Struggle in Russia

Recently, Li Xiao had a fairly relaxed life. During the day, he inspected the situation of the company, and then continued to study Russian. Now he can already stutter and communicate in Russian. Then, in addition to exercising his frail body, the rest of the time is to preside over the teaching of cultural cram schools and the compilation of teaching plans.

The latter two tasks took up most of his time and energy. It is really very difficult to engage in education, because you have no way of predicting what kind of strange things there are among your students.

Of course, Li Xiao knew the level of his students well. Re-learning must be quite painful for these senior students, most of whom have never been to school as adults. Especially during the day, they have heavy military training tasks, they are drilled like dogs, and then they have to listen to those cultural classes that make people drowsy by dim kerosene lamps at night.

The teaching progress is predictably slow. It took a whole week for the soldiers of the whole company to basically master the Cyrillic alphabet, which is slower than a turtle crawling.

"Company commander, according to the current teaching progress, it may take ten years to teach these people to read and write!"

"But they certainly won't be in the military for ten years, so what's the point of our work?"

"I'm sure, as long as they leave the barracks, these lazybones will immediately forget all the words they have learned!"

What Li Xiao didn't expect was that it wasn't the students who rebelled first, but the hardworking gardeners. It took only three days for the convict soldiers captured by him to become depressed from their initial high spirits. If he hadn't personally supervised them on the fourth day, these teachers would have wanted to put down their picks directly.

Of course, this only allowed the teachers to persist for four more days. The unusually slow teaching progress and the stupid and unrefined students made the teachers' teaching enthusiasm comparable to that of a scumbag who succeeded in sex, and it disappeared so quickly.

Li Xiao can only continue to encourage them: "Gentlemen, our teaching progress is indeed not satisfactory. There are more difficulties than imagined... But this does not mean that our work is meaningless!"

"...we will definitely encounter huge challenges at the beginning, but the significance of our work is not to challenge the backward tradition, enlighten and educate the ignorant Chinese, let them see the world with their eyes open, and let them talk about the ignorance and ignorance of the past. Goodbye..."

"...If we can't even overcome this difficulty, we will never be able to clarify our doctrines and ideas to the general public... Our country will always be closed, backward and ignorant until it is destroyed!"

"Gentlemen, I believe you don't want to see this kind of result! And our job now is to ignite the spark, to be the morning star, to be the pioneer. Everything you do now will be remembered by history and will remain in the annals of history forever!"

I have to say that Li Xiao's encouragement was quite effective. He captured the most urgent psychological needs of these people - they need approval and praise. As long as a little encouragement and stimulation, they will regroup and kill gods and Buddhas.

Of course, it's not enough to beat chicken blood alone, and the mental stimulation must be supplemented with material. In addition to praising the teachers on a daily basis, Li Xiao also gave them special treatment with a big wave of his hand. They don't need to continue to do hard labor, and they don't need to do exercises. In the season when dripping water turns into ice, you can stay in the warm company headquarters to read books, debate and write, except that you can't leave the camp, which can be regarded as freedom. There is milk and meat in every meal. There is coffee in the morning and black tea in the afternoon, and there is a small meal every week. It is quite nourishing.

This made Boris envious and jealous: "As for giving such a good treatment? They are just hard labor prisoners. If they don't work honestly, they will go to dig coal!"

"You can't blindly use violence against cultural people," Li Xiao pouted, "Using a whip to drive them to work is completely different from using carrots to lure them to work... Besides, it doesn't cost much, three or five people How much can I eat? Besides, isn’t my manuscript fee quite enough!”

Speaking of royalties,

Li Xiao was in a daze. Originally, he just planned to write something casually to fool Leonid. Who would have thought that the deputy head would take it seriously, and spoke highly of Li Xiao's article. In addition to sharing content, he even helped Li Xiao contribute.

With the endorsement of the Crown Prince's aide-de-camp and the duke's son, publications in Russia have been given the green light to publish many articles. He even submitted manuscripts abroad, and even English and French professional journals published Li Xiao's articles.

It has to be said that the Russian literati in this era are both painful and happy. The painful thing is the heavy shackles imposed by Nicholas I, which can make people breathless. But at the same time, Nicholas I also rewarded those literati who were willing to work hard for him to speak well.

At that time, Pushkin received a huge amount of sponsorship from Nicholas I, so that he could live and work in St. Petersburg and marry a young and beautiful wife (really a very young wife, not a mistress).

Nicholas I even spent a lot of money to paint his face, and he made a big joke about it. In 1839, Nicholas I invited the famous French writer Marquis Coutins to travel to Russia at the suggestion of Benkendorf, the No. The Marquis wrote some articles praising Nicholas I.

The plan is quite good. Both Nicholas I and Benkendorf took it for granted that the Marquis of Coutins, as a descendant of a nobleman who was sent to the guillotine during the French Revolution, because his grandfather and father were beheaded by the revolutionaries, he also supported it. Absolutism should appreciate Nicholas I, the great absolutist monarch.

But the final result was that the Marquis of Kutins published a book "Russia in 1839" after returning to China, which severely sarcasm Nicholas I and his autocratic court. The Marquis said in his book:

"You can experience the freedom of other European countries only if you have lived in the desert of Russia."

"Where everything is repressed, cowered with fear, all eerie silence, all blind to an invisible stick!"

"The most insignificant man, who pleases the Tsar, becomes the most important person in Russia... As the Tsar said: 'In Russia, the nobleman is the one who talks to me. And only when he talks to me , he is the noble!'"

"There are slaves in many countries, but to see so many court slaves, you have to go to Russia."

"Everything in Russia is unreal, what a 'beautiful' city Moscow is! It keeps showing me the most absurd object in history: there is the biggest clock in the world, but it never manages to ring. And The largest artillery piece in the world, but it was never able to fire a shell."

Naturally, Nicholas I was so angry that he cursed Benkendorf face to face, and then "reproached himself" bitterly: "Why am I so stupid to communicate with that hooligan!"

Anyway, Nicholas I's attitude towards cultural people was complicated. It was a big stick plus a carrot. It was terribly hard to kill, and he was as bold as a local tyrant and the second generation when he gave money. Li Xiao's manuscript fee during this period should not be too generous, it is enough to repair his dilapidated house in Haymarket.