Summerfolk

The best-known place of entertainment was the garden of the Artificial Mineral Waters, formerly part of the Stroganov lands at Novaia Derevnia. Far from simply performing a medical function, this institution soon became a major gathering place for wellheeled Petersburgers after it became independent and acquired charitable status in 1833.42Its character changed even more radically in 1848, when it was taken over by the energetic entrepreneur Johann Isler and turned into a commercial proposition. Taking advantage of the panic resulting from the cholera epidemic, Isler drew people in by stressing the health benefits of taking the waters, while at the same time laying on an impressive range of attractions: ample and high-quality refreshments, a choir of Moscow gypsies, military bands, fireworks, acrobatic displays, comedy actors, and themed balls.43 Contemporary reports emphasized that the Artificial Mineral Waters required no elaborate dress or code of conduct—a significant departure from earlier upper-class amusements.44 Isler’s institution thus provided a model for a new kind of urban entertainment that was not directed at any one section of society but rather appealed to various cultural groups. It brought together the salon and the show booth and thus interwove elite and popular tastes.45

The gardens of the opulent dachas on the Neva—notably those belonging to the Stroganovs and the Kushelev-Bezborodkos—to some extent followed suit: as before, they were open to the public, but now they operated on a more commercial footing. In the early 1830s, for example, the Kushelev-Bezborodkos decided to develop a part of their Poliustrovo estate as a dacha zone: twenty plots were offered for sale in 1833, and in the 1840s four-room apartments were available for summer rental by those who wished to take advantage of the local mineral source.46 Yet this was clearly not the only reason to spend the summer at one of the resorts north of the Neva: reports on these locations combined an emphasis on their health benefits with an account of the entertainments they offered (dancing, music, perambulations, open-air games).47 As the memoirs of one resident, the artist P.P.Sokolov, make clear, Poliustrovo was valued by summer visitors for making available a range of refined and enjoyable pastimes: for bringing a mixed bunch of middling urbanites into civilized proximity with the world of the aristocracy without obliging them to conform to its habits and values.48

For several years in the 1830s and 1840s, places of public entertainment performed two rather ambiguously distinguished functions: they continued their traditions of entertainment for a homogeneous social group while at the same time opening themselves up to a broader public. Compare, for example, the above accounts of Isler’s Mineral Waters with a roughly contemporaneous report that is more careful and staid in its description of the entertainments available:

A gulian’e at the Stroganov gardens (from Russkii illiustrirovannyi al’manakh [St. Petersburg, 1858]). Courtesy of Helsinki Slavonic Library.

The events and balls that have for several years consecutively taken place at the mineral waters establishment near Novaia Derevnia have, according to the wishes of many persons, been arranged for this summer as well. They may be attended by nobles, military and state civil servants, honored citizens, merchants, scholars, and artists.49

As this quotation suggests, St. Petersburg’s dacha locations and places of entertainment had their own social geography. Somewhat above the middle of the range was Isler’s establishment, which, even after it became less explicitly exclusive, still had a socially restricted clientele, given the expense of a season ticket (15 silver rubles for a family in the late 1840s). As earlier in the century, an extremely broad section of urban society was encountered at popular festivities (gulian’ia) such as May Day at Ekaterinhof or the equivalent celebration at Sokol’niki in Moscow, which traditionally signaled the start of the summer season.50