p But why do we speak of our Narodnik as having no way out? There is a way out, and the Narodnik writers themselves point to it. From certain works by Mr. Zlatovratsky one might think that he sees this way out in Count L. Tolstoy’s famous theory. Well, of course, why should not our Narodniks take up this teaching? But strangely and unexpectedly it leads to the conclusion that "a peasant needs exactly three arshins of land so that there is 67 somewhere to bury him”, and such a conclusion is an outright negation of Narodism. Gl. Uspensky sees the way out in a saintly and placid life "of labouring with one’s own hands”. In A Nest of the Gentry^^18^^ Lavretsky tells Panshin that he is going to "plough the land and try to do it as well as possible”. This is also what Gl. Uspensky advises our "new people" to do. But is it a way out, and if so, for whom? Not for the “people”, who ploughs the land now and tries to plough it as well as possible, in so far as its primitive fanning implements permit, of course. The Russian peasant will never pass through this narrow way to his liberation. The only people who may be able to squeeze through it are a few members of the "bored public”, and they would probably reach no freedom through it, even if they were not immediately caught by the village constable and sent back to their former place of residence. And in the present state of affairs the matter could easily take this latter turn. The above-quoted Letters from the Countryside by Mr. Engelhardt are capable of disappointing the most extreme optimist on this count.

p In this case Mr. Engelhardt’s testimony is worthy of great attention. He is convinced that if our intelligentsia decided, at last, "to go to the land”, we "would soon achieve results that would amaze the world”; therefore he summons the intelligentsia urgently to the village. "Enough of this rushing about!" he exclaims. "Go to the land, to the peasant! The peasant needs the intellectual.... Russia needs villages of intellectuals. Those intellectuals who go to the land will find happiness and peace for themselves there! The work of the farmer is heavy, but bread obtained with your own hands is light. This bread will riot stick in your throat. Each man will eat it with a light heart. And is this not happiness!

p “When Nekrasov’s peasants, searching for a happy man in Russia, come upon the intellectual settled on the land, the intellectual village, they will hear: ’we are happy men, we live well in Russia’" (p. 482, Letters from the Countryside). Such is the ideal. Let us now examine the reality.

p We have already mentioned that in present-day Russian reality there exist not only “intellectuals” striving to "settle on the land”, but also various police officials whose attitude towards this striving is most disapproving. And the poor “intellectual” is given a bad time by these officials. Mr. Engelhardt, "who is settled on the land" and, evidently, “happy”, "just could not get used to the sleigh bells, particularly in the evening when you cannot see who is coming. As soon as I heard a sleigh bell,” he confesses, "I got nervous tremors and palpitations and felt apprehensive. Vodka was the only thing that could help. I knocked back a glass. They rode past. And a feeling of relief spread over me, thank God.

_p “But if they turned into the yard, however, I grabbed a bottle and drank straight from it.... So the district police officer only 68 ever saw me drunk.... One morning a police chief arrived.... As soon as I heard the bell, I took a swig, of course.

p “I looked out of the window, saw the chief’s horses, and took another swig.

p “I cheered up. Decided he’d come about the taxes. But it was just about a few papers. He sat and talked, giving me funny looks and asking who visited me. He also enquired about the strangers who came to learn about farming. I learnt later that someone went to the village too and conducted enquiries, questioning people, mostly women, about who came to my place, what they did, how I lived, how I behaved, i.e., was I a one for the women, the peasants explained to me. A few days later another police chief arrived, a new man and not very high up. The priest dropped in. I could see he was behaving rather strangely, beating about the bush and dropping hints as if he was trying to justify himself in some way. I began to get fits of depression, and that’s the end. The peasants say that even infectious diseases are caught more easily in depression. I began to drink more and more. I heard the peasants talking among themselves. Someone had been getting at them, saying they would be held responsible together with the gentleman. ‘Tell us what’s going on there, who comes to see him. Who has ever heard of gentlemen working’....  [68•* 

p “Perhaps it was the depression getting on top of me, but I noticed that when I gave money to a peasant he would turn the banknote round and round, examining it closely. Ah, I thought, they suspect me of forging banknotes. In the spring the police chiefs began to arrive more often: they asked everyone for their documents, stamped them, examined them, inspected newcomers, noted down their particulars; they said there was an order that everyone had to be identified.... 1 started to drink heavily all the time—I fell ill and could not walk—I would set off for the fields, and not have the strength to go any further.... Then I would come home, pick up a newspaper and get even more irritated. The letters swam in a kind of mist. And suddenly through the mist I would see the face of a police chief in a peaked cap" (pp. 415, 416, 417, 418, 419). So this is the sort of happiness that Mr. Engelhardt promises the Russian intelligentsia!

p It is not hard to "amaze the world" with such happiness, but few are content with it.

p In order to feel free to act without the fear of administrative coercion, our intellectual raznochinets must first win himself "the ’ rights of a person and citizen”, and for this he must fight against absolutism, and for the fight against absolutism he must enlist strong support from somewhere.

p True, in seeking to suppress the raznochinets’ farming aspirations, our government is showing yet again that it has no understanding whatsoever of its own interests. In fact it would be impossible to think of a better way out for it than this. For whole decades it has been attempting unsuccessfully to suppress the “intellectual” by putting the muzzle of censorship on him, exiling him to places "not particularly”, but sometimes extremely remote, prosecuting and even hanging him, and suddenly—what luck!—the intellectual is forgetting all his "lofty talk”, retiring to "nature’s bosom”, planting cabbages and "thinking about ducks”. Farewell, cursed questions! An end to all the " disturbances"! Sedition is dying of anaemia, and in the Department of the State Police there is peace and good-will to men. Could one think of anything more fatal for the social development of Russia?

p And how would the "people’s cause" benefit from the fact that our educated raznochintsi cultivated several hundred or even several thousand dessiatines of land? Would this halt the collapse of the old, peasant, agricultural “ideals”? Could it put an end to the formation in the village of a third and fourth estate? Uspensky himself says that the village will soon disperse, that everything forceful and energetic will soon leave it. Does he think that the appearance of the intellectual "in his native fields" will make up for this loss?

Obviously such plans for living "by the labour of one’s own hands" do not envisage the well-being of the people, but are intended only to serve the intelligentsia as a kind of opium, to enable it to escape from harsh reality, "to find oblivion and sleep”. But it is destined not to find oblivion as long as the present political system in Russia exists. The government of Alexander III will succeed in rousing it and confronting it once more with the pressing questions of the present day.