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[ The zala is the chief room of a house, corresponding to the English drawing-room, but on a grand scale. The gostinaya—literally guest-room, usually translated as drawing-room—is a place for more intimate receptions. At Yasnaya Polyana meals were taken in the zala, but this is not the general Russian custom, houses being provided also with a stolovaya, or dining-room.]
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[ Kaftan, a long coat of various cuts, including military and naval frock-coat, and the long gown worn by coachmen.]
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[ Afanasyi Shenshin, the poet, who adopted his mother's name, Fet, for a time, owing to official difficulties about his birth-certificate. An intimate friend of Tolstoy's.]
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[ "Sovremennik," or "Contemporary Review," edited by the poet Mekrasof, was the rallying-place for the "men of the forties," the new school of realists. Ostrovsky is the dramatist; Gontcharof the novelist, author of "Oblomof"; Grigorovitch wrote tales about peasant life, and was the discoverer of Tchekhof's talent as a serious writer.]
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[ The balks are the banks dividing the fields of different owners or crops. Hedges are not used for this purpose in Russia.]