Russka: The Novel of Russia

  So the young men wanted to study village conditions. It was a novel idea, to work side by side with the peasants like this, but to Misha it seemed rather commendable. And when young Popov added that he was collecting folk tales, Misha was delighted. ‘I know most of Krylov’s fairy tales by heart,’ he told his visitor. ‘But my old nanny Arina is the one you should really talk to. She knows hundreds.’

  Misha Bobrov believed he got on well with students. For a start, he was interested in education. He had been busy all that year with the district zemstvo trying to improve the local schooling. ‘We now give a basic education to one boy in six and one girl in twenty at Russka,’ he told them proudly. ‘And it would be twice that if Savva Suvorin didn’t place every obstacle in our way.’

  He also let them know that he hated the Minister of Education. For some reason the Tsar was devoted to this man, a certain Count Dimitri Tolstoy – a distant kinsman of the great novelist – whose regime at the Education Ministry was so reactionary that he was known as ‘The Strangler’. And when Misha learned that Popov had studied at the medical school, where there had been a huge student strike some years before, he was quick to declare: ‘With that cursed Tolstoy at the Ministry, I can understand any student who wants to revolt.’

  He spoke easily of literature, the latest radical essays in the journals, and politics: where he even took the line – highly unusual for a provincial landowner – that as well as the local zemstvos there should also be a Constituent Assembly, freely elected by the people, to advise the Tsar on national affairs. In short, Misha Bobrov gave such proof of his progressive views that he felt sure that, although the two young men did not say much, he must have impressed them.

  It was towards the end of the meal that he received a surprise.

  He had been watching Yevgeny Popov with some interest during these conversations. In his day, nearly all the university students had come from his own gentry class; but since the mid-century, a new generation of educated people had begun to appear; sons of priests, minor officials and merchants – men like young Popov. Misha was all in favour. The doctors, teachers and agricultural experts whom the local zemstvos were employing mostly came from this class. But Popov, he sensed, was more intellectual than most. What kind of fellow was he? Another thing Misha noticed was that when Popov spoke, he was rather abrupt, as though scorning useless civilities. So much the better, Misha thought. He’s direct. And he took care to be direct himself whenever he addressed him.

  But he could not quite restrain his original curiosity about the ginger-haired student’s family; and so it was, when they were well into their second bottle of wine, that he politely enquired: ‘I noticed, my dear sir, that your patronymic was Pavlovich. Would you by any chance be the son of that Paul Popov whose father was once the priest at Russka?’

  It was a perfectly polite question, but Popov scarcely bothered to look up from his food when he answered: ‘Yes.’

  Fearing that he might have offended him in some way, Misha graciously added, though with flagrant untruth: ‘A most distinguished man.’

  ‘Was he? I’ve no idea.’ Popov continued to eat.

  Slightly puzzled, still curious, and feeling vaguely that, having begun to ask after his family, it would be impolite not to follow through, Misha ploughed on. ‘I hope your father is well.’

  Still Popov did not trouble to look up. ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ It was Anna Bobrov who, scarcely thinking, had spoken. After all, it was only common courtesy. But to her amazement, Popov now looked up at her calmly.

  ‘No, you’re not.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You’re not sorry. How could you possibly be sorry if you never even met him?’

  Anna looked confused; Misha frowned; and Nicolai smiled with amusement.

  ‘Yevgeny hates shams. He believes one should only tell the truth.’

  ‘Quite right,’ said Misha, hoping to smoothe over the little awkwardness. But to his surprise, young Popov only turned to look at him with a mild contempt.

  ‘Then why did you say that corrupt old idiot my grandfather was distinguished?’

  This was gross impertinence; yet, to his astonishment, Misha Bobrov felt himself blushing guiltily. ‘You’re my guest,’ he muttered. Then, irritably: ‘One should show some family respect.’

  ‘I can’t see why, when there’s nothing to respect.’

  There was an awkward pause. Then Anna spoke. She was not sure if she understood any of this, but one thing at least she knew. ‘Family feeling is the most important thing in the world,’ she said firmly.

