How did the idea of buying dead souls come about. Why does Chichikov need "dead souls"? What are revision tales
All of us at school studied the famous poem by N.V. Gogol "Dead Souls". If you remember, then among the heroes of the poem “the enterprise, or, to put it even more, so to speak, negotiation” caused complete bewilderment, turning into panic.
What exactly did Chichikov want to pull off? The characters in the novel make different assumptions. But in fact it was a circumvention of the law in order to enrich himself.
Who did Chichikov buy and why?
Chichikov explained Manilov as follows:
"I suppose to acquire the dead, which, however, would be listed as alive according to the revision."
Neither for Manilov, nor for the modern reader, this explanation gives anything.
Let's go in order and start with the revision.
An audit is a census of peasants subject to taxation. Since 1724, the household tax was replaced by Peter I with a poll tax. Prior to this reform, the tax was levied on one yard - a separate peasant economy, regardless of the size of the family. Now he was paid from each "soul of the male sex."
To determine the number of these souls, at the end of 1718, a per capita census began to be carried out. Registers of peasants (fairy tales) were sent, but soon numerous cases of hiding people from the census were revealed: the people felt that it was not being carried out for good.
From 1722 to 1724, the results of the census were checked, which was entrusted to special military auditors. As a result, the number of revision souls increased from 3.8 million to 5.5 million.
And here we come to the most interesting and significant circumstance for our investigation: the revision soul could be deleted from the revision fairy tale only at the next revision. In the period between revisions, it was taxed regardless of what happened to the person himself.
Chichikov just wanted to acquire revision souls, which were listed in fairy tales, but in reality were no longer alive. And then comes the next question...
Why did Chichikov need dead souls?
Everything is quite simple here - he wanted to pledge the revision souls he acquired to the Board of Trustees. It was a charitable institution for orphans and foundlings. But besides this, it disposed of huge monetary resources.
Since 1772, under the Board of Trustees in Moscow and St. Petersburg, loan and safe treasuries began to be officially created, which issued loans secured by estates, houses, jewelry and accepted deposits.
It was Chichikov who wanted to receive a loan and thus enrich himself. The size of the loan issued directly depended on the number of peasants - revision souls - in the estate. That's why he bought them. And the landowners had their own benefit - a reduction in the tax burden.
But the peasants alone were not enough to get the money.
And here the Kherson province
Chichikov bought peasants without land and wanted to resettle them elsewhere. But, strictly speaking, he did not have his own estate. And its presence was necessary for the implementation of the plan. The number of peasants only determined the size of the loan, while the estate was transferred as a pledge.
But Chichikov foresaw this too - he was going to resettle the purchased peasants in the Kherson province, and such a choice was not accidental. This territory, which was called Novorossia, became part of Russia in the middle of the 18th century after the wars with Turkey and was a practically uninhabited steppe.
Since 1764, the distribution of land to private owners began according to the "Plan for the distribution of state lands in the Novorossiysk province for their settlement." By the time the poem began, in Novorossia, including the Kherson province, there were still very large volumes of uninhabited state lands.
It was there that Chichikov acquired the land.
Whether he succeeded in bringing his scam to an end, one can only guess. The fate of the second volume of Dead Souls is well known to everyone.
Explain to the stupid: Why did Chichikov buy up dead souls ??? and got the best answer
Answer from Irene[guru]
Chichikov was engaged in buying up "dead souls", listed as alive according to the census, in order to fraudulently pledge them to the Board of Trustees and receive a large amount.
In "Dead Souls" there is a constant reference to an institution called the "Council of Trustees." It is the secretary of the board of trustees who prompts Chichikov the idea of dead souls. It is in the board of trustees that Chichikov is going to pawn the souls he has bought.
In Russia there were two boards of trustees - in Moscow and St. Petersburg. They were in charge of guardianship of underage orphans and "illegitimate children" who were in Moscow and St. Petersburg orphanages, supported the disabled and the elderly.
Although both educational homes were called imperial, the treasury did not release money to them. They existed at the expense of private charity, deductions from lotteries and theatrical performances, the sale of playing cards, etc. But the main source of income for orphanages was loan and mortgage transactions.
The councils of trustees that managed educational homes had the right to take movable and immovable property, houses and valuables, lands with peasants and serfs separately as collateral.
On the right of the nobles to mortgage their own peasants, that is, to receive a loan secured by serf souls, the whole Chichikov scam with the purchase of dead souls is built.
If valuables (movable property) were pledged in kind, then, of course, lands and peasants were pledged according to officially issued documents confirmed by local authorities, indicating that the pledged really exists.
