Timofei Mikhailovich Bondarev

“ Your eloquent subterfuges are empty nonsense compared with our simple language. All your precious labors for which you pay so generously, are as nothing compared to ours. Neither can you compare with us in merit. The treasures which fill your houses have no value compared to the bread for which we labor. All your great intelligence is weak before our simple faith. Your millions have no more value than our poor possessions. ”

“ The sluggards say to me: If you had found out how to be rich and happy without labor, all the world would have thanked you for it. But when you invite us to a painful, wearisome, and humiliating task, who will give your words any consideration? You would persuade the government that the primitive law is founded on labor for bread. But many well-educated people see the law only as through an obscure mist. Must we then deceive ourselves for bread? What is the use of writing on a subject that is not worth the trouble? ”

“ Is it that there are sluggards and drunkards in our family? No, my grandfather has said, never! Have my goods been destroyed by fire or flood? No, nothing like that has happened.
135. Then what has become of my labor? What brigand has stolen my fortune? Whence come your treasures, O rich man? Answer me faithfully.
136. Oh, if the wrong they do us were only temporary! But it is eternal. As the generations pass, those of to-day must still suffer misery. They will never have defender nor protector. But that is only because you have buried alive our father, that is to say, the commandment. ”

“ But you excite envy in the laborers; and in displaying the idleness of your life, you weaken the hands that are devoted to labor. Instead of helping them, the sight of your idleness discourages their work, and even tempts them to commit crimes.
What a pity there is not such a man in authority over you! For we hear the cry, "God is in heaven, and the Czar afar off."
40. We may see, by what has been said and by what follows, that the man who eats the bread he has earned by his own labor is happy in this world and blessed in the world to come. ”

“ And then the superior class will see our merit, which it had never before remarked or heard of. It will feel culpable towards God and man; it will no longer depend on or oppress us as it does now. We are bought at half price, and sold for double the amount. When a rich man finds himself in a poor country, far from the cities and commercial centres, he meets no one with whom he can buy or sell. At each mouthful of bread men will ask, in spite of themselves: Whose hands have prepared this food? And as for their conscience! Wealth cannot silence it. ”

“ We thus see that labor embraces all virtues, while idleness and luxury, on the contrary, produce all vices. If, then, a malefactor is found among laborers, it is because he does not observe this law.
We must not deny that other works have merit, but they are only to be considered after one has earned his nourishment with his own hands.
You have permitted the executioner to flog men, but what men? Evidently us only. He touches not the rich man, who has for his defence friends, eloquence, cunning, and, above all, money. We have no such advantages. ”

“ Why do you teach others, when you cannot teach your own selves? As is said in the same sense, "You place upon the shoulders of men heavy burdens, that you would not so much as touch with your little finger." We must set the example of virtue, and encourage people to cultivate it, lest the scythe in cutting the grass shall become broken against a stone.
47. O ye who belong to the upper classes of society, reflect on this: If all the laborers in the world should abandon labor for bread as you do, then every one would die of hunger. ”

“ If we address the chief men of the State, they say also, we are not to blame. In a word, the universe has become, as it were, a perfect circle, where no one is on the circumference, and all the world are in the centre. Ask this one or that, and he answers invariably, It is not I!
If the question were of boasting, of raising oneself to the clouds, or of riding on the backs of poor people, you will all cry, It is I! It is I! But if we speak of holding out the hand to the millions who are perishing in misery, It is not I. you say at once. ”

“ I will live like a pomestchik, with my hands in my pockets; I will command, and no longer obey. For it is not by honest labor that you acquire your fine houses. "Honest labor will not make you rich, but hunchbacked; if you do not sell your soul to the devil, you will not make money." [4]
And you will condemn such a man and exile him to Siberia, when you are yourselves the sole cause of his crimes.
37. You see now, reader, how much evil there is in this wrong, this neglect of labor for bread. ”

“ Do you find yourself entirely just before God, and needing no commandment? But were you more holy than the Holy of Holies, you do not the less eat bread labored for by another.
In truth, you cannot escape alive out of the hands of an adversary like me.
Here is another excuse that you give. If all the world were occupied in agriculture, the factories and work-shops must stop, and the universe would perish.—Nothing could be more false. The universe need not perish for that. There are eighty festivals in the year, on which we are free from all labor, and men will spend eighty more in idleness. ”

“ Here is what I have had a glimpse of all my life, and what I see clearly to-day, after having for a long time studied the meaning of this commandment: all the world over the peasants go into the fields and labor for bread, assisted by their little children. The newly born, who have not yet tasted bread, suffer for want of it. To see these people, would they not seem like bees flying over the fields and gathering honey by the way?
And in beholding men of the upper classes, I have compared them to drones, who are content to buzz without working, and to live by the labor of others. ”

“ Do you refuse to labor for bread because, if all the world should be so occupied, there would not be enough land? With more reasonableness, if you decided to labor, you would cultivate alone the whole earth! ”

“ We do not rest, you say, we work unceasingly. We do not eat food without paying for it with the money we have earned by our work, and we give the price that the laborer demands. We eat our bread in the sweat of our face.
And if we all work, where will the poor get their money? We give it them, and they give us bread. We live by them, and they by us. We cannot govern and direct others, and at the same time labor with our hands. ”

“ Labor for bread is a sacred duty for each of us, and we should not make excuses to avoid it. The more a man is educated, the more he owes the example of labor, neither pretending to discover obstacles to it, nor abandoning it altogether. ”

“ If God governs the world with justice, why is there this inequality among men? Why is vice happy, and virtue miserable?
But is it the fault of the mirror if our face is ugly? In other words, is it God's fault if we reject the law that would establish equality among men? ”

