Terence A. Dooley (National University of Ireland Maynooth) Christian Noack (University of Amsterdam)

‘From aristocratic past to public heritage: A comparative case study of Russian and Irish country houses since the revolutions.’

Introduction ‘The storm’, the final chapter of Priscilla Roosevelt’s pioneering study on the Russian estate, begins with speculation on how the country’s stately homes might look today if noble culture in 1917 had not been ‘so savagely put to death.’1 The picture she evokes bears many resemblances to the situation in England and Ireland in the present: ‘… there would certainly be fewer grand estate houses than in 1916, their maintenance perhaps financed by paying guests or reproductions of Ostankino treasures or Yusupov porcelain… many of Russia’s manor houses, as elsewhere, would undoubtedly have disintegrated, been sold and converted to other uses, or razed to make way for housing developments…’2 To date, the bulk of comparative research on Russian estates has focused on England, rather than on Ireland. John Randolph, for example, has devoted a long review essay to Roosevelt’s Country Estate and Peter Mandler’s seminal study on the Rise and Fall of the Stately Home. Randolph’s starting point is the obvious contrast with the situation in England where ‘two million members swell the ranks of the English country house’s defending army, the might National Trust’, while ‘Russia’s humiliated ruins can only echo Chaadaev’s famous judgement: “We do not even have homes”.’3 Arguably, a comparison of the Russian and Irish cases might be just as instructive, if not more so. In Ireland, an aristocratic culture, largely perceived as English and alien, lost its hegemonic position between 1916 and 1923 during a period of socio-political upheaval and civil war. This was contemporaneous with the decline of Russian gentry culture. As we will demonstrate in our paper, much of the built heritage, most particularly in the form of the country house, was lost and in the decades which followed a negative political and public attitude towards big houses prevailed. The splendour in which some houses present themselves today is somewhat misleading; in the Irish case, for example, it has been spawned by years of the so-called Celtic Tiger and a reappraisal of their heritage position within the national patrimony. As to the Russian case, Randolph, based on Mandler’s recommendation to study heritage making in the longue durée, had already speculated about a possible continuation of ‘beautiful [estate] life’ under Soviet conditions after 1917. We will try to demonstrate that elements of the nobility’s cultural arcadia indeed survived the burning of houses during the revolutions and the civil war.

1 Priscilla Roosevelt: Life on the Russian Country Estate: A Social and Cultural History (New Haven and London, 1995) p. 330. 2 Roosevelt, Country Estate, p. 329. 3 John Randolph, “The Old Mansion: Revisiting the History of the Russian Country Estate”, Kritika 1,4 (2000), pp. 729-749, quotes pp. 729-730.

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Subsequently the physical structures of the manor houses were preserved partly for practical purposes, and partly because of a reinterpretation of Russian culture during the Soviet period.4

The Irish case: an introduction.5 In July 2003, the then Minister for Education and Science, Noel Dempsey TD [Fianna Fáil], was happy to tell his audience in Trim Castle, county Meath: The built heritage in Ireland is a fundamental and treasured part of our national identity. It encapsulates historic linkages within and beyond our shores, and illustrates a strong sense of our identity within a common European and, indeed, a broader global inheritance.6 But in fact it was only at the turn of the 21st century that Irish politicians had, in general, become comfortable with the idea that country houses should be regarded as part of the Irish national patrimony. The aim of the first part of this paper is to demonstrate how older memories and traditional nationalist perceptions had to fade before country houses in Ireland could become popular visitor centres. The section which follow examine the origins of these perceptions, discuss how they impacted negatively on government policy towards the preservation of country houses in the immediate post-independence period, and finally explore the confluence of factors which over the last few decades have changed these perceptions so that the country house in Ireland is now less perceived as a symbol of colonial oppression and more as an important aspect of Ireland’s built heritage. In Ireland the reasons for the decline of the country house, or ‘big house’ (a term that ambiguously embodies deference and alienation), had mostly to do with the changing socio-political and economic circumstances of Irish landlords from the late 1870s as shrinking estates, vanishing incomes (first rental and then investment) and the growth of democracy coincided with the extraordinary upheavals of the extended Land War from the late 1870s, the Great War of 1914-18, the Irish revolution of 1916-23, and the worldwide economic depression that followed, not to mention more personal reasons of family misfortune.7 In the midst of all of this there was another phenomenon in this decline: the reinvention of the Irish nation from the late nineteenth century and the role it played in fostering political and popular resentment towards country houses in independent Ireland.8 While in Europe, aristocratic mansions, chateaux, Schlösser and villas were all victims of political destruction at different times, by the twentieth century

4 Randolph, “Old mansion”, pp. 747-749. 5 Much of what follows in this discussion of Ireland is a translation of Terence Dooley, ‘National patrimony and political perceptions of the Irish country house in post-independence Ireland’ in Terence Dooley (ed.), Ireland’s polemical past: views of Irish history in honour of R.V. Comerford (Dublin, 2010), pp. 192-212; for a wider discussion on the reasons for the fall of the Irish landed class, see Terence Dooley, The decline of the Big House in Ireland: a Study of Irish Landed Families, 1860-1960 (Dublin, 2001); also Terence Dooley and Christopher Ridgway (eds.), The Irish country house: its past, present and future (Dublin, 2010). 6 www.education.ie [1 Nov. 2007]. 7 Dooley, The Decline of the Big House. 8 On the subject of inventing the nation see R.V. Comerford’s magisterial Ireland (London and New York, 2003).

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there was more of a sense that they could be regarded ‘as national rather than specifically aristocratic property’ than was the case in post-independence Ireland, where there was a widely held perception amongst politicians (and the wider public) that country houses were (former) bastions of alien power built upon a feudal rackrenting economy and with this perception came all the attendant consequences that threatened their survival.9 Land wars and revolution, 1879-1923 The general case stated is that for Irish nationalists of the late nineteenth century, country houses became the physical representations in their locales of a landlord system that was despised for social, economic and political reasons. This had not always been the case. The Young Irelander, Thomas Davis (1814-45), for example, seems to have had little difficulty in appreciating the aesthetic qualities of country houses and their picturesque surroundings. When extolling the natural beauty of the Munster Blackwater Valley, Davis wrote: ‘There is every combination that can be produced by the elements that enter into the picturesque: rocks, verdant slopes with the triumphs of art superadded, and made visible in magnificent houses and beautiful villas, with their decorated lawns and pleasure-grounds’.10 As late as 1882 a radical separatist and despiser of landlordism, John Devoy, could still praise the duke of Leinster’s ‘handsome seat, called Carton, with its beautiful grounds’ and write of Lismore: ‘it ill behoves us to pass from the place without paying a tribute to the general air of comfort that pervades …’11 However, as the Land War intensified so did violent anti-landlord rhetoric that portended what lay ahead for country houses. This rhetoric was successful in creating the perception that landlords were the initiators of Ireland’s social, economic and political problems and those who practised this rhetoric - whether in speech or print - were purposeful in their intent to alienate the landlord class from the wider nationalist community. Periodicals and the emerging popular literature represented landlords as ‘territorial monsters’,12 or as ‘absentee, rack-renting, depopulating … making … laws in a foreign parliament for their miserable serfs at home’.13 They were charged with ‘Celtic depopulation’ and the spoliation of the ‘Celtic fatherland’, a reflection of the fact that since the 1840s the Celt had become synonymous with a Gaelic Ireland that predated the plantations.14 By the time Michael Davitt (1846-1906), founder of the Land League, published his version of its story in The Fall of Feudalism (1904), the growth of Irish nationalism and the emergence of the Irish Ireland movement from the 1880s had witnessed the re-imagination of the Irish nation as exclusively nationalist, Gaelic and catholic, so there was no room for landlords in the national collectivity.15 The essential point in all of this is that from the Land War era nationalists from all spheres of Irish society perpetuated the stereotypical representation of Irish landlords as alien oppressors more widely than before and from that emerged the perception that the

9 Peter Mandler, The Fall and Rise of the Stately Home (New Haven and London, 1997), p. 3. 10 Thomas Davis, Literary and Historical Essays (1846), p. 215; quoted in Comerford, Ireland, p. 240. 11 John Devoy, The Land of Eire (New York, 1882), pp 50, 102. 12 Patrick Lavelle, The Irish Landlord Since the Revolution (Dublin, 1870), p. 259. 13 Michael Davitt, The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland (New York, 1904), p. xvii. 14 Lavelle, The Irish Landlord, p. 273; Davitt, Fall of Feudalism, p. xii; Comerford, Ireland, p. 70. 15 Comerford, Ireland, p. 9.