From time to time, the state undertook audits - censuses of the country's serf population, primarily in order to establish the number of males suitable for recruits. Therefore, not every serf peasant, but only a male peasant, was called a "revision soul".
From 1719 to 1850, ten revisions were made. Information about serfs was recorded in special sheets - revision tales. Until the new revision, the revision souls were legally considered to exist; it was unthinkable to organize a daily record of the serf population. Thus, the dead or fugitive peasants were officially considered available, for them the landowners were obliged to pay a tax - a poll tax.
Chichikov took advantage of this circumstance, buying up dead souls from the landlords as if they were alive, with the aim of pawning them in the board of trustees and getting a tidy sum of money. The deal was also beneficial for the landowner-soul owner - having received from Chichikov at least a small amount for a non-existent peasant, he got rid of the need to pay a soul tax for him to the treasury.<...>
The villainy of Chichikov also consisted in the fact that he intended to lay fictitious peasants not anywhere, but in the Board of Trustees. After all, it was for the maintenance of orphans that the money received from mortgage operations went. In this way, Chichikov hoped to cash in on the grief and tears of destitute children, already half-starved and poorly dressed. This was clear to every contemporary of Gogol. It is important for us to know this in order to understand the immorality of Chichikov's scam.
Source: From the article by Yu. A. Fedosyuk "What is the essence of Chichikov's scam?"
Answer from Sergey None[active]
The amount of land for development in the South of Russia was then distributed by the government to the landlords not by the beauty of their appearance, but by the number of living serfs of such a landowner, so that the land could be cultivated and it would not stand idle. Chichikov, on the other hand, bought up the lists of the dead, counting on the fact that these lists had not yet reached the provincial population registration authorities due to the inertia of the authorities. This means that they will be considered alive, and the more he has, the more land he will receive from the government ... The ultimate task is then to testify that the serfs all died, for example, from some kind of pestilence or epidemic, and sell the land, while It's clear to make a profit...
Answer from Hans[guru]
For profit from resale to government agencies for the employment of labor force.
Answer from Anna Eremenko[guru]
it used to be that whoever has more servants is rich, and it doesn’t matter whether they are dead or alive! ... everything is according to the documents!
Answer from Andrey Andrey[guru]
I wanted to make money on the left papers.
Answer from Rikki64[guru]
for example, as it used to be at the plant, they wrote that, for example, 300 people worked, but in fact 250 people worked, the state allocated money for salaries for three hundred people, the extra money was shared by the management. so Chichikov had some kind of fat and dead souls
Among the heroes of the poem, Chichikov's "enterprise, or, to put it even more, so to speak, negotiation" caused complete bewilderment, turning into panic: both as an illegal, dangerous and incomprehensible action, and as a previously unseen formula, capable of denoting what arbitrarily and unconditionally fraught with some kind of threat. What they just did not begin to suspect: from the kidnapping of the governor's daughter to the recently happened in the province and neatly hushed up murders. What did Chichikov intend to do, and how is it presented in the novel?
Whom does Chichikov buy?
Chichikov at Manilov's. Engraving of Eustathius of Bernard based on a drawing by Alexander Agin. 1846 Ivanovo Regional Scientific Library“I suppose to acquire the dead, which, however, would be listed as alive according to the revision,” Chichikov explains to Manilov. This explanation is not very satisfactory either for Chichikov's interlocutor or for the modern reader. What is a revision? Revision is a census of peasants subject to taxation. In 1724, he carried out a reform, replacing the household tax with a poll tax. Behind this historical event is a story in the spirit of Chichikov - about repeated attempts to deceive the law within the framework of legality.
The essence of the household tax, which existed in Russia since 1678, was that the unit of taxation was the yard - a separate, fenced peasant farm, regardless of the number of people living there, and the number of outbuildings and residential buildings. Against the background of continuously increasing during the Northern War The Northern War for the possession of the Baltic lands between Sweden and a coalition of northern European states lasted from 1700 to 1721 and ended with the defeat of Sweden. taxes, many peasants abandoned their farms and fled to the Don, the Urals, Siberia. It turned out, however, that the reduction in the number of households was accompanied by an increase in their population, that is, several families were presented during the census as one "yard" and were taxed accordingly. This could be achieved in various ways: to unite several farms with one fence, to bribe a census taker, not to separate one's farm from the parent's.
