Home ⇒ 📌Brief contents ⇒ “The Power of the Earth” Uspensky in brief

“The Power of the Earth” Uspensky in brief

I. Ivan the Barefoot

In the yard of the house where I live, comes Ivan Petrov, nicknamed “Barefoot.” He stands by the logs, but does not chop them for firewood. I know that he came only to ask for money to get drunk. Such as he is called “the rural proletariat.” An absurd discrepancy in peasant rights is enough for a man to smuggle his home into a drinking house. These discrepancies create a person without a future, seek to make a slave of a person who can not exist without consciousness, that he is the master. Until recently, Ivan had a strong economy and lived in harmony with his wife, but today he drinks everything in a tavern, beats his wife, and his children look like street children.

II. The Story of Ivan the Barefoot

Drunkenness of Ivan grew into a disease, popularly known as “weakened.” He explained his weakness “will.” Earlier, Ivan worked at the station, he paid well, and he “zabalovat.” At

the father did not drink, and when the family has appeared, but then as the master became to itself, and could not be kept. Why does a good life turn a man into a pig? Ivan talked about Mr. Podsolnukhov. He wanted to do milk work and brought a cow from abroad. She ate a lot and gave little milk, because she did not think about milk, but about her own pleasure. And our cows only think about work. So the peasant people are born for work. There are those who make money, like a Jew Schnap, and Ivan would immediately spend it. And only for peasant labor he again began to resemble a man.

III. Disorder

Workers are paid much better than peasants or even teachers, and therefore drunkenness begins. I told Ivan about the Penza landowner, who facilitated the work of the peasants by arranging a shift work in his fields. I also mentioned the horse thief Ruchkin, who was without a right hand, but did not want to fight, but because he was evil. And working on such a system, he could honestly receive money, for example, by transporting something on someone else’s horse. Ivan did not agree, explaining this by saying

that the owner does not entrust his cattle to anyone.

IV. The power of the earth

The power of the earth keeps the peasant on his feet. He is inconceivable without it. This is said in the epic about Svyatogor, who could not lift the bag with the thrust of the earth, while the peasant Mikula Selyaninovich did it easily. A person depends on a fine blade of grass, which tomorrow will become bread. If we give the peasants money and tear them away from the land, they will become miserable and useless. The earth does not wait, the land demands, and the work is the life of the peasant. The old peasant on the threshold of death always remembers the land on which he worked.

V. The People’s Intelligentsia

The Russian people survived under the oppression of the Tartars and serfdom, since they were not torn from the ground. Wealth and poverty also depend on it – the earth has wreaked it or not. And only an evil, envious person does not understand this. There are in the people and the intelligentsia, which has always existed, but now imperceptible. She constantly reminded the people that although he is close to nature, he should not live according to forest laws. The folk legend of Nikolai and Kasyan best describes this type of people’s intelligent man. Returning to the god of the people, Kasyan came as a dandy, and Nikolai – all in the mud, so he worked with the people, that’s why people celebrate Kasyan’s day once a year and Nicholas many times.

VI. The agricultural calendar

In the peasant calendar everything is connected with work, harvest. There are signs, and even saints and miracle workers are transferred to the peasant position, becoming patrons of some kind of activity. The peasant carefully studies all the vagaries of nature and adapts to them. Every day of the year the peasants have countless signs, and although these signs do not make any sense to the educated reader, they characterize the agricultural people’s idea sufficiently.

VII. Now and before

Not being a malicious serf, I still think that under serfdom the relations of the peasant with the land were more correct. A smart landlord will treat his people correctly, as they bring him income. Now the peasants are very much yanked by rods. Until there will be an opportunity to look at a person in a human way, this will continue. At the same time, those in the “peasantry” who were themselves in the peasants and were beaten into the elders are cruel. I never understood the meaning of corporal punishment. However, since the bosses only want to cash in, their wards do the same.

