Nekrasov conceived "Who should live well in Russia" shortly after the reform of 1861, as a result of which millions of peasants were actually robbed. The government managed to suppress popular revolts, but the peasant masses did not calm down for a long time. In this difficult time, without losing hope for a better future, the poet engaged in a comprehensive artistic study of folk life.
In the center of the poem is a collective image of the Russian peasant. The poem reflects the peasant joys and sorrows, the peasant thirst for freedom and happiness. The reform of 1861 did not improve the situation of the people, and it is not for nothing that the peasants say about it:
You are good, royal letter,
Yes, you are not written about us ...
The plot of the poem is very close to the folk tale about the search for happiness and truth. The heroes of the poem are looking for "Unwhacked province, Ungutted volost, Izbytkov village." As in folk tales about truth and falsehood, "seven men came together" on the "pillar path". And as in fairy tales, the disputants disagree, quarrel, and then, with the help of a wonderful bird that speaks a human language, they reconcile and go to look for a happy one. A description of what the truth-seekers saw during their wanderings in Russia, stories about themselves of people who consider themselves happy, make up the content of the poem. Walkers for happiness see the joyless, powerless, hungry life of the people in the provinces with self-explanatory names: Frightened, Shot, Illiterate. Peasant “happiness,” the poet exclaims bitterly, “leaky with patches, humpbacked with calluses!” There are no happy peasants. Who is busy looking for happiness in the poem “Who in Russia should live well”?
First of all, these are seven men-truth-seekers, whose inquisitive thought made them think about the fundamental question of life: “Who has a fun, free life in Russia?” Peasant types are represented in various ways. These are peasants from different villages. Each went about his business, but then they met, argued. And the villages are named, and the provinces, and the peasants are listed by name, but we understand that events cannot be attributed to any particular year, or to any particular place. Here is the whole of Russia with its eternal sore concerns. In principle, each of the seven already has his own answer to the question:
Who has fun
Feel free in Russia?
Roman said: to the landowner,
Demyan said: to the official,
Luke said: ass.
Fat-bellied merchant! -
Gubin brothers said
Ivan and Mitrodor.
Old man Pahom looked down
And he said, looking at the ground:
noble boyar,
Minister of the State.
And Prov said: to the king...
They did not get the direct answer that the peasants were looking for. The answer came in a different sense. The priest has his own claims to a new life, the landowner and the merchant have their own. Nobody praises the new time, everyone remembers the old.
The great chain is broken
Torn - jumped,
One end on the master,
Others for a man.
Isn't our current situation similar to that reconstructed by Nekrasov? Men are deprived - both in the past and in the present. With bitter irony, Nekrasov describes in the chapter "Happy" how the wanderers prepared a whole bucket of vodka to treat the most successful peasant. But the result was only a bitter list of people's misfortunes. The old woman is happy that a turnip has grown in her garden, a soldier - that he was mercilessly beaten with sticks, but remained alive. The stonemason is happy with his young strength, and the weak one - that he returned alive from hard work. The peasants are disgusted by another "happy" lackey who, after forty years of service, is sick not with some kind of peasant hernia, but with a "noble" lordly disease - gout.
Happiness, according to Nekrasov, is not at all in the primitive sense in which seven peasant walkers understood it, but in resistance, struggle, opposition to grief and untruth, it is not simply divided between peasants and gentlemen. The author's sympathies demonstrate his undoubted spiritual affinity with the democratic, raznochinsk movement. It is not for nothing that he writes with such sympathy about the disturbers of social peace: the former convict Saveliy, who raised "the whole Korezhina" against the landowner Shalashnikov, who buried the cruel steward alive; Yermila Girin, who was imprisoned for protecting the interests of the peasants, the robber Kudeyara. Among the peasants who have risen to the consciousness of their disenfranchised position is Yakim Nagoi, who understood who gets the fruits of peasant labor. The author creates in the poem the image of another seeker of peasant happiness - the "people's defender" Grisha Dobrosklonov. A hungry childhood, the harsh youth of the son of a laborer and a rural deacon brought him closer to the people, accelerated his spiritual maturation and determined his life path:
fifteen years old
Gregory already knew for sure
What will live for happiness
Wretched and dark
native corner.
