AFTER my father had come to the conclusion that it was not only useless
to help people with money, but immoral, the part he took in distributing
food among the peasants during the famines of 1890, 1891, and 1898 may
seem to have shown inconsistency and contradiction of thought.
"If a horseman sees that his horse is tired out, he must not remain
seated on its back and hold up its head, but simply get off," he used to
say, condemning all the charities of the well-fed people who sit on the
back of the working classes, continue to enjoy all the benefits of their
privileged position, and merely give from their superfluity.
He did not believe in the good of such charity and considered it a
form of self-hallucination, all the more harmful because people thereby
acquire a sort of moral right to continue that idle, aristocratic life
and get to go on increasing the poverty of the people.
In the autumn of 1890 my father thought of writing an article on the
famine, which had then spread over nearly all Russia.
Although from the newspapers and from the accounts brought by those who
came from the famine-stricken parts he already knew about the extent of
the peasantry's disaster, nevertheless, when his old friend Ivanovitch
Rayovsky called on him at Yasnaya Polyana and proposed that he should
drive through to the Dankovski District with him in order to see the
state of things in the villages for himself, he readily agreed, and went
with him to his property at Begitchovka.
He went there with the intention of staying only for a day or two; but
when he saw what a call there was for immediate measures, he at once set
to work to help Rayovsky, who had already instituted several kitchens in
the villages, in relieving the distress of the peasantry, at first on
a small scale, and then, when big subscriptions began to pour in from
every side, on a continually increasing one. The upshot of it was that
he devoted two whole years of his life to the work.
It is wrong to think that my father showed any inconsistency in this
matter. He did not delude himself for a moment into thinking he was
engaged on a virtuous and momentous task, but when he saw the sufferings
of the people, he simply could not bear to go on living comfortably at
Yasnaya or in Moscow any longer, but had to go out and help in order to
relieve his own feelings. Once he wrote:
There is much about it that is not what it ought to be; there is S. A.'s
money [22] and the subscriptions; there is the relation of those who
feed and those who are fed. THERE IS SIN WITHOUT END, but I cannot stay
at home and write. I feel the necessity of taking part in it, of doing
something.
Six years later I worked again at the same job with my father in
Tchornski and Mtsenski districts.
After the bad crops of the two preceding years it became clear by the
beginning of the winter of 1898 that a new famine was approaching in our
neighborhood, and that charitable assistance to the peasantry would be
needed. I turned to my father for help. By the spring he had managed to
collect some money, and at the beginning of April he came himself to see
me.
I must say that my father, who was very economical by nature, was
extraordinarily cautious and, I may say, even parsimonious in charitable
matters. It is of course easy to understand, if one considers the
unlimited confidence which he enjoyed among the subscribers and the
great moral responsibility which he could not but feel toward them. So
that before undertaking anything he had himself to be fully convinced of
the necessity of giving aid.
The day after his arrival, we saddled a couple of horses and rode out.
We rode as we had ridden together twenty years before, when we went out
coursing with our greyhounds; that is, across country, over the fields.
It was all the same to me which way we rode, as I believed that all the
neighboring villages were equally distressed, and my father, for the
sake of old memories, wanted to revisit Spasskoye Lyutovinovo, which
was only six miles from me, and where he had not been since Turgenieff's
death. On the way there I remember he told me all about Turgenieff's
mother, who was famous through all the neighborhood for her remarkable
intelligence, energy, and craziness. I do not know that he ever saw
her himself, or whether he was telling me only the reports that he had
heard.
As we rode across the Turgenieff's park, he recalled in passing how of
old he and Ivan Sergeyevitch had disputed which park was best, Spasskoye
or Yasnaya Polyana. I asked him:
"And now which do you think?"
"Yasnaya Polyana IS the best, though this is very fine, very fine
indeed."
In the village we visited the head-man's and two or three other
cottages, and came away disappointed. There was no famine.
The peasants, who had been endowed at the emancipation with a full share
of good land, and had enriched themselves since by wage-earnings, were
hardly in want at all. It is true that some of the yards were badly
stocked; but there was none of that acute degree of want which amounts
to famine and which strikes the eye at once.
I even remember my father reproaching me a little for having sounded the
alarm when there was no sufficient cause for it, and for a little while
I felt rather ashamed and awkward before him.
Of course when he talked to the peasants he asked each of them if he
remembered Turgenieff and eagerly picked up anything they had to say
about him. Some of the old men remembered him and spoke of him with
great affection.