Analysis of the episode based on the novel by N.G. Chernyshevsky "What to do" "The fourth dream of Vera Pavlovna"

Vera Pavlovna's fourth dream is more necessary for the author than for the novel as a whole. This episode is a rare moment
author's revelations; he shares with the readers an idea, or maybe a dream, which he formulated after going through the main
part of my life. From my point of view, this piece of work can be separated into a separate independent
whole. But at the same time, this episode perfectly entered the composition of the novel, and from this position the author's decision
it turned out to be a genius to present her thoughts through Vera Pavlovna's dream.

From the very first lines, the immersion in sleep is fast and fantastic. Against the background of insanely beautiful nature, they sound
lyric works, Vera Pavlovna meets an old acquaintance, with whom she flies to the palace for
"Luxurious feast". With the poet's singing, the story is revealed, "and the life of millennia sweeps through his song." His
the story turns into a dialogue between two women. Vera Pavlovna learns strange things and even looks into the future. On the
the last words of her acquaintance, who turned out to be a queen, the dream ends.

This episode has a wonderful artistic twist. The queen speaks only with Vera, but according to
the perception of the text seems that in fact a dialogue is being conducted between me (the reader) and the author, who is hidden
under the mask of a woman. We hear his ideas, we perceive his thoughts.

From the words of the queen, it is clear that when people cease to be animals, consciousness began to wake up in the woman, but she
was recognized by a man only as a slave. Thus, Astarte, Aphrodite, "Integrity" arose, and then
She was born, as the pinnacle of evolution, when a man recognized a woman as his equal. And then comes the climax
plot. Vera Pavlovna learns that the queen is herself, that she is "the goal of life and all of life." In her, before
everything, inner beauty is important, awareness of equality, without which there is no "purity of the heart", "purity of the body",
"Genuine external beauty."

Then the queen lifts the curtain of time and shows Vera the future. Eternal nature reigns here,
youth, there are amazing buildings, technology and people. Everything is harmonious, everyone is happy. The picture is drawn
"Bright future".

The journey and the dream itself ends with a call to this "bright future."

Vera Pavlovna is amazed at new discoveries, she is surprised at everything she sees. But for her this dream is important, because
that she understands the correctness and importance of her path. She is aware of her destiny. Although from some point
vision, this dream is her dream, her fantasy, which I doubt. I believe that in this episode is clearly audible
author's voice. These ideas could be born in the head of an adult man with a certain life experience, but not in
young woman. This episode did not deepen and did not reveal Vera in any other way. The main thing is that the author considers it
ideal and sees her as the queen of the "bright future."

As a modern reader, I can say with allsoch.ru - 2001-2005 with confidence, based on the experience of previous generations, that this
a utopian picture of the world is impossible for real embodiment. And I'm glad of that, because I consider life like this
the world is boring and meaningless.

The society of the future is shown in the novel in the fourth dream of Vera Pavlovna. The man of the future, predicts Chernyshevsky, will remake nature with the help of wonderful machines. He will force nature to serve itself, forever free from the "power of the earth" over itself, throw off the dependence on the elemental forces of nature.

Labor will cease to be a heavy and shameful burden, it will become light and joyful, for all heavy work will be done by machines. Labor will become a natural need and pleasure for a person. The people of the future, predicts Chernyshevsky, will turn deserts into fertile lands, cover bare rocks with gardens, and dig grandiose canals. The opposition between mental and physical labor will forever disappear. The man of the future, freed from needs and worries, will become a comprehensively developed being, will be able to fully reveal all the riches of his nature. People of the future bloom with health and strength, they are slender and graceful, they are not slaves of machines, but creators and creators.

They are musicians, poets, philosophers, scientists, artists, but they also work in the fields and factories, control the perfect machines they have created. "All of them are happy handsome and handsome! Avians, leading a free life of work and pleasure."

Painting the victory of socialism in Russia, Chernyshevsky at the same time predicts its inevitable triumph throughout the world, when all artificial boundaries between peoples will be swept away and each person will become a welcome guest and a full-fledged owner anywhere in the world. Then all oppression of man by man will disappear, "for all eternal spring and summer, eternal joy" will come.

With deep insight, Chernyshevsky foresaw that socialism would liberate women from domestic slavery, that society would take upon itself a significant share of the concerns of raising the younger generation and providing for the elderly. He believed that only a few generations would change, and socialism would triumph in Russia and throughout the world. NG Chernyshevsky's brilliant prediction has come true in our time: many countries in Europe and Asia have begun building a socialist society, following the great example of the Soviet people, who built socialism and are moving towards communism. “The future is bright and beautiful,” Chernyshevsky tirelessly repeated and passionately called to fight for him: “Love him, strive for him, work for him, bring him closer” “er” 67 transfer from him to the present; ” as much as you can endure: "Your life will be so bright and kind, rich in joy and pleasure, as far as you can transfer to it from the future. Strive for it, work for it, bring it closer, transfer everything that you can transfer from it to the present."

The main heroes of Russian classical literature that preceded Chernyshevsky were “superfluous people”. Onegin, Pechorin, Beltov, Rudin. Oblomov, with all the differences among themselves, are similar in one thing: all of them, according to Herzen, are "clever uselessness", "titans of words and pygmies of deed", bifurcated natures, suffering from the eternal discord between consciousness and will, thought and deed, - from moral exhaustion ... These are not the heroes of Chernyshevsky. His "new people" know what they need to do, and are able to implement their plans, their thought is inseparable from the deed, they do not know the discord between consciousness and will. Chernyshevsky's heroes are creators of new relationships between people, carriers of a new morality. These new people are in the center of the author's attention, they are the protagonists of the Romaya; therefore, by the end of the second chapter of the novel, such representatives of the old world as Marya Aleyuseevna, Storeshnikov, Julie,

The novel began in December 1862 and finished four months later. Its first chapters appeared in the March book of Sovremennik for 1863, the rest - in the April and May issues of the magazine for the same 1863. The novel underwent double censorship. First...

A stumbling block for many readers of What Is to Be Done? are the dreams of Vera Pavlovna. It is difficult to understand them, especially in those cases when, for censorship reasons, Chernyshevsky expressed his ideas in an overly allegorical form. But one of the images, ...

A very important character in the novel, the chapter "A Special Person" is dedicated to him. He himself comes from a noble wealthy family, but leads an ascetic lifestyle. By the time of the action indicated in the novel, R. is 22 years old. He became a student at the age of 16, he studied natural ...

“I loved you so sincerely, so tenderly, As God bless you to be different ...” A. Pushkin When I began to analyze in detail the novel by N. G. Chernyshevsky in terms of content, I got three shelves. On one - there are moral relationships ...

Current page: 1 (total of the book has 2 pages)

Kolontaev Konstantin Vladimirovich
"The Fourth Genocidal Dream of Vera Pavlovna"

Konstantin Kolontaev "The Fourth Genocidal Dream of Vera Pavlovna" (Only Russia and Russians from pole to pole, or N. G. Chernyshevsky's view of the communist future of the Earth)

"Vera Pavlovna, instead of

to sleep with Rakhmetov,

sleeps alone and sees

your Fourth Dream "

(A line of one of the compositions

Soviet high school girls

Brezhnev era)

Instead of a Preface. The current world civilization crisis of capitalism, and some of its unexpected features

The current global crisis of capitalism, which began in the fall of 2008, with a grandiose collapse of many leading financial structures of the Western world, by the end of 2011 had become not so much an economic and political crisis, as it happened more than once before, but for the first time since the decline and collapse of the Roman Empire it became a civilizational crisis. Moreover, not only for the West, but also for the rest of the world, which by the end of the 20th century was completely globalized, on the basis of Western civilization.

As a result, for the entire present earthly civilization, in an extremely acute form, were posed, such our classic Russian questions as: "Who is to blame?" and "What to do?"

It would seem that the answers to these two fundamental questions for the current situation in the world look simple: world capitalism is to blame, and above all financial, and therefore this world capitalism must be destroyed in order to save humanity and the current level of civilizational development it has achieved. And then continue to develop further.

But, as is often the case, simple answers to complex questions do not always lead to simple solutions. The fact is that, the current world civilizational crisis, having shown the complete failure of world capitalism, and its absolute embodiment in the face of the present West, and the urgent need to replace it with world socialism, with the aim of the elementary survival of all mankind, however, at the same time, this global civilizational the crisis did not lead to the emergence of a clearly formulated socialist alternative to overcome it in order to overcome it and thereby save mankind.

This historical paradox became especially noticeable against the background of the waves of mass anti-capitalist protests that swept across all the leading Western countries in 2011-2012. But, these massive and stormy unrest, among other things, very clearly showed that under the blows of the current global civilization crisis, not only such a basic ideology of capitalism as liberalism has failed, but, oddly enough, its, before that, the main enemy - scientific communism, resting primarily on the ideology of Marxism.

As a result, practically all the communist parties of the present world, based on the ideology of Marxism created in the second half of the 19th century, entered a period of crisis and decline, on the eve and especially after the collapse Soviet Union, continue to experience crisis processes even now, already in the second decade of the 21st century, when, it would seem, the image of capitalism, finally and completely, is discredited in the eyes of the majority of the inhabitants of our planet.

This simultaneous collapse of two seemingly opposing global ideologies: liberalism and communism, which occurred due to the current global civilizational crisis, makes one wonder if the underlying ideology of Marxism is not really the underlying ideology of modern communism. , a kind of this very Western liberalism, so to speak, its left wing? And isn't Marxism, as the left wing of Western liberalism, the main reason for the collapse of modern communism, both as a theory and as a political movement?

Unfortunately, this topic, which is very relevant for the present time - the topic of a deep and systemic crisis of modern communism, both theory and political movement based on Marxism, has not yet received due scientific consideration, as well as the fact that the main reason for the modern world crisis of communism is the underlying European, or rather the all-Western liberal matrix, including in the form of Marxism.

Thus, in the modern world today there is no alternative ideology for overcoming this global crisis, which, having mastered the minds of the majority of mankind, would help it overcome this current global civilizational crisis and again take the path of social, scientific and economic progress. Such an ideology has not yet emerged, and so far, in the world, no prerequisites for its creation are visible.

Yes, they crushed, crushed the present civilized peoples of the world, intellectually and politically, and especially those countries that are economically highly developed. Whether it was in the 19th - early 20th centuries, when in all then, so to speak, civilized countries - genius thinkers, not to mention just talented intellectuals, bred like rabbits according to the "Breeding Table".

Part 1. Roman N. G. Chernyshevsky "What is to be done?", As a plan of global revolutionary transformations and forecast of their results

The situation of the global civilizational crisis in the current world, to some extent, resembles the one that developed in Europe and Russian Empire in the 60s of the 19th century, when European capitalism began the transition from the era of free competition to the era of financial empires, and the Russian Empire was liberated from the remnants of serfdom and overcame the strongest economic difficulties associated with the consequences of its defeat in the recent Crimean War.