Grisha Dobrosklonov in many ways resembles Dobrolyubov, in whom Nekrasov saw "the ideal of a public figure." He is a fighter for people's happiness, who wants to be there, "where it is difficult to breathe, where grief is heard." He sees that a people of many millions is awakening to struggle:
The army rises
Innumerable!
The strength will affect her
Invincible!
This thought fills his soul with joy and confidence in victory. To the main question of the poem - who lives well in Russia? - Nekrasov responds with the image of Grisha Dobrosklonov, " people's protector". That's why the poet says:
Would our wanderers be under their native roof,
If only they could know what happened to Grisha.
Difficult, but beautiful is the path that Grisha Dobrosklonov follows. But it is on it that true happiness awaits a person, since, according to Nekrasov, only one who devotes himself to the struggle for the good and happiness of the people can be happy. The name of Nekrasov's poem has long been a catchphrase, which today has received a second life, as society is again faced with the questions posed by the great classics of the 19th century: "Who is to blame?", "What to do?" and “Who is living well in Russia?”
I. Images of peasants and peasant women in lyrics.
2. Heroes of the poem "To whom in Russia it is good to live."
3. Collective image of the Russian people.
Peasant Russia, the bitter fate of the people, as well as the strength and nobility of the Russian people, their age-old habit of work is one of the main themes in the work of N. A. Nekrasov. In the poems “On the Road, Schoolboy”, “Troika”, “Railway”, “Forgotten Village” and many others, images of peasants and peasant women appear before us, created by the author with great sympathy and admiration.
He is struck by the beauty of a young peasant girl, the heroine of the poem "Troika", who runs after a troika flying by. But admiration is replaced by thoughts about her future bitter female fate, which will quickly destroy this beauty. The heroine is waiting for a joyless life, beatings of her husband, eternal reproaches of her mother-in-law and hard daily work that leaves no room for dreams and aspirations. Even more tragic is the fate of Pear from the poem "On the Road". Brought up at the whim of the master as a young lady, she was married off as a peasant and returned "to the village." But torn from her environment and not accustomed to hard peasant labor, having touched culture, she can no longer return to her former life. There is almost no description of her husband, the coachman, in the poem. But the sympathy with which he tells about the fate of the "villainous wife", understanding the tragedy of her situation, tells us a lot about himself, his kindness and nobility. In his failed family life, he blames not so much his wife as the "masters" who ruined her in vain.
The poet depicts the peasants who once came to the front entrance no less expressively. Their description occupies only one-sixth of the work and is given outwardly sparingly: bent backs, a thin Armenian coat, tanned faces and hands, a cross on the neck and blood on the legs, shod in homemade bast shoes. Apparently, their path to the front entrance was not close, where they were never allowed in, without accepting the meager contribution that they could offer. But if all the other visitors who “besiege” the main entrance on weekdays and holidays are portrayed by the poet with a greater or lesser degree of irony, then he writes about the peasants with frank sympathy and respectfully calls them Russian people.
The moral beauty, stamina, courage of the Russian people is sung by Nekrasov in the poem "Frost, Red Nose". The author emphasizes the bright individuality of his heroes: parents who suffered a terrible grief - the death of their son-breadwinner, Proclus himself - a mighty hero-worker with large calloused hands. Many generations of readers admired the image of Daria - the "stately Slav", beautiful in all clothes and dexterous in any work. This is a true hymn of the poet to the Russian peasant woman, who is accustomed to earning prosperity with her work, who knows how to work and relax.
