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Alexander Nikolaevich Engelhardt

Letters from the village

Preface

One hundred years ago, a great revolution took place in Russia, which changed the world in many ways. In Russia itself it has not yet ended, and at the end of the 80s of the last century we again entered a period of great upheaval. The collapse of historical Russia (in the form of the USSR) and the subsequent deep, long-term crisis is an episode of the Russian revolution on the ebb of the tide. Knowledge and understanding of these processes is a means of reducing the mass suffering of our people and a condition for better choice of path and overcoming the crisis, and the further development of our state, society and culture. Among the books that give us such knowledge and promote understanding, the book by A.N. occupies a special place. Engelhardt "Letters from the Village (1872–1887)". This book should be read (or better yet, read a little and think) by everyone who is trying to understand the reasons for certain historical elections in the 20th century, in the sense of the current confrontations and contradictions in Russia, and form their opinion about the doctrines and plans for its reform. This book was read (in September-October 1882, shortly before his death) by Karl Marx. He read, taking notes in the margins. He was interested in a thorough empirical description of the Russian community, which contradicted ideas about the backwardness of the peasant economy in comparison with the capitalist one. Lenin read this book, still believing that “the entire agrarian system of the state is becoming capitalist.” Book by A.N. Engelhardt showed that this is impossible in principle, and not because of the inertia of the peasantry. A.N. Engelhardt drew attention to a very important fact: the Russian intelligentsia, in general, had no idea about the most important aspects of the life and economic structure of the peasants. This led to a misunderstanding of the fact that, in the grip of real restrictions, the peasants found best way economy, and one that did not lead them to savagery and immersion in the civilization of slums.

According to A.N. Engelhardt, the peasants managed their farms much better and more rationally than the landowners with their agronomists and fertilizers. This book helped the Russian intelligentsia, including V.I. Lenin, to understand that the Russian revolution had a different character than Marx predicted, based on knowledge of Western capitalism. It will help many more generations of our intelligentsia to understand a lot. A.N. Engelhardt is the smartest and very kind person, a wonderful foundry master, chemical scientist and agronomist, who values and loves physical labor and hard workers. He is a true democrat and educator, respecting the intelligence, experience and views of the people to whom he sought to convey scientific knowledge. Young people who have temporarily doubted the value of all these qualities should listen to his observations and reasoning. And further. A.N. Engelhardt is a wonderful author and storyteller, he awakens in us the memory of the images of Russian people of all classes that are close and dear to us, about the countryside and the nature of Central Russia. Reading this book is a great joy, the soul rests.

S.G. Kara-Murza

Letter one

Description of my winter day, - Confectioner Savelich. – Cook Avdotya’s explanation of Pasteur’s experiments. – Is it easy to collect quitrents from peasants? - The cattleman Peter and his wife, the cattlewoman Khovra. - “Animal hut.” – A parallel between a retired professor and a retired pastry chef. - After lunch. – Folk calendar. - “Old woman.” – Giving “pieces.” - Who collects them? - How the “old woman” treats cattle. – Report of the elder Ivan. – Black, yellow and white cat. - “Whiners.” – Signs of the end of the world

You want me to write to you about our village life 1. I do it, but I warn you that I absolutely cannot think, speak, or write about anything else other than farming. All my interests, all the interests of the people I meet every day, are focused on firewood, bread, livestock, manure... We don’t care about anything else.

...After dinner, I go to bed and, falling asleep, I dream that in three years I will have thirteen acres of clover instead of the oblog, which I am now raising under flax. In a dream, I see a herd of hillocks grazing on the clover grass, which will be born from a bull promised to me by one famous St. Petersburg cattle breeder. I wake up thinking about how to buy hay cheaper.

When I wake up, I light a candle and knock on the wall - that means the master is awake and wants some tea. “I hear you!” Avdotya answers and begins to tinker with the samovar. While the woman is setting the samovar, I lie in bed, smoke a cigarette and dream about what a wonderful wasteland it will be when the forest I sold today is cut down. After daydreaming, smoking, I put on felt boots and a sheepskin coat. My house is rather bad: when the stoves are turned on, by the evening it’s extremely hot, by the morning it’s cold, it’s blowing from under the floor, it’s blowing from the doors, the windows are frozen, just like in a peasant’s hut. At first I wore a German suit, but I soon became convinced that this was impossible, and began wearing felt boots and a short fur coat. Warm and comfortable. Finally, the woman, yawning, brings tea. She is dressed, like me, in felt boots and a sheepskin coat.

- Hello, Avdotya. Well?

- Nothing!

- Cold?

– Not that much; It just wobbles.

- Ivan went to the cattle farm?

- He left a long time ago: tea, food was already given.

– What was Ayska barking last night?

- God knows. Oh nothing. The wolves must have gotten close.

I order lunch. Avdotya, the wife of elder Ivan, is the mistress of my house. She cooks my meals, washes my clothes, and manages the entire household. She milks cows, manages dairy cattle, beats butter, and collects cottage cheese. Avdotya is the main person in my female staff, and all the other women are subordinate to her, with the exception of the “old woman”, who is the hostess in the dining room.

Lunch has been ordered. Baba leaves. I drink tea and dream about how good it will be when this spring the lowlands in the wastelands and fields are cleared out, through which the mowing will improve and there will be more hay.

I drink tea, smoke and dream. Ivan the headman came; dressed in felt boots and a sheepskin coat.

- Hello, Ivan. Well?

- Thank God. They gave the cattle food. The brown white-sided cow was calving.

- A! Safely?

- God bless. She got dressed properly. They put it in a small shed.

- A heifer?

- A brown heifer, a white-backed one... Nothing, a heifer.

I take out a notebook from the table and write down the newborn heifer on the list of current calves: “No. 5/72 - brown white-backed heifer

8/11 72 from No. 10” and look at the calendar when the heifer is six weeks old, which I note in the book.

- Did you have a good evening meal?

- We ate well, only the old stuff remains. Empty hay, if you please see for yourself, will be good for cattle to eat: there will be nothing left except the waste, because there is no moth in it.

– What was Lyska barking last night?

- Oh nothing. The wolves must have been approaching.

Silence. There's nothing more to talk about. Ivan, having waited as long as decency requires, and seeing that there is nothing more to say, takes the tea utensils and goes to Avdotya to drink tea.

After tea, I either write or read chemical journals, actually, however, to clear my conscience: it’s awkward somehow, having studied chemistry for twenty years, to suddenly give up my science. But I can’t help but admit that very often, when reading an article about some steam-chloro-metaluidine, I think about the most interesting part and begin to dream how nice it would be if next fall I managed to buy 500 poods of zhmaks... manure what it would be!

It's worn out. Confectioner Savelich came to light the oven. My oven is heated by a pastry chef, a real pastry chef who knows how to make real sweets. This pastry chef came to me by accident. Once upon a time, about fifty or sixty years ago - due to old age, the confectioner himself forgot how old he was - Savelich studied confectionery in one of the best confectionery shops in Moscow, was a confectioner in one of the Moscow clubs, then was taken by a landowner to the village, where he held various positions: he was a cook, a coachman, a barman, a traveling footman, a stoker, a dishwasher, etc. Savelich did not manage to get married, did not acquire a household and a family, did not acquire property - he was always at the table with the gentlemen, - in his old age he became deaf and In an accident, he lost his jaw, which was taken out for him by some famous surgeon, called from abroad for the use of a rich, sick gentleman. It happened just at this time that Savelich’s left jaw was crushed by a blow from some mechanism in the grain mill, where he was tearing cereals; a wound appeared, and the crushed jaw had to be removed, which was done by the famous surgeon. The operation was a success. Savelich remained alive and chews regularly with one jaw. Eleven years ago Savelich became free and since then he lived more and more near the church. At first he was a church warden, then he went with a book to collect for the church. For the last two years, Savelich lived like a bird of heaven, from day to day, getting by somehow. In the summer and autumn, he was hired to guard the church for the peasants, for which the next courtyard gave him grub and paid him 5 kopecks per night, sometimes he made jam for merchants in the city, for which he also received some money. In winter - the most difficult time for Savelich - he lived on capital earned in the summer. He lived in his grub with some peasant he knew, and for the rent he helped the peasant with household chores - he went to fetch water, cut wood, pumped the cradle - the old man was never out of place in the yard; He fed on his confectionery craft: with the money he earned in the summer, he would buy several pounds of sugar, make candies and carry them around the villages (of course, without a trade certificate). If he gives the “old woman” candy for his grandchildren, she will feed him. Of course, he always ate poorly and sometimes went hungry, but he says he never asked for alms. Savelich came to me in this way: one day during Lent last year I went into a hut where workers and workers live, I saw a tall, thin, bald old man, exhausted from bad food, sitting in one shirt and rubbing tobacco in a wooden mortar. "Who is this? ", I ask. “And the old man,” says the headman, “came by as an acquaintance; I gave him tobacco to wipe off - he’ll dine with us for it.” In the evening, while giving a report on the housekeeping, the headman started talking about the old man, said that the old man was a former servant, that he was a pastry chef, lived with the masters, knew the master’s rules, and asked permission to invite the old man to break his fast on the bright holiday, “and for this he will help Avdotya to Prepare a table for the holiday,” added the headman. Of course, I allowed it. Avdotya was delighted that the old man would come for the holiday and help her prepare everything properly (formally), as is the case with gentlemen. So that everything is perfect, like the masters, is Avdotya’s strong point.

Alexander Nikolaevich Engelhardt

Letters from the village

Preface

One hundred years ago, a great revolution took place in Russia, which changed the world in many ways. In Russia itself it has not yet ended, and at the end of the 80s of the last century we again entered a period of great upheaval. The collapse of historical Russia (in the form of the USSR) and the subsequent deep, long-term crisis is an episode of the Russian revolution on the ebb of the tide. Knowledge and understanding of these processes is a means of reducing the mass suffering of our people and a condition for better choice of path and overcoming the crisis, and the further development of our state, society and culture. Among the books that give us such knowledge and promote understanding, the book by A.N. occupies a special place. Engelhardt "Letters from the Village (1872–1887)". This book should be read (or better yet, read a little and think) by everyone who is trying to understand the reasons for certain historical elections in the 20th century, in the sense of the current confrontations and contradictions in Russia, and form their opinion about the doctrines and plans for its reform. This book was read (in September-October 1882, shortly before his death) by Karl Marx. He read, taking notes in the margins. He was interested in a thorough empirical description of the Russian community, which contradicted ideas about the backwardness of the peasant economy in comparison with the capitalist one. Lenin read this book, still believing that “the entire agrarian system of the state is becoming capitalist.” Book by A.N. Engelhardt showed that this is impossible in principle, and not because of the inertia of the peasantry. A.N. Engelhardt drew attention to a very important fact: the Russian intelligentsia, in general, had no idea about the most important aspects of the life and economic structure of the peasants. This led to a lack of understanding that, in the grip of real restrictions, the peasants found the best way of farming, and one that did not lead them to savagery and immersion in the civilization of the slums.

S.G. Kara-Murza

Letter one

You want me to write to you about our village life1. I do it, but I warn you that I absolutely cannot think, speak, or write about anything else other than farming. All my interests, all the interests of the people I meet every day, are focused on firewood, bread, livestock, manure... We don’t care about anything else.

- Hello, Avdotya. Well?

- Nothing!

- Cold?

– Not that much; It just wobbles.

- Ivan went to the cattle farm?

- He left a long time ago: tea, food was already given.

– What was Ayska barking last night?

- God knows. Oh nothing. The wolves must have gotten close.

I drink tea, smoke and dream. Ivan the headman came; dressed in felt boots and a sheepskin coat.

- Hello, Ivan. Well?

- Thank God. They gave the cattle food. The brown white-sided cow was calving.

- A! Safely?

- God bless. She got dressed properly. They put it in a small shed.

- A heifer?

- A brown heifer, a white-backed one... Nothing, a heifer.

I take out a notebook from the table and write down the newborn heifer on the list of current calves: “No. 5/72 - brown white-backed heifer

8/11 72 from No. 10” and look at the calendar when the heifer is six weeks old, which I note in the book.

- Did you have a good evening meal?

- We ate well, only the old stuff remains. Empty hay, if you please see for yourself, will be good for cattle to eat: there will be nothing left except the waste, because there is no moth in it.

– What was Lyska barking last night?

- Oh nothing. The wolves must have been approaching.

Silence. There's nothing more to talk about. Ivan, having waited as long as decency requires, and seeing that there is nothing more to say, takes the tea utensils and goes to Avdotya to drink tea.

Great Russian Revolution- radical fracture in national history. The process, which affected all spheres of public life, is still in the historical consciousness modern Russia, which is experiencing a period of social, cultural and political transformation, has not acquired an unambiguous assessment. Many aspects of this period Russian history remain undisclosed or disclosed in a biased and politically biased manner.

In order for the reader to be able to “plunge” into the life of the people, public relations and life of the time preceding the Revolution, I begin the publication of the “Literary Monument” - "A.H. ENGELHARDT FROM THE VILLAGE 12 LETTERS" 1872-1887

Great Soviet Encyclopedia: "Engelgardt Alexander Nikolaevich (21.7 (2.8). 1832, Klimovo estate, Smolensk province, - 21.1 (2.2). 1893, village of Batishchevo, Smolensk province), Russian publicist, agricultural chemist. After graduating from the Mikhailovsky Artillery Academy (1853), he served in the St. Petersburg Arsenal, where he supervised the casting of cannons for the defense of Sevastopol and was in charge of the chemical laboratory.

He taught chemistry at the Alexander Lyceum. Together with N.N. Sokolov founded and edited the first Russian Chemical Journal (1859-60). In 1866-70, professor of chemistry at the St. Petersburg Agricultural Institute (now the Leningrad Forestry Academy named after Kirov); where he performed a number of works on organic chemistry, for which he was awarded an honorary doctorate in chemistry from Kharkov University (1870). For spreading democratic ideas among students, he was arrested in 1870 and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress.

At the beginning of 1871 he was expelled under police supervision to the village. Batishchevo, where he created a model farm on capitalist principles and a school for training “intelligent landowners.” Author of letters “From the Village” (11 letters published in “Notes of the Fatherland” in 1872-82 and the 12th letter in “Bulletin of Europe”, 1887, No. 5; separate publications - 1882, 1960) and a number of other works on issues Agriculture, which provide a description of the Russian post-reform village and the capitalist evolution of the landowner economy."

Description of my winter day. - Confectioner Savelich. - An explanation of Pasteur's experiments to the cook Avdotya. - Is it easy to receive quitrents from peasants? - The cattleman Peter and his wife, the cattlewoman Khovra. - "Animal hut." - Parallel between a retired professor and a retired pastry chef. - After lunch. - Folk calendar. "Old woman". - Giving "pieces" - Who collects them? - How the “old woman” treats cattle. - Report from Elder Ivan. Black, yellow and white cat. - "Whiners." - Signs of the end of the world.

Village interests. - Why does a man go to the master? - Kostya is a specialist, hunter and thief. - Is the man a drunk? - At Annunciation, thieves steal. - Fist Matov. - The trial of Kostya. - Incidents and rumors. - About treatment. - Furry bread. The girl will die - less expense - Organization of medical care in villages. - "Pops." - Their income. - At the station. - At the congress. Conveniences of the new legal proceedings.

"Indian summer". - Linen "experiments". - Chopping cabbage. - Women's songs. - Sidor and the soldier. - How the cabbage turned sour. - Clean and help "out of honor." - Do the roads need to be repaired? - Styopka the cook and his lesson in village politics. - Question about herbs. - Should we take fines? - Imaginary "evil". - Everything from the lords! - Why does Kasyan have one holiday at the age of four, and Nikola has two a year? - Flax and earthen fleas. - "Lost" magpies. - Agronomic books. - Hungry spring. - “Obligated” Dema. To sow or not to sow is a spring question. - More about books and book dead. - About mushrooms. - "Nove" at the mill.

Spring. - Tablet of Batishchevo harvests of 1871-1872. - Is the man a thief? - Is our worker lazy? Features of his character. - They don’t know how to work. - Is the official zealous? - Economy after the "Regulations". - It is necessary to change the farming system. - About the high cost of labor. - The reason for the poverty of the peasants is disunity in their actions. - Provincial Agricultural Exhibition. - Repairing the tailcoat. - Pas de culture. - About some necessary amenities. - Short fur coat or jacket. A gun for "case". - Exhibition cattle. - Grain drainage and uprooting machine. - Punished gullibility.

After drinking vodka and having dinner. - Batishchevsky dogs. - History of Lyska. - To whom did Tsurik howl? - A scrape with pastry chef Savelich. - “Whims” of Savelich. - His inventions. - Homemade stroller. - Bean cookies. - Angry official. How flax crops were introduced in Batishchevo. - All the power is in the women. Woman's work and woman's chest. - Introduction of plow arable land in Batishchevo. Uprooting a birch forest. - If we knock down a stump, we’ll find a penny. - About Pasteur. - Crushing flax. - The guy is gray, but it’s not the devil who ate his mind. - About farriers.

LETTER SIX: Signs of war. - The militia were taken. - Letter from a soldier from Turetsk region. - Paper about land. - Mikhailo the Boxman and military paintings. - Another soldier's letter. - Mitrofan's uterus. - Bukovsky zucchini. - Certain beliefs of the mindless masses. - The people understand who we are fighting for. - Mobilization. - The Sultan was stabbed to death. - Chernyaev showed up. - "Drive - ordered." - It’s still easier to die.

LETTER SEVEN: Grabors. - It happens that you shouldn’t eat well. - Physiology of peasant food. - About peas and indigestible substances. - “Strong” and “light” food. - The meaning of acid in a man's lunch. - Bread. - Cabbage soup and porridge. - Good food is thick and “throws into the swill.” “The people for whom others work can eat plenty of meat.” - The cheaper meat is in the city, the greater the need in the village. - Grabor work. - The importance of setting up tools in work. - "Wonderful" gentlemen. - Is priestly work easy? Construction of the Grabor artel. - Peasant individualism. The meaning of sections. - Women's individualism. - There are few owners. Village fools. - Sections and hooks. - Landowner farming and its basis. - Intelligent workers.

