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p Before looking in Gl. Uspensky’s works for an answer to this question, let us acquaint ourselves with certain other aspects of "popular character”. Let us imagine that our Ivan Yermolayevich has been taken away from his beloved sphere of agricultural labour and turned into a soldier, for example. What will be his attitude in this new role to different social phenomena? "The 55 Observations of an Idle Fellow" (Part Three of Ruin) contains a most instructive passage in this respect.

_p A sexton and a retired soldier who have come on a pilgrimage are chatting quietly to each other as they wait for the church service to begin.

_p “’What did you get that medal for?’

_p “’Poland!’

_p “’Ah, what about it?’

_p “’About what?’

_p “’Well, that revolt of theirs.’

_p “’Oh, that. They just wanted their own tsar, that’s what.’

_p “’Ee, the wicked lot,’ said the sexton, shaking his head. ’And what about the people?’

_p “’The people are alright.’

_p “’Alright?’

p “’Yes, alright.’"

p Ivan Yermolayevich, now decorated with a medal and discharged, describes how he “quelled” his fellow peasants:

_p “’We came and stopped outside a village. The womenfolk all ran away—thought the soldiers would have a go at them....’

p “’Ee, what blockheads!’ remarks the sexton.

_p “’So they all ran off.... But the men came out to greet us. They thought we’d see eye to eye with them! Tee, hee!’

p “’What fools, eh!’

_p “Til say so, a real load of trouble. I says to one of them: You just cut out all this nonsense, lads, I says! We won’t think twice. If we get an order, we’ll do as we’re told, and you’ll get it in the neck.... No bullets will be fired at us, he says.’

p “’What idiots, eh!’

_p “’No bullets will be fired at us, he says—And I says: you’ll soon see, if you don’t behave yourselves.’

p “’And then what?’

_p “’Disobedience, that’s what.... Didn’t even take their caps off! We got the order to fire blanks. So we fired and none of them budged an inch. They burst out laughing like geldings. Ha, ha, ha! No bullets.... No bullets, eh? No. ’Let ’em have it, lads,’ we were ordered. Boom, we goes. You should have seen them run. Scared the living daylights out of them. That’ll teach you—no bullets!’

_p “’Ah.... Don’t like that, do you?’

_p “’There’s no bullets for you!’

_p “’Tee, hee. The silly fools! No bullets! How could they think that!’

_p ’"They saw their mistake alright.... But—’

p “’I’ll say they did!’"

Just why did this Ivan Yermolayevich shoot at other Ivan Yermolayeviches who had been left in the fields and not conscripted into any infantry regiment? Why did he fire at Poles who were 56 guilty only of "wanting their own tsar”, as he put it? Does he think that the desire to have one’s own tsar is a terrible crime? Does he think so? But what are we saying—does he think? The fact of the matter here is that, away from his plough, harrow, ducks and cows, Ivan Yermolayevich ceases to think entirely. We have already seen that his range of interests is limited to the narrow confines of his peasant farm. Wo already know how vague his ideas are concerning everything outside these confines. In particular, we have remarked that he is a very poor politician, that he "knows nothing at all about the origin and significance of the authorities”, that when these authorities place the heavy burden of war on his broad back he does not know why it is being waged "and where the enemy’s country is”, etc. He remembers one thing only: "let it be as the tsar says”, and if the tsar so orders he is ready to “quell” anyone at all. In the story Slight Defects of the Mechanism (God is patient of sins) we find a young lad who is hired to guard a merchant’s woodshed and in an excess of zeal clubs a beggar who is walking past the barn to death. "It’s not my fault,” the lad says in self-justification. "I was told to use the club and I did.... We do as we’re told.” When a young lad like this is given a gun and told to "let ’em have it”, he will shoot at a Pole, a “student” or his own brother, Ivan Yermolayevich, and then, after he has killed and quelled them, he will tell you that they were all “alright” as people, and will sincerely regret their unfortunate “disobedience”. There is an interesting book in French byMenant called Annales des rois d’Assyrie. This book is a translation of the original inscriptions of the Assyrian kings on various Nineveh monuments. In accordance with Oriental custom the Assyrian autocrats are intolerably boastful about their victories and conquests. Describing the suppression of this or that internal or external enemy, they give a most vivid account of the bloodshed and devastation inflicted by them. "I did kill a great multitude of them,” exclaims the victor, "and their corpses did float down the river like tree trunks.” It goes without saying that the suppression was carried out not by the kings, but by the armies at their disposal, which were made up of Assyrian Ivan Yermolayeviches. The latter probably thought that the tribes and peoples being destroyed by them were “alright” and had nothing whatsoever against them, but wreaked havoc simply because for them politics "was concentrated in the king" and "it was as the king said”. The Assyrian Ivan Yermolayeviches were given a bow and arrows, the Assyrian Muravyovs shouted "let ’em have it”, and they “quelled” the foe, without philosophising, and the corpses of those who had been quelled "did float down the river like tree trunks”. Almost all the special features of the ancient history of the East are explained by the “influences” of agricultural labour.