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p Before us lie two works by Mr. Karonin: the sketch The Young People in Yama  [73•*  (the name of a village) and the short novel From the llottom Upwards. In both the main character is a young peas- 74 ant called Mikhail Lunin, who does not share many of Ivan Yermolayevich’s views concerning what can and “cannot” be done. This is due largely to the fact that the homestead to which Mikhailo belongs can by no means be called a “good”, prosperous peasant homestead. It is on the verge of complete ruin, like almost all the homesteads in the village of Yama. The impossibility of continuing "agricultural labour" peacefully inevitably forces the younger generation in the village to reflect on its position. Added to this is the fact that it has never known serfdom. It regards itself as “free”, whereas a multitude of the most oppressive restrictions constantly remind it that its “freedom” is not real at all. Mikhailo Lunin "involuntarily finds himself making the most unexpected comparisons. Freedom ... and ’bashing’ (i.e., flogging at the volost headquarters) ... free tilling of the land ... and ’a piece’ (his name for bread which was baked with all sorts of things mixed with the flour and which, in Mikhailo’s opinion, did not deserve to be called bread). Under the influence of these reflections he became despondent".

p Bad food had a most disastrous effect on Mikhailo’s organism. He was so anaemic, weak and small that he was rejected for military service. "The only things in his body that were in good condition were his face, cold but expressive, and his eyes, flashing, but dark as an enigma.” Mikhailo’s reflections led him to the most bitter conclusions. He became embittered and began to scorn and “reject”, first and foremost, his fellow peasants, the older generation in the village. Scenes would often take place between him and his father in which the father would argue that he had the right to teach, i.e., beat, him, and the son would refuse totally to acknowledge the salutary nature of the stick.

_p “’Well, you just tell me: is your lot a happy one? Do you live well? You’ve had the stick enough in your time, haven’t you?’

p “’Well, I’m a proper peasant. Thank the Lord! An honest peasant!’ his father would say.

_p “’What sort of a peasant are you! Spend your whole life wandering around in distant parts, leaving your house and your land. You’ve neither horse nor home. You’re only a peasant because you get treated like muck. Go off to earn a bit somewhere and get your leg broke, then come home and get a flogging!’

_p ’"Don’t talk like that, Mishka,’ his father would snap, with terrible anguish.

_p “’Well, it’s true, isn’t it? The corvee’s finished, but you’re still being flogged.’

_p “’Stop that, Mishka!’

p “But Mikhailo’s anger was not yet spent.

_p “’Is any part of you still unbruised? Surely you don’t think you can teach me to lead a miserable life like yours? I won’t have it!’

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_p “’Live as you like, and good luck to you!’ the father would groan.

p “Then Mikhailo would feel sorry for his father, too sorry for words."

_p Mikhailo did not want to live as his “forefathers” had lived, but he did not know how to live properly, and this lack of knowledge tormented him terribly. "’I don’t know! How should we live, eh?’" he asked his fiancee Pasha one day.

p ’"Like other people, Misha,’ the girl remarked timidly.

p “’Like what other people? Our old ’uns? What sort of life is that? Get beaten about, the shame of it, and eat ... straw! I want to live a decent life.... But how? Do you know how, Pasha, eh? Tell us how to live,’ Mikhailo asked urgently.

p “’I don’t know, Misha. I haven’t got no head for that. All I can do is go wherever you say, to the end of the world with you....’

_p “’What must we do to live honestly, without a lot of muck, not like cattle, but properly....’

p “Mikhailo’s talk was confused ... but his eyes were shining with tears."

p When a peasant finds himself in the position that Mikhailo was in, he is faced with a single alternative: of leaving the village and seeking his fortune elsewhere by trying to find a new job and with its help organising his new life “properly”, or joining the village "third estate”, becoming a kulak, who can eat something better than "a piece" and is not afraid of the birch rods lying ready at the volost headquarters. Our Narodniks have often noted and pointed out that it is mostly very talented, outstanding people who become kulaks in the village.  [75•* 

_p Both Gl. Uspensky and Mr. Zlatovratsky have examples of ordinary people who turn into kulaks and make money in order, inter alia, to protect their human dignity. But to do this one must possess: firstly, the wherewithal and a suitable opportunity, and, secondly, a special type of character. Among Mikhailo’s village friends we meet a certain Ivan Sharov, who appears to have all the necessary features to become a worthy member of the village bourgeoisie. He is lively, inventive and has a remarkable “flair” for making money. He is always rushing around trying to pick up a penny, so that "his life is like a whirlwind”. But Mi- 76 khailo, although amazed at Ivan’s talents, was himself "quite incapable of spinning round like a top.... He hadn’t the character to spend all his life nipping in and out on the make".

p “I don’t see how you can rush about like that all the time,” he often asked Sharov.