Under the conditions of historical pessimism that arose in Europe in the second half of the 19th century, various intellectual developments appeared to overcome it, with the corresponding question "What to do?" In this situation, one of the many European thinkers of the second half of the 19th century who were looking for and developing recipes for saving civilization was the Russian philosopher, politician and writer Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky, who, incidentally, believed that the existing capitalist Western civilization should not be saved, but on the contrary, as possible quickly destroy and build on its ruins a new building of world communist progress.

That is why, well-known at that time in Russia and completely unknown in that time, as well as in today's Europe, the Russian revolutionary intellectual and politician N. G. Chernyshevsky chose the question "What is to be done?" As the title of his literary work, which should was to show both the ways out of this crisis and the optimistic results of overcoming it.

Chernyshevsky saw the way out of the crisis of that time and the beginning of world civilizational progress in the socialist revolution in Russia, which will enable the Russian people to first build socialism in their country, and then create a global communist society for themselves.

The demonstration of the preparation of the Russian socialist revolution and the unfolding of the pictorial picture, the subsequent Russian global communism were given in the novel by Chernyshevsky, under the appropriate symbolic title "What is to be done?"

This novel was written by N.G. Chernyshevsky in just four months, from December 1862 to March 1863, in an extremely difficult life situation for him, when he was in pre-trial detention in the Peter and Paul Fortress, on charges of preparing a coup d'etat.

"What is to be done?"

The content of this novel is based on those sections of it that are called "Dreams of Vera Pavlovna". In these "dreams" of the main heroine of the novel Vera Pavlovna Rozalskaya, who in its pages is mostly referred to simply as Vera Pavlovna, the author conveys to the readers in the form of artistic images all his political, philosophical and economic ideas, predicting and explaining everything that according to him opinion will follow in the future in Russia and the world.

Namely, a detailed demonstration of the ways of preparing such a Russian socialist revolution and the deployment of a picturesque picture, the subsequent establishment of communism on a global scale, constituted the main content of the novel "What is to be done?"

Part 2. The novel by N. G. Chernyshevsky "What is to be done?" - the history of its creation and its worldwide - historical significance

The novel What Is To Be Done? By Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky, an outstanding even at that time Russian thinker, was written during his preliminary pre-trial detention in the Peter and Paul Fortress (Petersburg), in the period from December 1862 to March 1863.

"What to do?" - was created by the author in the genre of a philosophical - utopian novel, and was designed not for the sensual and imaginative, but for the rational and rational ability of its reader. The purpose of this work is to force readers to reconsider their views on life and to accept the truth of the communist worldview as a guide to action. The novel became a "textbook of life" for several generations of Russian revolutionaries, up to the beginning of the 20th century.

In the novel, Chernyshevsky showed the destruction of the old world and the emergence of a new one, portrayed new people who fought for the happiness of the people. But the most important thing is what Chernyshevsky showed in his novel What Is to Be Done? society of the future as a reality.

With his novel, Chernyshevsky seeks to awaken in readers the belief in the inevitable victory of socialism, and then the building of communism. In this regard, a special place in the novel is occupied by episodes or sections called "Dreams of Vera Pavlovna".

In these "dreams", of her main character Vera Pavlovna Rozalskaya (her maiden name), which in the novel is mostly referred to by her first name and patronymic, as Vera Pavlovna, the author carries out his main political ideas, explaining or predicting what will follow in the future. the lives of heroes or Russia as a whole.

Using the life of Vera Pavlovna as an example, Chernyshevsky shows the path of a thinking girl to the heights of professional and life self-affirmation that follows from it, and also, due to censorship conditions, in a very veiled form, shows the various stages of preparation of the future, in his opinion, socialist revolution in Russia, building first socialism, and then communism, after when this revolution takes place.

A key place among these "dreams" in the novel is occupied by "The Fourth Dream of Vera Pavlovna", in which Chernyshevsky develops a picture of a bright communist future, on the scale of our entire planet, when humanity has regained its former harmonious completeness, lost earlier for many millennia, and the fullness of your life.

Part 3. "The Fourth Dream of Vera Pavlovna", as the conclusion and plot basis of the novel "What is to be done?" By N. G. Chernyshevsky, and detailed description bright communist future of humanity

A key place among the "Dreams of Vera Pavlovna" is occupied by the section "The Fourth Dream of Vera Pavlovna", in which Chernyshevsky shows pictures of the triumph of the Russian communist future on a global scale, when the former harmonious completeness and completeness of primitive communism in tribal the communal system or the so-called "Golden Age of Mankind"

Therefore, the section "The Fourth Dream of Vera Pavlovna" is the core and, in fact, the basis of the content of the novel "What is to be done?" By N. G. Chernyshevsky. This section of this novel is found in the fourth chapter entitled "The Second Marriage." The main content of "The Fourth Dream of Vera Pavlovna" is contained in paragraphs 8, 9, 10, 11, section "The Fourth Dream".

"The Fourth Dream of Vera Pavlovna" paints a picture of a communist paradise on planet Earth. That, according to the author of the "Golden Age", which will arise on Earth when the revolution, which the author was preparing at that time, and to the propaganda of which he devoted his novel "What is to be done?"

However, since N.G. Chernyshevsky was a purely materialist, and besides, as he called himself - an anthropological materialist, he nevertheless populated his future world not with gods, but with people, although against the background of his contemporaries, these people of the future looked gods.

This future "Golden Age" or rather "Golden Era of Mankind", about which Lopukhov and Kirsanov theoretically talk about in the novel, is embodied in a giant crystal palace - a garden, standing among rich fat fields and gardens, a kingdom of eternal spring, summer and joy.

The entire Earth, the planet of "new people", transformed by liberated labor, is covered with such huge houses in a checkerboard pattern. In these houses - palaces, all happy people of an ideal future live together. They work together with songs, have dinner together, have fun.

And, Chernyshevsky speaks through the lips of a goddess free love about a bright future, revealing it to Vera Pavlovna and at the same time to all of its countless readers as follows: "It is light, it is beautiful. Tell everyone: this is what is in the future, the future is bright and beautiful. Love it, strive for it, work for it, bring it closer it, transfer from it to the present, as much as you can transfer. "

In "The Fourth Dream of Vera Pavlovna", Chernyshevsky depicts a society in which the interests of each are organically combined with the interests of all. This is a society where there is no exploitation of man by man, where people have learned to intelligently manage the forces of nature, where the dramatic division between mental and physical labor has disappeared, all people are free, equal and harmoniously developed and therefore they can be free and freed from want and everyday life worries, they can completely reveal all the wealth of your personality. In this part of the novel, the reader sees the world of the future, and this world is beautiful in everything.

With amazing insight, Chernyshevsky also foresaw that the society of the future would free women from domestic slavery and solve important problems of providing for the elderly and raising the younger generation.

All this is artistically embodied by the author in the following images: “Hello, sister,” she says to the queen, “are you here, sister?” She says to Vera Pavlovna, “you want to see how people will live when the queen, my pupil, reigns Above all? Look. A building, a huge, huge building, of which there are now only a few in the largest capitals - or not, now there is none! It stands among the fields and meadows, gardens and groves. The fields are our bread, but not such as ours, but thick, thick, abundant, abundant. Is it really wheat? Who has seen such ears? Who has seen such grains? Only in a greenhouse could now such ears with such grains be grown. Fields, these are our fields; but such flowers are now only in our flower beds. Gardens, lemon and orange trees, peaches and apricots - how do they grow in the open air? Oh, yes, these are the columns around them, they are open for the summer; yes, these are greenhouses that open for summer.

- But this building - what is it, what kind of architecture is it? Cast iron and glass, cast iron and glass - only. No, not only: this is only the shell of the building, these are its outer walls; and there, inside, there is already a real house, a huge house: it is covered with this cast-iron-crystal building, like a case; it forms wide galleries around it on all floors.

- What a light architecture of this inner house, what small walls between the windows - and the windows are huge, wide, at the entire height of the floors! Its stone walls are like a row of pilasters that frame the windows that open onto the gallery.

- But what kind of floors and ceilings are they? What are these doors and window frames made of? What it is? silver? platinum? And the furniture is almost all the same - furniture made of wood is just a whim, it is just for a change, but what is all the rest of the furniture, ceilings and floors made of?

“Try to move this chair,” says the older queen. This metal furniture is lighter than our walnut furniture. But what kind of metal is this? Ah, I know now that Sasha showed me such a tablet, it was as light as glass, and now there are such earrings, brooches, yes, Sasha said that sooner or later aluminum will replace wood, maybe stone. But how rich it all is! Aluminum and aluminum are everywhere, and all the gaps of the windows are clad in huge mirrors. And what carpets on the floor! In this room, half of the floor is open, and here you can see that it is made of aluminum. You see, here it is matte, so that it is not too slippery - children play here, and with them the big ones; here in this hall the floor is also without carpets - for dancing. And everywhere southern trees and flowers; the whole house is a huge winter garden.

- But who lives in this house, which is more magnificent than palaces? - "There are many, very many; go, we will see them."

They walk to a balcony protruding from the gallery's top floor. How did Vera Pavlovna not notice before? Scattered across these fields are groups of people; everywhere men and women, old people, young people and children together. But more young people; there are few old people, even fewer old women, more children than old people, but still not very many. More of the children’s floorboards are left at home to do the housework: they do almost everything around the house, they love it very much; several old women with them. And there are very few old people and old women, because here it is very late to become them, here is a healthy and calm life; she keeps fresh

The groups working in the fields are almost all singing; but what kind of work are they doing? Ah, they are the ones who take away the bread. How quickly their work is progressing! But she shouldn’t go quickly, and she shouldn’t sing to them! Almost everyone makes cars for them - and they reap, and knit sheaves, and take them away - people almost only walk, drive, drive cars. And how they made it comfortable for themselves; The day is hot, but they, of course, have nothing: a huge canopy will be spread over that part of the field where they work: how the work is progressing, so is he, how they have arranged a coolness for themselves! They wouldn’t work quickly and have fun, they wouldn’t sing! That way I would reap too! And all the songs, all the songs, are unfamiliar, new;

But now the work is over, everyone goes to the building. "Let's go back into the hall and see how they dine," says the older sister.

They enter the largest of the huge halls. Half of it is occupied by tables — the tables have already been set — how many there are! How many diners will there be? Yes, there are a thousand or more people: "Not everyone is here; everyone, they dine separately, at their place."

Those old women, old people, children who did not go out into the field, prepared all this: “cooking food, doing housework, cleaning up rooms is too easy work for other hands,” says the elder sister, “it should be done by those who are still cannot or can no longer do anything else. "

Great serving. All aluminum and crystal; vases with flowers are placed along the middle strip of wide tables, the dishes are already on the table, the workers come in, everyone sits down to dinner, and they, and those who were preparing dinner.

