There Are No Guilty People (Tolstoy)
Short summary
An eighty-year-old narrator reflected on his privileged position among the wealthy while feeling deep anguish about social injustice. He believed Providence placed him there to expose the truth about class relations. Alexander Ivanovich Volgin visited his cousin's estate.
Volgin enjoyed luxurious meals, strolled through manicured grounds, and lived comfortably while servants attended to his every need. Meanwhile, peasant Mitri Sudarikov lost his only horse and begged the landowner for help.
After receiving three roubles from Volgin, Mitri worked all day threshing grain to repay a neighbor's help. The narrator observed:
Among these downtrodden, duped, and defrauded men... there are men living who consider themselves Christians... Their hideous, lazy lives are supported by... slaves
The wealthy remained blind to these horrors.
Detailed summary
Division into chapters is editorial.
The authors moral confession and philosophical framework
The story opened with an elderly narrator's moral confession about his privileged position in society.
He expressed his profound awareness of social inequality and his inability to escape his comfortable circumstances.
Mine is a strange and wonderful lot! The chances are that there is not a single wretched beggar... who feels anything like as keenly as I do... the injustice, the cruelty
Despite his deep sensitivity to suffering, he remained trapped in wealthy society. He believed Providence placed him in this position to reveal the truth about social relations and expose the artificial barriers between classes.
Volgins privileged morning routine at the country estate
The narrative shifted to Alexander Ivanovich Volgin, a well-to-do bachelor staying at his cousin's country estate.
His morning routine exemplified aristocratic leisure. He awoke at eight, was attended by the elderly butler Stephen who had served the house for thirty years.
Volgin enjoyed an elaborate grooming ritual with imported brushes and fine toiletries, then dressed in expensive clothes held up by elegant braces. He breakfasted on delicacies prepared by multiple servants, including a samovar, coffee, cream, and fancy breads. The host Nicholas Petrovich had already left for his Zemstvo duties.
After breakfast, Volgin strolled through the manicured gardens and park, smoking and admiring the landscape. He encountered a shepherd boy tending the village herd and questioned him about reading and schooling. The boy wore ragged clothes and birch-bark shoes, could not read despite attending school, and was intimidated by Volgin's refined appearance.
Returning to the house, Volgin found a carriage with four thoroughbred horses waiting, driven by a coachman in silver-belted kaftan.
The encounter with the peasant and casual charity
At the front door stood a barefoot peasant in ragged clothes who had come to see Nicholas Petrovich.
The peasant explained his desperate situation - his only horse had died, leaving him with five children and no means of livelihood. He wept and knelt before Volgin, saying he would have to resort to begging. Volgin casually gave him three roubles from his purse and went inside, where Nicholas Petrovich was waiting impatiently to depart. The host briefly mentioned that the peasant was a drunkard but still deserving of pity. Volgin hurriedly wrote an important letter about purchasing a Madonna painting at auction, including a cheque for 180 roubles - sixty times what he had given the desperate peasant. He then spent his morning leisurely reading liberal newspapers before attending a sumptuous luncheon served by multiple servants.
The hostess dominated conversation with her self-important chatter, while her son Theodorite remained glum and silent, creating an uncomfortable atmosphere.
Mitri Sudarikovs desperate situation and hard labor
Meanwhile, Mitri Sudarikov had spent the previous day dealing with his dead horse's carcass. He negotiated with the knacker for the skin, borrowed a neighbor's horse to bury the animal, and drank vodka to console himself. He returned home to his wife and four daughters, including a five-week-old baby.
After receiving money from both Volgin and Nicholas Petrovich, Mitri went to help his neighbor Kumushkir with threshing, returning a favor from the previous week. He worked vigorously feeding corn into the horse-driven threshing machine, surrounded by other impoverished peasants. During their simple meal of bread, soup, and kvass, a one-armed beggar appeared asking for charity. Despite their own poverty, the workers shared their meager food with him. The backbreaking labor continued from dawn until evening, with Mitri contemplating selling a cow to survive, as he could not manage without his horse. The work was exhausting and degrading, yet necessary for survival.
The moral blindness of wealth amid suffering
The narrator concluded by exposing the moral blindness of the wealthy who lived surrounded by suffering yet remained oblivious to it. These privileged individuals, whether claiming to be Christians or considering themselves too enlightened for religion, sustained their comfortable lives through the degrading labor of countless slaves.
They live among these horrors, seeing them and yet not seeing them... poor children who are being vitiated and trained into moral blindness.
The story ended with the image of a kind mother reading to her daughter about a dog that harmed rabbits, while the child had become so accustomed to seeing barefoot, hungry peasant children that she no longer recognized them as human beings like herself, but merely as part of the familiar landscape.