Toil (Tolstoy book)

The Triumph of the Farmer or Industry and Parasitism

1890 English translation, titled Toil
Author	Timofei Bondarev
Language	Russian
Publisher	Russkoye Delo (1888 edited version) The Intermediary (1906)

The Triumph of the Farmer or Industry and Parasitism (Russian: Torzhestvo zemledel'tsa ili Trudoljubie i Tunejadstvo) is a treatise by Russian peasant philosopher Timofei Bondarev. The work details Bondarev's labor philosophy, in particular his idea of "bread-labor", by which every man is responsible for the physical labor required to sustain himself. The treatise captivated writer Leo Tolstoy, who began a long correspondence with Bondarev and endeavored for years to see the work published. An abbreviated version was published in 1888, and the full work was published in 1906.

History

Bondarev was born a serf in southern Russia. In the 1850s, his owner commissioned him into the army for a 25-year term, forcibly separating Bondarev from his wife and children. In the army he abandoned his Russian Orthodox faith and became a Subbotnik. In 1867, he was arrested for apostasy and exiled to a remote village on the Yenisey River for life.^[1]

As the village's only literate resident, Bondarev founded a school. He also devoted his energy to developing his philosophy of labor; inspired by Genesis 3:19, he formulated the theory of "bread-labor", which argued that all men, regardless of social position, were morally obligated to perform the physical labor necessary to sustain themselves. Bondarev spent the next 30 years teaching, farming, and composing what became The Triumph of the Farmer of Industry and Parasitism.^[1][2]

In July 1885, another political exile sent a copy of The Triumph of the Farmer to Leo Tolstoy, who had read of it earlier in a journal. Tolstoy was captivated by the manuscript, saying he agreed with "everything in" it, and started a correspondence with Bondarev. He went to great lengths to get it published, but its radical content ran it afoul of government censors. