What to do? (novel)

Chernyshevsky wrote a novel while in solitary confinement of the Alekseevsky ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress from December 14, 1862 to April 4, 1863. From January 1863, the manuscript was submitted in parts to the commission of inquiry in the Chernyshevsky case (the last part was transferred on April 6). The commission, and after it the censors, saw in the novel only a love line and gave permission for publication. An oversight of censorship was soon noticed, the responsible censor Beketov was removed from office. However, the novel has already been published in the journal Sovremennik (1863, No. 3-5). Despite the fact that the issues of Sovremennik, in which the novel “What to do?” Were printed, were banned, the text of the novel in manuscript copies spread throughout the country and caused a lot of imitations.

N. S. Leskov :

Chernyshevsky’s novel was not interpreted in a whisper, not in silence, but in full throat in the halls, at the porches, at the table of Ms. Milbret and in the Shtenbokov basement passage. They shouted: “muck”, “charm”, “abomination”, etc. - all in different tones ^[2] .

P. A. Kropotkin :

For the Russian youth of that time, it [the book “What to do?”] Was a kind of revelation and turned into a program, became a kind of banner ^[3] .

It has been suggested that the novel was overlooked by censorship as directed "from above" ^[4] . In 1867, the novel was published as a separate book in Geneva (in Russian) by Russian emigrants, then it was translated into Polish, Serbian, Hungarian, French, English, German, Italian, Swedish and Dutch. In Soviet times, also in Finnish and Tajik ( Farsi ). The influence of Chernyshevsky’s novel is felt by Emil Zola (“ Lady’s happiness ”), Strindberg (“Utopias in reality”), and the leader of the Bulgarian national revival Lyuben Karvelov (“Is fate to blame”, written in Serbian).

What to do, like Fathers and Sons, gave rise to the so-called anti-nihilistic novel. In particular, “ On the Knives ” by Leskov , where the motives of the work of Chernyshevsky are periodically used.

The ban on the publication of the novel “What to do?” Was lifted only in 1905. In 1906, the novel was first published in Russia as a separate publication.

The novel begins with information about a certain suicide bomber who shot himself on Liteiny Bridge on July 11, 1856 . Then the story goes to Vera Pavlovna , who at the dacha on Kamenny Island finds out about the tragic death of her husband.

Chernyshevsky describes the growing up of the main character in the house on Gorokhovaya Street and the first matchmaking of the vulgar officer Storeshnikov, to whom she, not taking into account the opinions of her parents, prefers the “medical student Lopukhov”. Marriage allows her to leave her parental home and move into a rented apartment in a “one-story wooden house” on the 5th line of Vasilievsky Island (between Sredny and Maly Avenues ). The family established new orders: do not kiss hands and sleep in different rooms.

Five months after the wedding, Vera decides to organize a “sewing workshop” for sewing “ladies' dresses” and takes orders “at home”. To expand her client base, Vera turns to her friend, Frenchwoman Julie Le-Tellier (from Storeshnikov’s circle). Faith succeeds by fairly distributing profits among the craftswomen. The number of employees for 5 years increases from 3 to 20. Over time, the craftswomen began to live together in the same apartment, having a “common table” and leaving their families. There was a strict schedule of work and rest. However, the community of Vera Pavlovna was deprived of asceticism. Craftswomen could get married, go to theaters or country walks.

Meanwhile, a friend of her husband Kirsanov falls in love with Vera Pavlovna, who has cooled off to her former lover Kryukova. Lopukhov’s disease makes his medical friend visit his house more often. After three years of marriage, Vera Pavlovna cools down to her husband in love with Kirsanova. Being honest and despising the lie, she tells her dream, in which he fell out of love. At the same time, Vera Pavlovna understands that she owes her husband. To give his exhausted wife freedom, Lopukhov wants to “get off the stage” and, after a trip to Ryazan , commits suicide (an affair begins with an episode of suicide). Vera Pavlovna, a month later, marries Kirsanov and settles on Sergievskaya Street , “closer to the Vyborg side, ” where her new husband is working. Having cooled to sewing, Vera Pavlovna is fond of medicine .

Meanwhile, Vera Pavlovna opens a store on Nevsky under the guise of Au bon travail. Magasin des Nouveautes . Her husband, Kirsanov, becomes a well-known professor and helps to recover by Ekaterina Polozova (her diagnosis of atrophia nervorum ), whose father met with a sales agent from the United States Charles Beaumont. The American buys shares of Polozov and marries his daughter Catherine. Semeytsatvo Byumontov settles in the neighborhood with the Kirsanovs and a close friendship is made between them: they arrange joint picnics and sleigh rides .

