The peasantry, or narod, was a subject of considerable interest to many in late Imperial Russia, not least to Leo Tolstoy. This historical background is readily apparent in his Anna Karenina, especially through the character of Konstantin Levin. Answers to the so-called “peasant question” attempted to understand the narod from various perspectives and according to various motives. Fundamentally, though, it must be asked, as Tolstoy asks, whether the narod is properly a subject about which to theorize generally. Here a distinction between monism and pluralism is useful. The former represents the narod by constructing an idealized peasant to embody all that is supposed to be essential to the identity of the Russian peasantry. The latter asserts either that all peasants are quite different or at least that there are different types of peasant within the narod, none of which represents a monistic ideal form. Tolstoy embraces elements of both of these through Levin, which lends itself to a nuanced characterization of peasants in Anna Karenina.
Following the framework of monism and pluralism, we shall explore the “peasant question” through a set of specific matters that are brought out in Tolstoy’s novel, which shall in turn be treated historically. Above all is the narod as a source of truth, which has important implications both for Levin and for historical Russia. In order to properly address this question, we must first consider the morality of the narod, which must be treated both in general and in relation to the morality of other Russians. In this way we will see not only a landscape of answers to the peasant question, but also Levin’s own idiosyncratic answer not only to the peasant question but also to life itself.
Neither a merely monistic conception of narod morality nor a merely pluralistic conception of narod morality adequately captures the historical reality of the narod, but the former had its strong proponents for a while among various Slavophiles and Populists. According to the Slavophile Ivan Aksakov, “The narod is made up of separate entities, each of whom has his own rational life, activity and freedom; each of them, taken separately, is not the narod, but together they make up that integral phenomenon, that new character who is called the narod and in whom all separate individuals vanish.”[1] This very neatly advances the monist position. What the narod does is not what any particular peasant does, but what the peasantry as a whole does. Thus the peasants become assimilated into this strange theoretical construct, the narod, and are considered as a whole. This is the approach of Sergey Ivanovitch, Levin’s half-brother, of whom it is said, “he liked the peasantry in contradistinction to the class of men he did not like, and so too he knew the peasantry as something distinct from and opposed to men generally,”[2] something to which Levin is explicitly opposed, as we shall see below.
According to Cathy Frierson, the efforts of later Populists to actually interact directly with those people who make up the narod would challenge such neat monism. The so-called narodniki would not settle for mere theorizing about their beloved narod; rather, they would come to know about it through experience. With regard to the radical character of these people, something that was on no account a necessary condition for Slavophilism, Frierson notes, “Morozov explained that for the Russian radical, socialism was his faith and the narod was his god.”[3] This god, however, did not reveal itself as the faithful anticipated. Rather, “the narod was not as cohesive a unit as expected…Not only did the peasants fail to display the predicted solidarity among the oppressed; they also did not share the Populists’ condemnation of serfdom and its remnants.”[4] Dissonance between theory and reality did not squelch the Populist project; instead, the Populists tried to inculcate such solidarity,[5] to inculcate a monism that would serve their revolutionary goals. At worst, this tacitly brings the whole idea of narod into question, and at best, transforms narod into an even vaguer concept than it was before. The Populists would not accept this, so they asserted the perfectibility of narod,[6] that is, they would make their god in their own image, so as to have it bear the moral qualities the Populists wanted it to posses.
While the Populists may have clung to the hope of monism, the reality of the narod remained pluralism, but pluralism of what sort? An answer waits if we are to look further into the moral nature of the narod. The idea of the peasant commune is very enlightening on the subject of moral conduct among the peasantry.[7] Peasant morality might be summarized as communal relativism. Boris Mironov says, “The communal conception of morality…recognized moral values, applied fully to interpersonal relations within the commune, extended to a lesser degree to peasants from other communes, and had only slight validity in dealings with the state, other classes, and other states.”[8] Mironov classifies this as a dualistic morality, since its duties are differently defined within and without the commune. This is interesting from the perspective of monism and pluralism, especially after Mironov says, “the peasant’s ‘I’ merged with the communal ‘we.’”[9] What could be more clearly monistic than that? Yet, there existed many communes that did not merge into anything that could be called a unified narod. This is the dualism once again on a more fundamental level of which moral dualism is merely a reflection. On the one hand, any commune is more or less monistic within, but on the other hand, these communes are themselves pluralistic.[10] This view can usefully be called semi-pluralism. Not only is the view not pluralistic on the level of individual, initially weakening the pluralism in question, but it also depends on considerable formal similarities among the plurality of communes, which do not form a monistic narod as individuals form a monistic commune.