LETTER EIGHT: About the officers. - Birches. - Taking care of the man. - Method of hatching papers. - Persecution of Jews. - Order about the plague. - Is it harmful to eat rotten food? - "He".

LETTER NINE: Prayer for rain. - God is an old master. Worms on flax. - Official orders. - For the landowner, a bad harvest is more profitable than a harvest. - Summer job. - Inserting a man into a collar. The oppression of a man by the earth. - Lack of pastures. - "Fast" man. - Bread is expensive - a man is cheap. - Rejoicing at the high cost of bread is a great sin. - Does Russia sell excess grain? - About clean bread. - Bread is cheap, meat is expensive, labor is expensive, the man prospers. - The opposite interests of the master and the peasant.

LETTER TEN:"Happy Corner" - Reduced drunkenness. - Peasant schools. - Does a man need an intellectual? - Intelligent villages. - Landowner farming is pointless. - The importance of outside earnings for peasants. - Summer work for yourself. - Go to the ground, to the man. - Are the peasants stagnant? - Fist. - Calling the intelligentsia to the village.

LETTER ELEVEN: Men's rumors. - A guy’s strange opinion about his superiors. - Rumors about the land. - Ordered to keep an eye on the gentlemen. - A man’s concept of the right to land. - Malicious people. - The function of the king is to equalize everyone. - The king is the main earthly owner. - The question of land shortage. - Development of wastelands. Intensive or extensive farming. - Everything will come to the man. Dispute with "Rus". - About phosphoric acid fats. - Landlord farming makes no sense. - There is no bollard. - Derunov and Bobrinsky. - The land must go into the hands of a man.

LETTER TWELVE (In Memory of Kavelin): Opening of a branch of a peasant bank. - Purchase of land. - Mediation of an intellectual. - This will count for him! - First experiments with phosphate rock. - About grass sowing among peasants. - Empty lands. - The meaning of phosphorite.

LETTER FIRST

You want me to write to you about our village life19. I do it, but I warn you that I absolutely cannot think, speak, or write about anything else other than farming. All my interests, all the interests of the people with whom I meet every day, are concentrated on firewood, bread, livestock, manure... We don’t care about anything else.

Having had dinner, I go to bed and, falling asleep, I dream that in three years I will have thirteen acres of clover instead of the logs that I am now raising under flax. In a dream, I see a herd of hillocks grazing on the clover grass, which will be born from a bull promised to me by one famous St. Petersburg cattle breeder. I wake up thinking about how to buy hay cheaper.

When I wake up, I light a candle and knock on the wall - the master means he’s woken up and wants some tea. "I hear you!" Avdotya answers and begins to tinker with the samovar. While the woman is setting the samovar, I lie in bed, smoke a cigarette and dream about what a wonderful wasteland it will be when the forest I sold today is cut down. After daydreaming, smoking, I put on felt boots and a sheepskin coat. My house is rather bad: when the stoves are turned on, by the evening it’s extremely hot, by the morning it’s cold, it’s blowing from under the floor, it’s blowing from the doors, the windows are frozen, just like in a peasant’s hut. At first I wore a German suit, but I soon became convinced that this was impossible, and began wearing felt boots and a short fur coat. Warm and comfortable. Finally, the woman, yawning, brings tea. She is dressed, like me, in felt boots and a sheepskin coat.

Hello, Avdotya. Well?

Nothing!

Cold?

Not really; It just wobbles.

Ivan went to the cattle farm?

He left a long time ago: tea, food was already given.

And God knows. Oh nothing. The wolves must have gotten close.

I order lunch. Avdotya, the wife of elder Ivan, is the mistress of my house. She prepares my meals, washes my clothes, and manages the entire household. She milks cows, manages dairy cattle, beats butter, and collects cottage cheese. Avdotya is the main person in my female staff, and all the other women are subordinate to her, with the exception of the “old woman”, who is the hostess at the table.

I drink tea, smoke and dream. Ivan the headman came; dressed in felt boots and a sheepskin coat.

Hello, Ivan. Well?

All thank God. They gave the cattle food. The brown white-sided cow was calving.

A! Safely?

God bless. She got dressed properly. They put it in a small shed.

Telila chick?

A brown heifer, white-backed... Nothing, a heifer.

I take a notebook from the table, write down the newborn heifer in the list of current calves: “No 5/72 - brown white-backed heifer 8/11 72 from No 10” and look at the calendar when the heifer is six weeks old, which I note in the book.

So, did you have a good evening meal?

They ate well, only the old stuff remained. Waste hay, if you please see for yourself, will be good for cattle to eat: there will be nothing left except the waste, because there is no moth in it.

What was Lyska barking last night?

Oh nothing. The wolves must have been approaching.

Silence. There's nothing more to talk about. Ivan, having waited as long as decency requires, and seeing that there is nothing more to say, takes the tea utensils and goes to Avdotya to drink tea.

It's worn out. Confectioner Savelich came to light the oven. My oven is heated by a pastry chef, a real pastry chef who knows how to make real sweets. This pastry chef came to me by accident. Once upon a time, about fifty or sixty years ago - due to old age, the confectioner himself forgot how old he was - Savelich studied confectionery in one of the best confectionery shops in Moscow, was a confectioner in one of the Moscow clubs, then was taken by a landowner to the village, where he held various positions: he was a cook, coachman, bartender, traveling footman, stoker, dishwasher, etc. Savelich did not have time to get married, did not have a household and a family, did not acquire property - he was always at the table with the gentlemen, in his old age he became deaf and in an accident lost his jaw, which was taken out for him by some famous surgeon, called from abroad for the use of a rich man sick master. It happened just at this time that Savelich’s left jaw was crushed by a blow from some mechanism in the grain mill, where he was tearing cereals; a wound appeared, and the crushed jaw had to be removed, which was done by the famous surgeon. The operation was a success. Savelich remained alive and chews regularly with one jaw. Eleven years ago Savelich became free and since then he lived more and more near the church. At first he was a church warden, then he went with a book to collect for the church. For the last two years, Savelich lived like a bird of heaven, from day to day, getting by somehow. In the summer and autumn, he was hired to guard the church for the peasants, for which the next courtyard gave him grub and paid him 5 kopecks per night, sometimes he made jam for merchants in the city, for which he also received some money. In winter - the most difficult time for Savelich - he lived on capital earned in the summer. He lived in his grub with some peasant he knew and for the rent he helped the peasant with household chores - he went to fetch water, cut wood, pumped the cradle - the old man was never out of place in the yard; He fed on his confectionery craft: with the money he earned in the summer, he would buy several pounds of sugar, make candies and carry them around the villages (of course, without a trade certificate). If he gives the “old woman” candy for his grandchildren, she will feed him. Of course, he always ate poorly and sometimes went hungry, but he says he never asked for alms. Savelich came to me in this way: one day during Lent last year I went into a hut where workers and workers live, I saw a tall, thin, bald old man, exhausted from bad food, sitting in one shirt and rubbing tobacco in a wooden mortar. "Who is this? “, I ask. “And the old man,” says the headman, “came by as an acquaintance; I gave him some tobacco to wipe off and he will have dinner with us for this." In the evening, while giving a report on the housekeeping, the headman started talking about the old man, said that the old man was a former servant, that he was a pastry chef, lived with the gentlemen, knew the master's rules, and asked permission to invite the old man to to break the fast on the bright holiday, “and in exchange for this he will help Avdotya prepare the table for the holiday,” added the headman. I, of course, allowed it. Avdotya was delighted that the old man would come to the holiday and help her prepare everything properly (formally), as is the case with gentlemen So that everything is perfect, like the masters, is Avdotya’s strong point.

Having settled in the village, I decided not to have coachmen, cooks, or footmen, that is, everything that belongs to the landowners' houses, which was one of the reasons for the ruin of the poor landowners, who after the "Regulation" were unable to lead their lives differently than before, which was one of the reasons why the landowners abandoned their farms and ran away to work. Having settled in the village, I took my life in a new direction.

I found the headman on the estate; The headman, of course, had a woman who ran his household, prepared food for him, and washed his linen. I moved the headman and the woman from the hut into the house and made Avdotya my mistress, cook, and laundress. I had nothing to teach her about housekeeping - dairy farming, feeding calves, etc.: I myself am learning from her and I must admit that I learned much more from her than from books that say that “a dairy cow has a light head, with thin horns, thin legs, a long and thin tail, soft and delicate skin and hair, in general the whole appearance is feminine, etc.”; but in terms of the kitchen I helped her a little. With my help (it’s not for nothing that I’m a chemist: after all, I can understand the essence of cooking), Avdotya, who has extraordinary culinary abilities and diligence, as well as the knowledge inherent in every woman, how to bake bread, make cabbage soup and pies, began to cook perfectly I need food and various supplies for the winter - pickles, pickled mushrooms, liqueurs, canned fish and crayfish, jam, cream cheeses. I explained to her that when preparing syrup from berries, the main thing is to cook to such an extent that, under the influence of acid, crystalline sugar turns into grape sugar and the syrup thickens so much that fermentation cannot occur; explained that rotting in canned food, mold in pickles, etc., as Pasteur showed, will not happen if the embryos of 23 lower organisms do not come from the air; explained the effect of high temperature on germs, protein, etc. Avdotya understood all this perfectly. Everything is going great for us: we make excellent butter, and we make velvety cream cheese such that Herbert would not be a sin to serve to his visitors, and we marinate crayfish, and salt ham, and smoke geese, and mend sausages, and fry hazel grouse just as well, than Dussault's. There is only one thing that Prokhorovna and I do not agree on: I only care about taste, and she, in addition, about making sure that everything is formal, as is the case with gentlemen, so that we are not judged. The pastry chef, who lived with the gentlemen, was a real godsend for her, and she anxiously waited to see if I would allow me to invite the pastry chef to the bright holiday: it’s a big holiday, the priests will come, but we won’t have a formal one.

The pastry chef came three days before the holiday. A ram was slaughtered; I went to the station and bought grains, sandalwood, raisins, almonds, and the cooking began; the pastry chef cut out decorations for Easter cake and lamb ham from multi-colored paper; I, together with one of my chemist friends, who came from St. Petersburg to visit me for the holiday, made a rose flower out of pink tea paper, perfumed it with excellent perfume and stuck it into the cake. Everything turned out great: Easter cake, Easter cake, pig, and lamb, and most importantly, everything was in order, and we didn’t lose face in the dirt in front of the priests. Avdotya was at the height of bliss and walked with a radiant face, dressed in a bright sundress. The pastry chef just made a mistake - he undertook to make some kind of sweet English cake, but the cake didn’t turn out, that is, it turned out very bad. Noticing the next day that everything had been eaten, with the exception of the English cake, the pastry chef was so embarrassed that, without saying a word, he disappeared somewhere.

In the summer, the pastry chef lived somewhere near a church, not far, about ten miles from me. I completely forgot about him. Only in August, when I needed a caretaker for winter crops, potatoes and peas, did I remember about the pastry chef. Give it to me, I think, I’ll take it with me for the winter; it won’t eat him, after all, but he’ll do something in the house. Since August, the pastry chef moved in with me and turned out to be a very useful person: in the fall he looked after peas and potatoes, drove out other people’s horses from the winter crops, of course, he didn’t catch a single horse in the grass (he was old, he slept from his body from the bad grub and lost his strength), but still... After all, the field watchman, the men are wary and don’t let the horses go in vain, and if one comes in by accident, the old man will drive him out. In the fall, the house was caulked and double frames were installed. Now he heats the stoves, Avdotya helps, cleans rooms, teaches the cats if they do something wrong, cleans clothes, washes dishes, and sometimes makes candy.

The pastry chef fired up the ovens. Avdotya came from under the cows. He puts the bread in the oven. He's going to cook. Ivan came.

I decided to go beyond the Dnieper today. Is it possible to buy 24 cheaply? They say they are putting a lot of pressure on redemption payments. There was a police officer in the volost. Now, out of need, maybe someone will sell the hay, otherwise you won’t be able to buy the arrears as soon as they pay off the arrears, which is why now the peasants’ feed is being diminished everywhere.

What are the ransom payments now?

Yes, these are all autumn ones, the hemp ones are knocked out. They sold the hemp, but didn’t pay for it. Hemp is bad these days. There is no bread. Another sold hemp, but did not pay taxes and redemption because he bought bread. So Fedot took some money - he paid from what he got for the hemp, but did not pay the ransom money. Now they press.

Well, go buy some hay. Would you like to stop by the volost? What about our quitrents?

I was recently. The volost promised. Here, he says, I’ll choose the government ones, and I’ll take over yours. Marchenko himself was there.

Well?

Yes, well, nothing. I tell him: what are you doing, you sold the hemp, but you don’t pay the arrears?

He says there is no money. He took twenty rubles for hemp, bought five octets of bread - and showed the bread. You yourself, he says, know that I have six children: after all, they need to be fed. After all, he says, this is not cattle; you can’t kill it and you can’t eat it if there is no food. Do whatever you want, just feed.

What about others?

Others are known to say: if you pay, then pay everyone equally, which is due. If the master will kindly wait for Marchenko, then why should we pay him before? Marchenko still has a bull - let him sell it. He needs to be flogged. If you have children, know how to feed them.

Fine. Well, go with God. Worry about the hay.

Receiving rent is a very difficult matter. It seems that quitrent is a sure income, just like a salary, but it only seems so in St. Petersburg. There, in St. Petersburg, for better or worse, you served for a month and go to the treasurer, get what you deserve. Where did this money come from, how did it get to the treasurer - you don’t know this and calmly put it in your pocket, especially since you think that you deserved it, earned it. It’s not the same here: if you please, receive a quitrent from a person who eats fur bread, which a piece of pure rye bread brings as a gift to children... Add to this that you cannot delude yourself that you deserved, earned this money...

Of course, you can get quitrent, you just have to insistently demand it; but every person is a person, and no matter how you set yourself up, you won’t be able to stand it calmly when you see a woman sobbing, saying goodbye to her cow, which is being taken to auction... You wave your hand and say: I’ll wait. Once, twice, and then run away to work somewhere; It’s easier to demand quitrent from a distance: 25 write to the intermediary, the cattle will be sold, you won’t see painful scenes...

The headman left. I'm going to the barnyard. The cattle have already been given water and they are starting to provide a second supply of food. I go into each barn and see if the morning task is eaten clean. The second task is given in front of me. I look at how the cattle eat, whether some cows are killing off others, and whether one should be put in a separate barn for correction. I go into the calf barn, into the sheepfold, into the cattle hut, where, in addition to the cattleman, the cowwoman (his wife) and their seven children, there are also newborn calves and lambs.

In addition to the headman, I also have a cattleman, Peter, with his wife Khovra and children. The cattleman has seven children: Varnai - 14 years old, Aksinya - 11 years old, Andrey - 10 years old, Prokhor - 8 years old, Soloshka - 6 years old, Pavlik - 4 years old, Khovra - not yet a year old. This entire family, up to and including Soloshka, works tirelessly from morning to night just to feed themselves.

The cattleman Peter himself grazes cattle in the summer, from May 1 to October 1, and in the winter, from October 1 to May 1, he feeds and waters the cattle. His two eldest sons, Varnai (14 years old) and Andrey (10 years old), help him in this work. In the summer, the cattleman, getting up at dawn before sunrise, drives the cattle into the field and, with the help of two older guys (there will be 100 cattle today), grazes them (the youngest, Andrei, usually carries a gun against wolves). At 11 o'clock he drives the cattle to the yard, where the cattle stand until 3 o'clock. At 4 o'clock he again drives the cattle into the field and returns home for the night. And so from day to day, throughout the whole summer, and on weekdays, and on holidays, and in the heat, and in the rain, and in the cold. For the cattleman there is no holiday either in summer or in winter; his holiday differs from weekdays only in that on holidays and Sundays he receives a portion of 1/100 of a bucket) of vodka before lunch. In winter, the cattleman, again with the help of two older guys, feeds and waters the cattle: getting up before light, he gives the first feed; when it gets wet, the women milk the cattle, after which the cattleman waters the cattle, driving each barn especially to water. After watering, he gives a second supply of food, has lunch and rests. In the evening he waters the cattle a second time and gives a third feed for the night. At night in winter, the cattleman has no real peace, because, despite neither the frost nor the blizzard, he must go to the barns several times during the night to look at the cattle, and when the cows begin to calve (December, January, February), he must constantly monitor behind them and always be on the alert, because his job is to accept the calf and bring it to a warm hut. The older guys help the cattleman distribute feed, and even ten-year-old Andrei works in a real way, to the best of his ability: he harnesses the horse, helps his brother put hay on the cart; At this time, the cattleman Peter himself brings feed to the small livestock, because hay needs to be selected for small livestock, and you can’t rely on the guys for this - he drives the horse and delivers feed to the barns and puts it in boxes. Of course, Andrey, to the best of his ability, 26 takes small armfuls of hay; but you should see how he briskly walks between the cows, how he shouts at the bull - and the bull is afraid of him, because Andrei has a whip in his hands. In the summer, Andrei carries a gun for his father, but on occasion he will shoot himself. Once, in the summer, I was in a field not far from a herd that was scattered among the bushes. Suddenly I hear a shot. I run towards the shot and see Andrei (he had just turned ten at the time) holding a smoking gun in his hands. "Who did you shoot at?" - "Into the wolf." - "Where?" - “Yes, behind the ditch; I jumped out of the youth on the other side of the ditch, stopped on the whip, stood and looked at me, such a shaggy one, I fired.” - “How did you shoot?” - the cattleman’s gun is heavy, long, single-barreled, from the 12th year, French, soldier’s. - “He put it on a twig, and fired. Well? So he hit it; and there it is blowing across the field.” Indeed, I see a wolf rushing across the fallow field.

The cattleman's wife, the cowwoman Khovra, milks the cows together with Avdotya and the milkmaids, waters the calves, feeds the lambs, prepares food for her large family - how much bread needs to be baked - washes and dresses the children. In these works she is helped by her eldest daughter, Aksyuta (12 years old), and her youngest, Soloshka (6 years old), whose special duty is to care for little Khovra, whom she rocks in a cradle, drags around the yard, amuses and nurses. Prokhor (8 years old) also helps with the housework: he chops wood, and since he has little strength, he fusses all day to chop as much wood as is needed to heat one stove. Only Pavlik and little Khovra do nothing.