It is the peasants who are the main characters in the poem "To whom in Russia it is good to live." Seven "powerful men from the temporarily liable", as they call themselves, from villages with telling names (Zaplatovo, Dyryavino, Razutovo, Znobishino, Gorelovo, Neyolovo, Neuro-zhayka), are trying to solve a difficult question: "who lives freely and cheerfully in Russia? ". Each of them imagines happiness in his own way and calls different people happy: a landowner, a priest, a tsarist minister and the sovereign himself. They are a generalized image of a peasant - stubborn, patient, sometimes quick-tempered, but also ready to stand up for the truth and his convictions. Wanderers are not the only representatives of the people in the poem. We see many other male and female images there. At the fair, the peasants meet Vavila, "who sells goat's shoes to his granddaughter." Leaving for the fair, he promised everyone gifts, but "drunk himself to a penny." Vavila is ready to patiently endure the reproaches of his family, but is tormented by the fact that he will not be able to bring the promised gift to his granddaughter. This man, for whom only a tavern is a joy in a difficult hopeless life, does not cause condemnation in the author, but rather compassion. Sympathize with the man and those around him. And everyone is ready to help him with bread or work, and only master Pavlusha Veretennikov could help with money. And when he rescued Vavila and bought shoes for him, everyone around was happy as if he gave everyone a ruble. This ability of a Russian person to sincerely rejoice for another adds another important feature to the collective image of a peasant.
The same breadth of the soul of the people is emphasized by the author in the story about Yermila Ilyich, from whom the rich merchant Altynnikov decided to take away the mill. When it was necessary to make a deposit, Yermil turned to the people with a request to help him out. And the hero collected the necessary amount, and exactly a week later he honestly repaid the debt to everyone, and everyone honestly took only as much as they gave, and even an extra ruble remained, which Yermil gave to the blind. It is no coincidence that the peasants unanimously elect him as headman. And he judges everyone honestly, punishes the guilty and does not offend the right and does not take a single extra penny for himself. Only once Yermil, speaking in modern terms, took advantage of his position and tried to save his brother from recruitment by sending another young man instead. But his conscience tormented him, and before the whole world he confessed his untruth and left his post. Grandfather Saveliy is also a bright representative of the staunch, honest, ironic folk character. A hero with a huge mane, similar to a bear. Matryona Timofeevna tells the wanderers about him, whom the wanderers also ask about happiness. The native son calls grandfather Saveliy “branded, convict”, the family does not like him. Matryona, who has suffered many insults in her husband's family, finds consolation in him. He tells her about the times when there was neither a landowner nor a steward over them, they did not know corvee and did not pay dues. Since there were no roads in their places, except for animal paths. Such a free life continued until “through dense forests and marshy swamps” a German master sent them to them. This German tricked the peasants into making a road and began to rule in a new way, ruining the peasants. They endured for the time being, and once, unable to stand it, they pushed the German into a pit and buried him alive. From the hardships of prison and hard labor that fell on him, Savely became rough and hardened, and only the appearance of the baby Demushka in the family brought him back to life. The hero learned to enjoy life again. It is he who has the hardest time coping with the death of this baby. He did not reproach himself for the murder of the German, but for the death of this baby, for whom he overlooked, he reproaches so that he cannot live among people and goes into the forest.
All the characters depicted by Nekrasov from the people create a single collective image of a hardworking peasant, strong, persistent, long-suffering, full of inner nobility and kindness, ready to help those who need it in difficult times. And although this peasant's life in Russia is not sweet, the poet believes in his great future.
Works on Literature: Images of Peasants in the Poem “Who Lives Well in Russia”
In the poem "To whom it is good to live in Russia," N.A. shows the life of the Russian peasantry in post-reform Russia, their plight. The main problem of this work is the search for an answer to the question, "who lives happily, freely in Russia", who is worthy and not worthy of happiness? The author introduces into the poem the image of seven wandering peasants traveling around the country in search of the lucky ones. This is a group portrait, therefore, in the image of the seven "temporarily liable" only general features characteristic of the Russian peasant are given: poverty, curiosity, unpretentiousness. The peasants do not seek happiness among the working people: peasants, soldiers. Their idea of happiness is associated with the images of the clergy, merchants, nobility, and the king. Peasants-truth-seekers have a sense of their own dignity. They are deeply convinced that the working people are better, higher, smarter than the landowner. The author shows the hatred of the peasants for those who live at their expense. Nekrasov also emphasizes the love of the people for work, their desire to help other people. Having learned that Matryona Timofeevna's harvest is dying, the peasants offer her help without hesitation; they also help the peasants of the Illiterate Governorate in mowing.
