Chapter 24
The night spent by Levin on the haycock did not pass
without result for him. The way in which he had been
managing his land revolted him and had lost all attraction
for him. In spite of the magnificent harvest, never had
there been, or, at least, never it seemed to him, had there
been so many hindrances and so many quarrels between
him and the peasants as that year, and the origin of these
failures and this hostility was now perfectly
comprehensible to him. The delight he had experienced in
the work itself, and the consequent greater intimacy with
the peasants, the envy he felt of them, of their life, the
desire to adopt that life, which had been to him that night
not a dream but an intention, the execution of which he
had thought out in detail —all this had so transformed his
view of the farming of the land as he had managed it, that
he could not take his former interest in it, and could not
help seeing that unpleasant relation between him and the
workspeople which was the foundation of it all. The herd
of improved cows such as Pava, the whole land ploughed
over and enriched, the nine level fields surrounded with
hedges, the two hundred and forty acres heavily manured,
the seed sown in drills, and all the rest of it—it was all
splendid if only the work had been done for themselves,
or for themselves and comrades —people in sympathy
with them. But he saw clearly now (his work on a book of
agriculture, in which the chief element in husbandry was
to have been the laborer, greatly assisted him in this) that
the sort of farming he was carrying on was nothing but a
cruel and stubborn struggle between him and the laborers,
in which there was on one side—his side—a continual
intense effort to change everything to a pattern he
considered better; on the other side, the natural order of
things. And in the struggle he saw that with immense
expenditure of force on his side, and with no effort or
even intention on the other side, all that was attained was
that the work did not go to the liking of either side, and
that splendid tools, splendid cattle and land were spoiled
with no good to anyone. Worst of all, the energy
expended on this work was not simply wasted. He could
not help feeling now, since the meaning of this system had
become clear to him, that the aim of his energy was a
most unworthy one. In reality, what was the struggle
about? He was struggling for every farthing of his share
(and he could not help it, for he had only to relax his
efforts, and he would not have had the money to pay his
laborers’ wages), while they were only struggling to be
able to do their work easily and agreeably, that is to say, as
they were used to doing it. It was for his interests that
every laborer should work as hard as possible, and that
while doing so he should keep his wits about him, so as to
try not to break the winnowing machines, the horse rakes,
the thrashing machines, that he should attend to what he
was doing. What the laborer wanted was to work as
pleasantly as possible, with rests, and above all, carelessly
and heedlessly, without thinking. That summer Levin saw
this at every step. He sent the men to mow some clover
for hay, picking out the worst patches where the clover
was overgrown with grass and weeds and of no use for
seed; again and again they mowed the best acres of clover,
justifying themselves by the pretense that the bailiff had
told them to, and trying to pacify him with the assurance
that it would be splendid hay; but he knew that it was
owing to those acres being so much easier to mow. He
sent out a hay machine for pitching the hay—it was
broken at the first row because it was dull work for a
peasant to sit on the seat in front with the great wings
waving above him. And he was told, ‘Don’t trouble, your
honor, sure, the womenfolks will pitch it quick enough.’
The ploughs were practically useless, because it never
occurred to the laborer to raise the share when he turned
the plough, and forcing it round, he strained the horses
and tore up the ground, and Levin was begged not to
mind about it. The horses were allowed to stray into the
wheat because not a single laborer would consent to be
night-watchman, and in spite of orders to the contrary, the
laborers insisted on taking turns for night duty, and Ivan,
after working all day long, fell asleep, and was very
penitent for his fault, saying, ‘Do what you will to me,
your honor.’
They killed three of the best calves by letting them into
the clover aftermath without care as to their drinking, and
nothing would make the men believe that they had been
blown out by the clover, but they told him, by way of
consolation, that one of his neighbors had lost a hundred
and twelve head of cattle in three days. All this happened,
not because anyone felt ill-will to Levin or his farm; on
the contrary, he knew that they liked him, thought him a
simple gentleman (their highest praise); but it happened
simply because all they wanted was to work merrily and
carelessly, and his interests were not only remote and
incomprehensible to them, but fatally opposed to their
most just claims. Long before, Levin had felt dissatisfaction
with his own position in regard to the land. He saw where
his boat leaked, but he did not look for the leak, perhaps
purposely deceiving himself. (Nothing would be left him
if he lost faith in it.) But now he could deceive himself no
longer. The farming of the land, as he was managing it,
had become not merely unattractive but revolting to him,
and he could take no further interest in it.
To this now was joined the presence, only twenty-five
miles off, of Kitty Shtcherbatskaya, whom he longed to
see and could not see. Darya Alexandrovna Oblonskaya
had invited him, when he was over there, to come; to
come with the object of renewing his offer to her sister,
who would, so she gave him to understand, accept him
now. Levin himself had felt on seeing Kitty
Shtcherbatskaya that he had never ceased to love her; but
he could not go over to the Oblonskys’, knowing she was
there. The fact that he had made her an offer, and she had
refused him, had placed an insuperable barrier between her
and him. ‘I can’t ask her to be my wife merely because she
can’t be the wife of the man she wanted to marry,’ he said
to himself. The thought of this made him cold and hostile
to her. ‘I should not be able to speak to her without a
feeling of reproach; I could not look at her without
resentment; and she will only hate me all the more, as
she’s bound to. And besides, how can I now, after what
Darya Alexandrovna told me, go to see them? Can I help
showing that I know what she told me? And me to go
magnanimously to forgive her, and have pity on her! Me
go through a performance before her of forgiving, and
deigning to bestow my love on her!... What induced
Darya Alexandrovna to tell me that? By chance I might
have seen her, then everything would have happened of
itself; but, as it is, it’s out of the question, out of the
question!’
