the largest groups possible, not allowing the family groups to divide into separate households. He was hard alike on the lazy, the depraved, and the weak, and tried to get them expelled from the commune.
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 Nikoláy.
He disliked having anything to do with the domestic serfs—the “drones” as he called them—and everyone said he spoiled them by his laxity. When a decision had to be taken regarding a domestic serf, especially if one had to be punished, he always felt undecided and consulted everybody in the house; but when it was possible to have a domestic serf conscripted instead of a land worker he did so without the least hesitation. He never felt any hesitation in dealing with the peasants. He knew that his every decision would be approved by them all with very few exceptions.
He did not allow himself either to be hard on or punish a man, or to make things easy for or reward anyone, merely because he felt inclined to do so.
He could not have said by what standard he judged what he should or should not do, but the standard was quite firm and definite in his own mind.
Often, speaking with vexation of some failure or irregularity, he would say:
“What can one do with our Russian peasants?”
and imagined that he could not bear them.
Yet he loved “our Russian peasants” and their way of life with his whole soul, and for that very reason had understood and assimilated the one way