therefore necessary, in order to be prepared to follow Maslova to
Siberia, upon which Nekhludoff was firmly resolved, to go to the
villages and arrange his affairs there.

First of all, he went to the Kusminskoie estate, the nearest, largest
black-earth estate, which brought the greatest income. He had lived on
the estate in his childhood and youth, and had also twice visited it
in his manhood, once when, upon the request of his mother, he brought
a German manager with whom he went over the affairs of the estate. So
that he knew its condition and the relations the peasants sustained
toward the office, i. e., the landowner. Their relations toward the
office were such that they have always been in absolute dependence
upon it. Nekhludoff had already known it when as a student he
professed and preached the doctrines of Henry George, and in carrying
out which he had distributed his father's estate among the peasants.
True, after his military career, when he was spending twenty thousand
rubles a year, those doctrines ceased to be necessary to the life he
was leading, were forgotten, and not only did he not ask himself where
the money came from, but tried not to think of it. But the death of
his mother, the inheritance, and the necessity of taking care of his
property, i. e., his lands, again raised the question in his mind of
his relation to private ownership of land. A month before Nekhludoff
would have argued that he was powerless to change the existing order
of things; that he was not managing the estate, and living and
receiving his income far away from the estate, would feel more or less
at ease. But now he resolved that, although there was before him a
trip to Siberia and complex and difficult relations to the prison
world, for which social standing, and especially money, were
necessary, he could not, nevertheless, leave his affairs in their
former condition, but must, to his own detriment, change them. For