_p “If you don’t you’ve had it,” the latter would retort. "Got to keep on your toes. Sit around doing nothing, and you’re done for—

p “But you don’t do any work, do you? I think you just run around for nothing__

p “Perhaps I do, but one day I might be lucky, and that’s it.... You don’t get anything by lying around all day. You have to chase your luck."

p Mikhailo was a born worker, not a merchant. If ho occasionally spoke about his homestead in terms that might easily have caused a good Narodnik to despair, this was because of one reason only: the homestead did not make it possible for him to live properly. Given this possibility, Mikhailo would have reconciled himself to his peasant lot without any difficulty. "At a different time, a more just time,” says. Mr. Karonin, "Mikhailo would have made a peasant who was perfectly satisfied with himself and his homestead, a peasant for whom bread and manure, a good gelding and a sturdy log cabin, a couple of pigs and a dozen sheep would have been enough to think himself a lucky man.” In a word, he would have become a real Ivan Yermolayevich and would have delighted Messrs. Narodniks by the “harmony” of his world outlook. But he has no bread, no manure, no sturdy log cabin, no pigs and no sheep, and therefore his world outlook has no “harmony”. He is a bitter man, despises his “forefathers”, torments himself with the question of how to live “properly” and, finally, after various mishaps, after clashes with the village elder and kulak Treshnikov, he demands a passport from his father and leaves the village. This marks the end of the sketch The Young People in Yanta.

p The short novel From the Bottom Upwards portrays his subsequent adventures. As soon as Mikhailo arrived in the town he landed up in prison for some swindling which he was driven to because of dire need for money. Fortunately for him his short term of imprisonment was not enough to disaccustom him from work and suppress his awakening mind. When he regained his freedom, he found employment at some brickworks where his life was a constant round of hard work and moral humiliation. He could not endure this life. Prompted by his desire "to live honestly, properly”, he left the brickworks and decided to look for other employment. He did not need a large wage, he just needed not to be pushed around like a pawn and to have his human dignity respected. He did not want to be a “slave”, he wanted to 77 stand up for his freedom whatever the cost. It is no easy task for a working man to solve such a problem, but Mikhailo was helped by a piece of luck.

p At the brickworks he had heard a great deal about a certain Fomich, an ordinary metal-worker, of whom all the workers spoke with the greatest respect. Once Fomich had even come to the brickworks, and he had impressed Mikhailo by his fine appearance and his European dress. It was to him that the young man, •"blessed with an unusual urge to fight against something, driven by a force which never gave him peace”, now went.

_p But on entering Fomich’s home Mikhailo thought he must have come to some gentlefolk by mistake. "The light from the bright lamp dazzled him, and the four people who sat drinking tea so amazed him by their appearance alone that he stood stock-still on the threshold.... The samovar, the table, the furniture and the room—it was all so clean and tidy that it crowned his amazement.” But the owner of the flat turned out to be none other than Fomich.

p “Well, I never, and he’s a metal-worker,” the thought flashed through Mikhailo’s mind.

_p Greatly embarrassed he explained to Fomich the aim of his visit and declared that he would not return to the brickworks for anything, because he found the atmosphere there stifling.

p “Not a thought in your brain-box all day long,” as he explained in his coarse language.

p Fomich worked at home and had a lot of work. He took Mikhailo on as his apprentice. A new life began for the latter. He saw that Fomich had succeeded in solving the question of how to live properly. Therefore he felt a kind of reverence for his master, his master’s wife and all their friends. They overwhelmed him by their intellectual superiority. "Comparing himself to them, he grew accustomed to think of himself as a real idiot. But one night, alone in the workshop, he suddenly realised that he too could study, that Fomich must have got it all from somewhere. Startled by this thought, he jumped off the bed with joy, not knowing himself why he had done so.” Seizing a manual of metal-working and other trades that was lying in the workshop, he began to try and remember the half-forgotten alphabet which he had been taught once in the village school. At first it was very hard going.... Progress in his studies was slowed down by the fact that shyness prevented him from turning to his new friends for help. But he had made a start anyway. "From then onwards he used to practise every evening."

