Peasant poverty

Peasant poverty is the chronic, grinding destitution of the Russian peasantry that Nekhludoff confronts when he visits his estates after the trial, and which becomes the central social indictment of the novel. The evidence shows that this poverty is not an occasional misfortune but a structural condition: peasants lack sufficient land, are crushed by taxes and fines, and are forced into a cycle of debt and hunger that Nekhludoff, through his own observations, comes to see as the direct consequence of the landlords' ownership of the land.

The Structure of Rural Destitution

When Nekhludoff visits the village of Panovo, he enters the hut of an old peasant who tells him bluntly, "What is our life but the very worst life?" The man has twelve in his family and must buy six poods of corn every month, yet his own land yields only enough to last until Christmas. He hires out as a labourer, borrowed money from the estate, and spent it all before Lent, and the tax of seventeen roubles for his household remains unpaid. The old woman preparing dinner offers only bread and kvas, then soup made from a fish a woman brought, and potatoes. When Nekhludoff asks if there is anything more, she adds, "We'll also have a little milk." The peasant's wife, standing by the stove with her sleeves rolled up over her thin, sinewy brown arms, speaks of the hut as "coming down, and might kill one any day." This is not an isolated case: the boys who guide Nekhludoff through the village point out the poorest families—Michael, Simon Makhroff, Martha, and Anisia, who "has not even got a cow" and goes begging. One woman's husband is in prison for cutting down two birch trees in the landlord's forest, leaving her with three children and a sick grandmother.

The Causes of Poverty

Nekhludoff's reflections after seeing these conditions lead him to a clear conclusion: the chief cause of the people's great want is that the land which alone could feed them has been taken from them by the landlords. He sees it as self-evident that children and the aged die because they have no milk, and they have no milk because there is no pasture land and no land to grow corn or make hay on. The land so much needed by men is tilled by these starving people so that the corn may be sold abroad and the owners of the land may buy themselves hats, canes, carriages, and bronzes. He compares the situation to horses that have eaten all the grass in their enclosure and will starve unless they are put where they can get food off other land. The peasants themselves understand this: the old man at Kousminski tells Nekhludoff that the steward's arguments about order are easy to make, but "it's more than our strength will bear." Another peasant, when Nekhludoff offers to let the land at a low rent, says, "If only the pay is such as we can afford." The poverty is so deep that even a generous offer is met with suspicion: the peasants cannot believe that a landlord would act against his own interest, and they refuse the proposal, preferring "to go on the old way."

The Contrast with Urban Wealth

The poverty of the countryside is thrown into sharp relief by the luxury Nekhludoff encounters in the city. When he returns to Moscow, he is struck by the clean, well-fed shopkeepers, the coachmen with their broad hips and rows of buttons, the door-keepers with gold cords on their caps, and the smart isvostchiks with the nape of their necks clean shaved, sitting lolling back in their traps. He sees bootmakers in cellars, pale washerwomen with thin arms ironing at open windows, and house-painters with stockingless feet, all of them peasants driven into the town by lack of land. The isvostchik who drives him to the prison confirms that the number of workmen flocking to the city is terrible, and that there is no room for them because there is nothing for them to do in the village—"no land to be had." The contrast between the dying peasant in the police station and the elegant carriage of the Korchagins, with its well-fed horses and rubber tires, becomes for Nekhludoff a symbol of the entire social order.

Nekhludoff's Response

Confronted with this poverty, Nekhludoff resolves to give up his land to the peasants. At Kousminski, he lets the land at a rent 30 per cent lower than the market rate, though the peasants still seem dissatisfied and disappointed, having expected something greater. At Panovo, he proposes to let the land to the peasants on condition that the rent forms a communal fund for their own use, but the peasants refuse, suspecting a trick. Only after three days, influenced by the explanation that the gentleman is acting for the salvation of his soul, do they accept. Nekhludoff's own feelings are mixed: he feels ashamed of something, and the memory of the woman with the baby in the patchwork cap, dying of starvation, and the prison with its shaved heads and chains, haunts him. Yet he also feels a new certainty: the only sure means to lighten the people's condition is to give back to them the land they need so much. This conviction, drawn from Henry George's teaching, becomes the foundation of his moral awakening.