Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART THREE CHAPTER 27
Chapter 27
“If I’d only the heart to throw up what’s been set going...such a lot of trouble
wasted...I’d turn my back on the whole business, sell up, go off like Nikolay
Ivanovitch...to hear La Belle Hélène,” said the landowner, a pleasant smile lighting
up his shrewd old face.
“But you see you don’t throw it up,” said Nikolay Ivanovitch Sviazhsky; “so there
must be something gained.”
“The only gain is that I live in my own house, neither bought nor hired. Besides,
one keeps hoping the people will learn sense. Though, instead of that, you’d never
believe it–the drunkenness, the immorality! They keep chopping and changing their
bits of land. Not a sight of a horse or a cow. The peasant’s dying of hunger, but just
go and take him on as a laborer, he’ll do his best to do you a mischief, and then bring
you up before the justice of the peace.”
“But then you make complaints to the justice too,” said Sviazhsky.
“I lodge complaints? Not for anything in the world! Such a talking, and such a todo,
that one would have cause to regret it. At the works, for instance, they pocketed
the advance-money and made off. What did the justice do? Why, acquitted them.
Nothing keeps them in order but their own communal court and their village elder.
He’ll flog them in the good old style! But for that there’d be nothing for it but to give
it all up and run away.”
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 measures,” 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, obviously 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
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