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country house could not be regarded as part of the national patrimony. Instead it was represented as the house of plenty, gathered and stored at the expense of the impoverished outside its demesne walls and so the Connaught Telegraph proclaimed in 1879: Our magnates revel in luxury, unknown to the kings of other countries. Their mansions, widespread pleasure grounds, and ornamental gardens are truly magnificent, while their tenants whose wretched huts are the only blemishes on the beautiful view, which lies open from the site of each lordly residence, pine away in all but utter destitution.16 As the Land War generation gave way to the revolutionary generation of the post-1916 period it bequeathed the ancestral resentments that intensified the alienation of Irish landlords. IRA veterans later claimed they had been reared on stories of English oppression (more often than not associated with landlord oppression.) Famed Tipperary IRA leader, Dan Breen recalled the influence of Charlie Walshe (Cormac Breathnach, later Lord Mayor of Dublin), who taught a generation of revolutionaries including himself, Dinny Lacey, Seán Treacy and Seán Hogan: ‘the naked facts about the English conquest of Ireland and the manner in which our country was held in bondage’.17 Similarly, Liam Deasy’s teacher: ‘strove constantly to rid us of the attitude of servility and subservience towards the landed gentry which was encouraged by this class, and in its place he endeavoured to plant a sense of self-respect and independence’.18 Tom Barry grew up to resent the big houses of west Cork in which ‘lived the leading British loyalist, secure and affluent in his many acres, enclosed by high demesne walls’.19 In total over 300 big houses were burned from the beginning of the War of Independence in 1920 to the end of the Civil War in 1923.20 When the arson campaign reached various peaks there were occasional outcries but they came mainly from to-be-expected sources such as the editor of the Irish Times, representatives of various church bodies, fellow country house owners, and the occasional old constitutional nationalist of the moribund Home Rule party.21 After independence, Free State government policy, official and otherwise, was unsympathetic in terms of compensating big house owners for the losses suffered or in any way encouraging in terms of helping them to rebuild.22 The draft of a statement to be delivered to the Dáil by President W.T. Cosgrave in March 1923 pointed out that: ‘Practically every claim for financial accommodation to economic interest is accompanied by a statement [from Loyalists] that the government can find millions to

16 Connaught Telegraph, 30 Aug. 1879. 17 Dan Breen. My Fight for Irish Freedom (Dublin, 1981 ed. [first ed., 1924]), p. 9. 18 Liam Deasy, Towards Ireland Free:The West Cork Brigade in the War of Independence (Cork, 1973), p. 2. 19 Tom Barry, Guerilla Days in Ireland (Dublin, 1981 ed. [first ed., 1949]), p. 6. 20 This is the number estimated by Dooley in The Decline of the Big House in Ireland, pp. 286-87; however a recent study by James S Donnelly Jr. for houses burned in Cork over the same period, and using a more extensive range of sources suggests the need to re-appraise the national figures; James S. Donnelly Jr,, “Big House Burnings in County Cork during the Irish revolution, 1920-21”, Éire-Ireland 47,3&4 (2012) pp. 141-97. 21 Dooley, The Decline of the Big House in Ireland, pp. 192-95. 22 Ibid., pp. 197-207.

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compensate a class which never benefited the nation and drew its revenue from rents and lands etc. etc.’23 The definition of nation quite clearly excluded the former ascendancy. There were many other damaging consequences of the arson attacks on big houses; much of their valuable contents also went up in flames. Financial exigencies had meant that contents had been disappearing from Ireland since the passing of the Settled Land Act (Ireland) in 1882 to make their way across the Atlantic to adorn the homes of rising plutocratic families such as the Vanderbilts, the Morgans and the Rockefellers. There was no public outcry then or for almost a century more. But the IRA gangs who ransacked country houses during the Troubles were not ‘barbarians’ or ‘philistines’ as Cornelia Adair thought the men who raided Glenveagh in August 1920 and who ‘injured four oil paintings of some value and tore up a group photograph that had Lord Kitchener in it’.24 They knew what Kitchener represented to them – an iconic figure of the empire that they fought – while the oil paintings were just as symbolic of an alien culture as her big house. Their historical (or material) value was irrelevant to men who shared none of Cornelia Adair’s cultural outlook. And, yet, there is something of a great irony in the fact that in the post-independence decades local people flocked to big house auctions and bought what could be described as mementoes while the prized artefacts went mainly abroad. There is little point in speculating about what might have been had a Home Rule parliament come into existence after the Great War but it is arguable that those who succeeded to power had little of the cultural experience of Parnell or Redmond. Separatists had no time for the trappings of aristocracy. From the perspective of the big house, democratisation and the reinvention of the nation in the post-Land War era meant that successive governments in independent Ireland were anything but sympathetic in their attitudes or policies towards them. It was not the destruction of a minority of big houses (probably less than 10 per cent) during the revolutionary period that was most significant, but rather the abandonment and/or demolition of a much higher proportion in the decades that followed.

Government attitudes in Ireland post independence One of the great social issues that faced the first independent government was still the redistribution of land. Through a succession of land acts from 1923 to 1965 country houses and their surrounding demesnes and estates had, in the majority of cases, to make way for the farming interest.25 During Dáil debates it was commonly remarked that the division of estates was the righting of a great historical wrong and a natural conclusion of the Land War of the 1880s.

23 Draft of statement to be delivered by President W.T. Cosgrave to Dáil Éireann, 26 Mar. 1923 (National Archive of Ireland, Dept of Taoiseach files, S2188). 24 Cornelia Adair to Mr Roberts, 2 August 1920 (on public display, Glenveigh Castle). 25 For a more detailed discussion of this topic see Terence Dooley, “The Land for the People”: The Land Question in Independent Ireland (Dublin, 2004).

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When Patrick Hogan (1891-1936), Minister for Lands, introduced the 1923 land bill to Dáil Éireann, Deputy J. Bourke (Tipperary, Coalition Treaty) proudly pronounced: I believe that implicit in this event alone is the undoing of the conquest of Ireland. For the conquest of Ireland was the conquest of the land of Ireland, the wresting of the lands of Ireland, held by Irish tenure, from the people of Ireland by foreigners who held by foreign tenure from a foreign king. In this even may be seen an outward sign and symbol of the victory of the Gael over the Gaul (recte Gall), the victory of the descendants of the clansmen … I believe that this measure represents an honest and, so far as it goes, a successful effort to deal with the remainder of the agrarian difficulty, one of the worst legacies of British misrule in Ireland. I believe when all the equities are taken into consideration that it does justice to the landlord; I believe it does very full justice to the tenant, and I believe that it does honour to the political capacity of the nation, and I for one am very glad to support it. 26 In a society where land redistribution was the perceived key to financial security the big house was only an obstacle to be removed, physically if necessary. Almost a century before, Thomas Davis had lamented the pillaging of ancient sites in nineteenth-century Ireland: ‘All classes, creeds and politics are to blame in this. The peasant lugs down a pillar for his sty, the farmer for his gate, the priest for his chapel, the minister for his glebe.’ The same might equally be applied to country houses in the twentieth century, only then the farmer used the country house for his sty and the Land Commission recommended their demolition and the use of their material for the erection of labourers’ cottages. In 1944, the Minister for Lands, Seán Moylan (Fianna Fáil) informed the Dáil: ‘Residences on lands acquired by the Land Commission for division which are not suitable for disposal to allottees may be demolished in order to provide material for building smaller houses for allottees or may be sold by public auction’.27 Three years before Moylan had shown his hand in much stronger terms when he told the same body: But, in general, the majority of these big houses that I know, and I am very familiar with them, are not structurally sound, have no artistic value and no historic interest. From my unregenerate point of view, I choose to regard them as tombstones of a departed ascendancy and the sooner they go down the better. They are no use.28 Inherent in Moylan’s reply was the type of cultural alienation that characterised nationalist attitudes towards country houses over generations. The former ascendancy’s own realisation of that meant that they were faced with what L.P. Curtis Jr has described as ‘a hard choice between self-imposed exile and accommodation with their new masters’.29 Many preferred to stay away permanently; others to come over only

26 Dáil Debates, vol. 3, 28 May 1923, 1164-5. 27 Dáil Debates, vol. 92, 23 Feb. 1944; www.oireachtas-debates.gov.ie/plweb- cgi/fastweb?stae_id=1227534811&view [24 Nov. 2008]. 28 Dáil Debates, vol. 93, 2 May 1944, 1852. 29 L. Perry Curtis Jr., “The Last Gasp of Southern Unionism: Lord Ashtown of Woodlawn” in Eire-Ireland, vol. 40,3&4 (2005), p. 140.

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occasionally because like Andrew Devonshire of Lismore Castle they felt apart from the nation: Even after living there [Lismore] for part of each year for the past fifty years, and counting many Irishmen as my friends, I don’t feel included in their Irishness. The truth is that any Englishman, even one whose family have owned property in Ireland over the centuries, is still regarded as English…. But for me the Republic is a mistress rather than a wife, to be visited but not to live with.30

Country houses as part of the Irish patrimony Essentially built heritage can be interpreted as ‘a physical legacy of the past belonging, however abstractly, to the citizenry of the present by virtue of its contribution to national history’31 Heritage can be used to exclude as well as include and in the early years of independence ascendancy cultural artefacts were not presented as an acceptable part of ‘a narrative of national achievement’.32 So there remained for decades the widely held perception that the architectural grandeur of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries symbolised the dominant elitism of landlords built to the impoverishment of the Irish people. Historical associations overrode architectural significance. Fairly typical in respect of the apathy shown towards the preservation of country houses was the case of Muckross House in Killarney donated to the State in 1932. The then vice- president of the Executive Council praised the Bourn Vincents ‘for their great generosity and for the fine example of public spirit which they have set’, while W.T. Cosgrave saw it as ‘a very remarkable gift, a very generous gift and a very princely gift.’33 But successive governments did nothing with Muckross House (except to strip it of many of its contents to furnish the president’s residence at Aras an Uachtarain) and at one stage in the 1950s a despondent report in the Irish Times read: ‘Muckross house remains a silent and lonely sentinel on the shore of the Middle lake. As successive government have failed to find a use for it, it seems it will eventually fall into decay.’34 It was not until 1964 that the house was opened to the public; today it is one of the main tourist attractions in southwest Ireland. In the early decades of independence successive governments simply never formulated any policies for houses that came into their possession. Before the introduction of proper planning laws, work was carried out in many of these state-owned houses with very little regard for good conservation practice. Their character and fabric suffered greatly as they were converted from residences into research centres (Johnstown Castle, County

30 Andrew Devonshire, Accidents of Fortune (Norwich, 2004), pp. 108-09. 31 Mandler, The Fall and Rise of the Stately Home, p. 7. 32 Comerford, Ireland, pp. 46, 249. It should, of course, be remembered that attitudes were not much different at this time in Britain, where, it has been argued: “All too easily accusations of privilege are aimed at the country house – that it encouraged and nurtured a parasitical society supported by an exploited working class, that the leisured way of life of one was achieved by the labour of the other”; Harry Teggin, “Domus Britannicus: What Future for the Country House?” in The Architect’s Journal, 24 Jan. 1979, p. 166. 33 Dáil Debates, vol, 45, 7 Dec. 1932, 947-48. 34 Irish Times, 29 June 1954.

