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Fedor Dostoevsky
BOY AT CHRIST'S TREE

I
BOY WITH A HANDLE

Children are strange people, they dream and imagine. Before the Christmas tree and just before Christmas, I kept meeting on the street, on a certain corner, one boy, no more than seven years old. In the terrible frost, he was dressed almost like summer clothes, but his neck was tied with some kind of old clothes, which means that someone equipped him when they sent him. He walked “with a pen”; This is a technical term and means to beg for alms. The term was invented by these boys themselves. There are many like him, they spin on your road and howl something they have learned by heart; but this one did not howl and spoke somehow innocently and unusually and looked trustingly into my eyes - therefore, he was just starting a profession. In response to my questions, he said that he had a sister who was unemployed and ill; maybe it’s true, but only I found out later that there are a lot of these boys: they are sent out “with a pen” even in the most terrible frost, and if they don’t get anything, then they will probably be beaten. Having collected kopecks, the boy returns with red, numb hands to some basement, where some gang of negligent workers are drinking, the same ones who, “having gone on strike at the factory on Sunday on Saturday, return to work no earlier than on Wednesday evening.” . There, in the basements, their hungry and beaten wives are drinking with them, and their hungry babies are squealing right there. Vodka, and dirt, and debauchery, and most importantly, vodka. With the collected pennies, the boy is immediately sent to the tavern, and he brings more wine. For fun, sometimes they pour a scythe into his mouth and laugh when, with his breathing stopped, he falls almost unconscious on the floor.

...and I put bad vodka in my mouth
Ruthlessly poured...

When he grows up, he is quickly sold off to a factory somewhere, but everything he earns, he is again obliged to bring to the careless workers, and they again drink away. But even before the factory, these children become complete criminals. They wander around the city and know places in different basements where they can crawl into and where they can spend the night unnoticed. One of them spent several nights in a row with one janitor in some kind of basket, and he never noticed him. Of course, they become thieves. Theft turns into a passion even among eight-year-old children, sometimes even without any consciousness of the criminality of the action. In the end they endure everything - hunger, cold, beatings - for only one thing, for freedom, and run away from their careless people to wander away from themselves. This wild creature sometimes does not understand anything, neither where he lives, nor what nation he is, whether there is a God, whether there is a sovereign; even such people convey things about them that are incredible to hear, and yet they are all facts.

II
BOY AT CHRIST'S TREE

But I am a novelist, and, it seems, I composed one “story” myself. Why do I write: “it seems”, because I myself probably know what I wrote, but I keep imagining that this happened somewhere and sometime, this is exactly what happened just before Christmas, on some kind of in a huge city and in terrible frost.

I imagine there was a boy in the basement, but he was still very small, about six years old or even younger. This boy woke up in the morning in a damp and cold basement. He was dressed in some kind of robe and was shaking. His breath flew out in white steam, and he, sitting in the corner on a chest, out of boredom, deliberately let this steam out of his mouth and amused himself by watching it fly out. But he really wanted to eat. Several times in the morning he approached the bunk, where his sick mother lay on a thin bedding like a pancake and on some kind of bundle under her head instead of a pillow. How did she end up here? She must have arrived with her boy from a foreign city and suddenly fell ill. The owner of the corners was captured by the police two days ago; the tenants scattered, it was a holiday, and the only one left, the robe, had been lying dead drunk for the whole day, without even waiting for the holiday. In another corner of the room, some eighty-year-old old woman, who had once lived somewhere as a nanny, but was now dying alone, was moaning from rheumatism, groaning, grumbling and grumbling at the boy, so that he was already afraid to come close to her corner. He got something to drink somewhere in the hallway, but couldn’t find a crust anywhere, and for the tenth time he already went to wake up his mother. He finally felt terrified in the darkness: evening had already begun long ago, but the fire had not been lit. Feeling his mother’s face, he was amazed that she did not move at all and became as cold as a wall. “It’s very cold here,” he thought, stood for a while, unconsciously forgetting his hand on the dead woman’s shoulder, then he breathed on his fingers to warm them, and suddenly, rummaging for his cap on the bunk, slowly, gropingly, he walked out of the basement. He would have gone even earlier, but he was still afraid of the big dog upstairs, on the stairs, which had been howling all day at the neighbors' doors. But the dog was no longer there, and he suddenly went outside.

Lord, what a city! He had never seen anything like this before. Where he came from, it was so dark at night, there was only one lantern on the entire street. Low wooden houses are closed with shutters; on the street, as soon as it gets dark, there is no one, everyone shuts up in their homes, and only whole packs of dogs howl, hundreds and thousands of them, howl and bark all night. But there it was so warm and they gave him something to eat, but here – Lord, if only he could eat! And what a knock and thunder there is, what light and people, horses and carriages, and frost, frost! Frozen steam rises from the driven horses, from their hot breathing muzzles; Horseshoes ring on the stones through the loose snow, and everyone is pushing so hard, and, God, I really want to eat, even just a piece of something, and my fingers suddenly hurt so much. A peace officer walked by and turned away so as not to notice the boy.

Here is the street again - oh, how wide! Here they will probably be crushed like that; how they all scream, run and drive, and the light, the light! And what's that? Wow, what a big glass, and behind the glass there is a room, and in the room there is wood up to the ceiling; this is a Christmas tree, and on the tree there are so many lights, so many golden pieces of paper and apples, and all around there are dolls and little horses; and children are running around the room, dressed up, clean, laughing and playing, and eating, and drinking something. This girl started dancing with the boy, what a pretty girl! Here comes the music, you can hear it through the glass. The boy looks, marvels, and even laughs, but his fingers and toes are already hurting, and his hands have become completely red, they no longer bend and it hurts to move. And suddenly the boy remembered that his fingers hurt so much, he began to cry and ran on, and now again he sees through another glass a room, again there are trees, but on the tables there are all kinds of pies - almond, red, yellow, and four people are sitting there rich ladies, and whoever comes, they give him pies, and the door opens every minute, many gentlemen come in from the street. The boy crept up, suddenly opened the door and entered. Wow, how they shouted and waved at him! One lady quickly came up and put a penny in his hand, and she opened the door to the street for him. How scared he was! And the penny immediately rolled out and rang down the steps: he could not bend his red fingers and hold it. The boy ran out and went as quickly as possible, but he didn’t know where. He wants to cry again, but he’s too afraid, and he runs and runs and blows on his hands. And melancholy takes over him, because he suddenly felt so lonely and terrible, and suddenly, Lord! So what is this again? People are standing in a crowd and marveling: on the window behind the glass there are three dolls, small, dressed in red and green dresses and very, very lifelike! Some old man sits and seems to be playing a large violin, two others stand right there and play small violins, and shake their heads to the beat, and look at each other, and their lips move, they talk, they really talk - only now You can't hear it because of the glass. And at first the boy thought that they were alive, but when he realized that they were dolls, he suddenly laughed. He had never seen such dolls and did not know that such existed! And he wants to cry, but the dolls are so funny. Suddenly it seemed to him that someone grabbed him by the robe from behind: a big, angry boy stood nearby and suddenly hit him on the head, tore off his cap, and kicked him from below. The boy rolled to the ground, then they screamed, he was stupefied, he jumped up and ran and ran, and suddenly he ran into he doesn’t know where, into a gateway, into someone else’s yard, and sat down behind some firewood: “They won’t find anyone here, and it’s dark.”

