Another difficulty lay in the peasants’ invincible mistrust of any other purpose on the landowner’s part than the desire to fleece them as much as possible. They were firmly convinced that his true goal, whatever he might tell them, would always lie in what he did not tell them. And they themselves, when they spoke, said many things, but never said what their true goal was. Besides that (Levin felt that the bilious landowner was right), the peasants put down as the first and immutable condition of any agreement whatsoever that they not be forced to employ new methods of farming or to make use of new tools. They agreed that the iron plough worked better, that the scarifier produced good results, but they found a thousand reasons why it was impossible for them to use either, and though he was convinced that he had to lower the level of farming, he was sorry to renounce improvements whose advantages were so obvious to him. But, despite all these difficulties, he had his way and by autumn things got going, or at least it seemed so to him.
In the beginning Levin thought of leasing the whole farm, as it was, to the peasants, workers and steward, on new conditions of partnership, but he soon became convinced that it was impossible, and he decided to subdivide the farming. The cattle-yard, orchards, kitchen gardens, meadows, fields, divided into several parts, were to constitute separate items. Naïve Ivan the cowman, who understood the matter best of all, as it seemed to Levin, chose an association for himself mainly from his own family, and became a participant in the cattle-yard. A far field that had lain fallow and overgrown for eight years was taken with the help of the clever carpenter Fyodor Rezunov by six muzhik families on the new associative terms, and the muzhik Shuraev leased all the kitchen gardens on the same conditions. The rest remained as before, but these three items were the beginning of a new system and fully occupied Levin.
True, in the cattle-yard things went no better than before, and Ivan strongly resisted the heating of the cow barn and making butter from fresh cream, maintaining that cows that are kept cold need less food and that sour-cream butter does you best, and he demanded a salary as in the old days, not concerned in the least that the money he got was not a salary but an advance against his share of the profit.
True, Fyodor Rezunov’s company did not cross-plough their land before sowing, as had been agreed, justifying themselves by the shortness of time. True, the muzhiks of this company, though they had agreed to conduct business on the new basis, referred to the land not as common but as shared, and both the muzhiks of the association and Rezunov himself more than once said to Levin: ‘If you’d take money for the land, it would put you at ease and unbind us.’ Besides that, these muzhiks, under various pretexts, kept postponing the building of a cattle-yard and threshing barn on this land, as had been agreed, and dragged it on till winter.
True, Shuraev wanted to take the kitchen gardens leased to him and let them out in small parcels to the muzhiks. Evidently he had completely misunderstood and, it seemed, deliberately misunderstood, the conditions on which the land had been leased to him.
True, as he talked with the muzhiks, explaining all the advantages of the undertaking to them, Levin often felt that they were listening only to the music of his voice and knew firmly that, whatever he might say, they were not going to let him deceive them. He felt it especially when he talked with the smartest of the peasants, Rezunov, and noticed that play in his eyes which clearly showed both mockery of him and the firm conviction that, if anyone was going to be deceived, it was not he, Rezunov.
But, despite all that, Levin thought that things had got going and that, by strict accounting and having it his way, he would eventually prove to them the advantages of such a system, and then everything would go by itself.
