I recollect that during the whole time of my unsuccessful endeavours to
help the unfortunate inhabitants of Moscow, I felt I was like a man
trying to help others out of a bog, who was all the time stuck fast in
it himself. Every effort made me feel the instability of the ground upon
which I was standing. I felt that I myself was in this bog, but the
acknowledgement did not help me to look more closely under my feet to
find out the nature of the ground on which I stood: I kept looking for
some external means to remedy the evil.
I felt my life was a bad one, and that people ought not to live so; yet
I did not come to the most natural and obvious conclusion: that I must
first reform my own mode of life before I could have any conception of
how to reform others. And so I began at the wrong end, as it were. I was
living in town, and wished to improve the lives of the men there; but I
soon became convinced that I had no power to do so; and then I began to
ponder over the _nature_ of town life and town misery.
I said to myself over and over again, "What is this town life and town
misery? And why, while living in town, am I unable to help the town
poor?" The only reply I found was, that I was powerless to do anything
for them, First, because there were too many collected together in one
place; Secondly, because none of them were at all like those in the
country. And again I asked myself, "Why are there so many here, and in
what do they differ from the country poor?"
To both these questions the answer was the same. The poor are numerous
in towns because all who have nothing to subsist on in the country are
collected there round the rich; and their peculiarity is due to the fact
that they have all come into the towns from the country to get a living.
(If there are any town poor born there, whose fathers and grandfathers
were town born, these in their turn originally came there to get a
living.) But what are we to understand by the expression, "getting a
living in town"? There is something strange in the expression; it sounds
like a joke when we reflect on its meaning. How is it that from the
country,--i.e., from places where there are woods, meadows, corn and
cattle, where the earth yields the treasures of fertility--men come
away, to get a living in a place where there are none of these
advantages, but only stones and dust? What then, do the words, "getting
a living in town," mean?
Such a phrase is constantly used, both by the employed and their
employers, as if it were quite clear and intelligible. I remember now
all the hundreds and thousands of town people living well or ill with
whom I had spoken about their object in coming here; and all of them,
without exception, told me they had quitted their villages "to get a
living"; that "Moscow neither sows nor reaps, yet lives in wealth"; that
in Moscow there is abundance of everything; and that, therefore, in
Moscow one may get the money which is needed in the country for corn,
cottages, horses, and the other essentials of life.
But, in fact, the country is the source of all wealth; there, only, are
real riches,--corn, woods, horses, and everything necessary. Why go to
towns, then, to get what is to be had in the country? And why should
people carry away from the country into the towns the things that are
necessary for country people,--flour, oats, horses, and cattle?
Hundreds of times I have spoken thus with peasants who live in towns;
and from my talks with them, and from my own observations, it became
clear to me that the accumulation of country people in our cities is
partly _necessary_, because they could not otherwise earn their
livelihood, and partly voluntary, because they are attracted by the
temptations of a town life.
It is true that the circumstances of a peasant are such, that, in order
to satisfy the pecuniary demands made on him in his village, he cannot
do otherwise than sell that corn and cattle which he knows very well
will be necessary for himself; and he is compelled, whether he will or
not, to go to town to earn back what was his own. But it is also true
that he is attracted to town by the charms of a comparatively easy way
of getting money, and by the luxury of life there; and, under the
pretext of earning his living, he goes there in order to have easier
work and better food, to drink tea three times a day, to dress himself
smartly, and even to get drunk and lead a dissolute life.
The cause is a simple one; for property passing from the hands of the
agriculturalists into those of non-agriculturalists accumulates in
towns. Observe towards autumn how much wealth is gathered together in
the villages. Then come the demands of taxes, rents, recruiting; then
the temptations of vodka, marriages, feasts, peddlers, and all sorts of
other snares; so that in one way or other, this property, all in its
various forms (sheep, calves, cows, horses, pigs, poultry, eggs, butter,
hemp, flax, rye, oats, buckwheat, peas, hemp-seed, and flax-seed),
passes into the hands of strangers, and is taken first to provincial
towns, and thence to the capitals. A villager is compelled to dispose of
all these things in order to satisfy the demands made upon him and the
temptations offered him; and, having thus parted with his goods, he is
left in want, and must follow where his wealth has been taken; and there
he tries to earn back the money which is necessary for his most urgent
needs at home; and so, being partly carried away by these temptations,
he himself, along with others, makes use of the accumulated wealth.
