turgenev: fathers & sons & a smoke

Ivan Turgenev was Russia’s great emancipator of the serf. His method: Show what their lives were really like through his stories and novels…

…Alexander II’s emancipation act of the serfs  of 1861 was the background for Ivan Turgenev’s next novel, Fathers and Sons. The nobles were upset because they had lost their “baptized property” and the serfs were disappointed because they were denied the one thing they wanted most: land. Turgenev knew that without some from of land reforms the country would turn chaotic and he was right in his assessment as rents rose and agricultural yields dropped. Fathers and Sons is the story of the conflict between a dying aristocratic world of tradition and the new world of science and skepticism. And Russia, not having cast off the one or accepted, or even understood the other, was a recipe for a collision that could spell disaster.

Wealthy landowners add their serfs, considered "baptized property" to the high stakes of a card game in this caricature by Gustave Dore. click image for source...

Wealthy landowners add their serfs, considered “baptized property” to the high stakes of a card game in this caricature by Gustave Dore. click image for source…

The condition of Russia was central to Turgenev’s work for the next twenty years. Whether he was in Germany, where he lived at Baden-Baden with his mistress Pauline Viardot and husband Louis Viardot for eight years, or in France, his eyes were always fixed on the homeland. In Smoke, his brilliantly satiric novel of 1867, he attacks all those who are contributing to the coming Russian debacle: the aristocrats who do not accept the end of serfdom, as well as the new populists and the Slavophiles who, in their blind faith in the traditions of Holy Russia, refuse to learn from the West.

And in Turgenev’s Virgin Soil, written in 1876, he portrays the young intellectual revolutionaries who have been going out among the unhappy landless serfs. It is in ths novel that one of his characters predicts that revolution will come to Russia in thirty years… ( to be continued)…

Illustration for "Singers" by Turgenev---Artist: Boris Kustodiev Completion Date: 1908 Style: Realism--click image for source...

Illustration for “Singers” by Turgenev—Artist: Boris Kustodiev
Completion Date: 1908
Style: Realism–click image for source…

ADDENDUM:

(see link at end)…Alexander, in many respects, was the opposite of his father; he seemed more like his uncle in his younger days when he earned the surname of Well-beloved. It may be, however, that Alexander was but the executor of his father’s instructions, after doubt began to torture him. It is known that Nicholas had seriously considered the emancipation of the serfs. Alexander took it up in earnest. There were two serious difficulties, namely, the compensation to be allowed to the serf owners, and the extent of the soil to be allotted to the serfs. It must be remembered that, although the peasant had become resigned to serve the landowner, his proverb: “Our backs are the owner’s, but the soil is our own,” showed how stubbornly he held to the conviction that it was his own land which he cultivated, however little profit he derived from his toil. For once the tchinovnik dared not interfere; public opinion had so strongly condemned their incompetence and dishonesty that the Russian official was glad to efface himself; the landowners, on the other hand, showed little enthusiasm. They knew what their revenues were, but not what they would be under altered circumstances.

Soon after the Treaty of Paris had restored peace, Alexander addressed his “faithful nobles” at Moscow, inviting them to consult about the proper measures to be taken with the view to emancipation. When this produced no results, he appointed a Committee, “for the amelioration of the condition of the peasants.” The nobles of Poland, seeing what was coming, declared themselves ready to emancipate their serfs. The czar gave his consent and the ukase containing it was sent to all the governors and marshals of the nobility “for your information,” and also “for your instruction if the nobles under your administration should express the same intention as those of the three Lithuanian governments.”

The press supported the czar, and for that reason was allowed an unusual freedom of expression. The plan was formed to reconstruct and strengthen the national mir. This was favored by a number of large landowners who saw in this plan the beginning of constitutional liberty. The czar directed that committees be appointed to examine the scheme.

There were at this time 47,000,000 serfs, of whom 21,000,000 belonged to private landowners, 1,400,000 were domestic servants, and the rest Crown peasants who possessed greater privileges and enjoyed some degree of self-government. Their local affairs were administered by the mir and an elected council with an elder as executive. They were judged by

ted courts, that is juries, either in the mir court or in that of the volost (district).

Forty-six committees composed of 1,336 land and serf-owners, assembled to discuss the future of 22,500,000 serfs and of 120,000 owners. These committees declared in favor of emancipation, but could not agree upon the allowance of acreage or the indemnity to the owners. Another committee of twelve was appointed, presided over by the czar, but there Alexander met considerable passive opposition. The czar made a journey through the provinces, where he appealed to the nobles, warning them that “reforms came better from above than below.” After his return another committee superior in authority to the one existing and composed of friends of emancipation was called. Its members, inspired by the czar, drafted laws whereby emancipation was to proceed at once, and stringent laws were made to prevent the free peasant from again becoming a serf, and to make of him a proprietor upon payment of an indemnity. On the 3d of March, 1861, the emancipation ukase was published.

The scheme, as is evident, was fraught with difficulty. A stroke of the pen by the hand of the czar could set free millions of serfs, but all the czar’s power stopped short of endowing the serf with the dignity and responsibility, which are the freeman’s birthright. For more than a century and a half, the moujik had been a beast of burden, toiling as he was bid, and finding recreation only in besotting himself with strong drink whenever he could find the means to indulge. Mental faculties, save such as are inseparable from animal instinct, had lain dormant; moral perception was limited between the knout on one side, and gross superstition on the other. Could such a being be intrusted with life and property? When the serf, brutalized by generations of oppression, should come to understand that he was free to do as he pleased, and that the hovel where he and his brood were styed was his to do with as he pleased, what could he be expected to do? Would he not seize the opportunity to indulge in his favorite craving, and, having sold his property, swell the army of homeless vagabonds? Read More:http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20880/20880-h/20880-h.htm

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