The District Elder tells me, as the Village Elder had done, that the taxes were being collected with special rigour by order of the higher authorities. He admits that it is no easy task to collect the taxes from the poor, but he shows less sympathy than the Village Elder did. He does not venture to censure the authorities; and, above all, he has hardly any doubt of the usefulness of his office, or of the rightness of taking part in such activity.
“One can’t, after all, encourage. …”
Soon after, I had occasion to talk about these things with a Zémsky Natchálnik.341 He had very little compassion for the hard lot of the poverty-stricken folk whom he scarcely ever saw, and just as little doubt of the morality and lawfulness of his activity. In his conversation with me he admitted that, on the whole, it would be pleasanter not to serve at all; but he considered himself a useful functionary, because other men in his place would do even worse things. “And once one is living in the country, why not take the salary, small as it is, of a Zémsky Natchálnik?”
The views of a Governor on the collection of taxes necessary to meet the needs of those who are occupied in arranging for the nation’s welfare, were entirely free from any considerations as to samovars, sheep, homespun linen, or calves taken from the poorest inhabitants of the villages; and he had not the slightest doubt as to the usefulness of his activity.
And finally, the Ministers and those who are busy managing the liquor traffic, those who are occupied in teaching men to kill one another, and those who are engaged in condemning people to exile, to prison, to penal servitude, or to the gallows—all the Ministers and their assistants are quite convinced that samovars and sheep and linen and calves taken from beggars, are put to their best use in producing vodka (which poisons the people), weapons for killing men, the erection of gaols and lockups, and, among other things, in paying to them and to their assistants the salaries they require to furnish drawing-rooms, to buy dresses for their wives, and for journeys and amusements which they undertake as relaxations after fulfilling their arduous labours for the welfare of the coarse and ungrateful masses.
Conclusion
A Dream
A few nights ago I dreamt so significant a dream that several times during the following day I asked myself, “What has happened today that is so specially important?” And then I remembered that the specially important thing was what I had seen, or rather heard, in my dream.
It was a speech that struck me greatly, spoken by one who, as often happens in dreams, was a combination of two men: my old friend, now dead, Vladímir Orlóf, with grey curls on each side of his bald head, and Nicholas Andréyevitch, a copyist who lived with my brother.
The speech was evoked by the conversation of a rich lady, the hostess, with a landowner who was visiting her house. The lady had recounted how the peasants on a neighbouring estate had burnt the landlord’s house and several sheds which sheltered century-old cherry trees and duchesse pears. Her visitor, the landowner, related how the peasants had cut down some oaks in his forest, and had even carted away a stack of hay.
“Neither arson nor robbery is considered a crime nowadays. The immorality of our people is terrible: they have all become thieves!” said someone.
And in answer to those words, that man, combined of two, spoke as follows:
“The peasants have stolen oaks and hay, and are thieves, and the most immoral class,” he began, addressing no one in particular. “Now, in the Caucasus, a chieftain used to raid the aouls and carry off all the horses of the inhabitants. But one of them found means to get back from the chieftain’s herds at least one of the horses that had been stolen from him. Was that man a thief, because he got back one of the many horses stolen from him? And is it not the same with the trees, the grass, the hay, and all the rest of the things you say the peasants have stolen from you? The earth is the Lord’s, and common to all; and if the peasants have taken what was grown on the common land of which they have been deprived, they have not stolen, but have only resumed possession of a small part of what has been stolen from them.
“I know you consider land to be the property of the landlord, and therefore call the restoration to themselves of its produce by the peasants—robbery; but, you know, that is not true! The land never was, and never can be, anyone’s property. If a man has more of it than he requires, while others have none, then he who possesses the surplus land possesses not land but men; and men cannot be the property of other men.
“Because a dozen mischievous lads have burnt some cherry tree sheds, and have cut down some trees, you say the peasants are thieves, and the most immoral class! …
“How can your tongue frame such words! They have stolen ten oaks from you. Stolen! ‘To prison with them!’
“Why, if they had taken not your oaks alone but everything that is in this house, they would only have taken what is theirs: made