The household census conducted in 1710 recorded a decrease in the number of households by 20% compared to the results of the previous census in 1678. The purpose of the Peter's reform was to introduce a more reliable unit of taxation - the "male soul" regardless of age. At the end of 1718, Peter I issued a decree on conducting a per capita census, just in case, immediately accompanying it with terrible threats: the confiscation of peasants hidden from the census, the death penalty for the elders responsible for hiding, and so on. Responsibility for submitting registers of peasants (tales) was assigned to their owners, elders, clerks and elected peasants. Threats did not help much, and although during the year 1719 fairy tales were sent, numerous cases of hiding people from the census were soon discovered (it was clear to everyone that they were considered not good).
At the end of 1720, decrees were issued on the beginning of an investigation into cases of concealment, on the confiscation of the estates of landlords who did not submit revision tales at all, and on the arrest of elders and clerks guilty of concealment. From 1722 until 1724, the results of the census were checked to clarify the “capitation number”. This difficult task was entrusted to special military auditors, selected by the Senate and personally by Peter. All this made it possible to increase the number of revision souls from 3.8 million (according to the 1721 census) to 5.5 million. This is how the first revision of the taxable population took place. The audit soul could be deleted from the audit fairy tale only at the next revision, and before that it was taxed, regardless of what actually happened to the person himself.
What is the benefit of the dead?
All of the above is a source of inconvenience for the owners of "dead souls" and a formal basis for their acquisition by Chichikov. What use should they be? Chichikov's idea was to pledge the revision souls he had bought to the Board of Trustees. How was he going to do it?
The history of granting loans to the nobles by the state at the time of the novel is not yet so long Wed the mention of this practice in Pushkin's story "The Young Lady-Peasant Woman" (1831): Grigory Ivanovich Muromsky "was considered a man not stupid, because the first of the landowners of his province guessed to mortgage the estate to the Board of Trustees: a turn that seemed at that time extremely complex and bold.". It begins in 1754, when, by decree of Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, St. Petersburg and Moscow noble banks were created, which were supposed to, in order to support the nobility, which was ruining and mortgaged their estates, issue loans to the court at a low interest rate. What's with the Board of Trustees? In fact, the Board of Trustees was created in 1763 to manage the Orphanage in Moscow (and later in St. Petersburg), a charitable institution for orphans and foundlings. A significant part of the original budget of the Orphanage was donations. There were many donors, and the most generous of them were members of the Board of Trustees, which, as a result, disposed of huge resources. Its history as an organization that gives loans began with the fact that in 1771 Prince Pyotr Ivanovich Repnin asked the Council for a loan of 50,000 rubles on the security of his estate. This request was granted, followed by similar ones, and soon this practice was legalized by the manifesto of 1772: under the Board of Trustees in Moscow and St. Petersburg, loan and safe treasuries were organized. They issued loans secured by estates, houses, jewelry, and also accepted deposits. Over time, this became the main source of income for Orphanages and an excellent addition to the noble banks: the funds of the latter were not infinite, and the need for loans was very great.
Why does Chichikov resettle dead souls in the Kherson province?
Map of Kherson province. 1821 kraeved.od.uaChichikov buys peasants without land, "for withdrawal", with the intention of resettling them in other places. Strictly speaking, there is nowhere to relocate them, Chichikov does not have his own estate, but it is very necessary, because it is the estate that is being mortgaged (the number of revision souls determines only the size of the loan). However, this is also provided for in Chichikov's plan: he intends to resettle the peasants in the Kherson province. This territory, called Novorossia, became part of Russia in the middle of the 18th century after the wars with Turkey and was a practically uninhabited steppe. Therefore, the government in every way encouraged those who were ready to occupy them and ennoble them. The distribution of land to private owners began to be carried out in Novorossia in 1764 in accordance with the "Plan for the distribution of state lands in the Novorossiysk province for their settlement." The peak was in the 1770s-90s, but colonization was given with such difficulty that, despite the huge volumes of land distributed at the end of the 18th century, the active resettlement of state peasants and the encouragement of the influx of foreign colonists, according to 1837, in Kherson province had more than 180 thousand acres of free state lands, and more than 270 thousand in Taurida The project of obtaining land in Novorossia was hardly as simple as it seems to Chichikov in his fantasies. In a study by Vladimir Maksimovich Kabuzan, dedicated to the settlement of Novorossia, it is argued that the distribution of land to landowners in this region at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries ceases, and from the second half of the 1820s, the active period of settlement of this territory also ceases. ..
