Markel Kondratieff

Markel Kondratieff is a political prisoner and former factory hand who, through self-education and revolutionary commitment, becomes a devoted follower of the intellectual leader Novodvoroff. His journey from exploited laborer to hardened revolutionary illustrates the transformative and often bitter radicalization of the working class in late Tsarist Russia.

Identity and Background

Kondratieff began working at the age of fifteen. His first clear sense of injustice came one Christmas when the factory owner's children received lavish gifts worth over fifty roubles, while he and the other factory children were given only a farthing whistle, an apple, a gilt walnut, and a fig. This early experience of class inequality left a dense sense of being wronged, which he initially tried to stifle with smoking and drinking. At twenty, a celebrated revolutionist came to work at his factory as a working girl. Noticing his superior qualities, she began giving him books and pamphlets, explaining his position and how to remedy it. Once the possibility of freeing himself and others from their oppressed state rose clearly in his mind, the injustice appeared more cruel and terrible than before, and he longed passionately not only for freedom but also for the punishment of those who had arranged and kept up this cruel injustice.

Life and Plot Trajectory

Kondratieff devoted himself with passion to the acquirement of knowledge. He left off drinking and smoking, and devoted all his leisure time to study. The revolutionist gave him lessons, and his thirst for every kind of knowledge, and the facility with which he took it in, surprised her. In two years he mastered algebra, geometry, history—which he was specially fond of—and made acquaintance with artistic and critical, and especially socialistic literature. The revolutionist was arrested, and Kondratieff with her, forbidden books having been found in their possession. They were imprisoned and then exiled to the Vologda Government. There Kondratieff became acquainted with Novodvoroff, and read a great deal more revolutionary literature, remembered it all, and became still firmer in his socialistic views. While in exile he became leader in a large strike, which ended in the destruction of a factory and the murder of the director. He was again arrested and condemned to Siberia. On the journey, he is one of the political prisoners traveling with the gang, and he is seen carrying provisions—two pots of milk and round boxes made of birch bark—into the prisoners' room.

Key Actions and Objectives

Kondratieff is ascetic through habit, contenting himself with very little, and, like all those used to work from childhood, he can work much and easily, and is quick at any manual labor. What he values most is the leisure in prisons and halting stations, which enables him to continue his studies. He is now studying the first volume of Karl Marx's Capital, and carefully hides the book in his sack as if it were a great treasure. He behaves with reserve and indifference to all his comrades, except Novodvoroff, to whom he is greatly attached, and whose arguments on all subjects he accepts as unanswerable truths. During a dispute in the prison, when Novodvoroff argues that the masses can only be the object of revolutionary activity and cannot be fellow-workers as long as they remain in a state of inertia, Kondratieff puts down the book he is reading by the lamplight and begins to listen attentively to his master's words.

Relationships and Conflict

Kondratieff has an indefinite contempt for women, whom he looks upon as a hindrance in all necessary business. He pities Maslova and is gentle with her, for he considers her an example of the way the lower classes are exploited by the upper classes. The same reason makes him dislike Nekhludoff, so that he talks little with him, and never presses Nekhludoff's hand, but only holds out his own to be pressed when greeting him. His religious views are of the same negative nature as his views of the existing economic conditions. Having seen the absurdity of the religion in which he was brought up, and having gained with great effort, and at first with fear but later with rapture, freedom from it, he does not tire of viciously and with venom ridiculing priests and religious dogmas, as if wishing to revenge himself for the deception that had been practised on him.

Change and Ending

Kondratieff remains a consistent, ascetic revolutionary throughout the narrative. He is one of the few political prisoners entirely free from love affairs, his entire emotional and intellectual energy being channeled into his revolutionary commitment and his devotion to Novodvoroff's ideas. On the journey, he sits on one of the carts with Novodvoroff and Grabetz, continuing his role as a disciplined follower.

Narrative Role and Evaluation

Kondratieff serves as a representative of the radicalized working-class revolutionary, in contrast to the peasant-origin revolutionary Nabatoff, who wishes to preserve the old forms of peasant life. His character illustrates the bitter, intellectualized, and ascetic path of a worker who has broken completely with his past and with traditional religion, finding in Marxist theory and revolutionary discipline a total framework for understanding and combating the injustice he experienced from childhood.