First Epilogue: 1813-20, Chptr. 7, P&V pg. 1144

First Epilogue Chapter 7

Nicholas marries Princess Mary and they move to Bald Hills with the Countess and Sonya. Nicholas becomes an enthusiastic farmer who has good relations with his serfs. They pay off their debts and the family prospers.

Summary:

In the winter of 1813 Nicholas married Princess Mary and moved to Bald Hills with his wife, his mother, and Sónya. They prosper. Within seven years Nicholas has paid off all of the Rostov debts without selling any of his wife’s property. He begins to purchase additional land, and is negotiating to buy back the Rostóvs’ former house at Otrádnoe. Nicholas has become avidly involved in farming. Having started farming from necessity, he soon grew so devoted to it that it became his favorite and almost his sole occupation. His success as a farmer seems due to his ability to work well with the peasants on the estate. He respects their knowledge of farming and tries to learn from them. He treats them well but does not coddle them. He was as careful of the sowing and reaping of the peasants’ hay and corn as of his own, and few landowners had their crops sown and harvested so early and so well, or got so good a return, as did Nicholas. He increased the number of cattle the peasants had and kept the peasant families together. But he worked to expel peasants who were lazy, depraved, and the weak. He loved the Russian peasants and their way of life. He had faith in their methods of farming, and was fair to them. But he was not a do gooder. He merely believed that “if the peasant is naked and hungry and has only one miserable horse, he can do no good either for himself or for me.” He refused to allow himself to think that he was doing good to others for virtue’s sake. The peasants came to regard Nicholas as a very good master.

quote from the chapter:

Having started farming from necessity, he soon grew so devoted to it that it became his favorite and almost his sole occupation. Nicholas was a plain farmer: he did not like innovations, especially the English ones then coming into vogue. He laughed at theoretical treatises on estate management, disliked factories, the raising of expensive products, and the buying of expensive seed corn, and did not make a hobby of any particular part of the work on his estate. He always had before his mind’s eye the estate as a whole and not any particular part of it. The chief thing in his eyes was not the nitrogen in the soil, nor the oxygen in the air, nor manures, nor special plows, but that most important agent by which nitrogen, oxygen, manure, and plow were made effective—the peasant laborer. When Nicholas first began farming and began to understand its different branches, it was the serf who especially attracted his attention. The peasant seemed to him not merely a tool, but also a judge of farming and an end in himself. At first he watched the serfs, trying to understand their aims and what they considered good and bad, and only pretended to direct them and give orders while in reality learning from them their methods, their manner of speech, and their judgment of what was good and bad. Only when he had understood the peasants’ tastes and aspirations, had learned to talk their language, to grasp the hidden meaning of their words, and felt akin to them did he begin boldly to manage his serfs, that is, to perform toward them the duties demanded of him. And Nicholas’ management produced very brilliant results.

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