"And who will serve?" - "When? During the table? Why? After all, there are only five or six dishes: those that should be hot are placed in places that will not cool down; you see, in the recesses, these are boxes with boiling water," says the older sister. You live well, you like a good table, often do you have such a dinner? "-" Several times a year. " and whoever does not demand anything special for himself against what is being done for everyone, there is no reckoning whatsoever. And everything is like this: what everyone can do within the means of their company, there are no calculations for that; for every special thing or whim - calculation. "

"Is it really us? Is it really our land? I heard our song, they speak Russian." - "Yes, we are these people, because I am with you, Russian!" - "And you did all this?" - "This is all done for me, and I inspired to do it, I inspired to improve it, but here she is doing it, my older sister, she is a worker, and I just enjoy." - "And everyone will live like this?" - “Everything, - says the elder sister, - for all eternal spring and summer, eternal joy. But we showed you only the end of my half of the day, work, and the beginning of her half; - we will still look at them in the evening, in two months”.

According to Chernyshevsky, in the communist society of the future, everyone chooses an occupation to their liking and works both for themselves and for people. All these people - musicians, poets, philosophers, scientists, artists, but they also work in the fields and factories, operate modern machines created by them, more and more alter nature, turning barren lands into fertile ones, drain swamps, build canals. And they do all this for their own good.

But all this, as Chernyshevsky said, is based on personal freedom. It is not in vain that the "bright beauty" says: "Where there is no freedom, there is no happiness either," confirming with these words that freedom is necessary for people.

The concluding paragraph of Vera Pavlovna's Fourth Dream: “You know the future. It is bright, it is beautiful. Tell everyone: this is what is in the future, the future is bright and beautiful. him into the present, as much as you can transfer: your life will be so bright and kind, rich in joy and pleasure, as much as you can transfer into it from the future. postpone".

Part 4. "The fourth dream of Vera Pavlovna", which can also be called genocidal, like the hitherto unknown forecast by N. G. Chernyshevsky about the ruthless Global Procession of Russian Progress, the aggressive and ruthless program of creating Global Communism - exclusively by Russians and only for Russians

A little-known side of the scientific and literary work of Chernyshevsky, in the novel "What is to be done?" and specifically in his section "The Fourth Dream of Vera Pavlovna" - this is Russian national - communist globalism, which, according to Chernyshevsky, means that communism is possible only on a global scale (like in Marx and Engels), but only Russians will create it and only they will use it by its fruits remaining the only people on the planet Earth.

If, judging by "The Fourth Dream of Vera Pavlovna, then the result of any Progress is Genocide. Former peoples are perishing (destroyed, dying out, changing), along with their culture. As Genghis Khan said:" It is not enough for me to win. Others must be defeated. "So, no -" Not a step back! ", No -" We will die, but we will not retreat! "

And so, according to Chernyshevsky, the global communist future is bright and beautiful. But, only for the Russians, who will remain in that future the only people on planet Earth.

And so, according to this concept of Chernyshevsky, Vera Pavlovna, the main character of this novel, saw in her "Fourth Dream":

"The flowers have withered; the leaves begin to fall from the trees; the picture becomes dull.

- "You see, it would be boring to look at, it would be boring to live here, says the younger sister, - I don't want that." - "The halls are empty, there is no one in the fields and in the gardens either," says the elder sister, "I arranged it at the behest of my sister, the queen." - "Is the palace really empty?" - "Yes, because it is cold and damp here, why be here? Out of two thousand people there are now ten to twenty original people who this time seemed a pleasant variety to stay here, in the wilderness, in solitude, to look at the northern autumn. Through , for some time, in winter, there will be incessant shifts, lovers of winter walks will come in small parties, spend several days here like winter. "

- "But where are they now?" - "Yes, wherever it is warm and good, you yourself leave for the south for 7 - 8 bad months of your year - whoever is much more pleased. But you also have a special side in the south, where the main mass of yours leaves. This side is called "New Russia".

- "This is where Odessa and Kherson?" - “No, it’s not in your time, but now, look, this is where New Russia is.” Mountains clad in gardens; between the mountains there are narrow valleys, wide plains. “These mountains used to be bare rocks,” says the elder sister. “Now they are covered with a thick layer of earth, and groves of the tallest trees grow on them among the gardens: below, in the moist hollows of a coffee tree plantation; above date palms, fig trees; vineyards mixed with plantations sugarcane; there is wheat in the fields, but more rice - What kind of land is this? - Let's go a minute higher, you will see its borders. "

Judging by the further description, the Heavenly Queen lifts Vera Pavlovna to one of the highest points of the Golan mountain range (Golan Heights) at the junction of the borders of present-day Syria, Lebanon and Israel.

Well, then there is such a description: "In the far northeast, two rivers that merge together (note - corresponds to the Tigris and Euphrates) directly to the east of the place from which Vera Pavlovna is looking; further south, all in the same south - eastward, a long and wide bay (note - Persian Gulf); in the south the land stretches far, expanding more and more southward between this bay and the long narrow bay that makes up its western border (note - Arabian Peninsula). Between the western narrow bay and the sea , which is very far in the north-west, a narrow isthmus (note - Sinai Peninsula).

But are we in the middle of the desert? - says the astonished Vera Pavlovna. (note - Arabian Desert)

- Yes, in the center of the former desert; and now, as you can see, the whole space from the north, from that big river in the northeast, has already been turned into the most blessed land, into the land the same as it once was, and again now that strip along the sea to the north of it, about which it was said in the old days that it "boils with milk and honey." We are not very far, you see, from the southern border of the cultivated area, the mountainous part of the peninsula is still a sandy, barren steppe, which was the whole peninsula in your time; every year people, you Russians, push the border of the desert further and further to the south. Others work in other countries: everyone has a lot of space, and enough work, and spacious, and abundant. Yes, from the large northeastern river (note - the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates), the entire space to the south up to half of the peninsula turns green and blooms, all over the space, as in the north, there are huge buildings three, four versts from each other, as if countless huge chess on a gigantic chess player. Let's go down to one of them - says the older sister.

The same huge crystal house, but its columns are white. “They’re made of aluminum,” says the elder sister, “because it’s very warm here, white is less hot in the sun, which is somewhat more expensive than cast iron, but more convenient in the local way.” rows of thin, extremely high pillars, and on them, high above the palace, over the entire palace and for half a mile around it, a white canopy will be stretched. It is constantly sprayed with water, ”says the elder sister: you see, from each column a small fountain rises above the canopy, scattering rain around, so it's cool to live here; you see, they change the temperature however they want.

- And who likes the heat and the bright local sun?

“You see, there are pavilions and tents in the distance. Everyone can live as he pleases, I am leading to this, I am all for this and work only.

- So, there are also cities left for those who like cities?

- There are not many such people; there are fewer cities left, almost only to be centers of communication and transportation of goods, near the best harbors, in other centers of communication, but these cities are larger and more splendid than before; everyone goes there for a few days for a change; most of their inhabitants are constantly changing, they are there for work, for a short time.

- But who wants to live in them permanently?

- They live as you live in your Petersburg, Paris, London - who cares? who will interfere? Everyone live as you want; only the vast majority, 99 out of 100 people, live the way my sister and I show you, because it is more pleasant and profitable for them. But, go to the palace, it's already quite late in the evening, it's time to look at them. "

- But no, first I want to know how it was done? - What? "The fact that a barren desert has turned into a fertile land, where almost all of us spend two-thirds of our year."

- How did it come about? What's so tricky about that? After all, this did not happen in one year, and not in ten years, I gradually moved the matter forward. From the northeast, from the banks of a large river, from the northwest, from the coast of the big sea - they have so many such powerful machines - they carried clay, it tied the sand, drew canals, arranged irrigation, greens appeared, more moisture appeared in the air; walked forward step by step, several versts, sometimes one verst a year, as now everyone goes more south, what's so special about that? They just became clever, they began to use for their own benefit a huge amount of forces and means that they had previously spent uselessly or directly to their own detriment.

What we have shown you will not soon be in its full development, which you have now seen. Many generations will change before what you foresee is fully realized. No, not many generations: my work is now going fast, ever faster every year, but still you will not yet enter this complete kingdom of my sister; at least you've seen him, you know the future. It is light, it is beautiful. Tell everyone: this is what is in the future, the future is bright and beautiful. Love him, strive for him, work for him, bring him closer, transfer from him to the present, as much as you can transfer: your life will be so bright and kind, rich in joy and pleasure, as far as you can transfer into it from the future. Strive for it, work for it, bring it closer, transfer from it to the present everything that you can transfer. "

By the way, at the time of Chernyshevsky, that is, in the early 60s of the 19th century, "New Russia" ("Novorossiya"), represented the northern and eastern coast of the Black Sea, as well as the adjacent coast of the Sea of ​​Azov. But in 1862 - 1863, Nikolai Gavrilovich, saw far ahead for many centuries, and somewhere in a couple of centuries in advance he saw a completely New Novorossia within the borders of the entire Greater Middle East and it must be understood that the territories of modern Turkey and Iran (Persia ), since without the territory of the latter, this New Russia will not have a direct land connection with the territory of Old Russia, and this would be a completely flagrant omission.

The revolution that broke out in France in February 1848 had a profound effect on the student N.G. Chernyshevsky, defining the circle of his interests. He plunged into the study of the works of the utopian socialists, in which they then saw the development of Christian teaching.

N.G. Chernyshevsky

But in July 1862 Chernyshevsky was arrested on charges of having connections with emigrants, that is, with a group A.I. Herzen, and found himself imprisoned in a solitary confinement cell of the Peter and Paul Fortress, where he was kept for two whole years, and it was there that his novel "What is to be done?" was written.

Chernyshevsky writes the novel "What is to be done?" The novel overshadowed the works of Dostoevsky, and he rushed to write his "answer to Chamberlain" - the novel "The Idiot"

The usual standards of that time cannot be applied to this novel. In the work Chernyshevsky we are dealing with a philosophical-utopian novel. Thought in his novel prevails over the direct depiction of life. It is no coincidence that the novel was evaluated by the revolutionary democratic intelligentsia not as a work of art itself, but as program work on the socialist reconstruction of life.

The composition of the work is strictly thought out: the image of "vulgar people", the image of "ordinary new people", the image of a "special person" and the dreams of the heroine of the novel, Vera Pavlovna. The four dreams of Vera Pavlovna contain a philosophical concept developed by Chernyshevsky for the revolutionary-minded youth.

Letter

On July 11, 1856, a note was found in one of the rooms of the St. Petersburg hotel, in which it was written that its author would soon become known on the Liteiny Bridge and that the guilty ones should not be looked for. On the same night, a man shot himself on the bridge. In the water they found his shot-through cap.

