137

p Let us now see what this old economic system was and how it affected the views, feelings and customs of the popular masses who were subjected to its irresistible influence.

p Naumov did not set himself the task of portraying it in all its aspects. He dwelt in detail only on a few of its social consequences. However, in the process he collected quite a lot of material for a description of this old system and its influence on popular life.

p Naumov’s observations concern for the most part the life of Siberian peasants, but this does not change the matter at all, of course.

_p Kindly listen to the following conversation between the author and the coachman taking him to the village of T... (The Web).

p “’What rich land you have here....’

_p ’"I should say so, couldn’t ask for better!’ replied the coachman. ’You’d think life would be good in a place like this, my friend, but everyone has a hard time all the same. There’s good harvests, mustn’t grumble, plenty of bees, and enough honey to last through the winter with some over, but we have a hard time, that’s the wonder of it!’ he concluded.

p “’Why do you have a hard time?’

p “’Why?’ he repeated. ’The land’s good round here, but it’s miles from anywhere. See for yourself. If the harvest’s good you can 138 give your corn away for nothing and no one will take it from you, that’s the trouble! But the taxes won’t wait, and you can’t keep a farm going without a penny, but where are you going to get your pennies from, eh, tell me that? Them that has plenty of horses and time load up and take their crops to the town T...; they make a profit and get rich, but we ordinary folk can’t do that, because you wear out your horses and time’s too short anyway.... So you have corn, but still suffer all the same...’" (Vol. I, p. 54).

p This idea that the peasant can suffer even when he has enough corn is also confirmed by the remarks of the afore-mentioned kulak Kuzma Terentich. In reply to the naive question as to why he does not work the land, the money-maker says curtly: "Lost the habit, sir”, and when the author asks whether anyone still farms in their village,  [138•*  he says:

p “One or two do, but it’s not worth it, sir! There are many villages round here where people still work the land. They’re up to their ears in corn, but they still haven’t got a penny, just hang around us all the time. Where are you going to sell it? They’ve got corn in their stacks that’s been lying there for five or six years, and not a penny to buy boots to keep out the cold. So why bother to grow it. No, it’s not worth it, sir!" (Vol. I, p. 65).

p In another passage (Yurovaya) a peasant who is trying to sell a kulak some fish argues like this:

p “We’ve got plenty of corn, too, thank the Lord, but what good is it to us? Do you think we wouldn’t like to eat fish, too? I’ll say we would.... But if you eat it what are you going to pay the taxes with, eh? And what are you going to use to plug up the holes in the farm? There’s plenty of them too, those holes! You’re lucky if you manage to caulk them! Another man would find something in the house and sell it in the town, but where can we take it? Three hundred versts to cover on one animal. It would warm your feet, but you can warm them without that journey; anything you took would go to feed you and your horse, and you’d come back with nothing, just a waste of time, and who’s going to do the work when you’re away. The farm can’t wait either, time’s precious. That’s a peasant’s life for you...” (Vol. I, p. 353).

p We imagine that these excerpts are quite sufficient to give one an idea of the national economy in the areas described by Naumov. This economy is what is known in the science as a natural economy. But this natural economy is already in the process of turning into a commodity economy. The peasant needs not only the natural produce of his own field, kitchen garden and cattle yard; he also needs a "universal commodity”, i.e., money, and even a relatively 139 large amount of money. Moreover he needs money not only to satisfy the demands of the state, i.e., to pay taxes, but also for his own “farm”, where, it appears, there are a lot of holes which can be stopped only with money. But it is not easy for the peasant to obtain money. Given an abundance of natural agricultural produce and the absence of an extensive and proper market for it, this produce is given away almost for nothing. Therefore people with money, by using it to gain control of trading, reap vast profits that put them far above the mass of the peasants in the material respect.

p But this is not all. As master of the marketing of the natural produce of the peasant economy, the possessor of the "universal commodity" becomes at the same time master of the producer himself. The producer becomes the slave of the buyer-up, and the less developed the emerging money economy, the more merciless and flagrant this bondage becomes. The buyer-up wishes to control, and does in fact control, not only the produce of peasant labour, but also the peasant’s whole heart and mind. "In this poor, oppressed life,” says Naumov, "capital plays an even greater role than anywhere else, suppressing all honest thought if it is born in the mind of a poor man dressed in a worn sheepskin coat and equally worn boots" (Vol. I, p. 344).

p The Narodniks believed that the kulaks appeared in the peasantry as a result of unfavourable external influences on it. They regarded the kulaks as an element of national economic life which could easily be removed not only without changing the foundations of this life, but by doing everything possible to strengthen them. We have seen that the kulak buyer-up is the inevitable product of a certain phase of socio-economic development. If a social cataclysm were to remove all the buyers-up, they would appear again in a very short time for the simple reason that such a cataclysm would not remove the economic reason for their appearance.

