Resurrection by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (i love reading .TXT) đź“–
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The rich will again get at the land. Those who live by working
the land will multiply, and land will again be scarce. Then the
rich will again get those who need land into their power.”
“Just so,” quickly said the ex-soldier.
“Forbid to sell the land; let only him who ploughs it have it,”
angrily interrupted the oven-builder.
To this Nekhludoff replied that it was impossible to know who was
ploughing for himself and who for another.
The tall, reasonable man proposed that an arrangement be made so
that they should all plough communally, and those who ploughed
should get the produce and those who did not should get nothing.
To this communistic project Nekhludoff had also an answer ready.
He said that for such an arrangement it would be necessary that
all should have ploughs, and that all the horses should be alike,
so that none should be left behind, and that ploughs and horses
and all the implements would have to be communal property, and
that in order to get that, all the people would have to agree.
“Our people could not be made to agree in a lifetime,” said the
cross old man.
“We should have regular fights,” said the white-bearded old man
with the laughing eyes. “So that the thing is not as simple as it
looks,” said Nekhludoff, “and this is a thing not only we but
many have been considering. There is an American, Henry George.
This is what he has thought out, and I agree with him.”
“Why, you are the master, and you give it as you like. What’s it
to you? The power is yours,” said the cross old man.
This confused Nekhludoff, but he was pleased to see that not he
alone was dissatisfied with this interruption.
“You wait a bit, Uncle Simon; let him tell us about it,” said the
reasonable man, in his imposing bass.
This emboldened Nekhludoff, and he began to explain Henry
George’s single-tax system “The earth is no man’s; it is God’s,”
he began.
“Just so; that it is,” several voices replied.
“The land is common to all. All have the same right to it, but
there is good land and bad land, and every one would like to take
the good land. How is one to do in order to get it justly
divided? In this way: he that will use the good land must pay
those who have got no land the value of the land he uses,”
Nekhludoff went on, answering his own question. “As it would be
difficult to say who should pay whom, and money is needed for
communal use, it should be arranged that he who uses the good
land should pay the amount of the value of his land to the
commune for its needs. Then every one would share equally. If you
want to use land pay for it—more for the good, less for the bad
land. If you do not wish to use land, don’t pay anything, and
those who use the land will pay the taxes and the communal
expenses for you.”
“Well, he had a head, this George,” said the oven-builder, moving
his brows. “He who has good land must pay more.”
“If only the payment is according to our strength,” said the tall
man with the bass voice, evidently foreseeing how the matter
would end.
“The payment should be not too high and not too low. If it is too
high it will not get paid, and there will be a loss; and if it is
too low it will be bought and sold. There would be a trading in
land. This is what I wished to arrange among you here.”
“That is just, that is right; yes, that would do,” said the
peasants.
“He has a head, this George,” said the broad-shouldered old man
with the curls. “See what he has invented.”
“Well, then, how would it be if I wished to take some land?”
asked the smiling foreman.
“If there is an allotment to spare, take it and work it,” said
Nekhludoff.
“What do you want it for? You have sufficient as it is,” said the
old man with the laughing eyes.
With this the conference ended.
Nekhludoff repeated his offer, and advised the men to talk it
over with the rest of the commune and to return with the answer.
The peasants said they would talk it over and bring an answer,
and left in a state of excitement. Their loud talk was audible as
they went along the road, and up to late in the night the sound
of voices came along the river from the village.
The next day the peasants did not go to work, but spent it in
considering the landlord’s offer. The commune was divided into
two parties—one which regarded the offer as a profitable one to
themselves and saw no danger in agreeing with it, and another
which suspected and feared the offer it did not understand. On
the third day, however, all agreed, and some were sent to
Nekhludoff to accept his offer. They were influenced in their
decision by the explanation some of the old men gave of the
landlord’s conduct, which did away with all fear of deceit. They
thought the gentleman had begun to consider his soul, and was
acting as he did for its salvation. The alms which Nekhludoff had
given away while in Panovo made his explanation seem likely. The
fact that Nekhludoff had never before been face to face with such
great poverty and so bare a life as the peasants had come to in
this place, and was so appalled by it, made him give away money
in charity, though he knew that this was not reasonable. He could
not help giving the money, of which he now had a great deal,
having received a large sum for the forest he had sold the year
before, and also the hand money for the implements and stock in
Kousminski. As soon as it was known that the master was giving
money in charity, crowds of people, chiefly women, began to come
to ask him for help. He did not in the least know how to deal
with them, how to decide, how much, and whom to give to. He felt
that to refuse to give money, of which he had a great deal, to
poor people was impossible, yet to give casually to those who
asked was not wise. The last day he spent in Panovo, Nekhludoff
looked over the things left in his aunts’ house, and in the
bottom drawer of the mahogany wardrobe, with the brass lions’
heads with rings through them, he found many letters, and amongst
them a photograph of a group, consisting of his aunts, Sophia
Ivanovna and Mary Ivanovna, a student, and Katusha. Of all the
things in the house he took only the letters and the photograph.
