by Anna Karenina (tr Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky) (Penguin Classics) (epub)
‘And I’m not the only one,’ Levin went on. ‘I can refer to all the farmers who conduct their business rationally; every one of them, with rare exceptions, operates at a loss. Tell me, now, is your farming profitable?’ said Levin, and he immediately noticed in Sviyazhsky’s eyes that momentary look of fear that he noticed whenever he wanted to penetrate beyond the reception rooms of Sviyazhsky’s mind.
Besides, on Levin’s part the question had not been asked in good conscience. Over tea the hostess had just told him that they had invited a German from Moscow that summer, an expert in bookkeeping, who for a fee of five hundred roubles had done the accounts of their farm and discovered that they were operating at a loss of three thousand and some roubles. She did not recall the exact figure, but it seems the German had it calculated down to the quarter kopeck.
The landowner smiled at the mention of the profits of Sviyazhsky’s farming, apparently knowing what sort of gains his neighbour and marshal might have.
‘Maybe it’s not profitable,’ Sviyazhsky replied. ‘That only proves that I’m a bad manager, or that I spend the capital to increase the true rent.’
‘Ah, the true rent!’ Levin exclaimed with horror. ‘Maybe true rent exists in Europe, where the land has been improved by the labour put into it; but with us the land all becomes worse from the labour put into it – that is, from being ploughed – and so there’s no true rent.’
‘What do you mean, no true rent? It’s a law.’
‘Then we’re outside the law. True rent won’t clarify anything for us; on the contrary, it will confuse things. No, tell us, how can the theory of true rent.. .’
‘Would you like some curds? Masha, send us some curds here, or raspberries,’ he turned to his wife. ‘This year the raspberries went on remarkably late.’
And in a most pleasant state of mind, Sviyazhsky got up and left, apparently assuming that the conversation had ended, at the very place where Levin thought it was just beginning.
Deprived of his interlocutor, Levin went on talking with the landowner, trying to prove to him that all the difficulty came from our not knowing the properties and habits of our worker; but the landowner, like all people who think originally and solitarily, was slow to understand another man’s thought and especially partial to his own. He insisted that the Russian muzhik was a swine and liked swinishness, and that to move him out of swinishness, authority was needed, and there was none, a stick was needed, and we suddenly became so liberal that we replaced the thousand–year–old stick with some sort of lawyers and lock–ups, in which worthless, stinking muzhiks are fed good soup and allotted so many cubic feet of air.
‘Why do you think,’ said Levin, trying to return to the question, ‘that it’s impossible to find relations with the workforce that would make work productive?’
‘That will never be done with the Russian peasantry without a stick! There’s no authority,’ the landowner replied.
‘How can new forms be found?’ said Sviyazhsky, who, having eaten his curds and lit a cigarette, again came over to the arguers. ‘All possible relations to the workforce have been defined and studied,’ he said. ‘That leftover of barbarism – the primitive community with its mutual guarantees – is falling apart of itself, serfdom is abolished, there remains only free labour, and its forms are defined and ready, and we must accept them. The hired worker, the day–labourer, the farmhand – you won’t get away from that.’
‘But Europe is dissatisfied with these forms.’
‘Dissatisfied and searching for new ones. And she’ll probably find them.’
‘That’s just what I’m talking about,’ replied Levin. ‘Why shouldn’t we search for them on our own?’
‘Because it’s the same as inventing new ways of building railways. They’re invented and ready.’
‘But what if they don’t suit us? What if they’re stupid?’ said Levin.
And again he noticed the look of fear in Sviyazhsky’s eyes.
‘Yes, right: we’ll win at a canter, we’ve found what Europe’s searching for! I know all that, but, pardon me, do you know what’s been done in Europe about the question of workers’ conditions?’
‘No, very little.’
‘This question now occupies the best minds in Europe. The Schulze–Delitsch tendency. . . Also all the vast literature on the workers question, on the most liberal Lassalle tendency… The Mulhouse system is already a fact, you surely know that.’[27] ‘I have an idea, but a very vague one.’
‘No, you only say so; you surely know it all as well as I do. Of course, I’m no social professor, but it once interested me, and if it interests you, you really should look into it.’
‘But what did they arrive at?’
‘Excuse me …’
The landowners got up, and Sviyazhsky, again stopping Levin in his unpleasant habit of prying beyond the reception rooms of his mind, went to see his guests off.
XXVIII
Levin was insufferably bored with the ladies that evening: he was troubled as never before by the thought that the dissatisfaction he now felt with farming was not his exceptional situation but the general condition of things in Russia, that to establish relations with workers so that they would work like the muzhik he had met half–way there was not a dream but a problem that had to be solved. And it seemed to him that this problem could be solved and that he must try to do it.
