Part Three: Chapter 29

by Leo Tolstoy

　　The carrying out of Levin's plan presented many difficulties; buthe struggled on, doing his utmost, and attained a result which,though not what he desired, was enough to enable him, withoutself-deception, to believe that the attempt was worth thetrouble. One of the chief difficulties was that the process ofcultivating the land was in full swing, that it was impossible tostop everything and begin it all again from the beginning, andthe machine had to be mended while in motion.

　　When on the evening that he arrived home he informed the bailiffof his plans, the latter with visible pleasure agreed with whathe said so long as he was pointing out that all that had beendone up to that time was stupid and useless. The bailiff saidthat he had said so a long while ago, but no heed had been paidhim. But as for the proposal made by Levin--to take a part asshareholder with his laborers in each agricultural undertaking--at this the bailiff simply expressed a profound despondency, andoffered no definite opinion, but began immediately talking of theurgent necessity of carrying the remaining sheaves of rye thenext day, and of sending the men out for the second ploughing, sothat Levin felt that this was not the time for discussing it.

　　On beginning to talk to the peasants about it, and making aproposition to cede them the land on new terms, he came intocollision with the same great difficulty that they were so muchabsorbed by the current work of the day, that they had not timeto consider the advantages and disadvantages of the proposedscheme.

　　The simple-hearted Ivan, the cowherd, seemed completely to graspLevin's proposal--that he should with his family take a share ofthe profits of the cattle-yard--and he was in complete sympathywith the plan. But when Levin hinted at the future advantages,Ivan's face expressed alarm and regret that he could not hear allhe had to say, and he made haste to find himself some task thatwould admit of no delay: he either snatched up the fork to pitchthe hay out of the pens, or ran to get water or to clear out thedung.

　　Another difficulty lay in the invincible disbelief of the peasantthat a landowner's object could be anything else than a desire tosqueeze all he could out of them. They were firmly convincedthat his real aim (whatever he might say to them) would always bein what he did not say to them. And they themselves, in givingtheir opinion, said a great deal but never said what was theirreal object. Moreover (Levin felt that the irascible landownerhad been right) the peasants made their first and unalterablecondition of any agreement whatever that they should not beforced to any new methods of tillage of any kind, nor to use newimplements. They agreed that the modern plough ploughed better,that the scarifier did the work more quickly, but they foundthousands of reasons that made it out of the question for them touse either of them; and though he had accepted the convictionthat he would have to lower the standard of cultivation, he feltsorry to give up improved methods, the advantages of which wereso obvious. But in spite of all these difficulties he got hisway, and by autumn the system was working, or at least so itseemed to him.

　　At first Levin had thought of giving up the whole farming of theland just as it was to the peasants, the laborers, and thebailiff on new conditions of partnership; but he was very soonconvinced that this was impossible, and determined to divide itup. The cattle-yard, the garden, hay fields, and arable land,divided into several parts, had to be made into separate lots.The simple-hearted cowherd, Ivan, who, Levin fancied, understoodthe matter better than any of them, collecting together a gang ofworkers to help him, principally of his own family, became apartner in the cattle-yard. A distant part of the estate, atract of waste land that had lain fallow for eight years, waswith the help of the clever carpenter, Fyodor Ryezunov, taken bysix families of peasants on new conditions of partnership, andthe peasant Shuraev took the management of all the vegetablegardens on the same terms. The remainder of the land was stillworked on the old system, but these three associated partnershipswere the first step to a new organization of the whole, and theycompletely took up Levin's time.

　　It is true that in the cattle-yard things went no better thanbefore, and Ivan strenuously opposed warm housing for the cowsand butter made of fresh cream, affirming that cows require lessfood if kept cold, and that butter is more profitable made fromsour cream, and he asked for wages just as under the old system,and took not the slightest interest in the fact that the money hereceived was not wages but an advance out of his future share inthe profits.