VIII. Greed

There was a landowner Sutaev, who understood the incorrectness of such methods. But this is an isolated case. Peasants understand that a large fortune can cause envy of a neighbor, because they almost do not pay taxes, for which the elder is responsible. At the same time the elders explain the cruelty towards the peasants by the fact that they do not want to pay taxes, although they have the means. And after a while they complain that the peasants are completely poor. Such “converts” take a great interest in the goods, but I do not recognize anything wrong in this. Everyone worries about themselves, buying from a neighbor oats and selling it in the spring for a double price. There were even cases when bread was taken from the granaries, that is, the peasants were stealing from the peasants.

IX. The Past of Ivan the Barefoot

If there are “stockbrokers”, cashing in on neighbors, that is, those who profit from it. This is also Ivan the Barefoot. When he was kicked out of the station, his farm was also unusable. Previously, it was all envy. The barefoot family was nicknamed, because there were all the bogatyrs who did not need boots and frost. In the times of Ivan came changes, to which he did not adapt. In the old days, know yourself to work, and now there are many difficulties with financial operations. The anthrax knocked over all the cattle, and to the master you no longer turn to the horse. I had to rent a horse, buy hay – in the end, poverty and arrears. So he began to drink. And now Ivan feels that there will be trouble, because how his house under the porch howls.

X. Land Troubles

All disasters can be explained by a violation of the land order. The situation is aggravated by military service. Previously, it affected large families, and now even small ones can lose their bread-winners. Previously, those who sought to live off the expense of another, although doing so in the soldiers, but at least did not play at the hands of the working people. Taxes used to be correct before – everyone paid, based on the state. I do not support serfdom at all, but I’m just talking about a system more correct for the peasants. A hundred years ago, Tikhon Zadonsky publicly said that second-hand dealers who cash in on someone in a difficult situation are thieves. Today, this can not be openly spoken.

XI. School and severity

The village teacher is not respected. Men think that he does not have rigor, and he does not teach anything. Often they even refuse to pay the school fee. But this is not from ignorance, but from the high demand for training. The people have a hidden power that helps them to survive any difficulties. It comes from the directions of nature itself. There is no fiction in this, because nature can not be deceived. The Christian idea allows the people not to live in an animal way, to distinguish good from evil. To make it clearer that we consider evil and what is good, let us cite the following two examples. Somehow, Pope Leo XIII, investing money in the bank, earned a good start. And one poor peasant woman, having lost her husband, slaughtered her five children and tried to drown herself, because she was exhausted. The pope was not convicted, but the woman was considered a criminal.

XII. Conclusion

Projects are ahead of time. It is necessary to think not about the problem of drunkenness, but about the land issue that is the root cause. All aspects of peasant life depend on the land. The peasant environment and the non-peasant environment differ. For example, a mouse colt and a daughter-in-law both adhere to young girls. But the first is a depraved and jaded representative of the privileged class, and the second worked from childhood and by the age of fifty accumulated a fortune and can afford to rest, without being externally and physically an old man. The peasants often have a “wedding” wedding, when the bridegroom simply takes the bride away, so no costs are needed. And families are created with rational goals – it’s easier to manage the economy. The peasantry follows religious requirements, although the churchmen themselves are not so righteous.

When I speak with Gavrilo Volkov, I always think what will happen when all his anger is out. He was born under serfdom, and when he was abolished, the despotic father kept trying to accumulate money, taking everything he earned from his sons, but still it did not turn out as successfully as his neighbor Cheremukhin. Cheremukhin was a typical cashier on a neighbor. After the death of his father Gavrila began to live alone. He tried to get rich by fraud, selling rotten hay, trying to substitute the master, but nothing came of it. Now Gavrila has a family, but he thinks only about accumulation, all saving and building plans for scams. Somehow he decided to work as a cab driver in Petersburg. He worked at night, and somehow the tipsy lady forgot his clutch with a purse. Gavrila hid the find under the floorboard. He began to suspect the policeman, but received a bribe and did not come again.

All these horrors I told only then, to say that you need to give the peasant a land, so that everything falls into place. As Leo Tolstoy wrote about Platon Karataev in War and Peace, he lived, only feeling himself a part of something more. It comes from the depths of nature itself. There is also a predator man. And where is the third type? The one who knows the truth of life is the people’s intelligentsia. It’s a pity, but now it’s not there, but life is on the side of a predator.