“ If a man speaks of a crime before a numerous society, he does not designate any one as its author, for he cannot look into the consciences of those present; he speaks of the crime from a legal point of view, and touches no one's sensitiveness. But if he speaks of the primitive law, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou knead bread," he cannot conceal the name of the criminal, because he bears the mark of Cain.
To disobey this commandment is the greatest of crimes; and if it is committed by an inferior man it may not be noticed ”

“ We sin, we disobey the divine precepts, and we incur all the maledictions pronounced in Deuteronomy. It is not so, according to you. Jesus Christ, you would say, takes on himself our sins, our impieties, and our maledictions. What a fine invention! and how exact your calculation is! No; each one must redeem himself by obeying the primitive command, "Eat the bread of thy labor." There is no greater virtue; and to fail in it is the most dangerous of crimes. ”

“ Our great-grandfathers, say you, our grandfathers, our fathers, our ancestors in a word, have labored, and we also, as you see, labor till old age. All that they gained by their labor they left to their children, and these have transmitted it to theirs.
Then why am not I rich? why can I not even practice the least economy? ”

“ Why are we poor and clownish? It is because we eat the bread of our own labor. Have we time to study and to be instructed? You have taken both our bread and our intelligence from us by fraud or violence ”

“ Often among you are found men who, when fortune deserts them and they lose all their wealth, being forced by circumstances to labor for their own bread, fall into despair, and become thieves and drunkards, and undertake all sorts of criminal enterprises. And usually they die a violent death, to escape labor for bread. But revive this commandment, whose life does not appear among you till you die, and the millionaire, finding himself in the same condition with us, will no longer seek to avoid this labor, but will turn to it eagerly. ”

“ From all the preceding arguments, we may conclude that there is nothing in the world more evil and infamous than to eat the bread of another's labor. On the other hand, there is nothing more healthful and sacred than to eat the bread of one's own labor. ”

“ A woman who has destroyed her child does penance all her life. From her soul she implores pardon of God, and to her dying hour she will fast and pray in penitence for her sin. Thus she may hope to obtain forgiveness from God for her crime.
But thou, reader, dost thou repent all thy life for having eaten the bread that another has earned? Dost thou ask pardon of God and man? ”

“ If it is true, God, in imposing on him the penance of labor, deceived Adam by a false promise. For if this labor was of no utility to Adam, if, after enduring all its fatigues during his life, he was condemned after death to the torments of hell, every one would exclaim, "Is this the recompense God gives us for our labor?" If that be true, what can we do? How shall we act? How must we live ? ”

“ We accomplish ten times more work than the laborer. Can we, then, be regarded as sluggards?
On festivals the laborer works, while the rich man rests on his couch, serving neither himself, his neighbor, nor God. They say then, the idle man does his duty, while the laborer commits a crime, in breaking the fourth commandment.
Is not that the position we occupy?
During 330 days in the year do what you will; occupy yourself as it shall please you; but during 35 days, at different times in the year, every man should labor for bread. ”

“ The principal scourge of our class, that which throws us in spite of ourselves into misery, dejection, and all similar unhappiness, is the division of goods among brothers. It is impossible to speak of this evil in few words. The cause is always the same: they have hidden from the world the law of labor. If this law was made known, a hundred men could live together. He who should command need not be haughty, and he who should obey need not be quick to take offence. ”

“ It is inadmissible to labor for bread by the hand of another, and it can only be done in certain permitted cases. Tell me why you disdain one commandment more than the other. What if your wives should say to you: "We have fulfilled our commandment; we bring forth children in sorrow, and in death: and you, why do you not keep the commandment which concerns you? Give your children bread earned by your own labor." ”

“ The first commandment, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou knead bread," would unite all religions. When men shall have comprehended all its import, and shall have it graven upon their hearts, then, in one century, perhaps even in less time, all the world, from east to west, from north to south, will be united in one faith, one church, and one love. (See article 35.)
168. Many people have asked me: Why do you regard those who avoid labor, not only without good will, but even with hatred? Whatever you feel in your heart, you should at least speak with gentleness and kindness. ”

“ Then we will enrich you, and heap up gold for you, because, hoping henceforth for safety, not only labor for bread, but all other kinds of labor, will seem to us easy.
140. The most weak-minded men, and even children, would comprehend, in hearing this law proclaimed, that it is the first that God gave to the first man, and that it is more important than all other virtues or commandments put together. They will at once say to themselves: "I must labor more than ever; but I will pass my life willingly in the fields, to merit happiness in the next world." ”

“ If we too must labor for bread, then the universe must of necessity perish. I have plenty of money, and I use it in great enterprises without labor, and yet you want me to go into the fields and torture myself for thirty kopecks a day! ”

“ It is because I must oppose a solid barrier to the subterfuges behind which you entrench yourselves; and for that, I must reply fully to your many arguments.
Can it be because there is neither a past nor a future for God, but all is to him as the present, that he has not comprehended that if man must always eat, he must also always labor? If he inflicted on you a penance for your sins, and said, Take a stone of a hundred pounds weight and carry it, you would reply: I cannot do it, Lord, for you have not given me strength sufficient. ”

“ But suppose that, next year, the harvest shall be bad, and we have a famine: the laborer will buy his wheat from the same rich man for a rouble and fifty kopecks the measure; and if he have not enough money to pay for it, he will sell his beasts at half price. And while he has not supplied his wants, he has sold his wheat, is deprived of his cattle, and will become a beggar. Thus many are ruined by selling their wheat. Then how can you say that the peasants cannot live without selling their wheat, when by doing so they die of hunger? ”