Everywhere throughout Russia, and, I think, not only in Russia but all
over the world, the same thing happens. The wealth of the country people
who produce it passes into the hands of tradespeople, landowners,
government officials, manufacturers. The men who receive this wealth
want to enjoy it, and to enjoy it fully they must be in town.
In the country, in the first place, it is difficult for the rich to
gratify all their desires, owing to the inhabitants being scattered: you
do not find there the shops, banks, restaurants, theatres, and various
kinds of public amusements.
Secondly, another of the chief pleasures procured by wealth,--vanity,
the desire to astonish, to make a display before others,--cannot be
gratified in the country for the same reason: its inhabitants being too
scattered. There is no one in the country to appreciate luxury; there is
no one to astonish. There you may have what you like to embellish your
dwelling,--pictures, bronze statues, all sorts of carriages, and fine
toilets,--but there is nobody to look at them or to envy you. The
peasants do not understand the value of all this, and cannot make head
or tail of it. Thirdly, luxury in the country is even disagreeable to a
man who has a conscience, and is an anxiety to a timid person. One feels
uneasy or ashamed at taking a milk bath, or in feeding puppies with
milk, when there are children close by needing it; one feels the same in
building pavilions and gardens among a people who live in cottages
covered with stable litter, and who have no wood to burn.
There is no one in the village to prevent the stupid, uneducated
peasants from spoiling our comforts.
Therefore, rich people gather together in towns, and settle near those
who, in similar positions, have similar desires. In towns, the enjoyment
of luxuries is carefully protected by a numerous police. The principal
inhabitants of towns are government officials, round whom all the rich
people, master-workmen, and artisans have settled. There, a rich man has
only to think about a thing, and he can get it. It is also more
agreeable for him to live there, because he can gratify his vanity;
there are people with whom he may try to compete in luxury, whom he may
astonish or eclipse. But it is especially pleasant for a wealthy man to
live in town, because, where his country life was uncomfortable, and
even somewhat incongruous because of his luxury, in town, on the
contrary, it would be uncomfortable for him _not_ to live splendidly, as
his equals in wealth do. What seemed out of place there, appears
indispensable here.
Rich people collect together in towns, and, under the protection of the
authorities, enjoy peacefully all that has been brought there by the
villagers. A countryman often cannot help going to town, where a
ceaseless round of feasting is going on, where what has been procured
from the peasants is being spent. He comes into the town to feed on
those crumbs which fall from the tables of the rich; and partly by
observing the careless, luxurious, and generally approved mode of living
of these men, he begins to desire to order his own affairs in such a
manner that he, too, may be able to work less and avail himself more of
the labour of others. At last he decides to settle down in the
neighbourhood of the wealthy, trying by every means in his power to get
back from them what is necessary for him, and submitting to all the
conditions which the rich enforce. These country people assist in
gratifying all the fancies of the wealthy: they serve them in public
baths, in taverns, as coachmen, and as prostitutes. They manufacture
carriages, make toys and dresses, and little by little learn from their
wealthy neighbours how to live like them, not by real labour, but by all
sorts of tricks, squeezing out from others the money they have
collected,--and so they become depraved, and are ruined.
It is then this same population, depraved by the wealth of towns, which
forms that city misery which I wished to relieve, but could not.
Indeed, if one only reflects on the condition of these country folk
coming to town to earn money to buy bread or to pay taxes, and who see
everywhere thousands of rubles squandered foolishly, and hundreds very
easily earned while they have to earn their pence by the hardest of
labour, one cannot but be astonished that there are still many such
people at work, and that they do not all have recourse to a more easy
way of getting money,--trading, begging, vice, cheating, and even
robbery.
