Венок усадьбам

As Zgura's successor, Alexei Grech headed the Society in 1927—1930, the most dramatic years of its existence, when the authorities put it to relentless pressure before closing it down; many of its members were imprisoned and met their death. Grech was the last victim.

The country's new masters needed neither the famous Russian country estates nor a Society engaged in their study; neither did they need those who were totally committed to the preservation of the nation's cultural heritage. On general lines, they did not need any of the cultural traditions of pre-revolutionary Russia, which had nourished the first generation of the Soviet intellectuals who stroye to preserve these traditions in the new conditions.

The year 1930 proved to be fatal to many cultural societies based in Moscow. Those specializing in historical-cultural, art and literary studies figured prominently in the popular reference book "All of Moscow” for 1930, but most of them failed to reappear on the pages of its next-year issue, for they had been suppressed with ruthless efficiency. An idea of atmosphere that surrounded the Society for the Study of Russian Country Estates and its chairman can be gleaned from the above-mentioned letter, addressed by Grech to Vasily Arsenyev, one of the Society members, which the latter received on March 31, 1930. Begging Arsenyev’s pardon because a manuscript, which the Society had received from him, had disappeared, Grech writes the following: "It has come to my mind that your manuscript may have rested in my desk at the Academy premises when I was working on a selection devoted to the Decembrists; but the desk was wrecked by a bunch of schoolchildren, as was the entire room". Grech added that he was stepping down as the Society’s chairman.

This letter is a valuable addition to what we know about the life of Alexei Grech. From the allusion to the Decembrist collection one can deduce that he was an historian. A man possessing profound and wide-ranging knowledge, he was acknowledged by specialists to be an authority on painting and manorial art of the 18th and 19th centuries. This is precisely the subject of his major work, “A Wreath for Country Estates", which is now published for the first time.

Grech started working on the “Wreath” in 1932 and he probably continued until his release from the labour camp. The duration of his first term, which began in 1932, has not been ascertained so far, but there are many reasons to believe that it ended not earlier than April 1936. This conclusion is borne out by a medical prescription dated March, 1936, and written on a printed form of a medical unit of the OGPU (the dreaded State Security service); it was discovered between the last pages of Grech’s manuscript.

The author’s purpose transpires from his introduction to the manuscript and from its title. Being fully aware that the historical and cultural heritage of pre-revolutionary Russia was irrevocably doomed, the ex-chairman of the suppressed society set out to preserve, at least in writing, that which had been a prize possession of Russian culture. The manuscript was conceived as a monument to Russian country estates, which, to use Grech’s own expression, "have all become a colossal necropolis”.