”

Noble families now began to pay considerable attention to preparing their daughters for adult life. Not much was required for this - to learn to speak fluently at least one or two foreign languages, to be able to read, preferably in French or English, to dance and maintain small talk. Mothers practically did not do this, entrusting the care of their daughters to governesses and bonnets. Girls were rarely purposefully prepared for family life, but they were thoroughly prepared for communication with future grooms.

If in the time of Peter a girl could be married off at the age of 13-14, then by the 19th century a girl was considered a bride from the age of 16, or less often from the age of 15. It was at this age that girls began to be officially taken out into the world. Girls had been taken to visit before, but their social circle was limited to games with peers or special children's balls and concerts. But at the age of 16, an event took place that all the girls were looking forward to - their first official trip out into the world to a ball, to the theater or to a reception.

For the first time, a girl was usually taken out into the world by her father, less often by her mother or an older relative. The girl had to look elegant, but modest - a light light dress with a small neckline, no or minimal jewelry (small earrings and a string of pearls), a simple hairstyle. They tried to start going out with a ball or reception, when the girl could be officially introduced to acquaintances and family friends. Naturally, many of those to whom the girl was introduced knew her before, but the ritual had to be observed.

From that moment on, the girl became an official participant in social life, they began to send her invitations to various events, just like her mother. In official cases, a girl was accepted in accordance with her father’s rank, which was enshrined in the “Table of Ranks.” If the father had the rank of I class, the daughter received “rank... above all wives who are in rank V. Girls whose fathers are in rank II are over wives who are in rank VI,” etc.

By the beginning of the 19th century, the order of a girl’s behavior at a ball and communication with gentlemen was clearly regulated. Deviations from the rules were not allowed, otherwise it was possible to compromise not only oneself, but also the family. I have already written about this in detail in an article devoted to noble balls - bride fairs. I will only add that until the age of 24-25, a girl could only go out with her parents or relatives. If for some reason it was not possible to get married, then from this age she could travel on her own. But even before the age of 30, a girl (widows and divorcees had their own rules) could not receive men or go to visit them without the presence of an older relative, even if they were old enough to be her grandfather.

A lot of conventions surrounded the matchmaking and the girl’s behavior in communicating with the groom after the engagement. Actually, the girl’s opinion about the potential groom was not often asked; usually the parents made the decision. But it was considered desirable that the groom be introduced to the potential bride in advance and have the opportunity to communicate with her several times, naturally, under the supervision of one of the older family members.

For the grooms, the situation was not easy. Talking about your feelings to a girl, which was allowed only in a veiled form, when the future mother-in-law or aunt of a potential bride stands over your soul, is not an easy task. Involuntarily, you will become tongue-tied, but you need to conduct an elegant small talk, and even allegorically confess your love.

Even after the engagement, the groom could not remain alone with the bride and accompany her to balls or social events. The bride came to all events with one of her relatives, but there the groom could take her under his wing and be with her inseparably; the engaged status allowed this. But the bride went home only with relatives; if the groom was invited to accompany her, he rode in a separate carriage.

After the engagement, the girl entered into a new life; now many of the conventions of girlish behavior could be forgotten. Her husband began to manage her social relationships. The behavior of married ladies in society had many of its own characteristics, but more on them in the next article.

The book "Domostroy" first appeared in the 15th century. Under Ivan the Terrible, the book was revised and supplemented by the clergyman Archpriest Sylvester. It was written in an orderly style, with frequent use of sayings. The book described ideal family relationships, home life, recipes, social and religious issues, and norms of behavior.

The book “Domostroy” was popular among boyars, Russian merchants, and then nobles who sought to create a certain way of life in their home in order to somehow organize food intake, drinking drinks appropriate for a certain moment, what words to say, how and what things to wear. People from these classes were educated and had every opportunity to read these recommendations and then could afford to implement all this point by point. Domostroy also described in detail the rules of going to church, wedding ceremonies, wedding and funeral ceremonies. And not only Russia used this kind of “Domostroi”. In many other European countries, thick volumes with advice and statements on maintaining household and family life.
The fashion for "Domostroy" began to gradually fade in the 19th century, personifying something ancient, useless and patriarchal. Writers of that time used images from Domostroy to more colorfully ridicule the petty-bourgeois, ossified way of life of medieval Russia.
IN modern life There are still similar books with descriptions of ancient Russian recipes from the royal kitchen and with recommendations for performing rituals, but very few turn to these overly inflated delights of that distant era, except perhaps to study what they lived, what they did, what rules our ancestors adhered to. The ideal of behavior in the family of a metropolitan nobleman in Russia in the first half of the 19th century: traditions and innovations
In the old days, in noble families, as well as in noble society as a whole, the ability to behave, observe tact, and follow etiquette was considered the first indicator of the degree of aristocracy.

In the old days, in noble families, as well as in noble society as a whole, the ability to behave, observe tact, and follow etiquette was considered the first indicator of the degree of aristocracy. The nobles simply flaunted noble manners in front of each other. In French it was called bon ton, and in Russian it was called good manners. Decent manners were usually instilled from childhood. But it often happened that a person, due to a lack of aesthetic education, could master secular etiquette himself, imitating its skilled bearers or consulting the relevant rules.

It is known that the basis of peaceful, respectable cohabitation of people is love, mutual respect and politeness. A disrespectful attitude towards someone close primarily causes moral damage to that person and negatively affects the reputation of the one who unwisely disregards the rules of etiquette. In the book “Good Form”, published in St. Petersburg in 1889, it is written about this: “We must never forget that the laws of society, like Christian ones, from which they draw their origin, their principles, require love, consent, long-suffering, meekness , kindness, humane treatment and respect for the individual." No matter what feelings people have for each other, they in any case must observe external decency.

An important source of rules of behavior in the family and society as a whole in the pre-Petrine period was the so-called. Domostroy is a set of ancient Russian everyday rules based on the Christian worldview. The head of the family according to Domostroy is certainly a man who is responsible for the entire house before God, is a father and teacher for his household. The wife should take care of the housework, and both spouses should raise children in the fear of God, keeping the commandments of Christ.

In the era of Peter the Great, a manual appeared on the rules of conduct for secular youth, “An Honest Mirror of Youth, or Indications for Everyday Conduct, Collected from Various Authors.” This essay shows the norms of etiquette in conversation - with superiors, with a confessor, with parents, with servants - and the style of behavior in various situations. A young man must rely on himself and respect others, honor his parents, be polite, brave, courageous. He should avoid drunkenness, extravagance, slander, rudeness, etc. Particular importance was attached to knowledge of languages: youths should speak to each other in a foreign language, “so that they could learn the skill.” Along with community instructions, this book also gives specific bonton rules of behavior at the table and in public places, and some hygiene standards.

The final part of this book is devoted to the special norms of behavior of girls, which, moreover, are strictly determined by church morality. These instructions are obviously close to traditional ancient Russian teachings. The virginal virtues are as follows: love for the word of God, humility, prayer, confession of faith, respect for parents, diligence, friendliness, mercy, modesty, bodily purity, abstinence and sobriety, frugality, generosity, fidelity and truthfulness. In public, a girl should behave modestly and humbly, avoid laughter, chatter, and coquetry.

In general, the monument reflects both general ethical norms of behavior and specific features of education related to the period of the most active perception of Russian tradition, Russian culture, and lifestyle features Western Europe.

In the 19th century, the importance of tradition was still extremely great. The wife must certainly honor her husband and please his family and friends. This is what the book “Life in the World, at Home and at Court,” published in 1890, teaches the average person. However, in contrast to the recommendations of Domostroy, the spouses often lived separately. Aristocratic families that owned large mansions arranged their homes in such a way that the husband and wife had their own separate chambers - the “female” and “male” halves. Each of these halves had its own special routine. True, there were cases when the house was divided into two parts for other reasons. For example, E.A. Sabaneeva in her book “Memories of the Past: From a Family Chronicle 1770–1838” describes the house of her grandfather Prince P.N. Obolensky in Moscow: “Large on two floors, between the street and the house there is a courtyard, behind the house there is a garden with an alley of acacias on both sides. The house was divided by a large dining room into two halves: one half was called Knyazeva, the other - maid of honor. In the same way, the people in the house, that is, footmen, coachmen, cooks and maids, as well as horses and carriages, were called princes and ladies-in-waiting. There was always a parade on Grandma's half; was at her disposal best part at home, she always had visitors. Grandfather had his own small chambers, above which there was a mezzanine for the children.”

Psychologists note that spouses, often without realizing it, when building their intra-family relationships, are largely guided by the family of their parents. At the same time, sometimes the order that exists in the parental family is perceived by a person as a certain ideal, which he strives to follow at all costs. But since in the parental families of the husband and wife these orders could not be at all similar, such thoughtless adherence to them can ultimately lead to serious complications in the relationship between the spouses.

Prince V.P. Meshchersky considered the behavior of his parents - both in the family and in society - to be standard. Father “was, without exaggeration, I will say, the ideal of a Christian man, namely a man,” the prince writes in his memoirs, “because he lived a full life of light, but at the same time shone, so to speak, with the beauty of Christianity: his soul loved his neighbor too much and good in order to ever think evil, and at the same time, always cheerful, always content, he lived the life of everyone around him; I read everything I could, took an interest in everything and, like my mother, never touched even in passing lies, arrogance, vulgarity, or gossip.”

V.N. Tatishchev in his will - a kind of Domostroy of the 18th century - says that “family legislation still has an extremely patriarchal character. The basis of the family is the unlimited power of the parent, which extends to children of both sexes and of all ages and ends only by natural death or deprivation of all rights of the estate.”

Until at least half of the 19th century, respectful attitude towards parents was a phenomenon, as they would now say, without alternative. However, some “freethinking”, which arose, in particular, under the influence of sentimental and romantic works, appeared. So the main character of the novel D.N. Begicheva’s “Olga: the life of Russian nobles at the beginning of the century” (1840) fiercely resisted her father’s desire to marry her to an unloved man, although she did not dare to contradict him openly.

The Khomyakov family has a legend that when both sons - Fyodor and Alexey - “came of age,” Marya Alekseevna called them to her and solemnly explained her idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe relationship between a man and a woman. “In today's terms,” she said, “men seem to enjoy freedom. And in a Christian way, a man must maintain his purity just as strictly as a woman. Chastity is the lot of people before marriage. Therefore, I want you to swear to me that you will not enter into a relationship with any woman until you marry, choosing your one and only. Swear it." The sons swore.

V.F. Odoevsky in “Excerpts from Masha’s Journal” shows a certain ideal of the relationship between parents and children. On the day Masha turns ten, she is given a journal, where the girl writes down everything that happens to her during the day. Mom gradually accustoms her to housekeeping, dad teaches her geography lessons. Masha treats her parents with great respect, respect, which is reinforced, in addition to general education in the spirit of the Law of God, by positive examples from the lives of some familiar parents. Parents themselves never raise their voices at their children. And if Masha deserves punishment, they, for example, oblige Masha not to leave the room. According to the author, his fairy tale should teach children and their parents to follow this example.

Emperor Nicholas I wrote in 1838 to his son Nicholas: “Love and honor your parents and elder brother and always resort to their advice and with full confidence, and then our blessing will always be over your dear head.”

The first principle in raising a noble child was that he was oriented not towards success, but towards an ideal. He should have been brave, honest, educated, not in order to achieve anything - fame, wealth, high rank - but because he was a nobleman, because he had been given a lot, because that’s what he should be.

Siblings were expected to be respectful of each other, and the eldest son had some authority over the younger children. Boys under 15 and girls under 21 walked ahead of their parents, who “vomited” them. The girl was completely dependent on the will of her parents, while the young man was not subject to their control and was free in his acquaintances. V.F. Odoevsky wrote: “This is our custom: a girl will die of boredom and will not give her hand to a man if he does not have the happiness of being her brother, uncle, or the even more enviable happiness of being eighty years old, because “what will mothers say?”

At the beginning of the 19th century, traditions and customs adopted in the previous century and characterized by a certain patriarchy began to be supplanted by new, more liberal rules. This also applied to the period of mourning. “Now all decency is poorly observed, but in my time they strictly followed everything and according to the proverb: “love to count kinship and give honor to it” - they were considered as if kinship and, when one of the relatives died, they wore mourning for him, depending on proximity or distance , how much was due. And before me it was even stricter. Widows wore mourning for three years: the first year only black wool and crepe, in the second year black silk and black lace could be worn, and in the third year, on ceremonial occasions, it was possible to wear silver mesh on the dress, not gold. This was worn at the end of three years, and the black dress of the widow was not removed, especially by the elderly. And the young woman would not have been praised if she had rushed to take off her mourning. They wore mourning for their father and mother for two years: the first - wool and crepe; on major holidays you could wear something woolen, but not too light. ...When weddings took place in a family where there was deep mourning, the black dress was temporarily removed and a purple one was worn, which was considered mourning for the brides,” wrote D.D. Blagovo in "Granny's Stories". But over time, this standard of behavior begins to disappear.

The behavior of the nobles in Moscow and St. Petersburg was different. As the same D.D. writes. Blagovo, with reference to the memories of his dear grandmother, “those who are more important and richer are all in St. Petersburg, and those who live out their lives in Moscow, or are outdated, or impoverished, sit quietly and live poorly, not in a lordly manner, as it used to be.” , but in a bourgeois way, about themselves. ...There may be good names, but there are no people: they don’t live by name.”

E.A. Sushkova, having first attended a ball in Moscow, finds many differences in the behavior of Moscow and St. Petersburg young ladies. The latter “are more than talkative with young people,” she says in her “Notes,” “they are familiar, they are their friends.” They address each other as “you”, call each other by last name, first name or nickname, and not in French, as was customary in the ancient capital. Life in Moscow was simpler. Yu.N. Tynyanov says that Nadezhda Osipovna Pushkina, for example, could sit unkempt in her bedroom all day long. And Yu.M. Lotman wrote that “military events brought Moscow and the Russian provinces closer together. The Moscow population “spread out” over vast areas. At the end of the war, after the French left Moscow, this gave rise to a reverse movement. ...The rapprochement between the city and the province, so noticeable in Moscow, had almost no effect on the life of St. Petersburg in those years. Moreover, the occupation of Moscow by the enemy cut off many of the threads connecting St. Petersburg with the country.”