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Wexford), agricultural training colleges (Ballyhaise, County Cavan), prisons (Shelton Abbey, County Wicklow) and so on.35 Unlike the landscape, big houses were not perceived to belong to the national patrimony – whereas in Britain it became possible to ‘float the idea that aristocratic property was in some magical and strictly intangible way the people’s property also’36 - and so the state was slow to concern itself with spending money on their protection. This remained the case until around the 1970s when the tourist industry realised the potential of country houses but even then it was primarily those such as Muckross, Killarney House and Glenveagh in Donegal that came with attractive gardens and large parklands. On the introduction of the National Monuments Bill in 1929,37 which more or less legislated that ruins were preferable to intact buildings, Timothy Sheehy (West Cork) emphasised the need to preserve what was left of O’Sullivan Beare’s castle at Castlehaven: It was the castle from which O’Sullivan Beare, after his last grand and great struggle for Irish liberty, sailed away to Spain. It has now only the foundations left, but they are sacred to the country, and by this Bill, introduced by the government, they can be preserved; … they will be there a monument to the younger generation of what was done in the good old times to save our independence and win it.38 He thanked God that ‘the nation [was now] in our own hands’ and that the ‘monuments to the heroism of our forefathers’ would be preserved. ‘Our hands’ obviously excluded the former landed ruling class and ‘our forefathers’ were of the old Gaelic ruling class such as O’Sullivan Beare who following the defeat of the Gaelic chiefs at Kinsale in 1601 made the heroic march with 1,000 of his followers from Cork to Leitrim. The prevailing attitude to the preservation of country houses should, of course, be understood in the context of a political climate that was still highly charged and where the mindsets and ideologies of those in government were still dictated to a large extent by emotive memories of Land War and British oppression, brought to the forefront by some deputy or other almost every time land or the establishment of an Irish republic were being debated. Just as importantly, the government was forced for decades after independence to wear a financial straitjacket. There could be no expenditure on the preservation of country houses when so many other social issues had to be addressed. When, during a debate on the land question in 1948, Deputy Charles Fagan (Independent, Longford-Westmeath) made the rare point in the Dáil that ‘It was a crying shame for the past 15 or 20 years to see mansions and big houses pulled down’, he was shouted down by Dublin South-Central representative, Con Lehane: ‘It is not mansions we want, but houses for our people.’ 39

35 See Terence Dooley, A Future for Irish Historic Houses: A Study of Fifty Houses (Dublin, 2003), p. 23. 36 See Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven and London, 1992), pp. 174-77. 37 An act to make provision for the protection and preservation of national monuments and for the preservation of archaeological objects in Saorstat Éireann and to make provision for other matters connected with the matters aforesaid, no. 2/1930 [26 Feb. 1930]. 38 Dáil Debates, vol. 32, 24 Oct. 1929, 251. 39 Dáil Debates, Vol. 111, 03 June 1948, 400.

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Social priority was most clearly articulated in the Dáil chambers in 1970 by Kevin Boland, then Fianna Fáil Minister for Local Government, in his now infamous ‘belted earls speech’.40 Much quoted as an attack on the Irish Georgian Society and its supporters, this speech is best understood in the context of its time. Boland claimed: …it is desirable to preserve as much as is feasible of the Georgian area of my native city…. I agree also that there are many examples of Georgian architecture outside the city of Dublin which are well worth preserving if possible and I also accept unreservedly that this is part of our national heritage, but it is part only.41 It was merely a token gesture when, in fact, Boland was more annoyed that ‘the antics’ of a handful of aesthetes and students had hijacked media attention for the preservation of Georgian Dublin. He perceived these to be a minority – as the wider public would have done – and so he told the Dáil: I think the impressive facades of those Georgian houses, the sweeping staircases, the fine stucco work, the Adam fireplaces and so on are well worth preserving but I think it is no harm to remind people who make a fetish of those things and who yearn after the days of gracious living that they denote that each example also involved a dark and gloomy basement and an insanitary back lane hovel.42 He made it quite clear that social concerns outweighed preservation: I make no apology whatever for saying that the physical needs of the people must get priority over the aesthetic needs of Lord and Lady Guinness and Deputies Dr FitzGerald, Dr Browne, Desmond and all the other Deputy doctors that we have. I make no apology for saying that, desirable as is the preservation of old buildings of architectural merit, while I am Minister for Local Government and while the needs of the people for housing, water and sewerage services remain unfulfilled, not one penny of the capital allocation that it is possible to make available to my department will be spent on such preservation, desirable as it is.43 The years that followed were characterised by soaring inflation, energy shortages and lack of confidence in modern economic development. Public finances were tight in the midst of continuing recession and so the government paid very little attention to the preservationist lobby. Country houses were crumbling as a result of harsh tax regimes that made it more expedient to demolish them (or at least strip them of their roofs) than pay exorbitantly high local government rates. By the early 1970s hundreds of the great Irish houses had disappeared: Tudenham in Westmeath; Dartrey in Monaghan;

40 It should also be understood that Boland was one of the more extreme nationalists in Fianna Fail. His father, Gerald, was a founding member of the party and his uncle, Harry, a prominent revolutionary figure was killed in the Civil War. Kevin Boland would resign his cabinet position later in 1970 in solidarity with Neil Blaney and Charles Haughey over their sacking from government for their alleged involvement in gunrunning for the Provisional IRA. 41 Dáil debates, vol. 245, 11 Mar. 1970, 167. 42 Dáil debates, vol. 245, 11 Mar. 1970, 168-69. 43 Dáil debates, vol. 245, 11 Mar. 1970, 168.

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Dunsandle in Galway; Frenchpark in Roscommon; and Dromore in Limerick, to name but a few.44 In the 1970s Malahide and its contents were offered to the state in lieu of the Talbot de Malahide family’s tax liability, but under the instructions of the Minister for Finance, Richie Ryan, the house and chattels were auctioned. As far as Ryan and the government were concerned these were not national possessions and the national benefit lay not in preserving the historical remnants of a medieval hall but rather in converting the contents, through sale, into revenue to be spent on education, social welfare and so on. It should not be overlooked that in all of this, owners shared some responsibility for their impotency to lobby governments for the protection of their homes.

Changing perceptions in Ireland So where and when did it all change and how did Ireland arrive at a position in 2003 for the then Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern TD, to proclaim? …the ‘Big House’ has a special place in Irish architectural history. Once considered not to be part of our patrimony, these magnificent eighteenth and nineteenth century houses, built by Irish builders, are now increasingly valued for their architectural significance and for the wealth of superb interior decoration created mainly by Irish craftspeople…. The survival of this important part of Ireland’s built heritage is of major concern to Government.45 The clue to changing political (and public) attitudes lies very much in Ahern’s use of the term ‘Irish’ in the above quotation: he emphasised that they were built by ‘Irish builders’, decorated by ‘Irish craftspeople’ and they held ‘a special place in Irish architectural history’. Less than half a century before preservationists first realised that this could be the key in unlocking political mindsets (and government coffers); the big house would have to be re-imagined as a part of the national patrimony. In 1957, when Desmond Guinness suggested the re-founding of the Irish Georgian Society in a letter to the Irish Times he stated that the function of the new organisation, amongst other things, would be ‘to awaken an interest in Ireland’s heritage of Georgian architecture’.46 To influence change the argument had to be formulated (in the case of many individual houses even invented) that country houses owed as much to Irish influence as English influence. This caused difficulties within and without the country house. Within, there remained a preference for all things English. Most had failed or deliberately avoided integration into Irish society despite the best efforts of such as Elizabeth Bowen to convince that ‘a barrier has two sides’.47 For most, Britain was still their spiritual home and in more practical terms the location of their children’s education in public schools and the outlet for their career ambitions.

44 For a more comprehensive listing, though by no means exhaustive, see The knight of Glin, D.J. Griffin and N.K. Robinson, Vanishing Country Houses of Ireland (Dublin, 1988). 45 Bertie Ahern, “Foreword” in Dooley, A Future for Irish Historic Houses, p. 2. 46 See Robert O’Byrne, The Irish Georgian Society: A Celebration (Dublin, 2008). 47 Elizabeth Bowen, “The big house” in Hermione Lee (ed.), The Mulberry Tree: Writing of Elizabeth Bowen (London, 1986), p. 30.

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Without, the idea that the country house should be regarded as part of the national patrimony was never going to be an easy sell. The only thing those propounding this ideology had in their favour was that the 1960s brought other changes to Ireland. It was a time of relative economic prosperity and increased optimism. Ireland was becoming increasingly urbanised and less obsessed with the land question (the last major land act was passed in 1965.) Society became less denominationalised. This began with the Catholic Church’s loss of influence on public culture; in the republic religion and nationality were no longer synonymous and as Vincent Comerford explains: the ‘moderation of politico-historical attitudes to the so-called ‘ascendancy’ was also coming into play’.48 Educational improvements, most notably the introduction of free primary and secondary education for all in 1967, gradually widened support amongst an increasingly enlightened and better-educated audience. Even though Kevin Boland’s speech came in 1970, the tide had begun to change, slowly. Three years after Boland’s speech Ireland joined the European Economic Union. This was crucial because now the architectural significance of the Irish country house had to be seen in a much wider European context. It could now be said that Ireland ‘belonged’ to Europe as opposed to Britain and this new link had no historical contamination. Moreover, from a public and private perspective, European money was too important to ignore international charters and conventions that were intended to inform and influence government policy and legislation for protecting the architectural heritage.49 In some cases Ireland was slow to sign up to these charters (almost twenty years in the case of UNESCO’s Convention concerning the protection of the world cultural and national heritage and in 1976 Ireland was the only EEC member without an official national buildings record50) but by 1991 the government eventually accepted that ‘each state party to the convention recognises that the duty of ensuring identification, protection, conservation, preservation and transmission to future generations of this heritage belongs primarily to that state.’51 In the interim the Irish government, responding to increased pressure from preservationists, did introduce various schemes that brought some respite to country house owners. Grants became available through central and local authorities or state bodies such as Bord Fáilte (illustrating a new dimension that the tourist value of the country house was now perceived to be worth exploring), while funds allocated to the Office of Public Works for the conservation of buildings of ancient, historic and architectural merit increased from £580,000 in 1973-4 to £1.7 million in 1976.52 But although support was increasing so also was the number of country houses in difficulty. In February 1974 the white paper on capital taxation, introduced ostensibly to redistribute wealth, had grave implications for historic houses, contents and gardens. By

48 Comerford, Ireland, pp. 118, 249. 49 Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government (DoEHLG), Architectural heritage protection: guidelines for planning authorities (Dublin, 2004), p. 14. 50 Knight of Glin et al., Vanishing Country Houses, p. 8. In the same year, the establishment of the Irish Architectural Archive by Edward McParland and Nicholas Robinson helped fill this gap. 51 DoEHLG, Architectural heritage protection, p. 14. 52 Edward McParland and Nicholas Robinson (eds.), Heritage at Risk: A Digest of An Taisce’s Report on the Future of Historic Houses, Gardens and Collections in the Republic of Ireland (Dublin, 1977), p. 30.

