My immediate reaction on reading this remarkable book was to spread out the map of Russia, fill my ancient Zhiguli with gas and head into the sunset. After all the bloodletting of the 20th century, I had no idea so many buildings in rural Russia had survived the ravages of revolution and war, either through luck or painstaking restoration.


The superb photographs tell their own story: Here is the lost world of the Russian country estate with its private neo-gothic churches, Palladian mausoleums and neo-classical hunting lodges. Here are mansions and monumental houses, some meticulously renovated, others falling apart; some close to Moscow, others further afield; but all of them begging to be visited.


Yet "Life on the Russian Country Estate: A Social and Cultural History" is no mere coffee table book. Priscilla Roosevelt, the author, is a considerable Russian scholar and she has drawn on many previously untranslated sources to make this the social and cultural history promised by the subtitle. The result is a comprehensive study of "estate culture" which, like so many things, began under Peter the Great and ended with the Bolshevik Revolution.


Before Peter's reign there was no such thing as a country mansion; the boyars lived in austere simplicity. Peter changed not only the face of Russia, but its soul. In his drive to transform his empire into a modern Western state not only did he build St. Petersburg, but he also nurtured a new nobility, men like Menshikov, Goncharov and Demidov, who were ready to embrace all things European.


By Catherine the Great's era these "noble foreigners" spoke French instead of Russian, danced and fenced. And, using the free labor of literally thousands of serfs (Princess Dashkova had 2,500 at Troitskoye), they competed in the building of magnificent country houses, such as Kuskovo, Arch-angelskoe, Khmelita and Yaropolets.


Both inside and out the Russian country estate was foreign, a "Western oasis" set in the heart of Mother Russia. By the late 18th century English architecture and landscape gardening was in fashion and parties of Russian nobles toured Chatsworth, Stowe and Blenheim gathering inspiration and hiring British gardeners. Roosevelt tells us that Prince Orlov was ready to pay the princely sum of ?200 for the services of Bristol-born John McLaren.


For the aristocracy the estate was "a playground, a luxurious arena of delight and fantasy." Every great house had a theater. At Archangelskoye, the lecherous Yusupov made his dancers strip naked; at Marfino, Countess Panina's two ballet companies entertained in a more sober style. At Saltyki, Prince Yury Golitsyn entertained his guests with the finest choir in Russia, 150 strong. And at Kuskovo, Count Peter Sheremetev's mansion, there was a fire-breathing dragon, a labyrinth and a casino.


Life on the Russian estate was less agreeable for the serfs. They had the status of slaves and could be bought or sold accordingly. Drawing from contemporary sources, Roosevelt gives credit to the few enlightened landowners, but on the whole she paints a picture of cruelty and depravity. Perhaps surprisingly, one of the archvillains was a woman called Saltykova, who killed 139 serfs, mostly girls.


Many serfs showed considerable artistic talent and, for the lucky few, this was the road to freedom. The opera singer Praskovya Kovaleva took the shortest route of all and married her owner, Prince Nikolai Sheremetyev. The painter Vasily Tropinin had to wait 20 years before his master, Count Morkov, gave way to pressure from friends and released him from servitude. Today his pictures hang in Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery.


It was not uncommon for serfs to work on the estates as artisans. Landowners were quick to spot talent, and they occasionally educated young serfs alongside their own children and even sent them abroad for training. Roosevelt portrays the serf as master of every trade from woodcarving to upholstering, from bricklaying to horse-training. Prince Yusupov employed several hundred serfs at his porcelain factory at Arkhangelskoye and their workmanship was first class.


Napoleon's invasion of Russia was a cultural watershed. After 1812, French was no longer the language of the upper classes. Russian aristocrats and gentry began to speak, and above all to write, in Russian, paving the way for the flowering of literature. Russia's great writers came from the landed gentry and grew up on country estates. As artists, Pushkin, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Lermontov, Gogol and Aksakov were able to pierce the fragile foreign veneer, leaving us with an immortal if idealized picture of this vanished world.


The little that remains of that world must be preserved, Roosevelt argues in her epilogue, be it crumbling mansions or old diaries and photographs. As for Khmelita, Roosevelt has a novel suggestion: why not resurrect this great house not just as a museum, but as a model working estate? (I can picture a ballet limbering up to the sound of gardeners at work on the labyrinth, and a casino guarded by a fire-breathing dragon.) It is a bold idea at the end of a bold and brilliant book.





"Life on the Russian Country Estate: A Social and Cultural History" by Priscilla Roosevelt, with photographs by William Brumfield. Yale University Press. 360 pages, $50.