p But who is this Fomich, this metal-worker who seems such a superior being to the simple village lad? He too is a "son of the people”, but a son who has been brought up in special conditions. He came from a poor urban bourgeois family and as a boy did 78 the inevitable period of hard labour as a craftsman’s apprentice. Actually he had a relatively kind master, who beat him "not with the pincers”, but “only” with his fist. A thirst for knowledge awakened in him fairly early, and when he came of age he "used every free moment to study. The constant cutting down of leisure time weakened him, his health began to fail, and the smile disappeared from his good-natured face”. But soon fate itself came to his aid. Something unexpected happened which he himself regarded as most “fortunate” for him. He was thrown into prison for a strike. Prison was bad in all respects but one: he had a lot of free time. "So there I was,” he recounted later, "I had a roof over my head; I got down to some reading, and I enjoyed it. Because I’ve never had and never will have such freedom as in prison, and I did a lot of good things there!" In prison he "learnt arithmetic and geometry, read a mass of books, and taught himself to appreciate literature, sensing with the instinct of the savage what was good. He learnt grammar and even wanted to try German”, etc., but then the authorities saw to his higher education as well: he was sent into exile. In the wretched little town where he found himself there lived another exile, a sick woman from an educated family called Nadezhda Nikolayevna. It was she who took upon herself the role of professor of all subjects in this unusual university. With her Fomich studied "geography and embarked upon algebra and physics”. When Fomich eventually returned to his native town he was a well-educated person. As a sober, industrious metalworker who knew his trade well, he received a comparatively good wage at an engineering works. Thus he was able to create the European conditions which had so impressed Mikhailo. He worked hard all day and in the evenings he read books and newspapers and in general led the life of an educated person. This was greatly assisted by his wife, the selfsame Nadezhda Nikolayevna who had once taught him in exile "at the end of the world".

p This, briefly, is the story of the metal-worker. It enables one to detect a feature, not without interest, that is typical of urban, and not of agricultural labour. Urban labour cannot devour the whole of a man’s mind, the whole of his moral being. On the contrary, as Marx rightly pointed out, a worker’s life begins only when his work ends.^^21^^ Consequently he can have other interests lying outside the sphere of his work. Given favourable circumstances, which, as we have seen, can be found in Russian towns also, his mind, unoccupied by work, awakes and demands sustenance. The worker avidly sets about studying, learns "grammar, arithmetic, physics and geometry”, and reads "good books”. Below we shall see that other spiritual requirements must inevitably awake in him as well.

p But let us return to Mikhailo. Although he tried hard to conceal his studies from Fomich, the secret finally came out. It 79 goes without saying that Fomich fully approved of his initiative and even found him a good teacher. In Mikhailo’s case the role of the educated lady in exile was to be played by a certain educated raznochinets called Kolosov, who was very “strict” with his pupils from the workers. Thus, for example, he had completely terrified a worker called Voronov, an unfortunate creature, who had been browbeaten ever since childhood and then totally confused by the clumsy educational activity of some young liberal or radical gentlemen. Fomich even warned Mikhailo about Kolosov’s strictness. But the latter was not disconcerted. "I’ll do whatever he says, even if he beats me,” he announced energetically.

p The real “strict” teaching began. In the daytime Mikhailo worked in the workshop, and in the evenings he hurried to Kolosov and had a lesson. "He studied not so much with enthusiasm, as with a kind of frenzy, and it was now not a question of the teacher urging him on, but the reverse. Sometimes he used to wonder: what if Kolosov were to die! Or Fomich went away somewhere! What would happen to him then?" But Kolosov did not die, Fomich did not go away, and the young peasant succeeded finally in making his cherished dream come true and leading an honest and sensible life. The job of assistant engineer at an engineering works which he found after completing his professional training under Fomich guaranteed him a reasonable existence and a certain amount of leisure for intellectual pursuits. Although Mikhailo stopped having lessons with Kolosov, he continued to study and read a great deal. One might think that now he could consider himself a happy man, but he was unexpectedly plagued by a new moral torment.