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1977 at least fifteen country houses were put up for sale or abandoned while 1976 became ‘the year in which the fine art collections of the big houses have come up for auction’.53 In response to the crisis, An Taisce the National Trust for Ireland published Heritage at risk (edited by Edward McParland and Nicholas Robinson) in 1977 and emphasised that ‘The architectural heritage as represented by surviving country houses within the state is of European, not merely national, importance.’ The report hailed big houses as: ‘the works of Irish and other architects of major artistic significance’. 54 Successive governments responded to some of the recommendations of Heritage at risk in the form of tax concessions announced in the 1978 budget and later section 19 of the Finance Act 1982 (later section 482 of the 1997 Taxes Consolidation Act) which allowed owners to offset the cost of repairs for historic houses against tax liabilities and afforded relief from capital taxes on the condition that the public was given reasonable access.55 By 2005, 200 properties (not all country houses) were availing of section 482.56A succession of other reports and influential publications followed, all of which highlighted the need to secure the future for country houses, especially those in the ownership of the original families with important surviving collections. In 1987 the Heritage Advisory Committee was set up by the Taoiseach, Dr Garret FitzGerald (Fine Gael): ‘to advise government on the conservation of Ireland’s architectural heritage and the disbursement of funds from the national lottery towards the maintenance and repair of privately held historic buildings’.57 His successor, Charles J. Haughey (Fianna Fail) established the National Heritage Council with a wider brief to cover archaeology, heritage gardens, landscape and wildlife as well as historic properties. Government attention to the built heritage had increased significantly over the previous fifteen years but it was still uneven: lobbyists considered that successive governments during this period were ‘attentive if not always encouraging.’58 This was arguably understandable in a time of stringency of public spending. The 1980s will be remembered for lots of other reasons other than the unevenness of government response to the protection of the built heritage. In 1988, taking a lead from The destruction of the country house 1875-1975 exhibition in London over ten years before, a similar exhibition was organised in Dublin accompanied by the publication the same year of Vanishing country houses of Ireland (edited by the Knight of Glin, Nicholas Robinson and David Griffin.) It is notable that in Ireland the term ‘vanishing’ was used instead of ‘destruction’ possibly because it was more politically neutral.59 There was a suggestion here that Ireland was now progressing along

53 Gabrielle Williams to editor in Irish Times, 8 Jan. 1977; quoted in McParland, Robinson, Heritage at Risk, p. 16. 54 McParland, Robinson, Heritage at Risk, p. 9. 55 The influence of developments in England cannot be disregarded in this respect; see John Cornforth’s hugely influential report, Country Houses of Britain: Can They Survive? (1974) and idem., The Country Houses of England 1948-1998 (London, 1998), p. 6. 56 Irish Independent, 22 Mar. 2006. 57 Knight of Glin et al., Vanishing country houses, p. 7. 58 Ibid., p. vi. 59 My thanks to Christopher Ridgway for sharing his thoughts with me on this point.

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the same lines as England where: ‘a broader, younger and less metropolitan constituency was being mobilised behind the cause of the country house’.60 Each of these reports and publications had one thing in common; they all referred to the ‘losses to the national heritage’ that the continued destruction of country houses would represent. The Irish Historic Properties had as its objective the protection of ‘what little remains of a once great national heritage of architecture, gardens and collections’ and urged in 1985 that ‘we, as a nation’ should ‘act now’.61 The official guide of the Historic Irish Tourist Houses and Gardens Association claimed to be ‘serving a national purpose by helping to provide living history’.62 It was just as careful as other organisations and report writers not to allude to a colonial past. Instead HITHA argued that ‘Irish houses … provide unique insights into Irish history’. Houses such as Clonalis were promoted as ‘the home of the descendants of the last high kings of Ireland, the O’Conor Don, and his Irish manuscripts and books dating from the 13th century’ and Lissadell as the home of Irish revolutionaries Countess Markievicz and Eva Gore Booth.63 In 1988, the knight of Glin diluted the colonial influence when he wrote in Vanishing Country Houses of Ireland: ‘Even if the upper classes were considered ‘foreign’, the craftsmen and builders were Irishmen. The naïve assumption that these houses are to be seen as merely memorials to outdated colonialism should be resisted because they are in fact treasure houses of Irish skills.’64 In 1992, a National Heritage Council report argued that many of the master craftsmen and architects who worked on the great houses of Ireland were foreign but ‘these skills were soon passed on to Irish craftsmen who added an Irish dimension to further enrich our heritage’.65 Thus by the late 1980s the re-imagining of the Irish country house was well under way and country house owners were beginning to feel optimistic that ‘the political attitude towards the owners of heritage property has changed and at least the will is there to consider their problem’.66 By the spring of 1991, one of the most prominent of these, Desmond FitzGerald, Knight of Glin, was buoyed by the fact that the then Taoiseach, Charles J. Haughey, was: ‘concerned about the future of heritage properties and has suggested to the [National Heritage] Council that a dialogue should start to discuss the problem of historic properties and taxes and is particularly interested in properties that have remained in the same family and with some of their contents’.67 The Knight’s home, Glin Castle in Limerick, was one of the very few Irish country houses in the ownership of the original family at a time when it was being expostulated in Britain that ‘from a national policy point of view, the most cost effective way of preserving intact a country’s heritage of historic houses, together with their contents and surrounding demesnes, is to

60 Mandler, The Fall and Rise of the Stately Home, p. 406. 61 K.B. Nowlan and Lewis Clohessy (eds), Report of the Irish Historic Properties Committee: Safeguarding Heritage Houses (1985), pp. 3, 5. 62 Historic Irish Tourist Houses and Gardens Association (HITHA), Castles, Houses and Gardens of Ireland open to the Public (n.d.), p. 1. 63 Ibid., pp 2, 78. 64 Knight of Glin et al., Vanishing Country Houses, p. 28. 65 National Heritage Council, Report of Sub Committee (Heritage Properties) on Legislative Provisions Designed to Assist the Maintenance and Succession to Heritage Properties (Dublin, 1992), p. 3. 66 Susan Kellet to Lord Henry Mount Charles, 7 Nov. 1991 (in private possession). 67 Desmond FitzGerald to Susan Kellet, 13 Apr. 1991 (in private possession).

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encourage their associated families to remain in custody and possession of their inheritance’.68 A quarter of a century after joining Europe and signing up to various charters and manifestoes it was important for politicians to represent the Irish government as a champion not just of Irish heritage but European heritage as well. In 2003, exactly eighty years after the ending of the Civil War in Ireland, the culmination of lobbying manifested itself in the Irish government’s decision to form an Irish Heritage Trust ‘a charity [that] has been created to care for historic properties, houses and gardens throughout Ireland.’ This decision arose from the recommendations of a report jointly commissioned by the government and the Irish Georgian Society and published in 2003.69 It happened because of the confluence of a number of factors that included the re-imagining of the Irish country house; increased urbanisation and the simultaneous decline of the land question; sustained lobbying by various interested bodies; an increased public awareness and appreciation of the built heritage fostered by educational developments, in particular the establishment of the Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses and Estates at the National University of Ireland Maynooth in 2004, the only private-public (with the support of the Office of Public Works) venture in Ireland and the United Kingdom at that time. Beyond that, the dramatic expansion in publications that have often breached academic and popular divides; the efforts of numerous enlightened civil servants in the Office of Public Works and the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government who strove to influence government policy and frame appropriate legislation that has been crucial in the protection of the surviving country houses.70 Finally the added impact of the Celtic Tiger economy has made it fashionable amongst the new wealth elite in Ireland to purchase and restore a country house to original grandeur so that houses such as Abbey Leix in Laois, Stackallen in Meath, Castle Hyde in Cork and Castletown Cox in County Kilkenny were rescued. Others benefited from their adaptation as guest houses or from more commercial ventures, most notably the sensitively restored Carton House in Kildare.71 One of the most interesting and important private acquisitions was Strokestown Park House in Roscommon. In 1979, a local businessman, Jim Callery, bought it with the intention of demolishing it and expanding his garage business but his discovery of the house’s archive in situ changed his mind.72 Today, its role is very different, incorporating as it does the National Famine Museum, and presenting a very different big house history, in this case the story of the Great Famine of 1845-51. While in the past houses that had passed into state ownership such as Muckross had been left dormant for decades or their historic fabric compromised through their

68 Nicholas Prins to Lord Killanin, chairman of National Heritage Council, 9 Jan. 1991 (in private possession). 69 Dooley, A Future for Irish Historic Houses? (Dublin, 2003). 70 Most importantly the Architectural Heritage (National Inventory) and Historic Monuments Act, 1999, and the Planning and Development Act 2000. 71 On Carton, see Christopher Ridgway, Country Life, 18 Feb. 2009; Ian Lumley, “Parklands and gardens” in An Taisce (Summer, 2007), p. 13; James Howley, “Carton: from ducal mansion to country house hotel” in Irish Arts Review (Spring, 2007); for houses that have been adapted see www.hidden-ireland.com; see also Bord Failte, Tourism Development Plan, 1976-80. 72 Jim Callery speaking at Second Annual Historic Houses of Ireland Conference, NUI Maynooth, 11 Sept. 2004.