  ‘Nonsense. Not if the feeling is insincere.’

  Her mouth opened in astonishment; but Nicolai smiled at her, then at his father, and explained: ‘Popov is the most sincere fellow in the world. He believes we must strip away falsehood from everything. Destroy it, no matter what it is.’

  ‘You mean,’ Anna tried to fathom this, ‘that anything, even kindness to others, good manners, should be destroyed? What on earth would you have if everyone did that?’

  And now, for the first time since he had arrived, Popov smiled.

  ‘Truth,’ he said simply.

  Misha Bobrov also smiled. Now he understood the fellow. ‘You’re what they call a Nihilist,’ he said. Every educated Russian knew something of these radical fellows after they had been described in Turgenev’s famous novel Fathers and Sons a few years before. They followed the Russian philosopher Bakunin who urged that all society’s falsehoods must be destroyed and that this destruction of outworn ideas, no matter how painful, was creative. ‘I am with you absolutely, my dear sir,’ he declared. ‘I understand.’ He felt rather pleased with himself.

  ‘No, you don’t.’ Popov was looking at him with a calm disdain. ‘You’re just typical of your generation. You talk endlessly, make a few half-hearted reforms, and actually do nothing.’ And he shrugged contemptuously.

  Misha Bobrov gasped. His fist clenched. For a moment he said nothing, but forced himself, very carefully, to drink the rest of his glass of wine. As he did so, he noticed that his hand was shaking. It really was outrageous: this rudeness in his own house. And yet – this was the awful thing – could it be that there was some truth in what the young man said? Misha suddenly had a vision of dear old Uncle Ilya, sitting in his chair, as the weeks, months and years passed, reading, talking – and doing nothing, just as Popov had described. Surely he was not like that himself, was he? ‘The reforms of the present reign have been real,’ he said defensively. ‘Why, we abolished serfdom before the Americans abolished slavery.’

  ‘In name but not in fact.’

  ‘These things take time.’ He paused and looked seriously at the young man. ‘Do you really believe that everything in Russia is rotten?’

  ‘Of course. Don’t you?’

  And there, of course, was the problem. As Misha Bobrov gazed at Popov, he could not honestly deny the charge. Russia was still pitifully backward. The bureaucracy was famous for its corruption. Even the elected zemstvo assemblies, of which he was so proud, had no influence at all on the central government of the empire, which was the same autocracy as in the days of Peter the Great or even Ivan the Terrible. Yes, of course, his beloved Russia was rotten. But wouldn’t it improve? Weren’t enlightened, liberal-minded men like him making a difference? Or was this rude and frankly unpleasant young man right?

  Only now, as he silently pondered this question, did Anna Bobrov suddenly speak up. She had listened to their exchange. Of the philosophical content she had understood not a word. But one statement she had clearly grasped. ‘You say that the state of Russia is rotten, Mr Popov,’ she declared, ‘and you are absolutely right. It’s a disgrace.’

  Nicolai turned to his mother in surprise. ‘And what should be done about it, Mother?’ he enquired.

  ‘Done?’ She looked astonished. ‘How should I know?’ And then, speaking unconsciously for the vast majority of the Russian people, and in a tone of voice which p
roclaimed that the statement was obvious: ‘That’s for the government to decide!’

  ‘Madame,’ Popov smiled ironically, ‘you have just solved the entire problem.’

  And it was clear to them all that – God bless her – she certainly thought she had.

  The discussion ended after that. But, as well as feeling hurt by Popov’s words, Misha Bobrov was left with the sad and uncomfortable feeling that a gulf had opened between him and his son: that there was something about Nicolai and his friend that he did not understand.

  In the days that followed, the weather swiftly grew warmer. In the Bobrov house, everything seemed very quiet. The two young men went out, each day, to work with the villagers and returned home tired. Everyone avoided further discussions, and when Misha occasionally asked if their researches were progressing well, they assured him they were. ‘Young men do get strange enthusiasms sometimes,’ he remarked doubtfully to his wife. ‘I suppose there’s no harm in it.’

