Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Three/Chapter 27
CHAPTER XXVII
"If it only were n't a pity to abandon what has been done,—cost so much labor,—it would be better to give up, sell out, go abroad, and hear 'La Belle Hélène,' like Nikolaï Ivanovitch," the old proprietor was saying, while his intelligent face lighted up with a pleasant smile.
"There now! but still you don't sell out," said Nikolaï Ivanovitch Sviazhsky; "so you must be well off, on the whole."
"I am well off in one way, because I have a home of my own, with board and lodging. Besides, one always hopes that the peasantry will improve. But would you believe it,—this drunkenness, this laziness! Everything goes to destruction. No horses, no cows. They starve to death. But try to help them,—take them for farm-hands: they manage to ruin you; yes, even before a justice of the peace!" [1]
"But you, too, can complain to the justice of the peace," said Sviazhsky.
"What! I complain? Not for the world! All such talk shows that complaints are idle. Here, at the mill, they took their handsel, and went off. What did the justice of the peace do? Acquitted them. Your only chance is to go to the communal court,—to the starshina. The starshina will have the man thrashed for you. He settles things in the old-fashioned way. If it were not for him you had better sell out, fly to the ends of the world!" The proprietor was evidently trying to tease Sviazhsky; but Sviazhsky not only did not lose his temper, but was much amused.
"Well, we carry on our estates without these measures," said he, smiling. "I and Levin and he."
He pointed to the other proprietor.
"Yes; but ask Mikhaïl Petrovitch how his affairs are getting along. Is that a rational way?"[2] demanded the proprietor, especially accenting the word "rational."
"My way is very simple," said Mikhaïl Petrovitch, "thank the Lord! My whole business lies in seeing that the money is ready for the autumn taxes. The muzhiks come, and say, 'Batyushka, help us, father.' Well, all these muzhiks are neighbors; I pity 'em. Well, I advance 'em the first third. Only I say, 'Remember, children, I help you; and you must help me when I need you,—sowing the oats, getting in the hay, harvesting,' Now, I get along with them as with my own family. To be sure, there are some among them who have n't any conscience."
Levin, who knew of old about these patriarchal traditions, exchanged glances with Sviazhsky; and, interrupting Mikhail Petrovitch, he said, "How would you advise?" addressing the old proprietor with the gray mustache. "How do you think one's estate ought to be managed?"
"Well, manage it just as Mikhaïl Petrovitch does,—either give half the land to the muzhiks, or go shares with them. That is possible; but, all the same, the wealth of the country is growing less and less. Places on my lands which in the time of serfage, under good management, produced ninefold, now produce only threefold. Emancipation has ruined Russia,"
Sviazhsky looked at Levin with smiling eyes, and even made a scarcely noticeable gesture to express his disdain, but Levin did not find the old proprietor's words ridiculous; he understood them better than he understood Sviazhsky. Much that the old man said in his complaint, that Russia was ruined by the emancipation, seemed to him true; for him it was novel and unanswerable. The proprietor evidently expressed his honest thought,—a thought which arose, not from any desire to show an idle wit, but from the conditions of his life, which had been spent in the country, where he could see the question practically from every side.
"The fact is, please to acknowledge," continued the old proprietor, who evidently wished to show that he was not an enemy of civilization, "all progress is accomplished by force alone. Take the reforms of Peter, of Catherine, of Alexander; take European history itself; still more so for progress in agriculture. The potato, for instance,—to introduce potatoes into Russia required force. We have not always plowed with iron plows; perhaps they have been introduced into our domains, but it required force. Now, until recently, when we had control over our serfs, we proprietors could conduct our affairs with all sorts of improvements: drying-rooms and winnowing-machines and dung-carts—all sorts of tools—we could introduce, because we had the power; and the muzhiks at first would oppose, and then would imitate us. But now, by the abrogation of serfage, they have taken away our authority; and so our estates,[3] now that everything is reduced to the same level, must necessarily sink back to the condition of primitive barbarism. This is my view of it."