Unlike capitals, as V.A. writes. Sollogub in his “Memoirs”, “biblical calm reigned in the life of the old-world landowner of that time (1820s - A.K.). The old man, his children, his servants, his few peasants formed exactly one continuous family with varying degrees of rights.” However, one should also distinguish between villages and cities in the provinces: the distances between neighbors living in their villages were generally enormous and therefore they saw each other much less often than in cities. Thus, the heroine of the novel “Alexandrina” by Fan Dim (E.V. Kologrivova) complained that Christmas time was the only opportunity for girls who saw each other extremely rarely to “go wild”, and they had fun during the entire period of separation, while in the capitals the number of boring visits increased several times.

It is obvious that family relationships are ideally based on mutual respect, piety, obedience of women, children and servants to the head of the family, and observance of the rules of decency. Society existed according to a traditional way of life at its core, which was combined with norms of behavior brought from Europe, which were increasingly taking root among the nobility. Therefore, the ideal of behavior changes over the course of half a century from a more traditional one, carefully preserved by the people of the 18th century, to a more “enlightened” one, which was facilitated by the abundance of foreign tutors, constant conversation in a foreign language, mainly French, and admiration for the West in general.

Marchenko N. Signs of dear old times. Morals and life of the Pushkin era. - M.: Isographus; Eksmo, 2002. - P.92.
Aleshina Yu.E., Gozman L.Ya.. Dubovskaya E.M. Social and psychological methods for studying marital relationships: Special workshop on social psychology. - M.: Publishing house Mosk. University.. 1987. - P.35.
Koshelev V. Alexey Stepanovich Khomyakov, biography in documents, reasoning and research. - M., 2000. - P. 163.
Odoevsky V.F. Motley tales. Tales of Grandfather Irenaeus / Comp., prepared. text, intro. Art. and comment. V. Grekova. - M.: Artist. lit.. 1993. - P.190-223.
Nicholas I. Husband Father. Emperor / Comp., pred. N.I. Azarova; comment N.I. Azarova, L.V. Gladkova; lane from fr. L.V. Gladkova. - M.: SLOVO / SLOVO, 2000. - P.330.

Internet source:
http://www.pravoslavie.ru/arhiv/051006163916

Kalinina A.S.

The beginning of the 18th century was marked by the reforms of Peter I, which were designed to bridge the gap in the level of development of Russia and Europe. The reforms affected all spheres of society. The state needed secular culture. An important feature of modern culture has become its openness and ability to communicate with the cultures of other peoples. The era we are considering is a century of turning point. This is clearly visible in the history of the nobility, in their everyday life.

For several centuries, the nobility was the highest ruling class of the Russian state. In Russia, the nobility arose in the 12th century as the lowest part of the military service class. Under Peter I, the formation of the nobility was completed, which was replenished by people from other strata as a result of their advancement in public service.

The 18th century is a separate stage in the life of the Russian nobility, unlike either the previous 17th century or the subsequent 19th and 20th centuries. This is a time of fundamental changes in the nobility in connection with the reforms of Peter I. But at the same time, this is a time when the old way of life of people was still preserved in a strong form. All this together gives a very complex and unique character profile of an 18th century nobleman.

Relevance of the topic: Recently, there has been an increased interest of researchers in studying the microcosm of a person, his everyday life. The question of studying the realities of everyday life seems relevant. In the first quarter of the 18th century, through the efforts of Peter I, the great Russian Empire was born and the Europeanization of culture was carried out. And it is very interesting for me to trace how the life of the Russian nobility changed with the reforms of Peter I.

Among the fairly large amount of literature devoted to this topic, we need to highlight the most significant and important for us. First of all, among the pre-revolutionary works, it is necessary to note the works of S.M. Solovyova, V.O. Klyuchevsky, N.M. Karamzin.

The transformations of everyday life during the time of Peter I were deeply analyzed by S. M. Solovyov. He first noted that the transformation began in the second half of the 17th century. Having examined the prerequisites for transformations in the field of culture, S. M. Solovyov noted that they were formed primarily in the sphere of material culture, in the material world of man, “the Russian people, entering the field of European activity, naturally had to dress in European dress, because the question was not about the sign of the nationality, the question was: which family of nations should they belong to, European or Asian, and accordingly wear the sign of this family in their clothes.” And in Chapter 3, Volume 18 of his “History of Russia since Ancient Times,” he defends the correctness of the reforms of Peter I. “...bringing, through civilization, a people, weak, poor, almost unknown, onto the historical stage...”.

The famous historian V. O. Klyuchevsky, continuing the thought of S. M. Solovyov, notes that the transformations of life in the form in which they were carried out were caused not so much by necessity as by the expression of the subjective feelings and views of the tsar. “He hoped...through the nobility to introduce European science and enlightenment into Russia as a necessary condition...”. In turn, N.M. Karamzin noted: the main content of the reform was that “an ardent monarch with a heated imagination, having seen Europe, wanted to make Russia Holland.” “But this passion for customs that were new to us crossed the boundaries of prudence in him... Russian clothes and a beard did not interfere with the establishment of schools.”

And I agree, the reforms of Peter I are contradictory. The transformations took place by force and entailed enormous sacrifices. But on the other hand, for the first time after the baptism of Rus', Peter I made an energetic attempt to bring the country closer to European civilization. It “has become a great power with an efficient economy, a modern navy, and a highly developed culture. The progress was rapid and decisive."

It should be emphasized that the historiography describing the daily life of society in the first quarter of the 18th century is quite extensive. It is mainly devoted to the life and customs of the Peter the Great era in works of a historical and cultural orientation. The first attempt at a comprehensive description of Russian life was undertaken by A.V. Tereshchenko in the multi-volume monograph “Life of the Russian People” (Vol. 1-7. St. Petersburg, 1848).

E. I. Karnovich’s everyday essays “Historical Stories and Everyday Sketches” contain information about the procedure for holding Peter the Great’s assemblies, masquerades and balls.

It should also be noted the works of M. M. Bogoslovsky “Life and customs of the Russian nobility in the first half of the 18th century.”

Speaking about literature on this topic, it is necessary to say about works devoted to noble culture. This, of course, is the work of the Soviet literary critic and cultural critic Yu.M. Lotman. “Conversations about Russian culture. Life and traditions of the Russian nobility." The author notes that in the 18th century, belonging to the nobility meant “obligatory rules of conduct, principles of honor, even the cut of clothing.” And, touching on the problem of the emergence of the nobility as a class, the scientist says that the nobility of the 18th century was entirely the product of Peter’s reforms. The book immerses the reader in the world of everyday life of the Russian nobility of the 18th - early 19th centuries. We see people of a distant era in the nursery and in the ballroom, at the card table, we can examine in detail their hairstyle, the cut of their dress, their demeanor. At the same time, everyday life for the author is a historical-psychological category, a sign system, that is, a kind of text.

“The history of everyday life” is still one of the most pressing and actively developed problems in Russian historiography.

After the reforms of Peter I, fundamental changes took place in the country, in the life of a separate class - the nobility, which is radically different from the nobility of the 17th century. Therefore, the purpose of this work will be to show what the nobility was like after Peter’s reforms, its way of life in the 18th century.

To achieve this goal, the following tasks have been set: we will consider the everyday, moral and cultural life of the nobility, their upbringing and education, and the spiritual sphere of their life.

The chronological framework of the study covers the period of reforms of Peter I (1700-1725).

The territorial scope of the study is outlined by Moscow and St. Petersburg. This limitation of the study is explained objective reasons: St. Petersburg in the first quarter of the 18th century was the center of cultural change. In most cases, all social events and official holidays were held in the northern capital. At the same time, Moscow remained the center of the Russian Empire and did not lose its political and cultural significance.

We will focus on the key moments of the daily life of the nobles - education, leisure, everyday life, clothing.

Education. Etiquette

The eighteenth century in Russia was marked by the reforms of Peter I. Russia began to climb the ladder of European culture, along which, in many ways, it was forcibly dragged by the unbridled and fierce will of Peter. The Tsar sought to introduce the Russian nation to enlightenment.

The formation of a new type of personality of a nobleman and noblewoman, which began earlier, continued, which was the result of borrowing European educational systems. During the time of Peter I, the creation of a secular school and noble education was an exclusively state matter.

In the 18th century, in the “normative” upbringing and education, Peter’s education became a necessary and obligatory part of the development of foreign languages ​​and good European manners. After the reforms, the formation of a new Russian nobleman.

The tsar was concerned about the external polish of the officers and officials, but he was well aware that the ability to behave in society, not slurp at the table, ... could neither build a fortress or a ship, nor successfully fulfill the role of a wheel in a clock mechanism, which meant the entire hierarchy of newly created institutions. This required knowledge and the ability to put this knowledge into practice.” For this purpose, primary schools and colleges were opened, textbooks began to be published, and some nobles went to study abroad. Nobles were generally forbidden to marry without education.

In 1701, the Navigation School was created, on the basis of which the Naval Academy arose in 1715, and the Artillery Academy was founded. In 1712, the Engineering School began operating in Moscow; medical personnel were trained at the Medical School, opened in 1707. For the needs of the diplomatic service, a school for teaching foreign languages ​​was opened at the Ambassadorial Prikaz. In 1721, a special school was established where students studied arithmetic, office work, the ability to compose business papers and letters, etc. Finally, in 1725, the Academy of Sciences opened.

There are two innovations in the field of education. One of them, the main one, is that the network of schools has expanded many times. It is important, however, that it was during the years of transformation that the beginning of vocational educational institutions was laid.

Another feature of enlightenment was that it acquired a secular character.

But young people must still be able to behave correctly in society. She must learn this not only in educational institutions and assemblies, but also by studying special instructions. One of them, under the obscure title “An Honest Mirror of Youth, or Indications for Everyday Conduct,” enjoyed especially wide popularity. Under Peter it was printed three times, which indicates a huge demand for it. The unknown compiler of this work used several foreign works, from which he translated those parts that he considered useful to the Russian reader.

“An Honest Mirror of Youth” set out the rules of behavior for young people in the family, at a party, in public places and at work. It instilled in young men modesty, hard work, and obedience. In the family it was necessary to “keep the father and mother in great honor”, ​​“young youths should always speak foreign languages ​​among themselves.” Interesting recommendations on how to behave in public places and at the table. “No one has to walk down the street with his head hanging and his eyes downcast, or look askance at people, but walk straight and without bending over.” Rules of behavior at the table: “Don’t let your hands lie on the plate for a long time, don’t shake your legs everywhere, when you drink, don’t wipe your lips with your hand, but with a towel.”

The last pages of “The Youth of the Honest Mirror” are dedicated to girls. The girl should have had much more of them: humility, hard work, mercy, modesty, fidelity, cleanliness. The girl's ability to blush was valued, which was a sign of moral purity. “In conversations, be able to listen, be polite...”

A network of schools promoted literacy. But not everyone could receive an education. It primarily covered in its network the children of nobles and clergy. The expansion of the network of schools and vocational educational institutions caused a flow of educational literature. Textbooks appeared on various branches of knowledge.

Clothes in the everyday life of nobles

The 18th century was marked by a revolution in the dress of the nobility. The Russian nobility, in their European costume, showed old Russian traditions - a passion for jewelry, furs, and red heels. Baroque costumes created a festive atmosphere in everyday life.

The year 1700 became a kind of starting point on the path to the Europeanization of Russian clothing and life. The famous historian of the 19th century, Vladimir Mikhnevich, very accurately conveyed the flavor of the 18th century: “The wizard-director in one moment changes the stage and costumes beyond recognition and, as it were, takes us on a flying carpet from Asia to Europe, from the gloomy Kremlin chambers to the sparkling fashion and luxury of Versailles. A noisy, motley crowd of gilded, latest Parisian style, short kaftans and camisoles, magnificently swollen figs, curled, powdered wigs and dandy cocked hats bursts onto the historical stage... Isn’t this a dream?”

“Peter I considered it necessary to change the old concepts about dresses and beards: he started with himself. His example should have brought about a change between the nobles and all citizens, but almost everyone persisted.” So, in December 1700, in Moscow, to the beat of drums, a royal decree was announced on the abolition of the old-fashioned Russian dress “On the wearing of German dress and shoes by people of every rank.” Peter I set out to eradicate traditional clothing. Dresses of a new, European style were put on display near the Kremlin wall. It was ordered for men to wear Hungarian and German dress from December 1, 1700, and for wives and daughters from January 1, 1701, so that “they would be equal with them (husbands and fathers) in that dress, and not different.” As you can see, the female half of the urban population was given a slightly longer period to update their wardrobe. It was obvious that the new fashion was being accepted with great difficulty. In Moscow, they even selected kissers who stood at all the city gates and “at first took money from opponents of the decree, and also cut and tore their (old-fashioned) clothes. For wearing a long caftan there was a fine of 2 hryvnia. If a Muscovite could not pay the required amount, then he was forced to his knees and his caftan was cut flush with the ground.” “At the same time, it was ordered not to sell Russian clothes in shops and not to sew such clothes for tailors, for fear of punishment.” The change in clothing was combined with a change in the entire appearance. In January 1705, the Decree “On shaving beards and mustaches of all ranks of people” followed.

Even among the nobility, new fashions at first caused discontent and resistance.

The transition to new clothes was not easy. Among the poor nobility, the transition to a new costume was difficult due to their financial status; it was not possible to change the entire wardrobe in a short time. The general appearance of the costumes, transformed by the fashion of the new time, was as follows: men's clothing consisted of shoes, a shirt, a camisole, a caftan, short pants (culottes), and stockings. For a woman it was necessary to wear a corsage, fluffy skirts, and a swinging dress. To complete the impression, imagine heavily powdered hairstyles for women and wigs for men. Gradually, dressing richly, following the new fashion, began to be considered a sign of high dignity.

Everyday life in the Peter the Great era was strikingly different from the previous one. If earlier it was enough for a fashionista to dress in rich clothes and jewelry, now a new cut of dress required learning different manners and different behavior. Fashionistas had to not so much show off an expensive dress to the eyes of their contemporaries, but rather show their personal merits, their ability to bow gallantly, with dignity, stand elegantly, and carry on a conversation with ease.