He sat down and huddled, but he couldn’t catch his breath from fear, and suddenly, quite suddenly, he felt so good: his arms and legs suddenly stopped hurting and it became so warm, so warm, like on a stove; Now he shuddered all over: oh, but he was about to fall asleep! How nice it is to fall asleep here: “I’ll sit here and go look at the dolls again,” the boy thought and grinned, remembering them, “just like alive!” And suddenly he heard his mother singing a song above him. “Mom, I’m sleeping, oh, how good it is to sleep here!”

“Let’s go to my Christmas tree, boy,” a quiet voice suddenly whispered above him.

He thought it was all his mother, but no, not her; He doesn’t see who called him, but someone bent over him and hugged him in the darkness, and he extended his hand and... and suddenly - oh, what a light! Oh, what a tree! And it’s not a Christmas tree, he’s never seen such trees before! Where is he now: everything glitters, everything shines and there are dolls all around - but no, these are all boys and girls, only so bright, they all circle around him, fly, they all kiss him, take him, carry him with them, yes and he himself flies, and he sees: his mother is looking and laughing at him joyfully.

- Mother! Mother! Oh, how nice it is here, mom! - the boy shouts to her, and again kisses the children, and he wants to tell them as soon as possible about those dolls behind the glass. -Who are you, boys? Who are you girls? - he asks, laughing and loving them.

“This is Christ’s Christmas tree,” they answer him. “Christ always has a Christmas tree on this day for little children who don’t have their own tree there...” And he found out that these boys and girls were all just like him, children, but some were still frozen in their baskets, in which they were thrown onto the stairs to the doors of St. Petersburg officials, others suffocated in the chukhonkas, from the orphanage while being fed, others died at the withered breasts of their mothers during the Samara famine, others suffocated in third-class carriages from the stench, and yet they are all here now, they are all now like angels, they are all with Christ, and he himself is in the midst of them, and stretches out his hands to them, and blesses them and their sinful mothers... And the mothers of these children are all standing right there, on the sidelines, and crying; everyone recognizes their boy or girl, and they fly up to them and kiss them, wipe away their tears with their hands and beg them not to cry, because they feel so good here...

And downstairs the next morning, the janitors found the small corpse of a boy who had run and frozen to collect firewood; They also found his mother... She died before him; both met with the Lord God in heaven.

And why did I compose such a story, which does not fit into an ordinary reasonable diary, especially a writer’s? And he also promised stories mainly about actual events! But that’s the point, it seems and seems to me that all this could really happen - that is, what happened in the basement and behind the firewood, and there about the Christmas tree at Christ’s - I don’t know how to tell you , could it happen or not? That's why I'm a novelist, to invent things.

Children are strange people, they dream and imagine. Before the Christmas tree and just before Christmas, I kept meeting on the street, on a certain corner, one boy, no more than seven years old. In the terrible frost, he was dressed almost like summer clothes, but his neck was tied with some kind of old clothes, which means that someone had equipped him when they sent him. He walked “with a pen”; This is a technical term and means to beg for alms. The term was invented by these boys themselves. There are many like him, they spin on your road and howl something they have learned by heart; but this one did not howl and spoke somehow innocently and unusually and looked trustingly into my eyes - therefore, he was just starting his profession. In response to my questions, he said that he had a sister who was unemployed and ill; maybe it’s true, but only I found out later that there are a lot of these boys: they are sent out “with a pen” even in the most terrible frost, and if they don’t get anything, then they will probably be beaten. Having collected kopecks, the boy returns with red, numb hands to some basement, where some gang of negligent workers are drinking, the same ones who, “having gone on strike at the factory on Sunday on Saturday, return to work no earlier than on Wednesday evening.” . There, in the basements, their hungry and beaten wives are drinking with them, and their hungry babies are squealing right there. Vodka, and dirt, and debauchery, and most importantly, vodka. With the collected pennies, the boy is immediately sent to the tavern, and he brings more wine. For fun, sometimes they pour a scythe into his mouth and laugh when, with his breathing stopped, he falls almost unconscious on the floor.

...and I put bad vodka in my mouth

Ruthlessly poured...

When he grows up, he is quickly sold off to a factory somewhere, but everything he earns, he is again obliged to bring to the careless workers, and they again drink away. But even before the factory, these children become complete criminals. They wander around the city and know places in different basements where they can crawl into and where they can spend the night unnoticed. One of them spent several nights in a row with one janitor in some kind of basket, and he never noticed him. Of course, they become thieves. Theft turns into a passion even among eight-year-old children, sometimes even without any consciousness of the criminality of the action. In the end they endure everything - hunger, cold, beatings - for only one thing, for freedom, and run away from their negligent people to wander away from themselves. This wild creature sometimes does not understand anything, neither where he lives, nor what nation he is, whether there is a God, whether there is a sovereign; even such people convey things about them that are incredible to hear, and yet they are all facts.

BOY AT CHRIST'S TREE

But I am a novelist, and, it seems, I composed one “story” myself. Why do I write: “it seems”, because I myself probably know what I wrote, but I keep imagining that this happened somewhere and sometime, this is exactly what happened just before Christmas, on some kind of in a huge city and in terrible frost.

