"Emancipation of the servants": how did the master's servants live before the revolution

The beginning of the XX century is a very vague time. The lower classes, as Comrade Lenin later wrote, could no longer, while the upper classes did not want to. They did not want, in particular, to notice living people in their servants, in the household staff. Former serfs were often treated like livestock, without pity, without any sympathy.

Has anyone ever heard that at least one native Muscovite or Petersburger remembers that his ancestors came to the pre-revolutionary capitals as coachmen, sex workers, laundresses or maids? It is unlikely, because it is certainly unpleasant to tell that your grandparents fell under the "Cook's Children Circular" of 1887. And at the beginning of the twentieth century, the capital's parents of cook's children lived like this.

In the magazine "Ogonek" No. 47 of November 23, 1908, the arguments of Mrs. Severova (the literary pseudonym of Natalia Nordman, the unmarried wife of Ilya Repin) about the life of domestic servants in the Russian Empire at the beginning of the XX century were published.

"Recently," recalls Ms. Severova, " a young girl came to me to be hired.

— Why are you without a place? I asked sternly. — I just got out of the hospital! She lay there for a month. "From the hospital?" What diseases were you treated for there? — Yes, and there was no special disease — only the legs were swollen and the whole back was broken. This means that from the stairs, the gentlemen lived on the 5th floor. Also, the head is spinning, and it knocks down, and it knocks down, it used to happen. The janitor took me straight to the hospital from the place. The doctor said, severe fatigue! — What were you doing there, rolling stones, or something?

She was embarrassed for a long time, but finally I managed to find out exactly how she spent the day in the last place. Get up at 6. "There is no alarm clock, so you wake up every minute from 4 o'clock, you are afraid to oversleep." A hot breakfast should be ready by 8 o'clock, two cadets with them to the corps. "You chop the cue balls, but you just peck with your nose. You will put a samovar, they also need to clean their clothes and boots. The cadets will leave, they will celebrate the master's service, they will also put a samovar, boots, clean clothes, run to the corner for hot rolls and a newspaper."

"The master will leave, the lady and the three young ladies will celebrate-boots, galoshes, a dress to clean, for some hemlines, would you believe it, you stand for an hour, dust, even sand on your teeth; at twelve o'clock you make coffee for them — you carry them to their beds. In between, clean the rooms, fill the lamps, smooth out some things. By two o'clock breakfast is hot, run to the store, put soup for dinner.

Just after breakfast, the cadets go home, and even with their comrades, they ask for tea, they send for cigarettes, only the cadets are full, the master goes, asks for fresh tea, and then the guests will come, run for muffins, and then for lemon, they don't say right away, sometimes I fly 5 times in a row, for that, my chest sometimes aches not to breathe.

Here, you see, the sixth hour. And you'll gasp, cook dinner, set it. The lady swears why she was late. At dinner, how many times will they send down to the shop — then cigarettes, then seltzer, then beer. After lunch, there are a lot of dishes in the kitchen, and then put the samovar on, or someone will ask for coffee, and sometimes guests will sit down to play cards, prepare a snack. By 12 o'clock you can't hear your feet, you'll bump into the stove, just fall asleep-the bell rings, one young lady has returned home, just fall asleep-a cadet from the ball, and so on all night, and at six you get up-chop the cue balls"".

"Crossing the threshold of our house for 8-10 rubles, they become our property, their day and night belong to us; sleep, food, the amount of work — everything depends on us."

"After listening to this story," writes Ms. Severova, " I realized that this young girl was too jealous of her duties, which lasted 20 hours a day, or she was too soft of character and did not know how to be rude and snap.

Having grown up in the village, in the same hut with calves and chickens, a young girl comes to St. Petersburg and is hired as a servant to the gentlemen. The dark kitchen next to the drainpipes is the arena of her life. Here she sleeps, combs her hair at the same table where she cooks, cleans skirts and boots on it, refills the lamps."

"Domestic workers are counted in tens, hundreds of thousands, and yet nothing has been done for them by law yet. You can really say that the law is not written about her."

"Our back stairs and backyards inspire disgust, and it seems to me that the uncleanliness and carelessness of the servants ("you run, you run, you don't have time to sew buttons on yourself") are in most cases forced shortcomings.

On an empty stomach, you can serve delicious dishes with your own hands all your life, inhale their aroma, be present while they are "eaten by the gentlemen", savor and praise ("they eat under escort, they can't swallow without us"), well, how can you not try to steal a piece at least later, not lick the plate with your tongue, not put a candy in your pocket, not take a sip from the neck of wine.

When we order, our young maid must serve our husbands and sons to wash, bring them tea to bed, clean their beds, help them dress. Often the servants stay with them all alone in the apartment and at night, when they return from drinking, they take off their boots and put them to bed. She has to do all this, but woe to her if we meet her with a fireman on the street. And woe to her even more if she announces to us about the free behavior of our son or husband."

"It is obvious that the capital's domestic workers are deeply and almost completely depraved. The female, mostly unmarried youth, who arrive in masses from the villages and enter the service of the St. Petersburg "gentlemen" as cooks, maids, laundresses, etc., are quickly and irrevocably involved in debauchery by the entire surrounding environment, and by innumerable, unceremonious ladies-in-waiting, starting with the "master" and the footman, and ending with the guards ' dandyish soldier, the velemoshny janitor, etc. d. The Vestal virgin, hardened in the wisdom of the church, would have resisted such a continuous and heterogeneous temptation from all sides! We can say positively, therefore, that the largest part of the female servants in St. Petersburg (the total complexity, about 60 tons) is entirely prostitutes, from the side of behavior" (V. Mikhnevich, "Historical sketches of Russian life", St. Petersburg, 1886).

Ms. Severova ends her reasoning with a prophecy: "... even 50 years ago, servants were called "domestic scum", "stinkers" and were called so in official papers. The current name "people" is also already outliving its time and in 20 years it will seem wild and impossible. "If we are 'people', then who are you? " one young maid asked me, looking expressively into my eyes."

Ms. Severova made a little mistake — not in 20, but in 9 years there will be a revolution, when the lower classes who did not want to live in the old way will start mass sawing of the upper classes. And then the young maids will look into the eyes of their ladies even more expressively…