Darya Alexandrovna sent him a letter, asking him for a
side-saddle for Kitty’s use. ‘I’m told you have a sidesaddle,’
she wrote to him; ‘I hope you will bring it over
yourself.’
This was more than he could stand. How could a
woman of any intelligence, of any delicacy, put her sister
in such a humiliating position! He wrote ten notes, and
tore them all up, and sent the saddle without any reply.
To write that he would go was impossible, because he
could not go; to write that he could not come because
something prevented him, or that he would be away, that
was still worse. He sent the saddle without an answer, and
with a sense of having done something shameful; he
handed over all the now revolting business of the estate to
the bailiff, and set off next day to a remote district to see
his friend Sviazhsky, who had splendid marshes for grouse
in his neighborhood, and had lately written to ask him to
keep a long-standing promise to stay with him. The
grouse-marsh, in the Surovsky district, had long tempted
Levin, but he had continually put off this visit on account
of his work on the estate. Now he was glad to get away
from the neighborhood of the Shtcherbatskys, and still
more from his farm work, especially on a shooting
expedition, which always in trouble served as the best
consolation.
Chapter 25
In the Surovsky district there was no railway nor
service of post horses, and Levin drove there with his own
horses in his big, old-fashioned carriage.
He stopped halfway at a well-to-do peasant’s to feed his
horses. A bald, well-preserved old man, with a broad, red
beard, gray on his cheeks, opened the gate, squeezing
against the gatepost to let the three horses pass. Directing
the coachman to a place under the shed in the big, clean,
tidy yard, with charred, old-fashioned ploughs in it, the
old man asked Levin to come into the parlor. A cleanly
dressed young woman, with clogs on her bare feet, was
scrubbing the floor in the new outer room. She was
frightened of the dog, that ran in after Levin, and uttered a
shriek, but began laughing at her own fright at once when
she was told the dog would not hurt her. Pointing Levin
with her bare arm to the door into the parlor, she bent
down again, hiding her handsome face, and went on
scrubbing.
‘Would you like the samovar?’ she asked.
‘Yes, please.’
The parlor was a big room, with a Dutch stove, and a
screen dividing it into two. Under the holy pictures stood
a table painted in patterns, a bench, and two chairs. Near
the entrance was a dresser full of crockery. The shutters
were closed, there were few flies, and it was so clean that
Levin was anxious that Laska, who had been running
along the road and bathing in puddles, should not muddy
the floor, and ordered her to a place in the corner by the
door. After looking round the parlor, Levin went out in
the back yard. The good-looking young woman in clogs,
swinging the empty pails on the yoke, ran on before him
to the well for water.
‘Look sharp, my girl!’ the old man shouted after her,
good-humoredly, and he went up to Levin. ‘Well, sir, are
you going to Nikolay Ivanovitch Sviazhsky? His honor
comes to us too,’ he began, chatting, leaning his elbows
on the railing of the steps. In the middle of the old man’s
account of his acquaintance with Sviazhsky, the gates
creaked again, and laborers came into the yard from the
fields, with wooden ploughs and harrows. The horses
harnessed to the ploughs and harrows were sleek and fat.
The laborers were obviously of the household: two were
young men in cotton shirts and caps, the two others were
hired laborers in homespun shirts, one an old man, the
other a young fellow. Moving off from the steps, the old
man went up to the horses and began unharnessing them.
‘What have they been ploughing?’ asked Levin.
‘Ploughing up the potatoes. We rent a bit of land too.
Fedot, don’t let out the gelding, but take it to the trough,
and we’ll put the other in harness.’
‘Oh, father, the ploughshares I ordered, has he brought
them along?’ asked the big, healthy-looking fellow,
obviously the old man’s son.
‘There...in the outer room,’ answered the old man,
bundling together the harness he had taken off, and
flinging it on the ground. ‘You can put them on, while
they have dinner.’
The good-looking young woman came into the outer
room with the full pails dragging at her shoulders. More
women came on the scene from somewhere, young and
handsome, middle-aged, old and ugly, with children and
without children.
The samovar was beginning to sing; the laborers and
the family, having disposed of the horses, came in to
dinner. Levin, getting his provisions out of his carriage,
invited the old man to take tea with him.
‘Well, I have had some today already,’ said the old
man, obviously accepting the invitation with pleasure.
‘But just a glass for company.’
Over their tea Levin heard all about the old man’s
farming. Ten years before, the old man had rented three
hundred acres from the lady who owned them, and a year
ago he had bought them and rented another three
hundred from a neighboring landowner. A small part of
the land—the worst part—he let out for rent, while a
hundred acres of arable land he cultivated himself with his
family and two hired laborers. The old man complained
that things were doing badly. But Levin saw that he simply
did so from a feeling of propriety, and that his farm was in
a flourishing condition. If it had been unsuccessful he
would not have bought land at thirty-five roubles the acre,
he would not have married his three sons and a nephew,
he would not have rebuilt twice after fires, and each time
on a larger scale. In spite of the old man’s complaints, it
was evident that he was proud, and justly proud, of his
prosperity, proud of his sons, his nephew, his sons’ wives,
his horses and his cows, and especially of the fact that he
was keeping all this farming going. From his conversation
with the old man, Levin thought he was not averse to new
methods either. He had planted a great many potatoes, and
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his potatoes, as Levin had seen driving past, were already
past flowering and beginning to die down, while Levin’s
were only just coming into flower. He earthed up his
potatoes with a modern plough borrowed from a
neighboring landowner. He sowed wheat. The trifling fact
that, thinning out his rye, the old man used the rye he
thinned out for his horses, specially struck Levin. How
many times had Levin seen this splendid fodder wasted,
and tried to get it saved; but always it had turned out to be
impossible. The peasant got this done, and he could not
say enough in praise of it as food for the beasts.