_p One day he went to the library to change his books and met his fiancee Pasha, whom he had all but forgotten. Not having received any news from Mikhailo, Pasha had bravely set off for the town and found work as a cook there. She could not help but marvel at the changes that she found in her Misha. "Well, I never, what a fine gentleman you’ve become!" the village girl exclaimed in amazement. His room and his dress made her think that Mikhailo was now an important person. "These all your outfits?" she asked.

_p “The clothes? Yes, they’re mine.

p “I’ll bet they cost a pretty penny!"

p The lamp with the shade also made her marvel, but what impressed Pasha most of all were all the books and newspapers in Mikhailo’s room. "Goodness, what a lot of gazettes you’ve got.... Do you read them?" "Yes, I do.” Pasha stared apprehensively at the pile of printed paper. "And what about these books?" "They’re nearly all mine.” The poor girl saw all these “outfits”, lamps, books and newspapers as an unheard-of luxury in the room of a peasant.

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p Fomich and his friends thought that Pasha would not be a good wife for Mikhailo and therefore advised him against marrying her, but Mikhailo did not heed them. For all the difference in their development they had something in common, the author remarks, namely, their village reminiscences. Pasha chatted to Mikhailo about everything that had been happening in the village: about his father, relatives and friends. Mikhailo listened to her with interest, "he was not bored to hear these apparently insignificant trifles”. He was often amused by the tragi-comic escapades of the villagers, but at the same time "he was sad. Evidently these conversations both pleased and upset him”. Mikhailo began to brood and became prey to attacks of a strange and inexplicable anguish. "It was not the anguish that comes to a man when he has nothing to eat, when he is beaten and insulted, when, in short, he is cold, hurt and afraid for his life. No, he contracted a different kind of anguish—groundless, but allpervading and ever-lasting!"

_p Under the influence of this anguish Mikhailo almost took to drink. One Sunday, when he and Fomich set off for a walk in the country, he began to drag his quiet and respectable friend into a tavern.

_p “’Let’s go in!’ he said, terribly pale.

_p “Fomich did not understand. ’Where?’ he asked.

_p “’Into the tavern!’ Mikhailo said abruptly.

_p “’What for?’

_p “’To have a drink!’

_p “Fomich thought it was a joke. ’Whatever will you think of next?’

_p “’You don’t want to? Alright, I’ll go on my own. I want a drink.’"

p Having said this, Mikhailo Grigoryevich put his foot on the first step of the dirty porch.

p But he did not enter the tavern. "He flushed a deep red, stepped slowly down from the porch, then rushed after Fomich and walked off beside him."

p These burning attacks of anguish recurred frequently. "He felt the urge to drink, but when he walked up to the tavern he would hesitate, dawdle, and fight with himself until he overcame the fatal desire by a tremendous effort of will. It sometimes happened that he actually entered the tavern and ordered himself a glass of vodka, but then he would suddenly tell the nearest regular customer to drink it instead and would rush out. Sometimes this hard battle was repeated several times in a day and he would return home almost dead with exhaustion.... The disease would flare up again after a month or two."

p What strange thing is this? Up till now we have never read in Narodnik literature that "a man from the people" could suffer 81 from such anguish. It is a kind of Byronism. quite out of place in a working man. Ivan Yermolayevich probably never knew such anguish! What did Mikhailo want? Let us try to examine his new spiritual state—it is beautifully described by Mr. Karonin. "He began to regard all that he possessed as worthless, unimportant or even totally unnecessary. Even his intellectual development, which lie had acquired with such effort, began to seem dubious to him. He kepi asking himself—what use is it to anyone and where do 1 go from here? He wore good clothes and did not live from harrd to mouth; he thought... read books, journals and newspapers. Me knew that the earth did not rest on three whales and the whales on an elephant, and theelephanl on a turtle, and knew a great deal more besides. But what was it all for? lie read every day that things were bad in Urzlmrn and even worse in Belebey. and (hat in Kazan Gubernia the Tartars were really done for; he read all this, and a million times more than this, because each day he •• I ravelled round Russia, and encompassed the whole globe__ But what was the use of it all? Me read, thought and knew ... but what next? He was wretched, wretched!"