p The Narodniks were always inclined to idealise the natural peasant economy. They were delighted by all the phenomena and all the government measures that might, as they thought, strengthen this economy. But since there are in fact no areas of Russia where the transition of the natural economy to a commodity economy has not begun and been completed to a greater or lesser extent, the hoped-for strengthening of the natural economy meant in fact nothing but the strengthening of the most primitive, most crude and most merciless forms of exploitation of the producer.

p The Narodniks were genuinely concerned for the welfare of our working masses, but having failed to understand the Russian economy of their day, they set off for one room and landed up in another, to quote Griboyedov’s famous expression.

So, the population of the areas described by Naumov was suffering both from the development of commodity production and

140 from its insufficient development. What social relations arise on this economic soil?

p In a natural economy any given economic unit satisfies almost all of its needs with the produce of its own farm. There is no division of labour between these units: each of them produces the same as all the others. Our Narodniks saw this economic system as a kind of Golden Age, in which there was no sorrow, no lamentation, only the all-round, harmonic development of the working people. All the formulae of progress popular with the Narodniks in some way or other urged civilised mankind to regress all the way back to a natural economy. And even today many people in our country are still convinced that the peasant who is capable of satisfying the greater part of his needs with his own produce is bound to be "more developed" than any industrial worker who is constantly engaged in one and the same type of work. In order to verify this opinion we strongly recommend the reader to turn to the story Zamora in Volume I of Naumov’s works.

_p Zamora is the name of the ruts which form on the road when the snow is thawing. Once a traveller has got caught in them it is very difficult to get out. So people are very afraid of them. In Naumov’s story Zamora is the name given to the peasant Maksim Korolkov who possesses the quality, unheard of in the " intelligentsia”, of "having a bee in his bonnet". It transpires from the explanations of his fellow villagers that this strange quality is simply a tendency to reflect, to think: "That Zamora, he’s forever thinking ’why and what’s the cause of it, and where’s the law?’" This tendency is regarded by the peasants as quite out of place in their life; they are convinced that thinking "is not a peasant’s job”. Of course, even a peasant cannot live without thinking at all: "he might sometimes like to live without thinking, but the trouble is that thoughts don’t ask you whether you need them or not, they just come into your head like that”. But there are thoughts and thoughts. Some thoughts the peasant can "allow freely" into his head, but others he should drive away and “suppress” as " funny”, i.e., harmful. Funny thoughts are those which are not about the thinker’s own farm, but about the existing social relations or even just customs. Zamora asks: "If there isn’t a law from God about drinking wine, why do people still drink it and do harm to themselves?" In the opinion of the peasant who informs the author about this, it was a harmful thought, because you mustn’t think "like that".

p “Why mustn’t you, tell me that?" the author asks him.

_p “’It’s wrong, it’s not a peasant’s job to go thinking such thoughts,’ he replied heatedly. ’A peasant’s job, sir, is to know one thing only: plough, sow, look after your farm, do what the authorities tell you, and don’t bother your head about things, whatever happens....’

141

_p ’"Don’t bother your head about things, no matter what is going on around you, eh?’

_p “’Yes, that’s right!’

p “’So Zamora kept bothering his head about things, did he?’

_p “’That’s what I’m saying. He has a bee in his bonnet! Thinking is like a fresh loaf for a hungry mouth, it tempts a man. But take a bite, and you’ll eat too much before you know where you are.’

p “’Too much thinking?’

p “’Well, too much thinking about things that are no concern of yours’" (Vol. I, p. 285).

A person who is accustomed to “think” will find it hard to understand how one can "eat too much" of it. Meanwhile poor Zamora really did get sick from it; he ended up with hallucinations and “prophecies”. Naumov portrays something similar in the study The Madman. A peasant who begins to "bother his head" about the system around him goes mad. When we read this study, we remembered what a great part all manner of “visions”, “voices”, "’prophecies”, etc., played in the history of our schism. The schism was, undoubtedly, a form of protest by the people against the burdens placed upon it by the state. In the schism the people protested through its “thinking”, but this was the broken and feverish thinking of people who were quite unaccustomed to reflect on their own social relations. As long as such people are satisfied with these relations, they believe that the slightest change in them might anger the heavens; but when these relations become very inconvenient, people condemn them in the name of the Divine will and wait for a miracle, such as the appearance of an angel with a fiery broom, who will sweep away the impious order and clear the way for a new one more pleasing to the Lord.