‘What have the wenches to do? They carry it out in
bundles to the roadside, and the cart brings it away.’
‘Well, we landowners can’t manage well with our
laborers,’ said Levin, handing him a glass of tea.
‘Thank you,’ said the old man, and he took the glass,
but refused sugar, pointing to a lump he had left. ‘They’re
simple destruction,’ said he. ‘Look at Sviazhsky’s, for
instance. We know what the land’s like—first-rate, yet
there’s not much of a crop to boast of. It’s not looked after
enough—that’s all it is!’
‘But you work your land with hired laborers?’
‘We’re all peasants together. We go into everything
ourselves. If a man’s no use, he can go, and we can
manage by ourselves.’
‘Father Finogen wants some tar,’ said the young
woman in the clogs, coming in.
‘Yes, yes, that’s how it is, sir!’ said the old man, getting
up, and crossing himself deliberately, he thanked Levin
and went out.
When Levin went into the kitchen to call his
coachman he saw the whole family at dinner. The women
were standing up waiting on them. The young, sturdylooking
son was telling something funny with his mouth
full of pudding, and they were all laughing, the woman in
the clogs, who was pouring cabbage soup into a bowl,
laughing most merrily of all.
Very probably the good-looking face of the young
woman in the dogs had a good deal to do with the
impression of well-being this peasant household made
upon Levin, but the impression was so strong that Levin
could never get rid of it. And all the way from the old
peasant’s to Sviazhsky’s he kept recalling this peasant farm
as though there were something in this impression that
demanded his special attention.
Chapter 26
Sviazhsky was the marshal of his district. He was five
years older than Levin, and had long been married. His
sister-in-law, a young girl Levin liked very much, lived in
his house; and Levin knew that Sviazhsky and his wife
would have greatly liked to marry the girl to him. He
knew this with certainty, as so-called eligible young men
always know it, though he could never have brought
himself to speak of it to anyone; and he knew too that,
although he wanted to get married, and although by every
token this very attractive girl would make an excellent
wife, he could no more have married her, even if he had
not been in love with Kitty Shtcherbatskaya, than he
could have flown up to the sky. And this knowledge
poisoned the pleasure he had hoped to find in the visit to
Sviazhsky.
On getting Sviazhsky’s letter with the invitation for
shooting, Levin had immediately thought of this; but in
spite of it he had made up his mind that Sviazhsky’s
having such views for him was simply his own groundless
supposition, and so he would go, all the same. Besides, at
the bottom of his heart he had a desire to try himself, put
himself to the test in regard to this girl. The Sviazhskys’
home-life was exceedingly pleasant, and Sviazhsky himself,
the best type of man taking part in local affairs that Levin
knew, was very interesting to him.
Sviazhsky was one of those people, always a source of
wonder to Levin, whose convictions, very logical though
never original, go one way by themselves, while their life,
exceedingly definite and firm in its direction, goes its way
quite apart and almost always in direct contradiction to
their convictions. Sviazhsky was an extremely advanced
man. He despised the nobility, and believed the mass of
the nobility to be secretly in favor of serfdom, and only
concealing their views from cowardice. He regarded
Russia as a ruined country, rather after the style of Turkey,
and the government of Russia as so bad that he never
permitted himself to criticize its doings seriously, and yet
he was a functionary of that government and a model
marshal of nobility, and when he drove about he always
wore the cockade of office and the cap with the red band.
He considered human life only tolerable abroad, and went
abroad to stay at every opportunity, and at the same time
he carried on a complex and improved system of
agriculture in Russia, and with extreme interest followed
everything and knew everything that was being done in
Russia. He considered the Russian peasant as occupying a
stage of development intermediate between the ape and
the man, and at the same time in the local assemblies no
one was readier to shake hands with the peasants and listen
to their opinion. He believed neither in God nor the
devil, but was much concerned about the question of the
improvement of the clergy and the maintenance of their
revenues, and took special trouble to keep up the church
in his village.
On the woman question he was on the side of the
extreme advocates of complete liberty for women, and
especially their right to labor. But he lived with his wife
on such terms that their affectionate childless home life
was the admiration of everyone, and arranged his wife’s
life so that she did nothing and could do nothing but share
her husband’s efforts that her time should pass as happily
and as agreeably as possible.
If it had not been a characteristic of Levin’s to put the
most favorable interpretation on people, Sviazhsky’s
character would have presented no doubt or difficulty to
him: he would have said to himself, ‘a fool or a knave,’
and everything would have seemed clear. But he could
not say ‘a fool,’ because Sviazhsky was unmistakably
clever, and moreover, a highly cultivated man, who was
exceptionally modest over his culture. There was not a
subject he knew nothing of. But he did not display his
knowledge except when he was compelled to do so. Still
less could Levin say that he was a knave, as Sviazhsky was
unmistakably an honest, good-hearted, sensible man, who
worked good-humoredly, keenly, and perseveringly at his
work; he was held in high honor by everyone about him,
and certainly he had never consciously done, and was
indeed incapable of doing, anything base.
Levin tried to understand him, and could not
understand him, and looked at him and his life as at a
living enigma.
Levin and he were very friendly, and so Levin used to
venture to sound Sviazhsky, to try to get at the very
foundation of his view of life; but it was always in vain.
Every time Levin tried to penetrate beyond the outer
chambers of Sviazhsky’s mind, which were hospitably
open to all, he noticed that Sviazhsky was slightly
disconcerted; faint signs of alarm were visible in his eyes,
as though he were afraid Levin would understand him,
and he would give him a kindly, good-humored repulse.
