The Saint Petersburg hall displays a series of illustrations by brothers Yuri and VadIm Rostovtsev, made for the book ‘Podlipovtsy’ by the Urals writer Fyodor Reshetnikov. ‘Podlipovtsy’ is an ethnographic sketch focusing on the fate of peasants after the abolition of serfdom. The book’s plot centers around the village of PodlIpnaya and its poor villagers seeking a better life outside the familiar but deadly environment. The writer once said: “There are a lot of people like these podlipovtsy [local dwellers] nowadays, not only in the Cherdyn Uyezd [administrative subdivision] of the Perm Governorate, the most distant and wild, but also in the adjacent areas, in Vyatka, Vologda, and Arkhangelsk”. The story paints a comprehensive picture of the early 1860s and the repercussions of the reform, which was supposed to change people’s lives.

Following the storyline, the series of illustrations begins with the work by Vadim Rostovtsev, ‘Pila in Sysoyko’s Hut’. This episode in the second chapter is preceded by a description of a fierce winter: “Thirty degrees below zero, the wind whistles so hard that the trees squeak, a blizzard so huge that one cannot see the road, people or animals <…> even the dog hid somewhere”. Here, the writer introduces the protagonist, peasant Pila. Pila is already “advanced in years: he is in his forties”. He enters a hut on the edge of the village. In the novel, this moment is presented as follows: “The hut is terribly cold, and the wind blows through the window frame <…> The hut is very poor; there is nothing to see here except for the walls, the table, the bench and one thin straw shoe lying on the floor in the center of the hut, and a small trough with a bark and two large spoons, <…> and someone moaning on the plank bed and on the stove: 'Hey, you slatterns! Are you alive there? ' There came a groaning from the plank bed”.

Another work, Matryona, Pila and Deacon by Yuri Rostovtsev, illustrates the scene of the conflict between Pila and his wife Matryona, who does not want to give her cow. The novel goes: “As Pila began to tie the cow to the wood sledge, Matryona hit him with a log, shouted at deacon as hard as she could, and maybe she would have killed Pila for the cow, but she had no strength: Pila and deacon beat her up she barely got to her hut”.

The wood engraving Pila and Sysoyko at Aproska’s Grave depicts one of the story climaxes, the scene where the main characters of Pila and Sysoyko bury Pila’s daughter Aproska’s. This scene reads as follows: ‘Aproska died, killed herself, suffocated. And why do I live? — thought Pila and Sysoyko’.

The illustration “Polipovtsy Walk Along the Big Road…” depicts peasants, who went to haul barges: “They walk along a big road, bumpy and partly covered with snow… it is good that the forest is dense and tall on both sides”.

The Rostovtsev brothers are first of all known for their book illustrations. Among other works to which Yuri and Vadim Rostovtsev made illustrations are Viktor Nekrasov’s novel ‘In the Trenches of Stalingrad’, a collection of poems by Varlam Shalamov ‘The Rustle of Leaves’ and ‘Lyrics’ by Taras Shevchenko.