In Chapter 2, Chernyshevsky through the mouths of Lopukhov (the “new man”) sets out the principles of rational egoism , according to which the main motive of human actions is “the pursuit of profit”. Lopukhov chooses a medical career, because doctors "live much better" clerical officials. Benefit is synonymous with “profit” and “calculation”. She is embodied in a "piece of bread." Love is the "decoration" of the case. When Vera Pavlovna asks if she should marry a rich but unpleasant groom, Lopukhov does not try to dissuade her. A similar philosophy is followed by a friend of Lopukhov, a student of Kirsanov, who declares that he loves only himself. In this case, evil is transferred from the person to the "situation". Aries , whose portrait is hanging in Lopukhov’s office, is called the “holy old man” of these “new people”. Socialist ideas about the future are combined with egoism, when "all the needs of the nature of each person will be completely satisfied." In the words of Rakhmetov, Chernyshevsky strongly condemns jealousy as "a consequence of looking at a person as my belonging, as a thing." In chapter 4, Chernyshevsky puts into the mouth of Vera Pavlovna feminist ideas about the superiority of female nature over man's in terms of the mind and that only the "dominance of violence" did not allow them to find proper implementation. In addition, it declares a greater strength of the "female body" compared with the male. The notion of women's weakness is caused only by "the power of prejudice, bad habit, false expectation."

• The first dream (Ch. 2, XII). Verochka is freed from the basement and is cured of paralysis by a girl whose name is “love for people”. At the same time, the girl constantly changes in the face in which English, German, French, Polish and Russian features are manifested.
• The second dream (Ch. 3, III). Vera Lopukhov’s husband and his friend Aleksey Petrovich Mertsalov conduct a philosophical conversation about dirt , which can be clean, real and healthy, because wheat will be born from it. Another type of dirt (“fantastic dirt”) is rotten and musty. From here they conclude that " movement is life ", life is reality , and "validity" is a "sure sign of reality". “In anthropological analysis, the root form of movement” is labor , which provides content for entertainment, relaxation, fun and fun. Then, various interlocutors (including the companion Julie Serge) begin to confess and it turns out that they themselves are good people, but their “soil” is “unhealthy”.
• The Third Dream (Ch. 3, XIX). Vera Pavlovna dreams that she is talking with singer Bozio , who forces her to read the diary . The heroine doubts her love for her husband and sees in him only a "deliverer" who freed her from the "disgusting life" in her parental home. Her diary says that she no longer loves her husband. Faith awakens in horror.
• The Fourth Dream (Ch. 4, XVI). In a dream, Vera Pavlovna hears Goethe ’s poems “Wie herrlich leuchtet” and sees a golden “cornfield”. Then he sees feasts in the palace and “nomad tents”. Before her eyes appears the "luxurious woman" Astarta with "heavy gold bracelets" on her arms and legs. She is servile and voluptuous . Then Vera Pavlovna sees a “marvelous city” with many statues, through the streets of which Pizistrat is riding a chariot. An invisible interlocutor tells Vera Pavlovna that the people of this city honor the woman as a “source of pleasure” and worship Aphrodite . Then she sees the arena with the knights , which the girl from the castle looks at. The name of the third woman is “Integrity”. Three “queens” symbolize three epochs of attitude towards a woman, in which humility, physical beauty, ethereal image are appreciated, but man himself is not appreciated. The mysterious interlocutor calls herself the fourth queen, whose kingdom was proclaimed in Rousseau 's novel Julia, or New Eloise . Vera Pavlovna learns that she is the fourth queen. In the future, she sees an analogue of the palace, which "stands on the Sydengham hill." This is a "huge winter garden" with aluminum furniture . People live in the palace, but "almost everyone makes cars for them." Vera’s interlocutor reports that the palace is next to the Oka . Then Vera sees the “New Russia” on the site of the former desert.