Just now, since his disenchantment with farming, Levin
was particularly glad to stay with Sviazhsky. Apart from
the fact that the sight of this happy and affectionate
couple, so pleased with themselves and everyone else, and
their well-ordered home had always a cheering effect on
Levin, he felt a longing, now that he was so dissatisfied
with his own life, to get at that secret in Sviazhsky that
gave him such clearness, definiteness, and good courage in
life. Moreover, Levin knew that at Sviazhsky’s he should
meet the landowners of the neighborhood, and it was
particularly interesting for him just now to hear and take
part in those rural conversations concerning crops,
laborers’ wages, and so on, which, he was aware, are
conventionally regarded as something very low, but which
seemed to him just now to constitute the one subject of
importance. ‘It was not, perhaps, of importance in the days
of serfdom, and it may not be of importance in England.
In both cases the conditions of agriculture are firmly
established; but among us now, when everything has been
turned upside down and is only just taking shape, the
question what form these conditions will take is the one
question of importance in Russia,’ thought Levin.
The shooting turned out to be worse than Levin had
expected. The marsh was dry and there were no grouse at
all. He walked about the whole day and only brought
back three birds, but to make up for that—he brought
back, as he always did from shooting, an excellent
appetite, excellent spirits, and that keen, intellectual mood
which with him always accompanied violent physical
exertion. And while out shooting, when he seemed to be
thinking of nothing at all, suddenly the old man and his
family kept coming back to his mind, and the impression
of them seemed to claim not merely his attention, but the
solution of some question connected with them.
In the evening at tea, two landowners who had come
about some business connected with a wardship were of
the party, and the interesting conversation Levin had been
looking forward to sprang up.
Levin was sitting beside his hostess at the tea table, and
was obliged to keep up a conversation with her and her
sister, who was sitting opposite him. Madame Sviazhskaya
was a round-faced, fair-haired, rather short woman, all
smiles and dimples. Levin tried through her to get a
solution of the weighty enigma her husband presented to
his mind; but he had not complete freedom of ideas,
because he was in an agony of embarrassment. This agony
of embarrassment was due to the fact that the sister-in-law
was sitting opposite to him, in a dress, specially put on, as
he fancied, for his benefit, cut particularly open, in the
shape of a trapeze, on her white bosom. This quadrangular
opening, in spite of the bosom’s being very white, or just
because it was very white, deprived Levin of the full use of
his faculties. He imagined, probably mistakenly, that this
low-necked bodice had been made on his account, and
felt that he had no right to look at it, and tried not to look
at it; but he felt that he was to blame for the very fact of
the low-necked bodice having been made. It seemed to
Levin that he had deceived someone, that he ought to
explain something, but that to explain it was impossible,
and for that reason he was continually blushing, was ill at
ease and awkward. His awkwardness infected the pretty
sister-in-law too. But their hostess appeared not to observe
this, and kept purposely drawing her into the
conversation.
‘You say,’ she said, pursuing the subject that had been
started, ‘that my husband cannot be interested in what’s
Russian. It’s quite the contrary; he is always in cheerful
spirits abroad, but not as he is here. Here, he feels in his
proper place. He has so much to do, and he has the faculty
of interesting himself in everything. Oh, you’ve not been
to see our school, have you?’
‘I’ve seen it.... The little house covered with ivy, isn’t
it?’
‘Yes; that’s Nastia’s work,’ she said, indicating her
sister.
‘You teach in it yourself?’ asked Levin, trying to look
above the open neck, but feeling that wherever he looked
in that direction he should see it.
‘Yes; I used to teach in it myself, and do teach still, but
we have a first-rate schoolmistress now. And we’ve started
gymnastic exercises.’
‘No, thank you, I won’t have any more tea,’ said
Levin, and conscious of doing a rude thing, but incapable
of continuing the conversation, he got up, blushing. ‘I
hear a very interesting conversation,’ he added, and
walked to the other end of the table, where Sviazhsky was
sitting with the two gentlemen of the neighborhood.
Sviazhsky was sitting sideways, with one elbow on the
table, and a cup in one hand, while with the other hand
he gathered up his beard, held it to his nose and let it drop
again, as though he were smelling it. His brilliant black
eyes were looking straight at the excited country
gentleman with gray whiskers, and apparently he derived
amusement from his remarks. The gentleman was
complaining of the peasants. It was evident to Levin that
Sviazhsky knew an answer to this gentleman’s complaints,
which would at once demolish his whole contention, but
that in his position he could not give utterance to this
answer, and listened, not without pleasure, to the
landowner’s comic speeches.
The gentleman with the gray whiskers was obviously
an inveterate adherent of serfdom and a devoted
agriculturist, who had lived all his life in the country.
Levin saw proofs of this in his dress, in the old-fashioned
threadbare coat, obviously not his everyday attire, in his
shrewd deep-set eyes, in his idiomatic, fluent Russian, in
the imperious tone that had become habitual from long
use, and in the resolute gestures of his large, red, sunburnt
hands, with an old betrothal ring on the little finger.
Chapter 27
‘If I’d only the heart to throw up what’s been set
going...such a lot of trouble wasted...I’d turn my back on
the whole business, sell up, go off like Nikolay
Ivanovitch...to hear La Belle Helene,’ said the landowner,
a pleasant smile lighting up his shrewd old face.
‘But you see you don’t throw it up,’ said Nikolay
Ivanovitch Sviazhsky; ‘so there must be something
gained.’
