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p In the article on Gl. Uspensky we contrasted the peasant Ivan Yermolayevich portrayed by him with the worker Mikhailo Lunin. the hero of Mr. Karonin’s short novel From the ftottom Upwards. In this connection both Mr. Karonin and ourselves have been widely accused of exaggerating. We agree that the contrast which we made was loo sharp. Mikhailo Lunin is indeed the exact opposite of Ivan Yermolayevich. The one cannot conceive of life without working on the land, and his mind functions only where there is a wooden plough, a harrow, sheep, hens, ducks, cows and such like. The other does not possess a plough, a harrow, sheep, hens, ducks, cows or tlie like, and not only does he not regret it, but it is even hard for him to understand how people can endure the harsh lot of the Russian peasant farmer.

p Ivan Yermolayevich does not really see why he needs to teach his son Mishutka to read and write. Mikhailo Lunin studies "not so much with enthusiasm, as with a kind of frenzy”. Ivan Yermolayevich’s views are remarkably “harmonious”.

Mikhailo Lunin, like any one who goes through a period of being at odds with the reality around him, was bound to experience all manner of doubts and misunderstanding, and, consequently, the

124 confusion of concepts that is connected with this. Ivan Yermolayevich merely yawns “devastatingly” when a "new person" tries to inculcate in him "new views on things”. In reply to all the arguments of such a person he "can say one thing only: that’s the way it must be".

p But this “only” has behind it the eternity and stability of nature itself—Ivan Yermolayevich’s head has no room for any questions.  Mikhailo Lunin is literally besieged with “questions” and capable of tormenting the most indefatigable “intellectual” with them. Ivan Yermolayevich would like to seize the "shaker of the foundations”, tie him up like a thief and hand him over to the relevant authorities. Mikhailo Lunin will set about shaking the " foundations" any day now himself. Ivan Yermolayevich’s gaze is fixed on the past.  He lives or would like to live as his “forefathers” lived before him, with the exception of serfdom, of course. Mikhailo Lunin listens with fear and trembling to stories about the life of his “forefathers” and tries to create for himself the possibility of leading a different, new life, to ensure himself of a different, better future.  In short, the one represents the old, peasant, pre-Petrino Russia, the other the new, emergent, working-class Russia, the Russia in which Peter’s reforms are finally receiving their extreme logical expression. Ever since this new, workingclass Russia began to emerge, reformer tsars have lost all importance in our social life and figures of quite a different kind, trend and position have acquired great historical significance and firm, real ground, namely, revolutionary propagandists, agitators and organisers. Formerly our progress came to us (in the very rare cases when it came at all) from above and could only come from above. Now it will come from below and can come only from below. And now it will no longer move at a snail’s pace.

p We repeat, the contrasting of Lunin with Ivan Yermolayevich was too sharp. But we could not avoid it, since we did not want to leave our idea half-expressed. The sketches and sto:ies by Mr. Karoriin, which we have now examined, give us new material to explain this idea, and if the reader will reflect upon the abovementioned characters arid scenes he will perhaps see for himself that Mikhailo Lunin is an entirely natural phenomenon, even one that is inevitable in our present social life.

p Everything depends on the surroundings. Ivan Yermolayevich is in the power of the land. It is to the land and only to the land, to agricultural labour and only to agricultural labour that he is indebted for his “harmonious” world outlook.

p But “civilisation” is advancing upon him and destroying all his centuries-old customs like houses of cards. "The harmony of agricultural farming ideals is being mercilessly destroyed by socalled civilisation,” says Gl. Uspensky. "Its influence is felt by the simple-hearted peasant in the slightest contact which he has with it. 125 The slightest touch, one light brush, and the ideal structures of a thousand years’ standing turn to dust.” We have seen that it is not only “civilisation”, but the state itself, under the influence of that civilisation, it is true, that is strongly assisting the breaking up of the “mass” life of the Ivan Yermolayeviches. In accordance •with thousands of different incidental features, the breaking up takes on different forms and produces entirely different types and characters. Some of them are in many, almost all, respects similar to Ivan Yermolayevich, but they also have new features not typical of Ivan Yermolayevich. In others the similar features are balanced by dissimilar ones. In yet a third group there is very little similarity at all to Ivan Yermolayevich.

p Finally, there are also appearing characters who have developed under the influence of a completely new environment and are quite unlike him, even the opposite of him. In the person of Dyoma we have met a peasant who was once a real Ivan Yermolayevich. Only poverty could tear him away from the land; but once having left it and found himself in a new environment he gradually begins to feel “dislike” for the village. New moral requirements are aroused in him, which he did not know in the village and which cannot be satisfied there. The same can be said of the dreamer Minai. He is merely a different version of Ivan Yermolayevich. He clings to the land with both hands, and the full flight of his ardent fancy is at first confined only to the sphere of agricultural labour. But the kulak Yepishka by his example upsets Minai’s world outlook: Minai dreams of finishing with the commune and beginning a new life, like Yepishka, on his own and not bound by anything. The reader will recall that the idea of leaving the commune occurred even to Ivan Yermolayevich. Only in his case it was not tinged with envy of kulak prosperity, as it was in the case of Minai. After leaving the village, the impressionable Minai probably succumbed even more to the influence of “civilisation”, and although he did not have the chance to get rich, his world outlook, of course, lost even more of its “harmony”.