It is only we who join in the ceaseless orgie going on in the towns who
can get so accustomed to our own mode of life that it seems quite
natural to us that one fine gentleman should occupy five large rooms
heated with sufficient firewood to enable twenty families to warm their
homes and cook their food with. To drive a short distance, we employ two
thoroughbreds and two men; we cover our inlaid floors with carpets, and
spend five or ten thousand rubles on a ball, or even twenty-five for a
Christmas-tree, and so on. Yet a man who needs ten rubles to buy bread
for his family, or from whom his last sheep has been taken to meet a tax
of seven rubles which he cannot save by the hardest of labour, cannot
get accustomed to all this which we imagine must seem quite natural to
the poor. There are even people _naïve_ enough to say that the poor are
thankful to us because we feed them by living so luxuriously!
But poor people do not lose their reasoning powers because they are
poor: they reason quite in the same manner as we do. When we have heard
that some one has lost a fortune at cards, or squandered ten or twenty
thousand rubles, the first thought that comes into our minds is: "How
stupid and bad this man must be to have parted with such a large sum
without any equivalent; and how well _I_ could have employed this money
for some building I have long wanted to get done, or for the improvement
of my estate," and so on.
The poor reason in the same way on seeing how foolishly we waste our
wealth; all the more forcibly, because this money is needed, not to
satisfy their _whims_, but for the chief necessaries of life, of which
they are in want. We are greatly mistaken in thinking that the poor,
while able to reason thus, still look on unconcernedly at the luxury
around them.
They have never acknowledged, and never will, that it is right for one
man to be always idling, and for another to be continually working. At
first they are astonished and offended; then, looking closer into the
question, they see that this state of things is acknowledged to be
legal, and they themselves try to get rid of work, and to take part in
the feasting. Some succeed in so doing, and acquire similar wanton
habits; others, little by little, approach such a condition; others
break down before they reach their object, and, having lost the habit of
working, fill the night-houses and the haunts of vice.
The year before last we took from the village a young peasant to be our
butler's assistant. He could not agree with the footman, and was sent
away; he entered the service of a merchant, pleased his masters, and now
wears a watch and chain, and has smart boots.
In his place we took another peasant, a married man. He turned out a
drunkard, and lost money. We took a third: he began to drink, and,
having drunk all he had, was for a long time in distress in a
night-lodging-house. Our old cook took to drinking in the town, and fell
ill. Last year a footman who used formerly to have fits of drunkenness,
but who, while living in the village kept himself from it for five
years, came to live in Moscow without his wife (who used to keep him in
order), began again to drink, and ruined himself. A young boy of our
village is living as butler's assistant at my brother's. His
grandfather, a blind old man, came to me while I was living in the
country, and asked me to persuade this grandson to send ten rubles for
taxes, because, unless this were done, the cow would have to be sold.
"He keeps telling me that he has to dress himself respectably," said the
old man. "He got himself long boots, and that ought to be enough; but I
actually believe he would like to buy a watch!"
In these words the grandfather expressed what he felt was the utmost
degree of extravagance. And this was really so; for the old man could
not afford a drop of oil for his food during the whole of Lent, and his
wood was spoilt because he had not the ruble and a quarter necessary for
cutting it up. But the old man's irony turned out to be reality. His
grandson came to me dressed in a fine black overcoat, and in long boots
for which he had paid eight rubles. Recently he had got ten rubles from
my brother, and spent them on his boots. And my children, who have known
the boy from his infancy, told me that he really considers it necessary
to buy a watch. He is a very good boy, but he considers that he will be
laughed at for not having one.
This year a housemaid, eighteen years of age, formed an intimacy with
the coachman, and was sent away. Our old nurse, to whom I related the
case, reminded me of a girl whom I had quite forgotten. Ten years ago,
during a short stay in Moscow, she formed an intimacy with a footman.
She also was sent away, and drifted at last into a house of ill-fame,
and died in a hospital before she was twenty years of age.
We have only to look around us to become alarmed by the infection which
(to say nothing of manufactories and workshops existing only to gratify
our luxury) we directly, by our luxurious town life, spread among those
very people whom we desire afterwards to help.
Thus, having got at the root of that town misery which I was not able to
alleviate, I saw that its first cause is in our taking from the
villagers their necessaries and carrying them to town. The second cause
is, that in those towns we avail ourselves of what we have gathered from
the country, and, by our foolish luxury, tempt and deprave the peasants
who follow us there in order to get back something of what we have taken
from them in the country.