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p However the triumph of the kulaks in the struggle with the commune is a subject with which readers have long been well acquainted. Mr. Karonin would have told us nothing new had he confined himself to portraying this element of the inner collapse 112 of the “foundations”. But his works also highlight other elements which our Narodnik fiction writers have rarely touched upon if at all. And these elements merit the student’s careful attention.

p Not all the gifted people in the village today become kulaks. In order to become a kulak, one needs a certain combination of circumstances on which only a small minority can count. The majority has to adapt itself differently to the historical process which is taking place in the village: it either leaves the village, or continues to live there, but on a new basis, forgetting the close, organic link which once united the members of a commune.

p The individualism which is creeping into the village on all sides colours all the peasant’s thoughts and feelings. But it would be most mistaken to think that its triumph can be characterised by sombre features alone. Historical reality is never so one-sided.

p The invasion of the Russian village by individualism is bringing to life aspects of the peasant mind and character the development of which was impossible under the old system and yet was essential for the further onward movement of the people. The kulaks themselves often herald the awakening of these progressive aspects of popular character today. This may sound paradoxical, but in fact there is not a trace of paradox here. The Narodnik fiction writers have often stressed the fact that the modern peasant frequently sets his sights on becoming a rich kulak precisely because he sees money as the only way of protecting his human dignity.

p Zlatovratsky’s peasant Pyotr—in The Foundations, if we are not mistaken—becomes a kulak with the aim of protecting his “person” from constant humiliation. Gl. Uspensky has frequently noted such features as well. And this is very important for and very typical of our age. Kulaks have existed in the Russian village for a long time, but it is probably only recently that in the dark kulak realm there have appeared people who think about their “person”.

p Even more important, however, is the fact that concern for one’s “person” is now not restricted to kulaks alone. It is beginning to affect the wretched village poor also; and it is perhaps even better known to the “vagabonds”. In losing his ingenuousness and taking a good look at himself, the peasant is making new demands on Russian social life. Confronted with these demands our present-day social and political orders are shown to be invalid—and herein lies their historical condemnation. Of course, in wakening from its thousand-year sleep, peasant thought does not immediately reveal the power and strength that we can expect from it in the future. Its first attempts to rise to its feet are often unsuccessful and take a wrong, morbid direction. But at least it is good that such attempts exist; it is also good that our Narodnik fiction writers have noticed them and put them down 113 on paper. Some of Karonin’s stories are specially devoted to their portrayal. Let us consider for a moment the story Village Nerves.

p The peasant Gavrilo enjoyed a considerable prosperity and, measuring by the old peasant standards, could have thought himself a happy man, it would seem.

p “What is happiness?" our author asks. "Or, rather, what is happiness for Gavrilo? Land, a horse, a heifer and steer, three sheep, bread and cabbage and a lot of other things, because if any of the things listed was lacking he would be unhappy. In the year when his heifer died he raved for several nights as if he were delirious.... But such catastrophes were few and far between; he avoided them, by averting or preparing for them. Bread? He never ran out of that. In the years of very poor harvests he always had a sack or two of flour put by, although he concealed the fact from his greedy neighbours so that none of them came begging for a favour. His horse? His horse had served him faithfully for fifteen years and never flagged; only recently it had begun to pant heavily and its hind legs had become less nimble, but Gavrilo had a two-year-old in reserve for when it should die.” In a word, in Gavrilo’s place Ivan Yermolayevich, so inimitably portrayed by Gl. LIspensky and so beloved by him, would probably have been quite happy both with himself and with the world around him. But Uspensky himself admits that Ivan Yermolayevich has already had his day. He is a type which history has sentenced to extinction. The hero of the story Village Nerves does not possess Ivan Yermolayevich’s wooden composure in the slightest. He suffers from “nerves”, which greatly perplexes the village doctor and provides readers with yet another excuse for accusing Karonin of being tendentious. The painful state of Gavrilo’s "village nerves" makes itself felt in the fact that he is subject to sudden attacks of excruciating, desperate melancholy, under the influence of which he cannot apply himself to any work. "To hell with it!" he replies to his wife’s remark that it is time to start the ploughing. His wife is beside herself with amazement, and Gavrilo himself is frightened by Ids own words; but his “nerves” give him no peace, and our hero goes off to have a talk with the priest. "I will tell you all, as 1 would the good Lord,” he says to the priest. "1 have nothing to hide, and nowhere to go. I feel like doing away with myself. My health’s got me down.” The worthy servant of the Lord, accustomed to the Olympian calm of Ivan Yermolayeviches, simply could not make out what this strange fellow wanted.

p “’But I don’t know what’s the matter with you!’ he exclaimed. ’I think it’s just nonsense.... That’s what’s the matter with you!

_p “’I don’t enjoy life—that’s what is the matter with me! / don’t know what it’s all for, why ... what rules....” Gavrilo insisted stubbornly.

_p 8—0766

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_p “’You’re a ploughman, are you riot?’ the priest asked sternly.

p "’Yes, a ploughman.’

p ’"Well, what more do you need! Grow bread in the sweat of thy brow and thou shalt be blessed, as the Scriptures say....’ ’"But why do I need bread?’ Gavrilo asked curiously. "’What do you mean ’why’? You’ve gone too far, brother. Man needs bread.’

