Part Three: Chapter 27

by Leo Tolstoy

　　"If I'd only the heart to throw up what's been set going...such alot of trouble wasted...I'd turn my back on the whole business,sell up, go off like Nikolay Ivanovitch...to hear La BelleHelene," said the landowner, a pleasant smile lighting up hisshrewd old face.

　　"But you see you don't throw it up," said Nikolay IvanovitchSviazhsky; "so there must be something gained."

　　"The only gain is that I live in my own house, neither boughtnor hired. Besides, one keeps hoping the people will learnsense. Though, instead of that, you'd never believe it--thedrunkenness, the immorality! They keep chopping and changingtheir bits of land. Not a sight of a horse or a cow. Thepeasant's dying of hunger, but just go and take him on as alaborer, he'll do his best to do you a mischief, and then bringyou up before the justice of the peace."

　　"But then you make complaints to the justice too," saidSviazhsky.

　　"I lodge complaints? Not for anything in the world! Such atalking, and such a to-do, that one would have cause to regretit. At the works, for instance, they pocketed the advance-moneyand made off. What did the justice do? Why, acquitted them.Nothing keeps them in order but their own communal court andtheir village elder. He'll flog them in the good old style! Butfor that there'd be nothing for it but to give it all up and runaway."

　　Obviously the landowner was chaffing Sviazhsky, who, far fromresenting 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 howit's done. Do you call that a rational system?" said thelandowner, 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 autumntaxes, 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, Ihave helped you, and you must help me when I need it--whetherit's the sowing of the oats, or the haycutting, or the harvest';and well, one agrees, so much for each taxpayer--though thereare dishonest ones among them too, it's true."

　　Levin, who had long been familiar with these patriarchal methods,exchanged glances with Sviazhsky and interrupted MihailPetrovitch, turning again to the gentleman with the graywhiskers.

　　"Then what do you think?" he asked; "what system is one to adoptnowadays?"

　　"Why, manage like Mihail Petrovitch, or let the land for half thecrop or for rent to the peasants; that one can do--only that'sjust how the general prosperity of the country is being ruined.Where the land with serf-labor and good management gave a yieldof 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 afaint gesture of irony to him; but Levin did not think thelandowner's words absurd, he understood them better than he didSviazhsky. A great deal more of what the gentleman with the graywhiskers said to show in what way Russia was ruined by theemancipation struck him indeed as very true, new to him, andquite incontestable. The landowner unmistakably spoke his ownindividual thought--a thing that very rarely happens--and athought to which he had been brought not by a desire of findingsome exercise for an idle brain, but a thought which had grown upout of the conditions of his life, which he had brooded over inthe solitude of his village, and had considered in every aspect.

　　"The point is, don't you see, that progress of every sort is onlymade by the use of authority," he said, evidently wishing to showhe was not without culture. "Take the reforms of Peter, ofCatherine, of Alexander. Take European history. And progress inagriculture more than anything else--the potato, for instance,that was introduced among us by force. The wooden plough toowasn't always used. It was introduced maybe in the days beforethe Empire, but it was probably brought in by force. Now, in ourown day, we landowners in the serf times used variousimprovements in our husbandry: drying machines and thrashingmachines, and carting manure and all the modern implements--allthat we brought into use by our authority, and the peasantsopposed it at first, and ended by imitating us. Now by theabolition of serfdom we have been deprived of our authority; andso our husbandry, where it had been raised to a high level, isbound to sink to the most savage primitive condition. That's howI see it."

　　"But why so? If it's rational, you'll be able to keep up thesame system with hired labor," said Sviazhsky.

　　"We've no power over them. With whom am I going to work thesystem, allow me to ask?"

　　"There it is--the labor force--the chief element inagriculture," thought Levin.

　　"With laborers."

　　"The laborers won't work well, and won't work with goodimplements. Our laborer can do nothing but get drunk like a pig,and when he's drunk he ruins everything you give him. He makesthe horses ill with too much water, cuts good harness, bartersthe tires of the wheels for drink, drops bits of iron into thethrashing machine, so as to break it. He loathes the sight ofanything that's not after his fashion. And that's how it is thewhole level of husbandry has fallen. Lands gone out ofcultivation, overgrown with weeds, or divided among the peasants,and where millions of bushels were raised you get a hundredthousand; the wealth of the country has decreased. If the samething had been done, but with care that..."

　　And he proceeded to unfold his own scheme of emancipation bymeans of which these drawbacks might have been avoided.

　　This did not interest Levin, but when he had finished, Levin wentback to his first position, and, addressing Sviazhsky, and tryingto draw him into expressing his serious opinion:-

　　"That the standard of culture is falling, and that with ourpresent relations to the peasants there is no possibility offamling on a rational system to yield a profit--that's perfectlytrue," said he.

　　"I don't believe it," Sviazhsky replied quite seriously; "all Isee is that we don't know how to cultivate the land, and that oursystem of agriculture in the serf days was by no means too high,but too low. We have no machines, no good stock, no efficientsupervision; we don't even know how to keep accounts. Ask anylandowner; he won't be able to tell you what crop's profitable,and what's not."

