Andrei and Natalia Chikhachev, middling nobles, spent their lives running their small estate of Dorozhaevo in Vladimir province and raising their family. In this episode, we use their copious notes and diaries to understand what it meant to be a 'normal' provincial noble in the Russian Empire in the mid-nineteenth century, considering their work lives, their past-times, and their relationship with the world around them.
Source
Kate Pickering-Antonova, An Ordinary Marriage: The World of a Gentry Family in Provincial Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
The colour photographs of Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii fascinated the imperial public of the early 20th century, persuading Emperor Nicholas II to sponsor expeditions across the...
In this episode, we examine the history of lèse-majesté (insulting the honour of the tsar, his family, and his image) in imperial Russia through...
In 1904, a shepherd and his daughter created a new religion in the Altai mountain ranges, leading to a violent confrontation with Russian settlers...
