Anna Karenina полностью

‘Yes, I should have said to him: “You say our farming doesn’t work because the muzhiks hate all improvements and that they must be introduced by authority. Now, if farming didn’t work at all without these improvements, you’d be right; but it does work, and it works only where the worker acts according to his habits, like that old man half-way here. Your and our common dissatisfaction with farming proves that either we or the workers are to blame. We’ve been pushing ahead for a long time in our own way, the European way, without asking ourselves about the properties of the workforce. Let’s try to look at the work force not as an ideal work force but as the Russian muzhik with his instincts, and organize our farming accordingly. Picture to yourself,” I should have said to him, “that you do your farming like that old man, that you’ve found a way of getting the workers interested in the success of the work and found some midpoint in the improvements that they can recognize - and, without exhausting the soil, you’ll bring in two or three times more than before. Divide it in two, give half to the workers; the difference you come out with will be greater and the workers will also come out with more. But to do that you have to lower the level of the farming and interest the workers in its success. How to do that is a matter of details, but there’s no doubt that it’s possible.”’

This thought threw Levin into great agitation. He did not sleep half the night, thinking over the details for bringing the thought to realization. He had not intended to leave the next day, but now decided to go home early in the morning. Besides, this sister-in-law with her neckline produced in him a feeling akin to shame and repentance for having done something bad. Above all, it was necessary for him to leave without delay: he had to offer the new project to the muzhiks in time, before the winter sowing, so that the sowing could be done on a new basis. He decided to overturn all the old management.

XXIX

The carrying out of Levin’s plan presented many difficulties; but he struggled with all his might and achieved, if not what he wished, at least something which, without deceiving himself, he could believe was worth the effort. One of the main difficulties was that the work was already in progress, that he could not stop everything and start over from the beginning, but had to retune the machine while it was running.

When, on returning home that same evening, he told the steward about his plans, the steward was obviously pleased to agree with the part of his speech which showed that everything done up to then was nonsense and unprofitable. The steward said that he had long been saying so, but no one had wanted to listen to him. As far as Levin’s proposal was concerned - that he participate as a shareholder, along with the workers, in the whole farming enterprise - to this the steward responded only with great dejection and no definite opinion, and immediately began talking about the necessity of transporting the remaining sheaves of rye the next day and seeing to the cross-ploughing, so that Levin felt that now was not the time for it.

Talking with the peasants about the same thing and offering to lease them the land on new conditions, he also ran into the chief difficulty that they were so busy with the current day’s work that they had no time to consider the advantages and disadvantages of the undertaking.

A naive muzhik, Ivan the cowman, seemed to have fully understood Levin’s proposal - that he and his family share in the profits of the cattle-yard - and was sympathetic with the undertaking. But when Levin impressed upon him his future advantages, Ivan’s face showed alarm and regret that he could not listen to it all to the end, and he hastened to find something to do that could not be put off: taking the fork to finish heaping up hay from the cattle-yard, or fetching water, or clearing away manure.