Labor and Idleness
Trudolyubie i tuneyadstvo
Loading audio player...
Preface by Leo Tolstoy
How strange and wild it would seem to the refined, educated Romans of the first half of the first century, if someone had told them that the unclear, confused, often absurd letters of a wandering Jew to his friends and disciples would be read a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand times more, more widely distributed, and have more influence on people than all the beloved poems, odes, elegies, and elegant epistles of the authors of that time. And yet this is what happened with the letters of Paul.
Just as strange and wild must my present assertion appear to people today: that the composition of Bondarev, at whose naivety we condescendingly smile from the height of our intellectual grandeur, will outlive all those works described in histories of Russian literature and produce more influence on people than all of them taken together. And yet I am certain that this is how it will be. And I am certain of this because, just as there are countless false paths leading nowhere and therefore unnecessary, while there is only one true path leading to the goal and therefore necessary, so too there are countless false and useless thoughts, while there is only one true and necessary way of thinking, and this one true and necessary way of thinking in our time is set forth by Bondarev in his composition with such extraordinary power, clarity, and conviction as no one has yet set it forth. And therefore everything that seems so important and necessary now will disappear without a trace and be forgotten, but what Bondarev says and to what he calls people will not be forgotten, because people themselves will be led by life itself more and more to what he says.
The discovery of all scientific abstract and applied truths, philosophical, moral, and economic, always happens in this way: people walk in ever-narrowing circles around these truths, coming closer and closer to them and sometimes only slightly touching them, until a bold, free, and gifted person points to the very center of this truth and places it on that height from which it is visible to all. And this very thing Bondarev has done with respect to the moral-economic truth that was to be discovered and clarified in our time.
Many have said and say the same thing. Some consider physical labor necessary for health, others for proper economic organization, still others for the normal development of all human faculties, while a fourth group considers it a necessary condition for human moral perfection. Thus, for example, one of the greatest writers of England and of our time, almost as unappreciated by the cultured crowd of our time as our Bondarev—despite the fact that Ruskin is the most educated and refined man of his time, standing on the opposite pole from Bondarev—this Ruskin says: “It is physically impossible that there should be true religious knowledge or pure morality among a class of people who do not earn their bread with their hands.” Many walk around this truth and express it with various reservations, as Ruskin does, but no one does what Bondarev does, recognizing bread labor as the fundamental religious law of life. And he does this not because (as we like to think) he is an ignorant and stupid peasant who doesn’t know all that we know, but because he is a genius who knows that truth is truth only when it is expressed not with amendments and reservations and coverings but when it is expressed fully.
Just as the truth that the sum of the angles in a triangle equals two right angles, expressed as: the sum of the angles in a triangle is sometimes approximately equal to two right angles, loses all meaning and significance, so too the truth that a person must work with his hands, expressed in the form of advice, desirability, an assertion that this can be useful from certain perspectives, and so forth, loses all its meaning and significance. This truth receives meaning and significance only when it is expressed as an inviolable law, departure from which leads to inevitable disasters and sufferings, and the fulfillment of which is required of us by God or by reason, as Bondarev expressed it.
Bondarev does not demand that everyone necessarily put on bast shoes and go to walk behind the plow, although he does say that this would be desirable and would free people drowning in luxury from the delusions that torment them (and indeed, nothing but good would come even from the exact fulfillment of this demand). But Bondarev says that every person must consider the obligation of physical labor, of direct participation in those labors whose fruits he uses, as his first, main, unquestionable sacred obligation, and that in such consciousness of this obligation people should be raised. And I cannot imagine how an honest and thinking person can disagree with this.
—Leo Tolstoy
Labor and Idleness, or The Triumph of the Farmer
A Composition by the Peasant T. Bondarev
“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken.” (Genesis 3:19)
I write in the name of all farmers and to all of you, however many there are in the world, who do not work bread for yourselves.
You, the higher class, have written thousands of books. Is there not much in them that is out of place and even harmful? And despite this, all of them have been accepted, approved, and made public.
We of the lower class, for our part, have written one short, true story—for all ages and eternities—in defense of ourselves, and you will reject it for only one deficiency: lack of eloquence and poor handwriting—so many have assured me. This will be the highest degree of offense to us, and, I think, to God as well.
My whole story consists of only two words: first, why do you not work bread for yourselves with your own hands according to the primordial commandment, but eat the labors of others? Second, why in all your writings—theological, civil, and all others—is bread labor and the one who labors in it not commended but degraded to the utmost?
I divide the whole world into two circles: one elevated and respected, the other humiliated and rejected. The first, richly dressed and sitting in a place of honor at a table filled with delicacies, is the rich man; and the second, in rags, exhausted by plain food and the heaviest labor, standing with humiliation and a sorrowful look before him at the threshold, is the poor farmers. The truth of my word is confirmed by the Gospel parable (Luke 16:20).
Adam, for transgressing the commandment given him by God not to taste the fruit of the forbidden tree, not only lost blessedness himself but subjected his entire future race to the same calamity until the end of time. From this we see that he committed the greatest lawlessness of all lawlessnesses, and by no means merely ate an apple.
Then he began to hide in the bushes of that garden, as Holy Scripture tells us: “Adam and his wife hid themselves amongst the trees of the garden.” But from whom was he hiding?—at that time there were no people. Of course, from God. You see what madness sin brings a person to. Is it really possible to hide from God?
From this we see that, having evaluated his transgression, he expected to receive punishment from God beyond all measure; but beyond expectation he received this divine sentence: “For transgressing the commandment given you by me, here is your punishment: ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken.’”
Did Adam not thereafter work bread with his own hands to the point of bloody sweat for himself throughout his life (930 years), fulfilling the penance imposed on him?