‘The only gain is that I live in my own house, neither
bought nor hired. Besides, one keeps hoping the people
will learn sense. Though, instead of that, you’d never
believe it—the drunkenness, the immorality! They keep
chopping and changing their bits of land. Not a sight of a
horse or a cow. The peasant’s dying of hunger, but just go
and take him on as a laborer, he’ll do his best to do you a
mischief, and then bring you up before the justice of the
peace.’
‘But then you make complaints to the justice too,’ said
Sviazhsky.
‘I lodge complaints? Not for anything in the world!
Such a talking, and such a to-do, that one would have
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cause to regret it. At the works, for instance, they
pocketed the advance-money and made off. What did the
justice do? Why, acquitted them. Nothing keeps them in
order but their own communal court and their village
elder. He’ll flog them in the good old style! But for that
there’d be nothing for it but to give it all up and run
away.’
Obviously the landowner was chaffing Sviazhsky, who,
far from resenting it, was apparently amused by it.
‘But you see we manage our land without such
extreme measures,’ said he, smiling: ‘Levin and I and this
gentleman.’
He indicated the other landowner.
‘Yes, the thing’s done at Mihail Petrovitch’s, but ask
him how it’s done. Do you call that a rational system?’ said
the landowner, obviously rather proud of the word
‘rational.’
‘My system’s very simple,’ said Mihail Petrovitch,
‘thank God. All my management rests on getting the
money ready for the autumn taxes, and the peasants come
to me, ‘Father, master, help us!’ Well, the peasants are all
one’s neighbors; one feels for them. So one advances them
a third, but one says: ‘Remember, lads, I have helped you,
and you must help me when I need it—whether it’s the
sowing of the oats, or the haycutting, or the harvest’; and
well, one agrees, so much for each taxpayer—though
there are dishonest ones among them too, it’s true.’
Levin, who had long been familiar with these
patriarchal methods, exchanged glances with Sviazhsky
and interrupted Mihail Petrovitch, turning again to the
gentleman with the gray whiskers.
‘Then what do you think?’ he asked; ‘what system is
one to adopt nowadays?’
‘Why, manage like Mihail Petrovitch, or let the land
for half the crop or for rent to the peasants; that one can
do—only that’s just how the general prosperity of the
country is being ruined. Where the land with serf-labor
and good management gave a yield of nine to one, on the
half-crop system it yields three to one. Russia has been
ruined by the emancipation!’
Sviazhsky looked with smiling eyes at Levin, and even
made a faint gesture of irony to him; but Levin did not
think the landowner’s words absurd, he understood them
better than he did Sviazhsky. A great deal more of what
the gentleman with the gray whiskers said to show in what
way Russia was ruined by the emancipation struck him
indeed as very true, new to him, and quite incontestable.
The landowner unmistakably spoke his own individual
thought—a thing that very rarely happens—and a thought
to which he had been brought not by a desire of finding
some exercise for an idle brain, but a thought which had
grown up out of the conditions of his life, which he had
brooded over in the solitude of his village, and had
considered in every aspect.
‘The point is, don’t you see, that progress of every sort
is only made by the use of authority,’ he said, evidently
wishing to show he was not without culture. ‘Take the
reforms of Peter, of Catherine, of Alexander. Take
European history. And progress in agriculture more than
anything else—the potato, for instance, that was
introduced among us by force. The wooden plough too
wasn’t always used. It was introduced maybe in the days
before the Empire, but it was probably brought in by
force. Now, in our own day, we landowners in the serf
times used various improvements in our husbandry: drying
machines and thrashing machines, and carting manure and
all the modern implements—all that we brought into use
by our authority, and the peasants opposed it at first, and
ended by imitating us. Now by the abolition of serfdom
we have been deprived of our authority; and so our
husbandry, where it had been raised to a high level, is
bound to sink to the most savage primitive condition.
That’s how I see it.’
‘But why so? If it’s rational, you’ll be able to keep up
the same system with hired labor,’ said Sviazhsky.
‘We’ve no power over them. With whom am I going
to work the system, allow me to ask?’
‘There it is—the labor force—the chief element in
agriculture,’ thought Levin.
‘With laborers.’
‘The laborers won’t work well, and won’t work with
good implements. Our laborer can do nothing but get
drunk like a pig, and when he’s drunk he ruins everything
you give him. He makes the horses ill with too much
water, cuts good harness, barters the tires of the wheels for
drink, drops bits of iron into the thrashing machine, so as
to break it. He loathes the sight of anything that’s not after
his fashion. And that’s how it is the whole level of
husbandry has fallen. Lands gone out of cultivation,
overgrown with weeds, or divided among the peasants,
and where millions of bushels were raised you get a
hundred thousand; the wealth of the country has
decreased. If the same thing had been done, but with care
that..’
And he proceeded to unfold his own scheme of
emancipation by means of which these drawbacks might
have been avoided.
This did not interest Levin, but when he had finished,
Levin went back to his first position, and, addressing
Sviazhsky, and trying to draw him into expressing his
serious opinion:-
‘That the standard of culture is falling, and that with
our present relations to the peasants there is no possibility
of famling on a rational system to yield a profit—that’s
perfectly true,’ said he.
‘I don’t believe it,’ Sviazhsky replied quite seriously; ‘all
I see is that we don’t know how to cultivate the land, and
that our system of agriculture in the serf days was by no
means too high, but too low. We have no machines, no
good stock, no efficient supervision; we don’t even know
how to keep accounts. Ask any landowner; he won’t be
able to tell you what crop’s profitable, and what’s not.’
‘Italian bookkeeping,’ said the gentleman of the gray
whiskers ironically. ‘You may keep your books as you
like, but if they spoil everything for you, there won’t be
any profit.’
