WEDDING FAMILY IN SEARCH OF SOVEREIGNTY

Previously, early marriages were typical for Russia. Historians noted that in the 16th-17th centuries, “Russians got married very early. It happened that the groom had from 12 to 13 years ... It rarely happened that a Russian remained unmarried for a long time ... ". Gradually, the age of marriage increased. By a decree of 1714, Peter I forbade noblemen to marry before they were 20, and to marry before they were 17, and by decree of Catherine II (1775) it was forbidden for all classes to marry men under 15, women under 13; in case of violation of the decree, the marriage was dissolved, and the priest was deprived of his dignity. Later, the lower limit of marriageable age increased even more. In accordance with the imperial decree of 1830, the minimum age for marriage was raised to 16 for the bride and 18 for the groom. However, the peasants and the lower strata of the urban population often turned to the spiritual authorities for permission to marry off their daughter at an earlier age. The main motive was the need to have a worker or mistress in the house. Even by the beginning of the 20th century, marriage in Russia remained quite early. More than half of all brides and about a third of grooms in European Russia were under 20 years old.

Even at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, marriage in Russia was almost universal. According to the first general census of the population in 1897, at the end of the 19th century. by the age of 50, almost all men and women were married, the proportion of the population who had never been married in the age group of 45–49 years was significantly lower than in Western Europe.

Pre-revolutionary Russia almost did not know divorce, the marriage union was concluded for life and practically could not be terminated. Divorce was considered by the church as the gravest sin and was allowed in exceptional cases. The only grounds for divorce could be the "unknown absence" and "deprivation of all rights of state" of one of the spouses. Nevertheless, as social conditions changed, the gradual emancipation of women, already in pre-revolutionary times, views on the values ​​of matrimony and attitudes towards divorce changed. But these changes affected mainly the elite segments of the population, official divorces were very rare. In 1913, out of 98.5 million Orthodox in Russia, only 3,791 marriages were annulled.

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries (1896–1905), the share of remarriages in the total number of marriages was approximately 14% for men and 8% for women. As a result, every man and every woman who lived to marriageable age and married (one or more times) lived in marriage for an average of a quarter of a century.

What was this quarter-century of marriage?

S. Solovyov in his “History of Russia from Ancient Times”, describing the ancient Russian family order, noted that “the relationship of a husband to his wife and parents to children in ancient Russian society was not particularly soft. A person who did not leave the tribal guardianship became a husband, that is, they united with him a being that was not familiar to him before, with whom he was not used to meeting before as a free being. The young man after the crown met for the first time with a weak, timid, silent being, who was given to him in full power, which he was obliged to teach i.e. to beat, even if politely according to the rule of Domostroy.

Russia has long tried to somehow limit forced marriages. Solovyov cites a 17th-century patriarchal decree instructing priests to “strongly interrogate” grooms and brides, as well as their parents, “whether they marry each other out of love and consent, and not out of violence or bondage.” Lomonosov urged "crowning priests to firmly confirm that they, having heard somewhere about an involuntary combination, would not allow it." But in fact, even in the 19th century, young people very often entered into marriage at the choice of their parents. Moreover, although marriage has always been understood as an intimate union of a man and a woman, when concluding a marriage, economic and social considerations most often came to the fore.

In a patriarchal family, a woman was seen primarily as a family worker - the ability to work was often the main criterion when choosing a bride. There was no going back after the marriage, it remained to live according to the old formula: "be patient - fall in love."

The family was not the environment in which an independent, individualized human personality could develop. Man for the family this is the principle on which patriarchal family relations have been based from time immemorial.

But something shifted in the second half of the 19th century. Habitual family relationships ceased to satisfy people, family members began to "rebel". It was then that the hidden conflict of a large and small family, "work" and "life" came to the surface. The patriarchal family is in crisis.

This crisis first of all affected the urban strata of Russian society, which previously also built their family relations according to models close to peasant ones. Russian literature of the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries is filled with references to this crisis - from L. Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" or A. Ostrovsky's "Thunderstorm" to articles by unknown or forgotten authors in scientific and journalistic publications.

The confrontation between the old and the new split Russia more and more, and the line of this split went through every family.

How the kings of the new dynasty tried to make a European capital out of a medieval city

In the 17th century, elegant temples of Russian patterning, the first water supply system and a stone bridge appeared in Moscow. And the 17th century became a rebellious century, when small and large uprisings in the city were replaced by devastating fires. Let's see how the Romanovs' Moscow looked like during this difficult time for them.

Bricklayers at work.
Book miniature of the 16th century

Where Moscow began and ended

By the time Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov began to reign, Moscow had already become a major metropolis. Travelers compare the capital with Paris, London and Constantinople. Moscow seems to them larger than it is, due to the impressive distances and randomly built buildings. There is no single development plan, and most of the urban space is occupied by gardens, kitchen gardens and wastelands. Moscow looks like a village.

“... most of the houses have vast wastelands and courtyards, very many houses are also adjacent to vegetable gardens, fruitful gardens, and, in addition, they are separated from each other by quite extensive meadows, interspersed with countless, one might say, churches and chapels; consequently, it does not have such a multitude of people as some believed, deceived by its vastness in appearance.

A. Meyerberg, Austrian envoy.

"Journey to Muscovy by Baron Augustine Mayerberg"

The population of Moscow was mainly townspeople - artisans and merchants. Their courtyards divided the city into settlements, of which there were about 140 by the 17th century. Each settlement had its own specialization: blacksmiths lived in one, tanners in another, potters in the third, and masons in the fourth.

Like other medieval cities in Europe of that time, Moscow was built up according to the radial-ring principle. In the center was the Kremlin - the princely palace with churches, surrounded by a moat and a wall. Trade and craft settlements crowded around the Kremlin and were connected by a grid of streets. The streets were interrupted by fortifications that ringed the city from the center to the outskirts - the farther from the Kremlin, the wider. Circular streets were arranged along the protective walls.

One of the Moscow settlements on an engraving of the 17th century

Bricklayers at work. Book miniature of the 16th century

"Plan of Sigismund" - a map of Moscow, compiled by the Poles in 1610

Moscow consisted of four rings: the Kremlin, Kitay-gorod, White and Zemlyanoy cities. Such a layout in the Middle Ages had its advantages: if the enemy takes the Earthen City or the fire destroys all the wooden houses, they will be stopped by the next line of stone walls. But the further we go from the Middle Ages, the less sense it makes to build a city in a ring. Fortress walls are losing their importance, and maintaining them is expensive.

In the 17th century, the Kremlin lost its defensive significance and turned into a ceremonial royal residence.

What Moscow looked like: houses, chambers and churches

The basis of the city in the 17th century was wooden, and this feature will remain in Moscow until the 19th century. But gradually more and more stone churches and chambers are being built. They are crowded into the territory of Kitay-Gorod and the White City - the wealthy shopping districts of Moscow.

A typical residential building in the 17th century is wooden, with one or two floors. During the construction of houses in craft settlements, the same technology was used. The carpenters connected the logs-crowns into a log house, covered it with a roof made of timber and cut through small light windows. Glass production had not yet been established in the 17th century, so window openings were covered with mica or oiled canvas.

A finished log house with windows and a roof was called a cage. The cage was placed on the ground or another log house - basement. The basement was used to store food and belongings. The dwelling - the upper room - was located at the top. If the house became cramped, a new cage was attached to it. According to this principle, not only residential buildings were built, but also wooden princely palaces.

Streets of Moscow in the 17th century in an engraving by Adam Olearius

The princely palace in Kolomenskoye, the largest wooden building in Moscow of the 17th century, consisted of log cabins.

Chambers of the Romanov boyars in Zaryadye

Stone chambers of boyars and merchants can be counted on the fingers. Thanks to durable material, some have survived to this day: the chambers of the Romanov boyars and the old English court in Zaryadye, the chambers of Averky Kirillov on Bersenevskaya Embankment and Simeon Ushakov in Ipatiev Lane.