Vera Pavlovna receives a fatal letter

At this time, on Kamenny Island, a young lady is sewing and singing a song. Her name is Vera Pavlovna. Then a maid appears with a letter, having read it Vera Pavlovna begins to cry. The young man who appears tries to console her, but Vera Pavlovna pushes him away with the words that it is his fault.

“You're covered in blood! His blood is on you! It's not your fault - I'm alone ... "

Acquaintance with Lopukhov

Further in the novel there is a story about the life of Vera Pavlovna and what led to such a sad outcome. Vera Pavlovna was born and raised in St. Petersburg. Her father, Pavel Konstantinovich Rozalsky, was the manager of the house, and her mother gave out money on bail. The main goal of the mother, Marya Alekseevna, was to marry her daughter as profitable as possible, and she made every effort to this. The son of the owners of the house, the officer of the Elders, draws attention to Vera, and tries to seduce her. The mother asks her daughter to be as affectionate as possible with him so that he marries her, but Vera understands Streshnikov's true intentions. In the house, Vera becomes unbearable, but everything is suddenly resolved.

Vera Pavlovna and Lopukhov

A young teacher, medical student Dmitry Sergeevich Lopukhov, was invited to Fedya, Vera's brother. Initially, they treat each other with caution, but afterwards they find a lot in common. Lopukhov tries to save Vera and arrange her as a governess, but he is refused, because no one wanted to take responsibility for a young girl who runs away from home.

First dream

Not long before graduation, Lopukhov quits studying, moonlights as private lessons and proposes to Vera.

N. Bondarenko. Vera Pavlovna's first dream

Vera has her first dream. She dreams that she is locked in a damp, dark basement. And suddenly the door flew open, and Vera found herself in a field. Then she dreams that she is paralyzed. And someone's voice says that she will be healthy, as soon as He touches her hand. Vera got up, walks, runs, and again she is on the field, and again frolics and runs. “And here is a girl walking across the field - how strange! Both the face and the gait - everything changes, constantly changes in it. " Vera asks her who she is. “I am your fiance's bride. My suitors know me, but I cannot know them; I've got plenty of them". - “But what is your name? I want to know so much, ”says Vera. And the girl answers her: “I have many different names. Whoever ought to call me, that's the name I tell him. Call me love for people. " Then she gives an order to Vera - so that she let everyone out and heal, how she cured her of paralysis. “And Verochka walks through the city and lets the girls out of the basement, treats them for paralysis. They all get up, walk, and they are all back on the field, running, frolicking. " The girl Vera met was a personification of the future revolution, and her suitors are revolutionaries ready to fight for the reconstruction of Russia.

Old Saratov, where Chernyshevsky is from. Mysterious treasures, the shadow of Chernyshevsky, an old manor house and love for the Fatherland ... Isn't it just another dream of Vera Pavlovna? Only all this happened in reality

The young people live in a rented apartment, the relationship between Lopukhov and Vera seems strange to her owner. They sleep in different rooms, ask before entering the room, and do not appear in front of each other unclothed. Vera explains this by the fact that they are afraid to get bored with each other, that this is how family life should be.

Second dream

Vera Pavlovna decides to open her own farm - a sewing workshop and hires girls there, who receive the same percentage of income as she does. They not only work together, but also relax together.

At this time, Vera Pavlovna has a second dream in which she sees a field on which ears are growing. There is real dirt on the field - this is care about what a person needs, ears grow from this dirt, and there is fantastic dirt - care about an empty, unnecessary matter, and nothing grows out of this dirt.

Third dream

Dmitry's friend, Alexander Matveyevich Kirsanov, often visits the Lopukhovs. Kirsanov spends a lot of time with Vera Pavlovna, while Lopukhov is busy with his work. But suddenly Kirsanov stops visiting them, the Lopukhovs cannot understand why. It's just that Kirsanov understands that he has fallen in love with a friend's wife. Kirsanov appears only when Dmitry is sick, he helps Vera Pavlovna in everything, and at this moment she realizes that she is also in love with Kirsanov.

N. Bondarenko. Family portrait in the interior. Vera Pavlovna

This is evidenced by her next, third, dream in which she reads the diary.

N. Bondarenko. Vera Pavlovna's third dream

The diary says that she is grateful to her husband for everything, but does not feel that tender feeling for him that she so needs.

Dmitry finds from this the only way out- he goes to the Linear Bridge, where the fatal shot takes place.

N. Bondarenko. Sewing workshop of Vera Pavlovna

When Vera Pavlovna finds out about this, Rakhmetov, a common friend of Kirsanov and Lopukhov, comes to her. He was from a wealthy family, but at one time he sold his estate, and gave all the money.

N. Bondarenko. Portrait of Rakhmetov

He does not drink wine, does not touch women, and even sleeps on nails in order to find out his physical capabilities. Rakhmetov traveled a lot in Europe and Russia in order to become as close to the people as possible. On this day, he brought a letter to Vera Pavlovna from Lopukhov, after which she becomes calm. Rakhmetov tells Vera Pavlovna that they were too different with Lopukhov, which is why she fell in love with Kirsanov.

After a while, Vera Pavlovna marries Kirsanov.

Kirsanov and Vera Pavlovna. Still from the film

The fact that Vera Pavlovna and Lopukhov are different was written in a letter she received from Berlin from a certain friend of Lopukhov, who says that after parting with Vera Lopukhov feels great.

The fourth dream

As a result, the life of Vera Pavlova and Kirsanov is not very different from her life with Lopukhov. Kirsanov loved her very much, he always listened to her, and if necessary he helped.

N. Bondarenko. The fourth dream of Vera Pavlovna

Soon she has a dream again, in which there are a lot of women of all times. The beauty from the first dream immediately appears, telling her about the freedom of women and the equality of the sexes.

The dream house of Vera Pavlovna

The fourth dream paints a utopian picture of the life of the future socialist society, a real earthly paradise. In this ideal world, unprecedented luxury reigns, workshops work, for some reason aluminum prevails (for that time a precious metal), while everyone is happy in free labor. Fantastic descriptions of the future clearly emphasize the main idea of ​​the novel: all this will be easily realized in the near future, if you just trust the Rakhmetovs and together "make" a revolution according to recipes taken from Vera Pavlovna's dreams.

Unlike Goncharova, who showed in the chapter "Oblomov's Dream" his ideal of Russia with all its troubles and weaknesses - the ideal that was turned not to the future, but to the present, - Chernyshevsky in Vera Pavlovna's dreams, she denies the very possibility of building a just society based on the tsarist regime. It seems to him that only uprising and revolution can bring happiness. But it was a utopia, and the Bolshevik party after half a century, attempting to build a just society according to the plans of the utopian socialists, ultimately failed, at least temporarily.

Many guests visit the Kirsanovs' house, and soon the Beaumont family appears among them. Ekaterina Beaumont met Kirsanov a long time ago, when he helped her understand that the man she loved was unworthy of her. Later, she met Charles Beaumont, who speaks Russian in superiority, since he lived in Russia until the age of 20. When Charles Beaumont meets with Kirsanov, the latter recognizes him as Lopukhov. The Kirsanovs and Beaumont are so close to each other that they decide to live in the same house.

What to do in the Looking Glass?

A little more than a century and a half ago, Chernyshevsky began to compose the dreams of Vera Pavlovna, and Lewis Carroll - the dreams of the girl Alice

Vera Pavlovna and Alisa. As soon as Alice fell asleep for a book, the Rabbit ran by and miracles began. And Vera Pavlovna dreamed of how to work so that worse miracles spun around

What if Carroll dreams of Chernyshevsky?

A century and a half ago, a radical writer began to compose the dreams of Vera Pavlovna, and a conservative writer - the dreams of the girl Alice.

One summer morning in 1862, 34-year-old Chernyshevsky went to the Peter and Paul Fortress. And 30-year-old teacher Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) - on a boat trip.

One, sitting behind bars, composed the dreams of Vera Pavlovna. Another just then, swimming with a colleague Duckworth and the children of the dean of the college Henry Liddell, began to compose, at the request of 7-year-old Alice, a story about her dreams. And here's the thing: girlish dreams, invented by two young people, made so much noise. We found so many meanings in their dreams!

Of course, the coincidence is just coincidence. Chernyshevsky did not even suspect about the existence of Lewis Carroll, just as he did not know about Nikolai Gavrilovich. But the whim of coincidence is curious - chiaroscuro is mixed, the characters glare in a new way.

Against Chernyshevsky, they fabricated an accusation of drafting a proclamation "Bow to the landowners from well-wishers," they called him "enemy number one of the Russian Empire." And he expounded his utopian ideals in the novel "What is to be done?", Mixing in dreams the future of humanity, the reality of love and cakes. By the way, after Vera Pavlovna, he took up a fairy-tale novel in the spirit of "A Thousand and One Nights" ("Tale in a Tale"), but somehow it did not work out.

Against Lewis Carroll, public opinion fabricated the myth of pedophilia: its shadow hovers over all Freudian (and what else ?!) interpretations of the history of Carroll's incomprehensible relationship with children. True, these relations have always remained within the bounds of the decency of that time - and those decencies are no match for the present. And the concept of "pedophilia" itself appeared only 15 years after the release of "Alice" (it was introduced by the Austrian psychiatrist Richard Kraft-Ebing in 1886).

Chernyshevsky, the skeptic Nabokov said, counted every time he shed a tear, the number of his tears. Carroll is also attentive to tears: his Alice almost drowned, crying the whole sea.

"Fu you, well you" in French

Vera Pavlovna is a principled girl. She tries to understand the wonders of real life and the characters around her, organizes a sewing workshop and, with inexplicable persistence, dreams about new life and their female equality ("do only what I want"). Alice is a girl who is always dozing somewhere in the garden and falling asleep into places where everything around is "wonderful", as well as around Vera Pavlovna.

Maria Alekseevna, mother of Vera Pavlovna, shouts to her daughter: "Wash your face!" The Queen yells at Alice: "Cut off her head!"

The same mother suddenly asks the question: "Is a wedding in French - marry, or what, Vera?" Alice could have answered (she was also asked, like “fu you, you,” in French): “If you tell me what this means, I will immediately translate it into French”.

Chernyshevsky's heroes are obsessed with tea drinking. “Please sit down,” said Marya Alekseevna. - Matryona, give me another glass. - "If this is for me, then thank you: I will not drink." - “Matryona, you don't need a glass. (Well-bred young man!) ". So it is with Alice: "Have some more tea," said the March Hare, bending over to Alice. "More? - asked Alice resentfully. "I haven't drank anything yet." "She doesn't want more tea," said the March Hare into space. "

It is clear that neither Vera nor Alice can easily walk past the pie.

