Barge Haulers on the Volga

In the 1860s, the peasant movement in Russia was so strong that Alexander II of Russia proclaimed the abolition of serfdom in February 1861. However, the deep-rooted feudal forces of exploitation did not budge at all, and the misery of the Russian peasants did not improve. Barge Haulers on the Volga is a vivid reflection of this reality. It is a masterpiece among the critical realist paintings created by Ilya Repin, one of Russia's greatest painters, in the 1870s and 1873s. The painting is a masterpiece with a strong realist spirit, which took Repin three years, two trips to the Volga River, a lot of observation and sketching, and finally, the completion of a painting renowned in the art world.

In the composition of this painting, Repin made use of the topography of the beach and the twists and turns of the river bay so that the eleven male burlaks are shaped like a group of sculpted figures on a yellow, raised pedestal. The clever layout of the Volga on the canvas gives the painting a grand and far-reaching tension, although it is not a very large painting. On the scorched banks of the river, a group of exhausted burlaks dragged their heavy feet to pull the barge. They are old and young, all dressed in rags, emaciated. The leader is a bearded old man with deep-set eyes and a resolute face reflecting weathered wisdom, but the sad expression still shows his helplessness for the hard life. The burlak walks at the end with his head hanging hands, numbly moves forward with the team, and seems to have been accustomed to such a day-to-day hard labor-like life.

There is another prominent figure in the team. A young man moves in the middle of the team, and his frown indicates that he has only recently started such work and is not quite accustomed to it. He straightens up and tries to use his hands to loosen the rope tightly strung on his shoulders, showing that he is, after all, young and not yet willing to endure such suffering. The rest of the burlaks are bent over and bowed their heads as if they have no more strength to show anything, and all that remains in them are poverty, hardship and helplessness.

Barge Haulers on the Volga expresses the miserable life of the Russian peasants under the exploitation of feudal power and capitalists and records the true face of the society at that time. The suffering of the 11 burlaks represents the suffering of the whole of Russia. In the painting, Repin indicts the cannibalistic Tsarist system and expresses his sympathy for the lower classes. It not only reveals the contradiction between a beautiful country and the reality of poverty but also affirms the positive forces of society and adds a new language to Russian genre painting.

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