The ladies found themselves in a more difficult position. They had to first overcome modesty - the dress exposed their neck and arms, and only then learn to move gracefully and learn languages.

The science of etiquette was difficult to comprehend; in 1716, the Hanoverian resident Christian Friedrich Weber wrote: “I have seen many women of amazing beauty, but they have not yet completely lost the habit of their old manners, because in the absence of a court (in Moscow) there is no strict supervision over this. The nobles dress in German, but put on their old clothes on top, and otherwise adhere to the old customs, for example, in greetings they still bow their heads low to the ground.” “In 1715, Peter the Great laughed at the old Russian outfits and organized a street masquerade in December. In which, from the most eminent person to the mere mortal, everyone was dressed in curious old dresses. Thus, among the ladies’ persons there was Baturlina in a fur coat and summer jacket; Prince-Abbess Rzhevskaya - in a fur coat and padded jacket... This is how the reformer of Russia laughed at the old outfits.”

Changing your dress is easier than breaking old habits. And if the Russian fashionista’s suit was in no way inferior in its elegance to European models, his manners left much to be desired. Weber said that women in dealing with strangers and foreigners “are still wild and capricious, as one famous German gentleman had to find out from his own experience. When... he wanted to kiss one girl’s hand and was rewarded for this with a full slap in the face.”

Over time, clothes of a new style became an integral part of most of the nobility.

Leisure

It is with the nobility that the true history of leisure begins. For a nobleman, almost all the time free from official affairs turned into leisure. The main forms of this leisure were originally borrowed in the 18th century. The Peter the Great era was marked by new traditions of spectacles. The most important innovation was fireworks. Masquerades were held either in the form of costumed processions or in the form of a demonstration of carnival costumes in a public place, and theatrical performances glorified the king.

The nobleman's day began very early. If he served, then he went to work, and if not, then for a walk. “The place for walking in St. Petersburg was Nevsky Prospekt, and in Moscow - Tverskoy Boulevard. There was music playing and crowds of people walking around. There were other places for walking in Moscow. Nobles often went to the Botanical Garden, founded by order of Peter I as the Apothecary Garden, to admire rare flowers, herbs, shrubs and trees.”

During walks, the nobles showed off their fashionable outfits, communicated and made social acquaintances. The walks continued until lunchtime.

Lunch was an important part of the daily routine. They either dined at home, but always with guests, or went to a dinner party themselves. They dined for a long time, in accordance with the traditions of noble etiquette, which were strictly observed. After lunch, there was certainly a rest, and then new entertainment awaited the nobleman.

The penetration of European culture into Russia radically changed the position of the noblewoman. “The nobles began to live in an open house; their spouses and daughters came out of their impenetrable chambers; balls and dinners united one sex with the other in noisy halls.” First, by force, and then of her own free will, she joined social life and mastered the corresponding skills of noble etiquette: she read books, took care of the toilet, learned foreign languages, mastered music, dancing, and the art of conversation. At the same time, she had a family with good traditions of the priority of values ​​and the Christian faith. Children remained the main daily concern of the noblewoman of Peter the Great's time.

The daily life of the capital's noblewomen was predetermined by generally accepted norms. The capital's noblewomen, if funds allowed, tried to think less about the state of finances and the entire “home economy.” They were much more worried about the arrangement of their home, its readiness to receive guests, as well as the condition of their outfits, which had to correspond to the latest fashion trends. Even foreigners were struck by the Russian noblewomen “by the ease with which (they) spent money on clothes and home improvement.”

Petersburg demanded greater compliance with etiquette and time rules and daily routine; in Moscow, as V.N. Golovina noted, “the lifestyle (was) simple and unashamed, without the slightest etiquette,” the actual life of the city began “at 9 o’clock in the evening,” when all “the houses were open,” and “morning and afternoon it could (were) carried out in any way.”

Nevertheless, most noblewomen in the cities spent their mornings and afternoons “in public.” The city dweller’s morning began with makeup: “In the morning we blushed slightly so that our face wouldn’t be too red...” After the morning toilet and a fairly light breakfast (for example, “fruit, curdled milk”), it was time to think about the outfit: even on an ordinary day A noblewoman in the city could not afford negligence in clothes, shoes “without heels, lack of hairstyle, that other “young women”, having styled their hair for some long-awaited holiday, “were forced to sit and sleep until the day of departure, so as not to spoil their attire.” And although, according to the Englishwoman Lady Rondeau, Russian men of that time looked at “women only as funny and pretty toys that could entertain,” women themselves often subtly understood the possibilities and limits of their own power over them. Conversations remained the main means of exchanging information for 18th-century townswomen and filled up most of the day for many.

At the end of 1718, Peter I forcibly introduced new forms of leisure - assemblies. Assembly, the king explained in the decree, is a French word; it means a certain number of people gathered together either for their own amusement, or for reasoning and friendly conversations. The selected society was invited to the assemblies. They started at four or five o'clock in the afternoon and lasted until 10 in the evening. The hosts, who received guests for the assemblies, had to provide them with accommodation, as well as light refreshments: sweets, tobacco and pipes, drinks to quench their thirst. Special tables were set up for playing checkers and chess. By the way, Peter loved chess and played it excellently.

The Assembly is a place of relaxed meetings, where the elite of society underwent a school of secular education. But ease, genuine fun, the ability to conduct small talk or insert an appropriate remark, and, finally, dance were not achieved immediately. At the first balls of Peter the Great's time, depressing boredom reigned; they danced as if they were serving a most unpleasant duty. A contemporary copied the following assembly from life: “The ladies always sit separately from the men, so that not only is it impossible to talk to them, but it is almost impossible to say a word; when they’re not dancing, everyone sits like dumb people and just looks at each other.”

Gradually, the nobles learned manners and fashionable dances, and Peter's assemblies began to be a joy. There were two types of dances at the assemblies: ceremonial and English. “At first, only wind and percussion instruments could be heard at the assemblies: trumpets, bassoons and timpani, but in 1721 the Duke of Holstein brought a string orchestra with him to Russia.”

Most often, assemblies were held in the winter months, less often in the summer. Sometimes the Tsar himself was the host of the assembly. Guests were invited to the Summer Garden or country residence - Peterhof.

Peter taught the rules of etiquette to the courtiers with the same zeal as he taught the officers the military articles. He drew up instructions that were to be followed in Peterhof. It is noteworthy as evidence of what elementary rules of behavior the king instilled in his courtiers: “Whoever is given a card with a bed number, then he can sleep here without having to endure the bed, give something lower to another, or take something from another bed.” Or an even more expressive point: “Do not lie down on the bed without taking off your shoes, boots or shoes.”

The Assembly is the most characteristic innovation, a kind of symbol of the era in the sense that it had no predecessors.

Code of Household Conduct

“In Peter’s time, important foundations were laid for the transformation of the noble family: the prohibition of forced marriage, allowing freedom of marriage choice, breaking the isolation of the Orthodox family by allowing marriages with foreigners, educating the bride and groom, raising the age of the young. Six weeks before the wedding, an engagement had to take place, after which the bride and groom could see each other freely, and if they did not like each other, they had the right to refuse the marriage.” Despite the preservation of traditional rituals, the wedding gradually turned into a European-style celebration with fashionable outfits, dancing and foreign travel. An innovation of this time was the divorce of noble families. At the heart of the family itself, which retained a largely patriarchal character, were duty and family harmony. The document that serves as legal protection for spouses is the marriage contract. An important phenomenon was the acquisition by a noblewoman of the exclusive right to a dowry. The noble family began to be built on new principles. In the family, the role of the woman who became a wife-friend has increased. The husband's power began to be more refined and enlightened.

For the first time, personal libraries and collections appeared in the houses of the nobility. Under the influence of European culture in the 18th century, aesthetic tastes and a new etiquette of communication among the Moscow nobility gradually formed. This process was accompanied by the development of self-awareness of the first estate, which was based on moral Orthodox guidelines. The ethical standards of Christianity largely influenced the moral principles of noble society. This was most clearly manifested in the charitable activities of the nobility - the creation of shelters, hospitals and other charitable institutions.

House. Culinary traditions

The 18th century passed in a tense struggle between the Russian chambers and the European house - the palace. The Peter the Great era was marked by the penetration of style, and palace houses began to be gradually built. The urban and rural estates of the nobles had a number of common features: the location of the residential building in the depths of the courtyard, the estate nature of the development, commitment to wood, enclosed estates and a regular park. European interiors of noble houses were decorated in red and lingonberry tones and with green tiled stoves according to the old Russian tradition. The hallmark of the noble mansion was the portico with columns and the cladding of wooden parts to look like stone. Landscape parks became one of the prerequisites for the development of the scientific interest of the nobility in natural branches of knowledge.

The dining culture of the aristocracy included French, English and German trends in dining. In general, “Russian exoticism” was a defining trend in the gastronomic tastes of the nobility. In the development of table culture, the Russian custom of table setting prevailed not only in Moscow, but it was recognized by the middle of the 19th century in Europe. The nobles for the most part turned dinners into theatrical performances, the roles of which were described by noble etiquette. So, the 18th century became for Russia the century of European cuisine. A large number of new dishes appeared that still exist today. From Western Europe, Russian people borrowed a more refined taste, table setting and the ability to beautifully eat cooked dishes.

Conclusion

The everyday culture of the nobility of the 18th century, during the reign of Peter I, is characterized by the clash and mixing in everyday life of two trends - traditional and European. This was a turning point, primarily in the field of changes in external, material factors in the everyday life of the nobility. A change in appearance was a kind of symbolic manifestation of the choice of one or another path of development of the country, an expression of commitment to a certain type of culture, but behind the external attributes there was usually an important internal content.

Thus, we see that the 18th century is a time when the nobleman, on the one hand, still possessed the traits of a truly Russian, deeply religious person, and on the other hand, the process of Europeanization began, inevitable after the turbulent era of Peter I, but at the same time not entirely understandable to the Russian to a person.

Summing up the results of my work, we can say that the 18th century is a time when a completely new noble class is being formed; in the Russian nobility we see a type of Russian person, not yet fully formed, but already completely new, who will never return to the past .

List of sources and literature

1. Georgieva T.S. History of Russian culture.-M.: Yurayt.-1998.-576 p.

2.Zakharova O.Yu. Secular ceremonies in Russia in the 18th and early 20th centuries..-M.: JSC Tsentropolygraf.-2003-329p.

3. History of Russia in questions and answers./Ed. V.A. Dines, A.A. Vorotnikova. - Saratov. - Publishing center of SGSEU. - 2000. - 384 p.

4. Karamzin M.K. History of Russian Goverment. T.11-12.- St. Petersburg: Printing house of Eduard Pratz.- 1853.-425p.

5. Karamzin N.M. History of the Russian State: 12 volumes in 4 volumes, volume 4.t.10-12.-M.: RIPOL CLASSIC.-1997.-736 p.

6.Kirsanova R.M. Russian costume and life of the 18th-19th centuries.//Culturology.-2007.-No.4.-P.152

7. Klyuchevsky V.O. Russian history course. part 4. - M.: Partnership of Printing House A.I. Mamontova.-1910.- 481 p.

8. Klyuchevsky V.O. Op. in 9 volumes, volume 4. Course of Russian history.- M.: Mysl.-1989.-398 p.

9. Korotkova M.V. A journey into the history of Russian life. - M.: Bustard. - 2006. - 252 p.

10. Lotman Yu. M. Conversations about Russian culture. Life and traditions of the Russian nobility. - M.: Art. - 1999.-415 p.

11. Pavlenko N.I. Peter the Great and his time.-M.: Enlightenment.-1989.-175 p.

12. Politkovskaya E.V. How they dressed in Moscow and its environs in the 16th-18th centuries. - M.: Nauka. - 2004. - 176 p.

13. Pushkareva N.L. The private life of a Russian woman: bride, wife, mistress (10th - early 19th centuries). - M.: Ladomir. - 1997. - 381 p.

14. Pylyaev M.I. Old life. - St. Petersburg: Printing house A.S. Suvorin.- 1892.-318 p.

15. Suslina E.N. Everyday life of Russian dandies and fashionistas.-M.: Mol.guard.-2003.-381 p.

16. Tereshchenko A.V. Life of the Russian people. Part 1. -M.: Russian book.-1997.-288 p.

Lecture LXV111, Solovyov’s judgments//Klyuchevsky V.O. Russian history course.. part 4. M., 1910. P. 270

Klyuchevsky V.O. Op. in 9 volumes, volume 4. Russian history course. M., 1989. P. 203

Karamzin N.M. History of the Russian State: 12 volumes in 4 volumes, volume 4.t. 10-12. M., 1997. P.502

History of Russia in questions and answers./Ed. V.A.Dines, A.A.Vorotnikov. Saratov, 2000. P. 45

Lotman Yu. M. Conversations about Russian culture. Life and traditions of the Russian nobility. M., 1999. P. 6

Pavlenko N.I. Peter the Great and his time. M., 1989. P. 158

Tereshchenko A.V. Life of the Russian people. Part 1. M., 1997.S. 206

Kirsanova R.M. Russian costume and life of the 18th-19th centuries//Culturology. 2007. No. 4. P. 152

Politkovskaya E.V. How they dressed in Moscow and its environs in the 16th-18th centuries. M., 2004. P. 144

Politkovskaya E.V. How they dressed in Moscow and its environs in the 16th-18th centuries. M., 2004. P. 144

Pylyaev M.I. Old life. St. Petersburg, 1892. P. 62

Zakharova O.Yu. Secular ceremonies in Russia in the 18th and early 20th centuries. M., 2003. P. 182

Suslina E.N. Daily life of Russian dandies and fashionistas. M., 2003. P. 153

Pylyaev M.I. Old life. St. Petersburg, 1892. P. 63

Suslina E.N. Daily life of Russian dandies and fashionistas. M., 2003. P. 152

Korotkova M.V. A journey into the history of Russian life. M., 2006. P. 181

Karamzin M.K. History of Russian Goverment. T.11-12.SPb., 1853. P. 419

Pushkareva N.L. The private life of a Russian woman: bride, wife, mistress (10th - early 19th century). M., 1997. P.226

