A diary? Well no! Rather, notes, notes, memories — or rather, physiology (a forgotten genre in which fiction is combined with journalism, sociology, psychology to more fully and more easily describe a certain social section). And now the hero is already riding on a train rushing him from the Russian province to the Russian capital, the carriage is full of provincials like him, and complains about the provincial that he can’t hide from the province anywhere (even the governorate settles in the same hotel ), muses, what the hell pulled him to migrate to St. Petersburg, because he doesn’t have any concessions for the construction of railways, nor other urgent matters.
However, the environment, as you know, sucks in: everyone runs around the ministries and departments, and the hero begins to run, if not in the same place, at least in the oyster hall to Yeliseyev, to this peculiar exchange, where Adam's apple trees, naps, caps with red perks and cockades flashed, some olive personalities - either Greeks, Jews or Armenians - Timothy anemodists, who rule the case and the case for cognac, balyk, vodka. The cycle of bustling business idleness sucks: everyone is trying to take a look at the theater for the visiting actress Schneider - and ours too ... They chew, utter talk, and everyone is oppressed by the thought that there is still something that you need to get, but what it is something this is precisely what the hero cannot formulate. Involuntarily, he recalls his grandfather, Matvey Ivanovich, who cheated with his life - he beat the police utterly, pounded dishes in taverns - and did not bump into misanthropy. True, the grandson thinks of the fact that he is yearning, because there is no one to dominate and nothing to do with, although it is a pity for him not serfdom, but that, despite its abolition, it still lives in our hearts.
A friend of the provincial Prokop does not let him relax: he smuggles the poor man in all the circles and societies where the projects are written (now these projects are in fashion, everyone writes them - one about the reduction, the other about the extension, the other about the shooting, about wasting, because to everyone I want a pie). “A people without religion is like a body without a soul <...> Agriculture is destroyed, industry is breathing a bit, stagnation is in trade <...> And why should ceremonies with this foul literature? <...> Tell me, where are we going? " - Democratic circles are extremely concerned about the fate of their homeland. As for the execution, it is not useless to subject the following persons to it: all those who disagree; all in whose behavior a lack of honesty is noticed; well-meaning well-meaning philistines upset by the gloomy outline of their faces; Zuboskalov and newspaper men - and nothing more. From rout to party, from one society of liberal-frightened people to another, while the provincial with Prokop get drunk to hell and spend the night, for goodness sake, in the apartment of the assistant district warden. No, it’s obvious that there’s no place to go without grandfather’s morality: there’s only one way to protect your life from unpleasant elements — by casting aside doubts, you can start to beat on the teeth again. And in a daze the hero wonders: is it possible that in the latest progressive times, a party that already has to be called the most destructive-conservative is coming to replace the destructive-conservative party?
So, having read the projects, mainly the works of Prokop (on the need for decentralization, on the need for stunning in the sense of temporarily euthanizing feelings, on reforming the academy's spirit), the provincial falls into a state of some particularly disturbing and visionary dreams. He dreams that he is dying lonely in furnished rooms, having acquired a million rubles from the merchants. And here the author describes how the soul of the deceased watches the plunder of the acquired. Everything he could, from securities to batiste shawls, was stolen by a bosom friend Prokop. And in the family estate at the village of Spoiled Sister Mashenka and Dashenka, nieces Fofochka and Lyolechka, remembering the dead man with oil voices, they think how to pull pieces of inheritance from each other.
Years passed - and now the aged Prokop lives under the oppression of the blackmailer Gavryushka, a former license plate, who saw how the master launched his hand into someone else's good. A lawyer arrives, a case is conceived, the guardian of the law tries to snatch his legitimate ones from Prokop, and only because of the intransigence of both, everything comes to court. Prokop wins his job, because the reason for the Russian assessors is to lose your own! that way and the world will soon go! After such a dream, the hero wants only one thing - to run away! Where to? Already fled from the provinces to the capital, not returning back ...