Just as there can be a perceived monistic character of the narod, there are certainly such characterizations of the nobility. Levin appeals to such an idea, but in an importantly nuanced way. Levin’s draws a distinction between normative monism and descriptive monism. Normative monism says that a certain class, be it the narod or the nobility, ought to conform to some idealization. Descriptive monism simply claims that the category in question has a single character. It follows, of course, that there are also normative and descriptive forms of pluralism, which parallel their monistic variants. The normative form says that there ought not to be an ideal noble or peasant character. The descriptive form simply observes the existence of pluralism among nobles or the narod or what have you.
This further distinction is useful in categorizing some of the active views in Russia on the relationship between the nobility and the peasantry around which Levin’s own view would be formed. Levin at one point tries to rationalize it: “[Levin] always felt the injustice of his own abundance in comparison with the poverty of the peasants, and now he determined that so as to feel quite in the right, though he had worked hard and lived by no means luxuriously before, he would work now still harder, and would allow himself even less luxury” (pt. I, ch. 26, pg. 87). This is quite different from any ordinary response to a felt injustice on the part of a noble, and it is even less plausibly a solution that an average non-noble might conceive. Levin’s position stands unique among more historically representative categories, which will be considered before turning again to Levin.
One position is that which denies the injustice of the dualism (which is a form of pluralism) between the nobility and the narod, or whatever more complex stratification might better classify Russian society. These would be normative pluralists in their endorsement of the social stratification, which found adherents on all levels of society, for example, with both peasants and nobles with nostalgia for serfdom, which Frierson observes when she speaks of the Populists’ realization that the character of the narod is pluralistic, noted above. By and large, this can be taken to be at least the tacit position of the majority of both peasants and nobles, since it approximates the “official” position. Indeed, other positions are in effect different oppositions to or variations on this conception. As the progressive noble Svizhsky accuses Levin, “‘An inveterate supporter of serfdom at heart, like all of them!’” (pt. III, ch. 28, pg. 313).
A noble or some such person might also conceive of some duty to help the peasantry, accepting the dualism between noble and narod, but at the same time assigning functional roles to each class in order to define a single functional order. This is another form of normative pluralism, or more precisely a normative dualism, which says that the functional divide is that which ought to be. Vronsky is the best example of this view, when he pours much money into renewing a park and building a very modern hospital (among other things) at Vozdvizhenskoe, all the while living with every possible luxury, making certain that in both spheres, everything is as new and Western as possible (pt VI, ch. 20, pg. 567). In this sense, Vronsky becomes the model Westernizer of Anna Karenina. This is to be contrasted with Levin’s own reforms at Pokrovskoe, which, according to Levin’s idea of himself “as a fellow-worker with him” (pt. III, ch. 1, pg. 224), not as a separate thing to be helped or analyzed, quite unlike his half-brother.
This is further exemplified in the perceived noble duty, which Levin does not understand, to participate in local governmental entities, committees, elections, and the like, which is witnessed when Levin visits the election in Moscow. Tolstoy does an excellent job of drawing his readers into Levin’s confusion, leaving the reader in just as much uncertainty about how Levin ought to vote as the character himself. When it did come time to vote, “Levin advanced, but utterly forgetting what he was to do, and much embarrassed, he turned to Sergey Ivanovitch with the question, ‘Where am I to put it?’” (pt. VI, ch. 28, pg. 601). This being overheard, Levin entered into a rather awkward position. The politics, it seemed to him, were going on for no purpose outside themselves—politics for politics sake, much to the chagrin of Levin.
