incapable of smearing him with mud or trampling him down. I can’t say anything about the future. Perhaps Tolstoy will yet be compelled to dwell in caves, covered by misunderstanding and anger. But at some point, this godsend will be found under heaps of stone and the new humanity will sigh joyously seeing the light emanating from underneath and dissipating the gathering darkness of ages.
Yes, the future will be as it must. For now we must be grateful that in our own lives, thanks to Tolstoy, we have perceived the truth.
Dimitrii Ivanovich Grishin agreed with me more than anyone. I told him of my plans to leave the village commune in spring, leave the peasant fields, which, due to a shortage of land, were always a source of unhappiness and enmity. I decided to go build myself a “castle” on the forested lands, at the edge of the forest, like that of any bird (except the cuckoo), to clear a garden, plant some fruit trees, and live off this. Mitia [Dimitrii] happily joined me. We decided to take nothing from our homes besides saws and axes and to leave all the household goods to our brothers.
One-and-a-half kilometers from the village there was a thicket with a swampy ravine near a stream. We picked this swampy place to drain and live on so as not to incur envy, that we had taken good land.
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The work went full swing. We cleared the thicket, dug a garden, and built ourselves a “skyscraper”—four meters wide and six meters long. But at the very height of our labor we were both taken to the Briansk prison which was far stronger than our castle.
The prosecutor began interrogating us as to the basis of our violation of governmental laws—building a house, cutting wood. I replied that I was ashamed to realize that there were people who imagined that the whole world belonged to them. I did not wish to affirm their sick, abnormal opinion and ask their permission to weave my own nest of marshland brushwood in a foul swamp. Having said this, I stopped. We remained standing while the prosecutor and another person consulted quietly. Then the prosecutor turned to us and said:
“Well, go! But where will you be going and what are you going to do?”
“We are going to go to our nest, try and finish it before winter, and tend to the garden so that we have something to eat this winter.”
We left the office silently and were released from prison. By winter we truly did finish our “castle.” We cut some shingles, covered our roof, cut up boards for the floor, made bricks, and built a Russian stove. We harvested our garden and took in my sister and her children for the winter. The kids jumped for joy and chirped happily about me. Mitia, being cheerful, also paid attention to the children and our swamp nest became a corner of paradise.
Many of the curious came to see us to find topics for their idle chatter. They were not shy about giving us all kinds of advice, how we should live so that things would be even better. We lived thus for a year when I once accidentally heard a gossipy woman telling my sister:
“Yes, all would be fine if you had milk and meat. In the village, some neighbor could spare some. Here there is no one and you can’t get it from anybody.”
“Yes, in the village I could earn some money for milk and meat; here there is no one even to talk to,” she complained about her life isolated from any company.
In the summer, when the peasants began to reapportion land, I went to them and asked them to parcel out a farmstead for me. The commune measured one out for me with cheerful joking.
“Well, well, Vasilii Vasil’evich you’ve build yourself a
So Mitia and I lugged in all kinds of junk from the ravine next to the farmstead. We mixed clay right on the spot and built a hut. We made bricks and built an oven, covered the roof, plastered the walls, put in a door and window frames, and built a table and four stools.
“Now, sister,” I said, “get ready. We’re going to the village into society, to your own home. You’ll live freely and unconstrained.”
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My sister immediately broke out into tears.
“What have you planned? To get rid of me?” And the complaints started.
“I don’t have a garden there. Where will I get seedlings? And what will I do there? If I had a sewing machine, I could sew and make a living, but what will I do there?”
Nevertheless, I moved her to the new home saying:
“Here you’ll be a gardener yourself and you’ll have enough seedlings for half the village.”
She smiled through her tears: “We know these tender persuasions. Then I’ll have to suffer with the children in any way I know.”
Toward the winter we bought her a sewing machine and a cow. We built a spacious shed. Mother gave her some chickens. In the spring we dug a seed-plot, planted cabbage seeds, and instructed the children to water them and guard them against the hens. My sister became more cordial to Mitia and me. We often visited each other for various reasons since there are many of these among those who love each other. Mitia and I stayed alone. Then we took in two boys who had lost both parents. They spent the winter with us, got used to the place, and were happy. But for some dark reason, their grandfather then took them. Afterwards Mitia’s brother and his wife died and left six children. The older brothers were already adults, about twenty years old. They remained living in their home and we helped them.
The infant girl was taken by a peasant woman, adding to her own three children. Mitia and I took the four- year-old boy. People who were curious came to us from various places expressing a desire to live with us jointly. But they soon became bored and left, finding a more attractive life style. They went where people walked about with clean hands and did not dig in the dirt, where they ate ready-baked, clean bread produced by those who lead a boring life and dig in the dirt. They became “wise leaders” thinking that peasants could not make it without their help. They engaged in all kinds of science, acting in theaters, dancing, playing football, chess, and performing somersaults beyond the clouds, etc. At the same time, however, they carefully made sure that the peasants should not eat up their own portion of bread by themselves. Otherwise, one could die from hunger with all one’s cultural games and pursuits.
Only a religious-moral attitude towards life helps a person choose a requisite labor and hold to it irrespective of any difficulties. It is to be carried out urgently and only leftover time may be allotted to amusements, merriment, and carousing. Only having set upon this path of the working peasant can a person establish brotherly relationships with people, be independent, and not sell his labor, creating exploiters in so doing. Additionally, he himself can respect another such brother-toiler.
Unrelenting Order and Terror: 1930–1953
By 1930, the first Five Year Plan was in effect. It ushered in consequences that no one could foretell, policies