Both the revolutionary-minded Vera Pavlovna and the naive Alice have confusion with hands and feet. One in bewilderment flips through the pages of notes: “sometimes with the left hand, sometimes with the right. Suppose now I have turned over with the right: how could I have turned over with the left? " And the second is horrified: “Where have my shoulders gone? My poor hands, where are you? Why can not I see you?"

In a dream, Vera has a girl whose "face and gait are constantly changing." Alice also admits: "I change all the time and don't remember anything."

Time, by the way, jumps as it wants. With Vera, “in one minute, two months have passed” Alice knows how it is: “She whispered a word and - p-times! - the arrow ran forward! "

Vera's mother "snored in mid-sentence and fell down" - just like Carroll's Sonya. Characters around and there, and here appear out of nowhere and disappear into nowhere. Have they forgotten Rakhmetov ?! Rakhmetov sleeping on nails is no worse than flamingos playing the role of clubs and soldiers bending in the form of croquet gates.

Finally, Vera Pavlovna's main dream, the fourth. The social ideal is in her head. Free workers work hard to have a full blast in the evenings. They explain to Vera Pavlovna (the girl who asked to call her “love”): “You saw in the hall how the cheeks were burning, how the eyes were shining; you saw - they were leaving, they were coming; ... it was I who captivated them, here is the room of each and every ... Here I am the purpose of life. "

And Alice, who noticed that the game went more fun, the Duchess says: "And the moral from here is:" Love, love, you move the world ... ""

One has a clumsy tongue, the other is playful. One has simple general thoughts. The other has nothing in the forehead. But in essence, everything is about the same as if they dreamed of each other: how to sail through life? Each of them answered the question - to the extent of the depravity of his talent.

Miracle in the environment

It's scary to think what would have happened to Chernyshevsky if he had dreamed of Lewis Carroll. And imagine the appearance of Gavrilych to sleeping Carroll? That's just it.

But if we discard empty fantasies - Tolstoy did not digest Chernyshevsky for "a thin, unpleasant voice that speaks stupid troubles." Carroll has his own problems with diction: he stuttered.

The prisoner Chernyshevsky was very tense with the authorities. Carroll, for all his conservatism, managed to upset Queen Victoria - albeit unwittingly. She asked after "Alice" to devote the next wonderful book to her - but the gentleman's next work was "An Elementary Guide to the Theory of Mathematical Determinants."

Author of "What is to be done?" seemingly a biscuit, but clearly preoccupied with the piquancy of "new forms of life": a fictitious marriage, life as a trio and other empyrean people. By the way, there were times when the forbidden book "What is to be done?" gave the newlyweds for the wedding as a very spicy little thing!

The author of the cheerful "Alice" lived like an adult child - one would expect all sorts of quirks from him, but he suddenly puffed out his cheeks, wanting to "publish a supermodest Shakespeare for young English virgins" and convincing them that "the true purpose of life is to develop character." ...

How to connect one with the other? And the way everything is linked in a dream. It's all topsy-turvy, humpty-dumpty, no explanation.

Both writers did not live on the moon, the world was seething around. What happened in the same 1862 that was digested in their heads when they wrote about the girlish dreams of their heroines?

In the United States, North and South are at war with might and main. The British Parliament is outraged by General Butler's proclamation about New Orleans women, allowing them to be treated like prostitutes if they harm soldiers. The parliamentarians are ridiculed by the London correspondent of the New York Daily Herald, Karl Marx.

England and France are preparing an intervention in the United States to help the slave-owning South. But the campaign is thwarted because of the wild Russia, which did not want to participate in armed intervention.

Inventor Richard Gatling receives a patent for the first rapid-fire machine gun. The first Russian conservatory was opened in St. Petersburg.

In England, depression, confusion and vacillation. There are reforms in Russia, but also confusion and vacillation. Everywhere they think about strengthening the feelings of power. The world industrial exhibition is magnificently held in London. We have a magnificent celebration of the millennium of Russia.

The stream of events is quite insane, like today, and Vera Pavlovna and Alice are trying to emerge from it to this day.

What do Chernyshevsky and Carroll offer them? As old man Einstein said, there are only two ways to live life. The first is that miracles do not exist. The second - as if there were only miracles all around. The first is clearly for Chernyshevsky. The second is for Carroll.

Everyone chooses their own dreams in life to taste.

MARRIAGE COURT

Vera Pavlovna's bold lifestyle and even bolder dreams were gleaned from the texts of Charles Fourier, which Chernyshevsky read already at the end of the 1840s. By that time, in practical America, there were Fourierist phalansters, but their experiments with marriage and sex did not go further than the joint work of men and women and attempts to "free love." The now famous erotic writings of Fourier for the most part remained in manuscripts that were inaccessible to either Neuez or Chernyshevsky. But the Russian author in his novel What Is to Be Done? he did not confine himself to the sewing workshop of Vera Pavlovna, copying the economic experiments of the Fourierists, but added a completely utopian, although vague, concept such as a "complex marriage" under censorship conditions.

In his book A History of American Socialisms (1869), John Humphrey Noyes gave a clear and, admittedly, extremely instructive overview of local utopian communities. All of them, according to Noyez, are the fruit of two main influences, which the author, in his usual eroticizing, designated as maternal and paternal principles. The paternal origin of American communities was the influence of European utopians. After the arrival of Robert Owen (“the holy elder” as Chernyshevsky called him) to America in 1824 and his purchase of a huge plot for New Harmony, he lived here for a long time and, leaving for Europe, returned to the New World many times. In the 1840s, Owen's American followers were influenced by Fourier and the communes were renamed Phalansters. The Owenites hated the Fourierists, but Neuez considered their amalgamation natural. “You shouldn't think of the two great attempts at socialist revival as completely different from each other. […] In the end, the main idea of ​​both was […] the expansion of the family union […] to the size of a large corporation. " Having formulated the idea of ​​socialism in this way, Neuez easily accepts both of its founders as his own predecessors. But all this is a paternal, European principle, of which; understandably not enough.

As for the maternal principle, Noyez considers the American religious tradition proper. Starting from the first decades of the 19th century, a Revival (Revival, writes Neuez with a capital letter) of religious life took place in America. The revival gave rise to many denominations and sects, but the main one for Noyez is the shakers. Shakers and socialists complement each other. The great goal of the shakers is the rebirth of the soul; the great goal of socialism is the degeneration of society. The real challenge is their mutual fertilization. It is precisely such a synthesis, claims Noyez, that he accomplished in "biblical communism."

European socialism, in his opinion, ignored sex, never realizing how important it was for the reconstruction of life. Owen, according to Noyes, did not address these issues at all; and the followers of Fourier, although they expected a change in human nature in the future, in fact focused on some economic experiments and led a traditionally monogamous life in their phalansters. New approach to sex and sex was, according to Noyes, the exclusive merit of shakers and biblical communists. “In all the memories of the associations of Fourier and Owen, not a word is said about the Women's Question! […] In fact, women are hardly mentioned; and the violent passions associated with the separation of the sexes, with which they had so many troubles [...] all religious communities [...] remain completely out of sight ”. The American failures of the European socialists are linked to gender neglect; conversely, communities of celibate shakers and promiscuous communists are stable and happy, Noyez said. They owe this attention to gender and radical solutions to its problems. The Fourierists, according to Noyez, build the kiln from the chimney; and he rejects their ideas, not because he does not want to build stoves, but because he believes that they must be built on a solid foundation. In other words, its ultimate goal is the same - the destruction of the family, private property and the state; but to achieve it, one must start not with the destruction of property and not with the destruction of the state, but with a new order of relations between the sexes.

Although celibacy of shakers seems like the polar opposite of “complicated marriage,” in fact, it turns out that among all the diversity of sects and communes, it is the shakers that are closest to Neues. He lived among them, participated in their rituals, and cited their documents with sympathy. Contacts were also made at the community level, the shakers. They even showed their "dances" in Oneida. “We owe the shakers more than any other social architect, and more than all of them put together,” Neuez wrote. In general, it seemed to him "doubtful that Owenism or Fourierism [...] would have touched the practical American people if it were not for the shakers." He even suggested that the shakers, when they were in England, influenced European utopians. A graduate of Yale and heir to the Romantic era, Noyez eagerly recognized his connection to the popular culture that the shakers embodied for him.

Associations of any type only increase the tendency towards adultery, frequent and in everyday life; and this tendency is capable of destroying any association, - signifies Neuez the experience of the American communists. “Love in its exceptional form is complemented by jealousy; and jealousy leads to enmity and division. Thus, any association that recognizes the oneness of love carries within it the seeds of its decay; and these seeds only ripen faster in the warmth of life together. " This has happened with Fourierist phalansters every time, but it does not happen where people abstain from sex, like shakers, or where people enter into a "difficult marriage", as in Oneida. Like the Hellenistic Gnostics and Russian eunuchs, Neuez traces his reasoning back to the history of original sin; but here, too, he goes further than the others, or at least formulates more consistently. "The real scheme of redemption begins with reconciliation with God, then leads to the restoration of proper relations between the sexes, then deals with the reform of the industrial system and ends with the victory over death." The Fourierists, Neuez believed, ignore both the beginning and the end of this chain, and are concerned only with economics. This analysis is striking in the non-triviality of the sociological vision. John Neues would have been able to compete with Max Weber if his ideas hadn't taken him too far.

Family and property, love and self-interest are two sides of the same moon; but, as usual, this moon is always turned towards the observer of one of its sides. Paul often found himself on the other, invisible side, while the enthusiastic observer was turned exclusively to the one related to property and its redistribution. But the other side of the moon exists, and looking beyond has always seemed like an exciting and risky adventure. If the pillars of socialism rather abhorred them, then fanatics and poets did not tire of reminding that the program of socialism goes, and has always gone, beyond the boundaries of economics. “Every person has a whole imperialism in the bottom place,” said the hero of Platonov. Mayakovsky's "Left march" asserted the same thing: overcoming original sin is the key to a truly leftist policy, and those who do not recognize this are still marching on the right. "Enough to live by the law given by Adam and Eve [...] the Left!" - called the poet. If the "nag of history" can be driven out, then this is the only way.