The chambers of merchants, boyars and princes differed from the houses of artisans not only in building material, but also in size and furnishings. Chambers were built in two or three floors. The first tier, almost without windows, was still used as a warehouse. On the second floor there was a refectory, a library and living quarters for the male half of the house. The third floor was reserved for women. There was a room with large windows for doing needlework - a room - and, of course, bedrooms.

Church of the Holy Trinity
in Nikitniki - an exemplary temple
in pattern style

The churches were the first and tallest stone buildings in Moscow. Their number was amazing even at the entrance to the city. The domes, shining in the sun, lined up along the horizon and towered above the rest of the buildings.

“There are a lot of churches, chapels and monasteries in the Kremlin and in the city; inside and outside the city walls there are more than 2,000 of them, since now each of the nobles, who has some property, orders himself to build a special chapel; most of them are made of stone. Stone churches are all inside with round vaults.

Adam Olearius, German traveler.

"Description of a journey to Muscovy and through Muscovy to Persia and back"

In the middle of the century, instead of massive temples with thick walls, architects began to build elegant churches in the patterned style. The facades are decorated with multi-colored tiles, traditional kokoshniks and so far unusual elements of Western European architecture, which masons spied on engravings. Architects follow strict church canons less and experiment more.

The pattern was the first step towards the secularization of architecture. In the 80s of the 17th century, the appearance of churches changed again, and a new style, the Naryshkin style, came to replace the patterned one. It is used in construction at the royal court and in houses close to the court of nobles. The name of the style is due to the fact that the boyars Naryshkins were the customers of its most striking monuments.

Donkey ride. Engraving from the book of Adam Olearius

Church of the Holy Trinity in Nikitniki - an exemplary temple in the style of patterned

Church of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin in Fili

The composition of the building becomes symmetrical, all tiers tend to the central axis. The skill of masons is growing - now they think not only about decoration, but also about a holistic impression of the building.

The metropolitan buildings in the Naryshkin style will be replaced by the Peter the Great baroque, but this will be only at the beginning of the next century.

How Moscow lived: urban disasters, life and entertainment

The 17th century is a time of uprisings, fires and epidemics. Settlements burned at least 10 times in a century, there were constant infections with dirty water from the channels of the Moscow River, and the infrastructure was not developed enough to prevent disasters. Tsars Mikhail Fedorovich and Alexei Mikhailovich begin to equip the city according to the European model.

The water supply was arranged in the Vodovzvodnaya (Sviblova) tower, which received water
from Moscow river

Infrastructure

The first plumbing in the Kremlin was designed by the Englishman Christopher Galovey in 1631-1633. Up to this point, the Kremlin was supplied by water carriers and a primitive gravity water supply system. Now water is supplied to the lower tier of the Water Tower by gravity, and the water-lifting machine pumps it into the tank of the upper tier of the tower. From there, water flows through pipes to the gardens and palaces of the Kremlin.

The water supply was arranged in the Vodovzvodnaya (Sviblova) tower, the water to which came from the Moscow River

A. M. Vasnetsov. The Rise of the Kremlin. All Saints Bridge and the Kremlin at the end of the 17th century. In 1680, the brick walls of the Kremlin were painted white with lime.

The first stone bridge in Moscow took 40 years to build and was solemnly opened in the 1680s. It was called All Saints, later - Big Stone. Its wooden predecessors were temporary: they were disassembled along with winter frosts and spring floods, and then reassembled. "Live" bridges surprised visitors.

“The bridge near the Kremlin, opposite the gates of the second city wall, arouses great surprise, it is even, made of large wooden beams, fitted one to the other and tied with thick ropes of linden bark, the ends of which are attached to the towers and to the opposite bank of the river. When the water rises, the bridge rises, because it is not supported by pillars, but consists of boards lying on the water, and when it decreases, the bridge also falls.

Paul of Aleppo, Archdeacon of the Orthodox Church of Antioch.

"Journey of Patriarch Macarius of Antioch to Russia in the middle of the 17th century"

Temporary bridges are easy to assemble and dismantle when attacked by the enemy. But the need to protect the Kremlin from the water is gradually fading away. But the royal residence is decorated more and more magnificently - like the elegant Spasskaya tower with a clock, the stone bridge has become the main attraction of the city.

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Education and urban entertainment

The life of Muscovites was not limited to hard work and rescue from fires. A brisk book trade, higher education and urban festivities are also innovations of the 17th century.

The Moscow Printing Yard was restored after being devastated by the Poles in 1620. If earlier it served only the sovereign's court, then in the 17th century private booksellers and a book row appeared. Reading by the end of the century becomes an accessible entertainment. On sale at booksellers you can find books on military affairs, primers and collections of poetry.

A library was opened at the Printing Yard, and in 1687 the first institution of higher education was opened. The Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy was founded by the Likhud brothers, Greek Orthodox monks. Here, residents of different classes were taught Greek, rhetoric, logic and grammar for 12 years.

Moscow printing house on Nikolskaya street

City festivities. Engraving from the book of Adam Olearius

During patronal feasts and official spectacles, Muscovites of the 17th century walked along the new stone bridge, watched performances by buffoons and puppet theaters, bought sweets at fairs and observed with curiosity the solemn entrances of foreign ambassadors.

Already in the next century, Moscow will be unrecognizable: the first oil lanterns and city estates will appear on the streets, and balls and salons will become the favorite entertainments of the townspeople.

Jump to the 18th century

Nobles, merchants and philistines: how people of different classes lived in Moscow in the 18th century

View of Red Square in 1783

Moscow has not been a capital for half a century. Extensive noble estates are adjacent to shacks and black huts. On the one hand - idleness and secular receptions, on the other - potato stew and monotonous daily work.

Upper class citizens. They could not work anywhere, but rarely used it. Men served in the army, state or court. Women also participated in court life, but in Moscow, far from the capital, they did not have such an opportunity.

The standard of living of urban merchants varied. Unlike artisans, who traded only in their own products, merchants enjoyed an advantage and could sell a wide variety of goods: from scrupulous (underwear and perfumes) to colonial (tea, coffee and spices).

A new type of city dwellers. The former inhabitants of the artisan settlements are gradually becoming hired workers. Instead of engaging in small-scale production, they go to manufactories or to the houses of the nobility for a salary.

Unknown artist.
View of Moscow in the 18th century

At home

The development of Moscow was uneven. Wide stone-paved streets turned into wooden pavements. Pitiful shacks crowded around the palaces and houses of the nobility. Some areas resembled wastelands, others were crowded with poor houses, and others impress with the splendor of the capital.

“Wrong”, “extraordinary”, “contrasting” - this is how foreigners who managed to visit here during the time of Elizabeth and Catherine II described Moscow.

“I was surprised by the strange sight of Smolensk, but incomparably more I was struck by the immensity and diversity of Moscow. This is something so wrong, peculiar, extraordinary, everything here is so full of contrasts that I have never seen anything like it.

William Cox, British traveler.

"Travels in Poland, Russia, Switzerland and Denmark"

nobles

Adolphe Baio. Pashkov's house on Vagankovsky hill

Adolphe Baio. Pashkov House
on Vagankovsky hill

Middle-class nobles settled in Moscow, so mansions were more often built in wood. They suffered from fires and again lined up along the "red line" - it marked the boundaries of construction on each street. Famous architects built the houses of the richest families from stone. These buildings have survived to this day. The most impressive example of 18th-century noble housing is the Pashkov House, which is believed to have been designed by architect Vasily Bazhenov.

Merchants

Unknown artist. View
Ilyinka streets in Moscow of the 18th century

A typical merchant's house was two-story. The first floor could be stone, the second - wooden. The European practice, when merchants settled above their own shops, has not yet become popular, because the malls were moved to separate areas of the city. Toward the end of the century, under Catherine II, a new type of housing appeared in Moscow - tenement houses. On the upper floors of tenement houses there were living rooms of merchants and apartments for rent, below - shops and shops. One of the first apartment buildings of this type in Moscow was Khryashchev's house on Ilyinka.

