Who Can Be Happy and Free in Russia?

Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Tapio Riikonen and PG
Distributed Proofreaders
Translated by Juliet M. Soskice
With an Introduction by Dr. David Soskice
1917
Born, near the town Vinitza, province of Podolia, November 22, 1821
Died, St. Petersburg, December 27, 1877.
'Who can be Happy and Free in Russia?' was first published in Russia in 1879. In 'The World's Classics' this translation was first published in 1917.
Western Europe has only lately begun to explore the rich domain of Russian literature, and is not yet acquainted with all even of its greatest figures. Treasures of untold beauty and priceless value, which for many decades have been enlarging and elevating the Russian mind, still await discovery here. Who in England, for instance, has heard the names of Saltykov, Uspensky, or Nekrassov? Yet Saltykov is the greatest of Russian satirists; Uspensky the greatest story-writer of the lives of the Russian toiling masses; while Nekrassov, the poet of the people's sorrow, whose muse of grief and vengeance has supremely dominated the minds of the Russian educated classes for the last half century, is the sole and rightful heir of his two great predecessors, Pushkin and Lermontov.
Russia is a country still largely mysterious to the denizen of Western Europe, and the Russian peasant, the moujik , an impenetrable riddle to him. Of all the great Russian writers not one has contributed more to the interpretation of the enigmatical soul of the moujik than Russia's great poet, Nekrassov, in his life-work the national epic, Who can be Happy in Russia?
There are few literate persons in Russia who do not know whole pages of this poem by heart. It will live as long as Russian literature exists; and its artistic value as an instrument for the depiction of Russian nature and the soul of the Russian people can be compared only with that of the great epics of Homer with regard to the legendary life of ancient Greece.
Nekrassov seemed destined to dwell from his birth amid such surroundings as are necessary for the creation of a great national poet.