There was a time when I read a lot of Russian novels written by names like Lermentov, Sholokov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Gogol and Dostoevsky. I even remember meeting a guy in the 70s who always had a fat Russian novel in his back pocket! Bookstores carried half a dozen of these Russian authors on their front shelves. Not like that anymore. Recently I came across the following book written by Russian philosopher and writer Nikolai Chernyshevsky in 1863 while he was in jail for subversive ideas in Czarist Russia. I decided to give it a read, all 500 pages!
Ii is about a young man (Lopukhov) who rescues a beautiful young woman (Vera Pavlona) from her controlling mother who is trying to marry her off to a rich man she hates. She suffers immensely under her mother’s control and Lopukhov takes pity on her and falls in love. He helps her move out, find a job and eventually they get married.
However their relationship is somewhat stilted in that they agree to sleep in separate rooms and only get together in a neutral middle room. After a few years, she has a dream where she falls in love with her husband’s best friend (Kirsanov). After she tells her husband of this dream, he senses that it is true and that his best friend loves Vera too. He is so concerned for his wife’s (and friend’s) happiness that he decides to get out of their way by faking his own suicide. She is then free and indeed does marry her new paramour Kirsanov without feelings of guilt. They both are very happy.
But that is not the end. Lukanov comes back disguised as an American and marries the daughter of a formerly rich man in St. Petersburg. They get together with the Kirsanovs socially and become the best of friends. Both couples end up living next door to each other in harmony and friendship. A highly complicated and unlikely plot you say? I agree. How does someone ever think of this kind of story?
One of the themes in the book is how can a young woman properly discern the needs of a man she meets in order to decide if she should marry him, when she herself has little life experience? Another is the need for women and men to first develop their minds through reading, study and discipline in order to assume a productive life that will benefit society. While married to Lopukhov, Vera starts up a very successful seamstress business built on revolutionary cooperative principles where no one person owns the company and all employees share in the profits.
Then another character appears briefly who is sent by Lopukov without any prior instruction to speak to Vera before she decides to marry Kirsanov. His name is Rakhmetov and he becomes the moral compass of the novel. Born of rich parents, he renounces his wealth, educates himself and develops extreme self discipline. He sleeps on a bed of nails literally, abstains from romantic relationships and alcohol and lives in poverty by choice.
He’s a contrast to Lopukhov and Kirsanov, who are rational and kind but still live fairly ordinary lives with love and comfort. Rakhmetov is on a whole other level — the embodiment of absolute revolutionary purity. His character becomes the blueprint for the future “revolutionary” type in Russian literature and politics.
Xi Jinping, China’s Premier recently quoted Rakhmetov’s influence on him personally in an interesting article here….So this apparently unreadable book has long been an inspiration for current and previous Communist leaders/revolutionaries. Wow, what a tribute to this book.
This book is really about the search for social, economic and political reform in 19th century Russia. A great read in my view, 9 out of 10 stars since Cehernevsky does ramble on at times.
(In 1864, Chernyshevski was sentenced to seven years of hard labor, followed by exile in Siberia. He spent over two decades in harsh conditions, which severely affected his health. In 1883, he was allowed to return to European Russia, and died in Saratov at the age of 61 (per ChatGPT)
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