Philistines

Unknown artist. View of Ilyinka street in Moscow of the 18th century

Unknown artist. street view
Ilyinka in 18th century Moscow

Like the inhabitants of craft settlements in the 17th century, the townspeople settled in simple wooden houses. Their way of life changed more slowly than that of the richer classes. The houses of the nobles and merchants were built according to the latest fashion, the houses of the townspeople - out of habit. The only change occurred in the internal structure of the house: instead of a common room for the whole family, separate rooms now appear in the houses.

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nobles

Schedule

nobles

P. Picard. Moscow Kremlin at the beginning of the 18th century

P. Picard. Moscow
Kremlin at the beginning of the 18th century

The officers came to the barracks by 6, officials - by 7–8 in the morning. Reviews and parades ended by noon, and the presences were interrupted for lunch.

A secular person woke up closer to noon. After breakfast, followed by a walk in the park or a trip accompanied by a runner - a servant who accompanied the carriage on foot. Then - dinner, theater and a ball, which lasted until morning.

“A nobleman who wants to be a man of the world must have a Danish dog, a runner, a lot of servants (ill-dressed) and a French teacher.”

Tesby de Bellecour, captain of the French service.

"Notes of a Frenchman about Moscow, 1774"

Merchants

B. Kustodiev. Gostiny Dvor

B. Kustodiev. Gostiny Dvor

Trade in Moscow began early, so by 6 in the morning the merchant opened his shop in Gostiny Dvor or on the first floor of a residential building. On the spot, he drank tea, had a hearty dinner, and talked with merchants in the neighborhood. In the evening he visited a tavern or a fair, and already at nine o'clock he fell into a dream.

Philistines

Detail of the trade mark of the Big Yaroslavl Manufactory. Mid 18th century

Brand Detail Large
Yaroslavl manufactory. Mid 18th century

Craftsmen worked at home, in living quarters or in the courtyard. Everyone at home, even children, took part in the work. Due to the emergence of manufactories and organized production, it became unprofitable for some artisans to work for themselves, and they became hired workers: weaving, building ships, forging metal products and preparing glass. The largest manufactory in Moscow was the Cloth Yard. The working day there began at half past five in the morning, and lasted 13.5 hours in the spring and summer months and 11.5 hours the rest of the year.

Food

For the nobles, eating was an art, for merchants it was a way to pass the time, for the townspeople it was a matter of survival.

nobles

Unknown artist. Dinner with a noble family

Unknown artist.
Dinner with a noble family

In rich houses, European cuisine was preferred. Tea and coffee in the 18th century ceased to be exotic, but were expensive. Since the beginning of the century, the fashion for foreign chefs has come - the French, less often the British. Some products were ordered from Europe, which Gogol sneered at in The Inspector General, where Khlestakov came to the table with "soup in a saucepan right on the ship from Paris."

Merchants

B. Kustodiev. Merchant drinking tea

The merchant's table was simpler. Tea from a samovar, which they drank “up to the seventh handkerchief” (until the sweat breaks through), half-and-half porridge with bacon, soups, pies, radishes and vegetable dishes - the main thing in nutrition is not variety, but abundance and satiety.

“The pot-bellied merchants, as before, after tea-drinking, practiced their trading affairs, ate radishes at noon, slurped cabbage soup with wooden or tin spoons, on which an inch of fat floated, and buckwheat porridge was mixed in half with butter.”

Philistines

F. Solntsev. Peasant family before dinner. Philistines and peasants lived in similar living conditions. The main thing that distinguished them was their daily activities and profession.

F. Solntsev. Peasant family before
lunch. The philistines and peasants lived in similar
living conditions. The main thing that distinguished them
- daily activities and profession

The daily menu included potato stew, gray cabbage soup, rye pies and steamed turnips. In addition, the townspeople could afford dishes from peas, vegetables from the garden and cereals. Kvass replaced them with tea and coffee.

City entertainment

The way a resident of Moscow had fun, first of all, spoke of his social status. Festive life in the city was for every taste: from theaters, balls and music salons to street fairs and fisticuffs.

nobles

Reception in a noble house

Reception in a noble house

The life of the Moscow nobility was so idle and unhurried that it irritated Catherine II:

“Moscow is the capital of idleness, and its excessive size will always be the main reason for this. I made it a rule when I was there never to send for anyone; for one visit they spend the whole day in a carriage, and now, therefore, the day is lost.

Entry from the diary of Catherine II

During the day, the nobles walked through the parks or streets in smart outfits. Then the way lay to relatives for tea. Family gatherings were not so much entertainment as a necessity: it was necessary to maintain family ties according to secular etiquette.

After dinner, reading and changing clothes, the nobleman went to the theater. In 1757, the Locatelli Opera was opened, later - the Petrovsky Theater, in which free and serf actors played. Around 10 pm, balls began, where you could not only dance, but also play cards, charades or burime.

Merchants

V. Surikov. Big masquerade in 1772 on the streets of Moscow with the participation of Peter I and Prince I. F. Romodanovsky

V. Surikov. big masquerade
in 1772 on the streets of Moscow with the participation
Peter I and Prince I. F. Romodanovsky

Noisy street fairs, puppet theater, comedies and performances of buffoons - these were the main merchant entertainments.

“The comedy was usually played by a home-grown troubadour with a bandura, with songs and dances. He did marvelous things with his feet, and every bone in him spoke. And how he jumps under the very nose of a pretty merchant’s wife, moves his shoulder and douses her, like boiling water, with a valiant demand: “Do you not love Al?” - there was no end to the delight.

Ivan Ivanovich Lazhechnikov, writer.

"White, black and gray"

Merchants spent their evenings in taverns or at home, and on city holidays they went out to watch fireworks. But this is only in the XVIII century: from the next century, wealthy merchants will strive to imitate the nobility in everything.

Philistines

B. Kustodiev. Fistfight on the Moscow River

B. Kustodiev.
Fistfight on the Moscow River

They could not afford to go to taverns and restaurants, but everyone participated in street festivities. Of the winter entertainments, they loved fisticuffs, one on one or wall to wall. The teams dispersed along the banks of the frozen Moskva River and fought in the middle. The main battles took place on holidays: St. Nicholas of the Winter, Christmas time, Epiphany and Maslenitsa.

In the 19th century, the differences between urban and rural populations are sharper than between the tradesman and the merchant. Merchants, philistines and artisans began to be called "city dwellers". But the gap between the daily life of the nobility and the "average condition of people" persisted even in next century.

Jump to the 19th century

House and life of a Muscovite in the 19th century

J. Delabart. Red Square in the late 18th - early 19th centuries

By what rules did they live, what did they eat and how did they talk in rich and poor families

Moscow in the 19th century is the capital of the retired and the elderly. She was more conservative than St. Petersburg, where they left for a career and fashion. Family hierarchy, family kinship and many other everyday conventions reigned in Moscow houses.

Noble life

Moscow nobles became smaller after the war and the fire of 1812. Few people could support the "open table" and hospitality of the last century. The en masse impoverished noble families led a nomadic lifestyle and ate at rich houses. There are more officials. They belonged to the nobility, but did not have a large fortune.

Where settled

Real nobles built houses and city estates on Maroseyka, Pokrovka and the territory between Ostozhenka and Arbat. Officials settled closer to the merchants: in Zamoskvorechye, on Taganka, Sretenka and Devichye Pole. Behind the Garden Ring, dachas and country estates with a garden or park were built.

Home and furnishings

V. Polenov. Grandma's garden. Typical wooden Moscow mansion

V. Polenov. Grandma's garden.
Typical wooden Moscow mansion

The middle-class nobility built wooden houses. But they are large, with 7–9 windows, with mezzanines and columns. A park or garden with a linden alley, elderberry and lilac was an indispensable attribute of aristocratic life. The farther from the center, the more extensive was the garden.

