What Men Live By

The Russian Empire experienced much political and social turmoil throughout the 19th century. The most significant event, particularly for the provinces, was the ending of serfdom. In 1861, the Emancipation Reform was issued, freeing the peasantry from the system of indentured servitude in which they were owned by the nobility. Notably, serfdom endured in Russia much longer than elsewhere in Europe; for example, France, Austria, and Prussia abolished the practice during the Enlightenment. Emancipation freed 23 million people, over a third of the total Russian population (Zenkovsky, Serge A. “The Emancipation of Serfs in Retrospect.” The Russian Review, vol. 20 no. 4, 1961, pp. 280).

However, this did not mark an end to the power the noble classes had over the peasantry. The reform did not provide peasants with enough land to make a living, forcing them to rent farming space from the wealthy landowners to whom they had been indentured. There was large-scale unrest after the Emancipation Reform was issued, and many areas experienced food shortages. While the situation stabilized somewhat by the 1880s, peasants still struggled to pay state taxes and the rents they owed to local landowners.

Because of the country’s size, the Russian provinces were largely uninfluenced by the cultural spheres of Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and the majority of people remained engaged in agricultural production. This led to Russia experiencing far less industrialization than other European countries, with the provinces remaining separate from the mechanization and modernization of the two major cities. This led to a sharp divide between the cities and the countryside and debates over how Russia should develop—toward a more industrialized (Western) future or embracing the rural peasantry and their way of life. It also meant that in the Russian countryside, mass-produced, machine-made goods were largely unavailable, and people purchased essentials, such as shoes, locally.

Tolstoy’s focus on the peasantry and the provinces in “What Men Live By” marks both his distaste for the influx of modern technologies and his concern for the peasantry’s precarious circumstances. Adopting nonviolent anarchist principles in his later life, Tolstoy viewed the aristocracy and state power as oppressive forces for most Russians and aligned himself with figures like Peter Kropotkin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and Mahatma Gandhi. His essays on these topics were censored by the monarchy but were published abroad, sparking a Tolstoyan movement that peaked around the 1917 Russian Revolution.