For all this, the cattleman receives 60 rubles a year in money, 6 bags of 6 measures of rye, 2 bags of oats, 11/2 bags of barley, keeps a cow and a sheep on my feed, has a small vegetable garden, which he must cultivate himself, gets a place for sowing one measure flax and one octopus potato, receives 2 servings of vodka - for himself and for his wife - on Sundays and holidays, receives cottage cheese, skim milk, skolotin, as much as my mercy will give (this is not in the contract). Since the cattleman needs at least 11 bags of rye per year for his family, he should buy another 4 bags of 2 measures of rye, which is 34 rubles at current prices. Thus, after spending on bread, out of a salary of 60 rubles, he has only 26 rubles left, of which he pays 20 rubles to the rent for the yard (before, when he had fewer children, he paid 40 rubles), and 6 rubles a year remain for buying salt, vegetable oil, clothes.

Not much, as you can see. Such hard work as that of a cattleman and his entire family is not paid inexpensively. From this example you can see that in our area the situation of the peasants who received 41/2 tithes of the allotment is not at all brilliant, because if there had been any opportunity for Peter to live on his allotment, he, 27 of course, would not have ended up in prison for such a payment. the position of a cattleman, where he has no rest day or night. On the other hand, the situation of cattle breeding among landowners is unenviable, and in its current state it is impossible to give a large payment to the cattleman, since even with such an insignificant payment for labor, the cattle are at a loss. The same can be said regarding other sectors of the economy. The landowner economy is currently being run so poorly, even worse, with less sense and understanding of the matter than in serfdom, when there were good elders-owners - that it is only holding on somehow because labor prices are incredibly low. It seems that my cattleman doesn’t get much, and even then they envy him, and if I refuse him, there will immediately be fifty hunters to take his place.

I always enjoy visiting the cattle hut. I really like this one" kindergarten", where all the children are constantly busy, cheerful, never bored, not capricious, although in the "garden" there is no "Gartnerin" that would be exhausted to occupy the children with useless work and boring sentimental songs, as in St. Petersburg kindergartens, where future citizens of the Russian land are trained in the German way.

After looking around everything in the barnyard, talking with the cattleman, the cowwoman, admiring the guys, calves, lambs - you can’t imagine how cute little Pavlik is when he plays on the floor with the lambs - I return to the house. Avdotya, howling, flushed, excited, in oblivion of feelings, partly even angry, is busy around the stove, on which everything is boiling and bubbling.

I'll serve dinner: it's ready.

Serve it up.

Avdotya sets the table and serves lunch. Having served the food, she stands and anxiously waits for me to say whether it’s good. She is especially worried if she serves some new food: at these moments she is in the same excited state as a student on an exam, like a chemist who burns some newly discovered body. She stands and looks at me: what will happen. Usually everything always turns out very well. Avdotya is at the height of bliss. If it happens that I have guests, then I even feel sorry for Avdotya: she worries to such an extent that she gets a headache from nerve disorder.

Avdotya’s whole life consists of the farm that she manages. Taking everything, from failed butter to a poorly washed stocking, to heart, she is forever worried, suffering and rejoicing. She is stingy to the point of impossibility and protects my property as if it were her own. Impeccably honest. Frank, straightforward, never lies, proud, proud and incredibly hot-tempered; she has always been free, and she does not have those shortcomings that distinguish former serfs: no servility, 28 servility, falsehood, downtroddenness, fear, humiliation. At the end of lunch, sometimes there is a surprise - the pastry chef has made something sweet, “for a snack,” as Avdotya says. The pastry chef and I have a kind of friendship; We are brought together, it seems to me, by the similarity of positions, which we both secretly feel, although we have never expressed it to each other. All my household staff - the headman, the cattleman, the forester, the worker, the housewife, the cowgirl, the old woman, the maids - are men; only the confectioner Savelich is from the courtyards, from the old courtyards, from the natural courtyards, as Avdotya says. As a result of this, Savelich, just like me, the master, enjoys the special respect shown to the “white bone”. Even the headman says “you” to Savelich, just like to me. Savelich is aware of his high birth, his superiority in origin and behaves accordingly: seriously, strictly, apart, because “if you are a bishop, then be a bishop.” This, then, is the first point of approach. Savelich is an experienced man, he lived a lot, saw a lot, experienced everything, lived under different gentlemen, served with a general, visited both Moscow and St. Petersburg, saw the Tsar. I, master, am also an experienced man, I’ve lived a lot, seen a lot, been in different positions, and most importantly, I was once a military man, which is especially respected by the people: “I was a military man, which means I’ve seen the world, tried everything, suffered everything - and the cold , and hunger, maybe they were flogged in the building." This is the second point of approach. Savelich is convinced that only he, an experienced man who served under the masters, understands the master’s treatment, that only he knows what and how I need. Savelich is convinced that if I talk with others, if I am satisfied with the services of the men who make up my economic and at the same time court staff, it is only out of condescension, due to my simplicity. I must confess that I myself feel a special affection for Savelich and it is precisely because of the similarity of our positions, the similarity that is unknown to Savelich. I am a retired professor; he is a retired pastry chef. Instead of giving lectures, tinkering with phenols, cresols, benzenes, supervising trainees in the laboratory, I sell and buy bulls, firewood, flax, bread, tinker with calves and piglets, teach Avdotya how to make pickles, pickle cucumbers, and repair sausages. He, Savelich, instead of making sweets, pies, meringues, marshmallows, guards the peas, drives horses out of greenery, stokes the stoves. Mass of specialized knowledge acquired many years of work, remains without an application for both me and him. Both he and I forget a lot and fall behind. The only difference is that I recently gave up my specialty and therefore have not forgotten everything, I could, perhaps, return to my old studies, although I already feel that I am behind, in two years I think I will forget everything, I will be completely behind, and most importantly , I will not be able to take on the old business with the necessary energy. He, Savelich, had long ago given up his confectionery craft, forgot almost everything and fell completely behind, so that today’s young confectioner would laugh at his works.

After lunch I smoke a cigar, drink punch and dream... Since January, when the sun begins to shine like spring and warms up, after lunch I go out on clear days to bask in the sun. You sit on the porch on the sunny side and warm yourself. Light frost, 8-10 degrees; quiet. The sun shines brightly and warms. Fine. You have to live alone in the village during October, November, December - these terrible months, when it is dark all day long, the sun is never visible in the sky, and if there is a glimpse, it is dim, cold, when there is frost, then thaw, then rain, then snow. , then it drizzles so much when there is no passage, mud or piles, ice or rosemary - so that you learn to appreciate a good sled run in December and the first ray of sun in January. You are in St. Petersburg and have no idea about this. You don’t care whether it’s November, January, or April. The most difficult months for us - October, November, December, January - for you, St. Petersburg residents, are the months of the most vigorous activity, the most intense pleasures and entertainment. You get up at eleven o'clock, drink tea, get dressed, by two o'clock you go to some department, commission, committee, work until five o'clock, have lunch at six, and then - the theater, evening, evening meeting in some commission - time flies unnoticed. And here, what will you do all evening if you are a landowner sitting alone in your farm - peasants are another matter, they live in societies, read? But what to read?

From January it's already sipping in the spring. On Vasilyev's evening, the day is added a chicken step, as people say. At the end of January, the days have already increased significantly, and although the frosts are severe, the sun is warming. In February - it’s not called bokogrey for nothing - after winter has met spring, on good clear days the sun heats up so much that the roofs begin to drip. Every day we get closer and closer to spring. March is already a spring month. With Aldaka (March 1 - Evdokia) spring begins and spring days will begin: Gerasim the “rooker” (March 4), the rooks will arrive; The rook is the first messenger of spring, a dear, long-awaited bird. Magpies (March 9)2, day and night are measured, larks will fly in, bring spring. Alexey “water from the mountains” (March 17), streams will flow - the snow will start to snow, the snow will begin to melt, the sun will warm you up so much that you can even take off your sheepskin coat, but by night it will freeze. Daria “go around the ice hole” (March 19), near the ice holes where cattle are watered in winter, it will melt so much that the manure that the cattle left during watering in winter will become visible. Annunciation (March 25) - spring overcame winter. Fedul (April 5) - a warm wind blew. Rodivon (April 8) - icebreaker. Vasily Pariysky (April 12) - the earth soars. Irina “urvi berega” (April 16), Yegoriy Teply (April 23) - he’s already looking forward to his 30th summer any day now. But after sitting without light for three months, already in February we feel the approach of spring and come to life. As soon as it’s a clear sunny day, everything comes to life and strives to take advantage of the life-giving rays of the sun. At noon, when the eel begins to drip from the roofs, chickens, ducks and all the living creatures pour out into the yard to bask in the sun; sparrows immediately dart between large bird and chirping merrily; a cow released to water will stop in the sun, close its eyes and warm itself. In the barn, all the calves crowd against the window facing the sunny side. Bulls, feeling the approach of spring, roar, get angry, and dig manure with their feet. You sit on your porch in a short fur coat, exposing your face to the warm rays of the sun, smoking, dreaming. Fine.

After basking in the sun, I set off for the second time to do some housework and first of all go to the “old woman”. The “old woman” is an old woman of about seventy years old - she remembers the devastation and loves to tell how the women stabbed the Frenchman with grips, which does not prevent her, however, from being friendly towards the French, because, she says, the French are kind people - but she is still healthy , cheerful, energetic, active. The “old woman” is the hostess in the dining room where all the people dine except the cattleman, who runs his own farm with his family. The “old woman” bakes bread and prepares food for the feast, looks after the pigs, ducks and chickens, which are all under her command, takes care of sick cattle, and every sick animal in the barnyard is transferred to the care of the “old woman”, who is in charge of the barns , built near the dining hut. The “old woman,” like a hostess in a dining room, serves “pieces.”

I do not have a properly organized distribution of baked bread to the poor by weight, as is done, or, better said, was done, in some master's houses. In my dining room, the old woman simply serves “pieces”, just as pieces are served in every peasant household where there is bread - as long as the peasant has his own or purchased bread, he serves pieces until the last minute. I didn't order anything, didn't know anything about these pieces. The “old woman” herself decided that “we” should be served pieces, and so she does.

In our province, even in fruitful years, a rare peasant has enough of his bread to last; Almost everyone has to buy bread, and those who have nothing to buy, then send children, old men, old women to “beg in pieces” around the world. This year we have a complete failure of the harvest for everything: the rye grew poorly and was overflowing with broom, fire, and greenweed; The spring crop was completely gone, so for the most part only the seeds were returned; feed - due to the failure of the spring straw harvest and the poor harvest of grass due to lack of rain - is not enough, and this is the most difficult thing for the peasants, because with a lack of bread in the world, you can still feed yourself somehow with scraps, but you cannot send a horse into the world to beg. It's bad - so bad that it couldn't be worse. Even before Kuzma-Demyan (November 1), the children went to pieces. Cold Yegory (November 26) was hungry this year - two Yegorys a year: cold (November 26) and hungry (April 23). Far before the winter St. Nicholas, the peasants ate their bread and began to buy; I sold the first sack of bread to a peasant in October, and the peasant, as you know, buys bread only when the last pound of homemade flour has been kneaded. At the end of December, every day up to thirty couples passed by, begging for pieces: children, women, old people, even healthy boys and young men, walking and traveling. Hunger is not your brother: if you don’t eat, so sell the saints. The young guy or girl is ashamed, but has nothing to do, puts on a bag and goes out into the world to beg. This year, not only children, women, old men, old women, young boys and girls, but also many owners went to pieces. There is nothing to eat at home - do you understand this? Today we ate the last rug, from which yesterday we served pieces to the beggars, ate it and went into the world. There is no bread, there is no work, everyone would be glad to work, just for the sake of bread, they would be glad, but there is no work. You see - there is no work. “Begging for pieces” and “beggar” are two perfect things. different types begging for alms. A beggar is a specialist; begging is his craft. For the most part, he has neither a yard, nor property, nor a household, and always wanders from place to place, collecting bread, and eggs, and money. The beggar sells everything he collects in kind - bread, eggs, flour, etc. - and turns it into money. A beggar, mostly crippled, a sick person, incapable of work, a weak old man, a fool. The beggar is dressed in rags, asks for alms loudly, sometimes even annoyingly, and is not ashamed of his craft. A beggar is a man of God. A beggar rarely walks among peasants: he hangs around merchants and gentlemen, walks around cities, large villages, and fairs. In our country, real beggars are rare - they have nothing to take. It is completely different to beg "in pieces." This is a peasant from the surrounding area. Offer him a job, and he will immediately take it and will no longer go to pieces. The beggar is dressed like any peasant, sometimes even in a new overcoat, with only a canvas bag over his shoulder; the neighboring peasant doesn’t even put on a bag - he’s ashamed, but comes as if he’d accidentally dropped in with nothing to do, as if to warm up, and the hostess, sparing his modesty, gives it to him unnoticed, as if by chance, or, if he came at lunchtime, invites him sit at the table; in this regard, the man is surprisingly delicate, because he knows that maybe he himself will have to go to pieces. Don’t give up the scrip and prison. The one begging for pieces is ashamed to ask and, entering the hut, crossing himself, stands silently at the threshold, usually saying to himself in a whisper, “Give it, for Christ’s sake.” No one pays attention to the person who has entered, everyone is doing their own thing or talking, laughing, as if no one had entered. Only the hostess 32 goes to the table, takes a small piece of bread, from 2 to 5 square inches, and serves it. He crosses himself and leaves. Pieces are served to everyone of the same size - if they are 2 inches, then everyone is 2 inches; if two people came at a time (those who collect pieces usually go in pairs), then the hostess asks: “Are you collecting together?”; if together, it gives a piece of 4 inches; if separately, then cut the piece in half.

The one who begs in pieces has a yard, a farm, horses, cows, sheep, his woman has outfits - he just doesn’t have bread at the moment, when next year he has bread, he will not only not go begging, but will serve it himself pieces, and even now, if, having survived with the help of the collected pieces, he finds a job, earns money and buys bread, then he will serve the pieces himself. A peasant has a yard for three souls, three horses, two cows, seven sheep, two pigs, chickens, etc. His wife has a supply of her own canvases in her chest, his daughter-in-law has outfits, she has her own money, his son has a new sheepskin coat. In the fall, when there is still a supply of rye, they eat plenty of clean bread, and unless a very prudent owner eats furry bread in the fall - and I have seen such people. A beggar comes and they give you pieces. But then the owner notices that “the bread is short.” They eat less, not three times a day, but two, and then one. Chaff is added to the bread. There is money, there is something left from the sale of stumps, in order to pay duties, the owner buys bread. There is no money - he somehow gets lost, tries to get ahead for work, to borrow money. What kind of interest is paid in this case can be seen from the fact that the owner of a neighboring inn, who sells vodka, bread and other items necessary for a peasant and issues these items on credit, himself borrows money in return to buy, for example, a whole carload of rye, and pays two rubles for one month for fifty rubles, that is, 48%. What percentage does he take? When a peasant has run out of all his bread and has nothing else to eat, children, old women, old men put on their bags and go begging for scraps in neighboring villages. Usually small children return home at night, older ones return when they have collected more pieces. The family eats the collected pieces, and what they don’t eat is dried in the oven as a reserve. Meanwhile, the owner is busy, looking for work, getting bread. The housewife feeds the cattle; she cannot leave the house; grown-up guys are ready to go to work almost for the sake of bread. The owner got hold of some bread, the children no longer eat the pieces, and the housewife again serves the pieces to others. There is no way to get bread - women, young girls and, worst of all (this happens with single people), the owners themselves, follow the children and the elderly; It happens that only the housewife remains in the yard to look after the livestock. The owner no longer walks, but rides on a horse. Such people make their way farther away, sometimes even into the Oryol province. Nowadays, in the middle of winter, we often come across a cart loaded with pieces, and on it is a man with a woman, a girl or a boy. The beggar on horseback collects pieces until he has collected a decent supply; He dries the collected pieces in the oven when he is allowed to spend the night in the village. Having collected pieces, he returns home, and the whole family eats the collected pieces, while the owner at this time works near the house or on the side, if the opportunity arises. The pieces are running out - they harness the horse again and go begging. Some people feed on pieces all winter, and even collect a supply for the spring; sometimes, if there is a supply of collected pieces in the house, they are served from them. In the spring, when it gets warm, the children again go to pieces and wander around the nearby villages. The owners need to work in the spring - this is where it is difficult to get by. There is no other way to get a loan, and in the spring you have to pay the debts again. It will get warmer, mushrooms will grow, but it’s hard to work on mushrooms alone. It's good, if only there is no bread. There is no bread - in the world you can somehow feed yourself until spring. No one dies of hunger, thanks to this mutual aid in pieces. “There were bad years,” one woman told me this fall, who in October no longer had bread, “they thought we would all die of hunger, but we didn’t die; God willing, we won’t die today either. No one dies of hunger.” But it’s bad when there is not only bread, but also feed for livestock, as there is now. You can't feed livestock in the world.

Here is an excerpt from a letter from one peasant to his son, who was in Moscow working (the letter was written by the peasant himself): “Dear son V.I., we show you our deepest respect and we inform you that in our house it is so bad, so bad , how could it be worse - there is no feed, no bread, in a word, there is nothing, even though we ourselves are somehow eating the world, and even drive the cattle from the yard to an open field. There is nothing to buy for, there is not a penny and I don’t know what to do.” This year there is such a lack of food that now in March they don’t ride horses to pieces, as they did in the middle of winter, because the pieces are served, but no one will give a piece of hay for the horse. From all that has been said, it is clear that the “beggar” is not a beggar - he is simply a person who does not have bread at the moment; You cannot say to him: “God will give,” as they say to a beggar if they do not want to give; They tell him: “We’ll go to pieces ourselves,” if they can’t give it to him; When he manages it, he gives it himself, but the beggar doesn’t give it to anyone. Not serving a piece when there is bread is a sin. Therefore, the “old woman” began to serve pieces without asking me, and I think that if I had forbidden her to serve pieces, she would have scolded me, and, perhaps, she would not have lived with me.