In the interior decoration of the house, the pursuit of fashion was replaced by constancy. Empire-style furniture bought at the beginning of the century stood in the front part of the house, along with porcelain knick-knacks and an office bronze sculpture. Cramped living quarters in the mezzanine and on the back of the house were furnished somehow.

Table

A. Voloskov. At the tea table

A. Voloskov. At the tea table

Unlike the refined dinners of St. Petersburg, the Moscow ones were hearty and plentiful. Cream was added to the morning tea and washed down with butter rolls. The second breakfast was prepared dense, with scrambled eggs, cheesecakes or meatballs. Around three o'clock, the family and frequent guests gathered for a dinner of several courses in the French or Russian style. For an afternoon snack, they were refreshed with tea and pies, and in the evening they ate the leftovers of dinner or prepared several more courses of dishes, depending on the wealth of the house.

Family way

There were many inhabitants in the noble house. In addition to close relatives, there was a place for aunts, cousins, second cousins, sisters and nephews, as well as the poor and governesses.

The house, as before, was divided into male and female halves. The study, the library and the smoking room were the men's rooms, and the boudoir, the sofa room and the girls' room were the women's rooms. Households and servants moved freely between halves, but received personal guests strictly on their territory.

Children's rooms were given a place away from the bedrooms of adults. The kids lived in common rooms for several people, teenage children were divided into male and female halves. Home lessons were held in the classroom, where a visiting teacher came. He gave lessons in secular etiquette, music and a foreign language.

Nobleman's Dictionary

Jolle journee - "crazy day", an afternoon ball that began at two in the afternoon and lasted until night.

Zhurfixes - days of the week in a noble house, which were allocated for the regular reception of guests.

Voksal - a pleasure garden where performances were staged, balls and fireworks were arranged.

merchant life

Merchants flourished in 19th-century Moscow. New surnames appear, which are not inferior in wealth to noble ones. The Morozovs, Ryabushinskys, Prokhorovs top the list of the richest entrepreneurs in the Russian Empire. Ambitious merchants seek to reach the nobles in terms of living standards and education and invest their capital in the development of the arts and sciences. The other part carefully guards its customs and eschews everything unusual.

Where settled

The merchant districts were Taganka, Presnya, Lefortovo and Zamoskvorechye. The latter - because of the proximity to the Kitaigorod market. Merchants-manufacturers preferred to build houses closer to production, so they chose the outskirts of the city.

Home and furnishings

V. Perov. Arrival of the governess to the merchant's house

V. Perov.
Arrival of the governess to the merchant's house

While the nobles were getting poorer, the merchants were making fortunes. They built simple but solid stone houses or bought former noble estates and furnished them to their taste. Houses usually overlooked a garden with a vegetable garden. Goods that the merchant supplied to the shops were stored in the courtyard.

The merchant's house differed from the noble one in the number of icons and motley decoration: crimson walls in the living rooms, an abundance of pictures and trinkets mixed with expensive pieces of furniture. The unity of style in the furnishings of the house was observed by rare, the most educated families.

Table

N. Bogdanov-Belsky. tea drinking

Supplies in the merchant's house were prepared by themselves - the cellars were filled with pickles to the ceiling. The table was laid no less richly than the nobles, but the dishes were Russian: pies, cereals. Services did not take root on the merchant's table, all the dishes were of various colors.

The merchant did not always return home for dinner, so the whole family gathered at the table in the evening, around eight o'clock. After a hearty dinner with fatty dishes, all the households drank tea for a long time with sugar or jam.

Family way

V. Pukirev. Reception of a dowry in a merchant family by painting

V. Pukirev.
Reception of a dowry in a merchant family by painting

The family life of merchants in the 19th century began with the participation of a matchmaker. The dowry of the bride was carefully counted. The marriage was concluded after the bride: the groom looked closely at the merchant's daughter in a public place, and then came with a personal visit and asked for her hand. Merchants' wives lived idle and did almost no housework - they only received guests or arranged trips. Children were given to nannies to raise, and in education they relied on the church. Even at the end of the century, only a few merchant children studied at gymnasiums and universities.

Merchant's Dictionary

Feryaz - traditional merchant outerwear.

Beardless is a merchant who follows Western fashion. He wears modern clothes instead of a caftan, shaves cleanly, is educated and knows languages.

Forty bucket barrel- a measure of not only volume, but also beauty. Burly women, the size of a forty-bucket barrel, were the merchant ideal in the 19th century.

Petty-bourgeois life

In the 19th century, the burghers were the main population of Moscow. Especially a lot of them became after the reform of 1861, when the peasants began to move to the cities in search of work. The petty-bourgeois class included teachers, day laborers, and all other hired workers.

Where settled

Factory workers and artisans settled behind the Garden Ring in rented apartments and small houses. Khamovniki, Lefortovo and Georgians were entrenched in them in the 17th century. Shoemakers, tailors and other small artisans settled in the Moscow "ghetto" - Zaryadye and the dark nooks and crannies of Kitay-gorod.

in the next issue)

At the turn of the 19th century

Family big and small

For centuries, the forms of traditional peasant family life were "tailored" to the economic and social conditions of the Russian agricultural economy. But in the second half of the 19th century, these conditions were rapidly fading into the past, and at the same time, family structures, forms and norms of family relations adapted to such conditions were also deprived of support. It was at this time that the always-existing latent contradiction of the “small” and “large” families came out.

In Russia, a large, undivided family lingered longer than in the countries of Western Europe - extended(i.e. consisting of one a married couple and other unmarried relatives of varying degrees of closeness - widowed parents and grandparents, unmarried children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, uncles, nephews, etc.) and composite(incorporating some married couples and, like the extended family, other relatives). However, not all members of such a large family are necessarily blood relatives, especially close ones. It may include more distant relatives (cousins ​​and second cousins, great-nephews, etc.), as well as persons related by property - sons-in-law, daughter-in-law, sister-in-law, brother-in-law, etc. - and even people who are not associated with her neither by kinship nor property, but living under the same roof and leading a household with other members of the family: adopted children, students, accustomers, workers, servants.

But along with large families, there has always been a small family, consisting of a married couple with children, and sometimes without children. It could exist in one of two forms: as an autonomous small family, or as "embedded" in a large family, as its integral part.

Historians and sociologists have long been arguing about what was the relationship between these two forms of existence of the "married family" in the past. There was a time when they unanimously believed that in all societies, without exception, where the small married family now dominates, the complex family, which was the main form of private community that preceded the modern small family, undoubtedly prevailed before. In recent decades, this unanimity of researchers has been greatly shaken: the analysis of historical sources has led many researchers to the conclusion that, in fact, in the past, a small married family met much more often than previously believed.

The very fact of the eternal parallel existence of small and large families is hardly in doubt. It could not have been otherwise - the formation of this or that type of family was not a rigidly determined process, we can only talk about what was the probability of the appearance of each of them. It is necessary to clearly understand the demographic conditions in which the family was formed 100-200 years ago. Undivided families, as a rule, were "paternal", that is, they continued along the male line, with married sons remaining in the parental home, and married daughters leaving for the husband's family. In the Russian countryside, all married sons with their wives and children usually remained in the parental family. In order for a three-generation undivided “paternal” family to develop and be recorded by statistics, it is necessary that in the family of the older generation there be at least one son who has lived to the age when he can marry and have children, and that at least one of his parents be alive to this moment.

In the pre-industrial era, due to high early mortality, rather significant infertility, frequent miscarriages and other similar circumstances, the probability of fulfilling these conditions was low. Therefore, even if we assume that most people aspired to the creation and preservation of multigenerational, undivided large "father" families, a large number of failed or partially completed families of this type were completely inevitable. In the second case, for example, a “fraternal” family was formed - a complex, but two-generation one. In the first case, a small family arose, consisting of spouses with children, and sometimes without them. Such a family is interpreted by researchers as "marital" or "nuclear" (grouped around the "marital nucleus"). But in the past it is forced nuclearity.