Having taken leave of the ladies and promised to stay the whole of the next day so that they could go together on horseback to look at an interesting landslide in the state forest, Levin stopped at his host’s study before going to bed to take some books on the workers question that Sviyazhsky had offered him. Sviyazhsky’s study was a huge room lined with bookcases and had two tables in it – one a massive desk that stood in the middle of the room, and the other a round one on which the latest issues of newspapers and magazines in different languages were laid out in a star–like pattern around a lamp. By the desk was a stand with boxes of all sorts of files marked with gilt labels.
Sviyazhsky got the books out and sat down in a rocking chair.
‘What are you looking at?’ he said to Levin, who stood by the round table looking through a magazine.
‘Ah, yes, there’s a very interesting article in it,’ Sviyazhsky said of the magazine Levin was holding. ‘It turns out,’ he added with cheerful animation, ‘that the chief culprit in the partition of Poland was not Frederick at all.[28] It turns out…’
And, with his particular clarity, he briefly recounted these new, very important and interesting discoveries. Despite the fact that Levin was now most occupied with the thought of farming, he kept asking himself as he listened to his host: ‘What’s got into him? And why, why is he interested in the partition of Poland?’ When Sviyazhsky finished, Levin involuntarily asked: ‘Well, what then?’ But there was nothing. The only interesting thing was that ‘it had turned out’. But Sviyazhsky did not explain or find it necessary to explain why he found it interesting.
‘Yes, but I was very interested in the angry landowner,’ Levin said with a sigh. ‘He’s intelligent and said many right things.’
‘Ah, go on! An inveterate secret serf–owner, as they all are!’ said Sviyazhsky.
‘Of whom you are the marshal…’
‘Yes, only I’m marshalling them in the other direction,’ Sviyazhsky said, laughing.
‘What interests me so much is this,’ said Levin. ‘He’s right that our cause, that is, rational farming, doesn’t work, that only usurious farming works, as with that silent one, or else the simplest kind. Who is to blame for that?’
‘We are, of course. And besides, it’s not true that it doesn’t work. At Vassilchikov’s it works.’
‘A mill…’
‘But all the same I don’t know what you’re surprised at. The peasantry stand at such a low level of both material and moral development that they apparently must oppose everything foreign to them. In Europe rational farming works because the peasantry are
educated; which means that with us the peasantry have to be educated – that’s all.’
‘But how are we to educate the peasantry?’
‘To educate the peasantry, three things are needed: schools, schools and schools.’
‘But you said yourself that the peasantry stand at a low level of material development. How will schools help?’
‘You know, you remind me of the anecdote about giving advice to a sick man: "Why don’t you try a laxative?" "I did: got worse." "Try leeches." "Tried them: got worse." "Well, then, just pray to God." "Tried that: got worse." It’s the same with you and me. I say political economy, and you say: worse. I say socialism – worse. Education – worse.’
‘But how will schools help?’
‘They’ll give them different needs.’
‘That’s something I’ve never understood,’ Levin objected hotly. ‘How will schools help the peasantry to improve their material well–being? You say that schools, education, will give them new needs. So much the worse, because they won’t be able to satisfy them. And how the knowledge of addition, subtraction and the catechism will help them to improve their material condition, I never could understand. The evening before last I met a woman with an infant at her breast and asked her where she had been. She said: "To the wise woman, because a shriek–hag has got into the child, so I took him to be treated." I asked how the wise woman treats the shriek–hag. "She puts the baby on a roost with the chickens and mumbles something."‘
‘Well, there you’ve said it yourself! We need schools so that she won’t treat the shriek–hag by putting the baby on a roost…’ Sviyazhsky said, smiling gaily.
‘Ah, no!’ Levin said in vexation. ‘For me that treatment is like treating the peasantry with schools. The peasants are poor and uneducated, we see that as surely as the woman sees the shriek–hag because the baby shrieks. But why schools will help in this trouble – poverty and uneducation – is as incomprehensible as why chickens on a roost help against the shriek–hag. What must be helped is the cause of the poverty.’
‘Well, in that at least you agree with Spencer,[29] whom you dislike so. He, too, says that education may result from a greater well–being and comfort in life – from frequent ablutions, as he says – but not from the ability to read and write …’
‘Well, I’m very glad, or, on the contrary, very not–glad, that I agree with Spencer – only I’ve known it for a long time. Schools won’t help, what will help is an economic system in which the peasantry will be wealthier, there will be more leisure – and then there will also be schools.’
‘Nevertheless, all over Europe schools are now compulsory.’
‘And how about you? Do you agree with Spencer?’ asked Levin.
But a look of fear flashed in Sviyazhsky’s eyes, and he said, smiling:
‘Ah, but that shriek–hag is excellent! You actually heard it yourself?’
Levin saw that he was not going to find a connection between this man’s life and his thoughts. Evidently it made absolutely no difference to him where his reasoning led him; he needed only the process of reasoning itself. And it was unpleasant for him when the process of reasoning led him to a dead end. That alone he disliked and avoided, turning the conversation to something pleasantly cheerful.