Here we are faced with chronological links that often contradict each other, creating that disturbing, very characteristic effect, when a seemingly very concrete reality described in detail begins to blur before the reader’s eyes, breaks up into pieces that cannot be put together in any way. stable sequential picture. These are not the only chronological clues that contradict each other. For example, in plain text, the narrator characterizes the time of action as the time “shortly after the glorious expulsion of the French” (and this does not contradict the discussion of the hypothesis that Chichikov is Napoleon in disguise), that is, we should be talking about the 1810s, at least until death (1821). But in the poem a gendarmerie officer is mentioned several times, and a special corps of gendarmes was formed in 1827. At the conclusion of transactions, it is mentioned that “the fortresses were written down, marked, entered in the book and where it should be, with the adoption of half a percent and for a print in Vedomosti”, and the Gubernskiye Vedomosti were published in Ros -since 1838. The mention of the recently former mass epidemic clearly refers to the cholera epidemic of 1831 (the previous epidemic was in 1823 in Transcaucasia and Astrakhan, and the next one will be in 1846).
Did such scams actually exist?
Moscow censors, according to Gogol's letter to Pletnev dated January 7, 1842, feared that "others would go to take an example and buy dead souls." Nothing is known about whether anyone dared to repeat Chichikov's phantasmagoric scam, but it is known that Gogol's text became the impetus for finding a prototype plot for Chichikov's scam. Stories about scams with revisionist souls, potentially familiar to Gogol (or Pushkin as a possible donor of the plot), began to be perceived as direct sources for the plot of Dead Souls. A good example of this is Gilyarovsky's story about his uncle, the landowner Pivinsky:
“Suddenly… officials began to travel around and collect information about everyone who has distilleries. There was a conversation about the fact that anyone who does not have fifty souls of peasants does not have the right to smoke wine.<…>And he [Pivinsky] went to Poltava, and paid dues for his dead peasants, as if for the living... in the neighbors and bought dead souls from them for this vodka, wrote them down for himself and, having become the owner of fifty souls on paper, smoked wine until his death and gave this theme to Gogol, who had been to Fedunki, and, besides, the whole Mirgorod region knew about the dead souls of Pivinsky.
In general, there is nothing unusual in such a reader's reaction, but in this case, the temptation to find direct sources of the plot (as well as, for example, to discover the exact chronology) paradoxically plays along with Gogol's poetics, sharpening the contradiction between plausibility and absurdity, on the constant combination of which it is built. .
What's wrong with the title?
Title page of the first edition of Dead Souls. 1842 House of antique books "In Nikitsky"The phrase "dead souls" caused panic not only among the heroes of Gogol's poem. The discussion of Gogol's novel in the Moscow Censorship Committee is very reminiscent of the discussion of the Chichikov scam directly in the novel:
“... The accusations, without exception, were a comedy in the highest degree. As soon as Golokhvastov, who took the place of the president, heard the name “Dead Souls”, he shouted in the voice of an ancient Roman: “No, I will never allow this: the soul is immortal; there can be no dead soul, the author is arming himself against immortality.” The smart president could finally understand that it was about Revizh souls. As soon as he understood and understood along with him other censors that the dead meant Revizh souls, an even greater mess ensued.
This similarity is not too surprising, since the details of the discussion in the censorship committee are known to us from the same letter from Gogol to Pletnev. But this is not the only case when the phrase "dead souls" was read by contemporaries as a dangerous nonsense. An excellent example of this is Mikhail Petrovich Pogodin's letter to Gogol, where we read the following: “There are no dead souls in the Russian language. There are revision souls, assigned, lost, profitable ones. If for the modern reader Gogol's metaphor has long become familiar, then it seemed strange and out of place to Pogodin. Let us pay attention to the "waning souls" mentioned in this list - just the conventional designation of the subject of Chichikov's "negotion". For example, it is used by Saltykov-Shchedrin in the collection of articles “Good-intentioned speeches”: “For ten years in a row I have been crying for wan souls - I know very well! Who was a soldier, who was taken as a warrior, and who died by himself - and I pay and pay!
Thus, on the one hand, a legally exact formula exists (and is never mentioned in Gogol's text), on the other hand, the metaphor of the death of the soul, replacing this formula in the text, was not something completely unusual for this time. It is found both in the lyrics of that time and in religious texts well known to Gogol. Here are just a few examples. “Although the human soul is rightly recognized as immortal, however, there is a certain kind of death for it.<…>But the death of the soul happens when God leaves it…” writes St. Augustine in the book “On the City of God”. We see a similar interpretation by Grigory Palamas in the collection The Philokalia, which Gogol carefully read: “Know ... that the soul also has death, although it is immortal by nature.<…>… The separation of God from the soul is the death of the soul.” Thus, Gogol combines, in general, a metaphor familiar to contemporaries with an equally well-known reality, but it is this combination that creates the stylistic and semantic breakdown that made the title so disturbing, incomprehensible and provocative.