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redevelopment as training colleges, schools, prisons and so on, there was a post-1990s move towards restoring country houses for the benefit and enjoyment of the state and the public. The two most notable examples in the 1990s and the early part of the twentieth century were/are Farmleigh and Castletown, both of which have been restored at enormous (and sometimes controversial) expense by the Office of Public Works. But while in 2005 the government provided €10.6 million in grant schemes and other state supports to private individuals, and funding of €32 million was provided to the OPW for heritage sites and properties under its protection, the state was simply not in a position to buy other important houses that came onto the market. Rather significantly, the 2003 sale of Lissadell in County Sligo into private ownership happened amidst widespread calls from the public for the government to buy it. On 3rd July 2006 at Russborough House, Co. Wicklow, the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, officially launched the Irish Heritage Trust as a limited company with charitable status to be governed by an independent board and with state support for the initial years. On twentieth December 2007, the Trust started caring for its first property, Fota House in County Cork. Serious questions may remain about Fianna Fáil’s ambiguous preservation policies that has seen the government praised on the one hand for its increased generosity (in legislative and financial terms) and on the other derided for its failure to restrict damaging development,73 and in the present economic climate the Trust may face many challenges but it is to be presumed that one of these will not be the denial of Irish country houses as part of the national patrimony, even given the fact that the nation is something of a chameleon.

Russia74 At first glance there are some astonishing parallels between the histories of the Anglo- Irish and Russian nobilities and the fate of ‘big house’ culture in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Arguably, in both cases the early nineteenth century had seen the flowering of estate culture in the Russian case and its continuation in the Irish case, largely at the expense of the political, social and economic degradation of the lower classes/peasantries. In Russia and Ireland, the nobility and the peasantry were sharply distinguished in social terms, even if they lived closely knitted together on the estates. The political and economic status of the Russian muzhiks as serfs was even lower than that of the Irish tenants. Except for the periphery of the Russian empire, gentry and peasantry were, however, not divided by religion. In many parts of the Imperial borderlands the non-Russian nobility had been assimilated to Orthodoxy and Russian culture, while the peasantry retained many aspects of the indigenous cultures.75 Still, the cultural gap between the westernised nobility on the one hand, and the traditional world of the peasantry on the other, was at least comparable to the gaps which existed between

73Frank McDonald, “Taoiseach’s Espousal of the Big House Is at Odds with Government Record” in Irish Times, 5 Dec. 2005. 74 Some of the thoughts in this section have been drawn from Christian Noack, “Imperiale Geschichte und nationales Erbe. Zur Aneignung von Adelssitzen und Adelskultur in Russland und Irland,” in: G. Hausmann, A. Rustemeyer (eds) Wege zum Imperienvergleich. Ansätze und Beispiele aus osteuropäischer Perspektive. Festschrift für Professor Andreas Kappeler zum 65. Geburtstag (Berlin, 2009) pp. 339-362. 75 This is not true, however, for the Baltic provinces and the former Polish lands.

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the protestant gentry and their catholic tenants in Ireland. Similar to the majority of nationalist Irish tenants, the serfs in the Russian Empire regarded the gentry as foreign intruders that had seized land once owned by their ancestors. They hoped that a good and just Tsar would restore them in their rights some day.76 The country mansion (or the usad’ba77 in Russian) varied significantly in size depending on the financial position of individual owners. As in Ireland it constituted the economic and social centre of noble life. Beginning with old princely families or favourites of the Tsars and Tsarinas, the magnates had begun to copy the palaces of the Imperial family in the second half of the eighteenth century. They erected enormous estate houses in classical or neo-baroque styles with extensive wings; ornate and impressive interiors particularly stairways; and their parks, designed with their own hunting grounds, had splendid driveways, and usually their own private churches. As the usad’ba was the focal point of a demesne, barns, stables and other outbuildings for servants and agricultural needs were close by. As a form of imitation, many owners of smaller estates copied the sumptuous lifestyle of the patriarchal magnates. While their country houses were much smaller - usually wooden structures of one or two storeys – these owners invariably imitated the magnate’s ensembles on a more modest scale. House interiors and surrounding parklands were designed to host visiting neighbouring nobles and to impress them with displays of grandeur and taste; during the first half of the nineteenth century, the usad’by became the symbol of noble extravagance. Probably even more than in Ireland, servants of peasant origin were omnipresent, even in the most unassuming households.78 Whether or not the usad’by has been the self-proclaimed island of western culture in the sea of peasant ignorance, has recently become the object of an intense debate among historians. Critics point at the contemporary origins of the cliché and suggest a mutual saturation of western ‘high’ and Russian ‘low’ culture.79

Decline The Crimean War and the ensuing reforms, including the liberation of the serfs in the 1860s, represented an important watershed in the history of Russian estates. In the wake of the reforms, the nobility transferred almost half of the land it had owned to the peasantry, receiving generous financial compensation from the state. The new peasant owners repaid annuities to the state in much the same way that Irish tenant farmers did under the various land purchase acts. Much of the capital received by the nobility went,

76 Carsten Goehrke, Russischer Alltag, Vol. 2 Auf dem Weg in die Moderne (Zurich, 2003) pp. 255-257. On the serfs’ obligations cf. David Moon, The Russian Peasantry 1600-1930. The World the Peasants Made (Harlow, 1999), pp. 66-117. 77 On the history of the term see Randolph, “Old mansion”, p. 732; Irina M. Pushkareva, “The Rural Noble Country House in Postreform Russia,” Russian Studies in History, 42,1 (2003), pp. 52-86, here p. 53. 78 Daniel Field, The End of Serfdom. Nobility and Bureaucracy in Russia, 1955-1961, (Cambridge Mass., 1976), pp. 8-35; Goehrke, Russischer Alltag, pp. 41-4, 116-7, 120-1, 130; Roosevelt, Country Estate, passim. 79 Michael Hughes, “The Russian Nobility and the Russian Countryside: Ambivalence and Orientations,” Journal of European Studies 36,2 (2006), pp. 115-37; For thorough critique of the psychological interpretation, suggested among others by Marc Raeff, and of Jurii Lotman’s approach to estate culture see Michelle Lamarche Marrese, “‘The Poetics of Everyday Behaviour’ Revisited: Lotman, Gender and the Evolution of Russian Noble Identity,” Kritika 11,4 (2010), pp. 701-739.

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as in Ireland, to repay extensive mortgages taken out by the nobility over previous generations. A significant minority of the gentry quickly adapted to the new economic lifestyle and began to progress the agricultural economy, specialising, for example, in the production of tillage crops for export. However, the traditional gentry mentality of wanting to exploit unpaid labour remained and some found it extremely to adapt to changing circumstances. These landowners either sold or leased their land to the peasantry; many of them migrated to the towns and cities and found occupation in the civil service or the army.80 Whichever option was chosen by the gentry, the further development of the usad’ba as the focal point of noble civilisation and culture was compromised: while the first group involved itself in sober and business-like activities, abandoning extravagance excesses and waste, the second group proved increasingly incapable of sustaining the old lifestyle. (Chekhov’s Cherry orchard and many other novels and plays from late nineteenth century provide ample evidence of this.) As in Ireland, late nineteenth-century Russia saw the abandonment of a number of manor houses and parks which subsequently fell into dereliction and decay.81 Estate culture continued to display vitality only in the houses of the magnate families, or - and here we touch upon an important difference between Ireland and Russia - in the circles dominated by industrialists and intellectuals who bought abandoned estates during the last third of the nineteenth century. These upwardly mobile groups in Russian society bore little resemblance to the Victorian industrial entrepreneurs in England who came from middle class backgrounds and who purchased country houses as their fortunes increased; instead the successful Russian manufacturers largely came from a peasant background, and it was not until the second generation, raised in the capital cities and provided with excellent education, that the Morozovs or Tretiakovs would begin to acquire country estates.82 Indeed, education is an important factor in the transformation of Russian estate culture which occurred during the last decades of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth centuries. During the eighteenth and much of the nineteenth century, the nobility was the only social group with access to at least rudimentary education (which, by the way, was compulsory for state service.) The expansion of the educational system, the bureaucratisation of the empire and, above all, the modernisation processes in the wake of the great reforms of the 1860s and 1870s created a new educated elite, the

80 Seymour Becker, Nobility and Privilege in Late Imperial Russia (DeKalb, 1985), pp. 7-14; Manfred Hildermeier, “Der Russische Adel von 1700 bis 1917”, in H.-U. Wehler (ed.) Europäischer Adel 1700- 1950 (Göttingen, 1990) p. 191-3. Classical Soviet Studies on the demesne economy comprise A.M. Anfimov, Krupnoe pomeshchech’e khoziaistvo Evropeiskoi Rossii (Moscow, 1969) and M.N. Druzhinin, Russkaia derevnia na perelome (Moscow, 1978) 81 Roosevelt, Life on the Country Estate, p. 320. Pushkareva writes that the number of country estates owned by the nobility in European Russia dropped from 59,000 in 1877 to 39,000 in 1915. The steepest decline occurred in the years after the revolution of 1905. Pushkareva, “The Rural Noble Country House”, p. 81 note 1. On the burning of estates see also Laura Victoir, “Creating and Preserving a Myth: Changing Attitudes About Country Estates in Late Imperial Russia,” Revolutionary Russia 25,1 (2012), pp. 61-85, here p. 65. 82 Pushkareva, “The Rural Noble Country House”, pp. 56, 61; Victoir, “Creating and Preserving a Myth,” p. 69.