  ‘Being out of doors is very good for Nicolai,’ she replied. And Bobrov had to agree that the boy looked uncommonly fit. Young Popov, he thought, sometimes looked rather bored.

  For his part, Nicolai was delighted with everything. He enjoyed the physical work and the company of the peasants who, though he could never really be one of them, seemed to get used to him; indeed he was delighted when, after a week, Timofei Romanov actually forgot for a moment who he was and cursed him as thoroughly as his own son for digging a trench in the wrong place.

  Above all, though he had moved amongst the peasants since his childhood, it was only now, he realized, that he really understood what their lives were like – the crippling payments, the shortage of land, young Boris’s need to get out from the nagging claustrophobia of his parents’ house, and the resulting, miserable prospect of the Suvorin factory for Natalia. And it’s our fault, the gentry’s, that they have to live like this, he thought. It’s true that we are parasites upon these people, who have nothing to gain from the way that Russia is run.

  Yet as he observed the village, he noticed other things too. He had learned a little from books about agricultural methods in other countries; and so he now understood that the practices followed at Russka, as in most of Russia, were medieval. The ploughs were wooden, since iron ones were too expensive. The ploughlands, moreover, were still arranged in strips, with wasteful ridges of unploughed earth between them. And since these strips were regularly redistributed, no peasant ever had a personal holding he could call his own, which he might have cultivated more intensively. When Nicolai once suggested this solution to Timofei, however, the peasant only looked doubtful and remarked: ‘But then some people might get better land than others.’ Such was the immutable way of the commune. ‘Anyway,’ Timofei confessed to him, ‘our greatest problem now is that every year, the crops we sow yield less and less. Our Russian soil is exhausted and there’s nothing you can do.’

  It was this statement that, for the first time, led Nicolai to question his father in detail about the village. Was Timofei correct? To his son’s surprise, the landowner’s answer was remarkably informed.

  ‘If you want to understand the Russian village,’ he explained, ‘you have to understand that many of its problems are of its own making. This soil exhaustion is a perfect example. Six months ago,’ he went on, ‘the provincial zemstvo hired a German expert to study the question. The basic problem is this: our peasants use a three-field system of crop rotation – spring oats or barley, together with potatoes; winter rye; and the third field fallow. And, quite simply, it isn’t efficient. In other countries they’re using four-, five-, six-year rotations and growing clover and ley grass to replenish the land. But in our backward Russia we don’t.

  ‘However, the greatest problem here,’ he continued, ‘is Savva Suvorin and his linen factory.’

  ‘Why so?’

  Misha sighed. ‘Because he encourages the peasants to grow flax for making linen. It’s a valuable cash crop. The trouble is, they substitute it for oats or barley in the spring sowing and the flax takes more goodness from the land than anything else. So – yes – the land here is getting exhausted, and flax is the main culprit. It’s the same all over the region.

  ‘But do you know the two greatest ironies of all? First, our people do grow ley grass, which would replenish the land: but they grow it in a separate field instead of putting it into the rotation. So it does no good. Second, in order to compensate for the lower yields, they take more pasture land and put it under the plough; and by doing that they reduce the livestock they can graze – the livestock whose manure is the only other thing they have to put goodness back into the exhausted land!’

  ‘But that’s a cycle of insanity,’ Nicolai said.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘And what’s to be done about it?’

  ‘Nothing. The peasant communes won’t change their customs, you know.’

  ‘And the zemstvo authorities?’

  ‘Ah,’ his father sighed. ‘I’m afraid they’ve no plans. It’s all too difficult, you see.’

  And Nicolai could only shake his head.

  Yet there were cheerful times too. Nicolai and Popov would often sit in the izba with the Romanov family, and Anna would relate the very folk tales she had told Nicolai’s father as a child. Popov usually sat quietly to one side – he had not become close with the family – but Nicolai would happily sit beside her and encourage her to tell him not only tales, but stories of her own life too. She several times told him of the awful famine of ’39. And she would happily relate her life as a serf girl in the Bobrov household.

