Is the Russian stove really Russian? Was she in every hut? And when did the beds appear in Russia? From time immemorial? Do you think you know the answers to these questions?
We are sure we know a lot. We were taught at school, we read books, educational films, in the end, we watched. And there is some kind of everyday experience. We argue and argue about ancient history, but what happened 200, 100 years ago do we know? It turns out that literally, wherever you stick your nose, amazing discoveries are waiting everywhere.
History of the bed and a little about the stove
10 thousand years ago, from a heap of leaves and branches, at best wrapped in the skins of killed animals, the history of the development of a mattress and bed began. These first primitively equipped couches served not so much the comfort of sleep of cavemen as they helped, lifting a person off the ground, to protect themselves from the cold, dirt and dangerous insects.
Even the ancient Egyptians in 3400 BC. still slept on the palm leaves that were stacked in the corners of the house.
The oldest known bed made of ropes belongs to the famous hero of Homer's epic poem Odysseus. Detailed beds can also be seen at the National History Museum for Wales.
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The very first beds found in villages in the north of Scotland date back to the period 3200-2200. BC. Some were boxes just above ground level, made of filled stone.
The first waterbed appeared in Persia about 3600 years ago. She was a goat skins filled with water. Later, Roman baths also used similar water mattresses for relaxing visitors, thus attracting more customers.
All this cannot and should not raise any objections. Museum collections are bursting with beds, and what would seem difficult - to throw a bag of hay on a board and sleep on it? 10,000 years of recorded history.
Well … and now a tub of cold water by the collar. Russia, St. Petersburg, the end of the nineteenth century!
The Marquis de Custine, who visited Russia in 1836, writes the following about Petersburg:
How so!? Custine didn't find the bed? In the nineteenth century !? This is some kind of stupidity! What, did the nobles sleep on the floor? And the hussars, there, and all sorts of ladies-in-waiting, coming from balls, fell into a haystack? And Pushkin? Sleep on the rug by the door? No, well, that's nonsense so nonsense!
That's right, this is a normal human reaction - rejection and irritation, often even anger! "Nonsense, I am ready to accept everything, but now this is complete nonsense!"
It's okay. Anger and irritation pass. I'm wondering what you do next? Just brush it off? Leave an angry comment out of annoyance? I expect that you will “go to the Internet” to “wipe my nose” and… And….!
Until the 18th century, furnaces were without pipes! They drowned in black. Yes Yes.
Here, look at least "The report of Eric Palmquist on the diplomatic mission to Russia in 1673."
Meeting of the ambassadors and the Russian bailiff at the border near Muraveino.
The river is the border. Russian houses (on the right) do not have chimneys, that is, they are heated in a black way when smoke comes out of the windows, unlike the houses of Europeans on the other side. Such an interesting, curious detail, right? Here we are - "Aryans", the whole world speaks our language. Vedic knowledge was brought to India. And there are no pipes. Maybe a nuclear fusion generator? Lost heating technologies?
Yes, there were no normal "Russian stoves". Artifice. 19-20 century. And that is not in every hut.
And the problem here is the hood. It's not just a hole in the roof. Here is the technology. In general, the topic of stoves and all kinds of fireplaces is well known. In England, for example, everything developed very rapidly. At first in London, too, they drowned in "black" for a long time. Then they began to make the chimney from wicker branches coated with clay. They did not yet understand the extraction process, as a result, the flame flew high upward, soot often caught fire in the pipes, there were no chimney sweeps - as a result, whole neighborhoods were repeatedly burnt out! And the appearance of pipes, fireplaces, stoves is comparable to the industrial revolution, which entailed serious consequences.
The Georgian era, the Tudors and the Stewarts, giant fireplaces on the floor of the castle, Fan-fans Tulips and other musketeers, all this is interesting. But it will be very difficult for you to find information about the history of the hood and the problems associated with it, which were not really solved even in the 19th century! And yes, I know about Benjamin Franklin, who developed a cast iron stove at the end of the 17th century.
This is me so, fluently, I do not want to dwell on the details. This article is not about fireplaces.
Do you think you knew a lot about Benjamin Franklin in the Russian outback? What kind of "Russian" stoves, what are you talking about? Has anyone heard of a Russian chimney sweep?
I will further allow myself to play a little naughty. It is not serious to approach the issue by referring to footage from feature films. I do it on purpose - it was these films that shaped our “consciousness”. They formed, created our worldview.