　　It is true that Fyodor Ryezunov's company did not plough over theground twice before sowing, as had been agreed, justifyingthemselves on the plea that the time was too short. It is truethat the peasants of the same company, though they had agreed towork the land on new conditions, always spoke of the land, not asheld in partnership, but as rented for half the crop, and morethan once the peasants and Ryezunov himself said to Levin, "Ifyou would take a rent for the land, it would save you trouble,and we should be more free." Moreover the same peasants keptputting off, on various excuses, the building of a cattleyard andbarn on the land as agreed upon, and delayed doing it till thewinter.

　　It is true that Shuraev would have liked to let out the kitchengardens he had undertaken in small lots to the peasants. Heevidently quite misunderstood, and apparently intentionallymisunderstood, the conditions upon which the land had been givento him.

　　Often, too, talking to the peasants and explaining to them allthe advantages of the plan, Levin felt that the peasants heardnothing but the sound of his voice, and were firmly resolved,whatever he might say, not to let themselves be taken in. Hefelt this especially when he talked to the cleverest of thepeasants, Ryezunov, and detected the gleam in Ryezunov's eyeswhich showed so plainly both ironical amusement at Levin, and thefirm conviction that, if any one were to be taken in, it wouldnot be he, Ryezunov. But in spite of all this Levin thought thesystem worked, and that by keeping accounts strictly andinsisting on his own way, he would prove to them in the futurethe advantages of the arrangement, and then the system would goof itself.

　　These matters, together with the management of the land stillleft on his hands, and the indoor work over his book, soengrossed Levin the whole summer that he scarcely ever went outshooting. At the end of August he heard that the Oblonskys hadgone away to Moscow, from their servant who brought back theside-saddle. He felt that in not answering Darya Alexandrovna'sletter he had by his rudeness, of which he could not thinkwithout a flush of shame, burned his ships, and that he wouldnever go and see them again. He had been just as rude with theSviazhskys, leaving them without saying good-bye. But he wouldnever go to see them again either. He did not care about thatnow. The business of reorganizing the farming of his landabsorbed him as completely as though there would never beanything else in his life. He read the books lent him bySviazhsky, and copying out what he had not got, he read both theeconomic and socialistic books on the subject, but, as he hadanticipated, found nothing bearing on the scheme he hadundertaken. In the books on political economy--in Mill, forinstance, whom he studied first with great ardor, hoping everyminute to find an answer to the questions that were engrossinghim--he found laws deduced from the condition of land culture inEurope; but he did not see why these laws, which did not apply inRussia, must be general. He saw just the same thing in thesocialistic books: either they were the beautiful butimpracticable fantasies which had fascinated him when he was astudent, or they were attempts at improving, rectifying theeconomic position in which Europe was placed, with which thesystem of land tenure in Russia had nothing in common. Politicaleconomy told him that the laws by which the wealth of Europe hadbeen developed, and was developing, were universal and unvarying.Socialism told him that development along these lines leads toruin. And neither of them gave an answer, or even a hint, inreply to the question what he, Levin, and all the Russianpeasants and landowners, were to do with their millions of handsand millions of acres, to make them as productive as possible forthe common weal.

　　Having once taken the subject up, he read conscientiouslyeverything bearing on it, and intended in the autumn to go abroadto study land systems on the spot, in order that he might not onthis question be confronted with what so often met him on varioussubjects. Often, just as he was beginning to understand the ideain the mind of anyone he was talking to, and was beginning toexplain his own, he would suddenly be told: "But Kauffmann, butJones, but Dubois, but Michelli? You haven't read them: they'vethrashed that question out thoroughly."

　　He saw now distinctly that Kauffmann and Michelli had nothing totell him. He knew what he wanted. He saw that Russia hassplendid land, splendid laborers, and that in certain cases, asat the peasant's on the way to Sviazhsky's, the produce raised bythe laborers and the land is great--in the majority of caseswhen capital is applied in the European way the produce is small,and that this simply arises from the fact that the laborers wantto work and work well only in their own peculiar way, and thatthis antagonism is not incidental but invariable, and has itsroots in the national spirit. He thought that the Russian peoplewhose task it was to colonize and cultivate vast tracts ofunoccupied land, consciously adhered, till all their land wasoccupied, to the methods suitable to their purpose, and thattheir methods were by no means so bad as was generally supposed.And he wanted to prove this theoretically in his book andpractically on his land.