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intelligentsia. This elite transcended the boundaries of the traditional nobility and the bureaucratic caste, and soon came to despise both as pillars of the old order. Not unlike the new generation of Irish nationalists in the last third of the nineteenth century, the intelligentsia firmly established the stereotype of the idle and incompetent landowner prepared to exploit the poor and downtrodden peasants.83 On the other hand the intelligentsia, more often than not raised in the cultural arcadia of the country estates, preserved an admiration for some crucial elements of the gentry’s lifestyle. Indeed, the Russian intelligentsia practiced a way of life that blended western bourgeois habits with elements of aristocratic outlook. Living a life imitating gentry habits proved to be attractive even for those intelligenty who did not come from an aristocratic background. Chekhov is a point in case, as he famously regarded the acquisition of a modest estate as the climax of his career.84 Artists, writers, journalists or others from the ranks of the intelligentsia strove to buy country houses on run-down estates, particularly those closest to the larger towns, where they would then spend their summer months. Whatever their individual social background was, “many owners were at that time enthusiastically building up libraries, developing collections, and setting up what could literally be described as ‘museum zones’. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, members of the financial and cultural elites turned the estates into a focal point of the newly established Russian high culture, from literature to music and painting.85 Members of the emerging urban middle classes copied this trend, renting peasant huts or erecting dachas in the vicinity of Petersburg and Moscow. As country living became more and more fashionable amongst the social groups below the gentry, the ways of traditional estate life changed accordingly. The folkways of the gentry were superseded by new, informal ways of social interaction preferred by the bourgeoisie.86 The intelligentsia’s impact was thus twofold: On the one hand, writers and publicists provided the interpretive patterns that would ultimately undermine the traditional social order and deal a fatal blow to noble estate’s cultural domination. On the other hand, it was the same intelligentsia which gradually appropriated and transformed central elements of noble gentry culture and charged it with new meanings. As we will try to demonstrate in the following section, this partial transformation by the intelligentsia provided a basis for the acceptance of these cultural forms and habits in the coming Soviet context. Revolution and after: 1917-c.1930

83 Heiko Haumann, “Lebenswelten im Zarenreich: Ursachen der Revolution“, in H. Haumann (ed.) The Russian Revolution 1917 (Köln, 2007), p. 26. 84 Chekhov acquired the Melikhovo estate 80 km south of Moscow in 1892. "It's nice to be a lord," he joked in a letter to his friend Shcheglov http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/ltchk10.txt [15 Aug. 2010] 85 Ekaterina Dmitrieva, Olga Kuptsova, Zhizn usadebnogo mifa. Utrachennyi i obretennyi rai (Moscow 2004), pp. 3-6. See also Pushkareva, “The Rural Noble Country House”, pp. 53-56. Referring to the same body of sources, Victoir, “Creating and Preserving a Myth,” pp. 66-69 interprets this cultural projection too narrowly as an exercise in Russian nation building. 86 Stephen Lovell, “Between Arcadia and Suburbia. Dachas in Late Imperial Russia”, Slavic Review 61 (2002), p. 66-87.

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Arguably, the eruption of violence and the destruction of Russia’s countryside that characterised the period 1917-1921 was far more drastic than what happened in Ireland. While more or less reliable statistics on the number of country estates before the revolution have recently been established, the number of manor house lost between 1917 and 1921 can only be estimated. Any quantitative assessment is complicated by the fact that the level of destruction varied form region to region.87 Russia’s central provinces, characterised by the highest density of noble landowning and former serf peasant communities, undoubtedly suffered most.88 To take the example of the Penza province: one fifth of its manor houses were burnt during the fall and winter 1917-18 alone, and almost all estate house in the outlying districts were lost by 1919.89 In both Ireland and Russia infringements on the gentry’s land and property was justified as reparation for an alleged earlier ‘theft’ by the landowning class. As a rule, the Russian peasant communities collectively organised incursions on estate lands in order to reclaim it ‘for those who work it’. There was similar activity in Ireland after February 1917, organised by the growing Sinn Fein party. Interestingly, where relations between gentry and peasants had been strained in the past, for example during the revolution of 1905-07, the life and property of the landowning class were most likely to be threatened during the revolutions.90 The peasants acted generally on their own mandate, but the new Bolshevik government hastened to legalise land seizures under the ‘Decree on Land’, one of the first decrees issued after the October revolution. It was followed by another decree on 10 November 1917, ‘On the dissolution of estates and insignia’, that cancelled all noble privileges. Many country estates were burned during the ensuing civil war because the peasants feared a return of the landowners, possibly an important reason for the destruction of country houses in Ireland. By contrast, the military and strategic reasons that played a role during the Irish War of Independence seem to have been of only minor importance in Russia. But did the Russian ‘jacquerie’ of 1917-1921 amount to a final demise of noble estate culture, a more abrupt and conclusive caesura than the ‘Irish bonfire for generations’?91 Hindsight seems to suggest this was the case, particularly when we compare the current situation in Ireland and Russia. The re-evaluation of the big house in Ireland as part of the national patrimony occurred only recently, yet it has resulted in the successful reanimation of some Irish big houses. In Russia the number of recently restored country

87 On Pushkareva’s data for 1877-1915 see note 81. For the destructions see Roosevelt, Country Estate, pp. 329-330; Laura Victoir, The Russian Country Estate Today. A Case Study of Cultural Politics in Post- Soviet Russia (Stuttgart, 2006), pp. 39-41. 88 John Chanon, “The Peasantry in the Revolution of 1917”, in: E. Frankel (ed.) Revolution in Russia: Reassessments of 1917 (Cambridge, 1992) pp. 110-112, 117-118, 121-124; Maureen Perrie, “The Peasants”, in R. Service (ed.) Society and Politics in the Russian Revolution (New York, 1992) pp. 15-9, 26-7, 30. 89 Orlando Figes, Peasant Russia, Civil War. The Volga Countryside in Revolution (1917-1921), 2nd ed. (London, 2001 ed. [first ed., 1989]) pp. 52-3. 90 Figes, Peasant Russia, p. 50-1; Perrie, “The Peasants”, p. 21-4. On the role of arson in rural conflicts in pre-revolutionary Russia see Cathy A. Frierson, All Russia Is Burning! A Cultural History of Fire and Arson in Late Imperial Russia (Seattle, 2002). It would make for an interesting study in Ireland to see to what extent big house burnings in the 1919-23 period coincided with the geography of Land Leagueism or the Plan of Campaign of the 1880s. 91 Chapter titles quoted from Figes’ Peasant Russia and from Dooley’s Decline.

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houses is much smaller, and many of the other surviving houses remain in a deplorable state. Ironically, however, the future for the preservation of estate houses initially looked much better in revolutionary Russia than it did in newly independent Ireland. The Russian revolutions wiped out the nobility as a social class and aristocratic lifestyle and behaviour were constantly ridiculed in public during the first years of Soviet power. But the new regime was comparatively open-minded with regards to the material remains in shape of the usad’by. While churches were deliberately desecrated and turned into cinemas, theatres or shops, many of the manor houses became museums, agricultural research institutes or sanatoria.92 In comparative terms: while the Irish big house became dilapidated and ruinous the surviving original families managed to retain some elements of its culture through the safeguarding of at least some contents whereas in Russia the outer walls remained intact but the house itself was gutted. At least in most parts, depending on the intended use of the buildings. For example, some splendour might have been preserved as well in cases they were turned in prestigious sanatoria.93 When the imperial palaces in Petrograd and Moscow were opened to the public, there was an agenda to demonstrate to the wider public the anti-social character of the old regime and to legitimise the political break with the past. Turning manor houses into museums seems to have followed a somewhat different logic. In many cases, provincial estates were preserved because they had been owned by writers or artists accommodated as ‘progressive’ in the pantheon of Soviet culture. With the intelligentsia deeply rooted in the gentry, and with estate culture embraced by those intellectuals even from non- aristocratic backgrounds, showcasing these homes invariably meant exhibiting central elements of nineteenth-century noble lifestyle. In fact, the usad’ba as a museum, whether created before or after the revolutions, ultimately displayed a world very familiar to the readers of Russian classics. Indeed, the country estate had provided the setting for countless nineteenth-century novels and plays; many of these remained in print and available throughout the Soviet period.94 Some of the leading revolutionaries, including Lenin, were partially rooted in a gentry background themselves, and displayed a rather traditional understanding of high culture. They overtly preferred pre-revolutionary literature and art to contemporary radical experiments. Lenin and many other Bolsheviks continued the practice of seasonal retreat to the countryside. Lenin sojourned at the estate of the manufacturer Morozov (today Leninskie gorki), while Lunarcharskii, the people’s commissar of enlightenment, preferred the Ostafievo estate once owned by the counts Sheremetev. The latter case is particularly instructive, as Lunarcharskii shielded the activities of an ‘Association for the Study of the Russian Estate’, run collectively by the offspring of former estate owners and their interior designers (Pavel Sheremetev and the brothers Polenov). The association

92 Roosevelt, Country Estate, Pp. 330-1, Victoir, Russian Country Estate Today, pp. 44-5. 93 The Soviet kurort, for example, preserved aristocratic European 19th century spa culture, yet opened it ostensibly to lower classes. Cf. the decree on health resorts (1920), in: I. Kozlov, Lenin i razvitie sanatorno-kurortnogo dela v SSSR (Moscow, 1982), pp. 27-28; and Chrisitan Noack, “Building Tourism in One Country?: The Sovietization of Vacationing, 1917-41”, E. G. Zuelov (ed.) Connecting Places and People: A Transnational Approach to European Tourism History (Farnham, 2010) pp. 171-95, here 177-79 . 94 Pushkareva, “The Rural Noble Country House”, pp. 58-59.