And you, higher class, are a branch of the same root; why then do you not want even to come near this penance throughout your whole life, yet you eat many times a day? It would be all right if you were as neglected as I and farmers like me. No, you are this much (showing with my hand above my head) smarter and more educated, yet what a great crime you commit before God and people.
God said to Eve: “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy sighing (what a terrible saying), in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.”
Now I ask, why in woman’s penance are there no secret evasions and allegories, but as God said, so everything happens literally? For the wife living in a poor hut and for the queen sitting on the throne with a crown on her head, the fate is one and the same: “in sorrow thou shalt bring forth thy children.” Not the slightest difference.
Yes! To such a degree in sorrow that she lies half-dead for days, and sometimes dies entirely.
But could this distinguished wife say: “I have no time to give birth, I am occupied with necessary and essential state affairs, and giving birth would bring more harm than benefit to the state. And besides: is it fitting for me to be equal to the last peasant woman, a village woman? Therefore I had better pay another woman to bear a child for me, or buy a ready-made child for money, and it will be my own, just like the one I myself would bear.” Could she reason and do this? No, the decree of God cannot be changed.
Gather treasures from all over the world and give them for a child, but it will not be yours; as it was someone else’s, so someone else’s it will remain to you. Whose is it then? Why, that mother’s who bore it. The same with the husband: he too can refuse bread work, buy one pound of bread for money; but as it was someone else’s, so someone else’s it will remain. Whose is it then? Why, the one who worked it. For as God has ordained: a wife must not shield herself with money or any evasions from bearing children, so a husband must work bread for himself, for his wife, and for his children with his own hands, not shielding himself with money or other evasions, regardless of any dignity.
All the crimes and great transgressions in the world—thefts, murders, robberies, deceits, bribes, and various forms of extortion—their whole cause is that this commandment is hidden from people. The rich man does all this with the aim of not approaching this vile occupation, and the poor man to free himself from it. Set this commandment before the eyes of the whole world in all its strength and dignity, and in a short time every crime will cease and people will be delivered from heavy poverty and unbearable destitution.
It was not in vain that God at the beginning appointed no virtues other than bread labor, and commanded people to avoid no vices other than fleeing from it. From this we see that this labor has absorbed all virtues into itself. On the contrary, idleness and leisure have appropriated all vices. And if there is now a criminal among farmers, it is because he does not know this law. But in this we must not lose sight of the fact that other labors are also virtue, but only with bread—that is, having eaten bread of one’s own labor.
Bread labor is a sacred obligation for each and every person, and no excuses should be considered: the higher the person, the more he must show an example to others in this labor and not shield himself with any evasions or hide from it behind various corners.
Establish such a law that not one person dare eat a single crumb of bread from others’ labor without valid reason. Then people, though they will not become equal, will still become much closer to one another—bread labor will clip the wings of pride.
For we are poor from your wealth, and you are rich from our poverty.
I hear often that they want to unite the whole universe in one faith. Whether this rumor is true, I do not know. If it is true, then, instead of uniting, it will divide again into as many sects as there are now, and the result will be not useful but even harmful labor.
It was good to unite in ancient times when the people were wild—wherever you want, there you lead them; they won’t break a thread. But now you can’t drag them with a triple rope—first, from habit to their own custom, and second, from pride, not to submit one to another. But establish faith on the one primordial law without an admixture of extraneous rules, and in a short time the whole universe will merge into one faith in God, because bread will bend, soften, and direct onto the path of virtue even the most hardened person.
O! You are blind, blind, learned man! You look with all your eyes into Holy Scripture, yet you do not see the doors through which you could go out and lead out the flock entrusted to you by God from under the yoke of sin, and you do not see the straight path leading to eternal life; your blindness is like that of the Sodomites who were struck with blindness, “seeking the doors of Lot’s house.”
But they saw their blindness in themselves, while you, being blind, think that you see clearly and see everything plainly, and know everything yourself without interpreters, and no one should point out anything to you. Your blindness is also like Balaam’s, who was riding on a donkey, and the angel of the Lord stood with a drawn sword on the road; the donkey that was under Balaam sees the angel, but Balaam does not. I am the donkey, and you are Balaam, and you have been riding on me from my youth.
—T. Bondarev
Translator’s Notes:
- Timofei Mikhailovich Bondarev (1820-1898) was born a serf in Kursk province. He was later exiled to Siberia as a religious dissenter (he belonged to a Judaizing sect) and spent most of his life in the village of Iudino in the Minusinsk district. Though nearly illiterate, he dictated his treatise to his son.
- Bondarev’s key text, Trudolyubie i tuneyadstvo, ili Torzhestvo zemledelʹtsa (“Labor and Idleness, or The Triumph of the Farmer”), was written in 1883-84. Tolstoy wrote his preface in 1886 and tried to publish it, but censorship prevented this in Russia.
- The comparison of Bondarev’s work to the letters of Paul is striking: Tolstoy is suggesting that a semi-literate peasant’s economic-religious treatise will have more lasting influence than all of polite Russian literature.
- John Ruskin (1819-1900) was the English art critic and social thinker whom Tolstoy greatly admired. The quotation about “a class of people who do not earn their bread with their hands” expresses a view Tolstoy shared.
- Bondarev’s argument turns on a reading of Genesis 3:19 as not merely descriptive but prescriptive: God commanded Adam to work the earth with his own hands, and this commandment is binding on all his descendants. Those who eat bread produced by others’ labor are violating this primordial law.
- The image of the farmer as the bee and the educated classes as drones (trutni) became important to Tolstoy’s social criticism.
- Bondarev’s final image—“I am the donkey, and you are Balaam”—refers to Numbers 22:21-35, where Balaam’s donkey sees the angel of the Lord blocking the road while Balaam himself is blind to it. Bondarev, the unlettered peasant, claims to see what the learned cannot.