131

p What were the practical aims which Naumov pursued in his literary activity? They should be explained precisely because his activity met with such warm sympathy among the most progressive young people in the seventies.

In the sketch Yashnik the author begins the story with the following important reservation:

“I shall not go into a detailed description of the hardships, joys and sorrows encountered in Yashnik’s life for fear not only of exhausting the reader’s attention, but also of appearing ridiculous in’his eyes. In describing the life of a hero from the intelligentsia an author can probably be sure of arousing the reader’s sympathy for and interest in the joys and sorrows of the person of his choice because these joys and sorrows will be comprehensible 9* 132 to each of us. But would the joys and sorrows of such people as Yashnik be comprehensible to us? What would the reader say if the author gave him a detailed description of the joy that seized Yashnik when his cow gave birth to a calf, a cow which had been purchased by him after much toil and privation and which for a long time did not produce any milk, thereby depriving his children of their only nourishment? Would he not ridicule the writer’s claim to describe the joys of such insignificant people as Yashnik? Are we capable to understand Yashnik’s profound sorrow when he miscalculated and lost one ruble and seventy kopeks at the market selling the wooden troughs, tubs and ladles that he had made when he was not working in the fields? Of course, we would gladly laugh at a skilful portrayal of the comical situation of the poor fellow who walked around for several days afterwards like a lost soul, spreading out his hands in a helpless gesture and saying: ’Ee, there’s a terrible thing for you, p’raps it’s a punishment from the good Lord, to be cheated out of a whole ruble and seventy kopeks, eh?’ But we cannot understand the grief of a man who mourns the loss of such a trivial sum. In our life one ruble and seventy kopeks does not play such an important role as it does in the life of such people as Yashnik. We give more than that to the lackey who serves us a rich dinner in a restaurant. Whereas Yashnik, in order to get one ruble and seventy kopeks and hand it over in payment of the taxes he owes, scraped the last remains of corn out of the bin and sold them at the market, feeding himself and his family on bran mixed with pine bark and other substitutes, specimens of which we see displayed in museums and looking at them only shrug our shoulders in amazement at how people can eat such loathsome things. So, avoiding all these details which are of no interest to us, I shall proceed directly to recount an episode in Yashnik’s life which had fateful effect on his destiny...” (Vol. I, p. 213).

p This long reservation is a direct reproach to our “society” which is incapable of sympathising "with the people’s grief. The sketch in question is devoted to portraying this grief in one of its countless manifestations. In itself it is a very bad one: it exudes a kind of almost artificial lachrymosity. But its aim is perfectly clear: Naumov wanted to show that even such a person as Yashnik, who is small in all senses, a kind of Akaky Akakiyevich^^39^^ "settled on the land”, is capable of noble impulses and that for this reason alone he deserves our sympathy. This idea is, of course, perfectly correct, but it is very elementary, so elementary that one cannot help wondering whether such ideas could have been so novel for the progressive intelligentsia of the seventies that it felt obliged to applaud the writer who had expressed them.

p In fact the progressive intelligentsia of the seventies was interested not in Naumov’s elementary ideas, but in the radical conclusions that it drew from his works itself. We do not know when Yashnik was published, and this is not important. The important thing is that if this sketch came out in the seventies it won the approval of progressive readers, firstly, by its abovequoted reproach to society which lives on the people but is incapable of understanding and alleviating its condition, and, secondly, by its portrayal of the noble character of the unfortunate Yashnik. This nobility was extremely gratifying and sought-after evidence in favour of "popular character”, the idealisation of 133 which was a perfectly natural and essential requirement of the best people of that day. We now know full well that so-called popular character cannot guarantee the future destiny of our people, because it is itself the product of certain social relations, with the more or less radical changing of which it is bound to change more or less radically. But this is a view which was totally alien to the Narodnik intelligentsia of the seventies. It adhered to the opposite view, according to which the basic cause of any given type of social relations are popular views, feelings, customs and popular character in general. How interesting it must have found views on popular character: after all, in its opinion, the whole future social development of our people depended on the qualities of this character. The Narodnik intelligentsia liked Naumov precisely because he portrayed popular character, at least partially, in the way in which it wanted to see it. Even the now obvious shortcomings in his writings must have seemed great merits then. Thus, Naumov actually has only two characters: the exploiter and the exploited. These characters are separated from each other by an immense gulf, without a trace of any bridges, any connecting links between them. This is a great shortcoming, of course, which is most evident when one compares the writings of Naumov with those of, say, Zlatovratsky, where the characters are for the most part real people, and not anthropomorphical abstractions. But to the progressive intelligentsia of the seventies this shortcoming must have seemed to be a merit. It was itself convinced that there was nothing whatsoever in common between the peasant kulak and the peasant victim of kulak exploitation; it regarded the kulak as the accidental product of external unfavourable influences on the life of the people, and not as the inevitable result of the phase of economic development through which the peasantry was passing. Constantly excited and ready to do anything for the good of the people, it was convinced that the alien layer of parasites that had been imposed on the people’s body from without could be removed immediately and without great difficulty, by a single energetic effort. And once this conviction had appeared and grown firm, the progressive intelligentsia of the seventies found it unpleasant to read sketches on popular life which showed that it was not entirely right, i.e., that the exploitation of the peasant by the peasant did not result from the so-called “external” influences on popular life  [133•*  alone, and, conve-r sely, it began to find works which confirmed its cherished idea, albeit slightly, particularly to its liking.