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published a regular bulletin, organised excursions to manor houses in the vicinity of Moscow and praised the cultural and aesthetic values of estate architecture and landscaping. With Stalin’s ‘cultural revolution’ at the end of the 1930s this tacit connivance ended, the association was dissolved and prominent members arrested or exiled.95 From the 1930s began a twenty year period of scholarly neglect of noble estate culture. To be sure, the muzei-usad’by remained relatively untouched, but neither Khrushchev’s ‘thaw’ nor the emergence of a Russian nationalist wing in the Communist party during the 1960s resulted in a renewed interest for gentry culture or the architectural heritage of manor houses, estates and parks on the previous level. The 1950s witnessed a reappraisal of Russian peasant culture which had almost perished through de-kulakisation and forced collectivisation in the 1930s. Likewise, the russophilia of the 1960s and 1970s displayed only marginal interest into the estates. True, some historical research was conducted on the socio-economic importance and the architectural value of some of the estate, yet it was Russia’s medieval heritage, particularly the churches and monasteries of the ‘Golden Ring’, that were at the centre of the Russian revival. Interestingly, problems of preservation were frequently discussed in conjunction with environmental issues, and that could occasionally result in references to the disappearance of estate gardens and parks.96 Finally, in Stalin’s times the links that had existed between gentry life and the pre- revolutionary dacha culture loosened. Life on the dacha was modernised in the sense that ‘purposeful’ activities such as self-education and sport increasingly superseded a culture of idleness and informal interaction. Also policies pursued by Stalin and his successors turned the dacha into an important means of subsistence economy, against the backdrop of permanent shortages in food supply. In other words, the peasant hut (izba) rather than the noble usad’ba became the role model for the Soviet era dacha.97 Thus, after the material losses of the years of revolution and the civil war, the 1930s constituted an important watershed in the re-appraisal of noble estate culture. With the old intelligentsia Stalin’s revolution from above largely destroyed the social group that had constituted a link between the pre-revolutionary gentry and the Soviet present. At the same time, his turn towards Russian culture as a means during the 1930s implied a (however selective) re-appropriation of Russian 19th art and literature culture; a culture that has been deeply permeated by ideas of ‘beautiful life’ in a country house. This had enduring consequences. Significantly, the most important scholarly attempt to reclaim elements of the aristocratic past for a Russian national culture was pursued by Jurii Lotman since the late 1970s. Lotman’s research on gentry and estate culture was almost

95 Roosevelt, Country Estate, pp.330-2; Victoir, Russian Country Estate Today, pp. 23-4; Pushkareva, “The Rural Noble Country House”, pp. 57-58. 96 Hildegard Kochanek, Die russisch-nationale Rechte von 1968 bis zum Ende der Sowjetunion. Eine Diskursanalyse (Stuttgart, 1999) p. 21-67. On the voluntary association of preservationists (Vserossiiskoe obshchestvo ochrany pamiatnikov istorii i kul’tury - VOOPIK) founded in 1965 see Victoir, Russian Country Estate Today, pp. 48-9. Among the books raising awareness for the former estate gardens was Dmitrii Lichachev, K poezii sadov. K semantike sadovo-parkovykh stilei (Leningrad, 1982). 97 Stephen Lovell, “The Making of the Stalin-Era Dacha”, Journal of Modern History 74 (2002), pp. 253- 288; Idem., Summerfolk. A History of the Dacha, 1710-2000 (Ithaca, 2003) pp. 136-145, 235.

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exclusively based on literary texts from the Russian classical canon.98 Clearly, this canon of literature conveyed an image of noble culture heavily influenced by the intelligentsia’s disdain for real or imagined nineteenth-century decadence, but it never implied the total rejection or complete neglect which had been characteristic of the Soviet political and historical discourses. On the contrary, particularly literary images of estate life coined during the nineteenth century shaped the apprehension of Russian culture by more than one Soviet generation. Enshrined in all sorts of cultural artefacts and particularly in the educational canon, this Soviet reading of Russian culture may be understood as part of a heritage building process.99 With the revolution, the popularity of the manor house as a setting for literary works may have vanished, but it obviously still left a deep imprint in the collective memory. But what happened to the material remnants of noble culture? From Soviet to post-Soviet At the turn of the millennium, only 20 per cent of an estimated 50,000 pre-revolutionary estates seem to have survived the Soviet period. The majority of these are situated in an area stretching 150-200 km around the capital city of Moscow. This may seem an impressive number, but it would have been significantly higher had not many of the provincial manor houses perished in more recent times. Part of the reason for this was the under-financing of the state run institutions that they accommodated in the 1980s and 1990s. As their budgets dwindled there was a corresponding decline in the historical fabric of the houses and outbuildings which were simply left to decay. 100 Things grew even worse with the collapse of the Soviet state in the early 1990s. In the first post-Soviet decade, various financial and cultural bodies jealously defended what they perceived to be their exclusive areas of responsibility and expertise, thus neglecting the necessary investment for the preservation of estates, parks and manor houses. Even if they had surrendered responsibility new owners would not easily have been found. The Russian Federation and other post-Soviet states lacked (and lack) strong non- governmental or voluntary organisations to support the state (or perhaps even challenge its monopoly.)101 It is revealing that even the re-establishment of the ‘Association for the Study of the Russian Country Estate’ (OIRU) in 1992 did not alter the situation significantly.102 Even thought there existed a small lobby of specialists and amateurs who

98 Lotman summarised his findings in Besedy o russkoi kul’ture. Byt i traditsii russkogo dvorianstva (XVIII – nachalo XIX veka (Reprint, St. Petersburg 2006, first edition 1994). For a well-taken critique of Lotman’s exclusive use of fictional sources see Marrese, “The Poetics of Everyday Behaviour”, pp. 702- 713. 99 Villem Veststejn, “Pomeshchich’ia usad’ba v russskoi literature XIX-XX v.,” in: Russkaia provinciia. Mif- tekst –realnost’ (Moscow and St. Petersburg, 2000) pp. 186-195; Victoir, Russian Country Estate Today, p. 125 referring to Kathleen Parthé, “Russia's Unreal Estate: Cognitive Mapping and National Identity,” Kennan Institute Paper no. 265 (Washington, D.C., 1997) pp. 2-7. 100 Estimates by the Russian architectural historian Dmitrii Shvidkovskij, quoted in Priscilla Roosevelt’s “Introduction” to Victoir’s Russian Country Estate Today, p. 15. Victoir counts around 500 preserved estates around Moscow, and 250 in other parts of European Russia. She estimates that no less than 100 are doomed to perish annually, due to neglect. Victoir, Russian Country Estate Today, p. 34. 101 Victoir, Russian Country Estate Today, pp. 26-7, 53-68, 82-8. It is worth mentioning, however, that the preservation of historical monuments (including churches) had neither been a priority area in Imperial Russia. See Victoir, “Creating and Preserving a Myth”, pp. 69-72. 102 Like its predecessor, the association sees itself as a platform for scholarly research and popularisation of estate culture and, as a rule, does not interfere into matters of heritage conservation. Randolph, Old

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were highly mobilised and enthusiastic they lacked influence in the face of state opposition to their activities. The remaining estate houses therefore faced what was in effect a moratorium: historical monuments were neither appropriated on a grand scale by the local or central authorities, nor were they sold of to the nouveau riches.103 Lying idle, deprived of heating and current expenditure, the already advanced process of dilapidation of the houses accelerated after. Moreover, the uncertain political situation gave rise to the illegal sequestration of former estate lands, parks and gardens, creating new problems for the preservation of the architectural ensembles.104 Since the beginning of the twenty-first century new trends can be observed. Firstly, and arguably most importantly, the Russian state has recovered economically, allowing those responsible for the preservation of cultural heritage to defend its claims for support with renewed credibility. In fact, some showcases have profited from extensive restoration but there remains a great deal of work to be done; unfortunately, it seems almost certainly that the cultural bureaucracy will be even less willing than ever to accept what it perceives as infringements into its area of vested interests and expertise. Also, the frontlines between the adherents of state protection for monuments and the advocates of private investment have become somewhat blurred over the last few years. The reasons are manifold, the most important being the emergence of a particularity in post-Soviet Russian political culture: in the Putin era branches of the state administration created their ‘own’ NGOs or engaged in direct competition with genuine non governmental organisations for external funding. This edged out many genuine NGOs, with the important ‘collateral damage’ of a rapprochement between business and the state in the realms of social and cultural sponsoring. Thirdly, besides the ‘Association for the study of the Russian country estate’ (OIRU) new lobbyists emerged. These are less retrospective and they are more perceptive of international developments. In their majority they consider the English National Trust as the best available model for monument preservation. This does not only entail an acknowledgement of the National Trust’s successful initiatives in the fields of heritage marketing and tourism development, but also a more receptive attitude towards public- private partnerships. Among these lobbyists, the Russian Estate Foundation, run by the Russian Noble Assembly, plays a minor role, especially because a restitution of estates to their former owners has never been seriously considered in Russia.105 Two other competing foundations, almost indistinguishable by their name, appear to be much better linked to the new post-Soviet establishment: The ‘Foundation for the Revival of the Russian Estate’, established in 2000, cooperates with the ‘Association for the Study of the Russian Country Estate’ (OIRU) on the one hand, and state organs like the Moscow city council and the Russian State Duma on the

mansion, pp. 740-743; Victoir, Russian Country Estate today, pp. 116-117; According to Pushkareva, “The Rural Noble Country House,” pp. 59-61, many of the scholars and journalists conducting research during the late Soviet period are among the active members of the society. Cf. also the website of the association: http://www.oiru.org/ [15 Aug. 2010] 103 Victoir, Russian Country Estate Today, p. 62. 104 Roosevelt, “Introduction”, in Victoir, Russian Country Estate Today, pp. 15-7; Victoir, Russian Country Estate today, pp. 26-7, 75-8, 127-8. 105 Victoir, Russian Country Estate today, p. 117, on restitution pp. 88-95.