Traveling in Russia, men meet various people. Revealing the images of the heroes met by the truth-seekers allows the author to characterize not only the position of the peasantry, but also the life of the merchants, the clergy, the nobility ... But the author pays the main attention to the peasants.
The images of Yakim Nagogoy, Yermila Girin, Savely, Matryona Timofeevna combine both common, typical features of the peasantry, such as hatred for all "shareholders" who drain their vitality, and individual features.
Yakim Nagoi, personifying the mass of the poorest peasantry, "works to death", but lives as a pauper, like most peasants in the village of Bosovo. His portrait testifies to constant hard work:
And myself to mother earth
He looks like: a brown neck,
Like a layer cut off with a plow,
brick face...
Yakim understands that the peasantry is a great force; he is proud of his belonging to it. He knows what the strength and weakness of the "peasant soul" are:
Soul that black cloud -
Angry, formidable - and it would be necessary
Thunders rumble from there ...
And everything ends with wine ...
Yakim refutes the opinion that the peasant is poor because he drinks. He reveals the true reason for this situation - the need to work for "shareholders". The fate of Yakim is typical for the peasants of post-reform Russia: he "once lived in St. Petersburg", but, having lost a lawsuit with a merchant, ended up in prison, from where he returned, "tattered like a velcro" and "took up the plow."
Another image of the Russian peasant is Yermila Girin. The author endows him with incorruptible honesty and natural intelligence. The peasants respect him for being
At seven years of a worldly penny
Didn't squeeze under the nail
At the age of seven, he did not touch the right one,
Did not let the guilty
I didn't bend my heart...
Having gone against the "peace", having sacrificed public interests for the sake of personal ones, - having given a neighbor's guy to the soldiers instead of her brother, - Yermila is tormented by remorse and comes to the thought of suicide. However, he does not hang himself, but goes to repent to the people.
The episode with the purchase of the mill is important. Nekrasov shows the solidarity of the peasantry. They trust Yermila, and he takes the side of the peasants during the riot.
The author's idea that Russian peasants are heroes is also important. For this purpose, the image of Savely, the Holy Russian hero, is introduced. Despite the unbearably hard life, the hero has not lost his best qualities. He treats Matryona Timofeevna with sincere love, deeply worries about the death of Demushka. About himself, he says: "Branded, but not a slave!". Savely acts as a folk philosopher. He reflects on whether the people should continue to endure their lack of rights, their oppressed state. Savely comes to the conclusion that it is better to "underbear" than "be patient", and he calls for protest.
Savelia's combination of sincerity, kindness, simplicity, sympathy for the oppressed and hatred for the oppressors makes this image vital and typical.
A special place in the poem, as in all of Nekrasov's work, is occupied by the display of the "women's share". In the poem, the author reveals it on the example of the image of Matrena Timofeevna. This is a strong and persistent woman fighting for her freedom and her female happiness. But, despite all efforts, the heroine says: "It's not a matter of looking for a happy woman between women."
The fate of Matryona Timofeevna is typical for a Russian woman: after marriage, she ended up with a "girlish holyday" in hell; misfortunes rained down on her one after another ... Finally, Matryona Timofeevna, like the peasants, is forced to overwork herself at work in order to feed her family.
In the image of Matrena Timofeevna, there are also features of the heroic character of the Russian peasantry.
In the poem "To whom it is good to live in Russia," the author showed how serfdom morally cripples people. He leads us in front of a string of courtyard people, servants, serfs, who, for many years of groveling before the master, have completely lost their own "I" and human dignity. This is Jacob the faithful, taking revenge on the master by killing himself in front of his eyes, and Ipat, the serf of the Utyatin princes, and Klim-Some peasants even become oppressors, receiving little power from the landowner. The peasants hate these slave-serfs even more than they do the landowners, they despise them.