The socialization of property requires the socialization of the family. Overcoming the economy means, as a necessary condition and even as a reverse side of the same process, overcoming gender. It's better to admit it directly, especially if you have a technical design to complete the task. But it is impossible to ignore this duality of leftist ideology, even if you do not have the necessary technical ideas. Dostoevsky, for example, also believed in the new man and in the fact that the present "man is a being on earth [...] not finished, but transitional." Dostoevsky knows only one feature of the "future nature of the future being", which is defined in the Gospel: "They do not marry or encroach, but live like the angels of God." Following various sectarians, Dostoevsky reads this text literally. The essence of the new man, although unknown, is determined not by economic equality, but by liberation from sex. The condemnation of sex and marriage is dictated by the requirements of community life: “the family [...] is still an abnormal, selfish state in the full sense of the word”; "Marriage and encroachment on a woman is, as it were, the greatest repulsion from humanism." Here it is clear that Dostoevsky is concerned not with physiology, but with sociology: not with the filth of sexual life, but with its selectivity, an inevitable consequence of the very nature of sex as a pair function. One person's love for another distracts him from his love for the community as a whole. Therefore, the earthly paradise will be determined by the overcoming of sex and sex: "It will be [...] when a person is reborn, according to the laws of nature, finally into another nature, who does not marry and does not encroach." An ideal assigned to other worlds acquires the reality of hope realizable in this world: thus, from the mystical teaching, the utopian grows. The community, the main value of Russian dreamers, will one day overcome the family, the selfish and inhuman institution of the old society. For this it is necessary to abolish sex, to change the nature of man, to carry out rebirth.

Dreams of Vera Pavlovna in Nizhny Tagil

Was this what Chernyshevsky dreamed of? In any case, the gospel source was the same. “Someday there will be only“ people ”in the world: neither women nor men (who for me are much more intolerant of women) will not remain in the world. Then people will be happy. " So it was not only Neuez who noticed the connection between socialism and gender, or, more precisely, with its absence. But only he makes a positively accurate diagnosis of the problem: the existence of a family makes it impossible to liquidate property; as long as people unite in pairs, it will tear the community apart; socialization of property is impossible without gender neutralization. Therefore, any socio-economic programs are doomed to failure if they do not include manipulation of gender, sex and family.

Neuez knows two areas of such work, and perhaps these two possibilities really exhaust the situation. You can try to eliminate gender by building a community of asexual people who need to be given some way to compensate for sex; this is how shakers operated in America, and eunuchs in Russia. Neuez came up with a second way: without eliminating gender as such, eliminate its harmful consequences for the community, prohibiting paired ties and opening them up to the boundaries of the community; in Russia a semblance of such a practice developed among the Khlysty. Rasputin preached: "Love is the ideal of angelic purity, and we are all brothers and sisters in Christ, there is no need to choose, because men and women are equal to all, and love should be equal, dispassionate towards everyone, without charm."

If in his inventions Neuez followed Fourier, he was incomparably more practical and radical than him, about like Lenin in comparison with Saint-Simon. Chernyshevsky, for his part, feeding on scraps of what he read and heard, and more on his intuitive understanding of the problem, combined in fragments of his novel both dimensions of utopia, economic socialism and sexual communism. Already in 1856, Chernyshevsky wrote about the success of the community Modern Times in the state of New York and about a series of similar experiments that in America, the Russian author wrote with envy, no one considers dangerous.

Chernyshevsky and Herzen's own contribution to Russian ideology is usually considered their discovery of the transition to socialism directly from feudalism and on the basis of a rural community. So, with a big leap based on national tradition, it seemed possible to bypass the accursed capitalism. This is the main innovation of leftist thought in Russia for all the times of its rapid development. On this theory of Chernyshevsky, the practice of Russian populism was based right up to Lenin and further successors of his cause; that is why they all valued Chernyshevsky so much. But this theory is radical not only in its practical implications; it was obviously anti-economic in nature and radically contradicted Marx. At the moment of its inception, this theoretical fantasy was in dire need of allies. The communist communities that existed in America even before the abolition of slavery seemed to be a living fulfillment of this Russian dream. Developing and uniting, these advanced sprouts of new life were to transform all other American realities, including the slave system in the South and the rule of capital in the North. So America will make its great leap, overcoming capitalism directly from the lower formations; at least that is how it was seen from across the ocean.

Paying tribute to the practical possibilities of the New World, Chernyshevsky placed his dream construction where only it could actually be realized - in America. Thanks to Ivan Grigoriev, Noyez's experiments became known in Russia several years before Chernyshevsky's novel was written; other, less expressive American experiments were also known. The similarity between Neuez's inventions and the dreams of Vera Pavlovna was also the result of their reliance on identical (Fourier) and similar (shakers and whips) sources. Perhaps even readers of the novel "What is to be done?" underestimated Chernyshevsky. He is more sober than Dostoevsky, without his hope for a mystical transformation, he saw the incompatibility of marriage and community; he understood the revolutionary essence of adultery more clearly than Herzen, without his romantic torments and hobbies; he was bolder than Lenin, without his everyday moralism, he understood the need for a sexual revolution as a lining for any communist project; and, locked in a prison cell, he looked at the map more often than his more fortunate compatriots.

*****

Discover America

ArticleA. Etkinda (with abbreviations and minor edits by S. Likhachev)

As you know, there is nothing more boring than someone else's dreams - and nothing more interesting than your own. Among other interesting dreams of Russian culture, the most beloved is the fourth dream of Vera Pavlovna, the heroine of Chernyshevsky's novel "What is to be done?"

The dream is like an opera and consists of several acts; we are interested in the scenery. First, we see a prelude with poems by Goethe and a pan-European romantic landscape: fields, flowers, birds, clouds. Then, in the first act, the goddess Astarte appears against the background of a characteristic Middle Eastern landscape: tents, nomads, camels, olives, fig trees, cedars. The second act is played by the goddess Aphrodite in Athens, they are named by name. The third act is a gothic castle and the same beauty. This is followed by an interlude, during which Rousseau is read to us and the scenery is changed.

The next queen combines the charms of all her predecessors. And no wonder: she is Russian. Her utopian palace is located at the Oka, among "our groves"; as proof, the author, faithful to his technique, lists Russian trees (oak, linden, maple, elm). The inhabitants of the palace live in separate rooms, dine together, and also work together. However, "almost everything is done for them by machines." But this collective farm among "our fields" is not at all the ultimate dream of the author and his heroine.

As it should be in an opera, something unexpected and sublime happens in the last act. Autumn is coming, it is cold in Russia, and most of the inhabitants of the Crystal Palace, along with their queen, move to a new place, to the south. As it turns out, here, in some kind of seasonal emigration, they spend most of their lives: seven to eight months a year. "This side is called New Russia"; but this is not southern Russia, the tsarina specifically specifies.

In the new New Russia, we see a landscape as easily recognizable as the previous landscapes: “groves of the tallest trees [...] coffee tree plantations [...] date palms, fig trees; vineyards are mixed with sugarcane plantations; there is also wheat in the fields, but there is more rice. " It looks like America, southern states. But this is not enough; not trusting the reader's botanical knowledge, Chernyshevsky goes over to geography. The binding of the final picture of Vera Pavlovna's fourth dream on the ground is given with details and perseverance, rare even for this author:

“In the far northeast there are two rivers that merge together right to the east of the place from which Vera Pavlovna is looking; further south, still in the same southeast direction, a long and wide bay; in the south, the land stretches far, expanding more and more to the south between this bay and the long narrow bay that makes up its western border. Between the western narrow bay and the sea, which is very far in the northwest, there is a narrow isthmus [...] We are not very far [...] from the southern border of the cultivated area [...]; every year people, you Russians, push the border of the desert further and further to the south. Others work in other countries [...] Yes, from the large northeastern river, the entire space to the south to half of the peninsula turns green and blooms, all over the space, like in the north, there are huge buildings ”.

Rivers in the northeast - Mississippi and Missouri; a wide gulf to the southeast of them - the Gulf of Mexico, a narrow gulf and isthmus in the west - the Gulf of California and the Peninsula. Vera Pavlovna with her guide, the Russian queen, are somewhere in Kansas; Russian people expand the borders of the States to the South, to Texas and Mexico.

In the draft version of the novel, Vera and the queen ended up in the Sinai desert; Mount Sinai was directly indicated in the text. By reworking the text, Chernyshevsky transferred the promised land from its old place, the Middle East, to a new place, America. So, probably, he understood his parting with the Christian archaism in the name of modernity. Writing his novel in a cell from which the sky was not visible, he did not seem to take his eyes off the map. Not biblical Palestine, but the American States, is becoming a place of new aspirations. The Russian idea is being implemented in the American South. As it should be in utopia, the time coordinate flattens and freezes in place; there will be no more time, it is said about this in the Apocalypse. But the space expands and unfolds, and geography takes on unprecedentedly intricate meanings.

Faith. New dreams

The seasonal inhabitants of New Russia work during the day on American soil, and "have fun and dance every evening" in their crystal palace. However, “only half of them” are having fun; others spend every other evening in their bedrooms. They also often change partners, each time with the help of the same queen. “This is my secret,” says the beautiful queen. By agreement through her, utopian men and women temporarily leave in pairs to their luxurious rooms with curtains, carpets and secrets that are "inviolable." In a dream, as you know, desires come true that cannot be realized in reality. But the heroine of Chernyshevsky also succeeds in reality: that's why she is utopia. In her real life, as in her dream, young people spend half of all evenings together, and the other half of the evenings in pairs.

The American Civil War, on the model of which Chernyshevsky built his projects for the liberation of Russia, ends with the conquest of the slave-owning South by free Russian people. Nothing special; after all, we are dealing only with the novel and even with the dream in the novel. In the world of symbols, desire can find itself a geopolitical metaphor like any other. Starting with the troubles that the censors who missed the novel were subjected to, and ending with the interpretations that he received in Soviet school textbooks, the erotic content of the novel was subjected to repression. It is much more unusual that geography was also the target of repression. We are dealing with a text that has been read many times and by a wide variety of readers. When discovering America in such a well-known space, it is necessary to explain why previous readers did not see it there: to give an interpretation to their interpretations - or, as in this case, the absence of the latter.

Vera Pavlovna's question, which Russia has not been able to answer for 150 years

Meanwhile, this fantasy with two of its elements - group marriage, on the one hand, its implementation in America, on the other hand, did not leave Chernyshevsky even after a quarter of a century, spent by him without women and without freedom. In the Yakut penal prison Chernyshevsky improvised for casual listeners an entertaining story with familiar motives; he read it smoothly, looking at a blank notebook, but the listeners recorded the plot (it was later published by Korolenko). The story was called "Not for everyone" and told about the physical love of the three. Two friends love one woman and after many adventures end up with her on a desert island. What to do? They “try and, after an easy victory over some ingrained feelings, everything works out fine. There comes peace, harmony, and instead of hell [...] paradise reigns. " But Russian homesickness brings them back to Europe; on the way, they find themselves in England, where they are put on trial for their triple marriage. But, all the time, the three of them, they seek justification and "leave for America, where, amid the ferment of new forms of life and their union, they find tolerance and a rightful place."