‘Why do they spoil things? A poor thrashing machine,
or your Russian presser, they will break, but my steam
press they don’t break. A wretched Russian nag they’ll
ruin, but keep good dray-horses—they won’t ruin them.
And so it is all round. We must raise our farming to a
higher level.’
‘Oh, if one only had the means to do it, Nikolay
Ivanovitch! It’s all very well for you; but for me, with a
son to keep at the university, lads to be educated at the
high school—how am I going to buy these dray-horses?’
‘Well, that’s what the land banks are for.’
‘To get what’s left me sold by auction? No, thank you.’
‘I don’t agree that it’s necessary or possible to raise the
level of agriculture still higher,’ said Levin. ‘I devote
myself to it, and I have means, but I can do nothing. As to
the banks, I don’t know to whom they’re any good. For
my part, anyway, whatever I’ve spent money on in the
way of husbandry, it has been a loss: stock—a loss,
machinery—a loss.’
‘That’s true enough,’ the gentleman with the gray
whiskers chimed in, positively laughing with satisfaction.
‘And I’m not the only one,’ pursued Levin. ‘I mix with
all the neighboring landowners, who are cultivating their
land on a rational system; they all, with rare exceptions,
are doing so at a loss. Come, tell us how does your land
do—does it pay?’ said Levin, and at once in Sviazhsky’s
eyes he detected that fleeting expression of alarm which he
had noticed whenever he had tried to penetrate beyond
the outer chambers of Sviazhsky’s mind.
Moreover, this question on Levin’s part was not quite
in good faith. Madame Sviazhskaya had just told him at tea
that they had that summer invited a Gemman expert in
bookkeeping from Moscow, who for a consideration of
five hundred roubles had investigated the management of
their property, and found that it was costing them a loss of
three thousand odd roubles. She did not remember the
precise sum, but it appeared that the Gemman had worked
it out to the fraction of a farthing.
The gray-whiskered landowner smiled at the mention
of the profits of Sviazhsky’s famling, obviously aware how
much gain his neighbor and marshal was likely to be
making.
‘Possibly it does not pay,’ answered Sviazhsky. ‘That
merely proves either that I’m a bad manager, or that I’ve
sunk my capital for the increase of my rents.’
‘Oh, rent!’ Levin cried with horror. ‘Rent there may
be in Europe, where land has been improved by the labor
put into it, but with us all the land is deteriorating from
the labor put into it—in other words they’re working it
out; so there’s no question of rent.’
‘How no rent? It’s a law.’
‘Then we’re outside the law; rent explains nothing for
us, but simply muddles us. No, tell me how there can be a
theory of rent?..’
‘Will you have some junket? Masha, pass us some
junket or raspberries.’ He turned to his wife.
‘Extraordinarily late the raspberries are lasting this year.’
And in the happiest frame of mind Sviazhsky got up
and walked off, apparently supposing the conversation to
have ended at the very point when to Levin it seemed that
it was only just beginning.
Having lost his antagonist, Levin continued the
conversation with the gray-whiskered landowner, trying
to prove to him that all the difficulty arises from the fact
that we don’t find out the peculiarities and habits of our
laborer; but the landowner, like all men who think
independently and in isolation, was slow in taking in any
other person’s idea, and particularly partial to his own. He
stuck to it that the Russian peasant is a swine and likes
swinishness, and that to get him out of his swinishness one
must have authority, and there is none; one must have the
stick, and we have become so liberal that we have all of a
sudden replaced the stick that served us for a thousand
years by lawyers and model prisons, where the worthless,
stinking peasant is fed on good soup and has a fixed
allowance of cubic feet of air.
‘What makes you think,’ said Levin, trying to get back
to the question, ‘that it’s impossible to find some relation
to the laborer in which the labor would become
productive?’
‘That never could be so with the Russian peasantry;
we’ve no power over them,’ answered the landowner.
‘How can new conditions be found?’ said Sviazhsky.
Having eaten some junket and lighted a cigarette, he came
back to the discussion. ‘All possible relations to the labor
force have been defined and studied,’ he said. ‘The relic of
barbarism, the primitive commune with each guarantee
for all, will disappear of itself; serfdom has been
abolished—there remains nothing but free labor, and its
fomms are fixed and ready made, and must be adopted.
Permanent hands, day-laborers, rammers—you can’t get
out of those forms.’
‘But Europe is dissatisfied with these forms.’
‘Dissatisfied, and seeking new ones. And will find
them, in all probability.’
‘That’s just what I was meaning,’ answered Levin.
‘Why shouldn’t we seek them for ourselves?’
‘Because it would be just like inventing afresh the
means for constructing railways. They are ready,
invented.’
‘But if they don’t do for us, if they’re stupid?’ said
Levin.
And again he detected the expression of alarm in the
eyes of Sviazhsky.
‘Oh, yes; we’ll bury the world under our caps! We’ve
found the secret Europe was seeking for! I’ve heard all
that; but, excuse me, do you know all that’s been done in
Europe on the question of the organization of labor?’
‘No, very little.’
‘That question is now absorbing the best minds in
Europe. The Schulze-Delitsch movement.... And then all
this enormous literature of the labor question, the most
liberal Lassalle movement...the Mulhausen experiment?
That’s a fact by now, as you’re probably aware.’
‘I have some idea of it, but very vague.’
‘No, you only say that; no doubt you know all about it
as well as I do. I’m not a professor of sociology, of course,
but it interested me, and really, if it interests you, you
ought to study it.’
‘But what conclusion have they come to?’
‘Excuse me..’
The two neighbors had risen, and Sviazhsky, once
more checking Levin in his inconvenient habit of peeping
into what was beyond the outer chambers of his mind,
went to see his guests out.
