Short Fiction

people, who do not and never did acknowledge landownership, we, imitating Europe, try in all sorts of cunning ways, and by deception, bribery, and even force, to accustom them to the idea of property in land⁠—that is to say, we try to deprave them and to destroy their consciousness of the truth they have held for ages, and which sooner or later will certainly be acknowledged by the whole human race: the truth that all who live on the earth cannot but have an equal right to its use.

These efforts to inoculate the people with the idea of landed property that is so foreign to them, are unceasingly made, with great perseverance and zeal by the Government, and consciously or for the most part unconsciously, from an instinct of self-preservation, by all the slaveholders of our time. And the slaveholders of our time are not the landowners alone, but are all those who, as a result of the people being deprived of the land, enjoy power over them.

Most strenuous efforts are made to deprave the people; but, thank God! it may be safely said that till now all those efforts have only had an effect on the smallest and worst part of Russia’s peasant population. The many-millioned majority of Russian workmen who hold but little land and live⁠—not the depraved, parasitic life of the slave-owners, but their own reasonable, hardworking lives⁠—do not yield to those efforts; because for them the solution of the land question is not one of personal advantage, as it is regarded by all the different slave-owners of today. For the enormous majority of peasants, the solution of that problem is not arrived at by mutually contradictory economic theories that spring up today and tomorrow are forgotten, but is found in the one truth, which is realised by them, and always has been and is realised by all reasonable men the world over⁠—the truth that all men are brothers and have therefore all an equal right to all the blessings of the world and, among the rest, to the most necessary of all rights⁠—namely, the equal right of all to the use of the land.

Living in this truth, an enormous majority of the peasants attach no importance to all the wretched measures adopted by the Government about this or that alteration of the laws of landownership, for they know that there is only one solution to the land question⁠—the total abolition of private property in land, and of land-slavery. And, knowing this, they quietly await their day, which sooner or later must come.

Singing in the Village

Voices and an accordion sounded as if close by, though through the mist nobody could be seen. It was a workday morning, and I was surprised to hear music.

“Oh, it’s the recruits’ leave-taking,” thought I, remembering that I had heard something a few days before about five men being drawn from our village. Involuntarily attracted by the merry song, I went in the direction whence it proceeded.

As I approached the singers, the sound of song and accordion suddenly stopped. The singers, that is the lads who were leave-taking, entered the double-fronted brick cottage belonging to the father of one of them. Before the door stood a small group of women, girls, and children.

While I was finding out whose sons were going, and why they had entered that cottage, the lads themselves, accompanied by their mothers and sisters, came out at the door. There were five of them: four bachelors and one married man. Our village is near the town where nearly all these conscripts had worked. They were dressed town-fashion, evidently wearing their best clothes: pea-jackets, new caps, and high, showy boots. Conspicuous among them was a young fellow, well built though not tall, with a sweet, merry, expressive face, a small beard and moustache just beginning to sprout, and bright hazel eyes. As he came out, he at once took a big, expensive-looking accordion that was hanging over his shoulders and, having bowed to me, started playing the merry tune of “Bárynya,” running his fingers nimbly over the keys and keeping exact time, as he moved with rhythmic step jauntily down the road.

Beside him walked a thickset, fair-haired lad, also of medium height. He looked gaily from side to side, and sang second with spirit, in harmony with the first singer. He was the married one. These two walked ahead of the other three, who were also well dressed, and not remarkable in any way except that one of them was tall.

Together with the crowd I followed the lads. All their songs were merry, and no expression of grief was heard while the procession was going along; but as soon as we came to the next house at which the lads were to be treated, the lamentations of the women began. It was difficult to make out what they were saying; only a word here and there could be distinguished: “death⁠ ⁠… father and mother⁠ ⁠… native land⁠ ⁠…”; and after every verse, the woman who led the chanting took a deep breath, and burst out into long-drawn moans, followed by hysterical laughter. The women were the mothers and sisters of the conscripts. Beside the lamentations of these relatives, one heard the admonitions of their friends.

“Now then, Matryóna, that’s enough! You must be tired out,” I heard one woman say, consoling another who was lamenting.

The lads entered the cottage. I remained outside, talking with a peasant acquaintance, Vasíly Oréhof, a former pupil of mine. His son, one of the five, was the married man who had been singing second as he went along.

“Well,” I said, “it is a pity!”

“What’s to be done? Pity or not, one has to serve.”

And he told me of his domestic affairs. He had three sons: the eldest was living at home, the second was now being taken, and a third (who, like the second, had gone away to work) was contributing dutifully to the support of the home. The one who was leaving had