Until 1861 the Russian economy depended on the labor of serfs who farmed the land. These people were considered property and could be bought and sold just like any other good. So it was not implausible that in the summer of 1842 a gentleman by the name of Pavel Chichikov could be traveling around rural Russia, buying up serfs for cold hard cash.
His business proposition was unusual, though: He only wanted dead ones. From the seller’s point of view, it was a good deal. Since serfs who had died before the regular census—so-called “dead souls”—were still taxable property, their sale represented a tax break. As for the purchaser, Chichikov, his ultimate purpose was to mortgage them to the government, take out big loans using the serfs as collateral and then skip town with the cash. Everyone stood to gain. Even the serfs, being dead, had nothing to lose.
Now there’s a big black hole here into which we could plunge with meditations upon the immortality of the soul, the elusiveness of good and the banality of evil, social oppression and injustice, hellfire and damnation, respect for the dead, human dignity, ethics, Russian culture and the devil’s wily ways, but from a purely economic point of view, the deal made a great deal of sense.
Chichikov never actually existed, except on the pages of a famous novel by Nikolai Gogol titled “Dead Souls.” So why read it? Gogol is dead, Russia is on the other side of the world, the novel’s action took place 168 years ago and it never happened anyway. And reading it won’t get you a job (maybe).
Well, for starters, the book teems with weird characters who will keep you company and entertain you on a long lonely night. The plot is bizarre and brilliant. “Dead Souls” is one of the funniest things you’ll ever read. Entering Gogol’s wacky, unforgettable world will bring on a feeling of sheer unadulterated joy that is its own reward.
But if you must, you can always come up with a socially relevant reason for reading, one that allows you to use the book as a guide for understanding current events. For example, Gogol’s swindler protagonist has real-life descendents, the semi-criminal “New Russian” business bosses who peeled the post-Soviet economy like a grape in the 1990s. And what with all the bribes and carrying on, the novel is as vicious a satire as you will ever read of government bureaucracy and human failings like greed, sloth and the other lower-grade sins.
Much as we’d like to deny it, these failings know no national borders.
Even in this hemisphere, swindles abound. And some of the gravest injustices begin as victimless crimes. In the world of “Dead Souls,” everyone gets something for nothing. The landowners get pocket change and a tax break. The bureaucrats get some hefty bribe money. Chichikov gets the collateral he needs for his get-rich-quick scheme. Only the government loses: Chichikov’s project depends on the easy availability of public funds—it is taxes, after all, that will provide him with the cash he will be borrowing from the government, and he has no intention of paying that money back, ever. For the longest time, there were no losers in our credit-default swaps of the mid-2000s either. Everything was on paper. But all that the funny accounting, mortgage fraud, incompetent oversight and complicated loan-layering landed us in a fearsome economic mess. At some point you have to bring your accounts into order, or before you know it there will be a lot of people living in cardboard boxes, or on the couch at your parents’.
I’m not too good at economics, and just so you know, I had to drop it in college. So this really isn’t about economics. It’s actually been a sales pitch to get you to take courses in arts and literature. Systems come and go, careers and fortunes are built and lost, the deadly sins lurk at the gate and speaking as an amateur, I’m not sure that learning a few more formulas and paradigms is going to change that.
Your soul, though, that’s still up for grabs.
A truck could run over you tomorrow; a mine could cave in and trap you underground; lethal chemicals leaking from an aluminum plant in Hungary could seep in under your door. AIDS, global warming, a terrorist, your homicidal ex-boyfriend, a teenager in a speeding SUV, the North Koreans, your refusal to wear a bicycle helmet, Krzyzewskiville germs, a flock of birds rising off the surface of a runway and being sucked into a jetliner NOT piloted by Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger—any of this could have your name on it.
As for me, if some big and incendiary thing is going to come flying through my ceiling tomorrow, I’d rather be doing at that moment what I really want to be doing rather than what I think I should be doing. And reading a long, juicy Russian novel, maybe with some company, is at the top of my list.
Carol Apollonio is an associate professor of the practice in Slavic and Eurasian studies and a faculty in residence in Wilson Residence Hall on East Campus. Her column runs every other Friday.
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