*****

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cold and damp, why be here? Here out of 2,000 people are left now

ten to twenty people of originals, who this time seemed

a pleasant variety to stay here in the wilderness, in solitude, to look at

northern autumn. In a few time, in winter, there will be incessant

shifts, lovers of winter walks will come in small parties,

spend a few days here like winter. "

But where are they now? - "Yes, wherever it is warm and good," says

older sister: - for the summer, when there is a lot of work and it is good, she comes here

all kinds of guests from the south; we were in a house where the whole company was from one

you; but many houses are built for guests, in others and mixed

guests and hosts live together, as you like, such a company and

chooses. But accepting many guests in the summer, assistants in work, you yourself

for 7-8 bad months of your year, you leave for the south - to whom it is much more pleasant. But

you also have a special side in the south, where your main mass is leaving. This

the side is called New Russia. "-" This is where Odessa and Kherson? "-" This

in your time, and now, look, that's where New Russia is. "

Mountains clad in gardens; between the mountains there are narrow valleys, wide plains. "These mountains

there were bare rocks before, - says the elder sister. - Now they are covered

thick layer of earth, and on them among the gardens grow groves of the highest

trees: below in the wet hollows of the coffee tree plantation; above

date palms, fig trees; vineyards are mixed with plantations

sugar cane; there is also wheat in the fields, but more rice. "-" Well this

for the land? "-" Let's rise a minute higher, you will see its borders. "

in the far northeast, two rivers that merge together right in the east

from the place from which Vera Pavlovna is looking; further south, still the same

southeastward, long and wide bay; goes far in the south

land, expanding more and more to the south between this bay and the long narrow

the bay that makes up its western border. Between the western narrow bay and

by the sea, which is very far in the northwest, a narrow isthmus. "But we are in

the center of the desert? "- says the astonished Vera Pavlovna." Yes, in the center of the former

deserts; and now, as you can see, the whole space is from the north, from that big

rivers in the northeast, already turned into a fertile land, into a land such

the same as that strip along the sea to the north of

her, about which it was said in the old days that she "boils with milk and honey"

(149). We are not very far, you see, from the southern border of the cultivated

space, the mountainous part of the peninsula is still sandy, barren

steppe, which was in your time the whole peninsula; every year people, you

other countries: everyone has a lot of space, and enough work, and spacious, and

abundantly. Yes, from the great northeastern river all the space south to

half of the peninsula turns green and blooms, throughout the space they stand, as on

north, huge buildings three, four versts from each other, as if

countless huge chess on a gigantic chess player. "Let's go down to

one of them, "says the older sister.

The same huge crystal house, but its columns are white. "They are therefore

made of aluminum, says the older sister, that it is very warm here, white

less hot in the sun, which is somewhat more expensive than cast iron, but in a local way

more convenient. "But here's what they also came up with: for a long distance around

of the crystal palace, there are rows of thin, extremely high pillars, and on them,

high above the palace, over the entire palace and for, half a mile around it stretched

white canopy. "He is constantly splashed with water, - says the elder sister: -

you see, from each column a small fountain rises above the canopy,

scattering rain around, so it's cool to live here; you see they

change the temperature as they want. "-" And who likes the heat and bright local

the sun? "-" You see, there are pavilions and tents in the distance. Everyone can live like

it pleases him; I am leading to this, I am all for this and work. "-" So,

there are also cities left for those who like cities? "-" There are not many of these

people; fewer cities remained, almost only to be

centers of communication and transport of goods, near the best harbors, in other centers

messages, but these cities are larger and splendid than before; everyone goes there for

a few days for a change; most of their inhabitants incessantly

takes turns, happens there for work, for a short time. "-" But who wants

constantly live in them? "-" They live as you live in your Petersburg, Paris,

London - who cares? who will interfere? Everyone live as you want;

only the vast majority, 99 out of 100, live like we

we show you to your sister, because it is more pleasant and profitable for them. But go to

the palace, it's already quite late in the evening, it's time to look at them. "

But no, first I want to know how it was done? "-" What? "-" That,

that a barren desert turned into a fertile land, where almost all of us

we spend two-thirds of our year. "-" How did it come about? but what is it

tricky? After all, this did not happen in one year, and not in ten years, I gradually

pushed things forward. From the northeast, from the banks of a large river, from the northwest,

from the coast of the big sea, - they have so many such strong cars, - they drove

clay, she tied sand, drew canals, arranged irrigation, appeared

greenery, more moisture appeared in the air; walked forward step by step, by

several versts, sometimes one verst a year, as now everyone goes more

south, what's so special about that? They just got smart, began to use it for good

a huge amount of effort and resources that were previously wasted

or and directly to the detriment of yourself. It's not for nothing that I work and teach. It was difficult for people

only to understand what is useful, they were still such savages in your time,

so rude, cruel, reckless, but I taught and taught them; and when they

began to understand, it was no longer difficult to perform. I don't ask for anything difficult

you know. You are doing something in my opinion, for me - is it bad? "" No. "

- "Of course not. Remember your workshop, did you have a lot of funds?

Is it more than the others? "-" No, what means did we have? "-" But

your seamstresses have ten times more amenities, twenty times more joys

life, a hundred times less unpleasant than others, with the same

means that you had. You yourself proved that in your time people

can live very freely. You just need to be reasonable, be able to do well

get settled, find out how to use funds more profitably. "-" So, so; i this

I know. "-" Go see a little more how people live in a few

time after they began to understand what you have long understood. "

They enter the house. Again the same huge, magnificent hall. Evening

in its full spaciousness and fun, three hours have passed after sunset:

it's time to have fun. How brightly lit the hall, what is it? - nowhere to be seen nor

candelabra, no chandeliers; ah, that's what! - in the dome of the hall there is a large platform of

frosted glass, light is pouring through it - of course, this is how it should be:

perfect, like sunny, white, bright and soft, - well, yes, this

electric lighting (149a). There are about a thousand people in the hall, but in it

there could be three times more freely. "And it happens when guests arrive, -

says the bright beauty, - there are more. "-" So what is it? Is not

ball? Is this a simple weekday evening? "-" Of course. "-" But in the present, this

would be a court ball, how luxurious the clothes of women are, yes, other times, this

can be seen from the cut of the dress. There are several ladies in our dress, but it is clear that

they dressed like that for a change, for a joke; yes they are fooling around, joking about

your suit; on others, other, a wide variety of costumes of different

eastern and southern cuts, all of them are more graceful than ours; but the suit prevails,

similar to the one worn by Greek women in the graceful time of Athens - very light

and loose, and men also wear a wide, long dress without a waist, something

like robes, imaties; it can be seen that this is their ordinary home suit, as

this dress is modest and lovely! How softly and gracefully it outlines the forms,

how it exalts the gracefulness of movement! And what an orchestra, more than a hundred artists

and artists, but especially, what a chorus! "-" Yes, you have not had

each friend is the same: the lifestyle is not the same, very healthy and together

people in the orchestra and in the choir are constantly changing: some leave, others

take their place - they leave to dance, they come from the dancers.

They have an evening, a weekday, ordinary evening, they are so

have fun and dance; but when did I see such an energy of fun? but also not

to have their merriment of energy unknown to us? - They worked out in the morning. Who is not

worked out enough, he did not prepare the nerve to feel full

fun. And now the fun of ordinary people, when they manage to have fun, more

joyful, lively and fresh than ours; but our ordinary people have little money

for fun, but here the means are richer than ours; and the fun of our simple

people are embarrassed by the recollection of inconveniences and deprivations, troubles and sufferings,

embarrassed by the foreboding of the same ahead - this is a fleeting hour of forgetting the need

and grief - but can need and grief be completely forgotten? Is the sand of the desert

does not enter? don't the miasma of the swamps infect even a small patch of good

land with good air, lying between the desert and the swamp? And here there is no

memories, no fear of need or grief; there are only memories of the free

labor in the hunt, contentment, kindness and enjoyment, here and expectation only everything

the same in front. What a comparison! And again: our working people have nerves

only strong, therefore they are able to withstand a lot of fun, but they have

rude, not susceptible. And here: nerves and strong, like those of our working people,

and developed, impressionable, like ours; ready for fun, healthy,

a strong thirst for him, which we do not have, which is given only by powerful health and

physical labor, in these people it is connected with all the subtlety of sensations,

what is in us; they have all our moral development together with

physical development of our strong working people: it is clear that their fun,

that their pleasure, their passion - more and more lively and stronger, wider and sweeter than

we have. Happy people!

No, now they don't know what real fun is, because yet

there is no life that is needed for him, and there are no such people. Only such people

can be quite merry and know all the delight of delight! How they bloom

health and strength, how slender and graceful they are, how energetic and expressive

their features! All of them are happy beauties and beauties, leading a free life.

labor and pleasure - lucky, lucky!

Half of them are noisily having fun in the huge hall, but where is the other half?

"Where are the others?" Says the bright queen, "they are everywhere; many in the theater, alone

actors, other musicians, third spectators, as they like to whom; others

scattered among audiences, museums, sitting in the library; some in the alleys of the garden,

some in their rooms, or to rest alone, or with their children, but

more, more than anything, it's my secret. You saw in the hall how cheeks burn, how

eyes shine; you saw them leaving, they came; they were leaving - it's me

carried them away, here is the room of each and every one - my shelter, they contain my secrets

inviolable, door curtains, luxurious carpets that absorb sound, there is silence,

there is a mystery; they were returning - it was I who returned them from the kingdom of my secrets to

light fun I reign here. "

"I reign here. Everything is here for me! Labor is the preparation of freshness

feelings and strength for me, fun - preparation for me, rest after me.

Here I am the goal of life, here I am the whole life. "

"In my sister, the queen, the highest happiness of life," says the elder sister,

But you see, here is all the happiness that anyone needs. Everybody lives here

how best for someone to live, here everyone and everyone - full will, free will. "

"What we have shown you will not be in full development soon, what

you saw now. Many generations will change before it is fully realized

what you anticipate. No, not many generations: my work is going now

fast, faster every year, but still you won't get into it yet

my sister's complete kingdom; at least you saw him, you know

future. It is light, it is beautiful. Tell everyone: this is what is in the future,

the future is bright and beautiful. Love him, strive for him, work for

him, bring him closer, transfer from him to the present, as much as you can

transfer: it will be so bright and kind, rich in joy and pleasure

your life, as far as you are able to transfer into it from the future. Strive for

him, work for him, bring him closer, transfer from him to the present

whatever you can carry. "

A year later, the new workshop was already completely settled, established. Both

the workshops were closely connected with each other, they passed orders to one another,

when one was overwhelmed with them, and the other had time to fulfill them. Between them

there was a checking account. Their funds were already sufficient to enable them

open a store on Nevsky, if they get even closer to each other. Arrange

it cost Vera Pavlovna and Mertsalova quite a lot of trouble. Although their

the companies were friendly, although often one company hosted

another, although they often connected for trips out of town, but still the thought of

the solidarity of the accounts of two different enterprises was a new thought, which

it took a long time and a lot to explain. However, it is profitable to have on Nevsky

her store was obvious, and after several months of worries about the merger of the two

of the parish accountants Vera Pavlovna and Mertsalova managed to achieve this.

