Peasant reform of 1861 in N.A. Nekrasov's poem "Peddlers"

Vei Sin'i PhD in Philology Postgraduate student, Department of the History of Russian Literature of the XIX Century, Faculty of Philology, Lomonosov Moscow State University. 518100, Kitai, spetsial'nyi raion, g. Shen'chzhen', ul. Tsin'syue, Raion Nan'shan', Tszin'lun, kv. C— 503, sinjivei@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

The poem "Peddlers" (1861) belongs to the most studied works of N.A. Nekrasov. The issues of stylistics and problems of composition of the poem were studied (see, for example, ^[1]), much attention was paid to its folklore basis (see ^[2]). In recent years, a facsimile edition of the first edition of Korobeynikov has appeared with a new commentary clarifying some of the "dark" sides of its content ^[3]. The topographic aspect of the poem has been well studied ^[4]. Close attention is paid to the unusual history of its creation and publication (the poem was published both in Sovremennik and in a separate cheap edition for the people) ^[5] and ^[6]. Attention is drawn to the specifics of the image of the people in the poem ^[7].

Despite all this, some aspects of the content of the Nekrasov poem remain still misunderstood. First of all, we mean its historical context. The poem was completed in August 1861 (in the so-called "Greshnevsky summer"), that is, only about five months after the publication of the Manifesto on the abolition of serfdom. For Nekrasov, who undoubtedly sincerely desired the people's welfare, the peasant reform was of great importance and the poet's interest in it was intense. However, the question of whether the poet's reflections on this great event were reflected in the work written shortly after him, and if so, what kind of view this poem contains of Nekrasov, was raised weakly and superficially (see for example ^[8]). In many ways, the correct understanding of this (so to speak, topical) the sides of the content of the "Peddlers" are hindered by the Soviet ideological ideas that have not yet been overcome about the "revolutionary character" of Nekrasov's poetry, about Nekrasov as a "democratic poet (see, for example, ^[9] and ^[10]). From such a point of view (from which the peasant reform seemed to be a deception of the people committed in favor of the landlords), of course, it is not easy to adequately interpret the content of this work. There is no revolutionary pathos or angry condemnation of the actions of the government in it (hence the attempt to show "Peddlers" as a "timeless" work, in no way connected with the actual historical stage – ^[11]).

In this article, we want to fill in the existing gap and show, firstly, that Nekrasov's reflections on the changes that the peasant reform brought to the life of Russia were reflected in the "Peddlers", and, secondly, that these reflections developed in the spirit of not "revolutionary-democratic", but rather capitalist ideals and ideas about progress. The methodological basis of our work is, firstly, the work of M.S. Makeev, who showed that Nekrasov's thinking as a person and a poet was largely the thinking of an entrepreneur for whom the market, the idea of business and trade had a positive character (see ^[12] and ^[13]). In our analysis, we also rely on the achievements of the current methodology of the "new economic criticism" (a general overview of its methods and the results achieved is presented in a solid and informative collection with the same name ^[14]). Researchers who are adjacent to this direction in literary studies show how the processes taking place in the economy affect the literary text, determine its structure and content even in cases when economic issues are not expressed in it directly and declaratively (see, first of all, the works of Mark Schell ^[15],[16] and Paul Delaney ^[17]). The text of the poem "Peddlers" is quoted from the academic Complete Works of N.A. Nekrasov ^[18].

Different sources speak about Nekrasov's attitude to the February 19 Manifesto in different ways. N.G. Chernyshevsky, who was extremely close to the poet at that time, recalled that Nekrasov was disappointed with the reform: "On the day when the decision of the case was made public, I enter Nekrasov's bedroom in the morning <...> He is lying on the pillow with his head, forgetting about the tea that is on the table next to him. The arms lie along the body. In his right hand is the printed sheet on which the decision of the peasant case is published. There is an expression of sadness on his face. The eyes are lowered into the chest. At my entrance, he started up, got up on the bed, clutching the sheet that was in his hand, and excitedly said: "So that's what this 'will' is. That's what she is!"" ^[19].

