“What Russian does not love to drive fast”

“What Russian does not love to drive fast?” turns the movement of Chichikov’s carriage into a meditation on Russia itself. From the sleepy horses jolted into motion to the troika racing toward an unanswered horizon, the passage makes speed at once exhilarating, comic, and ominous: the country’s immense forward force is palpable, but where it is going remains unknown.

From Drowsiness to Speed

The passage begins with a small disorder in the carriage. Selifan has nearly fallen asleep, his hands offering the horses little encouragement beyond an occasional flick of the reins. Petrushka has lost his cap and slumped backward until his head rests against Chichikov’s knees; a cuff wakes him. Selifan rouses himself and strikes the skewbald horse, which starts to trot. The other two follow, and the light britchka moves forward with sudden ease.

Selifan flourishes his whip and cries, “Hi, hi!” as the uneven road jolts him on his seat. Inside, Chichikov reclines against the leather cushions, pleased by the sensation of speed. The contrast is immediate: the driver is bounced about and must spur the team, while the passenger enjoys the ride from the comfort of the carriage. The shift from sluggishness to motion opens the scene beyond the individual journey.

The Pleasure of Driving Fast

The narrator broadens Chichikov’s pleasure into a shared national impulse, asking, “For what Russian does not love to drive fast?” The question imagines the desire to give the horses their head and shout, “To the devil with the world!” Speed becomes a bodily release: a great force seems to lift the traveler, while the surrounding world appears to fly backward.

The images accumulate in the carriage’s wake: verst stones, traders riding on wagon shafts, and dark lines of spruce and fir, where the woodcutter’s axe and a raven’s croak can be heard. Yet the faster the vehicle moves, the less clearly the traveler sees. The road seems to come toward him from a dim distance, while fleeting glimpses of the landscape remain indistinct. Motion intensifies perception and obscures it at the same time, giving the ride its pervasive mystery.

The Troika and Russia

The narrator turns from the carriage to the troika, addressing it as swift as a bird and asking who first invented it. Its character is set against fashionable, iron-fitted vehicles: this is shaped with the axe or chisel of a peasant from Yaroslav and driven not by a coachman in German livery but by a bearded man in mittens. The vehicle and its driver are presented as products of a hardy people and a poor, rough land extending across half the world.

The troika’s speed transforms its visible parts. The horses rush like the wind; the wheel spokes become transparent circles, and the road seems to quiver beneath them. A pedestrian cries out and stops to watch as the vehicle flies repeatedly into the distance, finally dwindling to a speck in a cloud of dust. The scene’s vivid physical spectacle makes the troika more than a means of travel: it becomes the passage’s emblem of a distinctly Russian power in motion.

An Unanswered Direction

The address to the troika gives way to an address to Russia, imagined as speeding in the same way, with the road smoking beneath its wheels and bridges thundering as it crosses them. Those left behind halt in wonder, unable to tell whether they are watching a vehicle or a thunderbolt launched from heaven. The narrator asks what this awe-inspiring progress foretells and what force lies within the horses, whose manes seem to hold the winds and whose bodies appear attuned to a celestial message.

The passage ends not with an explanation but with a question: “Whither, then, are you speeding, O Russia of mine? Whither?” No answer comes; only the sound of the collar-bells. That silence changes the passage’s exhilaration into uncertainty. Russia’s speed is undeniable, and the troika’s forward motion seems nearly supernatural in scale, but its destination and purpose remain beyond the narrator’s knowledge. The expression therefore holds the pleasure of movement beside a larger national enigma.