On the basis of unique archival materials, everyday life and the worldview of the middle-class noble family of the second quarter of the 19th century are recreated in the book by Katherine Pickering Antonova. Andrei Chikhachev, the landowner of the Vladimir province, was remembered by fellow countrymen as a benefactor and philanthropist who founded a free library for peasants. The archive's documents of the Chikhachev family are filled with concerns about the household and children, as well as worries about the harvest, health, lawsuits with neighbors and relations with serfs. Analyzing these documents, the author reveals in detail the ideas about power and personality, society and faith, Enlightenment and Romanticism, describes the circle of communication of the Chikhachevs and shows how the concepts and key ideas of that era spread and took root in the conditions of the Russian province. In particular, the "male" and "female" gender roles inherent in the dominant ideology of home life in the 19th century could change places, and conservative and liberal ideas could coexist peacefully in the imagination of the "middle hand" landowners. A microhistorical study by Pickering Antonova expands our understanding of the culture of the Russian nobility and its role in the intellectual, social, and economic life of the pre-reform province.
Katherine Pickering Antonova — historian, professor at Queens College of City University of New York (Queens College, CUNY). Her research interests lie in the field of the history of gender relations and conservatism in Russia and Western Europe in the first half of the 19th century.