A new sign appeared on Nevsky: "Au bon travail. Magasin des Nouveautes"

(150). With the opening of the store, business began to develop faster than before and

became more and more profitable. Mertsalova and Vera Pavlovna already dreamed in their

conversations that in two years instead of two sewing ones there will be four, five, and there

soon ten and twenty.

About three months after the opening of the store, one of Kirsanov came to Kirsanov.

an acquaintance, and more an unfamiliar fellow in medicine, talked a lot about

different medical incidents, most of all about the amazing success of their

healing methods, which consisted of putting along the chest and abdomen

two narrow and long bags filled with crushed ice (151) and

wrapped each in four napkins, and in conclusion he said that one

from his acquaintances wishes to get acquainted with Kirsanov (152).

Kirsanov fulfilled the wish; the acquaintance was pleasant, there was a conversation about

a lot, among other things, about the store. Explained that the store is open, in fact,

with a commercial purpose; We talked for a long time about the sign of the store, is it good that the

the sign says travail. Kirsanov said that travail means labor, Au bon

travail - a store that fulfills orders well; talked about whether it is better

would replace such a motto with a surname. Kirsanov began to say that the Russian

his wife's surname would cause a commercial loss; finally came up with this

means: his wife's name is "Vera" - in French faith - foi; if on

the sign could have been written instead of Au bon travail - A la bonne foi, then not

would that be enough? - It would have the most innocent meaning -

"bona fide store", and the owner's name would be on the sign; having judged

saw that it was possible. Kirsanov with particular zeal turned the conversation to

such questions and generally succeeded in this, so that he returned home very

pleased.

But in any case, Mertsalova and Vera Pavlovna significantly cut

wings to their dreams and began to take care to at least hold on to

place, and certainly not about going forward.

Thus, after cooling the excess heat in Vera Pavlovna and Mertsalova,

sewing machines and the store continued to exist, not developing, but already rejoicing and

what continues to exist. Kirsanov's new acquaintance continued and

brought him a lot of pleasure. So another two years or more passed, without

any special incidents.

Letter from Katerina Vasilievna Polozova

Dear Pauline, I liked the brand new thing so much that I

I recently found out, and which I am now doing myself with great zeal, that I

I want to describe it to you. I'm sure you will also be interested in her. But

most importantly, you yourself, perhaps, will find an opportunity to do something

similar. This is so nice, my friend.

The thing I want to describe for you is sewing; actually two

sewing, both arranged according to the same principle by a woman whom she met

I was only two weeks ago, but I have already become very good friends. I AM

now I help her, on the condition that she later help me arrange another

the same sewing. This lady Vera Pavlovna Kirsanova, still young, kind,

cheerful, completely in my taste, that is, more like you, Polina,

than your Katya, so meek: she is a lively and lively mistress. Accidentally

when I heard about her workshop, they told me only about one, I came directly

became interested in her sewing. We met from the very first time, the more that in

Kirsanov, her husband, I found the very same doctor Kirsanov, who is five years old.

You did me, remember, such an important service a long time ago.

After talking with me for half an hour and seeing that I really

I sympathize with such things, Vera Pavlovna took me to her workshop, the one

which she herself is engaged in (the other, which was arranged before, took on

one of her close acquaintances, also a very good young lady), and I

I will tell you the impressions of my first visit; they were so new and

amazing that I then entered them into my diary, which was long ago

abandoned, but now resumed for a special circumstance, about which, to be

maybe I'll tell you in a little while. I am very pleased that these

the impressions were then written down by me: now I would have forgotten to mention

many things that struck me then, but now, only two weeks later, already

seems to be the most common thing, which should not be otherwise. But what

the more ordinary this thing becomes, the more I become attached to it, because

that she is very good. So, Polina, I'm starting an extract from my diary,

complementing the details that I learned after.

Sewing workshop - what do you think I saw? We

stopped at the entrance, Vera Pavlovna took me along a very good

stairs, you know, one of those stairs on which you often meet

doormen. We entered the third floor, Vera Pavlovna called, and I saw myself

in a large hall, with a grand piano, with decent furniture - in a word, the hall had such

look as if we entered the apartment of a family living in 4 or 5 thousand

rubles per year. - Is this a workshop? Is this one of the seamstresses' rooms?

"Yes; this is the reception room and the evening meeting room; let's go to those

the rooms in which, in fact, the seamstresses live, they are now in the work rooms,

and we will not interfere with anyone. "- This is what I saw, walking around the rooms, and that

Vera Pavlovna explained to me.

The workshop space consisted of three apartments overlooking one

site and turned to the same apartment when the doors from one to

another. These apartments were previously sold for 700, 550 and 425 rubles. per year, total

for 1675 rubles. But giving everything together under a 5-year contract, the owner of the house

agreed to cede them for 1,250 rubles. There are 21 rooms in the workshop, of which 2

very large, 4 windows each, one serves as a reception room, the other as a dining room; in two

others, also very large, work; in the rest they live. We went 6 or 7

the rooms in which the girls live (I'm all talking about my first visit);

the furnishings of these rooms are also very decent, mahogany or walnut;

some have standing mirrors, others have very good dressing tables; lot

armchairs, sofas of good work. Furniture in different rooms is different, almost all

she was gradually bought on occasions, for cheap price... These rooms, in

which they live look like in the apartments of middle-class bureaucratic families

hands, in the families of old department chiefs or young

clerks who will soon be department heads. In the rooms

which are larger, three girls live, in one even four, in others two.

We entered the work rooms, and the girls who worked in them, too

seemed to me dressed like daughters, sisters, young wives of these officials: on

some wore silk dresses, made of simple silk fabrics, others

barge (153), muslin. The faces had that softness and tenderness that

develops only from a life of contentment. You can imagine how it all is

surprised me. We stayed in the working rooms for a long time. I'm right there

met some of the girls; Vera Pavlovna said the purpose of my

visits: the degree of their development was not the same; some have already said

completely in the language of an educated society, were familiar with literature as

our young ladies, had decent ideas about history, and about foreign lands, and about

everything that makes up the ordinary range of concepts of young ladies in our society;

two were even very well-read. Others, who entered the workshop not so long ago,

were less developed, but nevertheless it was possible to speak with each of them, as with

a girl who already had some education. Generally the degree of development

commensurate with how long which of them has lived in the workshop.

Vera Pavlovna was busy with business, sometimes she came up to me, and I said

with the girls, and so we waited for dinner. It consists, on weekdays, of

three courses. That day there was rice soup, boiled fish and veal. After

After dinner, tea and coffee appeared on the table. The dinner was so good that I ate with

taste and would not consider it a great deprivation to live at such a dinner.

And you know that my father still has a good cook.

This was the general impression of my first visit. I was told,

and I knew that I would be in the workshop in which the seamstresses live, that they will show me

seamstresses' rooms; that I will see seamstresses, that I will sit at seamstresses' dinner;

instead, I saw the apartments of people not in a poor state, connected into one

premises, I saw girls of an average bureaucratic or poor landowner

circle, was at dinner, not rich, but satisfactory for me; - well

is it? and how is this possible?

When we returned to Vera Pavlovna, she and her husband explained to me that

this is not surprising at all. By the way, Kirsanov then wrote to me for

an example of a small calculation on a piece of paper that survived between pages

my diary. I will rewrite it for you; but first, a few more words.

Instead of poverty - contentment; instead of dirt - not only cleanliness, even

some luxury of rooms; instead of rudeness - decent education; all

this happens for two reasons: on the one hand, the income of seamstresses increases, with

the other is that very large savings are achieved in their costs.

You understand why they get more income: they work for their own

own account, they themselves are mistresses; therefore they get the share that

would remain in profit with the owner of the store. But that's not all: working in your

their own benefit and at their own expense, they are much more economical and material

work and on time: work goes faster and costs less.

It is clear that there are many savings in the costs of their lives. They buy

in increasing quantities, they pay in cash, so things

they get it cheaper than when buying on credit and on trifles; things are chosen

carefully, with knowledge of the sense in them, with certificates, so everything is not bought

only cheaper, but also better than poor people have to buy at all.

In addition, many costs are either extremely reduced or become

are completely unnecessary. Think for example: go to the store every day for 2, for 3

miles - how much extra shoes wear out, an extra dress from this. I will give

you the smallest example, but which applies to everything in this

relation.

If you don't have a rain umbrella, it means a lot to lose from damage.

dresses in the rain. Now, listen to the words spoken to me by Vera Pavlovna. Simple

a canvas umbrella costs, let's say, 2 rubles. 25 seamstresses live in the workshop. On the

an umbrella for each would come out 5O p., the one that did not have an umbrella would endure

the loss in the dress would be more than 2 rubles. But they live together; each one comes out

from home only when it is convenient for her; therefore there is no such thing as a bad

the weather, many went out of the house. They found 5 rain umbrellas

quite pretty. These umbrellas are silk, good ones; they cost 5 rubles.

The total expense for rain umbrellas is 25 rubles, or for each seamstress - 1 rubles.

You see that each of them uses a good thing instead of a crappy one.

still has half the expense for this thing. So with a lot of little things,

which together are of great importance. The same with the apartment, with the table.

For example, this dinner, which I described to you, cost 5 rubles. 50 kopecks or 5

rub. 75 kopecks, with bread (but without tea and coffee). And there were 37 people at the table (not

including me, guests, and Vera Pavlovna), however, including several children.

RUB 5 75 kopecks. for 37 people, this is less than 16 kopecks. per person, less

5 p. per month. And Vera Pavlovna says that if a person dines alone, he

this money can have almost nothing but bread and that rubbish that

sold in small shops. There is such a lunch in the kitchen (only less

purely cooked) costs, according to Vera Pavlovna, 40 kopecks. ser., - over 30

cop. much worse. This difference is understandable: a kitchen manager, preparing a dinner for 20 people

or less, must himself be supported from this money, have an apartment, have

servants. There are almost no such extra costs here, or they are much

less. Salary to two old women, relatives of two seamstresses, that's the whole expense

Kirsanov did it for me as an example when I was with them for the first time. Having written

him, he told me:

Of course, I cannot tell you the exact numbers, and it would be difficult to find

them, because, you know, every business, every store,

each workshop has its own proportions between different income items and

consumption, each family also has its own special degrees of economy in

making expenses and special proportions between their different items. I put

numbers are just for example: but to make the score more convincing, I put numbers,

which are less than the actual profitability of our order, compared with

real expenses of almost any commercial business and almost any

small, poor economy.

Income of a commercial enterprise from the sale of goods, continued

Kirsanov, - splits into three main parts: one goes to the salary

workers; the other - for other expenses of the enterprise: rent of premises,

lighting, materials for work; the third remains for the profit of the owner. We put,