Such small families do not strive to reproduce themselves in their former form, but under the slightest favorable conditions they turn into large, complex ones. History knows a variety of ways to overcome forced nuclearity. In many countries, including Russia, adoption was widespread in the absence of direct male descendants, and not only a child, but also an adult man could be adopted. When there were conditions for this, “acquisition” was also practiced - contrary to custom, a married woman lived with her husband in the family of her parents.

A small married family is most likely the same age as a large, undivided, her constant companion. Coexisting for centuries, they were in a kind of symbiosis, they needed each other, they knew competition, confrontation, and mutual concessions.

The obvious economic and demographic advantages of the large family ruled out for a long time the mass desire of small families for an isolated existence. The small family, grouped around the marital nucleus, never opposed the large family as a type; rather, it felt its inferiority, incompleteness in comparison with the large one and strove at the first opportunity to turn into such a large, complex, multi-generational family, in the bowels of which it felt more protected. A person here was less dependent on economic, demographic and other accidents that were so frequent in the past.

But for this relative security, the married family had to pay a heavy price. Such a family was the two-faced Janus. With one face, she was turned inward - to marriage, procreation, and the upbringing of children. The other face of the married family was turned outwards - towards the immediate environment, towards the large family, to which its small constituent parts, taking care of their own interests - those that were under the supervision of the first Janus face - ceded the lion's share of their sovereignty.

So it was everywhere, so it was in Russia. The peasant waged the hardest, but far from always successful struggle for existence, hunger constantly stood at the threshold of his hut. A large family better suited the conditions of agricultural labor, increased the chances of survival. Before this decisive consideration, all others receded into the background. Much was written about the economic advantages of large peasant families in the second half of the 19th century, and it is only necessary to add to some of the demographic reasons for the preference for large families. The probability for spouses to be widowed, for children to remain orphans, and for the elderly to be lonely at the end of life was still very high, and belonging to a large family still gave some additional “insurance” that protected a widowed mother of many children, orphans or helpless old people from hunger and complete poverty.

By the standards of its time, the patriarchal family in Russia was absolutely natural, “normal”. The consistency of the main features of such a family, as well as the peasant community in which it was a part, with the structure of economic life made this type of social organization strong and stable. He, in turn, gave stability to the economic and political system.

For centuries, the "father's" family was a building block from which social foundations were formed - this is how it was seen by the authors of the 19th century. On this foundation, indeed, a lot has grown in the culture and ideology of Russian society, its worldview, its ideas about good and evil, about the relationship between collectivist and individualist values.

However, the moment came when this whole building - together with the family foundation - began to lose its age-old stability. The countryside determined the face of the country's economy to a lesser extent, and in the countryside itself, subsistence farming was rapidly retreating under the onslaught of commodity-money relations. Then the usual family way of life began to burst at the seams. Growing out of the tight suit of natural-economic relations, faced with ever new tasks, acquiring ever more diverse and complex social experience, Russian people quickly changed and began to suffocate in the narrow confines of outdated institutions, among which the family, due to its ubiquitous presence, occupied one of the first places.

Married family in search of sovereignty

Previously, early marriages were typical for Russia. Historians noted that in the 16th-17th centuries, “Russians got married very early. It happened that the groom had from 12 to 13 years ... It rarely happened that a Russian remained unmarried for a long time ... ". Gradually, the age of marriage increased. By a decree of 1714, Peter I forbade noblemen to marry before they were 20, and to marry before they were 17, and by decree of Catherine II (1775) it was forbidden for all classes to marry men under 15, women under 13; in case of violation of the decree, the marriage was dissolved, and the priest was deprived of his dignity. Later, the lower limit of marriageable age increased even more. In accordance with the imperial decree of 1830, the minimum age for marriage was raised to 16 for the bride and 18 for the groom. However, the peasants and the lower strata of the urban population often turned to the spiritual authorities for permission to marry off their daughter at an earlier age. The main motive was the need to have a worker or mistress in the house. Even by the beginning of the 20th century, marriage in Russia remained quite early. More than half of all brides and about a third of grooms in European Russia were under 20 years old.

Even at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, marriage in Russia was almost universal. According to the first general census of the population in 1897, at the end of the 19th century. by the age of 50, almost all men and women were married, the proportion of the population who had never been married in the age group of 45-49 years was significantly lower than in Western Europe.

Pre-revolutionary Russia almost did not know divorce, the marriage union was concluded for life and practically could not be terminated. Divorce was considered by the church as the gravest sin and was allowed in exceptional cases. The only grounds for divorce could be the "unknown absence" and "deprivation of all rights of state" of one of the spouses. Nevertheless, as social conditions changed, the gradual emancipation of women, already in pre-revolutionary times, views on the values ​​of matrimony and attitudes towards divorce changed. But these changes affected mainly the elite segments of the population, official divorces were very rare. In 1913, out of 98.5 million Orthodox in Russia, only 3,791 marriages were annulled.

Marriages did not last long, but not because of divorce. Due to high mortality, there has always been a high risk of marriage termination due to the widowhood of one of the spouses. At the very end of the 19th century, in 1897, the proportion of widows among all women of marriageable age was 13.4%. In men, the corresponding figure was significantly lower - 5.45%. At the same time, by the age of 31, among unmarried women, the proportion of widowed women was higher than the proportion of those who had never married: by the age of 50, 25% of women were widowed, by the age of 62 - half, by the age of 74 - over 75%.

Widowhood was largely compensated by remarriages, almost obligatory in the conditions of peasant life. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries (1896-1905), the share of remarriages in the total number of marriages was approximately 14% for men and 8% for women. As a result, every man and every woman who lived to marriageable age and married (one or more times) lived in marriage for an average of a quarter of a century.

What was this quarter-century of marriage?

S. Solovyov in his “History of Russia from Ancient Times”, describing the ancient Russian family order, noted that “the relationship of a husband to his wife and parents to children in ancient Russian society was not particularly soft. A person who did not leave the tribal guardianship became a husband, that is, they united with him a being that was not familiar to him before, with whom he was not used to meeting before as a free being. The young man after the crown met for the first time with a weak, timid, silent being, who was given to him in full power, which he was obliged to teach i.e. to beat, even if politely according to the rule of Domostroy. Solovyov's words express the position of the enlightened 19th century. However, after all, even at that time, the majority of Russians passed from childhood to adulthood without any intermediate steps, and marriage only formally marked the point of this transition: “small” became “man”. It is not surprising that many of the relationships that Solovyov so critically assessed survived into the 20th century.

Russia has long tried to somehow limit forced marriages. Solovyov cites a 17th-century patriarchal decree instructing priests to “strongly interrogate” grooms and brides, as well as their parents, “whether they marry each other out of love and consent, and not out of violence or bondage.” Lomonosov urged "crowning priests to firmly confirm that they, having heard somewhere about an involuntary combination, would not allow it." But in fact, even in the 19th century, young people very often entered into marriage at the choice of their parents. Moreover, although marriage has always been understood as an intimate union of a man and a woman, when concluding a marriage, economic and social considerations most often came to the fore.

In a patriarchal family, a woman was seen primarily as a family worker - the ability to work was often the main criterion when choosing a bride. There was no going back after the marriage, it remained to live according to the old formula: “be patient - fall in love”.

"Small", becoming a "man" at a very young age and continuing to live as part of the "paternal" family, remained a dependent person. And the position of a woman was even worse: she not only depended on her husband, but, having entered a large family, she also became dependent on her father-in-law, mother-in-law, other men in the family, their wives, etc. She immediately became one of the family workers , and this role of hers was in constant conflict with her own roles of wife and mother. But there were other aspects of her dependent position in the family, about which it was customary to remain silent, for example, daughter-in-law.