p The cunning and energetic Pyotr Sizov is probably just as fond of his land as Ivan Yermolayevich, but in a different way: in the way that kulaks and money-makers in general love it. For him land is precious not simply in itself, but because it possesses a certain exchange value. "The power of the land" takes second place here to the power of capital.

p But for all their similarity or dissimilarity to one another, Ivan Yermolayevich, Dyoma, Pyotr Sizov and even the dreamer Minai share the common feature tliat in their attitudes to the world around them, however attractive or unattractive it may be to us, there is nothing morbid.

p In Gavrilo’s deranged "village nerves" and in the "sick villager" Gorelov we see a different feature. The collapse of the old, 126 “mass” life lias had a morbid effect upon them. Their awakened mind, dissatisfied with the old “mass” world outlook, has asked itself the question "why, what for?" and has not found a satisfactory answer, becoming enmeshed in darkness and contradiction. But it could not reconcile itself to its own impotence either and has avenged this by adopting a negative attitude to the world around. Both Gavrilo and Yegor Fyodorych Gorelov run away from the village which has tormented and unsettled them in the extreme. The village environment cannot bring the sought-after “order” into their heads.

p The "free man" Yegor Pankralov is searching not so much for “order” in his thoughts, as for the possibility of living by "the law" and not submitting to the arbitrary behaviour of his superiors. More than anything else in the world he values his moral independence. This is his obsession, the dominant urge in his life. Under the influence of this urge, which is so often contradicted by the practice of village life, he becomes morose, unsociable and even avaricious. In this original individual, who concentrates all his powers on protecting his human dignity, one cannot help seeing a sign of the limes.

p A representative of “mass” life and the “mass” world outlook, Ivan Yermolayevich had no exceptional urges; in his mass, wellbalanced heart there was no place for them. Only when this spontaneously developed, mass balance is destroyed does the development of the individual with his own tastes, inclinations and aspirations become possible.

p The “scholar” Uncle Ivan has departed even further from Ivan Yermolayevich. Like Gavrilo and Gorelov, he is besieged by various questions which Ivan Yermolayevich did not know existed. But his questions take a far more definite and perfectly real direction. He goes the right way about solving them, he knocks at the door of the school, arms himself with a book. "Where does the peasant come from? What is the peasant for?" Once such questions have started appearing in a peasant’s head, one can say with complete certainty that the old, mass peasant life is at an end. True, Uncle Ivan does not stand firm, he loses heart, like Yegor Pankratov did. But this merely shows yet again that the modern village is an extremely unfavourable environment for the development of the peasant’s mind. Mikhailo Lunin left the village early on and survived. The difference between him and Uncle Ivan is one of fate and not of character. In Lunin’s place Uncle Ivan would probably have arrived at the same thing at which Lunin arrived. The relationship of Uncle Ivan to Mikhailo is that of the man who has set himself a definite aim to the man who has achieved that aim. That is all. Uncle Ivan is the opposite of Ivan Yermolayevich in his aspirations. Mikhailo Lunin is the opposite of Ivan Yermolayevich in his actions. We will probably 127 be told that very few workers find themselves in conditions so favourable for intellectual development as those in which Lunin found himself. This is true. But it is not the point. The important thing is that, thanks to the decline of mass life, modern Russian life is creating and will increasingly create individuals like Yegor Pankratov, Uncle Ivan and Mikhailo Lunin. The important thing is that however bad the condition of the Russian worker may be, urban life is far more favourable for the further intellectual and moral development of such individuals than rural life.

p Do you want it to be even more favourable? This depends to a very large extent on you yourselves__ Go to the workers and help them to understand the questions that life itself is presenting them. It is in their midst that the new historical force, which in lime will liberate all the working people of Ihe country, is growing.

p They are bad people who sit idly and place their hopes on the natural course of events. They are the drones of hislory. They will not stir any hearts. But those who persist in looking back, while talking constantly about the onward movement of the people, are little belter. Such people are condemned to failure and disillusion, because they deliberately turn their backs on history. Only the man who does not shrink from the struggle and is able to direct his efforts in keeping wilh the course of social development can be useful. It is some time since the Russian people began lo experience the process of the collapse of old village life. Ilhas already changed considerably. Yel our democratic intelligentsia slill continues to seek support in the old popular “ideals”. If it ever realises its mistake, it will perhaps say, as the Parashkino villagers said to the councillor: "It’s been like lhal no end of a lime, but we kept hanging on, kept thinking it would pass and God would provide__ Thai’s how blind we are!"

And it is blindness indeed! To strive forward arid at the same time defend a way of life which has had its day! To wish the people well and at the same time to defend the institutions which are capable only of perpetuating its slavery! To regard what is alive as dead, and what is dead as alive! Who but the blind cannot see the vast abyss of such contradictions? He who has eyes and uses them will fear neither historical development in general nor the triumph of capitalism in particular. lie will see not only evil in capitalism; he will also see its "destructive revolutionary aspect, which is to overthrow the old society”. This is why, observing Ihe present collapse of all Ihe anlediluvian “foundations” of Russian social and political life, the man who has eyes will exclaim wiili a light heart: farewell, old Oblomovka,^^37^^ you have done your job!