Two centuries of the Russian classics

2686-7494

IWL RAS

https://doi.org/10.22455/2686-7494-2026-8-2-304-319

Research Article

Articles

The Realization of a Childhood Dream of a Manor in P. D. Boborykin’s Novel “Vasily Terkin”

Skorokhodov

Maxim V.

red@rusklassika.ru

25 06 2026

8 2 304 319

P. D. Boborykin Russian literary manor manor and forest novel “Vasily Terkin ” memoirs

2026

P. D. Boborykin’s novel “Vasily Terkin” (1892) is considered one of the first works in Russian novelistic literature to explicitly address environmental issues, in which the sustainability of the natural world and human well-being are largely determined by the preservation of forest resources, clean, deep rivers, and well-maintained estates. Drawing on P. D. Boborykin’s unfinished memoirs “For Half a Century” allows one to discern autobiographical elements in the novel. The ideas expressed by the novel’s characters are linked to the practical activities of Russian entrepreneurs at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, who created highly profitable farms on the basis of old estates and adjacent forest plots, which included poultry and livestock farms, flower nurseries, and nurseries for exotic plants. This article analyzes the descriptions of dachas and estates presented in the novel. The theme of “estate and forest,” so relevant to the work of P. D. Boborykin, would be developed in the works of Soviet writers in the 20th century, and would become even more significant for Russian prose writers in the 21st century.

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