Lauren LaFrance, The Zemstvo

The word zemstvo is derived from the Russian word zemlia, meaning land, but had been used for centuries to refer to local self-government. The purpose of this new institution, created after the serf emancipation of 1861, was to compensate landowners for their lost authority, provide the central government with information on local conditions and to manage local economic welfare and needs. These needs ranged from the establishment of schools, hospitals and other social services to maintaining roadways. Each zemstvo was set up to govern an district or province by all males over 25 that desired to participate and who owned either private rural land, private urban land or allotment land.

In the novel, Anna Karenina  we are first introduced to the term zemstvo in a conversation that takes place between the half-brothers, Constantine Levin and Sergey Koznyshev.   Levin is a rural landowner and avid farmer and Koznyshev a brilliant and famous urban scholar and intellectual.  Although they are both  members of the same class of noble elite, they could not be any more different in their lifestyles or personalities.    Tolstoy utilizes the differences between the two brothers to illustrate the varying views of society when it came to this new institution of the zemstvo.

In their first conversation it becomes immediately clear how each man views the importance of the zemstvo.  When Levin discloses that he has resigned from his zemstvo for reasons we discover later on in the novel, Koznyshev is clearly displeased.  He sees the zemstvo as something not only of great importance but a blessed opportunity through which Russian society can secure their freedom.  Later in the novel  when Koznyshev is taking vacation with his brother in the country he again approaches Levin with his serious concern that his brother has washed his hands of the zemstvo.  After much probing, Levin’s true feelings and reasoning for his disinterest come out.  As a landowner who doesn’t merely own his estate on paper and dictate his authority from the distant city like so many others of his kind but instead who is immersed in not only the daily workings of his farm and but the lives of his peasant laborers as well, he has a much different opinion. 

“…why should I trouble about medical centers which I should never use or schools to which I should never send my children, and to which the peasants would not wish to send theirs either?-and to which I am not fully convinced they ought to send them?…At present I, a nobleman, see nothing in our Zemstvo that could conduce to my welfare."

Levin’s viewpoint is one of simplicity and logic that is very likely conducive of his simplistic way of life in the country.  His purpose is to cultivate his land in the best way he knows how in order to yield the most profit – nothing more and nothing less.  Although this is a difficult concept for someone like Koznyshev, who sees a future with endless possibilities in these zemstvo, it is something that the rural landowners like Levin obviously felt strongly about.

It is important to understand that this issue had far-reaching consequences and viewpoints that lasted through decades of wars and famines.  Tolstoy only gives us a glimpse of the concept of and debate surrounding the zemstvo and further research is necessary to fully understand its implications.  However, further research on the zemstvo is very possible and very important not only to better understand the society presented to us in Anna Karenina but to gain perspective on an important era in Russian History as well.