  ‘I see you have that same gesture,’ she once remarked to Nicolai, imitating the Bobrovs’ gentle, caressing motion of the arm, ‘that your father has. Ilya Alexandrovich had it too. And your great-grandfather, Alexander Prokofievich.’

  ‘Really?’ Nicolai was not even aware of this family characteristic. ‘And Uncle Sergei – did he have it?’

  But for some reason this set the old woman off into a high cackle of laughter. ‘Oh, no. He had something else, Master Sergei did!’ And she went on laughing for several minutes, though nobody there knew why.

  It was after one of these pleasant conversations however, when Popov had gone out, that Arina one evening drew him aside. She seemed unusually agitated. ‘Master Nicolai, forgive a poor old woman, but I beg you, don’t you get too mixed up with that one.’ She gestured to the door.

  ‘You mean Popov? He’s a capital fellow.’

  But she shook her head. ‘Stay away from him, Master Nicolai.’

  ‘What’s he done?’

  ‘That’s what I don’t know, see? But please, Nicolai Mikhailovich. He’s …’ she looked confused. ‘There’s something wrong with him.’

  Nicolai kissed her and laughed. ‘Dear Arina.’ He supposed Popov must seem strange to her.

  Many subjects went through Popov’s mind as he had made his way, one afternoon, along the lane that led through the woods to the little town of Russka. One of them concerned a hiding place.

  What he needed, he thought, was a small but private spot. A shed would do. But it would have to be somewhere that could be locked up and where nobody ever came. There was nowhere like that at Bobrovo.

  The article in question, carefully dismantled, was packed in pieces in a locked box in his room, which he had told his host contained only books. Soon, he judged, it would be time to use it.

  Well, no doubt something would turn up.

  Generally speaking he was pleased with his progress. Though he had some doubts about young Bobrov’s character, it seemed to him that Nicolai would serve his purpose here quite well. He had also kept his eyes open for others who might be useful. Young Boris Romanov, for instance, had engaged his attention: a fierce spirit, he thought. Popov had spoken to him several times in a general way, but given the young man no inkling, as yet, of what was afoot. One had to be careful.

  There was only one thing, really, which had taken him by surprise when he arrived at R
usska: and this was the influence of the nearby factories and the Suvorins who owned them. Clearly they were important; he needed to learn more about them; and so, leaving Nicolai at work in the fields that day, he had come past the monastery, over the bridge and into the busy little town.

  For some time he wandered about looking at the grim brick cotton mill, the warehouses and the sullen rows of workers’ cottages. And he was starting to become rather bored, when he suddenly caught sight of a lone figure, walking dejectedly along by some stalls in the market place, who instantly engaged his attention.

  He moved towards him.

  It seemed to Natalia that she was making progress.

  Grigory had let her kiss him.

  The kiss had not been very satisfactory, it had been salty; and she had felt him grow tense, uncertain what to do with his lips; she realized he had never kissed before. But it was a start.

  Though Natalia had not been sent to the factory yet, she was sure it was imminent. Boris had not changed his mind, and, since there was nothing to be done about it, the family would all help him to build a new izba at the far end of the village. Once he left, her own fate seemed inevitable. And though she had not yet told her father anything about her young man or her plans for him, she continued discreetly to meet Grigory every few days and to work on him patiently.

  She often talked to him about life in the village. She also told him about the two strange young men.

  Grigory enjoyed hearing about Nicolai and Popov. He was not able to understand why anyone would go and work in the fields if they did not have to, and he tried to imagine what they were like.

  So it was with great curiosity, early one evening, that he turned when Natalia suddenly pointed across the market place in Russka and declared: ‘Well, I never! There he is – the ginger-headed one. I wonder what he’s doing.’

  And so indeed did Grigory. For the curious stranger was deep in conversation with young Peter Suvorin.

  A month had passed; the ground was dry; spring was giving way to early summer and at Bobrovo all was quiet.