N. A. Nekrasov: Korobeiniki [The Pedlars]

The year 1861 was a key year in Russian history, when the tsar, Alexander II, emancipated the serfs. It was also a watershed in the development towards his mature poetic best of Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov, with the creation of The Pedlars (Korobeiniki), the first of the three great narrative poems on the theme of the Russian peasantry that stand pre-eminent in his oeuvre. The artistic achievement of these three narrative poems and the richness of their content make them, among all his works, most worthy of consideration by the modern reader. They are also of note as the only creations of their author to have been subject to major critical disagreement in the analysis of their message.

The Pedlars was a pr