Праздный день, досужий вечер: Культура досуга российского провинци-ального города второй половины XIX – начала XX века by С. Ю. Малышева, and: Повсед-невная жизнь городских татар в условиях буржуазных преобразо-ваний второй половины XIX – на-чала XX века by Л. Р. Габдрафикова (review)

Two recent books that delve into the nuances of daily life in Kazan during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries deserve wide readership among those who study imperial Russian and urban history. In their respective monographs, Svetlana Malysheva and Liliya Gabdrafikova describe the transformation of urban behavior in one of the Russian Empire’s most important provincial capitals. Located at the intersection of Europe and Asia, Kazan by the late nineteenth century was home to a range of industrial, commercial, and cultural establishments, in addition to important educational institutions, including Kazan University, a theological academy, and specialized schools for both Tatars and women. Between the mid-nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, the population of Kazan tripled from 60,000 to 180,000 people. Ethnic Russians made up a little over 70 percent of Kazan residents, with Tatars constituting over 20 percent. Smaller numbers of Poles, Jews, Germans, and other nationalities also lived in the city. Malysheva and Gabdrafikova contend that the close study of daily life in Kazan, particularly in relation to its diverse ethnolinguistic composition, can help fill out our understanding of how and why Russian society changed so rapidly in this era of reforms and revolutions.

In Idle Day, Leisurely Evening: The Culture of Leisure in a Russian Provincial City, historian Svetlana Malysheva tracks the technological, economic, industrial, and cultural upheaval of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russia through the concept of leisure, broadly defined. An increasing number of public spaces such as parks, museums, libraries, movie theaters, bars, and restaurants allowed for Kazan’s various social estates to relax and play in previously unimagined proximity. One of the first Russian historians to engage deeply with the German- and English-language literature on this topic, Malysheva has spent much of her career investigating daily life in Kazan.¹ Here, she relies on the work of an array of historians, sociologists, and philosophers to tease out the theoretical complexities of leisure. She strives to present a more inclusive perspective on the topic than have previous scholars, expanding her scope beyond that of a single activity or social group to encompass the vast possibilities for entertainment and free time. For example, Malysheva examines the business of prostitution, a form of leisure enjoyed by young and old, rich and poor, Russian and Tatar alike. The anecdote of the Tatar merchant who paid 800 rubles to enjoy a night as a brothel’s sole client is hard to forget.²

As Malysheva argues, almost all social, economic, and ethnolinguistic markers began to blur in this tumultuous period, leading to a more democratic and homogeneous culture of leisure. She frames new forms of leisure as a locus for communication and debate about social estates, gender norms, ethnic differences, professional hierarchies, and the urban/rural divide. She evinces particular affection for Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope, which allows her the flexibility to explore the evolution of these communicative practices in terms of both space and time. Malysheva points to commercialization and industrialization as key factors in creating new language, time, space, and regulations for leisure, each of which serves as an organizing conceit for one of the book’s four chapters.

Malysheva also embraces the concept of the “frontier” to examine cultural, religious, and communicative boundaries, with a particular eye to when and why they were breached. This analytical tool reflects the realities of daily life in Kazan, which remained highly segregated along class and national lines well into the twentieth century. Malysheva’s most engaging analysis comes when Russians and Tatars tested the limits of these frontiers, pushing back against religious and social taboos. For example, rather than serving vodka, a drink prohibited by Islam, Tatar taverns sold balsam, a mixture of herbs and wine. Over time, though, Tatars began adopting Russian drinking behavior, and when Russian taverns expanded into Tatar districts, they encountered no lack of clientele thirsty for vodka. Tatars likewise ventured into the Russian areas of the city in...