The Power of the Land

Background

In September 1881 Gleb Uspensky purchased a house in the Syabrintsy village in the Chudovo region of the Novgorod gubernia. It was there that in November 1881-March 1882 that he wrote the cycle of sketches, mixing fiction and documentary, based on his observations of the rural life in the provincial Russia. Thematically and ideologically it became a sequel to Uspensky's earlier work, Peasant and Peasant's Labour (Krestjanin y krestjansky trud, 1880) in which he analyzed ways in which working on land had formed Russian peasant's character and mindset.

History

Later in 1882 the 12 stories, mixing documentary and fiction (and having Ivan Bosykh as the main character) were re-issued and published as another compilation which retained the title, The Power of The Land. It featured five more stories: "Old Men" (Stariki), "The Levelling" (Ravnenye pod odno), "God Bears Our Sins" (Bog Grekham Terpit), "If Not" (Ne slutchis) and "Sheep Without Shepherd" (Ovtsy bez pastyrya). All the original sketches here too were given each its own title (while in the magazine version they were marked by numbers I-XII, as chapters). Censor Nazarevsky has given The Power of the Land a negative review and it was banned by the Central Department of Publishing Affairs and the Interior minister. According to the censor's report, the book "was certain to have a negative effect upon a reader for it hints on imminent catastrophe." By the end of the year, though, the publisher and Usensky himself managed to obtain the permission and the book was finally sent to print.

Uspensky attributed great importance to The Power of the Land. Drawing parallels with Émile Zola's Terra novel, he wrote to translator and publisher V.E.Genkel on February 13, 1888. "You see, the real power [of the land] here belongs to the people. My view of the Land was not as rude and cynical as that of Zola. He mixes the two modes of life (and indeed they have been mixed in the European countries): people living off land in order to make money. In Russia it is different: you're either on land without money, or with money but without land."

Concept

In the course of his studies Uspensky came to the conclusion that the major force that determines the whole life of a Russian peasant is what he termed "the power of the land", making a man feel continuously his total dependency upon Earth and forces of Nature which he invariably has to comply. This dependence is what forms a very special mindset and a way of life. Once a peasant gets rooted out of his soil, his world crumbles down, Uspensky argued. He insisted that the major reason behind the economical and moral crisis of Russian peasantry was the fact that after the 1861 reform it got lesser land than it had in the years of serfdom. The author pointed at two other causes for rural Russia's demise: the emergence of new, 'easy' ways of making money and the diminished number of rural intelligentsia, which, after the reform, became 'hired' and started to "defend a vulture's interests", serving the exploiting classes, not the people. Unlike narodnik theoreticians like Pyotr Lavrov and Nikolai Mikhailovsky, and authors like Nikolai Zlatovratsky, Uspensky thought little of so-called "special Russian folk spirit" and placed no value at all at "obshchina" ideals. What he endeavored to make was an objective social analysis in terms of what Soviet scholars later called "metaphysical materialism".

Uspensky described in detail the emergence of rural proletariat in Russia and tried to formulate the reasons for it. He expressed no sympathy towards small peasantry farms with their owners' egotistic tendencies, "fanatical craving to become property men" and strong prejudices against the social, collective labour. Showing the disintegration of Russian peasantry Uspensky, though, couldn't believe it was historically inevitabile. The newly born 'rural proletariat' won't need have been born at all, the author argued, should all those numerous reforms aiming to help people, have been held with respect to Russian people's traditional values and historically formed mindset. Uspensky believed better organization of life in the Russian countryside and giving a peasant more land might have done well to preserve the centuries' old "good old man of the land" ideal.

Uspensky was not exactly logical in his approach. On the one hand he severely criticized the poorest peasant class for its fatalistic nature-worshipping and the low efficiency of labour. "Eternal labour is [a peasant]'s only interest in life and life in itself, but the result of it is nil", he wrote. On the other hand he regarded "the power of the land" an eternal, immovable factor in Russian peasant's life. Idealizing the 'natural' type of peasant and seeing him as a healthy antidote for the newly emerged peasantry that's given to the 'power of the ruble', Uspensky was close to narodniks of the 1880s. According to Vladimir Lenin, there was strong contradiction to their views. "They wished to preserve peasant's bond with the land but did not want to have serfdom the only thing that could have guaranteed such bond preserved, the bond that has been broken by... capitalism which made the stability of such bonding impossible."

Critical reception

The Power of the Land caused heated discussion in the Russian press. The conservatives reviewed it negatively, accusing the author of "digging in izbas and pigsties." One of the critics, Pyotr Schebalsky (in The Russian Messenger, 1882, No.4), compared Uspensky's prose unfavourably to the fiction of Russian aristocrat writers, calling the latter "clear rooms", "the bel étage" of literature. He and other conservative critics suggested that the country as it was shown by Uspensky needed a 'hedgehog mittens' rule to be kept in order. Uspensky responded with the "Suspicious Bel étage" article.

The liberal critics (like A.Pypin and K.Arsenyev, both in Vestnik Evropy) praised the book. There were heated discussions of it in the narodnik camp which by this time has been divided into several warring factions. Many members of the movement, recognising Uspensky's strength as an artist, condemned him for criticism of narodnik's ideals. Of narodnik critics, the most objective and thorough analysis of the book was provided by Mikhail Protopopov (Delo, 1882, No.7) and Alexander Skabichevsky (Ustoyi, 1882, No.2).

In 1887 Georgy Plekhanov published the article "Gleb Uspensky" (later included in the Narodniki-belletristy collection). In it he praised the insightful realism of two of his books, Peasant And Peasant's Labour and The Power Of The Land, still highlighting some contradictions. "Most shrewd, intelligent and gifted of all the narodnik authors… set out to show us 'the real side of narodnik case', he gradually, without ever noticing, signed a death sentence to narodnitchestvo with all the programs and 'practical projects' associated with it," he wrote. According to Plekhanov, Uspensky's works were most important for Marxists in their struggle with narodniks' doctrine.

English translation