There is no reason not to trust the memoirist, but there are other facts that show Nekrasov's significantly more optimistic feeling about the changes beginning in the country. First of all, this was reflected in the poem "Freedom" written in the same year, which it seems appropriate to quote here in its entirety:

Motherland! across your plains

I haven't ridden with such a feeling yet!

I see a child in the arms of a native,

The heart is worried by the thought of the beloved:

In a good time , the child was born,

God is merciful! you don't recognize tears!

Since childhood, I have not been intimidated by anyone, I am free,

You'll choose a case that you're good for,

If you want, you'll stay a man forever,

If you can, you'll be an eagle under the sky!

There are many mistakes in these fantasies:

The human mind is thin and flexible,

I know, in place of the serfs' nets

People have come up with many others,

So!. but it's easier for people to unravel them.

Muse! greet freedom with hope!

This contradiction is probably explained by the peculiarity of Nekrasov's position. On the one hand, the poet shared the claims to the conditions under which the destruction of serfdom took place (which assumed the purchase of land by peasants from the landowner, established a transitional period of "temporary obligation" for already former serfs, which had other features that caused the indignation of many employees of Sovremennik, who expected a more just and sympathetic solution to their peasants "business"). On the other hand, Nekrasov, recognizing the injustice of many sides of the reform, saw in it only the beginning of a long process, which, by starting with unequal "starting conditions" for the participants, is not at all doomed to a deplorable, unsuccessful result.

In a letter to I.S. Turgenev dated April 5, 1861 (that is, very little time after the announcement of the Manifesto), the poet wrote: "We have a curious time now — but the most important thing and its whole fate is ahead" ^[20]. Whatever the beginning of the reform, Nekrasov could not doubt that it radically changed the situation of the Russian peasantry and the whole of Russian life as a whole. The question of what this new position of a free peasant is, who it turns him into, how it changes relations with other estates, what role in the state it prepares him for, and, ultimately, whether the people will be able to use their newfound freedom to improve their lives (whether they will find "happiness"), becomes a constant in in the post-reform work of Nekrasov, generating works of a very different mood and genre (from the small fragment "The Conflagration" imbued with bitter irony in relation to this "freedom" to the poem "Who lives well in Russia" permeated with historical optimism). These same questions, as we will try to show, play an important role in the poem "Peddlers".

In many ways, this "disagreement" with the radical employees of Nekrasov's magazine is due to the fact that at that time this improvement itself was seen not in the establishment of a just society on socialist foundations, but as a future based on equality of rights and opportunities, that is, rather capitalist, of course, also idealized (we, of course, cannot to assert that Nekrasov himself thought in exactly such categories).

The fact that the poem is based on the question of the future of Russia does not contradict the attribution of the poem's action to the past (the action takes place during the Crimean War, which appears there both in the reasoning of the main characters and through its material signs – peddlers come across wagons with captured Turkish soldiers: "They had military trucks / Sometimes came across: / "Look, the Turks are prisoners, / What a motley horde!"). The present, in which "everything was just beginning," undoubtedly did not yet provide objective material for reflection. The material had to be looked for in the past, assuming that it contains the germs, the makings of the future. In this respect, Nekrasov is not at all original, relying on traditions dating back, for example, to the "Captain's Daughter" by A.S. Pushkin (where the image of the causes of the riot that occurred in the past allows us to make an assumption about the "senselessness and ruthlessness" of the "Russian riot" in general, which must be avoided in the future) or to "Dead Souls" N.V. Gogol (in which the action is attributed to the time following the end of the "Napoleonic Wars", which only helps Gogol, describing this past, to reflect on the great and unclear future of Russia). A similar movement of Nekrasov's thought is due to the fact that, as it seemed to observers and participants of historical transformations at that time, the fate of post–reform Russia in the near future will depend primarily on the same estates and relations between the same estates as before the reform - peasants and landlords. It is this relationship that needs to change.