The rest he left to the miller who, at the smiling foreman’s
recommendation, had bought the house and all it contained, to be
taken down and carried away, at one-tenth of the real value.
Recalling the feeling of regret at the loss of his property which
he had felt in Kousminski, Nekhludoff was surprised how he could
have felt this regret. Now he felt nothing but unceasing joy at
the deliverance, and a sensation of newness something like that
which a traveller must experience when discovering new countries.
CHAPTER X.
NEKHLUDOFF RETURNS TO TOWN.
The town struck Nekhludoff in a new and peculiar light on his
return. He came back in the evening, when the gas was lit, and
drove from the railway station to his house, where the rooms
still smelt of naphthaline. Agraphena Petrovna and Corney were
both feeling tired and dissatisfied, and had even had a quarrel
over those things that seemed made only to be aired and packed
away. Nekhludoff’s room was empty, but not in order, and the way
to it was blocked up with boxes, so that his arrival evidently
hindered the business which, owing to a curious kind of inertia,
was going on in this house. The evident folly of these
proceedings, in which he had once taken part, was so distasteful
to Nekhludoff after the impressions the misery of the life of the
peasants had made on him, that he decided to go to a hotel the
next day, leaving Agraphena Petrovna to put away the things as
she thought fit until his sister should come and finally dispose
of everything in the house.
Nekhludoff left home early and chose a couple of rooms in a very
modest and not particularly clean lodging-house within easy reach
of the prison, and, having given orders that some of his things
should be sent there, he went to see the advocate. It was cold
out of doors. After some rainy and stormy weather it had turned
out cold, as it often does in spring. It was so cold that
Nekhludoff felt quite chilly in his light overcoat, and walked
fast hoping to get warmer. His mind was filled with thoughts of
the peasants, the women, children, old men, and all the poverty
and weariness which he seemed to have seen for the first time,
especially the smiling, old-faced infant writhing with his
calfless little legs, and he could not help contrasting what was
going on in the town. Passing by the butchers’, fishmongers’, and
clothiers’ shops, he was struck, as if he saw them for the first
time, by the appearance of the clean, well-fed shopkeepers, like
whom you could not find one peasant in the country. These men
were apparently convinced that the pains they took to deceive the
people who did not know much about their goods was not a useless
but rather an important business. The coachmen with their broad
hips and rows of buttons down their sides, and the doorkeepers
with gold cords on their caps, the servant-girls with their
aprons and curly fringes, and especially the smart isvostchiks
with the nape of their necks clean shaved, as they sat lolling
back in their traps, and examined the passers-by with dissolute
and contemptuous air, looked well fed. In all these people
Nekhludoff could not now help seeing some of these very peasants
who had been driven into the town by lack of land. Some of the
peasants driven to the town had found means of profiting by the
conditions of town life and had become like the gentlefolk and
were pleased with their position; others were in a worse position
than they had been in the country and were more to be pitied than
the country people.
Such seemed the bootmakers Nekhludoff saw in the cellar, the
pale, dishevelled washerwomen with their thin, bare, arms ironing
at an open window, out of which streamed soapy steam; such the
two house-painters with their aprons, stockingless feet, all
bespattered and smeared with paint, whom Nekhludoff met—their
weak, brown arms bared to above the elbows—carrying a pailful of
paint, and quarrelling with each other. Their faces looked
haggard and cross. The dark faces of the carters jolting along in
their carts bore the same expression, and so did the faces of the
tattered men and women who stood begging at the street corners.
The same kind of faces were to be seen at the open, windows of
the eating-houses which Nekhludoff passed. By the dirty tables on
which stood tea things and bottles, and between which waiters
dressed in white shirts were rushing hither and thither, sat
shouting and singing red, perspiring men with stupefied faces.
One sat by the window with lifted brows and pouting lips and
fixed eyes as if trying to remember something.
“And why
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