All the impressions of that day, starting with the muzhik half–way there, which seemed to serve as the fundamental basis for all that day’s impressions and thoughts, stirred Levin deeply. This good Sviyazhsky, who kept his thoughts only for public use and evidently had some other bases of life, hidden from Levin, though at the same time he and that crowd whose name was legion guided public opinion with these thoughts that were alien to him; this embittered landowner, perfectly right in his reasoning which he had suffered through in his life, but not right in his bitterness against a whole class, and that the best class in Russia; his own dissatisfaction with his activity and the vague hope of finding a remedy for it – all this merged into a feeling of inner anxiety and the expectation of an imminent resolution.
Left alone in the room given him, lying on a spring mattress that unexpectedly tossed his arms and legs up with every movement, Levin did not fall asleep for a long time. Not one conversation with Sviyazhsky, though he had said many intelligent things, had interested Levin; but the landowner’s arguments called for discussion. Levin involuntarily recalled all his words and in his imagination corrected his own replies.
‘Yes, I should have said to him: "You say our farming doesn’t work because the muzhiks hate all improvements and that they must be introduced by authority. Now, if farming didn’t work at all without these improvements, you’d be right; but it does work, and it works only where the worker acts according to his habits, like that old man half–way here. Your and our common dissatisfaction with farming proves that either we or the workers are to blame. We’ve been pushing ahead for a long time in our own way, the European way, without asking ourselves about the properties of the workforce. Let’s try to look at the work force not as an ideal workforce but as the Russian muzhik with his instincts, and organize our farming accordingly. Picture to yourself," I should have said to him, "that you do your farming like that old man, that you’ve found a way of getting the workers interested in the success of the work and found some midpoint in the improvements that they can recognize – and, without exhausting the soil, you’ll bring in two or three times more than before. Divide it in two, give half to the workers; the difference you come out with will be greater and the workers will also come out with more. But to do that you have to lower the level of the farming and interest the workers in its success. How to do that is a matter of details, but there’s no doubt that it’s possible."‘
This thought threw Levin into great agitation. He did not sleep half the night, thinking over the details for bringing the thought to realization. He had not intended to leave the next day, but now decided to go home early in the morning. Besides, this sister–in–law with her neckline produced in him a feeling akin to shame and repentance for having done something bad. Above all, it was necessary for him to leave without delay: he had to offer the new project to the muzhiks in time, before the winter sowing, so that the sowing could be done on a new basis. He decided to overturn all the old management.
XXIX
The carrying out of Levin’s plan presented many difficulties; but he struggled with all his might and achieved, if not what he wished, at least something which, without deceiving himself, he could believe was worth the effort. One of the main difficulties was that the work was already in progress, that he could not stop everything and start over from the beginning, but had to retune the machine while it was running.
When, on returning home that same evening, he told the steward about his plans, the steward was obviously pleased to agree with the part of his speech which showed that everything done up to then was nonsense and unprofitable. The steward said that he had long been saying so, but no one had wanted to listen to him. As far as Levin’s proposal was concerned – that he participate as a shareholder, along with the workers, in the whole farming enterprise – to this the steward responded only with great dejection and no definite opinion, and immediately began talking about the necessity of transporting the remaining sheaves of rye the next day and seeing to the cross–ploughing, so that Levin felt that now was not the time for it.
Talking with the peasants about the same thing and offering to lease them the land on new conditions, he also ran into the chief difficulty that they were so busy with the current day’s work that they had no time to consider the advantages and disadvantages of the undertaking.
A naive muzhik, Ivan the cowman, seemed to have fully understood Levin’s proposal – that he and his family share in the profits of the cattle–yard – and was sympathetic with the undertaking. But when Levin impressed upon him his future advantages, Ivan’s face showed alarm and regret that he could not listen to it all to the end, and he hastened to find something to do that could not be put off: taking the
fork to finish heaping up hay from the cattle–yard, or fetching water, or clearing away manure.
Another difficulty lay in the peasants’ invincible mistrust of any other purpose on the landowner’s part than the desire to fleece them as much as possible. They were firmly convinced that his true goal, whatever he might tell them, would always lie in what he did not tell them. And they themselves, when they spoke, said many things, but never said what their true goal was. Besides that (Levin felt that the bilious landowner was right), the peasants put down as the first and immutable condition of any agreement whatsoever that they not be forced to employ new methods of farming or to make use of new tools. They agreed that the iron plough worked better, that the scarifier produced good results, but they found a thousand reasons why it was impossible for them to use either, and though he was convinced that he had to lower the level of farming, he was sorry to renounce improvements whose advantages were so obvious to him. But, despite all these difficulties, he had his way and by autumn things got going, or at least it seemed so to him.