_p The mallei’ becomes a little clearer. Mikhailo is wretched because his intellectual development does not ease the position of his fellow peasants and all those for whom things are "bad, very bad”. Although his thoughts encompass the whole globe, nevertheless or. rather, by virtue of this and all the more attentively they dwell on the ugly phenomena of Russian reality. Ivan Yermolayevich does not read newspapers, and (11. Uspensky himself believes that as a good peasant he has no need to know when "the Queen of Spain was delivered of her child or how General Cissey was caught stealing with Mrs. Kaula".  [81•*  But obviously even in Russian newspapers Mikhailo could hnd news of another kind that made him wonder what use his intellectual development was to anyone. Perhaps, when his thoughts were encompassing the globe, he saw. far off in the West, his toiling brothers lighting for a better future; perhaps he had already managed to perceive certain features of this belter future, and he was wretched at not being able to take part in the great work of liberation. At home, in Russia, he saw great need, bul a tola! absence of light. This is how he expresses himself, for example, to Fomich, lying on the grass during the walk when he first started to seek the path to the tavern.

_p ’"But they are down in the very depths, Fomich,’ he said gloomilv.

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p ’"’Who?’ Fomich was surprised and had no idea whom his friend was talking about.

_p ’"All of them. I’m lying here, free, but they’re clown, in the depths where it’s dark and cold.’

_p “Fomich did not know what to say to this.

_p “’My father, mother and sisters are still living in the village.....

_p But I’m here!’ Mikhailo spoke softly, as if afraid that ? cry might escape from his breast.

p ’"Send them a bit more.’

_p ’"What use is money!’ shouted Mikhailo. ’You can’i nelp with money! It’s dark where they are, and money won’t give light!’

_p “Fomich felt, he should say something, but could cot. They were both silent for a while.

_p ’"They still flog them even now, Fomich, you know?’

p ’"What is to be done, Misha?’"

p In giving this reply, Fomich knew perfectly well Ilia I, he was talking utter nonsense, but at the time he could not think oi anything else.

p Mikhailo was faced with the same fatal question thai has so> tormented our intelligentsia: what is to be done? What is to hedone to bring light into the dark world of the people, to free working people from material poverty and moral humiliation? In. the person of Mikhailo the people itself had arrived "from the bottom upwards" at this fatal question.

p And indeed, remember that even as a youth Mikhailo had felt, "an unusual urge to fight against something”, reflect upon his; spiritual state, and you will understand perfectly whal he needs. "He sometiir.es feels a great surge of strength, he is ready to jump up and senses that he must go somewhere, run and do something.” He really does need to do something, he needs to work for the’ liberation of the very people to whom he belongs flesh and blood. I do not remember which critic it was in Russkaya Mysl who said that Mikhailo is unhappy because he wants to go back to the village.^^22^^ Most likely, in fact almost certainly, Mr. Karonin himself, as a Narodnik, would also not be averse to returning his brain-child to his former place of residence, the half-iuined village of Yama with which we are familiar. Mikhailo would probably agree to take this advice, but we can assure Messrs. Narodniks that he would not go there in order to admire the "harmony of the peasant world outlook”. He could not reconcile himself to. the disorder in the countryside even when he was an ignorant, almost illiterate lad. Now an educated man, he wants to bring light and knowledge to the people. But what light? We believe that Mikhailo would hardly have acknowledged as "’light" the teaching which in the person of its most talented representative arrived at the cheerless conclusion: "you cannot halt tho advance of civilisation and must not interfere”. We believe that his atli- 83 tude towards “civilisation” would have been the same as I hat oi his West European confreres. He would have made use of it to fight against it. He would have organised the forces created by it to fight against its dark aspects, in short, he would have become a fighter in the vanguard of the proletariat.

p Immodest though it may be on our part to quote our own programme in this connection, we would nevertheless take the liberty of reminding Ihe reader of it. "The proletarian ejected from the countryside as an impoverished member of the village commune,” it says, "will return there as a Social-Democratic agilalor."^^23^^

p Herein lies the moral of Mr. Karonin’s short novel, and iiow much richer his literary activity would have been, if he had been aware of this moral!

Unfortunately we have no hope of that at all. As an orthodox Narodnik, ever ready to sing Ihe praises of the commune. Mr. Karonin will probably declare our conclusions to be utter nonsense and totally inapplicable to Russian life. Bui this, of course, will not detract from their validity and will merely injure the further literary activity of Mr. Karonin.