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other. The latter have arranged exhibitions on estate culture. The foundation currently builds up a database dedicated to the collection of information on lost or surviving country estates. The foundation describes its aims as ‘creating multisided agreements between local funds controlling property and the committees on culture or other state organs dealing with the preservation of monuments.’ This should facilitate the access to information on the legal status of estates and their former lands. As to privatisation, the foundation sees itself as a mediator between state and potential investors, providing legal and practical assistance in the process of acquisition.106 The ‘Foundation for the Revival of the Russian Estate’, operating since 2005, pursues similar aims, but is somewhat more active in the media. It publishes Life on the Estate, a glossy magazine devoted to the country life of the aristocracy in Europe and Russia. Beyond that, it organises an annual competition for the preservation of Russian estates, financially supported by the Ministry of Culture. The foundation also seeks to enhance the cooperation between public and private investors in the preservation of monuments, featuring the most successful examples in its journal.107 What does that mean for the future of the Russian estates and manor houses? Firstly, the financial recovery of the State opens the prospect for further restorations. It is probable that the lion’s share of investment will be devoted to the preservation of properties in the capital cities such as the imperial palaces and those linked to the life and works of celebrated artists and writers. In geographical terms, this means preferential treatment for monuments in central Russia and in the vicinity of Petersburg, where many monuments are listed as being of ‘Federal importance’. Importantly, the restitution of church property (other than formerly private owned) means that the state is no longer the sole responsible for the preservation of sacral buildings, which lead to intense protests by architectural and historians as well as preservationists. Perhaps an indication of the growing importance of cultural heritage in Russia is highlighted in the fact that descendents of the former owners of historic properties have been appointed directors of estate-museums: a Tolstoi in Iasnaia Poliana near Tula; a Lermontov in Serednikovo near Moscow; and possibly in the near future a Nabokov will be appointed on the Vyra estate near Petersburg. This practice of ‘oblique restitution’ reflects the perceived reverence to writers and artists, characteristic of both the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. In this context, it is revealing to note that efforts at restitution undertaken by some descendents of noble families who had not made significant contributions to the literary invariably failed.108 Privatisation does not seem to be a preferential option, even in those cases where the state has proved unwilling or unable to raise the means necessary for the preservation of

106 Victoir, Russian Country Estate Today, p. 117-119. The website http://www.fovrus.ru/ has not been accessible since 2008. 107 Interview with chairman, V. Aliaverdin, Moscow, 13.10.2007; Victoir, Russian Country Estate Today, pp. 118-9. Website http://www.fondus.ru [15 Aug. 2010]. With Stolitsa i usad’ba, a glossy magazine modelled on Town and Country that was edited in Petersburg between 1913 and 1917, Life on the estate had a pre-revolutionary forerunner. See Victoir, “Creating and Preserving a Myth”, pp. 79-80. 108 Victoir, Russian Country Estate today, pp. 88-95. In 1997 the ruins of Alabino near Moscow were reclaimed in vain by Prince Aleksandr Meshchersky. The former engineer ‘squatted’ the remaining gate house for a couple of years and was evicted in 2001, ibid. pp. 90-1.

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certain properties. Although public-private cooperation is broadly promoted by the ‘National Foundation’, there seems to be a profound misgiving for private ownership for a variety of reasons: for example, while the cultural bureaucracy might expect infringements on the prerogatives, preservationists and art historians deeply distrust the potential investors’ sense of taste and responsibility. To overcome this, long term leases might present a viable solution for the years to come, as they would allow the state administration and preservationists to keep a close eye on the leaseholder’s compliance to the stipulations of the contracts.109 At any rate, the number of potential investors seems to be rather modest. Against the backdrop of overlapping responsibilities and the state’s incapacity (or unwillingness?) to create and regulate a reliable legal framework for privatisation, this is fully understandable. At present, it is uncertain whether substantial investments would provide sufficient return if country houses were converted into Hotels or Spas.110 Only a few country houses have been converted into residential homes, although members of the political elite recently seem to have bought mansions.111 Obviously, both the high costs of restoration and the impending control by cultural authorities and preservationists deter potential investors. For well-to-do Russians the erection of eclectic copies in the vicinities of Moscow is a much cheaper and less problematic alternative.112 Obviously, even the fact that the “estate text in Russian literature”113 has been firmly establish does not automatically imply that financial investments in estates provide sufficient return in cultural and social capital for investors. Unless obviously the estate was owned by writer or artist, but this would almost inevitably preclude any privatisation or leasing to investors not linked to the families of former artist-owners. Under these conditions it is more likely to expect that the huge Russian state corporations will take control of ‘the gems’ amongst the remaining country houses. These corporations have the necessary financial means and institutional links at their disposal. Whether they are willing to invest on a broad scale in the preservation of Russian noble estate culture, and whether they would open up the houses to a broader public remains to be seen.114

Conclusion

109 Victoir, Russian Country Estate Today, p. 26, 58, 79-82, 85-6;”V ozhidanii investorov“, Zhizn’ v usad’be 2007, No. 1, p. 5; Cf. also the cases described by O. Troickaia-Mirkovich, “Etot den’ izmenil nashu zhizn’ Zhizn’ v usad’be 2006, No. 3, pp. 48-53; T. Pavlovskaia, “Na grafskikh razvalinakh” Zhizn’ v usad’be 2007, No. 1, pp. 40-8. 110 D. Ojnas, “Usad’ba iz-pod zemli” Zhizn’ v usad’be 2006, No. 1, pp. 51-4. 111 According to oral information, Dmitrii Medvedev bought a former estate near Kostroma shortly before he switched office with Putin in 2012. 112 On the annual “Modern Manor House Fair” in Moscow see http://www.expostroy.ru/ru/su/ [15 Aug. 2010] 113 Pushkareva, “The Rural Noble Country House”, p. 69 quoting the Polish literary scholar Wasilij Szczukin. 114 On investements in the Moscow and Tver regions by Minatom, Yukos, Vympelkom and others see Victoir, Russian Country Estate Today, pp. 86-7.

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Writing this paper brought the authors to the realisation of just how strong the parallels were in the history of the country house in Ireland and Russia, but we should emphasise that our focus has been less on the history of country houses than on the ways their history has been (re)interpreted as ‘heritage’. Both Ireland and Russia experienced social and political turmoil during the first decades of the twentieth century. Violent revolutions and civil wars ended the gentry’s domination over politics, society and culture. One of the most obvious differences between the two countries is that in the Irish case a cultural construction of the landowning class as nationally ‘alien’ came to supersede social conflicts between landowners and tenants. The juxtaposition of tenant, catholic and Irish as opposed to landlord, protestant and English was persuasive. For a long time, this equation prevented any sensible inclusion of the big house in the emerging canon of Irish national culture. It took a significant amount of time, allied to demographic and economic changes, for a reappraisal of the position of the country house in Irish cultural history to take place. This was in large part due to Ireland’s increasing participation in European cultural affairs from the early 1970s and emerging tourist demands: country houses were promoted as part of a shared heritage, celebrated for the role – sometimes invented - played in their construction and embellishment by Irish architects, builders and craftspeople. The reappraisal of the country house was necessary to unlock private and public investment necessary for their preservation. In the Russian case, where social conflict also characterised historical relationships between landowners and peasants, there existed similar degrees of alienation. In the empire’s Baltic regions or in the Ukrainian region social differences between landowners and peasantry were used to distinguish between the “us” of emerging peasant nations and the “them” of Polish and German landowners and their hegemonic cultures. These borderlands, however, have not been examined in this paper. In the Russian heartlands the gentry had been an important tool in the state’s quest for westernisation during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Education and subsequently westernisation had been almost exclusively a privilege of the nobility and so a yawning cultural gap opened up between the Russian orthodox nobility and the Russian orthodox peasantry. Ironically it was the educated offspring of the Russian nobility who, as the emerging intelligentsia, successfully challenged the supremacy of noble culture and lifestyle during the nineteenth century. Although a majority were descendents of the aristocracy, the intelligenty claimed to speak in the name of the suppressed peasant majority and helped to undermine the foundations of the political and social system in late Imperial Russia. However, this denunciation of the nobility and its lifestyle by the intelligentsia was somewhat ambiguous: writers and artists of the ‘golden age’ of Russian culture preserved an affectionate image of gentry culture, and many exponents of the Russian intelligentsia had long incorporated some aristocratic habits into their lifestyles. Spending part of the year in the “cultural arcadia” of the country house was one of them. Against this backdrop the assault on the nobility as a social class during revolutions and civil war in Russia was not necessarily tantamount to Roosevelt’s ‘death’ of country house culture. Many leading Bolsheviks including Lenin continued to practise “gentrified” intelligentsia habits. It took the second cultural revolution under Stalin and the annihilation of the old intelligentsia to fully sever the links to the pre-revolutionary

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era. At the same time, Stalin’s return to Russian culture can be interpreted as a conscious act of heritage building through selective de-contextualisation. Paradoxically, the Stalinist identification of classical Russian literature as part of an overarching canon of Soviet high culture potentially entailed a re-appraisal of aristocratic country house culture. The country house and its inhabitants lived on in the imagination of the Soviet readership.

It is also true that during the Soviet period nationalists within and without the party started to identify with elements of the medieval and orthodox heritage rather than with the aristocratic past. Since the fall of the Soviet Union the Russian state has increasingly appropriated Imperial traditions and their material remnants but country houses still await discovery. The veneration of places linked to the intelligentsia may have developed during the twentieth century but a more widespread and affirmative appropriation of gentry culture does not look imminent. Gentry culture still seems to carry a stigma of “alien”. It appears as if the discursive juxtaposition between Russia and the West which has characterised post-Soviet developments after the brief flirt with Western liberalism during the early 1990s provides an obstacle for a broader identification with a gentry culture that once defined itself as westernised and advanced.

English version of T.A Duli, K. Noak, “Ot aristrokraticheskogo proshlogo k publichnomu naslediiu: sravnitelnoe issledovanie russkikh I irlandskikh usadeb posle revoliutsii”, in: A.B. Sokolov (ed.) Na presecheniiakh Britanskoi istorii, Yaroslavl’: Izd-vo IaGPU, 2013, pp. 82-128

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