Dikanka

Overview

Dikanka is the Kotchoubey family estate in the Poltava region, ten kilometres from the Bashkirtseff estate at Gavronzi. In Russian culture the name belongs to literature: Pushkin's Poltava (1829) sets there the story of Mazeppa, Mariya Kochubey and the execution of her father, and Gogol's Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka (1831–32) made the village a byword for Ukrainian village life. For the Bashkirtseff circle it was the grandest house in the neighbourhood, and being received there was a mark of standing.

In Marie's Diary

- 1 October 1876 (066.0428–0430): Marie visits with her father, dressed in white as at the Naples races. She finds a residence that can rival the Villas Borghese and Doria in Rome for garden, park and buildings, richer than either apart from their antiquities, "presque une petite ville", with courtyards, stables, workshops and machines, since the present prince has "la manie de fabriquer, de bâtir, d'orner". She marvels at "cette résidence royale en pleine Petite-Russie" and regrets that nobody knows it exists. The estate, she notes, was chiefly embellished by Prince Viktor Pavlovitch Kotchoubey, Grand Chancellor of the Empire and father of the current owner.

- October 1882 (096.0379, 096.0401): during the second Russian stay, her father's wolf hunt is organised in the Dikanka forests with the young Kotchoubey princes. The battue is enormous, with nets around several kilometres of woods and, in the event, more than four hundred peasants driving the game. Nine wolves and a fox are killed; Marie, posted on the wrong flank, fires at nothing.

- 31 October 1882 (097.0006): reports of the drinking at Dikanka the previous day; the family is flattered by the Kotchoubey friendship and "Poltava en est éblouie".

Related Entries

- #Kotchoubey — the owning family
- #Gavronzi — the Bashkirtseff estate nearby
- #Poltava — the regional capital
- #Russia — the 1876 and 1882 Russian journeys