Ibid S. 227

Pushkareva N.L. The private life of a Russian woman: bride, wife, mistress (10th - early 19th century). M., 1997. P.227

Korotkova M.V. A journey into the history of Russian life. M., 2006. P. 188

Pavlenko N.I. Peter the Great and his time. M., 1989. P. 156

Georgieva T.S. History of Russian culture. M., 1998. P. 155

When implementing the project, funds from state support were used, allocated as a grant in accordance with the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 11-rp dated January 17, 2014 and on the basis of a competition held by the All-Russian public organization "Russian Youth Union"

One of the features of the 18th century in the history of Russia is the closer acquaintance of Russia with the West and the expansion of Western influence on the upper class of Russian society. If previously this influence had only seeped into Russian life, now it rushed here in a wide wave, and the two previous paths along which it was directed, from barely noticeable paths, became well-worn roads. Western literature, which previously penetrated Moscow only through translations from Polish, now began to find access to Russia in the original. Previously, the Russian book market found demand mainly for fine literature or historical stories; from the 18th century they also began to be interested in the works of major and minor representatives of European political thought. And another path of Western influence - the appearance of foreigners in Russia - began to play a much more prominent role than before. The registration and hiring of foreigners for Russian service is being practiced on an increased scale. The influx of foreigners is facilitated by family ties into which the Russian reigning house entered into with the German ruling houses. Foreigners appear in greater numbers and in a different quality. Previously, they came to Moscow as merchants, were discharged as technicians, or entered the troops as military instructors. Now many of them were taken into the civil service in the collegium, which were even forced to hire special translators on their staff, since a significant proportion of their personnel were foreigners who did not understand a word of Russian. Also new was the appearance of a foreigner as a school and home teacher. The German began to penetrate Russia not only as a merchant, technician and officer, but also as a clerk in a college and a teacher at school and at home. Many of them quickly came into use in the Russian service, and the degree of their influence is reflected in the significant percentage that falls on the share of foreign names in the “general corps”, i.e. persons of the first four classes according to the Table of Ranks left after Peter, not to mention the foreigners who became stars of the first magnitude on the Russian political horizon. But the meaning of an ordinary foreigner in the 18th century became different than before. In the 17th century, a discharged technician and officer in the Russian service or a businessman visiting Russia were only accidental and involuntary spreaders of acquaintance with the West among those few Russian people who came into contact with them. Such a foreigner often got lost in the Russian masses and, if he remained for a long time in Russia, he would rather become a channel himself than Germanize those around him. Now he becomes an influential administrator and, more importantly, an official or private, but equally obligatory and necessary teacher of that part of Russian society that was forced by the state to take a course in foreign military and civil sciences. Reading and memorizing the Book of Hours and Psalms, to which all education was previously limited, becomes insufficient, and now only the initial education remains for the rural sexton, which must be completed by a foreign teacher. Foreigners fill the Academy of Sciences, teach at the Artillery and Naval academies, and then at the Gentry Cadet Corps, and open private schools.

Remembering the school work under Peter, we should not forget that small, perhaps in size, but still noticeable educational role played by the foreigners who unwittingly came to our fatherland at that time - captive Swedes, and traces of which are more than once found in the documents of the era. Brought to the remote corners of Russia, whiling away the sad days of captivity and seeking income for themselves, these Swedes used the knowledge that had been acquired in their homeland, and thus were conductors of Western culture. “One captive officer,” says Weber, a Hanoverian resident at the St. Petersburg court, who compiled a description of Russia under Peter, “who did not know any craft, started a puppet comedy in Tobolsk, to which many townspeople flocked, who had never seen anything like it. Others, on the contrary, possessing what knowledge, they opened decent schools with several classes, in which they taught not only the children of Swedish prisoners, but also the Russian children entrusted to them, Latin, French and other languages, as well as morality, mathematics and all kinds of physical exercises. It is known among Russians that these latter send their sons from Moscow, Vologda and other localities and cities to them for education.” One of these schools was opened in Moscow by the famous Swedish captive Pastor Gluck. In 1733, a certain monk from the nobility, Georgy Zvorykin, was brought in for interrogation, involved in one of the political processes that then dragged on in an endless string; in his autobiography, which he outlined during interrogation, we meet with the educational activities of the same prisoners. From his birth, Zvorykin showed, he was 26 years old; his father served in the dragoons and was killed in service near Poltava. After the death of his father, he stayed with his mother for two years in the Kostroma district, in the village of Pogorelki. His mother taught him to read and write with the help of a neighboring sexton, and then gave him to captured Swedes, who taught him Latin and German and arithmetic. It is obvious that in the first quarter of the 18th century the same role in Russian society fell to the lot of these captured Swedes, which at the beginning of the 19th century had to be repeated by French emigrants and prisoners who remained in Russia after the campaign of 1812 and became tutors in landowner families and teachers in schools .

After Peter, the number of private educational institutions maintained by foreigners in both capitals multiplied. The famous author of memoirs that so thoroughly depict Russian morals of the 18th century, Bolotov, was sent in St. Petersburg to the Ferret boarding school at the Gentry Cadet Corps because he was considered the best of several similar ones. In his memoirs, Bolotov vividly recalls the atmosphere of this boarding house. There he met about 15 comrades living and visiting, and among the latter was also one adult girl, the daughter of some major, who was going to study French. The owner of the boarding house, who was a teacher in the cadet corps, taught his students poorly and, apparently, cared exclusively about profit. On fasting days, he kept a strict fast in the boarding house, but even on fasting days he fed the children so fast that only serf servants taken from the villages, who were in the boarding house with the young masters, helped them out by preparing cabbage soup for them in addition to the boarding dinner.

Foreigners appeared as home teachers at court from the very beginning of the 18th century, and not only in the family of Peter, but also in the house of such an old-fashioned Russian woman as the widow of Tsar Ivan Alekseevich, Tsarina Praskovya Fedorovna. Her three daughters, Ekaterina, Anna and Praskovya, studied first of all, of course, “a primer of Slovenian-Russian letters with formations of things and moralizing poems.” But they already have two foreign teachers: the German Dietrich Osterman (brother of the famous Andrei Ivanovich) and the Frenchman Rambourg, who teaches the princesses French and dancing. The customs of the court are obligatory for the aristocracy, and foreign tutors and governesses appear in the families of Peter's nobility. The customs of the aristocracy become an object of imitation among the middle and lesser nobility, become fashionable, and now, by half a century, in every somewhat sufficient noble house there is certainly a German or French teacher or educator. In Russia, demand for foreign teachers has opened up, and supply has begun to flow from the West. For the population of Western countries, a new type of waste fishing arose, all the more tempting because, without requiring any special training, it was generously rewarded. The same memoirs of Bolotov introduce us to this kind of French teacher in a manor house, as well as to his very pedagogical techniques. Having been orphaned and settled in St. Petersburg with his uncle, Bolotov had to go to the house of Chief General Maslov to take lessons from a Frenchman who was with the general’s children. “G. Lapis,” writes Bolotov, “although he was a learned man, which could be concluded from his incessant reading of French books, he did not know what to do with us and how to teach us. He tormented us only by copying articles from a large French dictionary, published by the French Academy and in which there was only an explanation and interpretation of each French word in the French language; therefore, they were for the most part incomprehensible to us. These articles, and for the most part those for which we did not have the slightest need, should We were copied, and then learned by heart without the slightest benefit for us. Then we were forced to obey the will of our teacher, and do everything that he ordered. But now I burst out laughing, remembering this kind of teaching, and how the idlers the French do not teach , but they torment our children with sheer trifles and trifles, trying to do something to pass the time.” Fashion spread, and increased demand increased the quantity of supply, worsening its quality. A foreign coachman, footman and hairdresser, who could not find work at home and often did not get along with the domestic justice system, freely found a teaching position in Russia. The phenomenon became so common that the comic writer could clearly grasp the type of German teacher from coachmen in a noble family, and Adam Adamovich Vralman appeared on stage as a well-understood and long-familiar figure. During the reign of Elizabeth, when the import of teachers from abroad was especially extensive, the government began to take measures against it and tried to require an educational qualification by establishing exams for foreign teachers. Sad results were revealed. When asked what an adjective is, one of these subjects replied that it must be a new invention of academics: when he left his homeland, they had not yet talked about it. The consideration that many landowners, not having found the best teachers, take in those “who spent their entire lives as footmen, hairdressers and other similar crafts” was one of the motives given in the decree of January 12, 1755, on the establishment of a university in Moscow .

To these two paths of Western influence, which were a foreign book in the form of a novel, and then a scientific or journalistic treatise, and a foreigner, first in the form of a military instructor, and then in the form of a teacher and tutor, since the time of Peter, a third one has joined. This was the direct acquaintance of Russian society with the West thanks to travel abroad. In the first quarter of the 18th century, almost all of the Russian noble youth were taken abroad for educational or military purposes. The educational training of the nobility now began to consist of three courses. Initial training continued to be given by the same rural sexton, the middle course was completed under the guidance of a foreign teacher, and higher education was obtained on a business trip abroad. This order was established from the very end of the 17th century. Shortly before the departure of the famous large embassy to foreign lands, in which Peter himself traveled incognito and which in its numbers was more like a whole detachment, a party of young people from the best boyar families numbering 61 people, stolniks and sleeping bags, was sent to the West, and with them were 61 ordinary soldiers, also from the nobility, were sent. Both of them were assigned to Italy and Holland to study the science of navigation. Since then, similar detachments of young nobles have been constantly sent abroad, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that there was not any noble and prominent family, at least one of whose members did not travel abroad under Peter. In 1717, in Amsterdam alone there were 69 Russian navigators. In addition to studying the science of navigation, young people were also sent for broader purposes, to study law, medicine and the fine arts. A whole detachment of clerks was sent to Konigsberg to study the procedures of the German administration. Trips abroad under Peter were so frequent that it seemed to the above-mentioned Hanoverian resident Weber that several thousand Russians were sent abroad to study. Many of the Russian nobility had to live abroad as diplomatic agents. Peter's foreign policy became much more complex; Constant and lively relations were established with Western states. Foreign ambassadors to the Moscow state were temporary guests, living briefly in Moscow, appearing only at ceremonial receptions, the rest of the time they sat almost under arrest in the embassy courtyard, surrounded by guards. From Peter, permanent ambassadors are accredited to the Russian government, who lead an open lifestyle and set the tone for St. Petersburg high society society. At the same time, the Russian government is establishing permanent embassies abroad: in Paris, London, Berlin, Vienna, Dresden, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Hamburg, attracting noble youth to diplomatic service in these centers. Finally, the wars of the 18th century were also a means of communication with the West. Since the 18th century, Russian troops entered the territory of real Western Europe for the first time, no longer limited to Poland and the Baltic Sea region. During the Northern War, Russian troops operated in northern Germany on the banks of Baltic Sea, and in the then “Vedomosti” compatriots could read the news that “both officers and privates” in these detachments “were very fair and kind, both in their guns and in their dress, and it is impossible to recognize them, so that they are not They were very foreigners, and many of them spoke German." In 1748, the consequence of the renewed Russian-Austrian alliance was the sending to the banks of the Rhine of an auxiliary Russian corps of 30 thousand people, who wintered abroad in the Austrian provinces without ever getting involved. Finally, during the Seven Years' War, when Russian troops captured Königsberg and visited Berlin, the Russian nobility who filled the army could observe Western orders for several years at their leisure between battles.

So, compulsory science, diplomacy and war forced many Russian people in the first half of the 18th century to undertake an involuntary, but very instructive journey abroad. Monuments have been preserved that make it possible to restore with sufficient completeness the psychological process that took place in this involuntary Russian traveler of the 18th century during his contact with the Western European world. Several diaries and notes have come down to us, kept abroad by the first such travelers, which well convey their immediate impressions of everything they saw in the West - impressions recorded day after day with extraordinary simplicity and sincerity. These are the notes of P.A. Tolstoy, later one of the main employees of the reform, senator and president of the Commerce Collegium, Prince Kurakin - a prominent diplomat of the era of Peter, Matveev - the future president of the Justice Collegium, Neplyuev - the future Orenburg administrator, etc.

The foreign business trip, announced in January 1697, was viewed by many of the dispatched captains as a difficult test and an unexpected misfortune. The unprecedented nature of the matter and the distance of the journey could not but cause some fear of the journey. Moreover, I had to go, if not to infidel countries, then still to countries with a Christian faith of dubious purity. The purpose of the journey was also repulsive: quiet service at the sovereign’s court in high court ranks had to be exchanged for simple sailor service under the command of foreign officers - and this was for the descendants of the most noble houses, who had never known menial official work, accustomed to occupying the position of government at the top of society. Some of these stewards had already acquired families that they had to leave. All this together could not help but cause the gloomy mood with which they left Moscow, and the heavy melancholy they experienced when parting with her. Tolstoy, one of the few hunters who voluntarily went abroad to do what was pleasing to the sovereign, having left Moscow, stood in Dorogomilovskaya Sloboda for three more days, saying goodbye to his relatives.

The abundant series of new impressions that I had to experience along the way drowned out the difficult feelings inspired by separation. Europe struck the Russian people who came to it, first of all, with its majestic appearance, which he did not see at home. Huge cities with tall stone houses, with majestic cathedrals aroused one of the first surprises after Russian cities with their completely rural, thatched huts and small wooden churches, and the traveler will certainly note in his diary, as if there was something especially remarkable in this, that the whole city through which he passed was made of stone. If he happens to visit the theater, he will write in his diary, in his precise but surprisingly unadapted language for conveying new impressions, that “he was in the great round chambers, which the Italians call theatrerum. In those chambers there were many closets (boxes) in five rows upward, and in one theater there are two hundred closets, and in another three hundred or more; and all the closets are made from the inside of that theater with wonderful gilded work.” If they show him a finished garden, he will tell him that he saw there “many herbs and fair flowers, planted in different proportions, and many fruitful trees with pruned branches, arranged architecturally, and a considerable number of likenesses of human males and females made of copper ( statues)". Art remains for such a traveler its inner side still inaccessible, without causing any aesthetic excitement in him; but works of art amaze him with the mastery of technique, and he will note that the people he saw in the paintings or the “marble girls” depicting “filthy goddesses” are made as if they were alive (Tolstoy), or, having inquired about the meaning of the monument standing in the city square, he will write down , that in the square “there is a man standing like a copper man, with a book, as a sign to him, who was a much learned man and often taught people, and this was done as a sign,” as Prince Kurakin described the monument he saw to the famous Erasmus in Rotterdam.

