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p It was mentioned above that, because of his poor command of foreign languages, our educated raznochinets has little knowledge of foreign literatures. Therefore, in spite of his interest in West European social theories, his knowledge of them is extremely superficial and incomplete, gained from the odd magazine articles and some translations. The underdeveloped state of Russian social relations, moreover, has hindered the formulation in our country of any serious independent social teachings. All this was inevitably bound to produce great confusion in the mind of the raznochinets. Tylor says in his Anthropology that the Chinese purchase English vessels which they do not know how to sail and then deliberately deform them by trying to turn them into their own 70 ugly junks. And our raznochinets does exactly the same with the social teachings of the West.

p Having chanced upon this or that social idea, he immediately tries to re-model it according to Russian customs, and what emerges as a result is often a truly reactionary Utopia.

p There are many examples of such treatment of West European social theories in the works of Gl. Uspensky also. He readily compares Russian social relations with those of Western Europe. Moreover, in defence of his plans for attaching the Russian intelligentsia to the land he writes almost a whole treatise on the harmful effects of the division of labour. But what a treatise it is! The most talented fiction writer turns into the most mediocre publicist and reveals a total ignorance of the subject under discussion. He confuses socialism with anarchism, and, moreover, expresses the opinion that both socialism and anarchism reek of "the barrackroom and boredom”. He turns away from them in contempt and hastens to repose with the Russian peasant who, for all his “mass” character, sometimes appears to him as a perfect example of " allround development”. But this idealisation of peasant "allroundedness" merely shows that he does not know the primitive history of mankind.

p There are stages of social development at which man possesses even more all-roundedness than the Russian peasant. The savage hunter is even less acquainted with the division of labour than Ivan Yermolayevich. He has no tsar in whom politics would be concentrated for him. He himself engages in politics, himself declares war, himself concludes peace and, unlike Ivan Yermolayevich, knows perfectly well "where the enemy’s country is”. In the same way he has no priest, to whom Ivan Yermolayevich entrusts the management of religious matters, just as he entrusts the post master with the management of postal matters. The sorcerers that one finds in primitive communities are quite different from Russian priests.

p Primitive man knows his religion just as well as the sorcerer, he does not talk "what he regards as the most amazing rubbish" about it, and will not say, like the elder Semyon Nikitich: "We’re not educated, you know better than us from your books.” He is “educated” in everything and knows everything that can be known in the hunter period. In general, if Russian peasant barbarity with its absence of division of labour is superior to Western civilisation, then primitive savage life is even better than Russian barbarity. And if Gl. Uspensky can look at Russian women and exclaim with delight: "How fine our Russian women are, free spirits, indeed!”, he should regard a red-skinned or black-skinned matron as even “finer”. Such a matron is a whole head above the Russian peasant woman: she knows nothing of subjection to a man, and herself frequently holds men in a considerable degree of subjection. She 71 leaves her mark on all the legal relations, recognises no law other than maternal law, takes part in wars and performs heroic feats in battle. Just try telling her "You’ll be thrashed by your hard toplease husband, and you’ll slave for your mother-in-law”,^^19^^ she will simply not understand you. What fine people the primitive savages are, truly free spirits! And would it not be better for us, instead of ploughing the land, to create “intellectual” communes of savages? It would be hard to turn savage to such an extent, but given the effort it is possible, there have been precedents. In his book Les debuts de Vhumanite Hovelacque recounts that there was a red-skinned doctor in a certain town in South America who practised quite successfully for a while. But one day this “intellectual” went for a walk and, arriving at the edge of the forest, remembered the free spirits of his confreres, cast off the tailcoat covering his red body and his other raiment and ran off, as naked as the day he was born, into the heart of the forest. After that he was occasionally encountered by his former male and female patients, but he no longer wrote out prescriptions and did not show the slightest inclination to abandon his “all-round” life. In this connection Hovelacque remarks that 1’habit ne fait pas le moine,  [71•*  and the correctness of this remark permits us to hope that our intellectual opponents of the division of labour might, perhaps, be able to turn savage without any great effort. We shall be told that one must not joke about serious subjects. But is it humanly possible to take such theories seriously? However, if you desire seriousness, we shall say quite seriously that Gl. Uspensky is gravely mistaken in all his ideas on the division of labour and its role in human society. Nothing that he says concerning its harmful effects can possibly lead to the conclusion that it must be abolished. By simplifying the role of the producer in the production process, the development of machines creates the material possibility of moving from one occupation to another occupation, and, consequently, of all-round development also.  [71•**  The examples quoted by Gl. Uspensky, such as bast matting 72 production, belong to manufacturing and not to machine production. What is more, machine production has the unique advantage that it frees man for the first time from "the power of the land" and nature and from all the religious and political superstitions connected with this power, by subjecting the land and nature to his will and reason. Only with the development and proper organisation of machine production can a history truly worthy of man begin. But Gl. Uspensky wants to take us back, to the primitive, “heavy” and “awkward” implements of Ivan Yermolayevich, who "has not been able to drain the marshes" for a thousand years. No, gentlemen, our present is bad, we shall not dispute that; in order to settle accounts with it, however, we must not idealise our past, but work for a better future with energy and skill. Yet another example of the remarkable absence of “harmony” in our author’s practical suggestions. He is rightly angered by many unpleasant aspects of factory life. But, whereas the West European proletariat in pointing out these unpleasant aspects concludes the need for the socialist organisation of society, Gl. Uspensky suggests ... what would you think? Nothing more nor less than the spread in Russia of cottage industry (which is called Hausindustrie by the Germans) well-known in the annals of economic history.