To cite an important outworking of such a sense of moral duty, Adele Lindenmeyr describes an “Ethos of Charity” in Imperial Russia that exhibited itself in both by spontaneous almsgiving and through charitable organizations, which was not limited to the likes of the nobility but was largely directed toward the narod. This giving, says Lindenmeyr, was “motivated by deep-rooted religious and popular views on the purpose of charity,” as well as by rank-consciousness,[11] to cite two overarching purposes. In the most visible example of spontaneous charity in Anna Karenina, Kitty is carried away by the charitable Christianity of Varenka and Madame Stahl: “In Varenka [Kitty] realized that one has but to forget oneself and love others, and one will be calm, happy, and noble. And that was what Kitty longed to be” (pt. II, ch. 31, pg. 208). This moral compulsion to charity contains a conflict between Kitty’s not entirely selfless motives to be “calm, happy, and noble” and any genuine desire to help others and actually be a good person. Further, it contains a conflict between who she is and who she wants to be.[12] For one, this captures the attachment of charity to religious motivation, which invariably must come in varying degrees of sincerity and genuineness. While Varenka never appears to act from any impure motive, the uncertainties surrounding Madam Stahl and the complexities of Kitty’s motives show that the forces driving charity, even within the sphere of religiously motivated giving, are diverse.
When a worker is crushed by a train upon arriving at the station, Vronsky engages in spontaneous charity in order to make himself appear charitable before Anna, who directly suggests that someone do this; that is, Vronsky engaged in charity for reasons that are not basically charitable. With outward nonchalance, he accepts adulation “shrugging his shoulders” (pt. I, ch. 18, pg. 62). This charity is for the benefit of but a few; it is done apart from the scientific sort of giving on which some insisted. This sort of giving Lindermeyr attributes to the inception of Humanitarianism in Russia, which “combines compassion for the unfortunate with an Enlightenment-inspired view of man as inherently good and human society as perfectible.”[13] The consequence is the advent of a scientific giving that at once satisfies this compassion and works rationally to ensure progress toward the perfection of man. In Anna Karenina, besides the above mentioned attitude of Sergey Ivanovitch, the practices of Vronsky and Svizhsky come closest to exemplifying this, insofar as they work to improve conditions for the peasants on their estates for progressive ends, Svizhsky explicitly taking a loss on his investment.
Returning to Levin, recall that he voices his concerns about justice after speaking to his Populist and Marxist brother Nikolay, who is Tolstoy’s main representative of a radical with respect to the narod. Further, Nikolay is a noble radical, who decries his status as a noble, idealizing the people as the hope of salvation, as it were. Nikolay is quite consistent with the picture of the Populist presented above, in that he is most definitely a descriptive monist about the narod and about capitalists, summarizing the surplus value theory of Marx, “The laborers with us, the peasants, bear all the burden of labor, and are so placed that however much they work they can’t escape from their position of beasts of burden…all the surplus values are taken from them by the capitalists…that state of things must be changed” (pt. I, ch. 25, pg. 82-83). Nikolay’s normative ideal is found in a monistic idealization of the narod, but not of the narod as it is. This is why he emphasizes the importance of helping the narod in terms of education and the like, so as to make it to become what it ought to be. This is how the basic descriptive dualism, which Nikolay’s Marxism leads him to see in society, informs his Populism. A new monism ought to be formed according to the utopian ideal that his Populism attempts to bring about through the narod. [14] This is precisely what is seen not only in the picture of Populism above, but also to a greater extent in the observation, “The common theme was the exploitation of the peasants as a class; the hope was that making peasants aware of peasant rebellions…would contribute to a sense of belonging to a broad oppressed group, to a consciousness that would break the pattern of passivity.”[15] Passivity is the reason the Populists must help the narod, as Nikolay identifies, just as he emphasizes that the peasantry ought to become unified, so as to bring about universal monism.
If it is acceptable to draw a parallel between Levin and Tolstoy himself, then there is an insight to be gained from Janko Lavrin’s analysis of Tolstoy’s character. He says, “Tolstoy values human personality only in so far as it sacrifices itself to the compactness of the whole, and why he proclaims any act of individual self-affirmation as the original sin and as the very spring of all evil on earth.”[16] So, there is a plurality of individuals within the nobility and the narod, but there ought to be monism. This, however, would seem to imply that there ought not to be any distinction between noble and narod, at least as far as moral idealization is concerned. Further, this would seem to give rise to a tension in the thought of Tolstoy and Levin. Levin never abandons his nobility or his wealth any more than Tolstoy himself did; that is, they seem to tacitly endorse their social stratification.