The “old woman” gives everyone pieces of the same size - only the old woman gives larger ones to the soldiers (retired, indefinite, on leave), it seems because the soldiers are forbidden or were forbidden before (I probably don’t know this) to ask for alms.

The “old woman” is the commander - I can’t call her anything else - in the 34th dining hut, which also includes pigs and birds. The “old woman” is always busy and, it seems, doesn’t even sleep at night. She is compassionate to the extreme and loves all kinds of cattle to the utmost. But everything is fine with her - the chickens, the ducks, and the pigs. All day long she feeds them, waters them, touches them. Although all ducks are gray, the “old woman” knows each duck by sight. In the summer, she constantly counts chickens and ducklings, gets confused in the counting and at the same time gets disproportionately worried. If a chicken or duckling disappears, the kitten will carry it away - the “old woman” searches, searches, counts all the birds dozens of times (and I have quite a few of them - over the past year I ate 83 chickens), and when all the searches turn out to be in vain, the embarrassed one comes to report to me, that the duckling is missing, cries that she didn’t finish watching, and asks to be deducted from her salary (she receives one and a half rubles a month). The pigs are also in the “old woman’s” arms, and she also constantly fusses with them: she either washes the piglets, then feeds them, then drives them out into the sun, then takes them into the water to swim. Finally, in her care there is a child born to one of the maids and placed in a cradle right there in the dining room, and the “old woman” finds time to tinker with the child, drilling the mother more so that she holds the pacifier neatly, washes the child more often, and does not pump too much and so on.

The “old woman” knows what every bird, every cattle needs, down to the last detail. She treats cattle excellently. If the cattle gets sick, they should go to the “old woman” now. Look, after a week or two I recovered. It's just amazing. And the old woman does not take any medicine, except that sometimes she makes a poultice from some herbs or tongues a cow copper sulfate will anoint. Usually, he takes the cow into a warm hut, in emergency cases, even leaves it in the hut next to his bed at night, sprinkles it with holy water from three villages (for baptism they bring water from three different villages and save it all year round; you can’t do without this water on the farm, because it needs to be sprinkled on every newborn calf and lamb), he fumigates with a candle, washes it and begins to feed it with this and that: he will give soft hay, baked bread, oats with chaff, oatmeal, flour drink, clean water. He follows her, looks after her, caresses her, notices that the cow is eating - you look, and she has recovered. I am sure that even Professor Bazhanov, who wrote so many books on cattle breeding, is no better able to care for livestock than my “old woman.” The professor himself - but we do not have a professor - a specialist in the field of feeding livestock - Professor Groven himself, who collected all the experiments regarding feeding in his "Kritische Darstellung aller Futterungs-Versuche", is unlikely to fatten a pig, goose or duck to such disgrace, like "old woman". The main thing is that the “old woman” does all this somehow by eye, simply, without hanging the feed, without calculating how much protein, carbohydrates, etc. should be given. I must admit, I don’t have any scales on my farm that could be used to weigh livestock and feed. Everything is done by eye - everyone is already used to it. “There will be 27 arshins here,” says the carpenter; I measure, it comes out to 27 arshins and a quarter, it’s not worth measuring, because the quarter doesn’t matter. The cowman and the cowgirl think that the “old woman” “knows,” that is, that she knows how to cast a spell; but this is nonsense. The “old woman” simply, as the men say, “understands cattle,” she knows its nature to a fine degree, loves cattle, has enormous experience, because she lived among cows, sheep, pigs, and chickens for fifty years. The “old woman” treats cattle with clean air, sunlight, suitable food, soft bedding, attentive care, and affection; studies the individuality of each animal and, according to this, places it in certain hygienic conditions, feeds it with this or that food. I have such faith in the knowledge of the “old woman” that if she said: “God willing, it will pass,” I am absolutely convinced that the beast will recover. I would rather believe the “old woman” than the veterinarian, who thinks that his medicines are specific remedies against diseases.

Sometimes I go to the “old woman” - she loves it. The "old woman" tells me her joys - such and such a chicken has begun to lay eggs, a sick cow, God bless her, is getting better - and sorrows - a duck's leg was crushed, the kitten is somehow bored - and leads me into the barns to show the pigs, geese, ducks. Everything is always in order with the “old woman” - the stables are linen, the dishes are clean, the pigs, God bless them, are growing well.

Having examined everything at the “old woman’s”, I go to the barnyard for the second time. The cattle were watered a second time and given food for the night. I look to see if the second dacha is well eaten, how the cattle are accepted for the evening dacha. I watch how the calves are watered and the cows are milked.

It's getting dark. I'm coming home to drink tea. It is Savelich’s job to prepare the samovar for my arrival, because Avdotya is under the cows at this time. Until now there has never been a case where the pastry chef was late with the samovar. I enter the kitchen - the samovar is boiling. Savelich did it right.

During evening tea I have a report. First of all, Avdotya appears and reports how much milk has been milked, in what position the cows and calves are, which cows are giving birth, which ones have been assigned, what is the reason for this or that cow, etc., etc. Since there is nothing to do in the evening in the winter, the report is lengthy , detailed and thorough. After Avdotya, Ivan comes with a report and reports what has been done around the house today and what will be done tomorrow. We talk with him every day for a long time: we consult about the present, discuss the past, make assumptions about the future. He tells me all the village news.

Today, A.N., there was a trial in the village. 36

On what occasion?

Yesterday Vasily beat Eferov’s wife Khvorosya almost to death.

Yes for Peter. The peasants in the village have long noticed that Pyotr (Peter, a peasant from a foreign village, works in our mill) follows Khvorosya. We wanted to catch everything, but we couldn’t, but today we caught it. (The men look after the women of their village so that they don’t play around with other people’s guys; it’s okay with your fellow villagers - that’s the husband’s business, but don’t you dare with strangers.) And that’s all Ivan. We noticed at lunch that Peter was not in the tavern and Khvorosya was not there. They guessed what Moreich must have in his hut - there is no house, just an old woman. The whole world came to see Moreich. Locked. They knocked - the old woman opened the door, Khvorosya was sitting with her, but there was no one else. However, Ivan found it. He pulled Peter out from under the bench. Laughed at.

What about the husband, Ether?

Nothing. Peter gives Efera some vodka. But Vasily became enraged.

What about Vasily?

Like what? But he’s been living with Khvorosya for a long time, and now she’s taken Peter. In the evening, Vasily waylaid Khvorosya as she sank into the water, jumped out from around the corner with a log, and, well, carry her; He beat her, beat her, beat her to death. If the women had not heard, he would have killed him to death. They brought me home dead, even completely blackened. Now he’s lying on the stove and can’t turn around.

How did it end?

Today the world was gathering to Ether. Tried. They ordered that Vasily pay Efer ten rubles, assign a worker to Efer until Khvorosya recovers, and give the world half a bucket of vodka for the trial. They also drank vodka in front of me.

What about Khvorosya?

Nothing, he’s lying on the stove, groaning. Listar was also beaten. Listar, having drunk, began to show off at Kuzya. Panas says to him: why are you showing off? Listar and boast: why shouldn’t I show off - I’m not guilty of either the king or the lord. A! says Panas, so you want to collect the master’s money from me! Bang him in the snout. Kuzya got involved here, Efer, Mikhalka - they all piled on Listar; They beat him and beat him, and Mikhalka kept saying: don’t go to someone else’s wife, don’t go - they beat him bloody. I tell them: what are you guys, all for one. That’s what they say he needs: we know, they say, why we’re beating.

Ivan left, the tea party was over. Boring. I sit alone and read Dumas’s novels, which a neighboring landowner provided me with. Avdotya, Ivan, Savelich, having drunk tea, are getting ready to go to dinner. “We’ll go to dinner,” says Avdotya, who came in to make the bed, 37 “and I’ve set dinner for you in the dining room.” People went to the dining room. I'm going to the dining room. The cats, knowing that I will give them a tasty morsel at dinner, run after me. I have two cats - a large black and white cat and a black, yellow and white female cat; I got such a cat of national color for experience. They say that only cats are black, yellow and white, and that there are never cats of that color; They say that when a black-yellow-white cat is born, it means the end of the world is coming. I want to see if this is true. The first sign of the approaching end of the world is, as we know, the appearance of a large number of whiners, that is, people who keep whining; the second is the birth of a black, yellow and white cat. After the "Regulations" a lot of whiners appeared. I want to see if a black, yellow and white cat will be born.

My cats are trained in such a way that when I sit down to have dinner, they jump onto the chairs that stand around the table at which I have dinner: one sits on my right side, the other on my left. After drinking vodka, I have dinner and during dinner I teach the cats patience and good manners, so that they sit decorously, do not put their paws on the table, wait until the big ones take it, etc.

And outside there is a blizzard, a blizzard, the kind of weather about which they say: “You can’t eat for at least three days and don’t leave the stove.” The wind howls, Lyska’s depressing abrupt bark is heard: “gau”, “gau”, half a minute later again “gau”, “gau”, and so on ad infinitum. Wolves, therefore, roam nearby.

After dinner, I go to bed and dream...

Anyone interested in history should read this. A stunning fundamental description of the life of a Russian village in the second half of the 19th century.

The author, Alexander Nikolaevich Engelhardt, is an extremely extraordinary person. He was a professor of chemistry, but at some point he was exiled to the family estate. There he decided to put his academic knowledge into practice. It didn’t work out, but through trial and error, the ex-professor was able to raise a quite prosperous farm. For 15 years - a period that clearly speaks of the success of the event, not even to mention the statistics provided - the author regularly wrote “letters” to magazines.

At the very beginning, the author clearly outlines his position " Do you want me to write to you about our village life? I do it, but I warn you that I absolutely cannot think, speak, or write about anything else but about the Economy. All my interests, all the interests of the people with whom I meet every day, are concentrated on firewood, bread, livestock, manure... We don’t care about anything else.". And indeed, the author does not indulge one iota in any kind of soaring in the clouds, but meticulously, in numbers and facts, in endless piles of figures and boundless mountains of facts, he paints a picture of agriculture and the life of peasants.

Why you should read this to modern man? Even putting aside the understanding of the state of the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th century, this is a rare work. It is rare in that the author is one of the few examples of successful landowners who wrote literature. And, despite the clearly applied, down-to-earth, vulgar The nature of the text is precisely that of a literary work.

Let literature experts correct me, but the vast majority of famous writers are categorically not successful people in worldly life. There is a good review, for example, . Regardless of everything said in their works, in fact they were absolutely unable to make ends meet.

And this book is an opportunity to see the view from the other side of the screen.

A few words about the author himself, as I saw him through this book. Professor, intellectual, clearly Slavophile, chauvinist and conservative. Apparently, God-fearing, but anti-clericalism constantly shines through the texts. He is convinced that the basis of a strong state, as he clearly wants Russia to be, is well-fed and wealthy people. He perfectly understands the value of money and approves of everyone's desire to benefit - but only in the long term. He understands that it is impossible to achieve this without fundamental changes in law and law, and therefore is sympathetic to the populists.

Such an author seems to me to be perhaps the best interlocutor for immersion in history. A fair amount of time should be allocated for mastering, about two weeks. Reading is complicated by numerous repetitions and reformulations by the author of the same things - but he tries to write a text that is understandable for any reader.

Now I will give many quotes, which, nevertheless, constitute only a small fraction of the text and cannot constitute all the immersion that the entire book will provide. So they are absolutely no substitute for reading the text itself, which I highly recommend.
I do not do any sorting by the meaning of the sections, just as the author himself, in his discussions, regularly and extensively touches on all topics.

About the advantages of globalization and interest on loans:

It was also fortunate that the railway supported: firstly, there was income - sawing and transportation of firewood sent from here to Moscow - and secondly, due to the transportation of bread by rail, steppe rye did not rise above 7 rubles, while local rye went to 8 rubles. If it were not for the railway, rye would have reached 12 rubles, as in previous years. I repeat, the situation was terrible. The poorer peasants sold and mortgaged everything they could - both future grain and future labor. The interest on the borrowed money was enormous, 30 kopecks per ruble or more for 6 months. (...) Indeed, it is very often much more profitable for a peasant to borrow money and give a large percentage, especially through work, than to undertake to work off the borrowed money, even at a high price for work. Under certain conditions, a peasant cannot take your work, even if you give him an exorbitantly high price, let’s say two rubles a day, because by taking your work, he must lose his farm, upset his yard, no matter what it is; It’s clear that the man holds on with both his hands and his teeth.

About class struggle:

With the current economic system, with the existing relations, it is beneficial for every producer of bread for sale if bread is expensive. No one, of course, says: “Today, thank God, there is a bad harvest,” but don’t they rejoice when there is a bad harvest abroad, when the demand for bread is high, when bread prices are high? “The Germans now have a shortage of food, the Germans need bread, the demand is great, prices are rising,” everyone rejoices. (...)
This is where the whole difference lies. The master wants bread to be expensive, the man wants bread to be cheap. A man, even a rich one, is never happy about the high cost of bread. This need of the mass of peasants for bread, this need for bread to be cheap, is characterized by the fact that not a single peasant will ever say: “Thank God, bread is expensive.” This is more than indecent, more than shameful, this is an outrage, this is a sin, a great sin for which God will punish.
If the welfare of the peasants improved, if the peasants did not need bread, what would the landowners do with their bread? Note also that with a harvest, not only does the price of grain decrease, but, in addition, the price of labor rises. If the peasant had enough bread, would he really begin to cultivate the landowner’s fields at the fabulous cost? low prices, according to which it processes them now?
The interests of one class conflict with the interests of another. It is clear that the landowners cannot stand that the landowners' farms are falling into decay, that the landowners' lands are passing into the hands of peasant kulaks, petty bourgeois, merchants...
Our economy will only be on the right path when everyone desires favorable weather, harvest, cheap bread, when no one will say with their hearts: “Well, how can there be expensive bread!”
Never and nowhere have our landowners realized that the worker receives too little (...) If the landowners had really posed the question as the reviewer of the Agricultural Newspaper poses it, they would not have complained about the high cost of workers, but would have sought means to reducing the cost of the work itself, that is, not only leaving the worker the pay that he now receives, but even increasing it, we would try to increase the productivity of work by introducing improved tools, etc. In this sense, there is no one to even complain about, because that would mean complaining about oneself, about one’s ineptitude. Why complain that work is unproductive? Who should I complain to and why? Does anyone forbid the owner to introduce this or that system of farming, to use this or that implement, to keep this or that livestock, to feed or not feed horses with oats, to transport manure in carts with iron axles? What is there to complain about?
No, the landowners are not complaining about that at all: they are complaining precisely about the high cost of labor, they are precisely saying that wages are too high, that peasants charge too much for cultivating the land

About the armament of the population:

Almost all young people are hunters, almost all have guns, and here and there you can see a hound dog. On Sunday, the holiday, young people go hunting for hazel grouse, black grouse, and hares.
Then I saw that here in winter almost everyone travels armed for “cases.” Richer gentlemen mostly carry revolvers with them. Small gentlemen, clerks, elders, courtyard workers, peasants who have guns carry or carry guns with them, and a simple peasant has either an ax in his belt or a club in his hands: everyone, especially in winter, when going somewhere alone, takes take something with you in reserve. Don’t think that we will be restless; neither murders, nor robberies, nor major thefts - horse stealing has appeared only recently - is not heard in our parts. Meanwhile, everyone has with him a “reserve for the occasion,” the hour is uneven, an animal or an evil person will pounce. Of course, first of all they are afraid of the beast, but they always have “chance” in mind, and everyone looks suspiciously at everyone they meet, as if expecting to meet a robber in him. (...) Of course, at the age of three, the peasants of neighboring villages, especially the young ones, little by little became more trusting, seeing that I was not cheating, not deceiving, paying according to agreement, not pressing.

About the people's desire for education:

They don’t yet know that with us everything is possible, that if the authorities wish, the peasants of any volost will draw up a verdict about the desire to open in their volost not just a school, but a university or a classical gymnasium! I wanted to talk to the gentlemen who believe what is published in Vedomosti. I wanted to check myself, because three years ago, when I was still in St. Petersburg, I also believed everything that was written in the newspapers, I believed that the people strive for education, that they organize schools and donate money to them, that there are trustees , that there are hospitals, etc., etc. In a word, I believed not only that in some volost the peasants had decided to “establish a school,” but also my own correspondent’s reasoning that “it’s gratifying to see how people strive for education.” , etc.
Yes... three years ago I believed all this. But in the village I soon learned that many things were wrong, and that the Vedomosti could not be trusted; I got to the point where I stopped reading newspapers and just wondered, for whom is all this being written?
I was traveling from St. Petersburg with the conviction that in the last ten years everything has changed, that the people have quickly moved forward, etc., etc. You can imagine what my surprise was when, soon after I settled in the village, a man came to me with a request to intercede for him, because his son is not in line to be taken to school.
“Stand up, they’re offending you,” he says, “they’re demanding that my son is not in line for school, my son served school last winter, and now they’re demanding him again.”
So-called guys brainwork valued very cheaply (...). In one village school teacher The men set a salary of only 60 rubles a year, for him, the teacher, to eat. The trustee says that it is not enough that the farm laborer, the field worker, if you count grub, is paid more. And the men responded: if there are few, let them become farm laborers; anyone who is weak can be a teacher - you never know, anyone who cannot work. And then they began to calculate: he has a free summer, there is no training, if he undertakes to mow, how much he will mow! the soldiers have been spared.
Noting receipts and expenses on his pieces of paper, Ivan (illiterate) indicates with his writing only the amount dispensed and received, but to whom it was dispensed, from whom it was received, he remembers all this. In general, peasants-prasols and other people have a memory for objects with which they deal, and the ability to measure by eye and touch is incredibly developed, and moreover, all peasants believe surprisingly correctly.
Every peasant boy, every girl can count to a certain number. “Petka can count to 10”, “Akulina can count to 30”, “Micah can count to 100”. “Can count to 10” does not mean at all that Petka can count one, two, three, etc. up to 10; no, “can count to 10” - this means that he can do all the arithmetic operations on numbers up to 10. Several boys will bring, for example, a hundred or a hundred and a half crayfish to sell. They know how much money they should receive for all the crayfish and, having received the money, they divide it exactly among themselves, according to the number of crayfish caught by each.
When teaching arithmetic to peasant boys, the teacher must always keep this in mind, and he only has to use the available material and, having understood how the boy thinks, develop the calculation further and show that “you can count to infinity.” Peasant boys count much better than the master's children. Their intelligence, memory, eye, hearing, and sense of smell are developed immeasurably higher than those of our children, so that when you see our child, especially a city child, among peasant children, you might think that he has neither ears, nor eyes, nor legs, no hands.
[about 10 years later, we are talking about wealthy peasants]
When there was a fashion for literacy, soon after the “Regulation”, and we had a school in the volost, children had to be forced into this school, fathers did not want to send their children to school, they considered serving school as a duty. The fathers were reluctant to send their children to school, the children were also reluctant, and was there even time before school when the children went to “pieces” in the winter? (...) In recent years, the desire for literacy has begun to develop strongly. Not only do fathers want their children to learn, but children themselves want to learn. In winter, the children themselves ask to be taught to read and write, and not only the children, but also the adults: they work during the day and learn to read and write in the evening. The peasants even had their own schools in the villages. The owners will persuade some literate teacher, rent a little house from a little girl - and that’s the school. The study begins in December and continues until Holy Day. (...)
Of course, these schools are bad, the teachers are bad, the children in them do not quickly learn even poor literacy, but the important thing is that these are their own, peasant schools. The main thing is that this school is close, that it is in its own village, that it belongs to us, that the teacher is his own man, not a white-handed woman, not a gentleman, not a whim, he eats the same as a peasant, sleeps like a peasant. It is important that the teacher teaches here in the village, just as it is important for the women that the village has its own midwife. Suppose they teach better in the zemstvo school, but where is this zemstvo school? - Ten miles somewhere!