"Yes, but why? If that were rational, then you could keep on with your improvements by aid of hired labor," said Sviazhsky.
"We have no power. How could I? allow me to ask."
"This—this is the working-force, the chief element in the problem before us," thought Levin.
"With hired men."
"Hired men will not work well, or work with good tools. Our laborers know how to do only one thing,—to drink like pigs, and, when they are drunk, to ruin everything you intrust them with. They water your horses to death, destroy your best harnesses, take the tires off your wheels and sell them to get drink, and stick bolts into your winnowing-machines so as to render them useless. Everything that is not done in their way is nauseous to them. And thus the affairs of our estates go from bad to worse. The lands are neglected, and go to weeds, or else are abandoned to the muzhiks. Instead of producing millions of tchetverts[4] of wheat, you can raise only a few hundred thousand. The public wealth is diminishing. If they were going to free the serfs, they should have done it gradually." ....
And he developed his own scheme of emancipation whereby all these difficulties would have been avoided.
This plan did not interest Levin, but when the gentleman had finished he returned to his first proposition, with the hope of inducing Sviazhsky to tell what he seriously thought about it. He said, addressing Sviazhsky:—
"It is very true that the level of our agriculture is growing lower and lower, and that in our present relations with the peasantry, it is impossible to carry on our estates rationally," he said.
"I am not of that opinion," said Sviazhsky, seriously. "I only see that we are not up to the point of managing our estates, and that on the contrary, since serfage was abolished, agriculture has decayed; I argue that in those days it was very wretched, and very low. We never had any machines, or good oxen or decent supervision. We did not even know how to make up our accounts. Ask a proprietor: he could not tell you what a thing cost, or what it would bring him."
"Italian book-keeping!" said the old proprietor ironically. "Reckon all you please, and get things mixed as much as you please, there will be no profit in it."
"Why get things mixed up? Your miserable flail, your Russian topchachek, will break all to pieces; my steam-thresher will not break to pieces. Then your wretched nags; how are they? A puny breed that you can pull by the tails, comes to nothing; but our Percherons are vigorous horses, they are worth something. And so with everything. Our agriculture always needed to be helped forward."
"Yes! but it would need some power, Nikolaï Ivanovitch. Very well for you; but when one has one son at the university, and several others at school, as I have, he can't afford to buy Percherons."
"There are banks on purpose."
"To have my last goods and chattels sold under the hammer. No, thank you!"
"I don't agree that it is necessary or possible to lift the level of agriculture much higher," said Levin. "I am much interested in this question; and I have the means, but I cannot do anything. And as for banks, I don't know whom they profit. Up to the present time, whatever I have spent on my estate, has resulted only in loss. Cattle—loss; machines—loss."
"That is true," said the old proprietor with the gray mustache, laughing with hearty satisfaction.
"And I am not the only man," continued Levin. "I call to mind all those who have made experiments in the 'rational manner.' All, with few exceptions, have come out of it with losses. Will you admit that your farming is profitable?" he asked, and at that instant he detected in Sviazhsky's face that transient expression of embarrassment which he noticed when he wanted to penetrate farther into the inner chambers of Sviazhsky's mind.
However, the question was not entirely fair play on Levin's part. His hostess had told him at tea that they had just had a German expert up from Moscow, who, for five hundred rubles' fee, agreed to put the book-keeping of the estate in order; and he found that there had been a net loss of more than three thousand rubles. She could not remember exactly how much, but the German accountant had calculated it to within forty kopeks.
The old proprietor smiled when he heard Levin's question about the profits of Sviazhsky's management. It was evident that he knew about the state of his neighbors' finances.
"Maybe it is unprofitable," replied Sviazhsky. "This only proves that either I am a poor manager, or I sink my capital to increase the revenue."
"Oh! revenue!" cried Levin, with horror. "Maybe there is such a thing as revenue in Europe, where the land is better for the labor spent on it; but with us, the more labor spent on it, the worse it is—that is because it exhausts it—so there is no revenue."
"How, no revenue? It is a law."