The distinctions between monism and pluralism and between normativity and description can shed light on the tension. Tolstoy and Levin are very close here, in that they are both normative monists and descriptive pluralists. The normative monism is a fundamentally moral position, insofar as morality defines the idealization of humanity, which is shared by nobles, the narod, or whatever other category one might construct for mankind in general. Levin, at least, goes so far as to endorse a form of religious pluralism, finding a monism in a mere moral ideal for human beings in general. At the end of Anna Karenina, Levin discusses his then singular view when he says, “I am questioning the relation to Divinity of all the different religions of mankind. I am questioning the universal manifestation of God to all the world with all those misty blurs. What am I about? To me individually, to my heart has been revealed a knowledge beyond all doubt, and unattainable by reason, and here I am obstinately trying to express that knowledge in reason and words," and later, "The question of other religions and their relations to Divinity I have no right to decide, and no possibility of deciding" (pt. VIII, ch. 9, pg. 752-753). This is representative of his ultimate views of humankind in general, and of course of the narod as included in that universal category. Levin’s views are beautifully summarized thus:
To Konstantin Levin the peasant was simply the chief partner in their common labor, and in spite of all the respect and the love, almost that of kinship, he had for the peasant…still as a fellow-worker with him while sometimes enthusiastic over the vigor, gentleness, and justice of these men, he was very often, when their common labors called for other qualities, exasperated with the peasant for his carelessness, lack of method, drunkenness, and lying. If he had been asked whether he liked or didn’t like the peasants, Konstantin Levin would have been absolutely at a loss what to reply. He liked and did not like the peasants, just as he liked and did not like men in general. Of course, being a good-hearted man, he liked men rather than he disliked them and so too with the peasants. But like or dislike ‘the people’ as something apart he could not, not only because he lived with ‘the people,’ and all his interests were bound up with theirs, but also because he regarded himself as a part of ‘the people,’ did not see any special qualities or failings distinguishing himself and ‘the people,’ and he could not contrast himself with the peasants, as farmer and arbiter. (pt. III, ch. 1, pg. 224)
Levin’s analysis of the peasants is not an analysis at all.[17] He and the peasants are part of humanity.[18] They are analogous to Levin himself and men in general, unified, as has been seen, in the moral condition of mankind.
It can now be stated directly that Levin is a normative monist with respect the moral condition of humanity in general, but he is a descriptive pluralist besides that. As a normative monist about the human moral condition Levin clearly discerns a moral contrast between some people and others, noble or peasant. It is a certain mental condition, of which the peasants are representative, from which Levin draws his final epiphany. In Kitty and the peasants both, Levin perceives an admirable simplicity, through which he sees truly how to live apart from any rational consideration. It is Kitty’s life in the face of Nikolay’s death that stands as an example to the non-rational affirmation of life in the face of inevitable death. It is a Kierkegaardian faith that Levin admires in this, and it is this that he also finds in the peasant Fyodor’s revelatory statement, “‘Fokanitch is a righteous man. He lives for his soul. He does not forget God’” (pt. VIII, ch. 11, pg. 734). Neither of these, thinks Levin, are modes of living that are the conclusions of rational argument. They are natural ways of living of those who have not even considered rational argument, and in this Levin sees the way to live. His conclusion is fundamentally a form of Christian existentialism, and so Anna Karenina ends when Levin says of his life, “‘every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it’” (pt. VIII, ch. 19, pg. 754). Levin faithfully infuses his life with meaning through goodness, which he perceives through his moral consideration of the peasants, the truest representatives of humanity.
Full Bibliography
Black, Cyril. “The Nature of Imperial Russian Society.” Slavic Review, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Dec. 1961) pp. 565-582
Burbank, Jane. “Revisioning Imperial Russia.” Slavic Review, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Autumn 1993), pp. 555-567)
Frierson, Cathy. Peasant Icons. Representations of Rural People in Late Nineteenth-Century Russia. Oxford, New York: 1993.