About the harsh Russian wastelands:

My white sided doesn't have a tail. Maybe this one was born, or maybe it was torn off in the summer in the wasteland. Every year in our wastelands, about 5 or 6 cows tear off their tails: they will start to smack away the gadflies with their tails, get caught in a tree, the shepherd will not notice and drown the herd, the cow breaks, breaks, tears off the tail (that’s how tails are found on trees later) and the whole cow runs home covered in blood, without a tail. Maybe they would at least give this cow a piece of commendation because she is very convenient for grazing in our wastelands.

About exhibitions of national economic achievements:

The rural owners who had come to the exhibition from the province were portrayed by two of us, that is, me and Sidor: I was a representative of the landowners (I was the only one in the entire province who went to the exhibition), Sidor was a representative of the peasant class. (...) read the report and found out that the zemstvo gave 300 rubles for the exhibition, the Ministry state property 500 rubles, Ministry of Finance 500 rubles, which from the ministries and various agricultural societies issued 3 gold, 7 large silver, 20 small silver and 6 bronze medals. This means that I was not the only one who believed in the exhibition; I was not the only one who thought that this was a serious matter. But who, in fact, could have known that no one would come to the exhibition, that no one except the managers and a few city dwellers would attend it, that only one horse, not a single sheep, several bad cows, unsold cars would be exhibited? from some warehouse

About the academic nature of science:

I can’t extract anything from agronomic books. In all this mass of books and journal articles, what is striking is the absence common sense, practical knowledge and even the ability to imagine the real thing. Well, let’s say you don’t do the actual work in practice, so is it really impossible, when writing an article, to imagine yourself in the position of a person who must do what is written about in practice? Well, let’s say you’re writing an article about breeding clover, is it really impossible to imagine yourself in the position of a person who actually has to sow clover, who first of all needs to buy the seeds, and, therefore, needs to be able to discern whether they are good, etc.... Perfect lack of practical knowledge and some kind of ox-like lethargy - as if all these books were written by castrati. I have heard many times from learned agronomists that practical farming cannot be presented in lectures, books and articles, but this is not true. (...) Studying agronomy from books, just like studying chemistry or anatomy from books, is masturbation for the mind.
Leaving St. Petersburg, I took with me a lot of agronomic books (...) Nothing of my own, everything was taken from the Germans: such and such a German says this and that - give it here; another German says the exact opposite - come here; the third German says... drag it here, throw it all in a pile, whoever needs it will sort it out. There is darkness in every article, but no action.
(...)
The Germans here, however, are not to blame for anything, because they write for themselves: we are free to carry everything from them into our womb without chewing!
Natural sciences have no homeland, but agronomy, as an applied science, is alien to cosmopolitanism. There is no Russian, English or German chemistry, there is only chemistry common to the whole world, but agronomy can be Russian, or English, or German. Of course, I do not want to say by this that we cannot borrow anything in terms of agronomy from Germany, but we cannot limit ourselves to Western agronomy alone.

About how money spoils a person:

I noticed that the richer the village, the more prosperous and sophisticated the peasants, the more they try to good relations to the landowner, the nearest neighbor. A wealthy man is always polite, respectful, ready for all sorts of small favors - what does it mean to him to send a woman for a day or two at a time when field work is over? Of course, he will not undertake to work for next to nothing, but if the price is right and profitable and he takes the job, then he works excellently.
Not only poor women come to take flax and crush it, but also rich women, one can even say that the rich women do the bulk of the work and take most of the money given for picking and crushing. In rich households, the women are all strong, tall, healthy, well-fed, and dexterous. (...) Well-fed rich women crush up to 11/2 pounds of flax, while women of the poor, short, frail, weak, crush at the same time 30 pounds.

About attitude towards children:

I met Baba Panfilikha from a neighboring village,
- The will of God. The Lord is not without mercy - he took mine away,
- it’s still easier.
- Which one?
— The youngest one, I took away the other day. God, not without mercy, looked at us, his orphan sinners.
Everyone in the village decided that Aksyuta would die. The mother, who loved and spoiled Aksyuta very much, treated this with complete composure, that is, with that, so to speak, insensibility with which one hungry person treats another. “And if he dies, well, it doesn’t matter, he should get married in the fall, get out of the house; if he dies, then the expense will be less” (it costs less to bury him than to marry him off).
- Hello, master.
- Hello. Where are you going from?
— I went to the “pieces”. My daughter-in-law had it. The boy died.
- I know, I heard.
- Died. How many times have I told her: “Look, don’t curse him! I know that it’s difficult for you, just don’t curse, the hour is not even, you don’t know what time you’ll end up!” - I, he says, mommy, will never swear, let him live, God bless him! Died. Well, yes, it’s better, but it’s still easier.
- Everything is easier.

About the showdown in the area and the division of the flock:

A funny incident happened only with this relocation. I said that the peasants accepted comrades from other villages. They moved to a farm: one peasant from one village, the other from another. It turned out that one peasant was a parish in one village, the other was a parish in another village; the farm itself, when it was owned by the landowner, was a parish in the third village. Our peasants very much stick to their parishes, firstly, because each village celebrates its own holiday - some of the Intercession of the Father, some of the Trinity Mother, some of the Ascension - and has its own corresponding images; secondly, because everyone in their parish has their own “graves,” and the peasants adhere very strictly to commemorations of the deceased, going to each parent’s grave to commemorate their parents.
Each of the evicted peasants called a priest from his parish for the holiday to consecrate the house; this is nothing, because we have villages in which part of the households go to one village, and part to another, but that priest, where the farm was previously a parish, intervened and did not allow others to serve.
“My land,” he says, “one peasant told me, “I won’t allow strangers to serve on my land, I’ll take away the image.”
- How will he take it? - I ask.
“So, he says, they don’t dare serve on my land, I’ll take the image “to the stable,” the man said.
- Like in a barn?
“I didn’t understand at first, but then it became clear that the peasant applied to the images the expression that we usually use when they pick up a horse in the grass. They usually say: “taken into the stable.”
“So strangers were afraid to serve.” The peasants, they say, arranged things in such a way that they invited an old supernumerary priest to serve in the new houses, who was not afraid and served superbly - not like the priests of the new formation, who usually serve quickly.
“The old priest served so well, so well,” the peasant said, “not like the young ones: a whole candle in front of the icons was burned for service, but that’s all there is left,” and he pointed to the tip of his nail.
Peasants always measure the service by the number of candles burned at the image and, according to this, determine whether the priest charges dearly or not. Our priests of the new formation have not raised prices for ordinary services, which can be done without, they have only raised prices for weddings, etc., but they serve less, rather: a quarter of a candle, an octam, as the peasants put it. Then it came out, they say, that the peasants were allowed to remain in their parishes.

About knowing your faith:

May 11 (renewal of Constantinople in 330) in many villages peasants do not work, they pray to the Tsar-Grad, so that he, father, does not destroy the fields. Prayers are served. /about the holiday itself / (...)
the sexton singing “Hallelujah” and “Hail” during the prayer service is also convinced that they are praying to the Tsar-City, and diligently makes bows so that his rye is not hit by hail
The priests call “land income” the income received for burying the dead. “It’s bad these days,” complains another priest or sexton, “it’s bad now, there’s not enough income from land - more and more children are dying, no, not like real people.”
They take flax from me mainly on holidays - I’ll explain why below - or on Fridays, when women consider it a sin to take their flax and do some other work, but for me it’s not a sin to work for them, because the sin will fall on the owner or, better yet, say, on his field, which for this could be knocked out by hail, etc., which I, the owner, again, am not afraid of, because I can transfer the sin to the companies that insure against hail and fire, that is, to their shareholders.

About the peasant bank:(in my history textbook it was written that this was forced bondage, which only ruined the peasants, for example)

And we have opened a branch of a peasant bank (...) Five villages adjacent to my estate have already purchased quite a significant amount of land.
And it turns out well.
The owners are happy that they can sell land they don’t need, which they don’t know what to do with, from which they receive no income, and for which it is difficult to find buyers other than peasants. For sale, mostly sections, open lands, wastelands, individual neglected farmsteads, etc.
The peasants are happy that they can buy the lands they need “for eternity.” They can “bring to fruition” the purchased lands. The purchased lands are always essential for the peasants; many of them, for the most part, before, and others from the very “Regulations” already used them, serving their owners’ jobs for them, usually processing “circles”. But these works are for peasants highest degree shy. Only necessity - because “there is nowhere to go” - forces the peasants to work in circles for the use of these lands. Use is the most unprofitable, usually using only what the land gives, remaining in a wild, uncultivated state. And our lands are thin, bad, and by themselves they give very little. These are bad dry mowings and pastures. Only when processing and good fertilizer they can be “brought to work,” as the peasants say; but this is expensive, and, using the land only temporarily - peasants usually rent land for a year, many for three, without the right to plow - who will invest labor and money in it!
Now, thanks to the assistance of the peasant bank, the matter is being settled perfectly, to the mutual satisfaction of both owners and peasants. The owners receive the money they need - the peasants acquire the land they need. Both sides are happy. It turns out good. (...)
The peasants who bought land with the assistance of the bank, this truly beneficent institution, rejoiced this year. The earth has been a great help. There is enough bread. The peasants somehow especially love this purchased land and talk about it with some kind of tenderness, so to speak. They constantly think and worry about earning money and paying the bank on time. They work excellently for the landowner for an additional payment, they always show up for work promptly, in unison, with the whole village, according to the first order. (...)
Peasants are very concerned about timely payments to the bank, fearing that they will be late with payment; They keep a watchful eye on each other in this regard and have a huge moral influence on each other, encouraging them to earn money and not miss an opportunity when some work presents itself. This is especially noticeable in the careless lazy people, exceptional for the village, who usually did nothing since the fall, while there was bread, and did not undertake any outside work. To me, as an owner who constantly demands work force, especially day laborers, all this is very noticeable. I even find that the peasants live more soberly; Before, somehow we lived more carelessly. There is bread - well, okay: “even if you’re not tired, you’re still calm”; But now it’s not the same - everyone is trying to make money.

About fidelity in marriage and chastity:(no match for our age of total depravity and decline)

Relations between men and women among peasants are brought to the greatest simplicity. In the spring, when the farmhands and farmhands gather, within two weeks all relationships have been established, and everyone knows who is busy with whom. Usually, relationships once established in the spring are firmly preserved until the fall, when everyone disperses in different directions, perhaps never meeting again. At the same time, the woman enjoys complete freedom, but must first leave the person with whom she is engaged, and then she is free to immediately engage with whomever she wants. No jealousy. But while a woman is busy with someone, she is inviolable for other men, and any attempt by any man in this regard will be punished - his comrades will beat him. Men don’t even look at a busy woman until she breaks up with the person she was busy with and becomes free.
- Today, A.N., there was a trial in the village.
- On what occasion?
“Yesterday Vasily beat Eferov’s wife Khvorosya almost to death.
- For what?
- Yes, for Peter. The peasants in the village have long noticed that Pyotr (Peter, a peasant from a foreign village, works in our mill) follows Khvorosya. We wanted to catch everything, but we couldn’t, but today we caught it. (The men look after the women of their village so that they don’t play around with other people’s guys; it’s okay with your fellow villagers - that’s the husband’s business, but don’t you dare with strangers.) And that’s all Ivan. I noticed at lunch that Peter was not in the tavern and Khvorosya was not there. They guessed that Moreich must have had a hut - there was no house, just an old woman. The whole world came to see Moreich. Locked. They knocked - the old woman opened the door, Khvorosya was sitting with her, but there was no one else. However, Ivan found it. He pulled Peter out from under the bench. Laughed at.
- What about your husband, Ether?
- Nothing; Peter gives Ether some vodka. But Vasily became enraged.
- What about Vasily?
- Like what? But he’s been living with Khvorosya for a long time, and now she’s taken Peter in. In the evening, Vasily waylaid Khvorosya as she sank into the water, jumped out from around the corner with a log, and, well, carry her; He beat her, beat her, beat her to death. If the women had not heard, he would have killed him to death. They brought me home dead, even completely blackened. Now he’s lying on the stove and can’t turn around.
- How did it end?
“Today the world was gathering to Epher.” Tried. They ordered Vasily to pay Efer ten rubles, assign a worker to Efer until Khvorosya recovers, and give the world half a bucket of vodka for the trial. They also drank vodka in front of me.
Hunters of village strawberries know this very well and always take advantage of it. The morals of village women and girls are incredibly simple: money, some kind of scarf, under certain circumstances, as long as no one knows, as long as it is sewn and covered, they do everything. And judge for yourself: day laborers on their grub cost from 15 to 20 kopecks, for crushing a pound of flax 30 kopecks - flax is crushed at night and during the night only the best woman crushes a pound - for a day of threshing 20 kopecks. What does a fiver, even a quarter, or even a hundred ticket in rare cases mean to a gentleman coming from St. Petersburg? Judge for yourself! A hundred-hundred ticket for “not being washed away,” and 15 kopecks for day labor.

About Vedic femininity:

The work was completed, but all the time the women were swearing mercilessly - as only women can swear - everyone cursed the men (male husbands - the woman says “my man”, “her man”), why did they take this job: “Here , took a job so that the devils would be empty,” “Now work for them so that their stomachs will be eaten out,” etc., etc., non-stop, whole days. The men laughed it off: “You’re not working for us, but for your own guts - after all, you ate bread in the winter.” “Yes, I ate it,” the woman grumbles, “so that this bread gets in your throat - you get drunk yourself, and then kill yourself.” “Well, well, work,” the man objects, “I know you - you just need to sit and distill bread, you’re so lazy.” Both at work, and on their way home from work, and at home, women incessantly sharpened men. They fought back, laughed it off, but the women prevailed; in all matters where women’s interests are hurt, women always overpower the men, and anyone who starts a new business, in order to be successful, must first of all pay attention to how much women’s interests will be affected. in this matter, because all the power is in the women, which is understandable to everyone who, knowing the position of the woman in the village, takes into account that 1) the woman does not pay taxes and 2) that the woman cannot be flogged.

About the failures of labor organizations with indirect personal gain:

Thirty women, each working for themselves, at a certain time will produce, for example, 30 pounds of flax, but the same 30 women at the same time, working as an artel and, moreover, if processing is carried out from tithes, will produce no more than 15 pounds. Moreover, if women work for themselves and crush flax by the piece for a certain payment of a pood, then the tithe will give, for example, 35 poods of flax, but if they work by the tithe, then the same tithe will give no more than 25 or 30 poods, and 5 10 poods of flax will remain in the fire, will be wasted uselessly and the owner will receive from 10 to 20 rubles in loss, because then the woman will not care how much flax she gets, and she will even try to put more flax into the fire, so that there will be less work and to make it easier to carry the flax bundle to the barn.
So, with this method of processing flax, there are two circumstances: 1) the fact that the work is done together, indiscriminately, and not divided by each individual, and 2) that the work is done at a time when the woman, according to custom, is working for herself at home , and here she has to work for her yard owner - may be the reason for the lack of labor. But you just have to change the order of work, and hands will immediately be found, especially if you increase wages, what the owner can do without harming his pocket. Namely, if you add from 10 to 20 rubles to the previous price for processing tithes of 25 rubles, that is, as much as the owner will receive for the excess compared to the previous amount of flax that will be obtained from a more thorough crushing, then this will greatly increase wages fee.

