526 527
Obviously the landowner was chaffing Sviazhsky, who, far from
resenting it, was apparently amused by it.
“But you see we manage our land without such extreme mea-
sures,” said he, smiling: “Levin and I and this gentleman.”
He indicated the other landowner.
“Yes, the thing’s done at Mihail Petrovitch’s, but ask him how it’s
done. Do you call that a rational system?” said the landowner, obvi-
ously rather proud of the word “rational.”
“My system’s very simple,” said Mihail Petrovitch, “thank God. All
my management rests on getting the money ready for the autumn
taxes, and the peasants come to me, ‘Father, master, help us!’ Well, the
peasants are all one’s neighbors; one feels for them. So one advances
them a third, but one says: ‘Remember, lads, I have helped you, and
you must help me when I need it—whether it’s the sowing of the oats,
or the haycutting, or the harvest’; and well, one agrees, so much for
each taxpayer—though there are dishonest ones among them too, it’s
true.”
Levin, who had long been familiar with these patriarchal methods,
exchanged glances with Sviazhsky and interrupted Mihail Petrovitch,
turning again to the gentleman with the gray whiskers.
“Then what do you think?” he asked; “what system is one to adopt
nowadays?”
“Why, manage like Mihail Petrovitch, or let the land for half the
crop or for rent to the peasants; that one can do—only that’s just how
the general prosperity of the country is being ruined. Where the land
with serf-labor and good management gave a yield of nine to one, on
the half-crop system it yields three to one. Russia has been ruined by
the emancipation!”
Sviazhsky looked with smiling eyes at Levin, and even made a
faint gesture of irony to him; but Levin did not think the landowner’s
words absurd, he understood them better than he did Sviazhsky. A
great deal more of what the gentleman with the gray whiskers said to
show in what way Russia was ruined by the emancipation struck him
indeed as very true, new to him, and quite incontestable. The land-
owner unmistakably spoke his own individual thought—a thing that
very rarely happens—and a thought to which he had been brought not
by a desire of finding some exercise for an idle brain, but a thought
which had grown up out of the conditions of his life, which he had
brooded over in the solitude of his village, and had considered in every
aspect.
“The point is, don’t you see, that progress of every sort is only made
by the use of authority,” he said, evidently wishing to show he was not
without culture. “Take the reforms of Peter, of Catherine, of Alexander.
Take European history. And progress in agriculture more than any-
thing else—the potato, for instance, that was introduced among us by
force. The wooden plough too wasn’t always used. It was introduced
maybe in the days before the Empire, but it was probably brought in
by force. Now, in our own day, we landowners in the serf times used
various improvements in our husbandry: drying machines and thrash-
ing machines, and carting manure and all the modern implements—
all that we brought into use by our authority, and the peasants op-
posed it at first, and ended by imitating us. Now by the abolition of
serfdom we have been deprived of our authority; and so our hus-
bandry, where it had been raised to a high level, is bound to sink to the
most savage primitive condition. That’s how I see it.”
“But why so? If it’s rational, you’ll be able to keep up the same
system with hired labor,” said Sviazhsky.
“We’ve no power over them. With whom am I going to work the