"Then we are no exceptions to the law. The word renta, revenue, has no clearness for us, and explains nothing, but rather confuses. No; tell me how the doctrine of revenue can be ....
"Won't you have some curds?—Masha, send us some curds or some raspberries," said Sviazhsky to his wife. "Raspberries have lasted unusually late this year."
And, with his usual jovial disposition of soul, Sviazhsky got up and went out, evidently assuming that the discussion was ended, while for Levin it seemed that it had only just begun.
Levin was now left with the old proprietor, and continued to talk with him, endeavoring to prove to him that all the trouble arose from the fact that we did not try to understand our laborers' habits and peculiarities. But the old proprietor, like all people accustomed to think alone and for himself, found it difficult to enter into the thought of another, and clung firmly to his own opinions. He declared that the Russian muzhik was a pig, and loved swinishness, and that it needed force or else a stick to drive him out of his swinishness; but we are such liberals that we have suddenly swapped off the thousand-year-old stick for these lawyers and jails, where the good-for-nothing, stinking muzhik gets fed on good soup, and has his pure air by the cubic foot.
"Why," asked Levin, wishing to get back to the question, "do you think that it is impossible to reach an equilibrium which will utilize the forces of the laborer, and render them productive?"
"That will never come about with the Russian people; there is no force," replied the proprietor.
"Why could not new conditions be found?" asked Sviazhsky, who had been eating his curds, and smoking a cigarette, and now approached the two disputants. "All the needful forms are ready for use, and well learned. That relic of barbarism, the primitive commune where each member is responsible for all, is falling to pieces of its own weight; the right of holding serfs has been abolished; now there remains only free labor, and its forms are at hand,—the day-laborer, the journeyman, the ordinary farmer,—and you can't get rid of this."
"But Europe is discontented with these forms."
"Yes, and perhaps discontent will find new ones, and will progress probably."
"This is all I say about that," said Levin. "Why should we not seek for them on our side?"
"Because it would be much the same as our pretending to invent new methods of constructing railways. Our methods are all ready; all we have to do is to apply them."
"But if they do not suit us? if they are hurtful?" Levin insisted.
And again he saw the frightened look in Sviazhsky's eyes.
"Well! this: we throw up our caps, we follow wherever Europe leads! All this I know; but tell me, are you acquainted with all that is going on in Europe about the organization of labor?"
"No; I know very little."
"This question is now occupying the best minds in Europe. Schulze-Delitzsch[5] and his school .... then all this prodigious literature on the labor question .... the tendencies of Lassalle, the most radical of all of them .... the Miilhausen organization .... this all is a fact, you surely must know."
"I have an idea of it, but it's very vague."
"No, you only say so; you know all this as well as I do. I don't set up to be a professor of social science, but these things interest me; and I assure you, if they interest you, you should go into them."
"But where do they lead you?" ....
"Beg pardon." ....
The two proprietors got up; and Sviazhsky, again arresting Levin in his disagreeable habit of looking into the inner chambers of his mind, went out to bid his guests good-by.
- ↑ In the Russian mir, or commune, the starshina, or elder, is the chief elected every three years. Before the emancipation of the serfs, in 1861, each commune had its volostnoï sud, or district court, the decisions of which were often very ridiculous. Among the reforms instituted by the Emperor Alexander II. was the so-called mirovoïsudya, justice or arbiter of the peace,—more properly, judge of the peace,—an innovation which at first caused much opposition among the peasantry. See Wallace's "Russia" and Leroy Beaulieu's "L'Empire des Tsars."—Ed.
- ↑ Ratsionalnoye khozyaïstvo.
- ↑ Khozyaïstvo
- ↑ A tchetvert is 5.775 English bushels.
- ↑ Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch, who founded the first People's Bank, and in the German Parliament labored for constitutional reform, was born in Prussian Saxony, August 29, 1808, died at Potsdam, April 29, 1883. At the time of his death the United Bank Organization of which he was manager had thirty-five hundred branches, with fifty million dollars' capital, and about a hundred millions of deposits. He was an opponent of Lassalle's socialism.—Ed.