Thus, Nekrasov showed the stratification among the peasantry associated with the reform of 1861.
The poem also notes such a feature of the Russian peasantry as religiosity. It's a way to get away from reality. God is the supreme judge, from whom the peasants seek protection and justice. Faith in God is the hope for a better life.
So, N. A. Nekrasov in the poem "Who Lives Well in Russia" recreated the life of the peasantry in post-reform Russia, revealed the typical character traits of Russian peasants, showing that this is a force to be reckoned with, which gradually begins to realize its rights.
Nekrasov conceived "Who should live well in Russia" shortly after the reform of 1861, as a result of which millions of peasants were actually robbed. The government managed to suppress popular revolts, but the peasant masses did not calm down for a long time. In this difficult time, without losing hope for a better future, the poet engaged in a comprehensive artistic study of folk life.
In the center of the poem is a collective image of the Russian peasant. The poem reflects the peasant joys and sorrows, the peasant thirst for freedom and happiness. The reform of 1861 did not improve the situation of the people, and it is not for nothing that the peasants say about it:
You are good, royal letter,
Yes, you are not written about us ...
The plot of the poem is very close to the folk tale about the search for happiness and truth. The heroes of the poem are looking for "Unwhacked province, Ungutted volost, Izbytkov village." As in folk tales about truth and falsehood, "seven men came together" on the "pillar path". And as in fairy tales, the disputants disagree, quarrel, and then, with the help of a wonderful bird that speaks a human language, they reconcile and go to look for a happy one. A description of what the truth-seekers saw during their wanderings in Russia, stories about themselves of people who consider themselves happy, make up the content of the poem. Walkers for happiness see the joyless, powerless, hungry life of the people in the provinces with self-explanatory names: Frightened, Shot, Illiterate. Peasant “happiness,” the poet exclaims bitterly, “leaky with patches, humpbacked with calluses!” There are no happy peasants. Who is busy looking for happiness in the poem “Who in Russia should live well”?
First of all, these are seven men-truth-seekers, whose inquisitive thought made them think about the fundamental question of life: “Who has a fun, free life in Russia?” Peasant types are represented in various ways. These are peasants from different villages. Each went about his business, but then they met, argued. And the villages are named, and the provinces, and the peasants are listed by name, but we understand that events cannot be attributed to any particular year, or to any particular place. Here is the whole of Russia with its eternal sore concerns. In principle, each of the seven already has his own answer to the question:
Who has fun
Feel free in Russia?
Roman said: to the landowner,
Demyan said: to the official,
Luke said: ass.
Fat-bellied merchant! -
Gubin brothers said
Ivan and Mitrodor.
Old man Pahom looked down
And he said, looking at the ground:
noble boyar,
Minister of the State.
And Prov said: to the king ...
They did not get the direct answer that the peasants were looking for. The answer came in a different sense. The priest has his own claims to a new life, the landowner and the merchant have their own. Nobody praises the new time, everyone remembers the old.
The great chain is broken
Torn - jumped,
One end on the master,
Others for a man.
Isn't our current situation similar to that reconstructed by Nekrasov? Men are deprived - both in the past and in the present. With bitter irony, Nekrasov describes in the chapter "Happy" how the wanderers prepared a whole bucket of vodka to treat the most successful peasant. But the result was only a bitter list of people's misfortunes. The old woman is happy that a turnip has grown in her garden, a soldier - that he was mercilessly beaten with sticks, but remained alive. The stonemason is happy with his young strength, and the weak one - that he returned alive from hard work. The peasants are disgusted by another "happy" lackey who, after forty years of service, is sick not with some kind of peasant hernia, but with a "noble" lordly disease - gout.