Lavrin, Janko. “Tolstoy and Nietzsche.” The Slavonic Review, Vol. 4, No. 10 (Jun. 1925), pp. 67-82
Lindenmeyr, Adele. “The Ethos of Charity in Imperial Russia.” Journal of Social History, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Summer, 1990), pp. 679-694
Mironov, Boris. &c. (I lack the proper information to complete the cit
Struve, Peter. “Russia.” The Slavonic Review, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Jun. 1922), pp. 24-39
Sunderland, Willard. “Peasant Pioneering: Russian Peasant Settlers Describe Colonization and the Eastern Frontier, 1880s-1910s.” Journal of Social History, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Summer 2001), pp. 895-922.
Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina. Constance Garnett, tr. Barnes and Noble, New York: 2003.
Trice, Tom. “Rites of Protest: Populist Funerals in Imperial St. Petersburg, 1876-1878.” Slavic Review, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Spring 2001), pp. 50-74
Wachtel, Andrew. “Resurrection a la Russe: Tolstoy’s The Living Corpse as Cultural Paradigm.” PMLA, Vol.107, No. 2 (Mar. 1992), pp. 261-273
[1] Qtd. in Frierson, Cathy. Peasant Icons. Representations of Rural People in Late Nineteenth-Century Russia. Oxford, New York: 1993, pg. 35.
[2] Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina. Constance Garnett, tr. Barnes and Noble: New York: 2003. pt. III, ch. 1, pg. 224
[3] Frierson 40
[4] Ibid. 44
[5] Ibid. 45
[6] The Enlightenment theme of perfectibility shall appear again below, in reference to humanitarian charity.
[7] Collectivism of this sort has of course been called into question, for example, by Hoch, as noted in: Burbank, Jane. “Revisioning Imperial Russia.” Slavic Review, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Autumn 1993), pp. 555-567, pg. 564.
[8] Mironov, Boris. pg. 12
[9]Ibid. 18
[10] Willard Sunderland observes of the colonization of the Eastern frontier during the late Empire, “What is likely is that [Slavic neighbors] were seen in much the same way that peasants perceived peasant neighbors back home. That is to say, Slavic neighbors in the borderlands were probably seen as outsiders (any one outside the village commune was perforce an outsider) but as outsiders who were “essentially similar” in terms of religion and general way of life and therefore readily understandable” in “Peasant Pioneering: Russian Peasant Settlers Describe Colonization and the Eastern Frontier, 1880s-1910s.” Journal of Social History, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Summer 2001), pp. 895-922, pg. 907-908. This captures both the locally centered mindset of the Russian peasant and the continual bond with the commune.
[11] Lindenmeyr, Adele. “The Ethos of Charity in Imperial Russia.” Journal of Social History, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Summer, 1990), pp. 679-694
[12] It is also worthy of mention that Kitty does not notice this, emphasizing the non-rationality that Levin so admires in her. It is equally important that Kitty abandons this way of thinking as non-genuine, ultimately reverting back to being herself. The desire to be someone else, even what would presumably be a better person, is disingenuous, it seems. This is why Levin, in the end, resolves that his behavior will not be different, despite his epiphany. He must be himself, and he must be good. This is a staple of any existentialism, which is surely the ultimate conclusion that Levin reaches, deriving meaning not from reason but by a leap.
[13] ibid. 682
[14] Marx, it is well known, was not a utopian socialist, but rather a “dialectical materialist” or “scientific socialist,” but many socialists who were influenced by him were utopian.
[15] Frierson 45
[16] Lavrin, Janko. “Tolsoty and Nietzsche.” The Slavonic Review, Vol. 4, No. 10 (Jun. 1925), pp. 67-82, pg. 79
[17] This is amplified by the direct contrast of this passage with the analytical approach of Sergey Ivanovitch, who does view the peasantry as a theoretical other, quite different from himself.
[18] This is a fundamental lesson to be taken from the famous mowing episode, wherein Levin departs rational consciousness while working among the peasants. It is almost a unity of consciousness—a Monism of the truly metaphysical sort, between himself and the other human beings working with him.
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