New interests were aroused in the soul of the Russian observer as his life abroad became longer and his acquaintance with the West more thorough. The style of Western everyday life attracted his attention with its external and internal aspects. He was amazed by the cleanliness, order and improvement of European cities, the politeness and courtesy in the treatment of their inhabitants - traits to which he was not accustomed at home. He quickly became acquainted with the "plaisirs" of European life. Our diplomatic personnel were open to attending “assemblies, festins and conversions” in aristocratic houses; visiting comedies and operas, gatherings in coffee houses and austerias became favorite leisure activities for navigators. But more serious aspects of European life also attracted the attention of the Russian observer. His surprise was caused by the extensive charitable institutions in which he could observe the manifestation of the best Christian feelings of mercy and love for one's neighbor in a Western Christian, a Christian of such suspicious purity. At every step he encountered institutions of an educational nature: academies, museums and educational institutions, which gave him an idea of ​​\u200b\u200brespect in the West for science, the significance of which in public life he, if he was not quite clearly aware, then could no longer help but feel. Other methods of education and the position of women also caused notes in diaries. “The female people in Venice,” writes Tolstoy, “are very handsome and slender, and political, tall, thin and decent in everything; but they are not very keen on manual work, they live more in the cool, they always love to walk and have fun.” The simplicity and freedom of address of representatives of the French aristocracy, unheard of at home, amazed and fascinated Matveev in Versailles and Paris. “Neither the most female sex in France,” he writes, “has any reproach at all in all honest behavior towards the male sex, as if they were men themselves, with all the sweet and philanthropic hospitality and courtesy.” Finally, the political order of Western European states, which underlay this way of life, which the Russian people liked so much, aroused a lot of sympathy in them. Tolstoy spoke with great pleasure about freedom, the stamp of which is visible on all citizens of the Venetian Republic, about the simplicity in dealing with the Doge, about the justice that reigns in legal proceedings. Matveev came to France during the heyday of absolutism under Louis XIV. But he, not without a hidden allusion to his native political order, should have noted with sympathy the absence of arbitrariness, thanks to which “the king, except for general taxes, although an autocratic sovereign, cannot commit any violence, and in particular take nothing from anyone, except through his own fault, evidenced against his person in a mortal sin, in truth judged by parliament; then, by popular law, not by royal decree, his belongings will be subject to confiscation or inventory." Frequent and arbitrary confiscation of property was a sore spot in the Russian political system of the first half of the 18th century.

These were the impressions that the Russian observer of the late 17th and early 18th centuries took with him from the West upon closer acquaintance with it. Having a strong effect on his soul, they forced it to experience a whole range of moods. Sent abroad, a Russian man of the time of Peter the Great went there with sadness about what he had to leave, and with anxiety about what awaited him in an unknown country. Upon crossing the border, the majesty of the external European situation aroused surprise in him. Even with the most superficial acquaintance with European life, he found many aspects in it that reconciled him with the West, softening the severity of separation from his homeland. As he lived abroad longer, simple initial surprise gave way to reflection with its inevitable operation of comparison, distinguishing between similar and dissimilar. The results of this comparison of one’s home environment and customs with those that one had to learn abroad inevitably led to conclusions about the superiority of many aspects of European life over one’s own, Russian one. From here, the next step was criticism of their own orders, awareness of their unworthiness and the idea of ​​​​replacing them with new ones, borrowed from the West. Thus, leaving Moscow with anxiety and a hostile feeling towards the West, a navigator or diplomat often returned with a consciousness of its superiority.

Since the second quarter of a century, in the generation of children of these involuntary travelers, voluntary travel to the West has been developing and increasingly becoming fashionable for the same reasons for which it is undertaken to this day: completion of education, satisfaction of curiosity, treatment in foreign resorts, and finally, the pleasure of oneself trips. Improvement western city, the comfort of European life, refined morals, shows and entertainment, and then Western libraries, museums and universities - these were the lures that pulled the Russian traveler to the West. It is not for nothing that the decree of 1762 on the freedom of the nobility spoke in such detail about the opportunity for nobles to travel abroad, educate children there and live there as long as they want. Travel abroad became so popular and common that during the 20 years of this decree, the dry and narrow moralist, court preacher Savitsky, considered it necessary to arm himself against this phenomenon, which he considered a harm to Orthodoxy. “Are there many,” he exclaimed in a sermon delivered on July 4, 1742, “have spent even a penny on learning Orthodoxy? Very few! And many thousands have been thrown into learning dancing, horse riding, games, different languages, and traveling through foreign lands.” lands." Fashion gives rise to passions and goes to extremes, and the young man, a savage in his inner qualities, a blind admirer and funny imitator of Western appearance, sighing and yearning for Paris, where only one can live, became for a long time a favorite type of Russian satire and comedy. “Madame, you delight me,” says the son in “Brigadier,” declaring his love to his adviser, “we were created for each other; my whole misfortune consists only in the fact that you are Russian!” “This, my angel, is, of course, a terrible death for me,” the adviser answers. "This is so defaut [ disadvantage (fr.)], which nothing can make up for, continues the son. - Give me freedom. I do not intend to die in Russia. I will find a favorable occasion [ favorable occasion (fr.)] take you to Paris. There are the remains of our days, les restes de nos jonrs [ remnants of our days (French)], we will have the consolation of spending time with the French; there you will see that there are, among other things, people with whom I can have societe [ society, (French)]". Comedy, of course, is a very dangerous historical source: it shows a phenomenon in an exaggerated form, bringing its outlines to a caricature; but it still bases the caricature on the actual outlines. A trip abroad, on which at the beginning of the century had to be sent by force, In half a century it became one of the most beloved pleasures.

Western books, foreigners in Russia and Russians abroad - these were the conductors of Western influence in the first half of the 18th century. How did this influence affect the Russian nobility? In this meeting of the Russian and the Western, at first there was a lot that was unnecessary and immature, caricatured and funny. But there were also valuable acquisitions. The most valuable thing was the opportunity that opened up for ideological communication with enlightened countries, the custodians of the fruits of long-term mental work, and the possibility of borrowing from there the universal humanity that these Western fruits contained. If you look, you can find some stock of Western ideas already in Russian society in the first half of the 18th century. Acquisitions of scientific thought began to gradually penetrate into Russia. In general, the ideas of political philosophy found greater access to Russian society in this area. The successes that political thought achieved in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries coincided with an increased interest in political issues in the Russian people of the era of Peter, who had to be eyewitnesses and participants in the transformation of the entire political system, undertaken on such a wide scale. Peter's legislation reflected admiration for reason as the source and basis of politics; in the political treatises of Feofan Prokopovich, in the debates of noble circles discussing issues of state law in 1730, it is easy to notice concepts inspired by rationalist theory. Natural law, the state of nature, the contractual origin of the state - all this baggage of Western political thought of the 17th century is here. One should not, however, exaggerate the size of this ideological influence: it was very superficial. Ideas have not yet found suitable soil in Russia, prepared by long and persistent educational work. But only under such a condition do they enter flesh and blood, become an essential part of the body, form an integral worldview, regulate behavior, subjugate habits and transform into instincts. Otherwise, they remain an unproductive and volatile filling of the head, quickly evaporating. That's why and political ideas, which sparkled in 1730, quickly disappeared from our heads, being nothing more than an element accidentally brought there. Only very slowly and slowly will the results of Western thought make their way into Russian life and change it. But the guarantee of their future success can be seen in that sometimes still vague sense of respect for the West, which began to emerge among us in the 18th century. They began to recognize the superiority of his enlightenment, and sought to imitate his institutions and practices. Peter's reforms, carried out according to Western models, were valued by contemporaries as introducing Russia to the family of Western nations. “Your Majesty,” one of the diplomats of his time, Prince G.F. Dolgorukov, once wrote to Peter, “having mercy on the people of your state, deign to constantly work restlessly so that one of the former Asian customs to learn and teach how all Christian peoples in Europe behave." The same idea was expressed to Peter by the Senate in its greeting on the occasion of presenting him with the imperial title, saying that thanks to Peter's activities, the Russians were "added into the society of political peoples." The Western structure and relations received the value of a good example.During the well-known discord of the Supreme Privy Council with the nobility in 1730, the head of the council, Prince D.M. Golitsyn, trying to attract the favor of the nobility, included in the text of the oath he then compiled, which was supposed to have the meaning of a constitutional charter, paragraph , where the imperial power promised to keep the nobility in the same “consideration” as happens in Western countries. The horizons of the Russian observer expanded. The opportunity arose to compare one’s own with someone else’s; a noticeable critical attitude towards native reality developed back in the 17th century. Unattractive aspects This reality often aroused shame for it in front of the new society into which Russia has now entered. At one of the same noble meetings in the winter of 1730, at which representatives of the highest bureaucratic layer of this class gathered, heated exclamations were heard against the arbitrariness with which the political police acted in those years. Some members of the meeting indignantly declared that the existence of the Secret Chancellery, which sometimes, just for one carelessly spoken word, arrests, tortures, executes and confiscates property, depriving innocent infant heirs of all means of life - that this existence is a disgrace for Russia before Western nations. The ability to look critically at ourselves and be ashamed of our own sins and shortcomings was, perhaps, the most valuable acquisition that Russian society gained from its acquaintance with the West. The feeling of shame entailed repentance, which in turn caused a determination to abandon the wrong path and go in a new direction.

Of course, it was too early for ideas, when it was necessary to acquire familiarity with the very instrument of their dissemination - language. This acquaintance made rapid progress. No matter how bad and ridiculous the foreign teachers were, no matter how meager a stock of concepts they brought, they still did Russian society a service by teaching it at least their languages. Western books became accessible, and a foreigner ceased to be a “German” for us, i.e. a man who was silent because he was not understood. Already under Peter, one can count many cases of knowledge of foreign languages ​​in high society, especially among the younger generation. In the library book. D.M. Golitsyn has many books in foreign languages. Another associate of Peter, gr. P.A. Tolstoy himself works as a translator. Bergholz noted in his diary Russians who knew languages, and there were many of these notes. Captain Izmailov, who was sent to China, speaks German and French, as he served in Denmark for a long time. On February 16, 1722, a very noble guard guard was placed in the apartment of the Duke of Holstein; its members included: Lieutenant Prince. Dolgoruky, who spoke French well; Sergeant young prince Trubetskoy, a generally well-educated person who speaks good German; Corporal young Apraksin, a close relative of the Admiral General, who also knows German well. Book Cherkassky, a young chamberlain to the Duke’s fiancée, Princess Anna Petrovna, according to the same Bergholz, “the gentleman is very pleasant and amiable, has traveled a lot, is well educated, knows the languages ​​French and Italian thoroughly.” Of course, Bergholz's requirements for the title of an educated person are not God knows how high, but they specifically relate to manners and knowledge of languages. Gr. Golovin, the son of the late Admiral General, born in 1695, was placed in the Moscow navigation school for 11 years, then sent to Holland, then served on an English ship, speaks excellent French and English. Children gr. Golovkin received a new upbringing: the son attended lectures in Leipzig and Halle, the daughter married P.I. Yaguzhinsky, and then for M.P. Bestuzheva-Ryumina, spoke German well. The famous N.B. Sheremeteva, who left such touching memoirs, was brought up under the supervision of a foreign governess, Mlle Stauden. The entire Dolgoruky family spoke languages, since members of this family usually had a diplomatic career or grew up with relatives who were ambassadors abroad, and the most prominent of them, Prince. Vasily Lukich, according to the Duke de Liria, was a polyglot and spoke many languages ​​perfectly. An event occurred in this family that would later be common in our high society. Princess Irina Petrovna Dolgorukaya, née Golitsyna, while living abroad with her diplomat husband, converted to Catholicism. Returning as a Catholic and taking with her a certain abbot Jacques Jube, the princess came under investigation for changing her religion, and her children, princes Alexander and Vladimir, after testing at the Synod, also turned out to be doubtful in the Orthodox faith and were sent to the Alexander Nevsky Seminary for instruction in the true path. Under Peter and Anna, the German language predominated. In 1733, out of 245 Russian cadets in the then recently established Gentile Cadet Corps, 18 studied Russian, 51 French, and 237 German. But the French influence took over from Elizabeth, and the French language became the language of high Russian society. It should not be overlooked that Germany was then under French influence, the German language was suppressed by the Germans themselves, and the philosopher-king Frederick II wrote only in French. For that time, the movement towards the French language marked a step forward in the mental development of Russian society. The then undeveloped German language was the language of the technician and military instructor; subtle and flexible French - opened access to the field of philosophy and fine literature.

This assimilation of foreign languages, however, also had a downside. Firstly, it spoiled the native language, introducing many barbarisms into it. The dialogues of such admirers of the West, like the familiar adviser from “The Brigadier”, who declares that “merits should be respected” and that she is “capable of going mad” or like her admirer, who admits that he too is “characterized by Eturdery”, seem to us caricatured. But read the very interesting “The Story of the Gift of Peter Alekseevich,” written by Prince. Kurakin, a Russian diplomat of the era of Peter, where he, describing the childhood of the Tsar, says that Tsarina Natalya Kirillovna was “to rule incapabel,” and further characterizes her brother Lev Kirillovich as a man who indulged in drunkenness and, if he did good, then “without reason [, but] according to the bizarium of his humor"; or look through his no less interesting notes, where he tells how in Italy he was strongly “innamorated” during a certain “cittadina”, glorious in goodness, as a result of which he almost had a duellio with one “gentilhomme”, and you will see that the author of comedies I didn’t give my caricature too broad a scope. Perhaps no less evil than the damage to the native language was the oblivion and neglect to which it began to be subjected from the 18th century in the highest Russian society, which had completely forgotten how to speak it. “We can say,” we read in the autobiographical note compiled in French by Count A.R. Vorontsov, who at the age of 12 knew Voltaire, Racine, Corneille and Boileau from blackboard to blackboard, “that Russia is the only country where the study of native language and everything that pertains to the homeland. The so-called enlightened people in St. Petersburg and Moscow try to teach their children the French language, surround them with foreigners, hire them dance and music teachers at great expense and do not force them to learn their native language; so that this excellent education, and so expensive, leads to complete ignorance of one’s native country, indifference, perhaps even disdain for the country to which one owes existence, and attachment to everything that relates to the customs and countries of others, especially to France ". But if the lack of national studies constituted a large gap in the education of the Russian people of the 18th century, then as for the native language, he inevitably had to experience some neglect, since he did not keep up with thought and lagged behind the ideas of the time. A person brought up on Voltaire and Boileau, who became acquainted with French philosophical thought, would have found it very difficult to convey new ideas in his native language: he was too poor and clumsy for the richness and subtlety of thought that this philosophy achieved, and long and hard work on Russian was required the language of a number of writers to adapt it to this purpose. That is why educated people of the 18th century preferred to write, speak and even think in French: it was more convenient in cases where the content of these writings, conversations and thoughts were new concepts and ideas for which the native language was insufficient. This habit spoiled and plunged into oblivion the native language, but it gave access to ideas.