Happiness, according to Nekrasov, is not at all in the primitive sense in which seven peasant walkers understood it, but in resistance, struggle, opposition to grief and untruth, it is not simply divided between peasants and gentlemen. The author's sympathies demonstrate his undoubted spiritual affinity with the democratic, raznochinsk movement. It is not for nothing that he writes with such sympathy about the disturbers of social peace: the former convict Saveliy, who raised "the whole Korezhina" against the landowner Shalashnikov, who buried the cruel steward alive; Yermila Girin, who was imprisoned for protecting the interests of the peasants, the robber Kudeyara. Among the peasants who have risen to the consciousness of their disenfranchised position is Yakim Nagoi, who understood who gets the fruits of peasant labor. The author creates in the poem the image of another seeker of peasant happiness - the "people's defender" Grisha Dobrosklonov. A hungry childhood, the harsh youth of the son of a laborer and a rural deacon brought him closer to the people, accelerated his spiritual maturation and determined his life path:
... about fifteen
Gregory already knew for sure
What will live for happiness
Wretched and dark
native corner.
Grisha Dobrosklonov in many ways resembles Dobrolyubov, in whom Nekrasov saw "the ideal of a public figure." He is a fighter for people's happiness, who wants to be there, "where it is difficult to breathe, where grief is heard." He sees that a people of many millions is awakening to struggle:
The army rises
Innumerable!
The strength will affect her
Invincible!
This thought fills his soul with joy and confidence in victory. To the main question of the poem - who lives well in Russia? - Nekrasov responds with the image of Grisha Dobrosklonov, " people's protector". That's why the poet says:
Would our wanderers be under their native roof,
If only they could know what happened to Grisha.
Difficult, but beautiful is the path that Grisha Dobrosklonov follows. But it is on it that true happiness awaits a person, since, according to Nekrasov, only one who devotes himself to the struggle for the good and happiness of the people can be happy. The name of Nekrasov's poem has long been a catchphrase, which today has received a second life, as society is again faced with the questions posed by the great classics of the 19th century: "Who is to blame?", "What to do?" and “Who is living well in Russia?”
I. Images of peasants and peasant women in lyrics.
2. Heroes of the poem "To whom in Russia it is good to live."
3. Collective image of the Russian people.
Peasant Russia, the bitter fate of the people, as well as the strength and nobility of the Russian people, their age-old habit of work is one of the main themes in the work of N. A. Nekrasov. In the poems “On the Road, Schoolboy”, “Troika”, “Railway”, “Forgotten Village” and many others, images of peasants and peasant women appear before us, created by the author with great sympathy and admiration.
He is struck by the beauty of a young peasant girl, the heroine of the poem "Troika", who runs after a troika flying by. But admiration is replaced by thoughts about her future bitter female fate, which will quickly destroy this beauty. The heroine is waiting for a joyless life, beatings of her husband, eternal reproaches of her mother-in-law and hard daily work that leaves no room for dreams and aspirations. Even more tragic is the fate of Pear from the poem "On the Road". Brought up at the whim of the master as a young lady, she was married off as a peasant and returned "to the village." But torn from her environment and not accustomed to hard peasant labor, having touched culture, she can no longer return to her former life. There is almost no description of her husband, a coachman, in the poem. But the sympathy with which he tells about the fate of the "villainous wife", understanding the tragedy of her situation, tells us a lot about himself, his kindness and nobility. In his failed family life, he blames not so much his wife as the "masters" who ruined her in vain.
The poet depicts the peasants who once came to the front entrance no less expressively. Their description occupies only one-sixth of the work and is given outwardly sparingly: bent backs, a thin Armenian coat, tanned faces and hands, a cross on the neck and blood on the legs, shod in homemade bast shoes. Apparently, their path to the front entrance was not close, where they were never allowed in, without accepting the meager contribution that they could offer. But if all the other visitors who “besiege” the main entrance on weekdays and holidays are portrayed by the poet with a greater or lesser degree of irony, then he writes about the peasants with frank sympathy and respectfully calls them Russian people.