I imagine there was a boy in the basement, but he was still very small, about six years old or even younger. This boy woke up in the morning in a damp and cold basement. He was dressed in some kind of robe and was shaking. His breath flew out in white steam, and he, sitting in the corner on a chest, out of boredom, deliberately let this steam out of his mouth and amused himself by watching it fly out. But he really wanted to eat. Several times in the morning he approached the bunk, where his sick mother lay on a thin bedding like a pancake and on some kind of bundle under her head instead of a pillow. How did she end up here? She must have arrived with her boy from a foreign city and suddenly fell ill. The owner of the corners was captured by the police two days ago; the tenants scattered, it was a holiday, and the only one left, the robe, had been lying dead drunk for the whole day, without even waiting for the holiday. In another corner of the room, some eighty-year-old old woman, who had once lived somewhere as a nanny, but was now dying alone, was moaning from rheumatism, groaning, grumbling and grumbling at the boy, so that he was already afraid to come close to her corner. He got something to drink somewhere in the hallway, but couldn’t find a crust anywhere, and for the tenth time he already went to wake up his mother. He finally felt terrified in the darkness: evening had already begun long ago, but the fire had not been lit. Feeling his mother’s face, he was amazed that she did not move at all and became as cold as a wall. “It’s very cold here,” he thought, stood for a while, unconsciously forgetting his hand on the dead woman’s shoulder, then he breathed on his fingers to warm them, and suddenly, rummaging for his cap on the bunk, slowly, gropingly, he walked out of the basement. He would have gone even earlier, but he was still afraid of the big dog upstairs, on the stairs, which had been howling all day at the neighbors' doors. But the dog was no longer there, and he suddenly went outside.

Lord, what a city! He had never seen anything like this before. Where he came from, it was so dark at night, there was only one lantern on the entire street. Low wooden houses are closed with shutters; on the street, when it gets a little dark, there is no one, everyone shuts up in their homes, and only whole packs of dogs howl, hundreds and thousands of them, howl and bark all night. But there it was so warm and they gave him something to eat, but here - Lord, if only he could eat! And what a knock and thunder there is, what light and people, horses and carriages, and frost, frost! Frozen steam rises from the driven horses, from their hot breathing muzzles; Horseshoes ring on the stones through the loose snow, and everyone is pushing so hard, and, God, I really want to eat, even just a piece of something, and my fingers suddenly hurt so much. A peace officer walked by and turned away so as not to notice the boy.

Here is the street again - oh, how wide! Here they will probably be crushed like that; how they all scream, run and drive, and the light, the light! And what's that? Wow, what a big glass, and behind the glass there is a room, and in the room there is wood up to the ceiling; this is a Christmas tree, and on the tree there are so many lights, so many golden pieces of paper and apples, and all around there are dolls and little horses; and children are running around the room, dressed up, clean, laughing and playing, and eating, and drinking something. This girl started dancing with the boy, what a pretty girl! Here comes the music, you can hear it through the glass. The boy looks, marvels, and even laughs, but his fingers and toes are already hurting, and his hands have become completely red, they no longer bend and it hurts to move. And suddenly the boy remembered that his fingers hurt so much, he cried and ran on, and now again he sees through another glass a room, again there are trees, but on the tables there are all kinds of pies - almond, red, yellow, and four people are sitting there rich ladies, and whoever comes, they give him pies, and the door opens every minute, many gentlemen come in from the street. The boy crept up, suddenly opened the door and entered. Wow, how they shouted and waved at him! One lady quickly came up and put a penny in his hand, and she opened the door to the street for him. How scared he was! And the penny immediately rolled out and rang down the steps: he could not bend his red fingers and hold it. The boy ran out and went as quickly as possible, but he didn’t know where. He wants to cry again, but he’s too afraid, and he runs and runs and blows on his hands. And melancholy takes over him, because he suddenly felt so lonely and terrible, and suddenly, Lord! So what is this again? People are standing in a crowd and marveling: on the window behind the glass there are three dolls, small, dressed in red and green dresses and very, very lifelike! Some old man sits and seems to be playing a large violin, two others stand right there and play small violins, and shake their heads to the beat, and look at each other, and their lips move, they talk, they really talk - only now You can't hear it because of the glass. And at first the boy thought that they were alive, but when he realized that they were dolls, he suddenly laughed. He had never seen such dolls and did not know that such existed! And he wants to cry, but the dolls are so funny. Suddenly it seemed to him that someone grabbed him by the robe from behind: a big, angry boy stood nearby and suddenly hit him on the head, tore off his cap, and kicked him from below. The boy rolled to the ground, then they screamed, he was stunned, he jumped up and ran and ran, and suddenly he ran into he doesn’t know where, into a gateway, into someone else’s yard, and sat down behind some firewood: “They won’t find anyone here, and it’s dark.”

On December 26, 1875, F. M. Dostoevsky, together with his daughter Lyuba, attended a children’s ball and Christmas tree organized at the St. Petersburg Artists Club. On December 27, Dostoevsky and A.F. Koni arrived at the Colony for Juvenile Delinquents on the outskirts of the city on Okhta, headed by the famous teacher and writer P.A. Rovinsky. During these same pre-New Year days, he met several times on the streets of St. Petersburg a beggar boy begging for alms (“boy with a pen”). All these pre-New Year impressions formed the basis of the Christmas (or Yuletide) story “The Boy at Christ’s Christmas Tree.”

On the other hand, the story closely echoes the plot of the ballad “The Orphan's Tree” (“Des fremden Kindes heiliger Christ”) of 1816 by Friedrich Rückert, a German romantic poet. At the same time, Dostoevsky, observing the traditions of the classics of the Christmas story H. H. Andersen (“The Girl with Brimstone Matches”) and Charles Dickens (“Christmas Stories”), filled the short allegorical story with the realities of big city life to the maximum. In this case, we are talking about St. Petersburg, whose cold, literally and figuratively, splendor is contrasted with the provincial darkness of the boy’s unnamed homeland, where, however, he always had food and warmth. The theme of a hungry and poor child was started by the writer in the 40s with the works “Poor People”, “Christmas Tree and Wedding”, and the author did not deviate from it throughout his life until “The Brothers Karamazov”.

Dostoevsky began the story on December 30, 1875, and by the end of January, “The Boy at Christ’s Christmas Tree” was published along with other materials about “Russian children today” in the January issue of “A Writer’s Diary.” In the first issue of his renewed edition, Dostoevsky intended to tell his readers “something about children in general, about children with fathers, about children without fathers in particular, about children on Christmas trees, without Christmas trees, about children who are criminals...”. The story “The Boy at Christ’s Christmas Tree” in the “Writer’s Diary” was preceded by a small chapter “A Boy with a Hand,” and all the materials taken together from the first two chapters of the “Writer’s Diary” (in the first chapter the writer placed his journalistic reflections on the same topic) were combined the theme of compassion for children.

