Episode 20: Genteel Country Lives. The Tale of the Chikhachev Family

Andrei and Natalia Chikhachev, middling nobles, spent their lives running their small estate of Dorozhaevo in Vladimir province and raising their family. In this episode, we use their copious notes and diaries to understand what it meant to be a 'normal' provincial noble in the Russian Empire in the mid-nineteenth century, considering their work lives, their past-times, and their relationship with the world around them. Source Kate Pickering-Antonova, An Ordinary Marriage: The World of a Gentry Family in Provincial Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).