About the carelessness of the Russian peasant:

Over the course of two years, I became acquainted with the neighboring peasants, and they recognized me; a certain mutual trust was established, although each of us still remembers the proverb: “That’s why the pike is in the sea, so that the crucian does not sleep.” Not a bad relationship at all. I never delay the payment of money, I calculate correctly, and if the price has not been agreed upon, then I do not press, but pay like God; if I am not at home or I am busy with guests, then Ivan makes the payment. And then a man comes for money - now it’s impossible, the master or lady is sleeping; comes another time - it’s impossible, the master and the guests are busy; comes for the third time - there is no money, wait, I’ll sell the bread. Correct payment of money is the first step, but this is not enough. You must be able to value work, know what is worth what, and if it happens that a man makes a mistake or, at the very least, from hunger, takes work for too cheap a price - this often happens - you need to delve into the matter and calculate in a divine way, so that you also suffer a loss there wasn’t, and the man would have been satisfied. If a man does not fulfill the conditions, quits his job, refuses an obligation, then again we need to delve into the matter and sort it out thoroughly. There will always be some good reason: something has changed Family status man, the prices have gone up, the work is beyond our ability, or anything like that; Fraud rarely happens here. I'm not getting married to anyone; I have never once complained to a peace officer, or a mediator, or a volost, and yet for the most part I lend money and grain without receipts, I give deposits without conditions - and so far none of the peasants have deceived me.
Listening to what different newspaper correspondents say, it seems impossible to manage. The man is a drunkard, a thief, a swindler, doesn’t fulfill conditions, doesn’t pay off debts, leaves work after taking a deposit, is lazy, works poorly, spoils the master’s tools, etc., etc. There is none of this; at least it’s been three years since I’ve been in charge, and I haven’t seen anything like it. I, of course, will not prove that the peasant represents the ideal of honesty, but I do not find that he is worse than us, educated people.
No, our worker is not lazy if the owner understands the work, knows what can be demanded, knows how to excite energy when necessary and does not constantly demand superhuman efforts.
Of course, serfdom imposed its stigma here too; under his influence, a special way of work developed, called work “for the master” (even about the flies that bite strongly in the fall, peasants say: “in the summer the fly works for the master, and in the fall for itself”), but now there is a whole generation of young people who did not work corvée .
While a man has bread since the fall, although he hires himself out willingly and cheaply for winter work, he is a smart, calculating man and does not disdain cheap winter work: “a little young lady, but more often in the sack,” but he does not go to work for summer work. .

About civil rights:

No matter how right a man is, he is always afraid that he can always be judged with money, and besides, he himself usually does not know whether he is right or wrong, and if he is guilty, then what punishment he is subject to. It is difficult for him to know this, because different courts judge according to different laws: for example, the magistrate will not do anything special for failure to repay a debt - he will only order the debt to be repaid, and in the volost, perhaps, they will flog him on top of that; For the removal of two cartloads of hay, the world will be sent to prison for two months, and in the volost, at most, they will be kept under arrest.
You will not find a peasant who would not be afraid to go as a witness in court and would be confident that the chairman of the court cannot flog him.
As for knowledge of their rights and obligations, despite the ten-year existence of a public court and world institutions, no one has any idea about their rights. In all these respects, the peasants, even the trading bourgeoisie and merchants, are ignorant to the extreme. Even priests - I’m not saying priests, among whom there are still people more or less educated, although rarely - that is, all persons of clergy rank, sextons, sextons full-time and supernumerary, their various brothers, nephews, in a word, everyone living in the villages, nothing unemployed, drunken, long-maned people in cassocks and leather belts - not far from the peasants in their understanding of religious, political, and legal issues.
[dialogue about self-organizing peasant schools]
Meanwhile, these peasant schools are a matter of concern. As soon as the authorities find out that a school has opened in the village, they disperse it, the teachers are driven out, they are forbidden to teach. (...)
The man asked why they were dispersing schools and prohibiting anyone who wanted to teach children to read and write. I explained that this was probably because if anyone was allowed to teach, then a teacher might come across who would teach the children something bad.
- What bad things can he teach?
I found it difficult to explain. Tell the peasant that the teacher could be a malicious person who will “shock” him, will say that the peasants are offended by their allotments, etc. But how can one respond in this way to a peasant who already hopes that the tsar will add more land to the peasants and so on? would have added if the lords, students and malicious people who rebelled against the tsar for freeing the peasants had not interfered? The man speaks freely about all these issues at home in front of the children, at village gatherings, and no malicious person will tell the children anything new on these issues.
“Maybe the guys will have something to say against God,” I finally said.
The man looked at me in bewilderment.
- Against the king, maybe...
- How is this possible! But if the teacher starts teaching my child something empty, won’t I see it, won’t I tolerate it! No, that's not how it should be! I think that they forbid us to learn to read and write because they are afraid; As soon as the men, they say, learn to read and write, they will learn their rights, the rights that the tsar gives them - that’s what!
And what amazed me when I heard peasants talk at meetings was the freedom with which the peasants spoke. We talk and look around, can we tell? What if they pull you in and ask. But the man is not afraid of anything. Publicly, publicly, on the street, in the middle of the village, a man discusses all kinds of political and social issues and always says openly everything he thinks. A man, when he is not guilty of either the king or the master, that is, he has paid everything that is due, is calm.
Well, we don’t pay anything.
[about women]
I said that in the summer a woman is obliged to work in the yard, for the owner, whether the woman will be his wife, sister, daughter-in-law, like a farmhand. For the most part, women, especially in multi-family houses, treat this work like farm laborers: “you can’t change the master’s work.” During the winter, the woman works for herself and her main occupation is spinning wool and weaving flax; moreover, everything that the woman earns on the side in the winter becomes her property. The man does not give the woman anything to buy clothes, the woman dresses at her own expense, and what’s more, the woman must dress her husband and children. (...) The woman must dress the man, that is, prepare his shirts and trousers, she must dress herself and the children, and everything that remains for her - the money received from the sale of the comb, extra linens, bastings, etc. - constitutes her inalienable property , to which neither the husband, nor the owner, no one has the right. (...) It’s remarkable that a woman considers herself obligated to dress her husband and wash his clothes only as long as he lives with her. Once her husband cheated on her and got together with someone else, the first thing the woman does is refuse to dress him: “You live with her, let her dress you, and I’ll find one for myself.” (...) In the yard there is no money to pay duties, there is no bread, and the woman has money, and canvases, and outfits, but all this is her property, which the owner does not dare to touch. The owner must get money and bread from wherever he wants, but don’t dare touch a woman’s goods. A woman’s chest is her inviolable property, just as with us a wife’s property is her property, and if the owner, even the husband, takes anything from the chest, it will be theft, for which the court will punish. Also, a husband, when extreme, can take from his wife, especially if they live in their own yard separately, but the owner is not the husband - never; this will cause a riot in the whole village, and all the women will rise up, because no one guards their rights as jealously as the women.
This is an ulcer for the women in charge in the village. Men endure much more patiently the despotism of the owner, and the despotism of the village world, and the despotism of the volost, and the plans of the authorities: the police officer, the police officer, etc. But women - not if it concerns their personal women's interests. Once the authorities tried to describe the women's andaraki for arrears, so the women raised such a hubbub that they were afraid - to complain to the queen, they said, let's go.

About the state of agriculture:

It is impossible to manage the way the majority of our landowners manage. 12 years have passed since the “Regulations”, but the economic system remains the same for the majority; They sow rye in the old way, for which there are no prices and which no one buys, until the peasants have a decent harvest; oats, which we will give birth to very poorly; they cultivate the fields in the old way, hiring peasants with their horses and tools; they mow the same bad meadows, the cattle are kept, as they say, for manure, they are fed poorly and the cattle are considered well-maintained if the cows do not have to be raised in the spring. The farming system has not changed, everything is carried out in the old way, as it was before the “Regulations”, under serfdom, with the only difference being that the arable land has been reduced by more than half, the cultivation of the land is even worse than before, the amount of feed has decreased, because the meadows are not cleaned, not drained and become overgrown; Cattle breeding fell into complete decline. When in the first year I became acquainted with the state of the surrounding farms, the situation that “it’s impossible to manage like this” became even clearer to me, because I saw that most of the farms had already fallen into complete disarray within 12 years, many farms were completely neglected, and most of the landowners, abandoning their estates, ran away to serve. Indeed, driving through the district and seeing desolation and destruction everywhere, one would think that there was a war, an enemy invasion, if it were not clear that this destruction was not violent, but gradual, that everything was collapsing on its own, disappearing into starvation. Under serfdom, we did not manage to do anything economically, and therefore very little remains of serfdom.
Seventeen years have already passed since the “Regulations”, and the landowner economy has not advanced at all; on the contrary, every year it is falling more and more, the productivity of the estates is decreasing more and more, the lands are becoming more and more wild. Neither redemption certificates, nor the construction of railways, nor the rise in price of forests, for which the owners have recently paid huge sums of money, nor the opportunity to receive money from banks on the security of their estates, nor the fall of the credit ruble, which was so beneficial for farmers - nothing helped landowners’ farms get back on their feet. The money passed through the household without leaving a trace.
The old landowner system after the “Regulations” was replaced by the kulaks, but this system can only exist temporarily, has no strength and must fall and transform into some other, lasting form. If the peasants had fallen in this struggle, become landless, turned into bollards, then some lasting form of farm labor could have been created, but this did not happen - on the contrary, landowner farms are falling. Every year more and more farms are closed, livestock is destroyed, and land is given out for short-term rent, for ploughing, for flax and grain crops. The landowner economy has fallen, farming has not appeared, and simply wanton theft is taking place - forests are cut down, lands are plowed up, everyone grabs what they can and runs. No technical improvements can currently help our economy. Establish any agricultural schools you like, register any foreign cattle, any machines, nothing will help, because there is no foundation. At least, I, as the owner, do not see any possibility of raising our economy until the lands pass into the hands of farmers. It seems that now everyone is beginning to understand this.

About kulaks:

Every man is, to a certain extent, a fist, a pike, which is in the sea so that the crucian does not sleep. In my letters, I have repeatedly pointed out that although the peasants do not yet have the concept of hereditary ownership of land - no one’s land, royal land - their concept of property regarding movable property is very firm. I have repeatedly pointed out that the peasants have extremely developed individualism, selfishness, and the desire to exploit. Envy, distrust of each other, undermining one another, humiliation of the weak before the strong, arrogance of the strong, worship of wealth - all this is highly developed in the peasant environment. Kulak ideals reign in it, everyone is proud to be a pike and strives to devour crucian carp. Every peasant, if circumstances favor him, will exploit every other person in the most excellent way, no matter whether he is a peasant or a gentleman, he will squeeze the juice out of him, exploit his needs. All this, however, does not prevent the peasant from being extremely kind, tolerant, in his own way unusually humane, unique, truly humane, just as a person from the intelligent class is rarely humane.
There is a real fist in the village of B. This one loves neither land, nor farming, nor work, this one loves only money. This one will not say that he is ashamed when, when he goes to bed, he does not feel pain in his arms and legs, this one, on the contrary, says: “work loves fools,” “a fool works, but a smart man, with his hands in his pockets, walks around and turns his brains.” ". This one boasts of his fat belly, boasts of the fact that he doesn’t work much: “My debtors will mow down everything, burn it and put it in a barn.” This kulak deals with the land so-so, by the way, he does not expand the farm, does not increase the number of livestock, horses, and does not plow the land. This one will have everything to wait for, not on the land, not on the farm, not on work, but on the capital with which he trades, which he lends out at interest. His idol is money, the increase of which he only thinks about. (...) It is clear that for the development of his activities it is important that the peasants are poor, in need, and have to turn to him for loans. It is beneficial for him that the peasants do not work on the land, so that he lords over his money. (...) He supports all sorts of dreams, illusions, all sorts of rumors come from him; he, consciously or unconsciously, I don’t know, is trying to distract the peasants from the land, from farming, preaching that “work loves fools,” pointing out the difficulty of land labor, the ease of waste trades, and the profitability of earnings in Moscow.

About rumors:

the girls were seriously frightened and believed when, after the marriage of our Grand Duchess with the English prince, a rumor spread that the most beautiful girls would be taken and, if they were honest, sent to England, because the Tsar had given them as a dowry for his daughter, so that they would be there , in England, married the English and converted them to our faith - not only girls believed this, but also serious, elderly peasants, even soldiers on leave.

About the nuances of foreign and domestic policy in the prism of popular perception:

Here you will hear the opinion of the peasants that the Germans are much poorer than us Russians because they buy bread from us, and that if the gentlemen were forbidden to sell grain to Riga, the Germans would die of hunger; that when they have time to create as many new pieces of paper as needed /money/, then they won’t take taxes, etc.
There is no money, but money is needed. What am I without money? “Money, kids, wherever you send it, you can’t go there yourself.” But who dares to say that our country is poor? Who dares to say that we do not have enormous wealth lying in vain? And who doesn’t understand why these riches lie in vain? Now the man sees that there really is no money, and that it must be impossible to do the paperwork so quickly. The man, however, consoles himself with the fact that uncle “China” is offering our king as much money as you want... But where is this “China”? Where is this mysterious, powerful, rich “China”?
He knows all of Mikhail’s paintings in detail and, just as he previously explained the merits of his chintz and scarves, now he explains his paintings.
- This (...) our soldier grabbed the Turkish banner? - Mikhail points to a soldier hoisting a banner with a two-headed eagle on the wall of the fortress.
“This is a Russian banner, not a Turkish one,” I note.
- No, Turkish. You see, there is an eagle written on it, but in Russian there would be a cross.

About the Russian Empire - the breadwinner of Europe:

Once in St. Petersburg, being interested in the internal life of the people, I read newspaper correspondence, internal reviews, zemstvo reports, articles by various zemstvo residents, etc. I confess, I believed everything then, I had that false idea of our internal situation, which was created by people who were truly those who do not know the situation. When I got to the village - and it was winter, and the winter was severe, with frosts of 25 degrees - when I saw these snow-covered huts, learned real life, with its “pieces”, “sentences”, I was amazed. Soon, very soon, I saw that, living a completely different life, not knowing at all the life of the people, the state of the people, we had formed for ourselves some kind of, so to speak, idea of this life hanging in the air.
While the year before last the magazines were talking about overproduction and whining about the cheapness of bread, our peasants were simply starving. It’s been 15 years that I’ve been living in the village, I’ve also lived through those years when our rye reached 14 rubles per quarter, but I’ve never seen such a disaster as in the winter of 1885-86. I don’t know what exactly is called hunger in official language and where is the border between a lack of bread and hunger, but last year I myself saw hungry people who did not eat for two days. I have not seen such hungry people with such a special expression on their faces for a long time. When a few years ago our rye reached 14 rubles per quarter; There was no such hunger - there were not so many people going “in pieces” as last year. Not only children, old people, women, but even young girls and boys who were able to work were left in pieces.
The author of the article "Otech. Notes" proves that the grain we have left after export is not enough to feed ourselves. This conclusion shocked many and raised doubts among many about the accuracy of the statistical data. The compiler of the Suvorin calendar for 1880, 5 p. 274, saying that for our own consumption per capita we have only 1/2 of a quarter of bread, adds: if the figures about sowing and harvest are correct, then it can be concluded that the Russian people are poorly eats, making up for the lack of bread with some kind of surrogates. In a person from the intelligent class, such doubt is understandable, because it is simply hard to believe how people live like this without eating. And yet this is really so. It’s not that they haven’t eaten at all, but they are malnourished, living from hand to mouth, eating all sorts of rubbish. We send wheat, good clean rye abroad, to the Germans, who will not eat any rubbish. We burn the best, clean rye for wine, and the worst rye, with fluff, fire, calico and all sorts of waste obtained from cleaning rye for distilleries - this is what the peasant eats. But not only does the man eat the worst bread, he is also malnourished. If there is enough bread in the villages, they eat three times; there has become a derogation in the bread, the bread is short - they eat it twice, they lean more on the spring, potatoes, and hemp seed are added to the bread. Of course, the stomach is full, but from bad food people lose weight, get sick, the guys grow tighter, just like what happens with poorly kept cattle.
(…)
The first economic rule: it is more profitable to feed livestock well than poorly, it is more profitable to fertilize the land than to sow on empty land. But isn’t it the same with people? Isn't it more profitable for the state to act like a good owner? Can hungry, poorly nourished people compete with well-fed people? And what kind of science is this that preaches such absurdities!
Peasants (...) already now eat bread with barley, oats, potatoes, some kind of drum, chaff, and in some cases, if there is no bread, they can eat beef, because where there is no bread, beef is cheaper than rye flour. Yes, they can eat beef; even the sensible Agricultural Newspaper advises eating beef or lamb. In fact, in the Agricultural Newspaper, 1880, p. 749, we read: “One of the very good means of replacing, if not completely, then partly, rye bread is to increase the consumption of meat foods and specifically lamb.” "Agricultural Newspaper" therefore advises "in those areas of the Volga region where potatoes are cheap, pay special attention to lamb." What does learning mean, just think! If you don't have bread, eat lamb. The peasant, a fool, drags cattle to sell for next to nothing, buys rye flour with the proceeds, mixes it with oatmeal, barley, and chaff, just to have at least some kind of bread, the donkey doesn’t know what meat food is, exactly. lamb is a good substitute for rye bread!

About walking “in pieces”, or surviving until spring:

The one who is begging in pieces has a yard, a farm, horses, cows, sheep, his woman has clothes - he just doesn’t have bread at the moment; when next year he has bread, not only will he not go begging, but he will serve the pieces himself, and even now, if, having survived with the help of the collected pieces, he finds a job, earns money and buys bread, then he will serve the pieces himself . A peasant has a yard for three souls, three horses, two cows, seven sheep, two pigs, chickens, etc. His wife has a supply of her own canvases in her chest, his daughter-in-law has outfits, she has her own money, his son has a new sheepskin coat. In the fall, when there is still a supply of rye, they eat plenty of clean bread, and unless a very prudent owner eats furry bread in the fall - and I have seen such people. A beggar comes and they give you pieces. But then the owner notices that “the bread is short.” They eat less, not three times a day, but two, and then one. Chaff is added to the bread. There is money, there is something left from the sale of stumps, in order to pay duties, the owner buys bread. There is no money - he somehow gets lost, tries to get ahead for work, to borrow money. What kind of interest is paid in this case can be seen from the fact that the owner of a neighboring inn, who sells vodka, bread and other items necessary for a peasant and issues these items on credit, himself borrows money in return to buy, for example, a whole carload of rye, and pays two rubles for one month for fifty rubles, that is, 48%. What percentage does he take? When a peasant has run out of all his bread and has nothing else to eat, children, old women, old men put on their bags and go begging for scraps in neighboring villages. Usually small children return home at night, older ones return when they have collected more. The family eats the collected pieces, and what they don’t eat is dried in the oven as a reserve. Meanwhile, the owner is busy, looking for work, getting bread. The housewife feeds the cattle - she cannot leave the house; grown-up guys are ready to go to work almost for the sake of bread. The owner got hold of some bread, the children no longer eat the pieces, and the housewife again serves the pieces to others. There is no way to get bread - women, young girls and, worst of all (this happens with single people), the owners themselves, follow the children and the elderly; It happens that only the housewife remains in the yard to look after the livestock. The owner no longer walks, but rides on a horse. Such people make their way farther away, sometimes even into the Oryol province. Nowadays, in the middle of winter, we often come across a cart loaded with pieces, and on it a man with a woman, girl or boy. The beggar on horseback collects pieces until he has collected a decent supply; He dries the collected pieces in the oven when he is allowed to spend the night in the village. Having collected pieces, he returns home, and the whole family eats the collected pieces, while the owner at this time works near the house or on the side, if the opportunity arises. The pieces are running out - they harness the horse again and go begging. Some people feed on pieces all winter, and even collect a supply for the spring; sometimes, if there is a supply of collected pieces in the house, they are served from them. In the spring, when it gets warm, the children again go to pieces and wander around the nearby villages. The owners need to work in the spring - this is where it is difficult to get by. There is no other way to get it than in debt, and in the spring you have to pay the debts again. It will get warmer, mushrooms will grow, but it’s hard to work on mushrooms alone. It's good, if only there is no bread. There is no bread - in the world you can somehow feed yourself until spring. No one dies of hunger, thanks to this mutual aid of pieces. “There were bad years,” one woman told me this fall, who in October no longer had bread, “they thought we would all die of hunger, but we didn’t; God willing, we won’t die today either. No one dies of hunger.” But it’s bad when there is not only bread, but also feed for livestock, as there is now. You can't feed livestock in the world.