Fyodor Dostoevsky - Boy at Christ's Christmas tree. Christmas story:

I Boy with a pen

Children are strange people, they dream and imagine. Before the Christmas tree and just before Christmas, I kept meeting on the street, on a certain corner, one boy, no more than seven years old. In the terrible frost, he was dressed almost like summer clothes, but his neck was tied with some kind of old clothes, which means that someone equipped him when they sent him. He walked “with a pen”, this is a technical term, which means to beg. The term was invented by these boys themselves. There are many like him, they spin on your road and howl something they have learned by heart; but this one did not howl and spoke somehow innocently and unusually and looked trustingly into my eyes - therefore, he was just starting his profession. In response to my questions, he said that he had a sister who was unemployed and ill; maybe it’s true, but only I found out later that there are a lot of these boys: they are sent out “with a pen” even in the most terrible frost, and if they don’t get anything, then they will probably be beaten. Having collected kopecks, the boy returns with red, numb hands to some basement, where some gang of negligent workers are drinking, the same ones who, “having gone on strike at the factory on Sunday on Saturday, return to work no earlier than on Wednesday evening.” . There, in the basements, their hungry and beaten wives are drinking with them, and their hungry babies are squealing right there. Vodka, and dirt, and debauchery, and most importantly, vodka. With the collected pennies, the boy is immediately sent to the tavern, and he brings more wine. For fun, sometimes they pour a scythe into his mouth and laugh when, with his breathing stopped, he falls almost unconscious on the floor,

...And I put bad vodka in my mouth
He poured in mercilessly.

When he grows up, he is quickly sold off to a factory somewhere, but everything he earns, he is again obliged to bring to the careless workers, and they again drink away. But even before the factory, these children become complete criminals. They wander around the city and know places in different basements where they can crawl into and where they can spend the night unnoticed. One of them spent several nights in a row with one janitor in some kind of basket, and he never noticed him. Of course, they become thieves. Theft turns into a passion even among eight-year-old children, sometimes even without any consciousness of the criminality of the action. In the end they endure everything - hunger, cold, beatings - for only one thing, for freedom, and run away from their negligent people to wander away from themselves. This wild creature sometimes does not understand anything, neither where he lives, nor what nation he is, whether there is a God, whether there is a sovereign; even such people convey things about them that are incredible to hear, and yet all the facts.

II Boy at Christ's Christmas tree

But I am a novelist, and, it seems, I composed one “story” myself. Why do I write “it seems”, because I myself probably know what I wrote, but I keep imagining that this happened somewhere and sometime, this is exactly what happened just before Christmas, in some huge city and in a terrible frost .

I imagine there was a boy in the basement, but he was still very small, about six years old or even younger. This boy woke up in the morning in a damp and cold basement. He was dressed in some kind of robe and was shaking. His breath flew out in white steam, and he, sitting in the corner on a chest, out of boredom, deliberately let this steam out of his mouth and amused himself by watching it fly out. But he really wanted to eat. Several times in the morning he approached the bunk, where his sick mother lay on a thin bedding like a pancake and on some kind of bundle under her head instead of a pillow. How did she end up here? She must have arrived with her boy from a foreign city and suddenly fell ill. The owner of the corners was captured by the police two days ago; the tenants scattered, it was a holiday, and the only one left, the robe, had been lying dead drunk for the whole day, without even waiting for the holiday. In another corner of the room, some eighty-year-old old woman, who had once lived somewhere as a nanny, but was now dying alone, was moaning from rheumatism, groaning, grumbling and grumbling at the boy, so that he was already afraid to come close to her corner. He got something to drink somewhere in the hallway, but couldn’t find a crust anywhere, and for the tenth time he already went to wake up his mother. He finally felt terrified in the darkness: evening had already begun long ago, but the fire had not been lit. Feeling his mother’s face, he was amazed that she did not move at all and became as cold as a wall. “It’s very cold here,” he thought, stood for a while, unconsciously forgetting his hand on the dead woman’s shoulder, then he breathed on his fingers to warm them, and suddenly, rummaging for his cap on the bunk, slowly, gropingly, he walked out of the basement. He would have gone even earlier, but he was still afraid of the big dog upstairs, on the stairs, which had been howling all day at the neighbors' doors. But the dog was no longer there, and he suddenly went outside.

Lord, what a city! He had never seen anything like this before. Where he came from, it was so dark at night, there was only one lantern on the entire street. Low wooden houses are closed with shutters; on the street, when it gets a little dark, there is no one, everyone shuts up in their homes, and only whole packs of dogs howl, hundreds and thousands of them, howl and bark all night. But there it was so warm and they gave him something to eat, but here - Lord, if only he could eat! And what a knock and thunder there is, what light and people, horses and carriages, and frost, frost! Frozen steam rises from the driven horses, from their hot breathing muzzles; Horseshoes ring on the stones through the loose snow, and everyone is pushing so hard, and, God, I really want to eat, even just a piece of something, and my fingers suddenly hurt so much. A peace officer walked by and turned away so as not to notice the boy.

Here is the street again - oh, how wide! Here they will probably be crushed like that: how they all scream, run and drive, and the light, the light! And what's that? Wow, what a big glass, and behind the glass there is a room, and in the room there is wood up to the ceiling; this is a Christmas tree, and on the tree there are so many lights, so many golden pieces of paper and apples, and all around there are dolls and little horses; and children are running around the room, dressed up, clean, laughing and playing, and eating, and drinking something. This girl started dancing with the boy, what a pretty girl! Here comes the music, you can hear it through the glass. The boy looks, marvels, and even laughs, but his fingers and toes are already hurting, and his hands have become completely red, they no longer bend and it hurts to move. And suddenly the boy remembered that his fingers hurt so much, he cried and ran on, and now again he sees through another glass a room, again there are trees, but on the tables there are all kinds of pies - almond, red, yellow, and four people are sitting there rich ladies, and whoever comes, they give him pies, and the door opens every minute, many gentlemen come in from the street. The boy crept up, suddenly opened the door and entered. Wow, how they shouted and waved at him! One lady quickly came up and put a penny in his hand, and she opened the door to the street for him. How scared he was! And the penny immediately rolled out and rang down the steps: he could not bend his red fingers and hold it. The boy ran out and went as quickly as possible, but he didn’t know where. He wants to cry again, but he’s too afraid, and he runs and runs and blows on his hands. And melancholy takes over him, because he suddenly felt so lonely and terrible, and suddenly, Lord! So what is this again? People are standing in a crowd and marveling: on the window behind the glass there are three dolls, small, dressed in red and green dresses and very, very lifelike! Some old man sits and seems to be playing a large violin, two others stand right there and play small violins, and shake their heads to the beat, and look at each other, and their lips move, they talk, they really talk - only now You can't hear it because of the glass. And at first the boy thought that they were alive, but when he realized that they were dolls, he suddenly laughed. He had never seen such dolls and did not know that such existed! Suddenly he felt that someone grabbed him by the robe from behind; a big angry boy stood nearby and suddenly hit him on the head, tore off his cap, and kicked him from below. The boy rolled to the ground, then they screamed, he was stunned, he jumped up and ran and ran, and suddenly he ran into he doesn’t know where, into a gateway, into someone else’s yard, and sat down behind some firewood: “They won’t find anyone here, and it’s dark.”

