Peasant reform of 1861 in N.A. Nekrasov's poem "Peddlers"

Abstract

N.A. Nekrasov's poem "Peddlers", written in the summer of 1861, reflected the poet's reflections on the peasant reform that was beginning (announced by the Manifesto on February 19, 1861). Contrary to the testimony of N.G. Chernyshevsky, Nekrasov's attitude to the reform was not completely negative. Realizing that in some aspects the conditions of the changes were unfair to the peasants, the poet nevertheless saw in the reform the beginning of positive changes – the movement towards capitalist, market relations. Describing the recent past, Nekrasov, using specific figures of traveling peddlers, models the situation of the market in which landlords and peasants act not as masters and slaves, but as buyers. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that, in the analysis, the author also relies on the achievements of the current methodology of the "new economic criticism". Nekrasov shows the Russian national character as not alien to the love of market relations, the situation of purchase and sale, consequently, the emerging new living conditions, as quite favorable for the development of Russia. The necessary conditions for this development to really take place in the right direction, in the direction of improving the lives of both the nobility and peasants, as seen from this analysis, are the absence of severe ruinous wars (like the Crimean one, during which the action of the poem was transferred) and the protection of the domestic market from the expansion of European goods.