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# In the Eighteenth Century Russian Aristocrats Took to a New Fashion: Adopting Orphans from the Poorest Classes
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/v-xviii-veke-russkie-aristokraty-poliubili-novuiu-modu-usynovlenie-sirot-iz-bedneishikh-sloev/
- Published: 2020-09-29T10:03:20.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:42:12.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Aristocracy, Archive, Art, Moscow, Mores

In the eighteenth century Russian aristocrats took to a new fashion: adopting orphans from the poorest classes. Many families took into their homes the children of non-Russian peoples and brought them up as their own. Pyotr Borisovich and Varvara Alexeyevna Sheremetev raised two Kalmyk girls, the cousins Annushka and Varya. At Kuskovo there survives a fine portrait by the artist Argunov, dated 1767, of Anna Nikolayevna, who holds in her hands the likeness of her late foster-mother. Annushka corresponded a great deal with her grandmother and grandfather, as she called the Sheremetevs, even when they were parted for only a short while. After the death of her guardians, the care of the girls passed to their adoptive brother Nikolay, who brought them up and married them off to noblemen, giving them a good dowry and a pension. Anna Nikolayevna became Fatyanova, moved to the Kostroma district and bore two children.