He sat down and huddled, but he couldn’t catch his breath from fear, and suddenly, quite suddenly, he felt so good: his arms and legs suddenly stopped hurting and it became so warm, so warm, like on a stove; Now he shuddered all over: oh, but he was about to fall asleep! How good it is to sleep here! “I’ll sit here and go look at the dolls again,” the boy thought and grinned, remembering them, “just like alive!..” And suddenly he heard his mother singing a song above him. “Mom, I’m sleeping, oh, how good it is to sleep here!”

“Let’s go to my Christmas tree, boy,” a quiet voice suddenly whispered above him.

He thought it was all his mother, but no, not her; He doesn’t see who called him, but someone bent over him and hugged him in the darkness, and he extended his hand and... and suddenly - oh, what a light! Oh, what a tree! And it’s not a Christmas tree, he’s never seen such trees before! Where is he now: everything glitters, everything shines and all the dolls are around - but no, these are all boys and girls, only so bright, they all circle around him, fly, they all kiss him, take him, carry him with them, yes and he himself flies, and he sees: his mother is looking and laughing at him joyfully.

Mother! Mother! Oh, how nice it is here, mom! - the boy shouts to her and again kisses the children, and he wants to tell them as soon as possible about those dolls behind the glass. - Who are you, boys? Who are you girls? - he asks, laughing and loving them.

This is “Christ’s Christmas tree,” they answer him. - Christ always has a Christmas tree on this day for little children who don’t have their own tree... - And he found out that these boys and girls were all just like him, children, but some were still frozen in their baskets, in which they were thrown onto the stairs to the doors of St. Petersburg officials, others suffocated in the chukhonkas, from the orphanage while being fed, others died at the withered breasts of their mothers (during the Samara famine), others suffocated in third-class carriages from the stench, and yet they are all here now , they are all now like angels, they are all with Christ, and he himself is in the midst of them, and stretches out his hands to them, and blesses them and their sinful mothers... And the mothers of these children are all standing right there, on the sidelines, crying; everyone recognizes their boy or girl, and they fly up to them and kiss them, wipe away their tears with their hands and beg them not to cry, because they feel so good here...

And downstairs, the next morning, the janitors found the small corpse of a boy who had run and frozen to collect firewood; They also found his mother... She died before him; both met with the Lord God in heaven.

And why did I compose such a story, which does not fit into an ordinary reasonable diary, especially a writer’s? And he also promised stories mainly about actual events! But that’s the point, it seems and seems to me that all this could really happen - that is, what happened in the basement and behind the firewood, and there about the Christmas tree at Christ’s - I don’t know how to tell you , could it happen or not? That's why I'm a novelist, to invent things.

Stories -

“Dostoevsky F., Tales and Stories”: © Pravda Publishing House; Moscow; 1985
Fedor Dostoevsky
BOY AT CHRIST'S TREE

