Книга Венок усадьбам - Алексей Николаевич Греч

rested in my desk at the Academy premises when I was working on a selection devoted to the Decembrists; but the desk was wrecked by a bunch of schoolchildren, as was the entire room". Grech added that he was stepping down as the Society’s chairman.

This letter is a valuable addition to what we know about the life of Alexei Grech. From the allusion to the Decembrist collection one can deduce that he was an historian. A man possessing profound and wide-ranging knowledge, he was acknowledged by specialists to be an authority on painting and manorial art of the 18th and 19th centuries. This is precisely the subject of his major work, “A Wreath for Country Estates", which is now published for the first time.

Grech started working on the “Wreath” in 1932 and he probably continued until his release from the labour camp. The duration of his first term, which began in 1932, has not been ascertained so far, but there are many reasons to believe that it ended not earlier than April 1936. This conclusion is borne out by a medical prescription dated March, 1936, and written on a printed form of a medical unit of the OGPU (the dreaded State Security service); it was discovered between the last pages of Grech’s manuscript.

The author’s purpose transpires from his introduction to the manuscript and from its title. Being fully aware that the historical and cultural heritage of pre-revolutionary Russia was irrevocably doomed, the ex-chairman of the suppressed society set out to preserve, at least in writing, that which had been a prize possession of Russian culture. The manuscript was conceived as a monument to Russian country estates, which, to use Grech’s own expression, "have all become a colossal necropolis”.

The “Wreath” comprises 47 essays, each providing a detailed description of an individual estate or a survey of several estates lying in a certain district of Moscow Province or some neighbouring provinces. Grech’s choice of estates is not original; all of them have been covered by descriptions made both before and after him, but the “Wreath” is unique in that it presents, in shapeshot fashion, the condition of these estates in the mid-1920s. In those years the Soviet press, subject to the strictest control, dared not publish any data on the outrageous misuse or purposeful destruction of these famous sites. Moreover, the "Wreath” is the last and largest composition to be written in the tradition upheld by members of the Society for the Study of Russian Country Estates. Most of the essays follow the pattern worked out by the Society in the 20s: the location and early history of an estate, an appraisal of its architectural ensemble, a detailed description of its interior settings, its furniture, lighting fixtures, sculptures, libraries and picture galleries, as well as of the theatre auditoriums, hothouses and other ambitious and fanciful projects; information about the owners, architects, artists and others who lived on that estate or frequented it. In Grech’s descriptions every estate emerges as a living body: architecture is inseparably linked with the natural setting and the owners’ life-style, and the interior decoration and numerous collections add an important touch to the inimitable image of the Russian manor. Such an all-round approach to the subject is exemplified most fully by Alexei Grech. Those who came after the Society’s suppression treated the ravaged estates merely as architectural monuments; their owners’ life stories and life-styles, and the art works that went with these sites were disregarded.

Another point to make: despite the fact that the “Wreath” makes such good reading, it is undoubtedly a serious study, intended for specialists in the field. It summarizes surveys of country estates that had been carried on for a number of years, and it presents the data of many articles and materials that had never been published; it is actually the summing-up of the Society’s activities. Grech must have been fully aware how important his work would be for experts, and this probably accounts for his scrupulous descriptions of unique mementos of bygone days, pictures, chandeliers and mural paintings, in which he tries to convey graphic images; the names of personages appearing on the portraits are invariably listed.

Grech emerges both as a studious researcher and a writer on matters of everyday life. The manuscript contains poetic descriptions of magnificent fetes and hunting parties, and of the owners’ wide-ranging whims; these are-sometimes spiced with a touch of irony. Written in an exquisitive style, the essays contain some lyrical disgressions.

For the manuscript’s author, this piece of composition must have been a means of escaping his immediate grim surroundings by steeping himself in an irrevocably lost world. Many parts of the text were heavily edited by him, as evidenced by numerous corrections and addenda (written on separate sheets of paper or as marginal notes in pencil and ink). The last five pages of the manuscript, which was left unfinished, are all in pencil. On the margin of page 256 we find a list of country estates to which Grech had intended to devote separate essays: those of Sukhanovo and Dubrovitsy, Ostrov, Zhodochi, Krasnaya Pakhra and estates in other villages of Podolsk District.

The first part of the manuscript may have been retyped, as suggested by markings that indicate the end of each typescript page and the words “six signatures” inscribed on page 200. Let us note that the following 60 pages (their total number is 260) account for the greater part of the text. In contrast to the clear and bold penmanship of the first 200 pages, these are written in a small and crabbed hand. This has been a serious impediment to the publishers, as well as the fact that there were many words with missing letters. Maria and Alexander Afanasyev and Lyubov Pisarkova, who undertook to prepare the manuscript for the press, have also provided it with annotations and indices of proper and geographical names.

The compilers thank Alexander Afanasyev for his painstaking effort on editing the manuscript.