About the expediency of superior orders:

Out of nothing to do, the city leaders decided that birch trees should be planted along the streets of the villages. It will be beautiful - that's the first thing. In the event of a fire, birch trees will serve as protection - this is the second thing. Why can birch trees planted along a narrow village street protect against fire? Well, that’s what the bosses came up with. They thought of it, they have now issued the most stringent order for the volosts, the volosts - village elders order, those - to the tenths in the villages. The men planted birch trees - they were perplexed, why? It happened that summer the bishop was passing through - they thought it was for his passing, so that it would be more fun for him. Of course, over the summer all the planted birch trees withered. Anyone who knows the structure of a village and village life will now understand that no trees can grow on a village street. On the street, which is very narrow, there is usually knee-deep mud, cattle are driven along the street, itching against the planted trees, they drive along the street with manure, hay, firewood - one or the other will catch on a planted birch tree. Birch trees don't take root, and that's all - they dry out. In the spring, an official arrives, some kind of fire agent (there is such a rank and also with an asterisk) or agel, as the men call him. Where are the birches? - asks. - They dried up. - Withered! but here I am... and I went and went. He made a noise, shouted, ordered to plant it again, otherwise, he said, I’ll fine you five rubles for each birch tree. The men got scared, they planted it a second time, and it dried up again. In the third spring he demands again - plant! Well, the men came up with an idea: instead of uprooting a birch tree, they directly cut down a small birch tree, sharpen the butt and stick it into the ground before the agent arrives - the greenery lasts a long time. And in winter it is used for kindling, because in the summer it dries out well in the wind. An official won’t climb up to see if it’s planted with roots, but if there’s someone who will climb up, they’ll say:
“The root has rotted,” - where can he see that the birch tree has simply been chopped off? But the question is, where do peasants get birch trees? There are none in the allotments. Cut it down from the master? - The forest worker won’t allow it. Well, they dragged it at night.

About food sanctions:

During the plague we also learned that we need to eat fresh supplies. We always ate fragrant corned beef, rotten fish, and rotten Astrakhan warrior herring. They ate this first of all, and suddenly it turned out that it was all poison. Doctors were ordered to examine the fish and, if they noticed the plague in it, the police were to destroy the infected fish. It was difficult to deal with this. It happened, more than once, that rotten fish that were burned, recognized as harmful, or fish that had been buried in the ground and previously doused with sewage from latrines, were nevertheless dragged away from the fires - torn out of the ground and devoured. It happened that the stolen fish, after washing thoroughly with sewage, were even sold!..
They say that there is some kind of sausage poison, there is some kind of fish poison, from which those who eat poisonous fish die. Is it possible to tell by smell that such-and-such a sausage or such-and-such a fish contains poison? Can every doctor know this? During the persecution of rotten fish, many fish were destroyed, and all according to an external examination by doctors. If it smells, destroy it. Fish deemed unfit were doused with kerosene and burned, or doused with sewage and buried in the ground. Both fish were taken away, pulled out of the ground and eaten. And no one died. Well, let’s say that fish doused with kerosene were disinfected, but fish doused with sewage from latrines?

About food non-sanctions:

I had the opportunity to observe how workers who work piecework in an artel on their grub eat under conditions when it is profitable to eat well. These were wood cutters who did not work for me, but in the neighboring forest, and took from me some materials for grub. The people are great at recruiting. They worked great, they cut an exorbitant amount of firewood. No expense was spared on grub: every day vodka, porridge so strong you could barely prick it with a spoon, with cow’s butter, fatty cabbage soup. But they ate little meat, and it was then that I became convinced that working people did not at all attach importance to meat as a nutrient; vodka, for example, is preferred to meat in all respects. But I can’t say that they were drunkards. Sinful man, I myself would prefer a dinner consisting of a glass of vodka, cabbage soup with lard and porridge to a dinner consisting of cabbage soup, meat, porridge, but without vodka. (...) How little importance is attached to meat is evident from the fact that a working person will always agree to replace meat with vodka. To this, of course, they will say that it is known that the Russian man is a drunkard, he is ready to sell his own father for vodka, etc. But excuse me, however, the same working person will not agree to replace the lactic acid of normal food with vodka, will not agree to replace fat with vodka or buckwheat porridge.
Sauerkraut cabbage soup - cold or hot - constitutes the main dish in folk food. If there is no sauerkraut, then it is replaced with sour pickled beetroot (borscht). If there is no sauerkraut, no pickled beetroot, no pickled vegetables at all, as sometimes happens in the summer, then cabbage soup is prepared from fresh vegetables - beetroot, quinoa, nettle, sorrel - and fermented with acidic whey or sour skolotin obtained from the production of Chukhon butter. Finally, in extreme cases, cabbage soup is fermented with specially prepared raw sour kvass or replaced with sour soup with cucumber brine, kvass, highly sour dough, and breadcrumbs made from sour black bread (tyurya, murtsovka, kavardachok).
It happens that mowers in remote meadows in the summer are content with fresh mush, but the lack of hot sour food is always a great deprivation for the workers, and they strive to supplement this deficiency with sour milk, which, however, is not entirely satisfactory, because milk is an easy food, to difficult work does not go well, and mowing requires food that is strong, tough, and thick.
Peasants distinguish food into strong and light, with many gradations, of course. You can live on light food, for example: mushrooms, milk, gardening, but in order to work, you need to consume durable food, and for heavy work - digging, cutting, sawing, mowing, uprooting, etc. - the most durable, such that, after eating, you throw it on the swill, as the men put it, so that you want to get drunk, as drunk as a healthy worker drinks after a hearty, strong lunch, when he puts his lips to a bucket of kvass and immediately pulls out almost half the bucket.
Durable food is considered to be one that contains many nutritious but difficult-to-digest substances, which is digested slowly, remains in the intestine for a long time, and is not quickly excreted, because once the intestine is empty, hard work cannot be done and it is necessary to eat again.
I assert that a person who will cultivate the land with his own hands, even under the most favorable conditions - assuming that he has as much land as he can cultivate, assuming that he does not pay any taxes - cannot produce so much, cannot with his own hands. with his own labor to feed so many livestock so that he and his family have plenty of meat every day. Can not!
The most that he will have is plenty of meat on holidays, it’s good if a piece is for smell on weekdays, and enough milk, eggs, meat to feed children, infirm old people, the sick
But, perhaps some will ask, is it really possible that, having as much land as can be cultivated, and working the way a peasant works, it is really impossible to earn enough to have enough meat every day for yourself, your wife, your children, your old people? No, you cannot have enough of your own meat, that is, meat produced by your own labor. I say my meat, because under current conditions, if one has enough land, and others do not have enough, then, of course, you can buy beef from those in need for 2, 3 kopecks per pound, and sell them yours for almost the same price bread. It’s good if you produce enough so that children, old people, and the sick always have enough meat, milk, and broth! If two, three, ten, twelve pairs come together and work together, each according to strength and ability, then meat will appear on the table more often, and sometimes there will be lamb on weekdays...

About visiting specialists:

Each farrier walks along a well-known line, always along the same one from year to year, entering the villages and manor houses lying on his road, therefore, each farrier has his own permanent practice, and, conversely, each village, each owner has its own horseman, who visits him four times a year: twice in the spring - going back and forth - and twice in the fall. Farrier goes into every house and castrates everything that is required, it is clear that he knows all his villages and in the villages all the owners by name (...) Farriers charge inexpensively for their work: for castrating a ram - 5 kopecks, for a boletus - 5 kopecks, for bull - 10 kopecks, and in addition, if there is a lot of work, the farrier receives half a glass of vodka and a piece of lard, in which, after finishing the work, he fries the organs taken out during the operation for his benefit as a snack.
It often happens that even after the consultation, farriers explain that it is impossible to castrate an animal, because they, valuing their reputation, are generally very careful in their work and value their practice, their lines, to which they are accustomed. Farriers also treat animals, but their significance in this regard is negligible, because they only take place at certain times of the year. But the most valuable thing is that when you entrust your animal to a farrier, you can insure it with the same farrier. If you do not want to take risks, if you value the animal very much, if you do not trust the farrier, then you evaluate your animal, and then the farrier deposits the assigned amount for you as a deposit and then performs the operation; if the animal disappears, then the amount deposited by the farrier remains in your favor . It is clear that with insurance the fee for the operation is much higher and the higher the more collateral you require from the farrier. If the farrier has once agreed that it is possible to perform the operation, then he will always undertake to insure the animal if you wish, because even if he himself does not have money, he will find other farriers and collect the required amount.

About the need for collectivization:

The peasants by all means avoid such work where they need to work together, and prefer to work, even cheaper, but alone, each for himself. Once again I will return to this issue and report one fact. Just recently, a few years ago, the peasants of neighboring villages, according to an old habit, as in serfdom, cleared my fields together with the whole village, partly for money, partly from half. The whole village together went out to mow, mowed indiscriminately, collected the hay together and put it in one barn, and then divided the money and their share of the hay among themselves according to the number of hay. This arrangement was very convenient for me, because the harvesting proceeded amicably, in good weather the hay was quickly grabbed, supervision was easy, and the hay was divided up one at a time in the winter. Now they don’t take mowings like that from me or others. Now either everyone takes a special plot within the power of his family, or, taking a whole meadow, they divide it into fields, and everyone mows and cleans his own plot; The hay is immediately divided and transported: one part goes to my barn, the peasant takes the other to his place. It is clear that this is extremely inconvenient for me. When the mowing is in full swing and about 20 people in different places are collecting hay, the headman, who must share the hay with everyone, almost never has to get off his horse all day. It is clear that in such work as hay harvesting, it is more profitable to work as a team, and with the same diligence, that is, if everyone worked as he works for himself alone, the total amount of hay harvested would be greater and the hay would come out better , especially if the weather was favorable for cleaning and there was an owner who knew how to manage it. But here’s the thing, when dividing the hay, everyone would then receive equally, according to the number of braids, therefore, the one who is strong, knows how to work deftly, is diligent at work, is smart, would receive the same amount as the weak, clumsy, lazy, slow-witted . Here is the stumbling block, here is the reason why peasants divide the meadow taken for mowing into plots, just as they divide their fields and meadows into fields. Previously, when the neighboring village mowed my meadows indiscriminately with a team, all the peasants had hay for the winter. Those who had few horses even sold them, but now some have a lot of hay, while others have little or none at all, but there is no hay, no horses, no bread. Some become rich, while others, less diligent, less dexterous, less intelligent, become poorer, and, having become poor, abandon the land and become farm laborers.
In my letters I have many times pointed out the strong development of individualism among the peasants; to their isolation in actions, to their inability, reluctance, or better yet, to unite in the economy for a common cause. Other researchers of peasant life also point to this. Some even believe that doing anything together is contrary to the spirit of the peasantry. I completely disagree with this. It's all about looking at things together. Indeed, doing something together, indiscriminately, as the peasants say, doing it in such a way that the work of everyone cannot be taken into account individually, is disgusting to the peasants. They will not agree to such communication in practice, at least at the present stage of their development, although it happens now that in times of need, when it is impossible otherwise, peasants still work together. An example of this is the artels hired to thresh, transport manure, and mow. But for work on the artel basis, just as in the Grabor artels, where work is divided and everyone receives a reward for their work, the peasants unite extremely easily and willingly. Which of us will be able to unite so well as to repel the employer (if it weren’t for the artels, would the robbers receive such payment for their work: single robbers usually get cheaper because they interrupt each other’s work), who will be able to unite so well? to arrange a common table, a common apartment?
Now they will ask why the peasants, working in circles during artel threshing, spend, obviously at a loss, twice as much time as during the same artel threshing on a detachment? But because here 1) there is a rower-owner and 2) the artel workers have chosen equal strength, there is no owner-manager, my headman is only an overseer in both cases, and there are all sorts of artel workers, so everyone works like the weakest, so as not to redo one more than the other. Everyone is involved in the work; for the strong, for example, it means nothing to carry the bag into the bin, the weak fights and fights until he lifts it, until he carries it, having done his job, the strong one stands all this time, waits until the weak one carries it, and only then takes it for another bag. And so it is in everything.
A peasant community, a peasant artel, is not a beehive in which each bee, regardless of the other, works hard to the best of its ability for the common good. Eh! if the peasants made a beehive from their community, would they then wear bast shoes?
A multi-family house, in which there are several good workers and a good owner, as long as it is not divided, as long as everyone lives in a union, as long as they work together, still enjoys a certain prosperity and prosperity. What would happen if the whole village were in a union and worked the land together? Even with such a union as the workers' artel represents, that is, where everyone is allowed to live separately and unite in an artel only to run the economy together, and everyone works in a division and receives in proportion to the work, even with such an artel economy the results would be remarkable.
Anyone who clearly understands the essence of our economy will understand how important it is for farmers to unite for farming together and what enormous wealth would be obtained then. Only when farming together is it possible to establish grass sowing, which provides a means of starting mowing earlier and making better use of the time of need; Only with joint farming is it possible to establish the most important machines for the farm, namely machines that speed up the harvesting of grass and grain; Only with joint farming is it possible to let a significant number of people go to outside jobs, and with fast communications by railways, these people could go to the south, where the time of suffering begins earlier, and, having worked there, return home to their suffering. On the other hand, it becomes clear how important it is that during the time of suffering all other productions that distract hands from field work should be stopped. During this time, all factories would have to stop their work. Again, the huge number of free hands indicates the need to develop small-scale home industries. What is needed is not factories, not factories, but small village distilleries, oil mills, tanneries, weavers, etc., the waste from which will also be usefully used on farms.
It is absolutely clear that barracks-factory farm labor, even if it can compete with individual scattered farming - and even then only in the case if only a few people are engaged in farm farming, as a result of which farm laborers are cheaper than steamed turnips - it cannot compete with communal cooperative farming . (...) There is no other outcome than artel farming on common lands. (...)
I am sure that it is much more likely to count on the union of peasants for artel renting and artel cultivation of third-party lands, for example, entire landowner estates in their entirety. We know that it is extremely easy for peasants to form artels for outside work and organize their artel affairs in an extremely practical manner. Why couldn’t they unite for the artel lease of entire estates with full farming, that is, buildings, livestock? It is heard that there are already examples of such artel leases.
The cultivation of such estates leased by artels could be carried out on the same principles that now underlie the basis of workers' artels: only such work would be carried out jointly that otherwise cannot be done, for example, hauling manure, threshing, etc. All work that, without detrimental to the business, could be divided into division, and would be divided into division, and each would process as much as he could, according to the number of workers and horses. Divide the product according to the amount of work - by scythes, plows, etc. Strictly speaking, there is nothing new for the peasants regarding the method of work, because even now, when the peasants work for the landowner from half or work in circles for pieces or for money, processing is carried out in the same way in the same way.

About the distribution of land between landowners and peasants in 1861:

When allocating land to the peasants, the excess land against the provisions was cut off, and this segment, which was essential for the peasants, having come into someone else’s possession, constrained the peasants by its position alone, since it usually covers their land in a narrow strip and is adjacent to all three fields, and therefore, Wherever the cattle jump out, they will certainly end up on the land belonging to the lord. At first, while the landowners still did not understand the meaning of the plots, and where the peasants were more practical and less hopeful about the “new will,” they managed to acquire the plots as their property, either for money or for some kind of work, such people are now comparatively prosperous. Now everyone understands the significance of the segments, and every buyer of an estate, every tenant, even a German who cannot speak Russian, first of all looks at whether there are segments, how they are located and how much they crowd out the peasants.
Where the peasants owned a large amount of land during serfdom, the excess land, according to the “Regulations,” was cut off from them, and these “sections” came into the possession of the landowners; where the peasants did not have extra land, so they owned what they used before 1861, they, under serfdom, also used the master's pastures and not only from their landowner, but also from the neighboring one, since then it was simple, and After the harvest of grain, the cattle were free to roam everywhere, especially since all adjacent fields were usually under the same grain. Nowadays, no one is allowed into their land for nothing, even after taking herbs and grains. The need for pastures is now the most important thing for peasants. If the peasants have enough of their own bread, there will be enough bread until “new”, if they also have winter earnings, then nothing other than the need for pastures can force them to take over the landowner’s land for cultivation. No amount of money can seduce the peasant owners who farm the land. Peasants can remove mowing for money or partly and at a distance from the village; firewood and timber can also be purchased externally; they can also rent land; only they must take the pasture near the village, from the neighboring landowner. That’s why we hear this kind of praise for estates: “The peasants can’t help but work for me, because my land fits right next to the village, there’s nowhere for a peasant to put out his chickens,” or “he has an excellent estate, the plots stretch in a narrow strip for fourteen miles and cover seven villages; they cultivate the whole land in pieces." In a word, when assessing an estate, they look not at the quality of the land, not at the land, but at how the land is located in relation to neighboring villages, whether it supports them, whether the peasants need it, whether they can do without it or not. That is why now, with the existing system of farming, other estates, both without meadows and with bad land, provide a large income, because it is located favorably for the landowner relative to the villages, and most importantly, it has “segments”, which the peasants cannot do without, which They block their land from the lands of other owners, so that competition between owners, who each want to get peasants to work for themselves, cannot be beneficial for the peasants.
The most profitable thing for peasants is if they can rent plots and pastures for money or get use for some winter work, cutting or hauling firewood, loading wagons, etc., which happens in cases where the estate is bought by some some kind of timber merchant who is not involved in farming. In this case, the peasants immediately get better and get richer, because, having paid for the pastures or plots they need, winter work, then they work for themselves all summer, cut a lot of hay, rent land for flax and bread. The feed that they then bring from other people's lands is eaten by their livestock in their own yards, and the resulting manure is used to fertilize their peasant plots. But if the landowner manages the farm himself, then he does not give away any pasture or plots of land for money and demands that the peasants cultivate the land for him in exchange for pastures and plots. The whole art of the landowner is to force the peasants who need plots of land to cultivate as much land as possible; all the efforts of the peasants are aimed at working as little as possible, or even better, not working at all and paying for plots and pastures in money.
Thus, between the landowners and peasant farms There is a constant struggle, and where the peasants prevail, their well-being increases, and the landowners' farms, often to the benefit of the landowners, are forced out. Yes, to benefit, because, instead of running a non-income-generating farm, the landowner then rents out his lands to the peasants and receives more than he received when he ran a farm in which the income was absorbed by the maintenance of clerks and administration.