I
BOY WITH A HANDLE
Children are strange people, they dream and imagine. Before the Christmas tree and just before Christmas, I kept meeting on the street, on a certain corner, one boy, no more than seven years old. In the terrible frost, he was dressed almost like summer clothes, but his neck was tied with some kind of old clothes, which means that someone had equipped him when they sent him. He walked “with a pen”; This is a technical term and means to beg for alms. The term was invented by these boys themselves. There are many like him, they spin on your road and howl something they have learned by heart; but this one did not howl and spoke somehow innocently and unusually and looked trustingly into my eyes - therefore, he was just starting his profession. In response to my questions, he said that he had a sister who was unemployed and ill; maybe it’s true, but only I found out later that there are a lot of these boys: they are sent out “with a pen” even in the most terrible frost, and if they don’t get anything, then they will probably be beaten. Having collected kopecks, the boy returns with red, numb hands to some basement, where some gang of negligent workers are drinking, the same ones who, “having gone on strike at the factory on Sunday on Saturday, return to work no earlier than on Wednesday evening.” . There, in the basements, their hungry and beaten wives are drinking with them, and their hungry babies are squealing right there. Vodka, and dirt, and debauchery, and most importantly, vodka. With the collected pennies, the boy is immediately sent to the tavern, and he brings more wine. For fun, sometimes they pour a scythe into his mouth and laugh when, with his breathing stopped, he falls almost unconscious on the floor.
...and I put bad vodka in my mouth
Ruthlessly poured...
When he grows up, he is quickly sold off to a factory somewhere, but everything he earns, he is again obliged to bring to the careless workers, and they again drink away. But even before the factory, these children become complete criminals. They wander around the city and know places in different basements where they can crawl into and where they can spend the night unnoticed. One of them spent several nights in a row with one janitor in some kind of basket, and he never noticed him. Of course, they become thieves. Theft turns into a passion even among eight-year-old children, sometimes even without any consciousness of the criminality of the action. In the end they endure everything - hunger, cold, beatings - for only one thing, for freedom, and run away from their negligent people to wander away from themselves. This wild creature sometimes does not understand anything, neither where he lives, nor what nation he is, whether there is a God, whether there is a sovereign; even such people convey things about them that are incredible to hear, and yet they are all facts.
II
BOY AT CHRIST'S TREE
But I am a novelist, and, it seems, I composed one “story” myself. Why do I write: “it seems”, because I myself probably know what I wrote, but I keep imagining that this happened somewhere and sometime, this is exactly what happened just before Christmas, in some huge city and in a terrible freezing.
I imagine there was a boy in the basement, but he was still very small, about six years old or even younger. This boy woke up in the morning in a damp and cold basement. He was dressed in some kind of robe and was shaking. His breath flew out in white steam, and he, sitting in the corner on a chest, out of boredom, deliberately let this steam out of his mouth and amused himself by watching it fly out. But he really wanted to eat. Several times in the morning he approached the bunk, where his sick mother lay on a thin bedding like a pancake and on some kind of bundle under her head instead of a pillow. How did she end up here? She must have arrived with her boy from a foreign city and suddenly fell ill. The owner of the corners was captured by the police two days ago; the tenants scattered, it was a holiday, and the only one left, the robe, had been lying dead drunk for the whole day, without even waiting for the holiday. In another corner of the room, some eighty-year-old old woman, who had once lived somewhere as a nanny, but was now dying alone, was moaning from rheumatism, groaning, grumbling and grumbling at the boy, so that he was already afraid to come close to her corner. He got something to drink somewhere in the hallway, but couldn’t find a crust anywhere, and for the tenth time he already went to wake up his mother. He finally felt terrified in the darkness: evening had already begun long ago, but the fire had not been lit. Feeling his mother’s face, he was amazed that she did not move at all and became as cold as a wall. “It’s very cold here,” he thought, stood for a while, unconsciously forgetting his hand on the dead woman’s shoulder, then he breathed on his fingers to warm them, and suddenly, rummaging for his cap on the bunk, slowly, gropingly, he walked out of the basement. He would have gone even earlier, but he was still afraid of the big dog upstairs, on the stairs, which had been howling all day at the neighbors' doors. But the dog was no longer there, and he suddenly went outside.
Lord, what a city! He had never seen anything like this before. Where he came from, it was so dark at night, there was only one lantern on the entire street. Low wooden houses are closed with shutters; on the street, when it gets a little dark, there is no one, everyone shuts up in their homes, and only whole packs of dogs howl, hundreds and thousands of them, howl and bark all night. But there it was so warm and they gave him something to eat, but here - Lord, if only he could eat! And what a knock and thunder there is, what light and people, horses and carriages, and frost, frost! Frozen steam rises from the driven horses, from their hot breathing muzzles; Horseshoes ring on the stones through the loose snow, and everyone is pushing so hard, and, God, I really want to eat, even just a piece of something, and my fingers suddenly hurt so much. A peace officer walked by and turned away so as not to notice the boy.
Here is the street again - oh, how wide! Here they will probably be crushed like that; how they all scream, run and drive, and the light, the light! And what's that? Wow, what a big glass, and behind the glass there is a room, and in the room there is wood up to the ceiling; this is a Christmas tree, and on the tree there are so many lights, so many golden pieces of paper and apples, and all around there are dolls and little horses; and children are running around the room, dressed up, clean, laughing and playing, and eating, and drinking something. This girl started dancing with the boy, what a pretty girl! Here comes the music, you can hear it through the glass. The boy looks, marvels, and even laughs, but his fingers and toes are already hurting, and his hands have become completely red, they no longer bend and it hurts to move. And suddenly the boy remembered that his fingers hurt so much, he cried and ran on, and now again he sees through another glass a room, again there are trees, but on the tables there are all kinds of pies - almond, red, yellow, and four people are sitting there rich ladies, and whoever comes, they give him pies, and the door opens every minute, many gentlemen come in from the street. The boy crept up, suddenly opened the door and entered. Wow, how they shouted and waved at him! One lady quickly came up and put a penny in his hand, and she opened the door to the street for him. How scared he was! And the penny immediately rolled out and rang down the steps: he could not bend his red fingers and hold it. The boy ran out and went as quickly as possible, but he didn’t know where. He wants to cry again, but he’s too afraid, and he runs and runs and blows on his hands. And melancholy takes over him, because he suddenly felt so lonely and terrible, and suddenly, Lord! So what is this again? People are standing in a crowd and marveling: on the window behind the glass there are three dolls, small, dressed in red and green dresses and very, very lifelike! Some old man sits and seems to be playing a large violin, two others stand right there and play small violins, and shake their heads to the beat, and look at each other, and their lips move, they talk, they really talk - only now You can't hear it because of the glass. And at first the boy thought that they were alive, but when he realized that they were dolls, he suddenly laughed. He had never seen such dolls and did not know that such existed! And he wants to cry, but the dolls are so funny. Suddenly it seemed to him that someone grabbed him by the robe from behind: a big, angry boy stood nearby and suddenly hit him on the head, tore off his cap, and kicked him from below. The boy rolled to the ground, then they screamed, he was stunned, he jumped up and ran and ran, and suddenly he ran into he doesn’t know where, into a gateway, into someone else’s yard, and sat down behind some firewood: “They won’t find anyone here, and it’s dark.”

He sat down and huddled, but he couldn’t catch his breath from fear, and suddenly, quite suddenly, he felt so good: his arms and legs suddenly stopped hurting and it became so warm, so warm, like on a stove; Now he shuddered all over: oh, but he was about to fall asleep! How nice it is to fall asleep here: “I’ll sit here and go look at the dolls again,” the boy thought and grinned, remembering them, “just like alive!” And suddenly he heard his mother singing a song above him. “Mom, I’m sleeping, oh, how good it is to sleep here!”
“Let’s go to my Christmas tree, boy,” a quiet voice suddenly whispered above him.
He thought it was all his mother, but no, not her; He doesn’t see who called him, but someone bent over him and hugged him in the darkness, and he extended his hand and... and suddenly - oh, what a light! Oh, what a tree! And it’s not a Christmas tree, he’s never seen such trees before! Where is he now: everything glitters, everything shines and there are dolls all around - but no, these are all boys and girls, only so bright, they all circle around him, fly, they all kiss him, take him, carry him with them, yes and he himself flies, and he sees: his mother is looking and laughing at him joyfully.
- Mother! Mother! Oh, how nice it is here, mom! - the boy shouts to her, and again kisses the children, and he wants to tell them as soon as possible about those dolls behind the glass. - Who are you, boys? Who are you girls? - he asks, laughing and loving them.
“This is Christ’s Christmas tree,” they answer him. - Christ always has a Christmas tree on this day for little children who don’t have their own tree... - And he found out that these boys and girls were all just like him, children, but some were still frozen in their baskets, in which they were thrown onto the stairs to the doors of St. Petersburg officials, others suffocated in the chukhonkas, from the orphanage while being fed, others died at the withered breasts of their mothers during the Samara famine, others suffocated in third-class carriages from the stench, and yet they are all here now, they are all now like angels, they are all with Christ, and he himself is in the midst of them, and stretches out his hands to them, and blesses them and their sinful mothers... And the mothers of these children are all standing right there, on the sidelines, and crying; everyone recognizes their boy or girl, and they fly up to them and kiss them, wipe away their tears with their hands and beg them not to cry, because they feel so good here...
And downstairs the next morning, the janitors found the small corpse of a boy who had run and frozen to collect firewood; They also found his mother... She died before him; both met with the Lord God in heaven.
And why did I compose such a story, which does not fit into an ordinary reasonable diary, especially a writer’s? And he also promised stories mainly about actual events! But that’s the point, it seems and seems to me that all this could really happen - that is, what happened in the basement and behind the firewood, and there about the Christmas tree at Christ’s - I don’t know how to tell you , could it happen or not? That's why I'm a novelist, to invent things.