p “The German colonists ... did not respond to the summons of the newly appeared coupon ... and did not give their wives and daughters to be devoured by this ruler of our day,” he says in the article "Live Figures" (Collected Works, Vol. II, p. 1216). "Not, however, disdaining in the least the money which factory labour promised, they began to do factory work at home, and instead of factory machines cottage machines appeared—Saratov printed calico proved to be better, stronger and cheaper than foreign or Moscow printed calico. And, I assure you, when I was conversing about this with the dealer in manufactured goods who told me about this new experiment in production, he, a simple 73 man who had probably never thought about how this chintz and printed calico were made and knew only how to trade in them, was obviously amazed by this brilliant experiment and began talking about what an abyss of vileness and falsehood, which is inseparable from factory production, had been avoided by this cottage mode of production. He spoke not only about cheapness and strength, but also about the fact—much more than about the cheapness—that it had all worked out very well and fairly; a cheap product had emerged without a shadow of factory profligacy and sin!" (Small wonder that a merchant talks approvingly about cottage industry: for it is cottage industry that puts the producer in the power of buyers-up!)

p “It is not man who has gone out of his home to the machine, but the machine that has come to him in his home.” (And we all know how machines “come” to petty producers "in their home"!)

p “And in our peasant family is there the slightest sign of reluctance to complicate household work by adding new types of work to it? No tool and no machine that enters the peasant house voluntarily (!) will bring this house anything but the joy of having earnings. A peasant family likes work and lightens even the hardest, most difficult work with singing."

p The point is not the singing, but the fact that the German colonist and the Russian peasant are in entirely different positions. The former is on average at least five times richer than the latter. Where the colonist is still able to uphold his economic independence, the Russian peasant will probably lapse into servitude. How could Uspensky forget this simple truth?

p The triumph of capitalism is so inevitable in Russia that in the vast majority of cases even the plans of the “new” people concerning "universal prosperity" bear its imprint. These plans are distinguished by the fact that in closing the door to large capital, they leave it open to the petty bourgeoisie. Such is the "charming dialectics" of the Russian raznochinets.

p But if you regard the Narodniks’ plans as fantastic, reactionary and therefore impracticable, a reader may say, show us something better; after all we are not to hire ourselves into the service of Russian capitalists, are we? Or comfort ourselves with the appearance of coupons?

Let us look for this something better in the works of the Narodnik fiction writers themselves.