Anna Karenina
“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 good-humoredly.
“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.
At first Levin had thought of giving up the whole farming of the land
just as it was to the peasants, the laborers, and the bailiff on new
conditions of partnership; but he was very soon convinced that this was
impossible, and determined to divide it up. 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, understood the matter better than any of them,
collecting together a gang of workers to help him, principally of his
own family, became a partner in the cattle-yard. A distant part of the
estate, a tract of waste land that had lain fallow for eight years, was
with the help of the clever carpenter, Fyodor Ryezunov, taken by six
families of peasants on new conditions of partnership, and the peasant
Shuraev took the management of all the vegetable gardens on the same
terms. The remainder of the land was still worked on the old system,
but these three associated partnerships were the first step to a new
organization of the whole, and they completely took up Levin’s time.
It is true that in the cattle-yard things went no better than before,
and Ivan strenuously opposed warm housing for the cows and butter made
of fresh cream, affirming that cows require less food if kept cold, and