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p Formerly he, like the other Narodniks, had explained all aspects of peasant life by the feelings, concepts and ideals of the peasants. And we already know that for him such an explanation left a great deal that was unexplained and contradictory.

p The above-mentioned "chance circumstance" compelled him to do the opposite, i.e., to look for the key to popular concepts and ideals in the forms of popular life, and try to explain the origin of popular forms of life "by the conditions of agricultural labour”. His attempt at such an explanation met with considerable success.

p The life and world outlook of the peasant, which had formerly seemed obscure, contradictory, dull and meaningless to him,, unexpectedly acquired a "remarkable harmony" and consistency in his eyes. "The breadth and soundness of this harmony,” he says, "became apparent to me when I placed agricultural labour at the basis of the whole organisation of peasant life, family and social, and tried to examine it in more detail, to understand its special qualities and its influence on the man who is indissolubly connected with it.” It even emerged that the specific features of agricultural labour explained not only the organisation of the peasant family and commune, but also the peasant’s age-old patience, his religious beliefs, his attitude towards the government and, finally, even towards Messrs. Narodniks themselves.

p Agricultural labour makes the peasant entirely dependent on natural phenomena which he does not understand and which appear to be entirely accidental. Nature "teaches him to acknowledge authority, authority that is unchecked, specific, wilfully capricious and heartlessly cruel”. And the peasant "knows how to be patient, to be patient without thinking, without explaining, to be patient unquestioningly. He is familiar with this expression in practice, on his own skin, familiar to such an extent that it is quite impossible to place a more or less definite limit on this patience".

p It goes without saying that the peasant personifies nature, whose accidents for him "are concentrated in God”. He believes 47 in God "strongly, unshakeably" and "senses His proximity almost nalpably”. He prays to Him to win His favour, although he does

p not know a single prayer properly. Gl. Uspensky once happened to hear a most interesting version of the Creed. "I believe in one God, the Father,” a peasant whom he knew, Ivan Yermolayevich, was teaching his son, "and in heaven and earth. Visible and invisible, heard and unheard. He pontified and pilatified ... and goodness knows what came after that,” remarks the author. All this is ridiculous and incoherent, but necessary, inevitable and indeed very “harmonious”. Religious superstition is a natural product of the peasant’s relations with nature, of "the distinctive features of agricultural labour”. The peasant’s thought is enslaved by the "power of the land" and nature. At best it can create some “rationalistic” sect, but it can never reach the materialist and only true view of nature, the concept of man’s power over the land.

p The power of the bolshak  [47•*  in the peasant family is also explained by the features of agricultural labour.

p “A head in the house, a family authority, is necessary,” says Gl. Uspensky. "This again is required by the complexity of agricultural labour, which forms the basis of the economy, and by the dependence of this labour on the behests and commands of nature."

p The decisive influence of the same principle can easily be traced in the peasants’ land relations. "The land relations of the commune are also explained by requirements based solely on the conditions of agricultural labour and on agricultural ideals: a weak man who cannot perform his agricultural task through lack of the strength necessary for this task gives up his land (what use is it to him?) to a man who is stronger and more energetic, who is able to carry out this task on a larger scale. Since the amount of strength is constantly changing, since the man who is weak today may be stronger tomorrow, and the other man weaker, peredvizhka—as the peasants sometimes call peredel  [47•** —is bound to be an inevitable and just phenomenon."

p Do not think, reader, that this agricultural “justice” is done without the slightest inconvenience to anyone: in the works of the selfsame Gl. Uspensky we find some most instructive passages in this respect.

p “Next to the house of a peasant who has amassed twenty thousand roubles lives an old woman and her granddaughters, and she will have nothing to heat the stove with, nothing to cook the dinner on, if she does not pick up some firewood ’on the sly’, to say nothing of the winter when she freezes with the cold.

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_p “’But you have communal forests, do you not?’ you, who know little of village life, exclaim in surprise.

_p “’They don’t give the likes of me anything from there.’

_p ’"Why not?’

_p “’Well, like, they don’t give firewood to everybody.’

_p “Or:

_p “’Alms for the love of Christ.’

_p “’Are you a local woman?’

_p “’Yes, I am.’

p ’"How did you get into this state?’

_p “Til tell you how. We were living well, friend, then my old man went to build the master a barn and fell off the roof, and he’s been poorly for more than six months now.... They say he should be taken to town, but how can we get him there? I’m alone with the little ones. The mir^^11^ has taken our land.’

p “’Taken your land? Why?’

p “’Who could have paid the taxes on it? Thank the good Lord that they did take it. We haven’t got the strength”’, etc.

p Both the old woman with her granddaughters, who stole firewood, and the wife of the peasant who had an accident while working for his master are deprived of land and firewood by precisely the same “harmony” of agricultural life which requires that land be taken from "a weak man who cannot perform his agricultural task" and given to a man "who is stronger and more energetic”. Gl. Uspensky sees the seamy side of “harmonious” village life clearly, but he reconciles himself to it, adopting the peasant point of view. He now understands the inevitability of many phenomena which previously grieved and angered him so strongly. His nerves become "stronger as it were" and begin "to discover a certain tenacity in situations in which formerly, i.e., very recently, they could not help complaining, although, of course, to no avail".

p Let us too follow our author’s example. Let us study and not condemn the modern village system. Let us trace the influence of agricultural labour on the peasant’s views of the law and politics.

p “The same agricultural ideals are to be found in legal relations,” Gl. Uspensky continues: "property belongs to the person by whose work it has been created.... It is received by the son, and not the father, because the father drank, and the son worked; it is received by the wife, and not the husband, because the husband is a complete idiot and idler, etc. The supreme state system is also explained without the slightest difficulty in terms of the experience acquired by the peasant in the sphere of agricultural labour and ideals alone. On the basis of this experience the supreme authority can be explained: ’There must be a bolshak, it’s just like with us.’ From the same experience it is also easy to 49 explain the existence of taxes: ’They must be paid, the tsar needs money too.... It’s just like with us; if we hire a herdsman, we have to pay him, and the tsar gives the land.’"

p In a word, just as the accidents of nature are concentrated for the peasant in God, so the accidents of politics are concentrated for him in the tsar.

p “The tsar has gone to fight, the tsar has set us at liberty, the tsar gives the land, the tsar gives bread,—let it be as the tsar says."

Agricultural labour absorbs all the peasant’s attention and forms the whole content of all his mental activity. "In no other sphere, apart from the sphere of agricultural labour, again in countless ramifications and complications, is his thinking so free, so bold, so intense, as here, where the wooden plough, the harrow, sheep, hens, ducks, cows, etc. are. He knows almost nothing about his ’rights’, knows nothing at all about the origin and significance of the authorities, does not know why the war started and where the enemy’s country is, etc., because he is interested in his own work and has no time to know and be interested in all this, just as you and I, who are interested in all this, have neither the desire nor the opportunity to spend three evenings in a row thinking about a duck or gazing sorrowfully at a poor crop of oats.... But in his own work he pays attention to the slightest detail, each of his sheep has a name which suits its character, he does not sleep at night because of a duck, thinks about stone, etc."