Chapter 28
Levin was insufferably bored that evening with the
ladies; he was stirred as he had never been before by the
idea that the dissatisfaction he was feeling with his system
of managing his land was not an exceptional case, but the
general condition of things in Russia; that the organization
of some relation of the laborers to the soil in which they
would work, as with the peasant he had met half-way to
the Sviazhskys’, was not a dream, but a problem which
must be solved. And it seemed to him that the problem
could be solved, and that he ought to try and solve it.
After saying good-night to the ladies, and promising to
stay the whole of the next day, so as to make an
expedition on horseback with them to see an interesting
ruin in the crown forest, Levin went, before going to bed,
into his host’s study to get the books on the labor question
that Sviazhsky had offered him. Sviazhsky’s study was a
huge room, surrounded by bookcases and with two tables
in it—one a massive writing table, standing in the middle
of the room, and the other a round table, covered with
recent numbers of reviews and journals in different
languages, ranged like the rays of a star round the lamp.
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On the writing table was a stand of drawers marked with
gold lettering, and full of papers of various sorts.
Sviazhsky took out the books, and sat down in a
rocking-chair.
‘What are you looking at there?’ he said to Levin, who
was standing at the round table looking through the
reviews.
‘Oh, yes, there’s a very interesting article here,’ said
Sviazhsky of the review Levin was holding in his hand. ‘It
appears,’ he went on, with eager interest, ‘that Friedrich
was not, after all, the person chiefly responsible for the
partition of Poland. It is proved..’
And with his characteristic clearness, he summed up
those new, very important, and interesting revelations.
Although Levin was engrossed at the moment by his ideas
about the problem of the land, he wondered, as he heard
Sviazhsky: ‘What is there inside of him? And why, why is
he interested in the partition of Poland?’ When Sviazhsky
had finished, Levin could not help asking: ‘Well, and what
then?’ But there was nothing to follow. It was simply
interesting that it had been proved to be so and so. But
Sviazhsky did not explain, and saw no need to explain
why it was interesting to him.
‘Yes, but I was very much interested by your irritable
neighbor,’ said Levin, sighing. ‘He’s a clever fellow, and
said a lot that was true.’
‘Oh, get along with you! An inveterate supporter of
serfdom at heart, like all of them!’ said Sviazhsky.
‘Whose marshal you are.’
‘Yes, only I marshal them in the other direction,’ said
Sviazhsky, laughing.
‘I’ll tell you what interests me very much,’ said Levin.
‘He’s right that our system, that’s to say of rational
farming, doesn’t answer, that the only thing that answers is
the money-lender system, like that meek-looking
gentleman’s, or else the very simplest.... Whose fault is it?’
‘Our own, of course. Besides, it’s not true that it
doesn’t answer. It answers with Vassiltchikov.’
‘A factory..’
‘But I really don’t know what it is you are surprised at.
The people are at such a low stage of rational and moral
development, that it’s obvious they’re bound to oppose
everything that’s strange to them. In Europe, a rational
system answers because the people are educated; it follows
that we must educate the people—that’s all.’
‘But how are we to educate the people?’
‘To educate the people three things are needed:
schools, and schools, and schools.
‘But you said yourself the people are at such a low stage
of material development: what help are schools for that?’
‘Do you know, you remind me of the story of the
advice given to the sick man—You should try purgative
medicine. Taken: worse. Try leeches. Tried them: worse.
Well, then, there’s nothing left but to pray to God. Tried
it: worse. That’s just how it is with us. I say political
economy; you say—worse. I say socialism: worse.
Education: worse.’
‘But how do schools help matters?’
‘They give the peasant fresh wants.’
‘Well, that’s a thing I’ve never understood,’ Levin
replied with heat. ‘In what way are schools going to help
the people to improve their material position? You say
schools, education, will give them fresh wants. So much
the worse, since they won’t be capable of satisfying them.
And in what way a knowledge of addition and subtraction
and the catechism is going to improve their material
condition, I never could make out. The day before
yesterday, I met a peasant woman in the evening with a
little baby, and asked her where she was going. She said
she was going to the wise woman; her boy had screaming
fits, so she was taking him to be doctored. I asked, ‘Why,
how does the wise woman cure screaming fits?’ ‘She puts
the child on the hen-roost and repeats some charm....’ ‘
‘Well, you’re saying it yourself! What’s wanted to
prevent her taking her child to the hen-roost to cure it of
screaming fits is just...’ Sviazhsky said, smiling goodhumoredly.
‘Oh, no!’ said Levin with annoyance; ‘that method of
doctoring I merely meant as a simile for doctoring the
people with schools. The people are poor and ignorant—
that we see as surely as the peasant woman sees the baby is
ill because it screams. But in what way this trouble of
poverty and ignorance is to be cured by schools is as
incomprehensible as how the hen-roost affects the
screaming. What has to be cured is what makes him poor.’
‘Well, in that, at least, you’re in agreement with
Spencer, whom you dislike so much. He says, too, that
education may be the consequence of greater prosperity
and comfort, of more frequent washing, as he says, but not
of being able to read and write..’
‘Well, then, I’m very glad—or the contrary, very sorry,
that I’m in agreement with Spencer; only I’ve known it a
long while. Schools can do no good; what will do good is
an economic organization in which the people will
become richer, will have more leisure—and then there
will be schools.’
‘Still, all over Europe now schools are obligatory.’
‘And how far do you agree with Spencer yourself about
it?’ asked Levin.
But there was a gleam of alarm in Sviazhsky’s eyes, and
he said smiling:
‘No; that screaming story is positively capital! Did you
really hear it yourself?’