Children are strange people, they dream and imagine. Before the Christmas tree and right before Christmas, I kept meeting on the street, on a certain corner, one boy, no more than seven years old. In the terrible frost, he was dressed almost like summer clothes, but his neck was tied with some old clothes, which means that someone equipped him when they sent him. He walked “with a pen”; This is a technical term and means to beg for alms. The term was invented by these boys themselves. There are many like him, they spin on your road and howl something they have learned by heart; but this one did not howl and spoke somehow innocently and unusually and looked trustingly into my eyes - therefore, he was just starting a profession. In response to my questions, he said that he had a sister who was unemployed and ill; maybe it’s true, but only I found out later that there are a lot of these boys: they are sent out “with a pen” even in the most terrible frost, and if they don’t get anything, then they will probably be beaten. Having collected a few kopecks, the boy returns with red, numb hands to some basement, where some gang of negligent workers are drinking, the same ones who, “having gone on strike at the factory on Sunday on Saturday, return to work no earlier than on Wednesday evening.” . There, in the basements, their hungry and beaten wives are drinking with them, and their hungry babies are squealing right there. Vodka, and dirt, and debauchery, and most importantly, vodka. With the collected pennies, the boy is immediately sent to the tavern, and he brings more wine. For fun, sometimes they pour a scythe into his mouth and laugh when, with his breathing stopped, he falls almost unconscious on the floor,

...and I put bad vodka in my mouth
Ruthlessly poured...

When he grows up, he is quickly sold off to a factory somewhere, but everything he earns, he is again obliged to bring to the careless workers, and they again drink away. But even before the factory, these children become complete criminals. They wander around the city and know places in different basements where they can crawl into and where they can spend the night unnoticed. One of them spent several nights in a row with one janitor in some kind of basket, and he never noticed him. Of course, they become thieves. Theft turns into a passion even among eight-year-old children, sometimes even without any consciousness of the criminality of the action. In the end they endure everything - hunger, cold, beatings - for only one thing, for freedom, and run away from their negligent people to wander away from themselves. This wild creature sometimes does not understand anything, neither where he lives, nor what nation he is, whether there is a God, whether there is a sovereign; even such people convey things about them that are incredible to hear, and yet they are all facts.

Dostoevsky. Boy at Christ's Christmas tree. Video

II. Boy at Christ's Christmas tree

But I am a novelist, and, it seems, I composed one “story” myself. Why do I write: “it seems”, because I myself probably know what I wrote, but I keep imagining that this happened somewhere and sometime, this is exactly what happened just before Christmas, in some huge city and in a terrible freezing.

I imagine there was a boy in the basement, but he was still very small, about six years old or even younger. This boy woke up in the morning in a damp and cold basement. He was dressed in some kind of robe and was shaking. His breath flew out in white steam, and he, sitting in the corner on a chest, out of boredom, deliberately let this steam out of his mouth and amused himself by watching it fly out. But he really wanted to eat. Several times in the morning he approached the bunk, where his sick mother lay on a thin bedding like a pancake and on some kind of bundle under her head instead of a pillow. How did she end up here? She must have arrived with her boy from a foreign city and suddenly fell ill. The owner of the corners was captured by the police two days ago; the tenants scattered, it was a holiday, and the only one left, the robe, had been lying dead drunk for the whole day, without even waiting for the holiday. In another corner of the room, some eighty-year-old old woman, who had once lived somewhere as a nanny, but was now dying alone, was moaning from rheumatism, groaning, grumbling and grumbling at the boy, so that he was already afraid to come close to her corner. He got something to drink somewhere in the hallway, but couldn’t find a crust anywhere, and for the tenth time he already went to wake up his mother. He finally felt terrified in the darkness: evening had long since begun, but the fire had not been lit. Feeling his mother’s face, he was amazed that she did not move at all and became as cold as a wall. “It’s very cold here,” he thought, stood for a while, unconsciously forgetting his hand on the dead woman’s shoulder, then he breathed on his fingers to warm them, and suddenly, rummaging for his cap on the bunk, slowly, gropingly, he went to the basement. He would have gone even earlier, but he was still afraid of the big dog upstairs, on the stairs, which had been howling all day at the neighbors’ doors. But the dog was no longer there, and he suddenly went outside.

Lord, what a city! He had never seen anything like this before. Where he came from, it was so dark at night, there was only one lantern on the entire street. Low wooden houses are closed with shutters; on the street, as soon as it gets dark, there is no one, everyone shuts up in their homes, and only whole packs of dogs howl, hundreds and thousands of them, howl and bark all night. But there it was so warm and they gave him something to eat, but here - Lord, if only he could eat! And what a knock and thunder there is, what light and people, horses and carriages, and frost, frost! Frozen steam rises from the driven horses, from their hot breathing muzzles; Horseshoes ring on the stones through the loose snow, and everyone is pushing so hard, and, God, I really want to eat, even just a piece of something, and my fingers suddenly hurt so much. A peace officer walked by and turned away so as not to notice the boy.

