Old postcards Museum-Estate N.A. Nekrasov "Karabikha"

The estate at Karabikha, 15 km south of Yaroslavl, was begun for the Golitsyn princes in the 1740s. The poet Nikolay Nekrasov bought it in 1861 as a summer retreat and spent ten summer seasons here until 1875, writing “Red-Nosed Frost” and “Russian Women” and working on the long poem known in English as “Who Is Happy in Russia”. A memorial museum was set up at the estate after a 1946 government decree marking the 125th anniversary of his birth.

This 1983 set of Soviet postcards walks through the house room by room. Separate cards show Nekrasov’s study with the poet’s writing desk and a secretaire, the drawing room with a standing desk and a bookcase, the dining room, and the museum’s literary department with the title page of a collection of his poems and illustrations to his works. One card gives a view of the central building.

The rest of the set moves outdoors: corners of the Lower Park and the Upper Pond with the Gremikha brook, which runs around the park in a chain of small ponds and falls. One card shows an interior from the Nekrasov family estate at Greshnevo, where the poet grew up, and another the Nekrasov poetry festival at Karabikha.

Taken together, the cards come close to a full tour of Karabikha as visitors saw it in the early 1980s, from the study to the ponds.