Still from the film * Ilya Muromets *.
Ilya on the stove with a chimney! Wonderful! Wonderful!
"We are old men, Ilyushenka came to see the technologies of the future!"
Oh, how much porridge we have in our heads about a hero who lay on the stove for thirty years and three years, and then got up behind the Russian land and began to destroy the Mongoloid busurmans with crooked sabers and disgusting liquid mustaches and bald beards! By the way, you noticed that all the mean and bad ones are presented with such thin little beards, and our guys - all have a rich, bushy beard !? These are all staples too. Formation of the image. They form, like shavings are removed from Pinocchio. Let's go back to the beds.
Where did the Russian hero sleep?
He encroached on and trampled on the sacred - the Russian mother stove. How to sleep? No beds, no stove?
Yes, in the villages, children slept on warm beds with the cleanest air. Elderly people slept on the stove, if there was one, and young people often went to sleep in the hayloft.
Yes, and sleep on the stove, which is heated "in black", apparently, it was possible when the fire is extinguished, but the stove still keeps heat. Then let the experts of village life correct me. I vaguely imagine how you can indulge in a drowsy bliss in a room where the stove has no chimney, to lie without getting up for 30 years and three years.
It is known that sometimes peasants also slept on the floor. The floor in the Russian hut was warm (if not earthen), since it was then covered not by boards, but by floorboards - halves of a split log. The peasants slept across the floorboards - only the dead were laid along, since long floorboards in Russia were associated with a long journey.
But, what about the statement that among the higher estates - the bourgeoisie, noblemen, merchants - beds appeared much earlier than the reign of Peter the Great?
Peter the First and bed
Oh, this Peter! It is impossible to imagine a more contradictory figure in Russian history. Already a hero-father-knight is such that grandfather Lenin will envy.
He brought everything from Europe, the Russian people taught everything. Without it, even imagine, there was no braid! Potatoes - brought, smoking - brought, bed - brought! Peter brought everything and hacked the city on the Neva. All kinds of fables have been made up about Peter. Lenin and the stove-maker in a cube. There is already no chance of clearing this mess out of outright lies, some little bit of facts and heaps of gossip.
And yes, of course, in Russia, the fashion for fireplaces came thanks to Peter I. He issued a decree according to which every nobleman in the house should have a fireplace, which was considered a luxury item and emphasized social status!
Be that as it may, there is such a conviction that in merchant houses, they say, there were beds, and they were covered with mattresses, feather beds and blankets, so they climbed onto such a bed from the stairs or from a chair. How they dealt with the hordes of bedbugs about which Custine constantly writes is not clear.
And what about museums? Wherever I went, in what museums, everywhere I saw small beds. And all are short! Well, half a meter at most! My guides usually answered questions like this: they used to sleep half-sitting, it was believed that lying was harmful, the blood stagnated. And even after many hours of evening feasts, it happened and they died lying down, choking on their own vomit (sorry), and from suffocation. The doctors advised me to sleep with my knees bent and reclining on pillows. How they were given amorous pleasures on such beds is another question …
And what did Peter the First bring? What kind of bed?
In the 18th century, Peter I tried to fashion Dutch wardrobes with a bed inside. It was in such a closet that the tsar slept during his stay in Holland under the name of the carpenter Alekseev. But sleeping in such structures was inconvenient, so this fashion did not take root in Russia.
That is, they somehow slept, there were some beds, but in Petrovsky's closet it turned out to be too much to sleep. Interestingly, and then how to give love joys? The wardrobe is a meter long with a cap, and often even less … All right, puny Dutch, but how did Peter get in there?
Here is the comment I got from the respected skunk69:
So, the bed and even the stove are not a sign of a civilized society? Yes, it turns out that not everything is so simple. And if the Marquis de Custine does not find beds in houses, this does not mean that there are barbarians and fools all around. It's not that simple.
I personally do not accept the statement that there was no place. Maybe for a country house and relevant, but not for the new palaces of St. Petersburg.
Here's more about Custine's bed:
What kind of Russian iron bed did they bring him?
Beds in artwork
We will continue to study the production of Russian cinema. How are we used to imagine the decoration of houses of the 19th century? Or rather, who slept like:
Still from the film * A few days from the life of Oblomov *.
What did Ilya Ilyich sleep on? On the sofa. Perhaps the only piece for which I have no questions.