It was Western influence that was most accessible to Russian society and had the greatest impact on it in terms of external form and material conditions. It was quite natural. When children become close to adults, they first of all try to be like the latter in appearance; When uncultured peoples come into contact with cultural ones, they first of all adopt material culture and then, with much greater difficulty, are exposed to the influence of spiritual culture. The external environment: the home with its decoration, clothes, table, little things in everyday life, external everyday relationships and, in the first and main place, the pleasures of life - this is the content of this material element of Western influence. Its vehicle was the court, and its object was that social class for which the life of the court serves as an obligatory example. Already in the setting of the Kremlin Palace under Tsar Alexei, it was possible to point out many everyday objects of Western origin, tempting in the eyes of a true adherent of Moscow piety. Tsar Alexei loved to watch a foreign film, listen to a German organist play, and even started a German theater. Nevertheless, the step taken by his son cannot but be considered very decisive. The residence was moved far from their homes, far from the Moscow shrines, under the shadow of which the ancient kings felt calm. In the new capital, small palaces were built, decorated with foreign paintings and statues, brought from abroad by order of Peter and chosen not without taste. A new court staff was established with chamberlains and chamber cadets, and Peter’s court, according to foreign observers, became very similar to the court of a medium-sized German sovereign. The decorous ceremonial appearances of the Moscow tsars and boring ceremonial dinners in the palace, resounding with rude parochial abuse, have now been replaced by a completely new European court etiquette. True, the broad Russian nature every now and then came out of these narrow German frameworks during Christmas celebrations, when Peter, with a large noisy and drunken company, toured the houses of nobles and eminent merchants, when he performed the duties of a protodeacon at meetings of the most humorous and all-drunk cathedral, or when, celebrating the descent of the new ship, he announced publicly that he was a slacker who did not get drunk on such a joyful occasion, and after a six-hour treat, the participants in the feast fell under the table, from where they were carried out dead. But by the end of his reign, these broad scopes weakened, and Peter began to find pleasure in amusements of a more modest nature, to which he taught society. Due to the cramped palace premises, court meetings in the summer took place in the imperial summer garden, very well arranged, according to Bergholz, with properly laid out flower beds and alleys, with a grotto decorated with statues, rare shells and corals, with fountains and an organ powered by water and well who played.

At a cannon signal at five o'clock in the evening, a whole flotilla of small ships moored at the garden, bringing the invited society along the Neva. The evening began with a walk, then there were dances, for which Peter was a great hunter and in which he took on the role of manager, inventing more and more new intricate figures, some kind of “caprioli” or some kind of Kettentanz, which confused the dancers and caused general fun. The food at these court evenings was rather rude; simple vodka was served, to the great displeasure of foreigners and ladies.

In the following reigns, luxury appeared in imperial everyday life, which amazed foreigners. “Empress Anna is generous to the point of extravagance,” writes the Spanish Ambassador de Liria, “she loves pomp excessively, which makes her court surpass all other European ones in splendor.” “She loved order and splendor,” Field Marshal Minich echoes, “and the courtyard was never as well organized as with her.” The Winter Palace, built by Peter, seemed too small to her, and she built a new three-story palace with 70 rooms of varying sizes with a throne and theater halls. In the last years of Peter's reign, the entire cost of maintaining the court was about 186 thousand rubles. Under Anna, from 1733, 67 thousand rubles were spent on the court table alone. The Empress was a passionate hunter and horse lover. She rode deftly and shot accurately from a gun, not missing the bird in flight. An extensive arena was built for her and a stable staff of 379 horses and an even larger number of people were established. Court hunting, completely abolished under Peter, was enormous under Anna, and the Russian ambassadors in Paris and London, among important diplomatic affairs, had to carry out imperial orders for the purchase of entire batches of foreign hunting dogs, for which thousands of rubles were paid.

Luxury at court also infected high society. There appeared panache in clothes, open tables, and hitherto unknown expensive wines: champagne and Bourgogne. “Instead of a small number of rooms,” says Shcherbatov, “they began to have many, as evidenced by the buildings built at that time. They began to upholster these houses with damask and other wallpaper, considering it indecent to have a room without wallpaper; mirrors, of which there were very few at first, were already they began to use them in all rooms and large ones. The carriages also appreciated the splendor: rich gilded carriages with chiseled glass, upholstered in velvet, with gold and silver fringes; the best and expensive horses, rich heavy and gilded and silver curtains with silk curtains and gold or silver; also rich liveries began to be used." Another step forward, in terms of luxury, under Elizabeth. Here, according to the testimony of the same Shcherbatov, the carriages “shone with gold”, the courtyard was clothed in gold-woven clothes, “imitation of the most luxurious peoples increased, and a person became respectful (i.e., honored) in proportion to the splendor of his life and attire.” With growing splendor, art is increasingly penetrating court life, clothing luxury in graceful, elegant Western European forms. The palaces were built by the famous Rastrelli. Under Anna, Italian opera appeared at court, and under Elizabeth, stars of the first magnitude shone among the singers of this opera. Russian performances are also staged, in which the actors are the students of the Noble Cadet Corps, and the court choreographer Landet introduces grace and elegance into the decorous and ceremonial minuets, which the court society enthusiastically indulges in, and with what enthusiasm! It was necessary to have the strength of nerves characteristic of people of that time in order to withstand these endless amusements. The court masquerade in Moscow in 1731, on the anniversary of the restoration of autocracy, began on February 8 and then lasted for ten whole days. But the long-lasting court celebrations are full of decorous etiquette, and the orgies of Peter’s reign have already receded into the realm of legend. On January 2, 1751, “both noble persons of both sexes and foreign ministers, as well as all the noble nobility with surnames from the 6th to the 8th hour, arrived at the court for a masquerade in a rich masquerade dress, and gathered in the large hall, where at the 8th hour music began in two orchestras and continued until seven o'clock in the morning. Meanwhile, the tables were cleared with food and sweets for their imperial highnesses with noble persons of both sexes and foreign gentlemen ministers in special peace, and for the other persons who were in that masquerade in the hallways of the ceremonial chambers in three tables on which were placed a great many pyramids of sweets, as well as cold and hot food. In one large hall and in the state rooms in chandeliers and kragsteins, up to 5,000 candles burned, and in the masquerade there were up to 1,500 people of both sexes, all of whom, at the request of each, received different vodka and the best grape wines, as well as coffee, chocolate, tea, horchata and lemonade and satisfied with other drinks." This is how the court ball was described in the Petersburg Gazette of that time. Amusement progresses faster than other elements of social life. The sounds of ballroom music, waves of light flooding the halls, masked faces, glimpses of couples dancing - how far all this is from the church ritual of the Moscow royal court!

New forms of secular relations and new amusements were easily grafted onto Russian society, and this aspect of the reform cost the government the least effort. The nobility of the early 18th century parted with the beard and ancient dress without a heavy feeling and quite quickly, in the words of Shcherbatov, “the Russians were transformed from bearded to smooth and from long-skirted to short-skirted.” True, assemblies were introduced by force, and in the winter of 1722, when the court arrived in Moscow and an assembly was appointed in Preobrazhenskoye, it was necessary to use a threat to attract Moscow ladies and girls to it. Perhaps the forced nature of these meetings under Peter was reflected in the forced tone that reigned at them and amazed the foreigner. “What I don’t like about the assemblies,” writes Bergholz, “is, firstly, that in the room where the ladies dance, they smoke tobacco and play checkers, which causes a stench and clattering that is completely inappropriate for ladies and with music; secondly, the fact that the ladies always sit separately from the men, so that not only is it impossible to talk to them, but it is almost impossible to say a word: when they are not dancing, everyone sits as if dumb and just looks at each other friend." Compulsion to engage in this kind of entertainment even extended to the clergy, and to the black ones at that. In December 1723, a decree was issued by the first person present in the Synod on the order of assemblies in Moscow monasteries. On December 29, according to this decree, an assembly was held at the Archimandrite of the Donskoy Monastery, at which were: the President of the Synod, Archbishop Feodosius Yanovsky of Novgorod, Archbishop Leonid of Krutitsky, archimandrites of other Moscow monasteries and senior officials of the Synodal Office and the Monastic Prikaz from secular persons. The Donskoy Monastery was followed by assemblies in others. We arrived at three o'clock in the afternoon; the hosts did not forbid, as the decree of the chief present said, “to treat the guests with dinner.” This innovation in the spiritual environment caused displeasure on the part of adherents of strict morals. “Having left church services and monastic devotional rule,” Metropolitan Sylvester of Kazan later wrote in a denunciation against Theodosius, the initiator of these assemblies, “he set up samley with music and amused himself with cards and chess and amused himself insatiably. And the bishops who were in Moscow and also in the Moscow monasteries, the archimandrites, having composed a daily list, ordered the samleya to be with various fun." But in the secular environment there was no such displeasure. The assembly was to the taste of Russian society, it quickly spread, and the woman brought into society was soon freed out of shyness, she began to feel like a mistress in it. “It was pleasant for the female sex,” Shcherbatov narrates about this change, “who had almost until now been slaves in their houses, to enjoy all the pleasures of society, to decorate themselves with clothes and decorations that multiply the beauty of their faces and render their good camp; It gave them no small pleasure that they could first see with whom they were to copulate forever, and that the faces of their suitors and husbands were no longer covered with prickly beards." This rapprochement of the sexes not only softened morals, but also gave rise to new feelings and moods, not known until then. “The passion of love,” continues the same writer, “until then almost unknown in rude morals, began to take possession of sensitive hearts, and the first confirmation of this change from the action of feelings occurred!.. Oh, if the desire to be pleasant acts on the feelings wives!" The assemblies provided a place for the practice of those feelings, the theory of which was read from some translated French novel entitled "Epaminondas and Celeriana", which gave "the concept of love passion from a very tender and downright romantic side," as Bolotov experienced. “Everything that is called a good life,” he recalls about Elizabethan times, “then it was just beginning, just as a refined taste in everything was entering the people. The most tender love, only supported by tender and loving songs composed in decent verses, then first gained its dominance only over young people." By half a century, Western amusements had already penetrated into the countryside, into the estates of the landowners, and a kind of assemblies took place there, rather heavy and rude , like everyone else in the village, cards appear and minuets and country dances are danced.In 1752, the young man Bolotov, returning from St. Petersburg to his native Tula village, stopped by his son-in-law, the Pskov landowner Neklyudov, married to his older sister, and ended up with her name day. The name day was celebrated gloriously. There was a large congress of the surrounding landowners and, of course, with their families. P. M. Sumorotsky, an important neighbor with the rank of colonel, respected by the whole neighborhood, arrived and brought with him, at the request of the owner, his home orchestra of several courtyard violinists, who, in their free time from practicing art, helped the master's lackeys serve at the table. Another Sumorotsky arrived, a poor little and thin man with a “fat and beautiful” wife and three of the countless daughters of all ages that made up his family. The landowner Brylkin, “one of the simpletons who loved to smoke tobacco and sometimes drink an extra glass,” arrived, greatly annoying Bolotov with his questions. Many others arrived, whose names were not preserved by the memory of the author of the memoirs. Lunch, as befitted a solemn occasion, lasted several hours. After dinner the company indulged in amusements. The youth took up dancing, and Bolotov, sporting a blue caftan made in St. Petersburg with white split cuffs, was supposed to open the minuet, dancing in the first couple with the colonel’s daughter. The ladies sat down at the card tables, amusing themselves with some kind of game of pamphlet, the men continued the conversation over a glass. Finally, the ever-increasing revival engulfed everyone; cards and conversations were abandoned, everything began to dance. Elements of Russian culture took precedence over European culture, and the decorous Western minuet gave way to Russian, accompanied by the songs of courtyard girls and lackeys. This continued until dinner. The guests, of course, spent the night with their hospitable host and began to leave only the next day after dinner.

II
Domestic basics

A certain small stock of ideas, foreign literature and languages, European forms of life and furnishings, perhaps even new feelings - all these sparkles that appeared on the Russian nobility since the 18th century were gilded only by the upper class. Only barely noticeable flickering rays penetrated into its deep provincial layers shrouded in darkness from this brilliance. In the first half of the 18th century, this dark mass lived entirely untouched by native legends. However, if you look more closely, it is not difficult to notice the fragility, and often the dubious quality of the gilding that adorned the peaks. And here, for the most part, this easily detachable tinsel very incompletely covered the same similarities between the tops and bottoms, the same nondescript features they shared. The difference was evident only in appearance; the basis here and there was the same. This identity came from the sameness of the economic foundation on which the class rested. We must now become familiar with the influence of this economic situation. A walk through several noble estates of the first half of the 18th century will be useful for this purpose. Let's start with the large estates near Moscow.

