ANNA KARENINA (Collector's Edition). Leo Tolstoy

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      Chapter 29

      THE carrying out of Levin’s plans presented many difficulties, but he struggled with all his might to attain, if not all he desired, at any rate a possibility of believing without self-deception that the thing was worth doing. One of the chief difficulties was that the farming was actually going on and it was impossible to stop it all and start afresh; so that the machine had to be altered while it was working.

      When, on the evening of his return, he informed the steward of his intentions, the steward with evident pleasure agreed with that part of the plan which showed that all that had been done up to then was foolish and unprofitable. He remarked that he had always said so but had not been listened to. But to Levin’s proposal that he, like the peasants, should participate as a shareholder would in the farming, the steward only put on a look of great depression and expressed no definite opinion, but at once began to speak of the necessity of carting the last sheaves of rye next day and of starting the second ploughing; so that Levin felt that it was not the time for his plans to be considered.

      When speaking of the matter to the peasants and offering them land on the new conditions, Levin again met with the same difficulty; they too were so fully occupied with the labour of the day that they had no time to consider the advantages and disadvantages of the venture.

      The naïve peasant, the cowman Ivan, quite understood Levin’s offer of letting him and his family have a share in the profits of the dairy farm, and quite sympathized with this undertaking: but when Levin impressed upon him the benefit that would accrue to him in the future, a look of anxiety and regret that he could not stop to listen to it all appeared on Ivan’s face, and he hurriedly remembered some task that could not be put off, seized a hayfork to remove the hay from the enclosure, fetched water, or cleared away the manure.

      Another stumbling-block was the peasant’s invincible mistrust of the possibility of a landlord having any other aim than that of robbing them as much as possible. They were firmly convinced that his real aim (whatever he might say) would always be hidden in what he did not tell them. And they themselves, when they talked, said much, but never said what they really wanted. Besides all this (Levin felt that the splenetic landowner was right), the peasants put as the first and unalterable condition in any agreement, that they should not be obliged to use any new methods or new kinds of tools for their work. They agreed that an English plough ploughed better, that a scarifier worked quicker, but they found a thousand reasons why they could not use either the one or the other; and, though he was convinced that it would be necessary to lower his standards of farming, he disliked having to give up improvements the benefit of which was so clear. Yet in spite of all these difficulties he got his way, and by autumn the scheme began to work, or at any rate it seemed so to him.

      At first Levin thought of letting the whole of his farm as it stood to the peasants, to the labourers, and to his steward, on the new co-partnership lines, but he very soon saw that this was impossible and decided to divide up the different parts. The cattle-yard, the fruit and vegetable gardens, the meadows and the cornfields, divided into several parts, should come under different sections. The naïve Ivan, who, it seemed to Levin, best understood the plan, formed an artel [workman’s profit-sharing association with mutual responsibility] consisting chiefly of his own family, and became partner in the dairy section. The far field that had lain fallow for eight years was, with the aid of the intelligent carpenter Theodore Rezunov, taken up by six peasants’ families on the new cooperative lines, and the peasant Shuraev rented the vegetable gardens on similar terms. The rest remained as before; but these three sections were the beginning of a new order and fully occupied Levin.

      It is true that the dairy farm did not as yet go on any better than before, and Ivan strongly opposed heating the cowsheds and making butter from fresh cream, maintaining that cows required less food when kept in the cold and that butter made from sour cream went further; and that he expected his wages to be paid as before, not being at all interested to know that they were not wages but an advance on account of profits.

      It was true that Theodore Rezunov’s group did not plough the corn land twice with the English plough as they had agreed to do, pleading lack of time. It was true that the peasants of that group, though they had agreed to farm the land on the new conditions, did not speak of it as cooperatively held land, but as land held for payment in kind; and that the members of that group and Rezunov himself said to Levin: ‘If you would only accept money for the land it would be less trouble for you, and we should feel freer.’ Moreover, these peasants, on all sorts of pretexts, kept putting off the building of the cattle-sheds and granary they had agreed to put up on this land, and dragged the matter on till winter.

      It was true that Shuraev had taken steps to sublet the kitchen garden in small lots to the other peasants; he evidently quite misunderstood, and apparently intentionally misunderstood, the conditions on which the land was let to him.

      It was true that often when talking to the peasants, and explaining to them the advantages of the plan, Levin felt that they were only listening to the sound of his voice and were quite determined, СКАЧАТЬ