_p ’Yes, bread’s alright.... Bread’s good thing. But what’s it for? That’s the question. I eat it today and I’ll eat it again tomorrow.... You stuff yourself with bread as if you were a pit, an empty sack, but what for? It’s wretched—This is what always happens: you get down to it and start work, then suddenly you ask yourself: why, what for? And it’s wretched.....

p ’"You’ve got to live, you fool! That’s why you work,’ said the priest angrily.

_p ’"But why have I got to live?’ asked Gavrilo. "The priest spat. ’Igh! What a fool you are!’ "’Please don’t be angry, father. I’m telling you my dying thoughts.... I am unhappy myself; it’s gone so far that it makes

p a man sick, makes his heart ache__ What causes it?’

_p “’That’s enough of this nonsense!’ the priest said sternly, determined to put an end to the strange conversation.

p “’The main thing is I don’t know what to do with myself,’ Gavrilo retorted sadly.

_p “’Pray to God, work hard__ It’s all from laziness and drinking.... I’ve got no other advice for you. Now go with God.’

p “With this the priest rose firmly to his feet__"

p Have you by any chance read the so-called Confession of Count. L. Tolstoy? Is it not true that Gavrilo asked himself the same questions of "why, what for, and what comes afterwards?" that tormented the famous novelist? But whereas the rich and educated count had every possibility of replying to these questions less distortedly than he did, Gavrilo by his very position was deprived of all the means and all the aids to solve them correctly. There was no ray of light in the darkness around him.

p He wept, behaved eccentrically, was rude to the priest, cursed the doctor, and had a light with the starsltina for which he landed up in prison. He was saved by the doctor who drew the judge’s attention to the accused’s unbalanced state of mind. And he calmed down considerably later, when he found a job as yardkeeper in the next town. There was nothing to think about there. "One cannot think anything about a broom or iu connection with a broom, can one? All he had left in life was a broom,” Mr. Karonin explains. "As a result of this he no longer had any thoughts. He did what he was told. If he had been told to heal the backs of the inhabitants with the selfsame broom, he would have done so. The inhabitants did not like him, as if they under- 115 stood that this man did not think at all. Because of his stance at the gates they called him the ’idol’. Yet his only crime was that his nerves, which had been torn to shreds by the village, had made him insensitive."

_p The "clever reader"^^34^^ will hasten to point out to us that the questions which besieged Gavrilo were not solved to the slightest extent by the broom and that therefore it is hard to see how the job of yardkeeper gave this strange peasant the peace he desired. But the point is that, generally speaking, Gavrilo had asked himself questions that were quite unanswerable, in town or country, by the plough or the broom, in the monk’s cell or the scholar’s study.

_p “Why? What for? And what comes afterwards?" Remember Heine’s young man who asks:

_p Was bedeutet der Mensch?
Woher ist er kommen? Wo geht er hin?

p Did he find an answer?

p Es murmeln die Wogen ihr ew’ges Gemurmel,
Es wehet der Wind, es fliehen die Wolken,
Es blinken die Sterne gleichgiiltig und kalt,
Und ein Narr wartet auf Antwort.  [115•* ~^^35^^

p Yes, they are unanswerable questions! We can find out how something happens, but we do not know why it happens. And it is interesting that the unanswerability of such questions worries people only in a certain type of social relations, only when the society, or a certain class, or certain stratum of society, is in a state of severe crisis.

p A living person thinks about living things. It is a characteristic of physically and morally healthy people that they live, work, study, struggle, grieve and rejoice, love and hate, but not that they weep over unanswerable questions. This is how people usually behave as long as they are healthy both physically and morally. And they remain morally healthy as long as they are living in a healthy social environment, i.e., until the given social order begins to decline. When this time comes there appear, at first in the most educated strata of society, anxious people who ask: "Life, vain gift of chance, pray, tell me—why have you been 116 granted me?"^^36^^—then, if this unhealthy condition spreads to the whole of the social organism, the dissatisfaction with oneself and one’s surroundings is felt in the least educated strata; here too, as among the intellectuals, there are “nervy” individuals, preoccupied, as Gavrilo put it, with “dying” thoughts. To use an expression of Saint-Simon’s, one might say that the morbid urge to solve the insoluble is characteristic of the critical and alien to the organic epochs of social development. But the point is that even in critical epochs this urge to reflect upon unanswerable questions conceals the perfectly natural need to discover the cause of people’s dissatisfaction. As soon as it is discovered, as soon as people who have ceased to be satisfied with their old relations find a new aim in life, set themselves new moral and social tasks, their tendency to reflect upon unanswerable metaphysical questions disappears without trace.

From metaphysicians they again turn into living people who think about living things, but think in a new way, not in the old way. There is another means of curing oneself of the same disease: to leave the environment that has inspired the “dying” thoughts in you, forget about it and find an occupation which has nothing in common with your old surroundings. It is quite possible that the new environment in which you take refuge will have its own "cursed questions”, but they will be alien to you and before they gain access to your mind and heart you will have time to rest and enjoy a certain degree of “insensitivity”. This type of cure by running away is not very attractive, but there is no doubt that it can be perfectly effective on occasion. It was to this means that Gavrilo resorted, and cured himself in his way. He was cured not by the “broom” but simply by a change of surroundings. The village which he abandoned ceased to torment him with its disorder, and simultaneously his “dying” thoughts disappeared.