Studying the works of the classics at school, we sometimes do not think about what real, practical benefits can be drawn from them personally for ourselves. And, meanwhile, it is enough to carefully read some works in order to find in them not only useful, but also harmful advice. For example, tormented by the exorbitant amount of knowledge invested in them, unfortunate schoolchildren are simply unable to pay attention to some of the “advice” that the classics quite openly and transparently communicate in them. Let's take, for example, "Dead Souls" by N.V. Gogol. Most of us remember: Chichikov bought up dead souls, that is, the souls of dead serfs, who were listed as other landowners. And why did you buy it, how many people remember? And did you ever know? And meanwhile, the practical sense in it was, and rather big. No wonder the genius Pushkin suggested to Gogol the plot of the work, apparently, in his time there were cunning businessmen who could make their business on this seemingly useless product.
These useless souls could enrich the nimble Chichikov in many ways. But first, let's look at the history of that time.
Each landowner indicated the number of serf souls in a special list (revision tales), which was then transferred to the revision departments (census). Since censuses (revisions) were carried out quite rarely, about once every ten years, and it naturally never occurred to anyone to count the serfs “by their heads”, it is clear that during these years the landowner owned the number of serfs that was indicated by these lists. What is the practical benefit or harm from this?
First, from this list, the state received information about the number of possible recruits in case of mobilization or labor force capable of producing a certain amount of products. For each serf soul (person), the landowner was obliged to pay a poll tax. Naturally, it is unprofitable for the landowner to pay for the dead as if they were still alive. Therefore, it is understandable why local landowners quite easily sold for next to nothing (and some, like Manilov, for example, even gave away for nothing) these dead souls, which until the next, not yet imminent, census will be listed as alive. The benefit of the landlords to sell dead souls is understandable, but why do they need Chichikov?
The first benefit lies on the surface. Buying the dead, in fact, but quite alive and able-bodied, according to the documents, Chichikov becomes a completely prosperous landowner. His greatly increased status practically opens the way to marriage with any, the richest bride, which means an even greater increase in his wealth (and this time quite real) due to her dowry. But this is the easiest and not the most profitable way to get rich. After all, the bride was also attached to the desired dowry, and Chichikov never expressed any particular desire for the voluntary deprivation of bachelor's freedom throughout the entire novel.
Another, more profitable, way of enrichment, and more complicated. This multi-way combination included several stages of the original business plan (let's call it that modern).
At the beginning of the 19th century and until the very abolition of serfdom, agrarian Russia was interested in ensuring that the landowners' farms were not completely ruined, and therefore allowed the landlords' property (land) to be mortgaged and remortgaged many times in order to obtain a bank loan. But hypocritical serf Russia allowed to make deals with land only together with serfs assigned to the landowner (that is, to his land). Consequently, in order to receive loans, Chichikov needed not only land (which he did not have), but also serf souls.
Chichikov, by the genius of Gogol, came up with a grandiose scam: to buy dead souls living according to documents (that is, those who died between censuses) for withdrawal to the Kherson province (at that time the vast territory of Novorossia was being developed), where the land was distributed free of charge. In addition, when settling the southern provinces to "feed" the souls of the serfs, banks issued subsidies, 200 rubles per soul. With a sufficiently large number of serf souls, the amount was quite impressive.
That's why Chichikov bought dead souls for a pittance, because the more souls he has on paper, the more credit he would be given. When it came to repaying the loan, Chichikov would simply advise the bank to take the pledged property (land along with serfs) as payment, at the then price for one serf up to 500 rubles. And it is not his fault, they say, that these souls would have been dead by that time.
So, the goal of Chichikov – obtaining start-up capital, obtaining a loan secured by serf souls along with land. Consequently, the Board of Trustees of the Orphanage, in which he was going to take a loan, had to provide a certificate of ownership of land (received in the Kherson region for free) and merchant's fortresses on supposedly living serfs.
If Chichikov had not stayed in the city for a few weeks, he would have succeeded in this scam without being noticed. But the local landowners, utterly surprised by the opportunity to trade dead souls, inadvertently revealed his brilliant plan, and if Fortune had not interfered in his fate in the form of the death of a prosecutor, he would have been in prison. And so, escaping with a slight fright, the rogue in the finale of the novel rushes on a trio bird along the South Russian road to a profitable loan with a full set of documents.
What is the moral of Gogol's work?
Businessmen should be more careful in choosing partners when concluding commercial transactions, and banks should be more careful when checking the proposed collateral.
Concluding the article, let me slightly alter the words of the great classic. “We were all taught a little: something, and somehow” ... But life forced us (and, thank God) to look into books again!