Own internal connections and relations of the married family, which did not have sufficient independence, remained undeveloped, did not play the special role in people's lives that they have acquired in our time. And therefore, each individual person felt himself, first of all, as a wheel of a complex mechanism of a large family, obliged to regularly fulfill his duty in relation to it, and only to a very small extent saw in the family an environment for revealing and realizing his individuality. Such a family was not the socializing environment in which an independent, individualized human personality could develop. Man for the family this is the principle on which patriarchal family relations have been based from time immemorial.

But something shifted in the second half of the 19th century. For the time being, the dissolution of a person in the family was justified by economic and demographic necessity, the interests of physical survival. But as soon as these two necessities weakened a little, the rigid predestination of human destiny lost its justification, habitual family relations ceased to satisfy people, family members began to “rebel”. It was then that the hidden conflict of a large and small family, "work" and "life" came to the surface. The patriarchal family is in crisis.

This crisis first of all affected the urban strata of Russian society, which previously also built their family relations according to models close to peasant ones. Russian literature of the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries is filled with references to this crisis - from L. Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" or A. Ostrovsky's "Thunderstorm" to articles by unknown or forgotten authors in scientific and journalistic publications.

The confrontation between the old and the new split Russia more and more, and the line of this split went through every family.

Riot on the family ship

Russia was not the first country to face the crisis of the traditional family. By the beginning of the 20th century, many Western countries had already passed through it, the traditional large family became the property of history, gave way to a highly mobile, small, “married” family. “During the voyage that was to bring the family into modernity ... she separated herself from the community around her, erecting - to protect herself - an insurmountable wall of privacy. She broke off her relations with distant relatives and weakened even those that she maintained with close relatives ... How did the family manage to quietly leave their parking lot at the pier of tradition? ... The ship's crew - mother, father and children - that's who happily broke the fetters that held him to go on his own voyage. These words refer to the Western European family, but the same thing - albeit later - happened to the Russian family.

Perhaps the main force that blew up the old family way of life from within and accelerated its crisis was the woman most crushed by this way of life.

Although certain steps towards changing the place of women in the family and society were made by Peter the Great's reforms (by liberating her from the tower), even in the 19th century the ideas of women's equality were not popular in Russia and were perceived as something alien to Russian tradition and Russian culture. I. Kireevsky found the first germ of the subsequently famous doctrine of the all-round emancipation of women in the "moral decay of the upper class" of European society. L. Tolstoy was also convinced of the uselessness, moreover, of the harm of emancipation, and wrote a lot about it. But, apparently, the reasons for the growing struggle in Russia for the expansion of women's rights were rooted not only in the European contagion and the "upper classes". Probably, one should not underestimate the contribution of enlightened and intelligent women to the struggle for women's equality. However, the decisive events did not take place in high-society salons. The main arena of change in the position of women was the village.

The “baby rebellion” in the countryside is only one, albeit a very vivid, manifestation of family changes that were brewing and beginning. Next to their “female” line, another one is visible - “children's”.

The notion of the unlimited rights of parents in relation to children and the equally unlimited duty of children in relation to their parents was deeply rooted in the popular consciousness. Even at the end of the nineteenth century, parental power was very great. The expression “father laid down his son” was still encountered (that is, he gave it to work for a certain period, and took the money in advance). Parents had the final word when it came to the marriage of their sons, and especially the marriage of their daughters. And yet, by the end of the 19th century, the old family orders in the relationship between parents and children were already cracking at the seams, both the former respect for parents and the former obedience to them had weakened, although outwardly much was still preserved.

To the extent that the power of the parents still remained, it was more and more based on the direct economic dependence of the children alone. Throughout the second half of the 19th century, changes in the economic conditions of family life and in intra-family relations shook the foundations of a large undivided family, and the number of family divisions increased. Every day it became clearer: the advantages of a large family no longer cover its shortcomings, living in such a family became more and more painful. Hidden from view, the internal antagonisms of the large patriarchal family came out. “All the peasants are aware that it is more profitable to live in large families, that division is the cause of impoverishment, but meanwhile they still divide. Is there any reason for this, then? It is obvious that there is something in family peasant life that a peasant who endures everything cannot endure, ”wrote Engelhardt, the author of the famous letters“ From the Village ”, a consistent opponent of family divisions.

The inevitability of change

By the beginning of the 20th century, Russian society was faced with the most acute economic and social problems, against which demographic and family troubles might not look the most important. In any case, much less was said and written about them than, say, about economic backwardness, about the land issue, about the poverty or lack of rights of the people, about the need for political changes, etc. But still it cannot be said that this side of people's life is completely did not attract attention. Huge mortality, more frequent attempts to evade the birth of children or the rejection of children already born, the "fall of family morals", the women's emancipation movement in the cities and the "women's revolt" in the countryside, the disobedience of adult children and the weakening parental authority, the multiplication of peasant family divisions - all this spoke of the depreciation of the age-old commandments of family life, of its growing discord.

The discord was noticed by everyone and became the object of criticism, self-criticism of the Russian society, which was increasingly aware of the need for renewal. Changes in the family and in general private life of people were only one of the sides of the general changes experienced by Russia in the post-reform period, when its desire to become a modern industrial country was clearly outlined. In the four decades that followed the abolition of serfdom, all previous balances were broken, and new ones have not yet been created. Russian society has entered a period of severe, protracted crisis.

Could not avoid this crisis and the entire system of family and demographic relations. However, the very development that plunged the private life of people into a crisis created opportunities for a way out of it.

Economic necessity prescribed certain forms of organization of family production, division of labor in the family, etc., but the family and society were always compelled to reckon also with demographic necessity, which set a limit even to economic demands. Many of the most important norms and stereotypes of behavior were subordinated to it. Cultural and religious traditions placed high value on motherhood and fatherhood, while at the same time placing strict prohibitions on marginal behaviors that could allow a woman or a couple to evade their parental duties. No self-will was allowed, the principle "a man for the family" found here one of its most solid foundations. The decline in mortality and fertility was a double shift that dramatically expanded the demographic freedom of the family and its members and caused irreparable damage to this principle.

Indeed, the less time, effort, energy biological reproduction requires from a woman and family, the more they can be spent (without prejudice to procreation) on social reproduction: self-development and self-realization of the individual, socialization of children, transfer and renewal of cultural patterns, production material goods, etc. The old family orders do not recognize any choice, family roles and family responsibilities are strictly fixed once and for all, which is justified by economic and demographic necessity, the interests of physical survival. As soon as these two necessities weaken even a little, the rigid predetermination of human fate loses its justification. Habitual forms of demographic and family behavior cease to satisfy people, new activity appears aimed at filling the expanded space of freedom, achieving a longer life for yourself and your children, defending the intimacy of your family life, discovering new social roles, fulfilling yourself more fully. .

Although in Russia at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries all this was accessible only to a narrow layer of people and insufficiently realized by the whole society, nevertheless, the movement had already begun, much was foreseen, something was known from the example of more advanced European countries. The discord in the old family order, of course, disturbed contemporaries, but there was also an expectation of the desired positive changes.

It would be good if the replacement, which would make it possible to overcome the crisis of traditional demographic and family relations, occurred as a result of their smooth evolution, the gradual development of new forms and norms of demographic and family behavior that would meet new economic and social conditions, which would also develop gradually. But in the conditions of a rapidly changing Russia, there was little chance for this, it simply did not have time for gradual changes, from generation to generation. The country was rapidly approaching a social explosion, in which the old family was to burn out.

(Beginning. Continued in the next issue)

Strictly speaking, the word "family" is not fully applicable to such forms of hostel life, and in everyday, and even more so in scientific language, they are denoted by the terms "farm", "household", in Russia in the past the word "yard" was used in this case.
Kostomarov N. Home life and customs of the Great Russian people. - M., 1993, p. 209.
Shorter E. Naissance de la famfle moderne. XVIII-XX siecle. — Paris: Seuil, 1977.
Engelgardt A.N. From the countryside: 12 letters: 1872-1887. - M .: Thought, 1987.
Zvonkov A.P. Modern marriage and wedding among the peasants of the Tambov province ... - M., 1889. Issue. 1.