Levin saw that he was not to discover the connection
between this man’s life and his thoughts. Obviously he did
not care in the least what his reasoning led him to; all he
wanted was the process of reasoning. And he did not like
it when the process of reasoning brought him into a blind
alley. That was the only thing he disliked, and avoided by
changing the conversation to something agreeable and
amusing.
All the impressions of the day, beginning with the
impression made by the old peasant, which served, as it
were, as the fundamental basis of all the conceptions and
ideas of the day, threw Levin into violent excitement. This
dear good Sviazhsky, keeping a stock of ideas simply for
social purposes, and obviously having some other
principles hidden from Levin, while with the crowd,
whose name is legion, he guided public opinion by ideas
he did not share; that irascible country gentleman,
perfectly correct in the conclusions that he had been
worried into by life, but wrong in his exasperation against
a whole class, and that the best class in Russia; his own
dissatisfaction with the work he had been doing, and the
vague hope of finding a remedy for all this—all was
blended in a sense of inward turmoil, and anticipation of
some solution near at hand.
Left alone in the room assigned him, lying on a spring
mattress that yielded unexpectedly at every movement of
his arm or his leg, Levin did not fall asleep for a long
while. Not one conversation with Sviazhsky, though he
had said a great deal that was clever, had interested Levin;
but the conclusions of the irascible landowner required
consideration. Levin could not help recalling every word
he had said, and in imagination amending his own replies.
‘Yes, I ought to have said to him: You say that our
husbandry does not answer because the peasant hates
improvements, and that they must be forced on him by
authority. If no system of husbandry answered at all
without these improvements, you would be quite right.
But the only system that does answer is where laborer is
working in accordance with his habits, just as on the old
peasant’s land half-way here. Your and our general
dissatisfaction with the system shows that either we are to
blame or the laborers. We have gone our way—the
European way—a long while, without asking ourselves
about the qualities of our labor force. Let us try to look
upon the labor force not as an abstract force, but as the
Russian peasant with his instincts, and we shall arrange our
system of culture in accordance with that. Imagine, I
ought to have said to him, that you have the same system
as the old peasant has, that you have found means of
making your laborers take an interest in the success of the
work, and have found the happy mean in the way of
improvements which they will admit, and you will,
without exhausting the soil, get twice or three times the
yield you got before. Divide it in halves, give half as the
share of labor, the surplus left you will be greater, and the
share of labor will be greater too. And to do this one must
lower the standard of husbandry and interest the laborers
in its success. How to do this?—that’s a matter of detail;
but undoubtedly it can be done.’
This idea threw Levin into a great excitement. He did
not sleep half the night, thinking over in detail the putting
of his idea into practice. He had not intended to go away
next day, but he now determined to go home early in the
morning. Besides, the sister-in-law with her low-necked
bodice aroused in him a feeling akin to shame and remorse
for some utterly base action. Most important of all—he
must get back without delay: he would have to make haste
to put his new project to the peasants before the sowing of
the winter wheat, so that the sowing might be undertaken
on a new basis. He had made up his mind to revolutionize
his whole system.
Chapter 29
The carrying out of Levin’s plan presented many
difficulties; but he struggled on, doing his utmost, and
attained a result which, though not what he desired, was
enough to enable him, without self-deception, to believe
that the attempt was worth the trouble. One of the chief
difficulties was that the process of cultivating the land was
in full swing, that it was impossible to stop everything and
begin it all again from the beginning, and the machine had
to be mended while in motion.
When on the evening that he arrived home he
informed the bailiff of his plans, the latter with visible
pleasure agreed with what he said so long as he was
pointing out that all that had been done up to that time
was stupid and useless. The bailiff said that he had said so a
long while ago, but no heed had been paid him. But as for
the proposal made by Levin—to take a part as shareholder
with his laborers in each agricultural undertaking— at this
the bailiff simply expressed a profound despondency, and
offered no definite opinion, but began immediately talking
of the urgent necessity of carrying the remaining sheaves
of rye the next day, and of sending the men out for the
second ploughing, so that Levin felt that this was not the
time for discussing it.
On beginning to talk to the peasants about it, and
making a proposition to cede them the land on new terms,
he came into collision with the same great difficulty that
they were so much absorbed by the current work of the
day, that they had not time to consider the advantages and
disadvantages of the proposed scheme.
The simple-hearted Ivan, the cowherd, seemed
completely to grasp Levin’s proposal—that he should with
his family take a share of the profits of the cattle-yard—
and he was in complete sympathy with the plan. But
when Levin hinted at the future advantages, Ivan’s face
expressed alarm and regret that he could not hear all he
had to say, and he made haste to find himself some task
that would admit of no delay: he either snatched up the
fork to pitch the hay out of the pens, or ran to get water
or to clear out the dung.
Another difficulty lay in the invincible disbelief of the
peasant that a landowner’s object could be anything else
than a desire to squeeze all he could out of them. They
were firmly convinced that his real aim (whatever he
might say to them) would always be in what he did not
say to them. And they themselves, in giving their opinion,
said a great deal but never said what was their real object.
Moreover (Levin felt that the irascible landowner had
been right) the peasants made their first and unalterable
condition of any agreement whatever that they should not
be forced to any new methods of tillage of any kind, nor
to use new implements. They agreed that the modern
plough ploughed better, that the scarifier did the work
more quickly, but they found thousands of reasons that
made it out of the question for them to use either of them;
and though he had accepted the conviction that he would
have to lower the standard of cultivation, he felt sorry to
give up improved methods, the advantages of which were
so obvious. But in spite of all these difficulties he got his
way, and by autumn the system was working, or at least so
it seemed to him.
