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XXVIII

Levin was insufferably bored with the ladies that evening: he was troubled as never before by the thought that the dissatisfaction he now felt with farming was not his exceptional situation but the general condition of things in Russia, that to establish relations with workers so that they would work like the muzhik he had met half-way there was not a dream but a problem that had to be solved. And it seemed to him that this problem could be solved and that he must try to do it.

Having taken leave of the ladies and promised to stay the whole of the next day so that they could go together on horseback to look at an interesting landslide in the state forest, Levin stopped at his host’s study before going to bed to take some books on the workers question that Sviyazhsky had offered him. Sviyazhsky’s study was a huge room lined with bookcases and had two tables in it - one a massive desk that stood in the middle of the room, and the other a round one on which the latest issues of newspapers and magazines in different languages were laid out in a star-like pattern around a lamp. By the desk was a stand with boxes of all sorts of files marked with gilt labels.

Sviyazhsky got the books out and sat down in a rocking chair.

‘What are you looking at?’ he said to Levin, who stood by the round table looking through a magazine.

‘Ah, yes, there’s a very interesting article in it,’ Sviyazhsky said of the magazine Levin was holding. ‘It turns out,’ he added with cheerful animation, ‘that the chief culprit in the partition of Poland was not Frederick at all.28 It turns out ...’

And, with his particular clarity, he briefly recounted these new, very important and interesting discoveries. Despite the fact that Levin was now most occupied with the thought of farming, he kept asking himself as he listened to his host: ‘What’s got into him? And why, why is he interested in the partition of Poland?’ When Sviyazhsky finished, Levin involuntarily asked: ‘Well, what then?’ But there was nothing. The only interesting thing was that ‘it had turned out’. But Sviyazhsky did not explain or find it necessary to explain why he found it interesting.

‘Yes, but I was very interested in the angry landowner,’ Levin said with a sigh. ‘He’s intelligent and said many right things.’

‘Ah, go on! An inveterate secret serf-owner, as they all are!’ said Sviyazhsky.

‘Of whom you are the marshal ...’

‘Yes, only I’m marshalling them in the other direction,’ Sviyazhsky said, laughing.

‘What interests me so much is this,’ said Levin. ‘He’s right that our cause, that is, rational farming, doesn’t work, that only usurious farming works, as with that silent one, or else the simplest kind. Who is to blame for that?’

‘We are, of course. And besides, it’s not true that it doesn’t work. At Vassilchikov’s it works.’

‘A mill...’

‘But all the same I don’t know what you’re surprised at. The peasantry stand at such a low level of both material and moral development that they apparently must oppose everything foreign to them. In Europe rational farming works because the peasantry are educated; which means that with us the peasantry have to be educated - that’s all.’

‘But how are we to educate the peasantry?’

‘To educate the peasantry, three things are needed: schools, schools and schools.’

‘But you said yourself that the peasantry stand at a low level of material development. How will schools help?’

‘You know, you remind me of the anecdote about giving advice to a sick man: “Why don’t you try a laxative?” “I did: got worse.” “Try leeches.” “Tried them: got worse.” “Well, then, just pray to God.” “Tried that: got worse.” It’s the same with you and me. I say political economy, and you say: worse. I say socialism-worse. Education - worse.’

‘But how will schools help?’

‘They’ll give them different needs.’

‘That’s something I’ve never understood,’ Levin objected hotly. ‘How will schools help the peasantry to improve their material well-being? You say that schools, education, will give them