Here is the street again - oh, how wide! Here they will probably be crushed like that; how they all scream, run and drive, and the light, the light! And what's that? Wow, what a big glass, and behind the glass there is a room, and in the room there is wood up to the ceiling; this is a Christmas tree, and on the tree there are so many lights, so many golden pieces of paper and apples, and all around there are dolls and little horses; and children are running around the room, dressed up, clean, laughing and playing, and eating, and drinking something. This girl started dancing with the boy, what a pretty girl! Here comes the music, you can hear it through the glass. The boy looks, marvels, and laughs, but his fingers and toes are already hurting, and his hands have become completely red, they no longer bend and it hurts to move. And suddenly the boy remembered that his fingers hurt so much, he began to cry and ran on, and now again he sees through another glass a room, again there are trees, but on the tables there are all kinds of pies - almond, red, yellow, and four people are sitting there rich ladies, and whoever comes, they give him pies, and the door opens every minute, many gentlemen come in from the street. The boy crept up, suddenly opened the door and entered. Wow, how they shouted and waved at him! One lady quickly came up and put a penny in his hand, and she opened the door to the street for him. How scared he was! And the penny immediately rolled out and rang down the steps: he could not bend his red fingers and hold it. The boy ran out and went as quickly as possible, but he didn’t know where. He wants to cry again, but he’s too afraid, and he runs and runs and blows on his hands. And melancholy takes over him, because he suddenly felt so lonely and terrible, and suddenly, Lord! So what is this again? People are standing in a crowd and marveling: on the window behind the glass there are three dolls, small, dressed in red and green dresses and very, very lifelike! Some old man sits and seems to be playing a large violin, two others stand right there and play small violins, and shake their heads to the beat, and look at each other, and their lips move, they talk, they really talk - only now You can't hear it because of the glass. And at first the boy thought that they were alive, but when he realized that they were dolls, he suddenly laughed. He had never seen such dolls and did not know that such existed! And he wants to cry, but the dolls are so funny. Suddenly it seemed to him that someone grabbed him by the robe from behind: a big, angry boy stood nearby and suddenly hit him on the head, tore off his cap, and kicked him from below. The boy rolled to the ground, then they screamed, he was stupefied, he jumped up and ran and ran, and suddenly he ran into he doesn’t know where, into a gateway, into someone else’s yard, and sat down behind some firewood: “They won’t find anyone here, and it’s dark.”

He sat down and huddled, but he couldn’t catch his breath from fear, and suddenly, quite suddenly, he felt so good: his arms and legs suddenly stopped hurting and it became so warm, so warm, like on a stove; Now he shuddered all over: oh, but he was about to fall asleep! How nice it is to fall asleep here: “I’ll sit here and go look at the dolls again,” the boy thought and grinned, remembering them, “just like alive!” And suddenly he heard his mother singing a song above him. “Mom, I’m sleeping, oh, how good it is to sleep here!”

“Let’s go to my Christmas tree, boy,” a quiet voice suddenly whispered above him.

He thought it was all his mother, but no, not her; He doesn’t see who called him, but someone bent over him and hugged him in the darkness, and he extended his hand and... and suddenly - oh, what a light! Oh, what a tree! And it’s not a Christmas tree, he’s never seen such trees before! Where is he now: everything glitters, everything shines and there are all dolls all around - but no, these are all boys and girls, only so bright, they all circle around him, fly, they all kiss him, take him, carry him with them, yes and he himself flies, and he sees: his mother is looking and laughing at him joyfully.

- Mother! Mother! Oh, how nice it is here, mom! - the boy shouts to her, and again kisses the children, and he wants to tell them as soon as possible about those dolls behind the glass. -Who are you, boys? Who are you girls? - he asks, laughing and loving them.

“This is Christ’s Christmas tree,” they answer him. - Christ always has a Christmas tree on this day for little children who don’t have their own Christmas tree... - And he found out that these boys and girls were all just like him, children, but some were still frozen in their baskets, in which they were thrown on the stairs to the doors of St. Petersburg officials; others suffocated among the Chukhonkas, from the orphanage while being fed, others died at the withered breasts of their mothers (during the Samara famine), the fourth suffocated in third-class carriages from the stench, and they are all here now, all of them are now like angels, all of them Christ, and he himself is in the midst of them, and stretches out his hands to them, and blesses them and their sinful mothers... And the mothers of these children all stand right there, on the sidelines, and cry; everyone recognizes their boy or girl, and they fly up to them and kiss them, wipe away their tears with their hands and beg them not to cry, because they feel so good here...

And downstairs, the next morning, the janitors found the small corpse of a boy who had run and frozen to collect firewood; They also found his mother... She died before him; both met with the Lord God in heaven.

And why did I compose such a story, which does not fit into an ordinary reasonable diary, especially a writer’s? And he also promised stories mainly about actual events! But that’s the thing, it seems and seems to me that all this could really happen - that is, what happened in the basement and behind the firewood, and there about the Christmas tree at Christ’s - I don’t know how to tell you , could it happen or not? That's why I'm a novelist, to invent things.

...and poured bad vodka into my mouth // Ruthlessly poured...– Inaccurate quote from N. A. Nekrasov’s poem “Childhood” (1855), which is the second edition of the poem “Excerpt” (“I was born in the province...”, 1844). During the lifetime of Nekrasov and Dostoevsky, “Childhood” was not published, but was circulated in lists. When and how Dostoevsky met him is not clear; nevertheless, the entire scene of getting a young boy drunk echoes the following excerpt from “Childhood”:

From my mother on the sly
He put me in his place
And put nasty vodka in my mouth
Drop by drop he poured:
“Well, refuel from a young age,
Fool, you will grow up -
You won't die of hunger.
You can’t drink your shirt away!” –
That's what he said - and furiously
Laughed with friends
When I'm like crazy
And he fell and screamed...
(Nekrasov N.A. Complete collection of works and letters: In 15 volumes, L., 1981. T. 1. P. 558).

...others suffocated from the Chukhonkas, from the orphanage for food...– Orphanages were called shelters for foundlings and street babies. Dostoevsky’s attention was drawn to the St. Petersburg orphanage back in 1873 by a note in “Voice” (1873. March 9), which outlined a letter from priest John Nikolsky about the high mortality rate among the pupils of this institution, distributed to the peasant women of his parish in Tsarskoye Selo district. The letter indicated that peasant women take children in order to get linen and money for them, and do not take care of babies; in turn, doctors who issue documents for the right to take a child show complete indifference and indifference to whose hands the children will fall into. In the May issue of “The Diary of a Writer,” talking about his visit to the Orphanage, Dostoevsky mentions his intention “to go to the villages, to the Chukhonkas, who have been given babies to raise” (see p. 176).

Chukhonets- Finnish

...during the Samara famine...– In 1871 – 1873 The Samara province suffered catastrophic crop failures, causing severe famine.

...the fourth suffocated in third-class carriages from the stench...– “Moskovskie Vedomosti” (1876. January 6) cited an entry from the complaint book at Art. Voronezh that a boy and a girl were burned to death on the train, in a third-class carriage, and that the latter’s condition was hopeless. “The reason is the stench in the carriage, from which even adult passengers fled.”