From the reign of Peter the Great, Russia's country estates were oases of barbarian splendor and personal freedom in a vast, sparsely settled, and authoritarian land. This lavishly illustrated book is the first in any language to explore fully the vanished world of the Russian country estate. Priscilla Roosevelt brings to life these magnificent aristocratic dwellings, discussing their origins, their design and decoration, the social, family, and cultural life within their walls, and their physical demise after the 1917 revolution. The Bolshevik revolution destroyed both the world of the estate and much of the evidence about it. To recreate this lost world Roosevelt has drawn on many sources - including the physical remains of once-grand manor houses (many photographed for this book), the invaluable diaries and memoirs that chronicle a way of life that was to perish, and the Russian art and literature that estate life produced and in which it was portrayed. Juxtaposing images from art and from the novels of such literary giants as Turgenev and Tolstoy with the real milieu that inspired them, the book is a beautiful and vivid portrait of Russian country life.