The book brings together articles by 24 authors, distributed into three problematic and thematic sections: a diachronic view of the Russian estate, estates of the Russian emigration, estates of European countries. A number of constant features of the Russian literary estate and cottages (storehouse of culture, moral space, the core of national identity, the concept of “non-city” in mass society, etc.) are highlighted in a comparative and diachronic analysis. The structure-forming potential and references of the “estate-dacha topos” in the foreign culture of Russian emigrants of the ХХth century disclosed in the works by I.A. Bunin, V.V. Nabokov, B.K. Zaitsev, L.F. Zurov, I.S. Shmelev, V.A. Nikiforov-Volgin of the 1920–1960s and in the Russian-language periodicals of France, Germany, Latvia, Estonia of the 1920–1930s. The most important topic of the book is the search for the origins of the Russian estate phenomenon in world culture, along with its involvement in the spectrum of similar phenomena in other national literatures (Greek, Polish, English, Belgian). The isomorphism of the estate space in Russia and other European countries allows us to speak of the “estate topos” as a universality. The publication is addressed to humanities professionals, primarily philo- logists, and at the same time to a wide circle of students and interested readers.