p Let the reader recall how strongly and bitterly G.I. Uspensky was reproached at that time for his alleged excessive and unfound- 134 ed pessimism. In what did this “pessimism” consist? Precisely in pointing to those aspects of peasant life which cause inequality, and with it the exploitation of the peasant by the peasant, to arise in the village commune even in cases when the external influences that favour their growth are totally absent. The Narodnik intelligentsia had every reason to be displeased with G. I. Uspensky: this fine man’s probing mind was destroying one by one all the principal propositions of Narodism and preparing the ground for totally different views of our popular life. There was nothing of the kind in Naumov, he did not try to make the reader eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the fruit of which, as we know, can sometimes be very bitter; without philosophising he sought to arouse hatred of the exploiters, i.e., the very feelings the appeal to which was the main, if not the only, force of the Narodniks’ arguments. The Narodniks could not help liking in Naumov even the explanation scenes between the kulaks and their victims, which with a few exceptions now seem terribly long-drawn-out and therefore boring to us: for in them the kulaks are pilloried, called robbers, cursed as vipers, etc. People who were proposing to put an end to the existence of the vipers any day now and did not possess a developed aesthetic taste were bound to read such scenes with great pleasure.

p N. I. Naumov never went further than propagating the most elementary humanism. The peasant has a soul like the rest of us,  [134•*  the convict is also a human being, among the so-called criminals there are many who are mentally sick and should be given treatment, not punished,  [134•** —these are the truisms to which his preaching amounts. To this it must be added that he does not offer any real solutions to the social questions whicli he raises, but, on the contrary, shows an obvious willingness to be satisfied with palliatives.  [134•***  If the progressive Narodnik intelligentsia of the seventies that was so enthusiastic about Naumov’s works had ever had a clear idea of the practical aims that he pursued in these works, it would have regarded him as an extremely backward person. But it did not try to find out these aims and showed no interest in them at all. It had its own, firmly set aim. It thought that Naumov’s works were a new and strong argument in support 135 of this aim, and therefore read them avidly, without inquiring either about their artistic merit or about the practical " programme" of their author.

