Summary
Part 1
An unnamed woman visits her younger sister in the country. Over tea, the two women begin to discuss their differing lifestyles. Married to a tradesman, the elder sister gloats about the material advantages of city life, boasting of the glamorous clothes, food, and entertainment options. She additionally condemns the lack of elegance and sophistication of peasantry.
The younger sister, a peasant, defends her simple way of life, claiming that she and her family are "free from anxiety" and have significantly less to lose than her sister (5). She recites the proverb "Loss and gain are brothers twain" to warn her sister that affluent people can lose their wealth and find themselves begging for basic needs without warning. The young sister takes pride in the "rough and coarse work" of peasantry, as it results in self-sufficiency and freedom from the temptations of town life, including drinking, gambling, and infidelity.
The younger sister’s husband, Pahom, lies on top of the oven and eavesdrops on the women’s conversation. He begins to contemplate his social and economic status as a peasant: he values the hard work and dignity of his life but regrets his lack of land. He thinks, “If I had plenty of land, I shouldn’t fear the Devil himself!” (5).
The women finish their conversation and go to sleep. However, the narrator reveals that the Devil was sitting behind the oven and overheard Pahom's thoughts. The Devil interprets Pahom’s conflicting views about peasantry as a dare: he vows to give Pahom the land he desires—at the cost of luring him into a life of sin and moral indecency.
Part 2
The narrator explains that a nearby female landowner maintains a peaceful and cooperative relationship with the peasants—until she hires an old soldier as the property manager of her three-hundred-acre estate. The soldier burdens peasants (including Pahom) with fines for minor offenses, such as cows wandering into the landowner’s property. Aggrieved by the constant fining, Pahom takes out his frustration on his family. He feels relieved when he can finally contain cattle in the stable during the winter and thereby free himself from the payments.
The landowner abruptly decides to sell her land, and the local innkeeper begins to bargain for it. Fearful that the innkeeper would impose higher fines if he possessed the estate, the peasants of the commune approach the landowner, offering her a higher price for the estate. The landowner accepts the offer, and the peasants attempt to equitably split up sections of the land among each family. The peasants struggle to reach an agreement, while the Devil interferes to intensify their argument. The peasants finally decide to individually buy pieces of the estate based on their current income.
Pahom envies other peasants who can afford to buy significant portions of the estate. He laments to his wife, "Other people are buying...and we must also buy twenty acres or so. Life is becoming impossible. The steward is simply crushing us with his fines" (7). Pahom and his wife sell some of their possessions, hire out their son, accept wages in advance, and borrow money from Pahom's brother-in-law to purchase a farm of forty acres. Pahom pays the landowner half the price upfront and agrees to pay the remainder within two years.
Pahom becomes a landowner and pays off his debts after a successful harvest. He continues the "rough and coarse work"—ploughing and sowing the land, making hay, cutting down trees, and feeding cattle—required of a peasant (5). However, he is now overjoyed with the newfound freedom of performing these duties on his own land. The narrator explains, "Formerly, when he [Pahom] passed by that land, it had appeared the same as any other land, but now it seemed quite different" (8).
Part 3
While content with his landowner status, Pahom begins to resent the nearby peasants trespassing on his cornfields and meadows. He politely asks them to keep their livestock off his land, but these appeals prove ineffective. Pahom at first forgives the peasants and does not prosecute them, acknowledging, "...it was the peasants’ want of land, and no evil intent on their part, that caused the trouble" (9). However, he eventually loses patience and complains to the district court, fearing that the peasants are destroying his land.
Pahom begins to fine the peasants, who purposely have their cattle stray onto his land out of anger. One peasant even resentfully cuts down and steals five of Pahom’s lime trees. Enraged, Pahom feels certain that one of the local peasants, Simon, is responsible for the wrongdoing. Pahom causes an angry scene at Simon’s homestead and later files a complaint. The judges dismiss the case and acquit Simon, citing a lack of evidence against him. More furious than ever, Pahom denounces judges as thieves and continues to fine and quarrel with his neighbors. Despite his elevated socioeconomic position as a landowner, Pahom now holds a tarnished and unfavorable reputation in the commune. Some of the peasants even threaten to burn Pahom’s homestead.
Meanwhile, Pahom feels "too cramped to be comfortable" with the current size of his land (10). He views the rumors of peasants relocating to other villages as an opportunity to expand his estate.
A traveling peasant passes through Pahom’s land, seeking supper and temporary lodging. The peasant tells Pahom that he comes from a village past the Volga River, where residents are granted 25 acres of fertile land for free. The peasant mentions the village’s opportunity for economic growth and social mobility, as one peasant "brought nothing with him but his bare hands, and now he had six horses and two cows of his own" (10).
Intrigued, Pahom walks three hundred miles on foot to reach the new settlement past the Volga. In addition to the free 25 acres reserved for each family, Pahom discovers that members of the commune can purchase as much land as they want for two shillings per acre.
Pahom returns home and sells his land, homestead, and cattle for a profit. He prepares to move to the new village with his family.
Analysis
"How Much Land Does a Man Need?" is one of Leo Tolstoy’s most socially conscious works, one that shows how economic systems can perilously foster greed, moral decay, and illusory free-will among men. These expository scenes introduce one of the short story’s central conflicts: the individual vs. socioeconomic hierarchies. With the sisters’ opening discussion, Tolstoy uses the stark divide between rich and poor to illustrate how social class can define and in turn constrain one’s sense of self.
