Anna Karenina
that butter is more profitable made from sour cream, and he asked for
wages just as under the old system, and took not the slightest interest
in the fact that the money he received was not wages but an advance out
of his future share in the profits.
It is true that Fyodor Ryezunov’s company did not plough over the
ground twice before sowing, as had been agreed, justifying themselves
on the plea that the time was too short. It is true that the peasants
of the same company, though they had agreed to work the land on new
conditions, always spoke of the land, not as held in partnership, but
as rented for half the crop, and more than once the peasants and
Ryezunov himself said to Levin, “If you would take a rent for the land,
it would save you trouble, and we should be more free.” Moreover the
same peasants kept putting off, on various excuses, the building of a
cattleyard and barn on the land as agreed upon, and delayed doing it
till the winter.
It is true that Shuraev would have liked to let out the kitchen gardens
he had undertaken in small lots to the peasants. He evidently quite
misunderstood, and apparently intentionally misunderstood, the
conditions upon which the land had been given to him.
Often, too, talking to the peasants and explaining to them all the
advantages of the plan, Levin felt that the peasants heard nothing but
the sound of his voice, and were firmly resolved, whatever he might
say, not to let themselves be taken in. He felt this especially when he
talked to the cleverest of the peasants, Ryezunov, and detected the
gleam in Ryezunov’s eyes which showed so plainly both ironical
amusement at Levin, and the firm conviction that, if anyone were to be
taken in, it would not be he, Ryezunov. But in spite of all this Levin
thought the system worked, and that by keeping accounts strictly and
insisting on his own way, he would prove to them in the future the
advantages of the arrangement, and then the system would go of itself.
These matters, together with the management of the land still left on
his hands, and the indoor work over his book, so engrossed Levin the
whole summer that he scarcely ever went out shooting. At the end of
August he heard that the Oblonskys had gone away to Moscow, from their
servant who brought back the side-saddle. He felt that in not answering
Darya Alexandrovna’s letter he had by his rudeness, of which he could
not think without a flush of shame, burned his ships, and that he would
never go and see them again. He had been just as rude with the
Sviazhskys, leaving them without saying good-bye. But he would never go
to see them again either. He did not care about that now. The business
of reorganizing the farming of his land absorbed him as completely as
though there would never be anything else in his life. He read the
books lent him by Sviazhsky, and copying out what he had not got, he
read both the economic and socialistic books on the subject, but, as he
had anticipated, found nothing bearing on the scheme he had undertaken.
In the books on political economy—in Mill, for instance, whom he
studied first with great ardor, hoping every minute to find an answer
to the questions that were engrossing him—he found laws deduced from
the condition of land culture in Europe; but he did not see why these
laws, which did not apply in Russia, must be general. He saw just the
same thing in the socialistic books: either they were the beautiful but
impracticable fantasies which had fascinated him when he was a student,
or they were attempts at improving, rectifying the economic position in
which Europe was placed, with which the system of land tenure in Russia
had nothing in common. Political economy told him that the laws by
which the wealth of Europe had been developed, and was developing, were
universal and unvarying. Socialism told him that development along
these lines leads to ruin. And neither of them gave an answer, or even
a hint, in reply to the question what he, Levin, and all the Russian
peasants and landowners, were to do with their millions of hands and
millions of acres, to make them as productive as possible for the
common weal.
Having once taken the subject up, he read conscientiously everything
bearing on it, and intended in the autumn to go abroad to study land
systems on the spot, in order that he might not on this question be
confronted with what so often met him on various subjects. Often, just
as he was beginning to understand the idea in the mind of anyone he was
talking to, and was beginning to explain his own, he would suddenly be
told: “But Kauffmann, but Jones, but Dubois, but Michelli? You haven’t
read them: they’ve thrashed that question out thoroughly.”
He saw now distinctly that Kauffmann and Michelli had nothing to tell
him. He knew what he wanted. He saw that Russia has splendid land,
splendid laborers, and that in certain cases, as at the peasant’s on
the way to Sviazhsky’s, the produce raised by the laborers and the land
is great—in the majority of cases when capital is applied in the
European way the produce is small, and that this simply arises from the
fact that the laborers want to work and work well only in their own
peculiar way, and that this antagonism is not incidental but
invariable, and has its roots in the national spirit. He thought that
the Russian people whose task it was to colonize and cultivate vast
tracts of unoccupied land, consciously adhered, till all their land was
occupied, to the methods suitable to their purpose, and that their
methods were by no means so bad as was generally supposed. And he
wanted to prove this theoretically in his book and practically on his
land.