Here is the village of Yasenevo in the Moscow district, which belonged to the Lopukhins and in 1718 was assigned to the sovereign. The inventory made regarding the confiscation allows us to get an idea of ​​the large manorial estate at that time. In the village there is a dilapidated wooden church of one dome with an ancient iconostasis. The two-story manor house, also wooden, was built from pine and spruce wood and covered with planks on four slopes. In it, in addition to the entryway and closets, there are 7 rooms, or light rooms, of which two are in the upper and five in the lower floor. The walls in some small rooms are covered with bleached linen; The windows are not all glass, some are made of mica. The furniture consisted of ordinary benches along the walls, linden and oak tables, wardrobes, a dozen simple chairs and half a dozen twisted ones upholstered in leather. The walls were decorated with icons, but besides them, the inventory counted more than 30 paintings of foreign origin (“Fryazh printed sheets”). When there are mansions there is an inevitable soapbox. The manor's courtyard, enclosed by a fence with gates intricately decorated with turned balusters, occupied almost a tithe of space. Here there was a special manor's outbuilding consisting of two small rooms and a whole series of outbuildings: a cookhouse with two "urgent" huts, a clerk's hut, a brewery with the utensils and furnishings necessary for brewing, a cellar and a glacier with a cellar, a stable with 9 stalls, a hut for a groom, two granaries. Adjoining the main yard were also: a cattle yard with sheds, stables and huts for livestock and poultry, and a “fenced” (hay) yard with two barns. A huge orchard, located on three and a half acres, with ponds and a wooden tented gazebo, approached the fence of the estate on both sides. The inventory counted in it 1800 different kinds of apple trees, many hundreds of plums and cherries. A certain aesthetic taste is also noticeable: in the garden there was a small flower bed, planted on four sides with red currants.

Here is another Moscow region also of a great gentleman, Prince. D.M. Golitsyn, a famous leader, as she was found by the inventory made in 1737, also on the occasion of confiscation. This is the village of Bogorodskoye in the south of the Moscow district on the Pakhra River, which previously belonged to the Odoevsky princes. We will not find here at all the luxury with which, according to Shcherbatov, the capital's houses began to shine. The small old manor house consists of only two light rooms. Among the decorations mentioned are images of “Cherkasy” work, perhaps taken by the prince from Kyiv, where he was governor, as well as seven paintings in black frames, one of which depicted the Battle of Poltava, and the others had “Latin letters”, which remained incomprehensible to the clerk who made the inventory. A village estate does not yet serve as a permanent place of residence for a noble gentleman, his place of residence. For him, the village is only a source of resources that feed his vast and populated estate, similar in every way to the village, but already richer decorated, estate in the capital, where he lives permanently.

For a closer acquaintance with the life of the provincial depths of the class, we will visit several provincial estates. The situation there is even simpler. Pskov landowners, according to Bolotov’s memoirs, lived very prosperously in the 50s. His son-in-law Neklyudov, on his comfortable estate, had a well-decorated house with plastered and oil-painted walls, which, obviously, was rare and attracted attention. The house was divided, as was generally the case among Pskov landowners at that time, into two halves: the living half, which was constantly occupied by the owners, and the front room for receiving guests. The estate of the author of the memoirs is more modest. The Tula nobility was noticeably smaller, especially thanks to family divisions. Large owners have fiefdoms, each including a village with several villages. But for the most part the village is fragmented among several owners, so that each owner has two or three peasant households. The village of Dvoryaninovo on the Skniga River, which consisted of only 16 peasant households, belonged to four landowners, three of them Bolotov and among these latter the author of the memoirs, Andrei Timofeevich. Three manorial estates were located right next to the village and were located not far from one another, 30 - 40 yards away. In Andrei Timofeevich’s estate, near a pond, adjacent to an orchard with hemp, surrounded by some outbuildings, there was a manor’s house. We need to get rid of the usual idea that arises in us at these last words. This dilapidated house was very small and extremely unprepossessing in appearance; one-story, without a foundation, having stood perhaps for half a century, it seemed to have grown into the ground and looked unfriendly with its tiny windows with shutters. It was also uncomfortable inside. It contained only three rooms, but of these three, one large hall was uninhabited because it was cold and not heated. It was sparsely furnished. Benches stretched along the plank walls, very blackened by time, and in the front corner, decorated with many of the same blackened icons, there was a table covered with a carpet. The other two small rooms were living rooms. In the bright coal room, a huge stove lined with multi-colored tiles spread heat. There were the same many icons on the walls, and in the front corner hung an icon case with relics, in front of which an unquenchable lamp glowed. In this room there were several chairs, a chest of drawers and a bed. Here, almost without leaving her, lived Bolotov’s mother, who was widowed. The third, communicating with the entryway, a very small room, served at the same time as a children's room, a maid's room, and a footman's room. Everything in this noble house smelled of the antiquity of the 17th century, and only the notebook of geometric drawings that appeared with the young owner was news among this ancient setting. The notes of Major Danilov preserved for us a description of the estate of one of his relatives, his great-uncle, M.O. Danilov, a fairly wealthy man: “The estate where he lived, in the village of Kharin,” writes the major, “was very impressive: two gardens, a pond and groves all around the estate. The church in the village was wooden. His mansions were high on the omshaniks, and below to the upper vestibule there was a long staircase from the courtyard; this staircase was covered with its branches by a large, wide and dense elm tree standing near the porch. All of his tall and spacious-looking mansions consisted of two residential upper rooms, standing across the entryway; in one upper room he lived in the winter, and in the other in the summer." The house of another Danilov, the brother of the previous one, in the same village of Kharin was even smaller; it also consisted of two upper rooms, but only one of them was white, i.e. living, and the other, black, served instead of a kitchen. The same type of landowner's house in the distant estate of the prince. D.M. Golitsyn, in the village of Znamensky, Nizhny Novgorod district, registered in 1737. It has two clean rooms, each with 5 windows, separated from each other by vestibules: one on the living basement, the other on the omshanik. The windows in both are mica and dilapidated. Adjacent to the clean rooms was another black one. The house is covered with shingles, and around it are the usual outbuildings: a cellar, two stables, a barn, a shed, a bathhouse with a dressing room, and also a “zemstvo hut” - apparently the estate’s office. The same are the estates in his other estates in Bezhetsky and Galitsky districts: the same two or three upper rooms on the basement and on the omshanik, the same canopy between them. This is obviously the general type of manor house of that time.

In such cramped and nondescript nests, scattered in the provincial wilderness, the provincial nobility huddled in the first half of the 18th century. However, in this era these nests were quite empty: their population was drawn from there by service. “Our neighborhood,” says Bolotov, recalling his childhood years, “was so empty then that none of the good and rich neighbors were close to us.” The noble estates were especially deserted during the long reign of Peter. The city nobleman of the 16th - 17th centuries spent at least his free time at home between campaigns. With the emergence of a standing army, which was occupied with a continuous and difficult war, such wholesale dissolutions of service people ceased; they were replaced by dismissals of individuals on short-term vacations. The Petrovsky nobleman had to part with his native fields and groves for a long time, among which his childhood passed and about which he could only retain a vague idea by the time he, outdated and decrepit, received his resignation. In 1727, a certain foreman Kropotov reported to the Senate that he had not been to his estate since 1700, i.e. a whole 27 years. Only after Peter did the nobleman’s official burden gradually weaken. His military service is becoming less and less necessary, since the rank and file of the standing regular army is replenished through recruitment from the tax-paying classes, and the nobility is needed in it only to occupy officer positions. At the same time, the introduction of the poll tax created a new duty for the nobleman, which brought his landowning importance to the fore. He became responsible to the government as a collector of poll taxes from his peasants. This new financial obligation, outweighing the military one, required the presence of a nobleman in the village, and after Peter we see a whole series of measures to facilitate and shorten the period of noble service, which contributed to the influx of nobility into their native corners. Under Catherine I, a significant number of officers and soldiers from the nobility received long leaves to monitor household economy. Under Anna, according to the law of 1736, one son from a noble family received freedom from military service to engage in agriculture. At the same time, service was limited to a period of 25 years, which, given the ingrained custom among nobles of enrolling children for service in their infancy, came very early for many.

The flow of nobility to the provinces began. But the real revival of the province owes to later measures: the law on the liberty of the nobility of 1762, which filled the province with nobility, and the laws of 1775 and 1785, which organized this provincial nobility into noble societies and attracted these societies to participate in local administration. This emptiness of the province in the first half of the century, the inability to see people of one’s own circle and to live in public interests did not pass without leaving its mark on the psychology of the landowners. They killed sociability in characters and acted in contrast to the service that developed comradely feelings and relationships in the noble circle. Lonely and rare inhabitants of the estates, free from service, ran wild, and along with the traits of cordiality and hospitality characteristic of the Slavic nature in general and widespread in the Russian nobility of the 18th century, a special type of gloomy and unsociable landowner also developed, secluded himself in his estate, never going anywhere. and did not accept anyone, immersed exclusively in the petty interests and squabbles of his serfs and worries about greyhounds and hounds. There was nowhere to go, there was no one to receive, since there were no neighbors for a long distance, and loneliness became a habit. Bolotov’s mother “lived,” in his words, “an almost solitary life in the village. Almost none of her best neighbors visited her and she went to see no one.” His uncle, a stingy and envious man, “loved to live in solitude.” The grandfather of another author of memoirs, Major Danilov, whose estate we visited, spent his days in the same solitude. “He didn’t go anywhere to visit guests,” Danilov writes about him, who remembered him well in childhood, “and I haven’t even heard of any of his neighbors, nobles equal to him, going to see him.” These character traits, generated by the environmental conditions in which the nobleman had to live, will turn out to be so strong that they will not succumb to the educational action of Catherine’s provincial public institutions, and, being inherited to descendants, will create Plyushkin of the first half of the 19th century. The gloomy and unsociable Bolotovs and Danilovs of the times of Anna and Elizabeth are akin to him: after all, these are his grandfathers and great-grandfathers.

The deserted environment surrounding the noble estate from the outside gave rise to individual unsociable characters among the nobility. The system that the landowner encountered inside the estate had even greater psychological consequences, leaving an imprint not only on individuals, but on the entire class as a whole. The basis of this system was serfdom, which regulated all its details. For half a century it made significant progress, which was given impetus by some of Peter's innovations and which was favored by the powerful position of the nobility occupied by it since 1725. Recruit sets caused brisk trade turnover with serf souls, creating a demand for purchased recruits. The poll tax drew formerly free people into serfdom, since being registered as a landowner was considered the best guarantee of regularity of payment, and erased the previous difference between two types of serfdom: peasant and serf, since both were equally taxed and found themselves equally dependent on landowner. By making the landowner responsible for the correct payment of the capitation tax, the state expanded his rights over the serfs, refusing in his favor the police and justice over the population of the estates. A large or medium-sized noble estate becomes something like a small state, a small copy of a large original. It is not for nothing that Peter’s legislation calls the landowner’s serfs his “subjects,” resorting in this case to the terminology of state law. In such a fiefdom there is a very differentiated social system. In the manor's house itself there is a large staff of court servants; in separate courtyards right there on the estate there are business people who are in charge of individual items of the landowner's economy, as well as an increasingly diversified class of specialist craftsmen who satisfy the various needs of the lordly household. Next, the class of courtyard servants, planted on arable land, the so-called backyard people, after the revision, finally mixed with the peasants; finally, the village and the villages spread around it with a peasant population on quitrent or corvee. This entire population is governed by a complex administration, headed by a clerk or chief clerk with mayors, elders and “electors” and which is not alien to representative institutions in the form of a village assembly, which sometimes has a special hut for its meetings in the master’s courtyard. In most cases, customary law applies in the fiefdom, but since half a century, quite a variety of written codes and charters have appeared - the constitutions of these small states. Of course, the highest law on the estate is the will of the master, who does not hesitate to violate ancient customs and the constitutions he himself established. This is the order in large and medium-sized estates. Small-scale owners, as far as they can, imitate large ones.

Relations with neighbors raised questions of foreign policy in these states. These relations were often not smooth, especially due to the lack of properly established land surveying - disputes constantly arose with recourse to the courts, and each large estate certainly had its own “man of the order”, a lawyer from the serfs, long-term practice and in handling cases acquired legal experience and knowledge of the laws, in which he could compete with clerks. Sometimes the landowner himself acted in the legal field, having a taste for court cases, which gave him mental work in the absence of any other. Prince Shcherbatov recalls one of his short-lived ancestors, who “went” to court not only for his own affairs, but also conducted other people’s litigations on behalf of him. The trials dragged on endlessly and, along with greyhounds and hounds, represented the most interesting topic for conversation among the rural nobility, helping to fill the emptiness and boredom of a solitary life. Litigation became a passion in other cases, and great hunters and hunters of litigation appeared, at whose services wise legal advisers also appeared, inciting litigation. In 1752, the Empress announced to the Senate that she was extremely displeased to hear about the ruin and oppression of her subjects from the “snitch-tellers.” The decree also provided a specific portrait of such a snitch. It was a certain Prince Nikita Khovansky, a retired ensign of the Life Guards, a religious and political freethinker and a quarrelsome person: he left his wife, did not go to confession for 12 years in a row, called high-ranking persons fools and gloated about the fire in the Moscow palace, witty that the empress was being persecuted elements: water (flood) drives it from St. Petersburg, and fire from Moscow. The decree ordered Prince Nikita to give up legal studies and not to give any advice or instructions to anyone on business, for fear of confiscation of movable and immovable property, threatening the same penalties for his clients who would openly or secretly turn to him for advice. For his atheism and harsh language at the wrong time, the witty lawyer paid with whips and exile, first to a monastery for repentance, and then to his villages.

