Summary
Part 4
When Pahom and his family arrive at the new village, he immediately applies for admission into the commune. In addition to shared pasture, the elders of the community grant Pahom and his son 125 acres of arable land spread across different fields. Pahom now owns three times as much land as he did in his previous commune, leading the narrator to remark, "He was ten times better off than he had been" (11).
Soon, Pahom feels constrained by his amount of land again. After a successful first harvest, he wishes to sow more wheat but does not own enough suitable land. The village members quarrel about the lack of fertile land to suit all their needs. This leads to class division in the village: the wealthier residents want to purchase the land to grow wheat, while the poorer residents want the land to mortgage out their wheat to merchants in hopes of paying their taxes. Pahom ultimately rents additional land to sow more wheat, but the land is inconveniently over ten miles away from the village. His dissatisfaction grows when he notices that the peasant-dealers who live on their own freehold property (land separated from the commune) are becoming wealthy.
Pahom considers purchasing freehold land, thinking "If I were to buy some freehold land, and have a homestead on it, it would be a different thing, altogether. Then it would all be nice and compact" (11). However, Pahom continues to rent land and sow wheat for three years. His savings grow from bountiful harvests, but he becomes increasingly tired of renting other residents' land and squabbling with other residents whenever a suitable piece of rented land became available.
Pahom and a dealer purchase a piece of land from some peasants, who already plowed the land. This leads to disputes between the peasants and Pahom, which in turn prompts Pathom’s agitation to grow. He thinks, "If it were my own land...I should be independent, and there would not be all this unpleasantness" (11-12).
Finally, Pahom searches for opportunities to acquire his own land and encounters a peasant who fell into economic difficulties after buying 1,300 acres of land. The peasant is willing to sell the land at an affordable price: 1,500 roubles across multiple payments. Pahom and the peasant nearly finalize the deal—until a passing dealer suddenly appears on Pahom’s land. Over tea, the merchant claims that he bought 13,000 acres of land for 1,000 roubles from Bashkirs, a group of Turkish people living in the Russian Ural mountains. The tradesman further explains that the Bashkirs are "as simple as sheep," and Pahom can purchase virgin land for less than two cents an acre—as long as he "makes friends with the chiefs" and gifts the Bashkirs some drinks and goods (12). Pahom declines the peasant's deal and decides to travel to Bashkiria, reasoning, "If I take it out there, I can get more than ten times as much for the money" (12).
Part 5
Pahom embarks on the journey to the Bashkirs with just his workman, leaving his wife to look after their homestead. On their way, they buy tea, wine, and other presents for the Bashkirs. They finally reach the Bashkirs’ village after seven days and three hundred miles of travel. Pahom spots the Bashkirs drinking tea and kumiss—a traditional Central Asian drink made from fermented milk—on steppes by a river. He notices that they do not work on their land and even let their livestock wander about freely. The narrator remarks, "As far as the men were concerned, drinking kumiss and tea, eating mutton, and playing on their pipes, was all they [the Bashkirs] cared about. They were all stout and merry, and all the summer long they never thought of doing any work" (13).
The Bashkirs, who do not speak Russian, greet Pahom and fetch an interpreter. The Bashkirs warmly take Pahom to a comfortable and opulent tent, offering mutton, tea, and kumiss. Pahom presents his gifts, and the translator explains that the Bashkirs will, per custom, repay Pahom for his offerings. Pahom explains that the soil from his old village is crowded and exhausted, and that he requests land for repayment.
The Bashkirs talk among themselves, shouting and laughing. After some spirited deliberation, they become silent as the translator explains to Pahom that they will grant him as much land as he wants—he just has to claim the land himself. The Bashkirs start disputing with each other, much to Pahom’s confusion. The translator tells Pahom that some Bashkirs believe they must ask their chief for permission before guaranteeing the land to Pahom, while others believe that the chief’s permission is unnecessary.
Part 6: While the Bashkirs argue, the chief, dressed extravagantly in a fox-fur cap, joins the group. The Bashkirs rise to their feet to greet the chief, and Pahom offers him the best dressing-gown and five pounds of tea. The chief accepts the gifts, and the Bashkirs explain Pahom’s situation to him. The chief speaks directly to Pahom in Russian: "Choose whatever piece you like; we have plenty of it" (15).
Dumbfounded, Pahom believes there must be a formal means of securing his land ownership to prevent the Bashkirs from taking his land away from him. He tells the Bashkirs that he wishes to ensure his ownership, claiming, "Life and death are in God’s hands. You good people give it to me, but your children might wish to take it away again" (15). The chief agrees to take Pahom into town to have a scribe properly execute a contract of ownership. The chief also tells Pahom that they sell land at a set rate of one thousand roubles a day, and Pahom can claim as much land as he wishes: "As much as you can go round on your feet in a day is yours" (16).