Chapter 30
At the end of September the timber had been carted for building the
cattleyard on the land that had been allotted to the association of
peasants, and the butter from the cows was sold and the profits
divided. In practice the system worked capitally, or, at least, so it
seemed to Levin. In order to work out the whole subject theoretically
and to complete his book, which, in Levin’s daydreams, was not merely
to effect a revolution in political economy, but to annihilate that
science entirely and to lay the foundation of a new science of the
relation of the people to the soil, all that was left to do was to make
a tour abroad, and to study on the spot all that had been done in the
same direction, and to collect conclusive evidence that all that had
been done there was not what was wanted. Levin was only waiting for the
delivery of his wheat to receive the money for it and go abroad. But
the rains began, preventing the harvesting of the corn and potatoes
left in the fields, and putting a stop to all work, even to the
delivery of the wheat.
The mud was impassable along the roads; two mills were carried away,
and the weather got worse and worse.
On the 30th of September the sun came out in the morning, and hoping
for fine weather, Levin began making final preparations for his
journey. He gave orders for the wheat to be delivered, sent the bailiff
to the merchant to get the money owing him, and went out himself to
give some final directions on the estate before setting off.
Having finished all his business, soaked through with the streams of
water which kept running down the leather behind his neck and his
gaiters, but in the keenest and most confident temper, Levin returned
homewards in the evening. The weather had become worse than ever
towards evening; the hail lashed the drenched mare so cruelly that she
went along sideways, shaking her head and ears; but Levin was all right
under his hood, and he looked cheerfully about him at the muddy streams
running under the wheels, at the drops hanging on every bare twig, at
the whiteness of the patch of unmelted hailstones on the planks of the
bridge, at the thick layer of still juicy, fleshy leaves that lay
heaped up about the stripped elm-tree. In spite of the gloominess of
nature around him, he felt peculiarly eager. The talks he had been
having with the peasants in the further village had shown that they
were beginning to get used to their new position. The old servant to
whose hut he had gone to get dry evidently approved of Levin’s plan,
and of his own accord proposed to enter the partnership by the purchase
of cattle.
“I have only to go stubbornly on towards my aim, and I shall attain my
end,” thought Levin; “and it’s something to work and take trouble for.
This is not a matter of myself individually; the question of the public
welfare comes into it. The whole system of culture, the chief element
in the condition of the people, must be completely transformed. Instead
of poverty, general prosperity and content; instead of hostility,
harmony and unity of interests. In short, a bloodless revolution, but a
revolution of the greatest magnitude, beginning in the little circle of
our district, then the province, then Russia, the whole world. Because
a just idea cannot but be fruitful. Yes, it’s an aim worth working for.
And its being me, Kostya Levin, who went to a ball in a black tie, and
was refused by the Shtcherbatskaya girl, and who was intrinsically such
a pitiful, worthless creature—that proves nothing; I feel sure Franklin
felt just as worthless, and he too had no faith in himself, thinking of
himself as a whole. That means nothing. And he too, most likely, had an
Agafea Mihalovna to whom he confided his secrets.”
Musing on such thoughts Levin reached home in the darkness.
The bailiff, who had been to the merchant, had come back and brought
part of the money for the wheat. An agreement had been made with the
old servant, and on the road the bailiff had learned that everywhere
the corn was still standing in the fields, so that his one hundred and
sixty shocks that had not been carried were nothing in comparison with
the losses of others.
After dinner Levin was sitting, as he usually did, in an easy chair
with a book, and as he read he went on thinking of the journey before
him in connection with his book. Today all the significance of his book
rose before him with special distinctness, and whole periods ranged
themselves in his mind in illustration of his theories. “I must write
that down,” he thought. “That ought to form a brief introduction, which
I thought unnecessary before.” He got up to go to his writing-table,
and Laska, lying at his feet, got up too, stretching and looking at him
as though to inquire where to go. But he had not time to write it down,
for the head peasants had come round, and Levin went out into the hall
to them.
After his levee, that is to say, giving directions about the labors of
the next day, and seeing all the peasants who had business with him,
Levin went back to his study and sat down to work.
Laska lay under the table; Agafea Mihalovna settled herself in her
place with her stocking.
After writing for a little while, Levin suddenly thought with
exceptional vividness of Kitty, her refusal, and their last meeting. He
got up and began walking about the room.
“What’s the use of being dreary?” said Agafea Mihalovna. “Come, why do
you stay on at home? You ought to go to some warm springs, especially
now you’re ready for the journey.”
“Well, I am going away the day after tomorrow, Agafea Mihalovna; I must
finish my work.”
“There, there, your work, you say! As if you hadn’t done enough for the
peasants! Why, as ’tis, they’re saying, ‘Your master will be getting
some honor from the Tsar for it.’ Indeed and it is a strange thing; why
need you worry about the peasants?”
“I’m not worrying about them; I’m doing it for my own good.”
Agafea Mihalovna knew every detail of Levin’s plans for his land. Levin
often put his views before her in all their complexity, and not