Today, a large family is rather an exception, and in pre-revolutionary Russia, most families had large families. Our grandmothers and great-grandmothers raised, as a rule, at least three (or even five) children. True, not everyone survived to adulthood. There were several reasons for the phenomenon of having many children, and the notorious inability to family planning had nothing to do with it.

The economic reason for having many children

Climatic conditions left their mark on the family well-being of the peasant family. It was quite difficult for one family to support elderly parents, since having 2.5 acres, according to Prince Shcherbakov, the average family lived from hand to mouth. Therefore, parents could be sure of a guaranteed piece of bread in old age only if they raised several children to their feet - the future of their breadwinners.

God gives children - will give for children

In those days, the average life expectancy was small, and therefore a girl could get married at 13, and a boy had the right to marry at 15. Such restrictions were established from the 18th century by the Pilot Book - a set of church rules.

One should not exaggerate the religious canons associated with the birth of children, but at that time it was believed that "it is a sin to try to decide for God who will be born." It was this rule that guided Russian families before the revolution.

Sons and daughters

If the first child in the family was a daughter, the father treated her indifferently, and at home they spoke about it with regret. Will the grandmother add: "Nothing, the nanny will be." And the young father, whose first-born daughter was born, other men in the village had the right to beat - "why gave birth to a girl." It happened that the young father had a great time, but he was silent, endured, but because "it has been like this for a long time."

The basis of family education is motherhood

Today it is interesting to read “Notes of a Russian Peasant”, in which Stolyarov, a native of the village of Karachun, Zadonsky district, Voronezh province, talks about the role of a mother in a peasant family. According to him, it was the mother who solved all the everyday problems of the children, including grocery planning and making clothes. And the mother had no less authority in Russian families than her father.

“It was amazing to see how the children clung to their exhausted mother,” the doctor Davydova wrote in her memoirs. - And she did not forget anyone, she stroked everyone's head, even the eldest almost adult son, who was located a little further from the flock of girls and boys. The younger the child was, the closer he sat to his mother. And this rule was not disputed by anyone.

grandfather and grandmother

Do not forget that parents in peasant families almost always worked. Even a pregnant woman did all the housework - threshing, weeding, planting and dripping potatoes until the very birth. “Others will give birth in the field, others in a shaking cart (feeling the approach of childbirth, other women are in a hurry to get home). Another woman, with the onset of labor pains, runs home, "like a sheep" - wrote ethnographers of that time.

The history of Dilyar Latyshin in the book "History of Pedagogy" writes: " In the villages it was often possible to meet on the street a child barely stepping barefoot in one short shirt. With a crust of bread in his hand, he paced under the window of the hut, near which his mother sat with work, occasionally glancing at him.».

Therefore, the role of grandparents, who not only looked after children, but also passed on useful knowledge to them, was great in the upbringing of children. This often happened through fairy tales, which dealt with the dangers lurking in forests and rivers. Fear of the water, gray wolf or other "evil heroes" was a kind of psychological brake for the ubiquitous village boy, often presented to himself. But from the age of 10 you could meet him alone in the forest, in the field, he went to the neighboring village and sometimes returned late at night without any fear.

Continuing the theme, 20 more photographs of the beginning of the 20th century, which depict.

A. Ryazanov. Noble family at the turn of the 18th - 19th centuries

// Materials on the history of the Vologda nobility. - Vologda, 2001

L. N. Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace” describes a curious scene when Prince Andrei went berserk at Zherkov’s cheeky jokes about General Mack, the commander of the Allied army, which had just suffered a crushing defeat: “Yes, you understand that we - or officers who serve their tsar and fatherland and rejoice in the common success and grieve over the common failure, or we are lackeys who do not care about the master's business.

In these words, the great writer put the whole essence of the ideology of the nobility, which was based on a sense of duty and self-esteem. For a nobleman, serving the Fatherland was not only a duty, but also a right. Compatriots never ceased to admire the nobility, courage, patriotism of the heroes of the Patriotic War of 1812. However, their actions were not always clear to their readers. And we boldly explain this by the quirkiness of the "eighteenth" and nineteenth centuries, forgetting or not knowing the norms and way of life of the departed class. Trying to explain incomprehensible phenomena from a modern point of view, researchers sometimes created entire myths themselves. For example, in the Soviet period, it was always said and written about the cruelty and heartlessness of the mother of A. S. Pushkin, about the meanness of his father; about how cynical Uncle A.I. Odoevsky betrayed his nephew to the authorities, who asked him for asylum after the Decembrist uprising. The act of General N. N. Raevsky is not clear today either. In 1812, near Saltanovka, he led his young sons into battle, not at all considering this a feat. In order to understand these oddities of the past centuries, let's try to consider the structure and relationships in the noble family at the turn of the 18th - 19th centuries, that generation of people of the Pavlovian and Alexander eras, which, according to the famous lawyer, historian and public figure K. D. Kavelin "will always be serve as a vivid example of what kind of people can be developed in Russia under favorable circumstances. The source study possibilities for studying the history of a noble family at the turn of the 18th - 19th centuries are enormous: these are memoirs, memoirs, letters, moralizing, testimonies of those who lived at that time.

The structure and relationships in the noble family rested on the ideology that was introduced by Peter the Great and existed in Russia until the 40s of the 19th century. The great emperor firmly connected service and noble dignity, established the dependence of service on education and education on dignity. The existing hierarchy of the noble family was expressed, first of all, in the fact that each of its members had a special ministry.

The main person in this hierarchy was the father - the head of the family. His position was so significant that in comparison the emperor himself was likened to the father of the Fatherland. He was responsible for the representation of the family in society and society in the family. In the event of his death, his widow became the head of the family. If the father, due to his physical condition, was not able to cope with the duties of the head of the family, then another person really did all the work, and the father only symbolized the unity of the family in the eyes of society. For example, the duties of the head in the family of N.S. Turgenev was performed by his mother, Varvara Petrovna, and not by his father, Sergei Nikolaevich, a colonel of the Yekaterinoslav cuirassier regiment, a weak-willed and mentally ill person.

The position of the head of the family was qualitatively different from the position of its other members. Etiquette ordered him to stay at a distance, to be inaccessible, to have separate rooms. Let us recall from numerous literary works with what trepidation the children secretly entered their father's study, which even in adulthood remained inaccessible to them. Even the head of the family had to transmit his orders through a third party. So, the father could forgive a guilty son only through his wife, and his wife through a friend. This made it possible to forgive without diminishing the power and dignity of the head of the family. The main duties of the father were: arranging the marriages of the offspring and the careers of the sons.

The very concept of "family" was very voluminous. It could consist of relatives, both by consanguinity and by kinship. The family often included members of the household, that is, people living under the same roof. However, servants and serfs may not have been included in this number. The exception, however, was the nanny. She participated in the meal on an equal footing with other family members, which emphasized her special position. Let us recall at least the nanny of A. S. Pushkin - Arina Rodionovna.

Teachers could also be included in the family if they had good personal relations with the parents of the students, otherwise they remained in the position of servants (remember the French teacher from A.S. Pushkin's story "Dubrovsky").

Often, “family” was also understood as a community of life. For example, children could call an educational institution, a boarding school, military schools, colleges, a lyceum a family - these institutions were sometimes a single family for their pupils. In critical periods of life, the concept of the family expanded to enormous proportions. Even distant relatives were invited to christenings, weddings and funerals. It is well known that, according to existing laws and traditions, a nobleman had to serve society. The family was also a similar means of serving society. The individual was lower than the family. The ideal of the individual was self-sacrifice in the name of his interests. If in Western Europe the family was opposed to society, and its member could find a moral refuge in it, then in Russia the family was considered part of society. Therefore, probably, the Decembrist A.I. Odoevsky could not find a safe haven in his uncle's house. However, the Decembrists were condemned not only by society, but sometimes by their own families.