The poem depicts both of these estates. In the course of the plot, Nekrasov manages to describe the landowner's life and even several types of landowners and peasants, representatives of the people. However, unlike Nekrasov's pre-reform works, the interaction between representatives of these estates is practically not shown in the "Peddlers". In the poem, they seem to live each in their own "niche", which is reflected in the composition of the poem itself, where the peasants practically do not intersect with each other. Thus, there is no traditional attitude and the traditional for the pre–reform works of Nekrasov (among the numerous examples "On the road", "Homeland", "Gardener", etc.) collision - the villain-landowner destroys a peasant or peasant woman (sometimes such a destroyer is like serfdom itself, as in the poem "The Cabman"). Surprisingly, Nekrasov, describing the era of serfdom and the main "actors" of this era, does not actually describe serfdom relations. More precisely, it describes the relations that existed under serfdom, but are not specifically serfdom.

The element that allows the two estates to be present in the poem, without entering into direct interaction, are "peddlers", wandering merchants. They are like an "intermediate" element. On the one hand, they are commoners (their speech is emphatically vernacular, replete with colloquialisms like "sweetheart", "babye", "drunk", etc.) and, apparently, former serfs (the elder peddler Tikhonych tells about "our" lady: "At least our: old woman, / Acne-faced..."). On the other hand, their life does not fit into serfdom relations based on the production of products by peasants, most of the value of which is appropriated by the landowner to whom they belong. They are not just not "attached to the land" (among the serfs, as we well know, there was a large category of paid off workers"), but represent "free entrepreneurs", representatives of a capitalist-type economy based on the relationship of buyer and seller, on the principle of free exchange of goods for money (they are also called "hucksters", and "mosheyniki" and "merchants-golubchiks").

This allows them not only to be constantly on the move ("They are moving slowly,/ They are accumulating profits"), symbolizing Russia, torn from its place, coming out of many years of stagnation, sitting still and moving into the future (the motive of the path and movement is undoubtedly one of the most important in the poem, as has been said more than once (see, for example, ^[21]). The relations that peddlers enter into with peasants and landlords, as it were, equalize both estates, turning them from slaves and masters (as should happen in reality, where one estate has ceased to "own" the other) into subjects of market relations, buyers.

There is no doubt that landlords and peasants have differences as buyers. It is, however, mainly quantitative: landlords often have more money and they can purchase goods of better quality and in greater quantities (village women buy goods for "copper pennies", landlords can have hundreds of rubles). At the same time, a comparison of the episodes of purchase and sale shows a great similarity between landlords and peasants. Both of them love the very process of buying – choosing a product, evaluating it, trading, purchasing: in the village, "Zealous talk has begun, / In the middle of the village there is a bazaar, / Women walk like drunks, / Each other's goods are torn...", landowners: "Everything is done with white hands / Selects slowly, / And takes whole pieces — / That's how the lady is a soul!"

Both of them love beauty, strive to buy something good and at the same time beautiful. The landowner conducts a polite conversation with the merchants and acquires everything herself (",, What will you take for earrings with beads? / What's with the scarlet brocade?" / I'll shake my blond curls, / I'll wring — what I want!"), peasant women can also fight because of competition: "Two daughters-in-law for a motley ribbon / Scratched in blood"). Both of them can demonstrate both consumer rationality and unreasonable generosity, willingness to save, and it is pointless to spend the surplus they have (peasant women: "Where are the copper pennies / Were hidden in skeins, / Poor women got everything, / Walk in brand-new scarves." Landowners: "Word for word, friends / They laughed among themselves / Yes, three hundred and walked away, / Without looking, behind my box."

In a word, both landlords and peasants represent quite a favorable environment for trade, exchange (which is shown by the final parts of the poem, in which peddlers rush home with a very impressive result, which makes them a laconic prey for the scoundrel forester: ""Oh! empty, empty box, / purse full of money").