　　"Italian bookkeeping," said the gentleman of the gray whiskersironically. "You may keep your books as you like, but if theyspoil everything for you, there won't be any profit."

　　"Why do they spoil things? A poor thrashing machine, or yourRussian presser, they will break, but my steam press they don'tbreak. A wretched Russian nag they'll ruin, but keep gooddray-horses--they won't ruin them. And so it is all round. Wemust 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 theuniversity, lads to be educated at the high school--how am Igoing 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 levelof agriculture still higher," said Levin. "I devote myself toit, and I have means, but I can do nothing. As to the banks, Idon'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 beena loss: stock--a loss, machinery--a loss."

　　"That's true enough," the gentleman with the gray whiskers chimedin, positively laughing with satisfaction.

　　"And I'm not the only one," pursued Levin. "I mix with all theneighboring landowners, who are cultivating their land on arational system; they all, with rare exceptions, are doing so ata loss. Come, tell us how does your land do--does it pay?" saidLevin, and at once in Sviazhsky's eyes he detected that fleetingexpression of alarm which he had noticed whenever he had tried topenetrate beyond the outer chambers of Sviazhsky's mind.

　　Moreover, this question on Levin's part was not quite in goodfaith. Madame Sviazhskaya had just told him at tea that they hadthat summer invited a Gemman expert in bookkeeping from Moscow,who for a consideration of five hundred roubles had investigatedthe management of their property, and found that it was costingthem a loss of three thousand odd roubles. She did not rememberthe precise sum, but it appeared that the Gemman had worked itout to the fraction of a farthing.

　　The gray-whiskered landowner smiled at the mention of the profitsof Sviazhsky's famling, obviously aware how much gain hisneighbor and marshal was likely to be making.

　　"Possibly it does not pay," answered Sviazhsky. "That merelyproves either that I'm a bad manager, or that I've sunk mycapital for the increase of my rents."

　　"Oh, rent!" Levin cried with horror. "Rent there may be inEurope, where land has been improved by the labor put into it,but with us all the land is deteriorating from the labor put intoit--in other words they're working it out; so there's noquestion of rent."

　　"How no rent? It's a law."

　　"Then we're outside the law; rent explains nothing for us, butsimply muddles us. No, tell me how there can be a theory ofrent?..."

　　"Will you have some junket? Masha, pass us some junket orraspberries." He turned to his wife. "Extraordinarily late theraspberries are lasting this year."

　　And in the happiest frame of mind Sviazhsky got up and walkedoff, apparently supposing the conversation to have ended at thevery point when to Levin it seemed that it was only justbeginning.

　　Having lost his antagonist, Levin continued the conversation withthe gray-whiskered landowner, trying to prove to him that all thedifficulty arises from the fact that we don't find out thepeculiarities and habits of our laborer; but the landowner, likeall men who think independently and in isolation, was slow intaking in any other person's idea, and particularly partial tohis own. He stuck to it that the Russian peasant is a swine andlikes swinishness, and that to get him out of his swinishness onemust have authority, and there is none; one must have the stick,and we have become so liberal that we have all of a suddenreplaced the stick that served us for a thousand years by lawyersand model prisons, where the worthless, stinking peasant is fedon good soup and has a fixed allowance of cubic feet of air.

　　"What makes you think," said Levin, trying to get back to thequestion, "that it's impossible to find some relation to thelaborer in which the labor would become productive?"

　　"That never could be so with the Russian peasantry; we've nopower over them," answered the landowner.

　　"How can new conditions be found?" said Sviazhsky. Having eatensome junket and lighted a cigarette, he came back to thediscussion. "All possible relations to the labor force have beendefined and studied," he said. "The relic of barbarism, theprimitive commune with each guarantee for all, will disappear ofitself; serfdom has been abolished--there remains nothing butfree labor, and its fomms are fixed and ready made, and must beadopted. Permanent hands, day-laborers, rammers--you can't getout of those forms."

　　"But Europe is dissatisfied with these forms."

　　"Dissatisfied, and seeking new ones. And will find them, in allprobability."

　　"That's just what I was meaning," answered Levin. "Whyshouldn't we seek them for ourselves?"

　　"Because it would be just like inventing afresh the means forconstructing 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 ofSviazhsky.

　　"Oh, yes; we'll bury the world under our caps! We've found thesecret Europe was seeking for! I've heard all that; but, excuseme, do you know all that's been done in Europe on the question ofthe organization of labor?"

　　"No, very little."

　　"That question is now absorbing the best minds in Europe. TheSchulze-Delitsch movement.... And then all this enormousliterature of the labor question, the most liberal Lassallemovement...the Mulhausen experiment? That's a fact by now, asyou'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 asI do. I'm not a professor of sociology, of course, but itinterested me, and really, if it interests you, you ought tostudy it."

　　"But what conclusion have they come to?"

　　"Excuse me..."

　　The two neighbors had risen, and Sviazhsky, once more checkingLevin in his inconvenient habit of peeping into what was beyondthe outer chambers of his mind, went to see his guests out.