• Vera Pavlovna is the daughter of Pavel Konstantinich Rozalsky and Maria Alekseevna, the “assistant to the head clerk in some department ”. Her younger brother Feda in 1852 was 9 years old. With her family, she lived on Gorokhovaya Street . From childhood she had a dark complexion, black hair and eyes ("as if from Little Russia "). She knew how to play the piano . At the age of 16, her mother began to “dress up” and take her to the opera , so that she would find a gentleman and successfully marry. Out of habits, Vera Pavlovna “loves to bask” in bed, “cream is her passion too.” Her first husband is Lopukhov, and the second is Kirsanov.
• Storeshnikov Mikhail Ivanovich - voluptuous , selfish and spineless groom of Vera Pavlovna, officer . Before meeting Vera Pavlovna, Adele had a mistress.
• Julie Le Tellier is a Frenchwoman, a Petersburg lady of high society, who "was two years a street woman in Paris ." She wears a “false bust” and discourages Vera Pavlovna from marrying Storeshnikov. Subsequently, she helps Vera Pavlovna to expand the circle of clients for the sewing workshop. He appears in society accompanied by Serge, but refuses to marry him, as he considers marriage to be a prejudice.
• Dmitry Lopukhov - a medical student from the " Academy on the Vyborg Side ", teacher (tutor) Fedi, husband of Vera Pavlovna. The son of the Ryazan tradesman . Serious, solid, solid. Of medium height, with dark brown hair, regular features, brown eyes, thick lips and an aquiline nose. He especially appreciates the photo of Aries on his wall.
• Kirsanov Alexander Matveich - a friend of Lopukhov, a medical student . "The son of the scribe of the county court." In his free time he prefers to sit in a bathrobe on the couch and smoke cigars. Kirsanov had brown hair, "dark blue eyes, a straight Greek nose, a small mouth, and an oblong face." Before meeting with Vera Pavlovna, he cohabited with Nastasya Kryukova, whom he weaned from drunkenness.
• Kryukova Nastasya Borisovna - a consumptive girl, originally a maid , and then an employee of the sewing workshop Vera Pavlovna, cohabitant Kirsanova, who weaned her from drinking.
• Rakhmetov is a 22-year-old student of the Faculty of Philology "from a surname known since the 13th century ." His ancestor Rakhmet died as a “Tatar temnik ” in Tver , but the son of a Tatar from a Russian woman was spared and baptized into Michael. The descendants of this Mikhail Rakhmetov became the Tver boyars, and then the Moscow devious ones . The great-grandfather of the hero of the work of Chernyshevsky died under Novi , and his father rose to the rank of lieutenant general and owned estates in the upper Ursa . Student Rakhmetov was tall, he was engaged in gymnastics and “the development of physical strength”, for the sake of which he “took a boxing diet ” (he ate raw steaks ). He even tried to sleep on nails. For the sake of respect of ordinary people, he did not disdain simple work and even went on like a hoover . His friend was Kirsanov, who advised Rakhmetov in the field of useful books ( Malthus , Mill , Ricardo , Thackeray ).
• Charles Beaumont is a conscientious "agent of the London-based firm of Hodgson, Loter and Co. for the purchase of fat and stearin", a citizen of Massachusetts . A descendant of the French colonists of Canada . His grandfather moved from Quebec to New York . Beaumont's father came to do business in Russia, where he became a distillery at a factory in the Tambov province , where Charles was born. After 20 years, the Beaumont returned to New York and began working as a clerk . According to his convictions, an abolitionist . In St. Petersburg, he will marry Katerina Vasilievna Polozova.
• Polozova, Ekaterina Vasilievna - wife of Beaumont, daughter of the once rich but ruined captain Polozova, a former patient of Kirsanov.

The novel "What to do?" I just plowed deeply. This is a thing that gives a charge for a lifetime ^[5] .

The entertaining, adventurous, melodramatic beginning of the novel was emphasized not only to confuse censorship, but also to attract a wide mass of readers. The external plot of the novel is a love story, but it reflects new economic, philosophical and social ideas of the time. The novel is riddled with allusions to the coming revolution .

L. Yu. Brik remembered Mayakovsky :

One of the books closest to him was “What to do?” By Chernyshevsky. He constantly returned to her. The life described in it echoed ours. Mayakovsky, as it were, consulted with Chernyshevsky about his personal affairs, found support in him. “What to do?” Was the last book he read before his death ^[6] .

• In the novel of N. G. Chernyshevsky “What to do?” Aluminum is mentioned. In the “naive utopia” of Vera Pavlovna’s fourth dream, he is called the metal of the future. Aluminum reached the “Big Future” by the middle of the 20th century.
• The Lady in Mourning, which appears at the end of the work, is Olga Sokratovna Chernyshevskaya, the writer’s wife. At the end of the novel, we are talking about the liberation of Chernyshevsky from the Peter and Paul Fortress, where he was at the time of writing the novel. He did not wait for release: on February 7, 1864 he was sentenced to 14 years in hard labor, followed by settlement in Siberia ^{[7] [8]} .
• The main characters with the surname Kirsanov are also found in the novel of Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev , however, researchers refuse to connect the characters of the novels Chernyshevsky and Turgenev with each other.
• F. M. Dostoevsky argues with Chernyshevsky’s ideas, in particular with his thoughts about the future of mankind in his Notes from the Underground , thanks to which the image of the “crystal palace” has become a common motif of world literature of the 20th century.
• The history of family drama has much in common with the plot of Leo Tolstoy ’s play “The Living Corpse ”.

• " What to do? "- a three-part television show (directors: Nadezhda Marusalova , Pavel Reznikov ), 1971 .
• “Che fare?” (“What to do?”) Is a five-part television play by Italian television (directed by Gianni Serra, 1979).

• Who is guilty?
• What to do? (Lenin)

• Nikolaev P. Revolutionary novel // Chernyshevsky N. G. What to do? - M.: Fiction , 1985.
• “What to do?” N. G. Chernyshevsky: Historical and functional research / Otv. ed. K.N. Lomunov. - M .: Nauka, 1990 .-- 1990 s. - ISBN 5-02-011421-9 .

• Text of the novel
• The journal edition of the novel at ENI “N. G. Chernyshevsky
• The original edition of the novel at ENI “N. G. Chernyshevsky