p The fulfilment of the aim which it set itself assumed, among other things, a great deal of initiative on the part of the Russian peasantry. But there is not the slightest trace of such initiative in Naumov’s writings. The poor as he portrays them can do nothing but slap their thighs and exclaim "a-ah!" or "have a heart!”. It they ever produce people who are incapable of obediently putting their neck under the yoke of the village exploiters and who urge them to resist, they cannot support such people. The story Peasant Elections depicts this attitude of the village poor to their own defenders very well. The intelligent and persistent peasant Yegor Semyonovich Bychkov earns the hatred of the "eaters of the mir”,  [135•*  the volost authorities and even the posrednik  [135•**  by his independent behaviour and his energetic and skilful defence of the interests of the peasant mir.  But he is loved by the peasants, who are even proposing to elect him as the volost starshina. Naturally, this intention does not please the "eaters of the mir" at all, and a bitter struggle between the parties rages throughout the U... volost.  The closer the elections come, the more strongly the kulak party attacks the mir’s cherished candidate, using money and slander. Among the various untrue stories that are spread about Bychkov there is a rumour that he is soon to be put in prison for inciting the peasants to complain to the highest authorities about the irregular actions of the posrednik and officials of the Zemstvo police. The peasants partly guess that this rumour has been spread by the kulaks; but, on the other hand, they cannot help admitting that it contains a considerable amount of probability. They are themselves partly ready to acknowledge that their favoured candidate is a rebel. They say "who can see into another man’s soul! It’s no secret that Bychkov has got it in for the authorities!" Thus the clever lie has a great effect on the village poor; Bychkov’s “sin”, which they admit, greatly weakens their energy. And when the posrednik informs the peasants at the volost meeting to elect the starshina that he will not permit them to elect Bychkov and will not even let them go home until they have voted for the candidate put forward by the "eaters of the mir”, they acquiesce. "Of course, there was a lot of talking, bitter, angry talking; and a lot of sighing and slapping of thighs, the peasant’s favourite gesture, that expresses so much, but the result of all this was that many left silently and others voted for Trofim Kirillovich (the candidate of the kulak party) and towards the evening of the same day the noisy village became deserted, and all the highways and 136 byways were filled with people travelling home and talking loudly about the recent happenings" (Vol. I, pp. 500-01).

p And what about Bychkov? The posrednik illegally ordered Bychkov to be put in the volost prison where he spent about five months, enduring terrible privation and persecution. Freed at last, thanks to the fortuitous intercession of the assessor, he found his farm completely ruined, and his former supporters terribly frightened.

p “He did not lose the respect and sympathy of those around him,” says Naumov, "because it is not in the nature of the Russian common man to turn his back on another’s misfortune; but the timidity and secrecy in which they expressed them for fear of victimisation were more painful to him than if they had not been there at all. People were obviously shunning him as if he were infectious, not daring to cross the threshold of his ever hospitable home" (Vol. I, pp. 506-07). Bychkov became unsociable, avoiding all dealings with his fellow villagers, and finally decided to move to another district. His fellow villagers saw him off with sincere regret and when his covered wagon disappeared from view, they talked for a long time on the way home about how this man, in whom there was so much truth, had come to no good "for nothing".

p Concluding the story of Yegor Semyonovich, Naumov remarks that he did not perish after all and "was properly appreciated" in his new place of residence, where he was elected volost starshina. So virtue eventually triumphed after all. But whatever others may think, this triumph holds little joy for us; to us it seems contrived, or at least totally accidental.  Since the peasants of U... volost were no different from the peasants of other volosts, it is obvious that in his new place of residence too Bychkov could have been made to knuckle under and his new fellow villagers not only might have, but were bound to be as timid in this case as his former ones.

p But why did the progressive intelligentsia of the seventies not notice that the suffering peasant masses as portrayed by Naumov were completely lacking in initiative? It is difficult to answer this question today, because it is hard today to reconstruct in all its detail the psychology of the progressive Narodnik of that time. Most probably the explanation is as follows: the progressive intelligentsia assumed that people of the mir like Bychkov perished because of the lack of any mutual link between them and of any help, any guidance from outside. It was the intelligentsia’s duty to create this link, bring this help, provide this guidance. When this duty had been done, the people of the mir would no longer be single helpless individuals, and the peasant masses themselves would cease to take fright at the first cockade they encountered and to abandon their defenders in trouble. It was precisely in 137 order to perform this duty that the progressive intelligentsia of that time went to the people.

And people of the mir such as Bychkov remained its favourite types. Naumov says of such people: "They devote themselves entirely to their cause, allowing nothing to stop them and not sparing themselves; they have a great deal of ineradicable faith in the truth, and they search for it in every way possible; they do not know disillusion, although life confronts them with it at every step, and when all the paths leading to their goal are closed before them, they open up new ones and struggle on towards it until they fall under the weight of the uneven struggle" (Vol. I, p. 435). Just imagine the delight of the progressive intelligentsia of that day when it encountered the portrayal of such people. How many bright hopes it was bound to pin on their existence! And it was not wrong, of course, to value such people so highly. Its mistake lay elsewhere, namely in the thoughtless idealisation of our old economic system which was by then rapidly disintegrating. The perpetuation of this system would inevitably have led to the perpetuation of the very qualities of popular character which so often defeated the energy of the Bychkovs and which subsequently defeated the selflessness of the Narodniks.