On the ruins of the count

Nostalgic sketches of Kira Krainova based on observations of villages in the Yaroslavl region. The experience of combining the drawing and commentary on it and, in fact, the experience of subtle girlish sadness for the departed.

Material prepared by the project
Center for Russian Culture Studies

Baths in black

In the countryside, on the banks of the rivers you can see baths that are separate from residential and farm buildings. Along the river, they stretched out in a chain and from a distance look like a train. This bathhouse in black is an old version of the Russian bathhouse, characterized by the special sultry of the steam and the special property of healing a person from all diseases. It is difficult to say when the baths were built, but they still use them: here they wash, and steam, and wash.

Yes, and one bath is often used not by one family, but several, by agreement. And it seems that no benefits of civilization can change the traditions of washing and washing here, on the banks of the river, and not at home. For all the decades that these baths have stood, one civilizational innovation has appeared - electricity has been supplied. But nature is still the same as a hundred years ago: a small river, depth "waist-deep" and therefore always warm, and fluffy thick green cover.

Mansions

Before the revolution, the Vyatka peasants of the Yaroslavl province, who went to St. Petersburg for field work, returned with very wealthy people, often with a higher social status: burghers, merchants, and they built real St. Petersburg merchant mansions in their homeland. From here - a rich stucco molding on the facades, skillful stoves in houses and much more - everything that the peasant craftsmen did in St. Petersburg, then was recreated in the village of Vyatskoye.

To date, many mansions have survived, but some look like this - with gaping windows, stucco peeling on the facade and a collapsed roof - the bitter legacy of a dashing 20th century.