Days of a Russian Noblewoman: The Memories of Anna Labzina, 1758–1821

by Anna Labzina

Providing a unique glimpse into the domestic life of Russia's nobility in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Days of a Russian Noblewoman combines a rare memoir and a diary, now translated into English for the first time. Anna Labzina was relatively well educated by the standards of her day, and she traveled widely through the Russian empire. Yet, unlike most writers of her time, she writes primarily as a dutiful, if inwardly rebellious, daughter and wife, reflecting on the onerous roles assigned to women in a male-centered society.

Labzina was married young to Alexander Karamyshev, who, while well regarded in political and scholarly circles of his day, proved to be brutish and abusive at home. A "Russian Voltairian," he professed atheism and free love. His unbridled behavior caused Labzina much grief, which she vividly recalls in her memoir. Because she moved among aristocratic circles, her reminiscences bring readers face to face with celebrated figures of politics and literature, including the Empress Catherine the Great and the "Radiant Prince" Grigorii Potemkin. As a pious and charitable woman, Labzina also speaks for others who rarely had a voice in literature: serfs, prisoners, and political exiles.

Labzina wrote both her memoir and her diary during her second marriage, to Alexander Labzin, a leader in Russian Freemasonry and in the movement for religious revival. At the same time, she became actively involved in the spiritual life of his lodge, the Dying Sphinx. Her account of her spiritual development and her social sphere offer unparalleled insights into male and female sensibilities of the time.

Genres: History, Russia, Biography, Memoir, 18th Century

202 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2001

Reviews

[Jazmin Wheeler · Rating 3 out of 5]

lots of weeping… makes me question how sound her mind was when writing her memoir

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book extremely interesting. It reveals details about Russian nobility that are incredibly hard to access. It is a valuable primary document. However, it was written in the style of sentimentalism, so it can get rather tiring and depressing.

[Rebecca Feiner · Rating 4 out of 5]

How could Russian noblewoman not slay

[Richard Thompson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed The Cavalry Maiden, a memoir of a woman who disguised herself as a man and fought for the tsar as a cavalry officer in the Napoleonic Wars. It was nicely written and had insights into the position of women in Russian society of the early 19th Century and into the lives of cavalry officers that was different from the usual story of boredom and drudgery punctuated by drinking, gambling and duels at remote military outposts. I was hoping to repeat that experience with this book, which is another Russian woman's memoir from around the same time period, but it was largely a failure.

Natalia Durova, the Cavalry Maiden, had a trump card that Anna Labzina lacked. She had Pushkin as a mentor whereas Labzina was writing before Pushkin invented the literary language of Russia. So Labzina's memoir is the worst kind of moralistic and sentimental slop, modeled on the devotional writing that was most familiar to her. She portrays herself as a persecuted angel and her husband as a tormenting devil, though in most ways her life at the top of Russian society isn't so bad, and though the husband is sometimes extremely overbearing, he also frequently says that he cares for her and sometimes treats her nicely. Anna and her husband were within the circle of Potemkin and were favored by Catherine the Great. They received a house and garden in Petersburg as gifts from grateful proteges. It's true that her husband has a gambling and drinking problem and remains a sex addict even when he manages to abstain from cards and vodka, but his greatest offense is in suggesting that Anna should take a lover. I get why that was offensive to her, but this was a problem of the .01%. The image that she paints of herself throughout struck me as insipid. It was a like a consciously constructed saint's life, but it lacks the power the life of Avvakum, whose wife comes off in his saintly autobiography as a person of greater interest and personality than Anna does here.

Anna was almost redeemed for me by the diary that makes up the second part of this book and which covers a much later part of her life. The diary, unlike the memoir, discloses a real person living a real life. In the diary she concerns herself with the problems arising from a schism within her husband's Masonic Lodge and with the possibly ill-advised marriage plans of her proteges. She was still a captive of the ideas of her class and times, but she is no longer the insipid sock puppet that we find in the Memoir.

[Wyatt strawbridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very quick read. Sorta interesting, more interesting having read war and peace as it made that book, with the context of a real recorded experience, seem so much further from fiction. Got a bit repetitive. I would imagine the document in Russian would be quite helpful for a scholar of religion or gender, not so much for me though.

[Noemi · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[jul]

Read parts of it for class, it was ok

[Kathryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish her memoirs were complete!

[trivialchemy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Every night before I sleep I pray that you, dear Goodreader, are never forced to suffer this vapid, self-ingratiating trash.

Jarratt, a comment? How could I even begin to explain...?