The moral beauty, stamina, courage of the Russian people is sung by Nekrasov in the poem "Frost, Red Nose". The author emphasizes the bright individuality of his characters: parents who suffered a terrible grief - the death of the breadwinner son, Proclus himself - a mighty hero-worker with large calloused hands. Many generations of readers admired the image of Daria - the "stately Slav", beautiful in all clothes and dexterous in any work. This is a true hymn of the poet to the Russian peasant woman, who is accustomed to earning prosperity with her work, who knows how to work and relax.
It is the peasants who are the main characters in the poem "To whom in Russia it is good to live." Seven "powerful men from the temporarily liable", as they call themselves, from villages with telling names (Zaplatovo, Dyryavino, Razutovo, Znobishino, Gorelovo, Neyolovo, Neuro-zhayka), are trying to solve a difficult question: "who lives freely and cheerfully in Russia? ". Each of them imagines happiness in his own way and calls different people happy: a landowner, a priest, a tsarist minister and the sovereign himself. They are a generalized image of a peasant - stubborn, patient, sometimes quick-tempered, but also ready to stand up for the truth and his convictions. Wanderers are not the only representatives of the people in the poem. We see many other male and female images there. At the fair, the peasants meet Vavila, "who sells goat's shoes to his granddaughter." Leaving for the fair, he promised everyone gifts, but "drunk himself to a penny." Vavila is ready to patiently endure the reproaches of his family, but is tormented by the fact that he will not be able to bring the promised gift to his granddaughter. This man, for whom only a tavern is a joy in a difficult hopeless life, causes the author not condemnation, but rather compassion. Sympathize with the man and those around him. And everyone is ready to help him with bread or work, and only master Pavlusha Veretennikov could help with money. And when he rescued Vavila and bought shoes for him, everyone around was happy as if he gave everyone a ruble. This ability of a Russian person to sincerely rejoice for another adds another important feature to the collective image of a peasant.
The same breadth of the soul of the people is emphasized by the author in the story about Yermila Ilyich, from whom the rich merchant Altynnikov decided to take away the mill. When it was necessary to make a deposit, Yermil turned to the people with a request to help him out. And the hero collected the necessary amount, and exactly a week later he honestly repaid the debt to everyone, and everyone honestly took only as much as they gave, and even an extra ruble remained, which Yermil gave to the blind. It is no coincidence that the peasants unanimously elect him as headman. And he judges everyone honestly, punishes the guilty and does not offend the right and does not take a single extra penny for himself. Only once Yermil, speaking in modern terms, took advantage of his position and tried to save his brother from recruitment by sending another young man instead. But his conscience tormented him, and before the whole world he confessed his untruth and left his post. Grandfather Saveliy is also a bright representative of the staunch, honest, ironic folk character. A hero with a huge mane, similar to a bear. Matryona Timofeevna tells the wanderers about him, whom the wanderers also ask about happiness. The native son calls grandfather Saveliy “branded, convict”, the family does not like him. Matryona, who has suffered many insults in her husband's family, finds consolation in him. He tells her about the times when there was neither a landowner nor a steward over them, they did not know corvee and did not pay dues. Since there were no roads in their places, except for animal paths. Such a free life continued until “through dense forests and marshy swamps” a German master sent them to them. This German tricked the peasants into making a road and began to rule in a new way, ruining the peasants. They endured for the time being, and once, unable to stand it, they pushed the German into a pit and buried him alive. From the hardships of prison and hard labor that fell on him, Savely became rough and hardened, and only the appearance of the baby Demushka in the family brought him back to life. The hero learned to enjoy life again. It is he who has the hardest time coping with the death of this baby. He did not reproach himself for the murder of the German, but for the death of this baby, for whom he overlooked, he reproaches so that he cannot live among people and goes into the forest.
All the characters depicted by Nekrasov from the people create a single collective image of a hardworking peasant, strong, persistent, long-suffering, full of inner nobility and kindness, ready to help those who need it in difficult times. And although this peasant's life in Russia is not sweet, the poet believes in his great future.
