Book 2 Chapter 1 Property in Land

It was possible for Maslova's case to come before the Senate in a
fortnight, at which time Nekhludoff meant to go to Petersburg,
and, if need be, to appeal to the Emperor (as the advocate who
had drawn up the petition advised) should the appeal be
disregarded (and, according to the advocate, it was best to be
prepared for that, since the causes for appeal were so slight).
The party of convicts, among whom was Maslova, would very likely
leave in the beginning of June. In order to be able to follow her
to Siberia, as Nekhludoff was firmly resolved to do, he was now
obliged to visit his estates, and settle matters there.
Nekhludoff first went to the nearest, Kousminski, a large estate
that lay in the black earth district, and from which he derived
the greatest part of his income.

He had lived on that estate in his childhood and youth, and had
been there twice since, and once, at his mother's request, he had
taken a German steward there, and had with him verified the
accounts. The state of things there and the peasants' relations
to the management, i.e., the landlord, had therefore been long
known to him. The relations of the peasants to the administration
were those of utter dependence on that management. Nekhludoff
knew all this when still a university student, he had confessed
and preached Henry Georgeism, and, on the basis of that teaching,
had given the land inherited from his father to the peasants. It
is true that after entering the army, when he got into the habit
of spending 20,000 roubles a year, those former occupations
ceased to be regarded as a duty, and were forgotten, and he not
only left off asking himself where the money his mother allowed
him came from, but even avoided thinking about it. But his
mother's death, the coming into the property, and the necessity
of managing it, again raised the question as to what his position
in reference to private property in land was. A month before
Nekhludoff would have answered that he had not the strength to
alter the existing order of things; that it was not he who was
administering the estate; and would one way or another have eased
his conscience, continuing to live far from his estates, and
having the money sent him. But now he decided that he could not
leave things to go on as they were, but would have to alter them
in a way unprofitable to himself, even though he had all these
complicated and difficult relations with the prison world which
made money necessary, as well as a probable journey to Siberia
before him. Therefore he decided not to farm the land, but to let
it to the peasants at a low rent, to enable them to cultivate it
without depending on a landlord. More than once, when comparing
the position of a landowner with that of an owner of serfs,
Nekhludoff had compared the renting of land to the peasants
instead of cultivating it with hired labour, to the old system by
which serf proprietors used to exact a money payment from their
serfs in place of labour. It was not a solution of the problem,
and yet a step towards the solution; it was a movement towards a
less rude form of slavery. And it was in this way he meant to
act.