About the fifth column:

You can’t go to the city without a view, they even started visiting each other with tickets, because without a ticket, you’ll end up in a cold one. However, catching malicious people was to their liking, so the authorities didn’t really need to demand it, but rather needed to restrain it. The peasants thought that malicious people, students that is, were rebelling against the king because he wanted to give the peasant land; the landowners thought that malicious people wanted to take their land away from them; priests - that they insist on reducing the number of receipts, on accurate verification of candle amounts and various other innovations that are unpleasant for the priest’s pockets; railway officials - that when trains collide, they initiate protests, examine rotten sleepers, and write them off; finally, that they are trying to destroy the red uniform caps assigned to station commanders. In a word, everyone was in a hurry to help the authorities catch them.

About other nations:

Another class of tenants are foreigners: Germans, Swiss, who rent large, good estates with water meadows and for the most part have in mind mainly cattle breeding and dairy farming. Here you come across people who have knowledge, education, and the ability to work - the Swiss specifically. These - again, the Swiss have more - the economy is going well, they don’t squeeze the peasants like that, they pay honestly, they don’t engage in kulaks, mucklachinism and any such abomination, they even enjoy the respect of the peasants - the Swiss in particular - who are always happy if they don’t show up. pressing them hard, giving them work and the working mental people themselves, not the bar. The peasant sees this now and although he calls everyone Germans, he perfectly distinguishes the Swiss from the Germans, who do not know how to work and do not like, and, when they get better, they treat the peasant with contempt and with that vile rudeness that generally distinguishes Germans, especially our Russians. The peasant now sees that the Swiss are not like the Germans - he is a peasant himself, he is not afraid of menial work, and he sees a man in the peasant.
Why should a Russian peasant have only what is necessary to somehow lose his soul? Why shouldn’t he, like an American, eat ham, lamb, and apple pies even on holidays? No, it turns out that black rye bread is enough for a Russian peasant, and even with sint, a bell, a fire and all sorts of rubbish that cannot be sent to a German. Yes, there are some fellows who think that the Russian peasant is not worth even rye bread, that he should eat potatoes. Thus, Mr. Rodionov ("Earth Newspaper" 1880, p. 701) proposes preparing bread from rye flour with an admixture of potatoes and says: “if, instead of sour black bread made from rye flour alone, the mass of rural inhabitants begins to consume bread, prepared from a mixture of rye flour and potatoes, according to the method I have communicated, then half the amount of rye can go abroad to support our credit ruble, without damage to the people's food supply." And this is published in the Agricultural Newspaper, published by scientific agronomists. I understand that both corn and potato crops can be recommended: the more diversity in the crop, the better, if each fruit has its own place: one for humans, the other for cattle. I understand that in unfortunate hungry years one can point to various surrogates: bread with corn, potatoes, perhaps even wheatgrass rhizomes, etc. But that’s not the case here. Here the whole point is to compete with America, to maintain our credit ruble (and they were given this ruble? It’s like he’s some kind of deity to whom even a person should be sacrificed). For this reason, they want to feed the peasant with potatoes wrapped in bread instead of bread, and they also assure that this will be without damage to the people's food supply.
After all, if we live like Americans, not only by transporting grain abroad, but by producing it twice as much as we do now, then it would just be time for us to do it ourselves. They talk about ways of communication, but don’t see the essence. The American is free about the land, and he himself is free, do as you know on the farm. There is no zemstvo chairman over him, no police officer, no indispensable, no constable, no one is in charge, no one commands, no one orders when and what to sow, how to drink, eat, sleep, dress, but we have a regulation about everything. You found it convenient to wear a Russian shirt and sheepskin coat while doing housework - you can’t, because, according to your position, you should wear a tailcoat. You decided to work yourself - you look, and a cap is looking at you from behind a bush. The American man knows how to work, and is educated in everything. He intelligent person, studied at school, understands about farming, about cars. He came home from work, reads the newspaper, is free, goes to the club. Everything is free for him. And our man only knows how to work, but he has no idea about anything, no knowledge, no education. An educated, intelligent person can only talk, but does not know how to work, cannot, and even if he wanted to, he is so afraid whether his superiors will allow it. The American holds labor in high esteem, but we despise it: this, they say, befits a rabble. Some deacon, whose dad has settled down, collected quite a few nickels, is ashamed to milk a cow or do anything around the house: I, they say, am an educated young lady with a gentle upbringing. The American mows, and reaps, and rows, and threshes everything with a machine - he sits on his goats and whistles, and the machine itself reaps and knits sheaves, and our man is all backbone and backbone. An American farmer's farmhand sleeps on a bed with clean sheets under a blanket, eats the same things as the farmer, reads the same newspaper, goes to the agricultural club with the owner on holidays, and receives a large salary. He earned some money, looked for a plot of land and became the owner himself.
Landowners who, like American farmers , would work with their family, I don’t know about people of the intelligent class yet. They say there are some, but I haven't seen them.
I don’t know any intelligent landowners who, having farm laborers, would work themselves along with farm laborers who would have farm laborers, just as American farmers, would live, eat and drink with their owners.
I also don’t know any farms in which all the work would be done by farm laborers using machines, and the owner-landowner himself, who knows how to work, understands work and farming, manages everything, supervises the work and farming, just like in large American farms.
We have nothing like this. And first of all, most importantly, the landowner is a gentleman, he doesn’t know how to work, he has nothing in common with farm laborers, and for him they are not people, but only working machines.

About the division of labor:

The peasant household is prosperous as long as the family is large and consists of a significant number of workers, as long as there is at least some kind of family union, as long as the land is not divided and work is done together. Usually this union lasts only while the old man is alive, and disintegrates with his death. The more severe the old man, the more despotic, the morally stronger, the more respect he enjoys from the world, the more economic order there is in the yard, the more prosperous the yard. A harsh despot-master can only be a strong nature, one who knows how to hold the reins of government with the power of his mind, and such a mentally strong person is certainly at the same time a good master, who can, as the men say, “put everything in order”; on the farm, a good “riddle” is the first thing, because with a good riddle, the work goes faster and the results are good.
But no matter how important a good “riddle” of the owner is, the root cause of the prosperity and comparative well-being of large, undivided families is that the land is not divided, that the work is done together, that the whole family eats from the same pot. The proof of this is that large families, even with a weak old man, a bad owner, who does not know how to keep the yard in order, still live well.
I said above that the main reason for the impoverishment during partitions lies in the fact that both the land and the economy are divided, then everyone acquires his own house, as a result of which interests are extremely narrowed and directed towards this house. I don’t think it can be expected that the peasants will soon move on to artillery cultivation of their allotment land, because such a union of people who have already separated and acquired houses is an extremely difficult matter. Even where there is no need for manure, the union of the land for artisanal cultivation can be more easily achieved, but since manure is needed, the general maintenance of livestock, the general preparation of feed, etc. is necessary. The peasants will not soon reach such an agreement, because for this it is necessary, so that their level of education rises significantly.
People from different courtyards were always selected into the artel, and people from one divided courtyard were never united. Those who are divided cannot in any way unite for a common economic cause, and nowhere is there such envy, such ill will, as between those who are divided, although, on the other hand, when repelling an enemy, for example, in a fight, those who are divided, despite the eternal quarrels among themselves, act extremely in harmony , and there is nothing worse than falling under the fists of divided brothers.

About chauvinism:

I positively noticed that those villages where women rule, where women have prevailed over men, live poorer, work worse, do not run their households as well as those where men have the upper hand. In such villages of women, men are more idealistic, less kulaks, and more likely to obey the kulak of a fellow villager, who has overpowered and taken the women into his hands. In the same way, in individual households, where women have prevailed over men, there is no such unanimity, such order in the household, such discipline in work.
But women have much more initiative than men. Women are more likely to take on any new business, if only this business is personally beneficial to them, the women. Women are somehow more greedy for money, petty greedy, without any consideration for the future, just to get more money now. You can do everything with money much more quickly with women than with men. This plays into the hands of the kulaks, and they always strive to rein in the women, and once this is done, the yard or village is in the hands of the village kulak, who then twists and turns everything. A peasant has well-known rules, well-known concepts about the honor of his village, so he will not do much so as not to damage the dignity of the village. For a woman, money is in the foreground. For money, a woman will sell any girl in the village, her sister, even her daughter, but there’s nothing to say about herself.

About the size of peasant plots and the discussion in the press:

this land with which he is endowed is not enough for the peasant, that he needs more land, that he is ready to pay and will pay the king more than anyone else, if only he has something to pay from. The peasant sees the decline of the landowners' farms, all their insolvency, the peasant sees that most of these farms are maintained only by pressure, cuttings, pastures, etc., he sees that masses of the gentlemen's lands are either empty or are being wastelessly depleted, due to bad management, leasing to plowing The man says that all this is at a loss to the tsar and the state, that this makes bread and everything expensive, that this is not order. And the man endures, waits, hopes. (...) However, there are also bodies in literature that, contrary to the voice of the people, prove that there is no land shortage at all. These literary organs say that land shortage was invented by liberals, that it is only a liberal dogma, unexpectedly, like a burdock that grew across the road (Rus, 1881, No. 11).
Vast areas of wasteland are unproductive, and these wasteland owners are ready to sell cheaply, because the owners, who receive nothing or very little from these wastelands and only pay a land tax for them, are more profitable to sell the land and have capital from which they can receive interest. Instead of helping land-hungry peasants squeezed into their plots to buy up empty lands, from which they, having plowed, can select sums that will more than cover the money paid for the land, they propose organizing a loan for artificial fertilizers! “Rus” sympathizes with this, she thinks correct positioning question. Do whatever stupid thing you want, just don’t touch on the issue of land shortage!

About medical assistance:

They brought a doctor; for the visit you need to give him 15 rubles and 10 rubles is not enough. We need to take the doctor to the city and bring the medicine. Count everything - how much it will be, and most importantly, you need to have a carriage, horses, and coachman. But in case of serious illness, one visit is not enough. It is obvious that the doctor is now available only to rich landowners (...) Poor landowners, for example, those who had 300 peasant souls mortgaged, tenants of small estates, clerks managing individual farms, priests, innkeepers and the like wealthy, compared with peasants, people cannot send to the city for a doctor; These for the most part use good, that is, well-known in the area, paramedics, mainly from the courtyards, paramedics who were in charge of pharmacies and hospitals that rich landowners had during serfdom. However, such paramedics are also inaccessible to the mass of our poor peasants, because even a paramedic needs to be given three rubles with his medicine, or even five rubles, for a visit. Only very wealthy peasants resort to such paramedics.
The next day I had such an upset stomach that I was afraid. (...) The doctor happened, they got Tinctura opii somewhere, I drank and drank it - it didn’t help.
Of course, then they would not refrain from having children, especially since with chloroform this act is performed painlessly.
The hut was smoked with arsenic to kill cockroaches

On the need for rotation of authorities:

Yes, even if I, according to humanity, took the side of the peasants, what could I do? If I cry myself, they will make me a troublemaker of the peasants and send me where Makar did not drive the calves, and they will flog the peasants. Of course, in such cases, when there is a war between the peasants and the volost, everyone, knowing that the peasants are right, steps aside and advises the peasants not to get excited. The world mediator is as bad as the peasants, but what about me? The volost court is drunk, etc., etc., but what about me? and what will I do? The priest is tight-fisted... but we cannot change the priest, etc. But if: the volost is a unit, the volost foreman, elected, the administrative authorities in the volost, to whom, in a certain legal respect, everyone living in the volost, both peasants and landowners, priests, etc. His own volost judge, living in the volost. The volosts have their own elected priests. Its own internal volost police. Your own parish council. Then the volost doctor, the volost school, and the volost loan office would appear sooner.

About income differentiation:

The Barda gentleman willingly gives a grabber [professional digger] a hundred rubles a year!
at other times a man is hired to do someone else's work for a ruble a day only out of poverty, at another time a rich man willingly works for fifty rubles a day.
What can I say: just try, let a professor of agriculture or cattle breeding, who receives a salary of 2,400 rubles [per year], earn that kind of money on his farm; let the agricultural inspector earn at least half of the salary he receives on the farm.
Try to earn 1000 rubles a year on the farm for your labor (...)
My economy expanded at this time, and how much it expanded can be judged by the following data.
In 1871, 1,562 rubles were received at the cash register, and 1,453 rubles were released from the cash register - a total of 3,015 rubles.
In 1874, 6,047 rubles were received and 5,839 rubles were issued - a total of 11,886 rubles.
[I will repeat with the quote, but it is also very appropriate here]
men value so-called mental labor very cheaply (...). In one village, the peasants assigned a school teacher a salary of only 60 rubles a year, for him, the teacher, to eat. The trustee says that it is not enough that the farm laborer, the field worker, if you count grub, is paid more. And the men responded: if there are few, let them become farm laborers; anyone who is weak can be a teacher - you never know, anyone who cannot work. And then they began to calculate: he has a free summer, there is no training, if he undertakes to mow, how much he will mow! the soldiers have been spared.

Alexander Nikolaevich Engelhardt - chemist, writer and public figure of the 60s–70s of the 19th century, known to the general public mainly as the author of the letters “From the Village.” These are indeed detailed letters, the first of which was sent in 1872 to Otechestvennye zapiski from the Engelhardt family estate - the village of Batishchevo, Dorogobuzh district, Smolensk region. And then for ten years OZ readers waited for the publication of the next letter. The twelfth letter was already published in Vestnik Evropy - Otechestvennye zapiski was closed. “Letters” was published as a book at one time and read by Lenin and Marx, thanks to which “From the Village” was republished after 1917.
CONTENT:
Letters from the village. 12 letters. 1872-1887 (7).
ADDITIONS
Letters of 1863 (479).
N.A. Engelgardt. Alexander Nikolaevich Engelhardt and the Batishchev case. (Biographical sketch) (510).
N.A. Engelgardt. Episodes of my life. (Excerpts) (558).
APPLICATIONS
B.F. Egorov. Letters “From the Village” as a literary and journalistic monument (575).
D.I.Budaev, O.D.Budaeva. Letters “From the Village” as a historical source (582).
V.P. Novikov (Smolensk), D. Shpaar (Berlin). Agronomic heritage of A.N. Engelhardt (597).
A.V.Tikhonov. The Engelhardt family and its pedigree (611).
Notes (A.V. Tikhonova, D.I. Budaev) (636).
The main works of A.N. Engelhardt (compiled by B.F. Egorov, A.V. Tikhonova) (669).
Dictionary of dialectal, church and obsolete words (compiled by A.V. Tikhonova) (682).
Index of names (compiled by A.V. Tikhonova) (702).
Index of periodicals (compiled by B.F. Egorov, A.V. Tikhonova) (707).
Conditional abbreviations (709).
List of illustrations (710).
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS:
A.N. Engelgardt. Photo from 1870 (IRL RAS Museum). Frontispiece.
Plan of Batishchev - the estate of A.N. Engelhardt - p.9.
A.N. Engelgardt. Manuscript of the beginning of the First Letter “From the Village” (RGALI. F.572. Op.2. D.4) - p.10.
Secret order from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the Smolensk governor to strengthen supervision over A.N. Engelgardt (GASO. F.1. Op.8. D.1141) - p.392.
A.N. Engelgardt. Photo of 1861. Reproduced from: Proceedings of the Engelhardt Agricultural Experimental Station of Dorogobuzhsky District. Smolensk province. Compiled by N.K. Malyushitsky. St. Petersburg, 1913 (insert).
A.N. Engelgardt. Photo from 1871 (insert).
A.N. Engelgardt. Letter to the Smolensk governor on February 24, 1882 about the constant delays of letters (GASO. F.1. Op.8. D.1141) - p.441.
A.N. Engelgardt. Photo from the early 1880s. (insert).
Batishchevo. The Red Court and the house where A.N. Engelgardt died. Photo from the 1890s. (insert).
Landscape of Batishchevsky fields. Photo from the 1890s. (insert).
Batishchevo. Huts. Photo from the 1890s. From the funds of the Smolensk Regional Museum-Reserve (inset).
P.A. Vyazemsky - to the censors - p.476.
Birth certificate of A.N. Engelgardt - p.572.
Batishchevo. Headman Ivan Pavlovich Bogachev and A.N. Engelhardt’s son Nikolai Alexandrovich. Photo from the late 1890s. From the funds of the Smolensk Regional Museum-Reserve (inset).
Engelhardt family tree diagram (inset).
Coat of arms of the Smolensk branch of the Engelhardt family. Cited from: General Armorial of the noble families of the All-Russian Empire (Part VI, No. 91) (insert).

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