Leo Tolstoy and "How Much Land" Mini-Lesson

Leo Tolstoy and "How Much Land" Mini-Lesson

Russian Literature in English Class

This fellow is Leo Tolstoy.

He wrote Anna Karenina and War and Peace, two of the most celebrated novels ever. Aside from being one of the most venerated authors of his time, he had a fairly...interesting life.

Russia was awkward during Tolstoy's life.

• serfdom: n. the position of peasants under a feudal system in which they are beholden to a noble and unable, by law or decree, to leave a specific area

• Russia was still trying to make feudal serfdom work into the 19th century, which the rest of Europe had stopped trying to do by the end of the 15th century. (Russia actually hadn't picked it up until the 16th century, so needless to say...they were already behind.)

• Czar Alexander II, known for the many reforms during his reign, freed all of the serfs in 1861. (For context, America was not only a country by then, but had just kicked off the Civil War!)

A Young, Idealistic Noble

• Tolstoy inherited the title of "count" and his family estate at only nineteen years old! He was young and full of ideals that were not terribly popular among the older nobility.

• This was still only 1847, so Czar Alexander hadn't freed the serfs yet. Tolstoy wasn't necessarily a fan of having people who were forced to work his land, pay rent to live there, and pay him taxes on top of all that. It just didn't seem fair to him. He made it his personal goal to help the people on his lands.

Alexander II freed the serfs...which somehow made things worse??

Maybe it wasn't worse, per se, for the former serfs themselves in that they were now free, but it definitely didn't exactly feel like freedom to them. You see, they were all told they owed their lords a bunch of backpay, essentially, for using those lands they had been (again) forced to live on for hundreds of years.

Imagine being freed but still made to pay off a debt that you and your family were unknowingly accumulating for many generations because it technically had not existed until you were freed.

Multiple Choice

In episode one, Pahom tells his wife and sister-in-law, "Busy as we are from childhood tilling mother earth, we peasants have no time to let any nonsense settle in our heads. Our only trouble is that we haven't land enough. If I had plenty of land, I shouldn't fear the Devil himself!"

Pahom, likely having come out of serfdom himself, equates having land to having what?

• power

• popularity

• greed

• work

Poll

Assume the following statements are true:

a) Having more land equals having more power.

b) Power corrupts a person.

Would you say that Pahom was corrupted in his quest to obtain more and more land?

• Yes

• No

Tolstoy had a meltdown.

Tolstoy eventually began questioning whether everything he had done in life had been wrong when he became richer after publishing two extremely popular novels back to back. He saw himself as nothing more than a hypocrite, helping peasants while taking advantage of them and living recklessly for many years.

What's a guy to do?

Tolstoy turned to Baha'i spirituality...then began dismantling his wealth. Eventually, he was, essentially, living as much like a peasant as possible, doing fieldwork, staying in modest housing, and wearing modest clothing while rejecting all temptations of finer things and helping those in need with any worldly wealth he had left.

"How Much Land Does a Man Need?"

The title being this question is intended to ask the reader the same question over and over. How much land will Pahom need before he is fulfilled? How much empty power is worth the expense of the things in his life that should matter more, such as his relationships with other people and his general well-being? He trades a simple life of generally having everything a person needs in order to try fulfilling his endless desire to obtain more and more of something he will never, apparently, have enough of.

Open Ended

Knowing Tolstoy's life and the circumstances he found his country in, what do you think he was trying to advise or warn others about when it came to pursuing the lifestyle he had given up?