Misha Bobrov gasped. His fist clenched. For a moment he said nothing, but forced himself, very carefully, to drink the rest of his glass of wine. As he did so, he noticed that his hand was shaking. It really was outrageous: this rudeness in his own house. And yet – this was the awful thing – could it be that there was some truth in what the young man said? Misha suddenly had a vision of dear old Uncle Ilya, sitting in his chair, as the weeks, months and years passed, reading, talking – and doing nothing, just as Popov had described. Surely he was not like that himself, was he? ‘The reforms of the present reign have been real,’ he said defensively. ‘Why, we abolished serfdom before the Americans abolished slavery.’
‘In name but not in fact.’
‘These things take time.’ He paused and looked seriously at the young man. ‘Do you really believe that everything in Russia is rotten?’
‘Of course. Don’t you?’
And there, of course, was the problem. As Misha Bobrov gazed at Popov, he could not honestly deny the charge. Russia was still pitifully backward. The bureaucracy was famous for its corruption. Even the elected zemstvo assemblies, of which he was so proud, had no influence at all on the central government of the empire, which was the same autocracy as in the days of Peter the Great or even Ivan the Terrible. Yes, of course, his beloved Russia was rotten. But wouldn’t it improve? Weren’t enlightened, liberal-minded men like him making a difference? Or was this rude and frankly unpleasant young man right?
Only now, as he silently pondered this question, did Anna Bobrov suddenly speak up. She had listened to their exchange. Of the philosophical content she had understood not a word. But one statement she had clearly grasped. ‘You say that the state of Russia is rotten, Mr Popov,’ she declared, ‘and you are absolutely right. It’s a disgrace.’
Nicolai turned to his mother in surprise. ‘And what should be done about it, Mother?’ he enquired.
‘Done?’ She looked astonished. ‘How should I know?’ And then, speaking unconsciously for the vast majority of the Russian people, and in a tone of voice which proclaimed that the statement was obvious: ‘That’s for the government to decide!’
‘Madame,’ Popov smiled ironically, ‘you have just solved the entire problem.’
And it was clear to them all that – God bless her – she certainly thought she had.
The discussion ended after that. But, as well as feeling hurt by Popov’s words, Misha Bobrov was left with the sad and uncomfortable feeling that a gulf had opened between him and his son: that there was something about Nicolai and his friend that he did not understand.
In the days that followed, the weather swiftly grew warmer. In the Bobrov house, everything seemed very quiet. The two young men went out, each day, to work with the villagers and returned home tired. Everyone avoided further discussions, and when Misha occasionally asked if their researches were progressing well, they assured him they were. ‘Young men do get strange enthusiasms sometimes,’ he remarked doubtfully to his wife. ‘I suppose there’s no harm in it.’
‘Being out of doors is very good for Nicolai,’ she replied. And Bobrov had to agree that the boy looked uncommonly fit. Young Popov, he thought, sometimes looked rather bored.
For his part, Nicolai was delighted with everything. He enjoyed the physical work and the company of the peasants who, though he could never really be one of them, seemed to get used to him; indeed he was delighted when, after a week, Timofei Romanov actually forgot for a moment who he was and cursed him as thoroughly as his own son for digging a trench in the wrong place.
Above all, though he had moved amongst the peasants since his childhood, it was only now, he realized, that he really understood what their lives were like – the crippling payments, the shortage of land, young Boris’s need to get out from the nagging claustrophobia of his parents’ house, and the resulting, miserable prospect of the Suvorin factory for Natalia. And it’s our fault, the gentry’s, that they have to live like this, he thought. It’s true that we are parasites upon these people, who have nothing to gain from the way that Russia is run.
Yet as he observed the village, he noticed other things too. He had learned a little from books about agricultural methods in other countries; and so he now understood that the practices followed at Russka, as in most of Russia, were medieval. The ploughs were wooden, since iron ones were too expensive. The ploughlands, moreover, were still arranged in strips, with wasteful ridges of unploughed earth between them. And since these strips were regularly redistributed, no peasant ever had a personal holding he could call his own, which he might have cultivated more intensively. When Nicolai once suggested this solution to Timofei, however, the peasant only looked doubtful and remarked: ‘But then some people might get better land than others.’ Such was the immutable way of the commune. ‘Anyway,’ Timofei confessed to him, ‘our greatest problem now is that every year, the crops we sow yield less and less. Our Russian soil is exhausted and there’s nothing you can do.’
It was this statement that, for the first time, led Nicolai to question his father in detail about the village. Was Timofei correct? To his son’s surprise, the landowner’s answer was remarkably informed.
‘If you want to understand the Russian village,’ he explained, ‘you have to understand that many of its problems are of its own making. This soil exhaustion is a perfect example. Six months ago,’ he went on, ‘the provincial zemstvo hired a German expert to study the question. The basic problem is this: our peasants use a three-field system of crop rotation – spring oats or barley, together with potatoes; winter rye; and the third field fallow. And, quite simply, it isn’t efficient. In other countries they’re using four-, five-, six-year rotations and growing clover and ley grass to replenish the land. But in our backward Russia we don’t.
‘However, the greatest problem here,’ he continued, ‘is Savva Suvorin and his linen factory.’
‘Why so?’
Misha sighed. ‘Because he encourages the peasants to grow flax for making linen. It’s a valuable cash crop. The trouble is, they substitute it for oats or barley in the spring sowing and the flax takes more goodness from the land than anything else. So – yes – the land here is getting exhausted, and flax is the main culprit. It’s the same all over the region.
‘But do you know the two greatest ironies of all? First, our people do grow ley grass, which would replenish the land: but they grow it in a separate field instead of putting it into the rotation. So it does no good. Second, in order to compensate for the lower yields, they take more pasture land and put it under the plough; and by doing that they reduce the livestock they can graze – the livestock whose manure is the only other thing they have to put goodness back into the exhausted land!’
‘But that’s a cycle of insanity,’ Nicolai said.
‘It is.’
‘And what’s to be done about it?’
‘Nothing. The peasant communes won’t change their customs, you know.’
‘And the zemstvo authorities?’
‘Ah,’ his father sighed. ‘I’m afraid they’ve no plans. It’s all too difficult, you see.’
And Nicolai could only shake his head.
Yet there were cheerful times too. Nicolai and Popov would often sit in the izba with the Romanov family, and Anna would relate the very folk tales she had told Nicolai’s father as a child. Popov usually sat quietly to one side – he had not become close with the family – but Nicolai would happily sit beside her and encourage her to tell him not only tales, but stories of her own life too. She several times told him of the awful famine of ’39. And she would happily relate her life as a serf girl in the Bobrov household.