The main feature of the structure of the noble family in Russia was its division into male and female hierarchies. Its existence manifested itself in all spheres of life. Even during travels and trips, people of different sexes set off separately. If housekeeping was considered a specific female duty, then affairs outside the home were considered male. Sexual differences also manifested themselves in social activities: etiquette ordered men to meet in the evening, and women could visit each other during the day. Moreover, the male hierarchy was considered the eldest of these two hierarchies. The division was so clear that even the gender of the teacher always matched the gender of the child. So, a widower could only raise a son, but his daughter, no matter how much he loved her, was obliged to give up a relative to be raised. Dying, the father could say that he was leaving his son an orphan, although his mother was alive.

It should be noted that men, as a rule, did not interfere in the affairs of the female hierarchy, with the exception of arranging the marriage of their daughters. Naturally, because of this separation, children were more attached to parents of the opposite sex.

Even more curious was the idea of ​​childhood. Childhood in Russia in the 18th and early 19th centuries, up to the age of seven, was considered a time of purely biological existence. This attitude is partly due to high infant mortality. Therefore, caring for a child up to the age of seven was entrusted to a nanny. The institution of nannies, which Russia was proud of, was alien and incomprehensible to Western European moralists: they preached the ideal of maternal care.

From the age of seven, a child was treated as a small adult. It was believed that he had a mind, and he became suitable for learning. Education and upbringing focused primarily on serving the Fatherland. The boy was brought up the ability to command and obey, and the girl - the ability to sacrifice himself as a wife and mother. Moreover, unlike other cultures of that era, Russian noble education did not consider it possible to “break the will” of a child. Preference was given to persuasion and personal example. Although corporal punishment existed, it was not welcomed and gradually disappeared. After seven years, the behavior of adults became the standard of behavior for a child. The child could even be punished for playing. Children could be present and take an active part in any conversations of adults, including intimate ones, and read any books. The upbringing of little Pushkin in the circle of friends of his father (true, brilliant ones), which Pushkinists admire, was not uncommon.

The status of a man and a woman was different in the noble family of the 18th - early 19th centuries. So, from the age of seven, the girl fell under the care of her mother, who until her marriage bore full responsibility for her. Education and her moral upbringing were entrusted to the governesses, with whom, however, according to the testimony of memoirists, the pupils rarely established good relations. The girls first appeared in the light already, being potential brides. The age of the bride was usually limited to 23 years.

The dignity of marriage consisted not only in love, but also in the fact that the girl broke out from under her mother's guardianship, from the female hierarchy. The main principle of marriage was service to the husband. Even if the husband mistreated his wife, there was nowhere to appeal. The only situation in which a wife could resist her husband's behavior and not be condemned by the light was when the husband squandered his fortune. The state was considered the property of the family and children, for the future of which the mother was also responsible. Here I would like to recall a case from the life of grandmother A.S. Pushkin Maria Alekseevna Gannibal, when she sued her husband Osip Abramovich, who squandered all his fortune. It is interesting to note that legally the spouses were quite independent. The community of property, in our understanding, did not exist. Spouses did not even inherit each other. In society, they had a different circle of acquaintances, led an independent lifestyle and were perceived as independent individuals. There are numerous testimonies about this.

Almost always, the daughter-in-law's relationship with her husband's relatives was difficult, and above all with the mother-in-law, who replaced the mother's guardianship after the woman's marriage. It is known, for example, how many troubles the wife of the hero of the Patriotic War of 1812, Prince D.V., endured. Golitsyn Tatyana Vasilievna from his mother, the state - ladies Natalia Petrovna Golitsyna, just because she considered the Vasilchikov family not noble enough for the Golitsyns.

Motherhood was considered the most important role of a woman. However, after the birth of a child, a distance immediately arose in the mother's relationship with him. In a Russian noble family, it was not decent for a mother to feed a child; this duty was entrusted to a wet nurse. This custom continued until the end of the 19th century. In addition, among the nobility, disappointment in the child was aggravated by the fact that the son was alienated from his mother by a special circle of occupations, and the daughter, after marrying, considered her a very distant authority. The behavior of widows, who were entrusted with the duties of the status of the head of the family, was more free. 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 governor-general Prince D.V. Golitsyn, even in small things, should ask for the blessing of his mother Natalya Petrovna, who continued to see a minor child in the sixty-year-old military leader.

The status of a man in the structure of a noble family was completely different. Until the age of seven, the boy was brought up exclusively by women. The nanny raised the child directly. The mother left the overall supervision. From the age of seven, the boy moved into the male hierarchy. The highest authority now was not the mother, but the father. From this time on, the child sees his mother less often, begins to idealize her image, and the mother, in turn, becomes even more tender towards her son. However, if there was no father, and the mother assumed the role of the head of the family, then this caused feelings of fear and even hatred among the sons. From the age of seven, the child passed into the hands of the uncle, while the nanny was completely removed from education. And here a quote from A.S. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin"

The responsibility of the father for the son did not at all mean their close relationship. It manifested itself only in the selection of uncles and teachers for the son. The father was also responsible for choosing a career for his son. Even if the father was strongly attached to his son, this was not accepted by society. It should be inaccessible, the decisions of which were not disputed and not discussed. The uncle was closest to the child, since he was the least loaded with the role of educator. Often for a nephew, it was he who became the closest friend in the family.

The best educator was considered a teacher - a foreigner. His duties included not only teaching the course of sciences, but, above all, the education of manners, stereotypes of behavior. After all, “failure to behave in the prescribed manner,” as moralists noted, “could lead not only to expulsion from society, but also to the breaking of family ties.” The teacher accompanied the pupil everywhere, could forbid him to go anywhere even with a relative. The father, as a rule, did not interfere in the education system. Emotionally close relationship with the teacher usually did not arise. This was hindered by the position of the teacher in the family hierarchy. On the one hand, he acted as the highest authority for the pupil, and on the other hand, the teacher remained in the position of a servant. Therefore, he aroused neither love, nor friendship, nor fear. Rare memoirists favorably recalled their teachers.

If a girl after marriage automatically became an adult, then a young man was considered an adult only at the age of twenty, as he mastered the levels of hierarchy and service. Puberty did not make a boy an adult. Only study or service in the army made the young man not only an adult, but also gave the first independence from the power of his father. Here, for the first time, the young man found himself in a company of people equal to him in position and age. Study and service evoked the mysticism of friendship and brotherhood. This memory of them remained for life. At the same age, the young man first began to attend society, to go out. The relative freedom from hierarchy was only temporary. However, the question of a career and even marriage remained still with the father. After marriage, a man, as a rule, left the service. Often the marriage was concluded in connection with the death of the father or his inability to be the head of the family. If the father was alive, the position of the son was contradictory, since he still had to obey him. Evidence of this can be found in almost all memoirs. For example, T.P. Passek in his memoirs tells a story from the life of the Kashin landowner I.I. Kuchin, who ignored his father’s orders to carefully ride horses, for which he was flogged. Marriage for love was rare, usually concluded at the age of 30. The will of the father in choosing the bride was decisive. For a man, marriage was a less critical and important moment than for a woman, since his main social role lay in serving society, and not the family. The death of his father was the last step in the man's acquisition of the status of the head of the family, the servant of society.

Even a cursory examination of the structure and relationships in the noble family of the 18th - early 19th centuries shows that they differed sharply from the society of the late 19th century and are completely different from modern concepts. Since the 30s of the XIX century, there have been significant changes in the relationship and structure of the family. This was facilitated by the rapprochement between Russia and Europe, a period of reforms, and the infringement of the rights of the nobility. Now the emotional rather than the rational life came to the fore. Great emphasis was placed on the mutual love of parents and children, and not on the relationship of power and subordinates. The family, as in the West, began to be seen as morally and emotionally separate from society, as a place of special purity and holiness. The house became a moral refuge of a person from society. The structure and relationships in the family, which were finally formed in the second half of the 19th century in a European way, are preserved at the beginning of the 21st century.