Nevertheless, Custine mentions the presence of sofas in the hotel room. Sofas do not suit him due to the large presence of the same ill-fated bugs in them.
And bedbugs should not be ignored! This is now, when they are not under your mattress, as if the devil is with them. There was no such chemistry, nothing! I'm sorry, I remember these creatures from my childhood. Even in the 1980s, this was a problem in the USSR. What can we say about the 19th century ?!
What mattresses? What are the blankets ?? What feather beds ??? I can not imagine. Here, call me what you want, but I can't imagine! Even if all this is there, how to sleep on it? A very, very sophisticated torture.
And in the cinema?
Still from the movie * Star of Captivating Happiness *.
Well, just a gorgeous bed at the wives of the Decembrists!
Still from the movie * Dead Souls *.
In the Chichikov hotel there is a bed behind a screen. Quite a lorry with a mattress.
And if we assume that in a personal estate, in a rich St. Petersburg house, all the servants physically harassed bedbugs day and night, then in such a hotel … oh …..
It is possible to give examples for a long time, but even so it is clear - the cinema does not notice any problems in Russia of the nineteenth century with beds (as well as with stoves in Russia) and bedbugs.
Royal beds
Why am I so nervous? He began, they say, to flog some nonsense and why? Some kind of "misdirected Cossack" marquis scribbled some kind of fagot slander after slander on great Russia. We didn't even have beds, vish! The enemy is mean! How can one of his paragraphs question our great tradition of stove and bed? Cinema still dragged, show cartoons, right?
Joked and that's enough. You just know what is amazing? Not movies, not books … - palaces!
Bedroom of Elizaveta Petrovna. This interior has become a bedchamber not only for Catherine II, but also for her grandson Alexander I. Pay attention to the "chic" bed.
Tell me, do you imagine "Walk the Crazy Empress"? You will not roam … The gatherer of dead souls in a provincial hotel in a mossy city N was lucky to taste richer delights!
What do you think? Not a fact, right? You never know, take a nap while knitting? And they say, somewhere there - the royal chambers, a boudoir, a bed 10 meters wide? Not. No - here it is - the boudoir and here it is the bedroom.
Bedroom! We look at the bed by the window to the right.
Bed of Paul I from the Mikhailovsky Palace in St. Petersburg.
This bed looks like a bed from the tomb of the pharaoh, not like a royal bed.
Bed of Nicholas I from the Palace Cottage in Peterhof.
Temporary bed, clamshell - yes. But the bed? I choose a shop and a chest.
bed of Alexander I Camping bed of Alexander I. The Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo.
That's right: this legged stretcher is a camp bed.
Chernetsov. Cabinet of Tsarevich Alexander Nikolaevich (Alexander II). 1837 Winter Palace.
On the right, against the wall, you can see the same folding travel bed.
Why is she here? Take a nap in the office? Is there another normal bed somewhere? No!
Looking at these halls decorated with golden stucco molding with huge ceilings, you are perplexed. The beds look ridiculous! It would seem, what is easier? After all, what is a bed - the same bench and a mattress on it. Some kind of squalor. Not the master's bed, but the watchman's tent. The wildest inconsistency of one with the other!
How so? Ancient Greece, Egypt of the Pharaonic times !? Beds, headrests, mattresses, pillows !?
Decide for yourself, dear reader.
So what am I doing all this for
I am not a historian, but a philistine. And from the point of view of the layman, I am writing a small article, not a scientific work, deliberately bypassing abstruse quotations and boring details. About simple things - a stove, a bed, not whiteman, not pyramids - so what? Porridge is in our head. Some notions from fairy tales about princesses and a pea and about Peter who brought everything to the savages from abroad. We try to talk about millennial antiquities, about the Scythians and Tartarii, and I found lice and ticks in the Moscow region in 1980, and in the city, not in the countryside. It was commonplace everywhere, it's not about poor hygiene, believe me! Which of the children of the seventies, eighties and nineties is not familiar with DDT? I'm not talking about a rock band, but about soap.
We argue from our belfry, with today's realities we climb into antiquity, not accepting elementary things! I'm not writing about the administration of natural needs in the absence of the paper industry. This is a stove, a bed - Nikolaev Russia! Time for Pushkin and the Decembrists!
Continuation: "When everything appeared in Russia"
Author: Sil2