It is worth remembering by the way that at the same time (at the very beginning of the reform), the idea of the alienness of the desire for a Russian peasant to have excessive, additional income will appear more than once in conservative journalism, since he does not know where to spend it, he has no cultural (in the broadest sense) interests. Russian Russian market mechanisms and principles are therefore very difficult, according to many publicists, for example, the "Russian Bulletin", to apply in Russia, since the Russian peasant does not seek to earn more than he needs to maintain his farm ^[22]. Nekrasov in his poem seeks to show that both noblemen and peasants have cultural requests, a request for (albeit very moderate), but luxury and beauty (the peddler lures village girls quite easily: "We have rich calico, / There are mitkal, kumach and pleats. <...> You see, the stones are semi-precious / In the ring they burn like heat"). The poem does not, of course, conclude that this can completely force the Russian peasants to work more, but such a conclusion is for a certain group of readers (readers and subscribers of Sovremennik - you can recall with what pleasure the progressive heroes of the novel "What to Do?" read the "Peddlers") was quite asking for. In this light, the beginning of new capitalist relations in Russia in the poem seems quite optimistic, promising. There are enterprising people in the country who are ready to "trade", and buyers who are ready to engage in market relations.

At first glance, these conclusions are contradicted by arguments about the "crisis", about the decline of trade, complaints about poor incomes coming from the mouths of peddlers. The goods, according to the protagonists, are now selling poorly, the peddler's income has fallen significantly or has become much more difficult to get: "— Our business is now a lot / Not to get — not those years!", "Happiness, Tikhonych, uneven, / Now the revenue is bad." It is important, however, that the reasons for this are objective, do not lie in the plane of "alienness" for the Russian person of the "idea of the market" itself. The reasons why Russian people began to buy less from peddlers differ in the case of peasants and landowners. The peasantry became impoverished due to the war (and the severe economic consequences of the defeat remained an unpleasant reality in the early 1860s.):

The cursed war has come,

Yes , and it 's too bad,

Where would the wedding be rich —

PSC in the groom's soldiers!

The tsar is fooling — it's a pity for the people!

Sharpening the Russian treasury,

Paints with blood Black Sea,

Ships are going down.

Translation to lead and tin,

Yes, to the brave fellows.

All the people hung their heads.

There is a groan in the villages.

The loss of breadwinners, sons – all this undermines, in the language of economists, the purchasing power of this estate (it is also important, of course, that, in tragic moments of public life, the people become not up to luxury, hence the developing drunkenness among the people: "Get drunk, window sills, / Where can they dress up women! / They are going to the city, they are wearing robes, / They go to borrow bast shoes!). The nobility turned into bad buyers for another reason. Tikhonych accuses modern landlords of not living on their estates ("Now they are rural / They do not live in villages"), they go abroad ("The city is like this: Paris, / It is not for nothing that it is said about it: / As soon as you come in, you will burn"), and — most importantly – they prefer foreign goods to domestic goods ("And such women's fashions / Got started... where can we go! <...> It's from these mosheynikov, / That they live in that city (Paris – V.S.), / Nothing at the peddlers / Now they don't take the bar. / Damn the new fashion!"). Note by the way that this problem – protectionism and free trade – was actively discussed in the press at that time. The publicists of Nekrasov's Sovremennik at the same time stood unequivocally on the position of protectionism, the need to protect domestic producers from European competitors ^[23].

In these speeches, albeit coming from an ordinary person, but at the same time an experienced practitioner, Nekrasov invests quite a serious program: for the prosperity of trade, and therefore the state, peace and protection of national interests are needed not militarily, but economically. Tikhonych, of course, speaks about the prosperity of the merchants themselves. However, the behavior of the people and nobles in the "market" scenes suggests at least that the prosperity of trade in the country is not alien to their interests.

Let's summarize the results. The poem "Peddlers", the action of which is transferred to the recent past, says as much about him as about the present and future of Russia, which has begun the path of reforms. These reforms, perhaps unfair in some ways, nevertheless, eliminating the relationship of slavery and domination between the nobility and the peasantry, made it possible to develop market relations in the country. This determines the poet's optimistic view of the abolition of serfdom. Russian russians, as Nekrasov wants to show, may become an obstacle to these relations, not some alienation of the Russian people to the idea of the market (rather, on the contrary, market relations are quite organic for all classes of the Russian nation), but heavy ruinous wars and the insecurity of the domestic market from European goods.