But with all the love for processes among the nobility, the more impetuous and ardent natures did not have the patience to wait for the end of litigation, and they, by vocation as military people, preferred to resolve misunderstandings that arose by open battle. Thus, neighboring fiefdom states entered into hostilities against each other, and private wars took place in a completely medieval spirit. Here are examples. In 1742, the wealthy Vyazma landowner Griboyedov, at the head of a detachment of servants with spears and clubs, attacked the estate of the landowner Bekhteeva at night, drove out the landowner and settled in the conquered estate. In 1754, three Oryol landowners, the Lvov brothers, all people with ranks: councilor, assessor and cornet, launched a campaign against their neighbor, Lieutenant Safonov. With the help of relatives, the Lvovs assembled an army of 600 peasants and serfs. The performance was solemn. Two priests served a prayer service with the blessing of water, and everyone venerated the image; then the landowners made parting speeches to the army, encouraging them and encouraging them to “have an unyielding fight” and not betray each other. To boost their warlike spirit, the best peasants were given a glass of vodka, and the army set off. The landowners and clerks rode on horseback, the peasants followed on foot. Approaching carefully the enemy peasants busy in haymaking and taking them by surprise, the Lvovs attacked them from the forest. A bloody battle took place. 11 people were killed, 45 seriously wounded, 2 missing. In the same year, the Moscow region patrimony of General Streshneva, the village of Sokolovo, was at war with the Prince’s patrimony near Moscow. Golitsyn, with the village of Yakovlevsky. The first serfs, numbering 70 people, armed with guns, clubs and broadswords, under the leadership of the headman and one of the servants, attacked the Yakovlev peasants and, capturing 12 people, brought them to Sokolovo and put them in cellars. In this age of female reigns, even ladies, wives and daughters of service people, showed warlike inclinations and discovered strategic talents. In 1755, the Poshekhon landowner Pobedinskaya, at the head of her serfs, fought with two neighbors, landowners Fryazin and Leontiev, who, having apparently concluded an alliance with each other, attacked her people. The battle ended in defeat and even death of both allies. In other estates, armed, uniformed and military-trained detachments were formed from courtyard people to protect against the then frequent attacks on the estates of robber gangs. These detachments were also used in internecine wars.

Built on serfdom, which permeated its entire internal structure and was reflected in external relations, the estate served as the setting in which the nobleman received his initial education. It was a bad pedagogical environment, and serfdom played a sad role not only for peasant psychology. The serfdom relationship between the subject of law - the landowner - and its object - the serf - was legally very changeable: almost every five years more and more new laws appeared that changed the essence of this relationship, which is therefore so difficult to grasp for legal definition. But the moral influence of serfdom was a very constant and very definite phenomenon. With its legal weight this right fell on the object, but morally it equally spoiled both - both the object and the subject. It put a stamp on the peasant who had long been a weak-willed instrument in the wrong hands, which has not completely been erased from him, perhaps even to this day. It belittled his personality and made him cast a distrustful and fearful glance around him from under his brows. It killed his energy in work and, perhaps, to a large extent it also introduced dull notes into the song that accompanies his leisure hours. But serfdom had an equally detrimental effect on the landowner.

Firstly, it spoiled his character by not placing any checks on his will. The will, which was the law for so many others, became accustomed to forgetting boundaries, becoming unbridled arbitrariness. It was practiced on powerless serfs and then manifested itself on powerless free people. In the estate of a large master, in addition to the courtyard servants, there is a special staff of hangers-on from distant and poor relatives or from small neighbors, serving as targets of the lordly wit or instruments of lordly fun, which take on a rude character and immediately turn into violence. Through the mouth of their deputy in Catherine's commission, the noblemen of the Tambov province bitterly complained about the constant grievances that they, small people, had to bear from their noble neighbors. The deputy passionately rebelled against the abolition of corporal punishment for nobles. Without these punishments, he said, “it is impossible for nobles to refrain from violence in the future due to the freedom they have been shown. But, most honorable assembly,” the deputy continued, “I don’t dare to talk about other provinces, but what about Voronezh and Belgorod, I boldly assure: wherever "Is the residence left peaceful without oppression and insults from the noble nobility? There really is not a single one, which is also proven in representations from society."

Secondly, serfdom was destructive for the nobleman in that, giving him free labor in abundance, it weaned his will from energy and constancy. It provided him with harmful leisure for an idle mind, which had nothing to occupy it with and which sought employment in everything, anything, but not in what it should be busy with. In the service, the nobleman became less and less needed, and agriculture, built on serf principles, interested him only in the result, i.e. the amount of income, and not the process, i.e. means of obtaining it, because unfree labor made this process tiresomely monotonous, intractable to any movement and incapable of any changes or improvements. The situation in which the nobleman found himself, freed from service and not taking an active part in agriculture, reduced his energy and weaned him off any serious work. That is why the landowner class turned out to be even less efficient than the serf peasantry. True, the free noble mind, not occupied with obligatory work, sometimes sparkled with surprisingly bright sparks, but the lack of endurance and constancy in work prevented these rare sparks from gathering into a flame that gave a constant, even, useful and productive light. The nobleman was never a guild worker in any way, sometimes acting as a brilliant amateur. This psychology will acquire fatal significance for the class when changing circumstances require persistent and hard work from everyone amidst aggravated economic struggle. It will be the least adapted in this struggle.

Serfdom extended its influence beyond the boundaries of the landowner class, being, obviously, the central node that determined the entire structure of private, public and even state life. The habits and relationships developed in the main economic unit, which was the serf estate, were reflected in the entire state and social system, and the economic basis determined in this case the forms of the upper floors of the hostel, its legal appearance and its spiritual content. In fact, a complete correspondence can be seen between the original economic unit and the vast state organism. If the serf patrimony was a small state, then the state, for its part, was very reminiscent of a large serf patrimony. It took Peter the Great a lot of work and effort to wean his contemporaries from this view of the state and to implement new political ideas, according to which the sovereign should not be the master-patrimonial owner, but the first servant of the social union pursuing the goals of the common good. However, the reality of life turned out to be stronger than the new ideas with which it was covered and noticeably showed through them everywhere. The entire social structure of the state from top to bottom bore the stamp of serfdom, since all social classes were enslaved. In the institutions, despite their complete transformation, a lot of patrimonial antiquity remained. The very imperial court of the times of Anna and Elizabeth, arranged according to Western models, striking even foreigners with its brilliance and splendor, serving as a conductor of European tone in Russian society, was still, in essence, a vast landowner’s estate. Both named empresses were typical Russian landowners-serfs of the 18th century. One could not fall asleep without listening to the coming sleep of some terrible story about robbers, and for these stories there was a special staff of especially talkative women, masters of writing and telling different stories; another drove her foreign cook into despair with her open preference for cabbage soup and boiled pork, kulebyak and buckwheat porridge over all foreign dishes. When Anna was free from court ceremonies and government affairs, she liked to spend her time in her bedroom among jesters and hangers-on, wearing a spacious house bonnet and tying her head with a scarf. The ladies-in-waiting of her court, like simple hay girls in every manor's house, sat at work in the room next to the bedroom. Bored, Anna opened the door to them and said: “Well, girls, sing!” And they sang until the empress shouted: “Enough!” She sent the ladies-in-waiting who were guilty of something and caused her displeasure to wash their clothes in the laundry yard, i.e. dealt with them in the same way as they did in the manor’s estate with the courtyard girls. The private environment of the sovereign still differed little at court from state institutions. The foreigner, Elizabeth's cook, Fuchs, was awarded the high rank of brigadier, and the Russian charge d'affaires in Paris, negotiating with the French government, was at the same time obliged to select and purchase silk stockings of a new style for the empress and find a cook to serve under Razumovsky.

In this huge estate, with such a vast and richly arranged manorial estate in the center, the nobility occupied a place similar to that in a private estate occupied by a special class of serfs - “courtyard people”. It was not for nothing that before Peter the nobility were officially called “slaves” in their addresses to the sovereign. Much more profound than the legal analogy, there was a moral similarity here, and in the relations of the nobility to the supreme power there was much inspired by serfdom. We should not forget that the nobility, in comparison with other classes of Russian society, had to experience the double effect of serfdom. Other classes were only objects of this right; the nobility was exposed to its influence both as an object and as a subject: as an object because it was enslaved by compulsory service, being one of the serf classes; as a subject because it was the owner of the serfs. And so, into the relationships that arose from serfdom of the first kind, it introduced many features borrowed from relationships of the second kind. The nobility unwittingly modeled its serf relations on the model of the relations of its own serfs towards him. Arbitrariness directed downwards surprisingly somehow manages to combine in the same soul with servility directed upwards, so that there is no more servile creature than a despot, and no more despotic than a slave.

Too often this word “slave” appears in the first half of the 18th century in official expressions of the relations of the nobility to the supreme power, appearing in place of the word “slave” just expelled by Peter and showing how tenacious actual relations are contrary to the law. You will meet it both in a judicial verdict and in the language of a legislator, diplomat and military man. In 1727, the famous Peter the Great's chief of police, Devier, was sentenced to whipping and exile because, among other things, he did not give “slavish respect” to one of the princesses, Anna Petrovna, and allowed himself to sit in her presence. In the verdict against one of the prominent leaders, Prince V.L. Dolgoruky, it was said that he was exiled to distant villages “for many of his unscrupulous, disgusting actions towards us and our state, and that he, without fear of God and His Last Judgment and neglecting the position of an honest and faithful slave, dared”, etc. In 1740, a decree on noble service was issued, which declared that the previous decree of 1736 on the 25-year term of this service applied only to those nobles “who served faithfully and decently for 25 years, as faithful slaves and it behooves honest sons of the fatherland, and not those who by any means escaped direct service and sought to waste time in vain." In a dispatch from Vienna, the Russian envoy to the Austrian court, Lanchinsky, wrote: " Slavishly reasoning, that the latest decree clearly and repeatedly ordered me to leave... I could not pay attention to their (Austrian ministers) suggestions: not mine slave business to intervene in something that Your Majesty deigned to leave to yourselves to consider." In 1749, Chancellor Bestuzhev submitted a report to the Empress regarding his clash with Count Kirill Razumovsky's tutor Teplov, and in this report he touched upon the incident at the farewell dinner given by the English ambassador Lord Gindford. Lord, Having poured “pokola” to everyone, he made a toast to the empress’s health, and wished “that Her Imperial Majesty’s prosperous reign would continue for more years than in that pokal of drops; then everyone drank it, but only (the master of ceremonies) Veselovsky did not want to drink, but he poured out a spoon and a half or so with water, and stood stubbornly in front of everyone, although the chancellor, out of jealousy of Her Majesty and out of shame before the ambassadors, in Russian and said that he should drink this health in full, like faithful slave, and because Her Imperial Majesty showed him a lot of mercy by rewarding him from a small rank to such a noble one." Field Marshal S.F. Apraksin, in a report on the Battle of Gross-Jägersdorf, indicating the exploits of individual generals, made the following conclusion: "In a word, All your Imperial Majesty's subjects in the army entrusted to me during this battle, each according to his rank, behaved as slave position the empress demanded them in nature." The number of such extracts could be multiplied indefinitely.

In the appearance of this term “slave” in place of the former “slave” one cannot help but see even some loss for the nobility: in the word “slave” there is somehow more indication of a service relationship, while in the word “slave” there is more indication of lack of rights in relation to Mr. However, the very legislation of Peter, which banished the first term, indirectly authorized the use of the second. Allowing dangerous synonyms, it applied the term of state law to the phenomenon of private law, to serfs, calling them landowners subjects. It is not surprising that, on the contrary, the relations of state law, when mixing concepts, began to be clothed in private terms. If slaves were called subjects, then subjects were called slaves. And these expressions were not an empty verbal form; they were completely true. It is difficult to imagine a more proud and powerful nobleman than the famous Volynsky; in the gubernatorial position he was an unlimited satrap. And read in his exculpatory report the story about How Peter the Great beat him - this is exactly the tone of a courtyard man humiliatingly talking about the master. “His Majesty,” writes Volynsky, “soon deigned to come from the admiral’s ship to his own; although it was night then, he nevertheless deigned to send for me and here, in anger, beat me with a cane... But although I endured, it was not so, how I, a slave, should have endured from my sovereign; but he deigned to punish me, like a merciful father of his son, with his own hand...” Among the punishments in the lord’s courts, among other things, exile from the lord’s eyes was practiced, where the culprit held any prominent position. position, to distant villages; The same exile to distant villages befell the court nobles. The servant did not have his own property, all his goods belonged to the master; and what was less guaranteed and durable in the 18th century than noble property, movable and immovable, which could be subject to confiscation at any moment?

The nobility was sometimes clearly aware of the unsightly nature of their relationship to the supreme power and, at the opportune moment, spoke about them quietly with bitter frankness. In 1730, an anonymous note passed through the hands of the nobles gathered in Moscow, who were heatedly discussing the issue of changing the state structure, expressing fear that with the establishment of the power of the Supreme Privy Council, instead of one monarch, there would become ten of them. “Then we, the gentry,” the note said, “will be completely lost and will be forced to suffer worse than before.” idolatry"But, realizing the unsightliness of relations, the nobility did not know how to rebuild them. The most developed and defiant in terms of nobility, official position and property, part of it in the same 1730 made an attempt to take a more independent and honorable position, providing it with the participation of noble representation in the form of a special noble chamber of deputies in the highest state administration; but this attempt was defeated by the resistance of the overwhelming number and loud cry of the noble democracy, which preferred material, property and service benefits from the hands of the supreme power to political independence and honor. The sense of personal honor inherent in any Western aristocracy was somehow little understood by the Russian nobleman of the 17th and first half of the 18th centuries.At the top of this class there was a highly developed sense of family honor, which was expressed in localism and due to which the nobleman, who did not see anything humiliating in calling himself a serf, in signing with a diminutive name, in corporal punishment, felt humiliating for himself to take a place at the table next to a fellow nobleman, whom he considered, however, not noble enough for this neighborhood. But the monarchs themselves had to teach the nobility a sense of personal honor. Peter removed diminutive names from use. Catherine announced to the nobility that nobility is not a special type of service, but titre d’honneur, i.e. an honorary title resulting from merit to the state. This was not news except for Prince Shcherbatov; For the majority of yesterday's serfs, these words of the empress were some kind of light of revelation, and they referred to them at the right time and in the wrong way. But while such concepts were instilled from the height of the throne, among the landowners who gathered in the districts for the elections of deputies to the commission on the Code, some, under the instructions to the deputies, apparently, not without pride, signed up with the rank of court “lackey”, and not to them Of course, I had to think about an independent and honorable position. This is how serfdom repaid the nobility for the benefits that this right gave them. It spoiled the characters of individuals and was the cause of the humiliating position of the class. It represented the old home base with which the new Western ideas had to enter into a long and stubborn struggle. This struggle began already in the second half of the 18th century.

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bogoslovsky (1867-1929) - Russian historian. Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1921; corresponding member since 1920).