Surprised, Pahom exclaims that men can cover large amounts of land in a day, to which the chief responds with a caveat: "But there is one condition: If you don’t return on the same day to the spot whence you started, your money is lost" (16). Pahom must also use a spade to mark his spots when he feels necessary, as well as dig a hole and pile up turf at every turn. Pahom can cover as much ground and dig as many holes as he pleases—as long as he returns to his starting point by sunset. Excited, Pahom enthusiastically decides to start sectioning off his land the following morning. The Bashkirs and Pahom celebrate with more food and drink, and the Bashkirs give Pahom a feather bed to sleep. The Bashkirs leave Pahom for the night, promising to meet and ride out to the appointed spot before sunrise.
Analysis
The middle sections of "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" mirror the events of Part 3: Pahom feels a fleeting satisfaction with his estate before seeking out another one. At the end of Part 3, a discussion with a traveling peasant prompts Pahom to seek out another land acquisition past the Volga river. By the end of Part 4, he feels cramped again, and after speaking with the merchant, he decides to travel 300 miles to Bashkiria. The structural repetition of the story illustrates the endless monotony of pursuits for social mobility: no matter how much land and material status Pahom gains, his greed prevents him from feeling truly independent and fulfilled.
Tolstoy uses the motif of entrapment to underscore Pahom’s vehement desire for unlimited land ownership and, by extension, happiness and self-satisfaction. Pahom’s various estates make him feel enclosed and cramped, as proven by the remarks, "As it is, I am too cramped to be comfortable" and "In this crowded place one is always having trouble. But I must first go and find out all about it myself" (10). Conversely, he associates more expansive land ownership with freedom and self-sufficiency, as indicated by the thought, "If it were all my own land...I should be independent, and there would not be all this unpleasantness" (11). Pahom insistently blames his spiritual deprivation and entrapment on the arbitrary spatial parameters of his estates, fervently believing that acquiring more land is the only feasible means of transcending his constrained position. As a result, he now bases his entire selfhood in his material assets; his self-esteem directly ties to how much physical property he can procure. In other words, Pahom projects his intangible unfulfillment onto a perceived lack of tangible and concrete belongings, a characteristic the wealthier elder sister embodies—and the younger sister condemns and cautions against—in Part 1.
Ironically, Pahom’s entrapment within an economic system that equates property with freedom perpetuates permanent feelings of entrapment and inadequacy. Tolstoy constructs Pahom’s estate in Part 4, for instance, as an idyllic living setting: he has three times the amount of land he owned in Part 3, shares ample communal properties, grows wheat in addition to corn, and experiences successful harvests. Pahom’s lack of property is thus not the primary conflict in his life. Rather, it is his rigid adherence to a dehumanizing economic system that prompts him to continually find fault and feel dissatisfied with his station in life, and leads to a need to constantly expand and “improve” his circumstances. He attempts to escape self-perceived limitations and become "independent" by obtaining more land (12). The situation is doomed, of course, as the predicament he struggles against is inescapable: his land ownership will never reach a point of complete satiation. As such, the repetition of Pahom’s cycling through various estates highlights the theme of the powerlessness inherent to the quest for economic ascension.
Pahom even passingly acknowledges his lack of free will when he insists on a contract to formally secure the Bashkirs’ land, stating, "But I should like to be sure which bit is mine...Life and death are in God’s hands. You good people give it to me, but your children might wish to take it away again" (15). In this instance, however, Pahom attributes the lack of control over his own future to divine acts of God, rather than economic systems. This attribution aligns with Pahom’s characterization, as he is blind to his succumbing to false promises of economic ascension. By acknowledging the role of both economics and religion in Pahom's life, Tolstoy reveals the variety of exterior factors that determine human fate and thereby inhibit autonomy.
Through Pathom’s self-inflicted alienation from his family, Tolstoy shows the detrimental impacts of Pahom’s fruitless allocation of his self-worth and happiness into property. Pahom’s family has a significant presence throughout Parts 1–3. His wife and her sister are the first characters introduced in the story, and their discussion precipitates Pahom’s central plight of losing himself to the allures of land and material status. Also, Pahom expresses his frustration with their status as peasants to his wife, and they work together and labor out their son to purchase their first piece of property. However, as Pahom becomes more consumed with estate procurement, his family’s presence minimizes in tandem, until they are left behind altogether when Pahom travels to Bashkiria. Not only do Pahom’s obsessions destroy all paths toward contentedness and self-fulfillment, but they dismantle all chances of maintaining meaningful external relationships as well.
Pahom’s values, lifestyle, and internal motivations sharply juxtapose with the Bashkirs. When Pahom arrives in Bashkiria, he finds them uninterested in work, preferring to spend their time indulging in undemanding pleasures: kumiss, music, and each other’s company. They are kind to Pahom, even though he is a passing visitor approaching them out of thinly-veiled self-interest. The Bashkirs’ selling method appeals to Pahom’s greed and self-delusion—still latching onto ideals of free will within the confines of buying and selling land, he believes he will cover much ground and, in turn, own as much property as he can imagine. However, due to Pahom's dissipated relationships and constant self-inflicted disappointment, we know his ambitions are fraught and doomed to lead to a tragic outcome.
