This article examines changing attitudes towards the Russian countryside and the country estate among a section of the Russian nobility during the first half of the nineteenth century, making use of sources ranging from the works of major writers like Pushkin through to the memoir accounts of little-known authors. The article argues that the pastoral idyll presented in many fictional and non-fictional works often concealed an underlying ambivalence about the prosaic realities of country living. At the same time, though, it suggests that a complex array of factors was encouraging many members of Russian noble families to strengthen their emotional identification with the countryside and the country estate. The growth of such a ‘rural consciousness’ reflected a series of social, economic and political changes that had been taking place since the final decade of the eighteenth century.
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