Living in a cosmopolitan urban milieu, the elder sister embodies the characteristics of the upper class, as she derives meaning and happiness from material possessions and tangible experiences, such as expensive clothes and entertainment. Meanwhile, the younger sister passionately defends her lack of social capital, claiming that her subsistence lifestyle permits a free life unbeholden to higher authorities and immoral temptations of city life. Notably, the characterization of the women is sparse. Like most characters in the story, the women remain nameless, and they are defined by their fierce adherence and loyalty to their respective social classes. Tolstoy does not further distinguish the women with other attributes, such as their close relationships, hobbies or interests, and religious identities. Through this sparse characterization, Tolstoy presents class as the predominating force in shaping one’s identity.
Moreover, the younger sister denounces the futility of pursuing and maintaining wealth, claiming, “You live in better style than we do, but though you often earn more than you need, you are very likely to lose all you have...our way is safer.” In other words, wealth is not a fixed guarantee nor indicator of fulfillment in a person’s life, so it is critical to avoid allocating too much value to material success. The younger sister also asserts there is more security in rural, lower-class lifestyles, where individuals have fewer monetary possessions to lose. The younger sister’s commentary on the instability of upper-class lifestyles establishes the main conflict of the story: an individual's powerlessness in constructing their own purpose and happiness within prevailing socioeconomic class structures. Her comment that wealthy people are more likely to "lose all [they] have" foreshadows Pahom’s decline from a well-intentioned peasant to a greedy, exploitative landowner who abandons his family, commune, and moral dignity for the sake of illusory material gain.
Tolstoy introduces Pahom, the story’s protagonist, as impressionable and susceptible to basing his self-perception and life trajectory on others’ opinions. Overhearing the sisters’ conversation, he embraces his wife’s position, defending the diligence and self-sufficiency embodied in peasantry: "It is perfectly true...Busy as we are from childhood tilling Mother Earth, we peasants have no time to let any nonsense settle in our hands" (5). However, he also internalizes the elder sister’s endorsement of social status and the luxuries of high-class life. The elder sister’s statements lead Pahom to believe that owning a large estate will protect him from evil, which clashes with the sentiments expressed by the younger sister. Pahom holds two contradictory views on peasantry, creating a paradox and self-delusion that prevents him from truly acting out of his own accord as he chases for land and class ascension.
Before becoming a landowner himself, Pahom is exploited by the upper class. The soldier continually imposes fines on Pahom and other members of the commune when their livestock wander onto the landowner’s estate. As a peasant, Pahom does not own enough land to confine his cattle within his limited property, and the offense thus falls outside of his control. He is forced to rely on seasonal changes to finally contain his cattle and avoid fines, rather than the soldier’s mercy and empathy toward the peasants' socioeconomic constraints. The soldier's demeaning of the peasants drives them to fear that the innkeeper would also abuse his position of power to levy even worse fines on the peasants if he attained sole land ownership of the village.
Because of the soldier's cruelty, Pahom understandably seeks to transcend his peasant status and become a landowner: it will finally relieve him of being beholden to higher authorities and structural class limitations. However, to acquire his first piece of property, Pahom willingly goes into debt, sells his belongings, and hires out his young son’s labor. Pahom’s exploitation of his family and surrendering of his possessions indicate the hardships and downright infeasibilities of upward mobility from a lower class to a higher one.
Pahom’s unremitting pursuit of land links class ascension with moral decay, which only increases when he becomes a ruthless landowner in Part 3. Despite losing his possessions and slipping into debt, Pahom is content with his newfound landowner status, and his heart "fills with joy" every time he works on his fields (8). His land ownership becomes a core tenet of his identity, his sole source of fulfillment and pride. Because of this, he loses sight of the distress he suffered as a peasant. Pahom has the opportunity to forgive neighboring peasants whose livestock wander on his land, since he experienced these plights himself. Instead, he imposes relentless fines on them—exactly what the soldier did to him. Despite his own experience with these plights, Pahom ultimately values the protection and maintenance of his land more than empathizing with the peasants’ socioeconomic adversities. He wishes to teach the peasants a "lesson," even though their trespassing reflects their "want of land" and no intentional wrongdoing (9). Further, Pahom blindly accuses Simon of stealing without evidence, and fines with such a frequency and aggression that he angers and alienates the commune, who threaten arson in retaliation.
Pahom’s characterization in the closing paragraphs of Part 3 deepens the theme of the corruptive and dehumanizing force of social hierarchies. Through the characterization of the soldier and innkeeper, Tolstoy shows how the upper class capitalize on peasants’ lack of cultural capital and property to generate more profit for themselves—and effectively maintain unequal power relations. Pahom wishes to escape the landowner’s enforcement of class disparities and oppression. Once he transcends his peasant status, though, he ends up imitating the soldier’s behavior and, in turn, perpetuating the unjust cycle of the marginalization against the lower class. Again, Pahom does not possess true agency over his role in society—landowner or not, he is merely a pawn within a class structure that systematically disadvantages the poor and strips the rich of their compassion and decency.
