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These chapters tell you a lot about Levin and his life as the
owner of a large country estate.
Although several months have passed since his proposal to
Kitty, he is still miserable over his rejection. But his farm
takes up most of his time and attention and he is satisfied with
this diversion. The descriptions of the weather and countryside
are lush in these chapters, and are a good indication that Levin
spends a lot of his time drinking in the beauty of his
surroundings--a far cry from life in the city!
You learn that Levin is writing a book on agriculture. It\'s
a revolutionary book because it emphasizes that the laborers are
as much a factor in successful farming as climate and soil.
This was a topic dear to Tolstoy\'s heart, and he speaks on it
through Levin.
NOTE: EMANCIPATION OF THE SERFS Until 1861 the Russian
agricultural system was composed of wealthy landowners and
serfs. Serfs were essentially slaves; not allowed to own land,
they worked their master\'s land for a small salary. In that
time, Russian farms were huge and landowning families depended
on their serfs not only for field work but also for various
housekeeping tasks. A landowner\'s heirs inherited his serfs as
well as his money and property.
After the Czar\'s emancipation decree freed them, the serfs
were allowed to own land and to work for themselves. But
because for so many generations they had worked for exceedingly
low wages, most serfs hadn\'t been able to save any money with
which to buy land. They continued to work for the estate owners
they had always served.
But this situation also caused problems, for landowners could
no longer get away with paying very low wages. Legally allowed
to be ambitious, serfs were now demanding that they be better
paid. As a result, they and their former owners would
negotiate, sometimes in painful detail, the arrangement between
them. For example, should serfs get a percentage of profits?
How should serfs who had managed to buy a small plot of land
divide their time between their own farming and that for the
landowner?
The serfs\' new freedom had psychological effects as well.
Some landowners could not adjust to thinking of former serfs as
their equals. Other landowners, who had always regarded their
serfs as part of the family, were now hurt at the sudden
distance between them.
Levin\'s plan to make the serfs equal partners in his farm
infuriated other landowners. It also made some of the serfs
suspicious. After all, if that was the way Levin had felt all
along, why hadn\'t he done it sooner, they wondered.
You remember that the Oblonskys were having money problems.
Their situation has worsened, and Stiva comes to stay with Levin
while he sells a forest that Dolly owns. He has made a deal
with Ryabinin, a dealer Levin doesn\'t respect. Ryabinin comes
to Levin\'s home to conclude his transaction with Stiva. Levin
is against the deal because Stiva\'s price is too low, and makes
a higher counteroffer. But Stiva has promised Ryabinin and
feels it would be dishonorable to go back on his word.
This is an important incident. It points up that city
people, with little knowledge of respect for the land,
contribute to its devaluation. Tolstoy believed that people
like Stiva would eventually ruin Russia through such
make-money-quick business deals.
Stiva tells Levin that Kitty has been ill, that she and
Vronsky never got together. He also tells Levin that the
princess had been impressed with Vronsky because he was a
\"perfect aristocrat.\" (Kitty didn\'t care about this.) This leads
the two men into a discussion on the meaning of aristocracy.
Levin says that he worries about the extravagance of urban
nobles who consider it beneath their dignity to haggle over
prices. He points out that Ryabinin\'s children may well be
better off than Stiva\'s. Levin goes on to say that, unlike
Stiva and the princess, he doesn\'t consider Vronsky a true
aristocrat, because his family, though rich, does not go back
very far, and his mother\'s reputation is questionable. Levin
says he considers himself a true nobleman--his family can be
traced back many generations, his relatives have always been
well educated and independent. Never have they--unlike Stiva
and Vronsky--taken government grants and awards and high-level
bureaucratic jobs given out largely on the basis of connections.
The conversation remains pleasant, although Levin and Stiva
disagree on all points raised.
NOTE: Tolstoy is clearly talking through Levin. Stiva is
part of an urban crowd that is gaining more and more government
power, primarily through agencies that Tolstoy thinks harmful.
In this conversation, you can see that Levin and Stiva have
launched themselves on diverging paths. These paths symbolize
what Tolstoy believed were conflicting possibilities for the
future of Russia.
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