The provincial rushes to his old friend Menander Perelestnov, who wrote the essay Homer, Man and Citizen at the university, translated a page from some textbook, and, due to impoverishment, became a liberal and publicist in the daily literary-scientific-journalistic publication “The oldest All-Russian The filler. " In fact, our hero can not be called alien to literary work: a copy of the youthful agenda "Malanya", from peasant life, perfectly rewritten and superbly intertwined, and is now stored at the provincial. Friends agreed that today it is easy to breathe, lives lightly, and most importantly - Perelestnov promises to introduce a comrade into the almost secret "Union of Pennantsemnim". The hero gets acquainted with the Charter of the Union, established for the absence of the present case and in the forms of harmless passing of time, and soon with its members themselves, mainly journalists, employees of various publications, such as the “True Russian Paint Pick-up”, “Pick-up Mirrors”,
The “All-Russian Pencil Shramnitsa”, where, it seems, under different pseudonyms the same person is polemicizing with himself. And so ... which of these scavengers is engaged in the Churilka pedigree; who argues that the plot of "Chizhik-fawn" is borrowed; who are actively working to maintain "abolition." In a word, the incompetence of scavengers in matters of life is beyond doubt; only in literature, which is in a state of necrosis, can they give out their babble for answers to questions of life and even impress someone. At the same time, literature sadly wanders around the stalled rut and mutters incoherently that it first comes to hand. The writer does not want to write, the reader does not want to read. And glad to run, but nowhere ...
However, the main event for the provincial, after immersing himself in the world of skimmers, was the hoax of the VIII International Statistical Congress, to which the transatlantic friends, puffed foreigners flock; gullible Russian delegates, including Kirsanov, Bersenev, Rudin, Lavretsky, Volokhov, feed and drink them, arrange excursions, are going to show Moscow and the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. Meanwhile, at the working sessions it turns out which articles and headings in Russia are generally possible to conduct statistical research. Finally, the love of Russians to open up with foreigners, polyberal to Europeans leads to a seemingly inevitable end: the whole congress was a trap to find out the political views and the degree of loyalty of the gentlemen of the Russian delegates. They are rewritten and obligated to appear at interrogations in some secret place. Now the daredevils and frontiers are ready to lay each other, and everyone exposes himself, if only to show his trustworthiness and to get rid of complicity, God already knows what. Everything ends with an ordinary swindling: at least some money is extorted from the detainees, promising to immediately terminate the case. A sigh of general relief ... However, according to numerous mistakes and reservations, it would have been high time to guess that this is a stupidly crude joke for the purpose of making money.
A frenzied provincial sits at home and begins to scribble articles with great longing; so free printing is enriched by imperishable films on the following topics: vaccination; Who was Tibullova Delia? hemorrhoids - is the Russian disease? customs and customs of bats; the ceremonial of the burial of Grand Duke Truvor - and a long series of others with subtle hints of modernity. And again, as an obsession, a dreamy dream of a million, of his own death, of the trial of the stolen Prokop, whose case, according to the cassation ruling, is decided to be examined in turn in all cities of the Russian Empire, is approaching the provincial. And again, a restless soul flies over the cursed earth, over all cities, in alphabetical order, observing everywhere the triumph of post-reform justice and the imposing quirkiness of Prokop, rejoicing at the inexorable ringing of bells, which projects are easily written, and the reformist ventures are happily combined with the smell of good smell to scam. Sisters, on the other hand, are visited by the young lawyer Aleksandr Khlestakov, the son of that same Ivan Alexandrovich. He redeems the right to the whole inheritance for five thousand in cash. The soul of the provincial is transferred to Petersburg. Alexander Ivanovich is pondering where to find absolutely reliable false witnesses to flood Prokop? False witnesses are found, but only those whom Prokop himself slipped in to swindle the new relatives of the provincial. His soul is again transferred to the very end of the XIX century. Prokop is still suing, triumphantly winning in one hundred and twenty-five cities, giving out almost the entire stolen million. Meanwhile, the progressive changes in the kingdom-state are extraordinary: instead of passports, small cards are introduced; the division into military and state does not exist; the curses that made up the controversy of the 70s are abolished, although the literature is completely free ... The hero awakens in ... a hospital for the insane. How to get there, does not remember and does not know. One consolation is that both the lawyers of Prokop and Menander are sitting there. That concludes the year spent by the provincial in St. Petersburg.
In the yellow house, at his leisure, the hero sums up everything he sees and hears, and mainly, understands who these “new people” he knew in the capital. Then it dawns on him that the “new people” belong to that kind of mammal, which does not have any virtues in the state. People who think of themselves as leaders can’t influence the general direction of life in any way due to the fact that, being in the camp of spiritual poverty, they are vicious. There is nothing to expect from the average person either, for he is a representative of the mass, insensitive to public interests, who is willing to give up their birthright for nothing, but not give up a single spoonful of their lentil soup. And the provincial blames himself as a newly-minted liberal that everyone shouted at new forms of old ugliness: more! yap!
So, one of the results of the provincial’s diary is the realization of a vital emptiness and the impossibility of stumbling somewhere, playing an active role somewhere. And in vain the provincial intelligentsia fell into St. Petersburg with a thought: would it not be easier? whether it will be possible to cling to the edge of any concession, then to sell its constituent right, and there - abroad, to mineral waters ...
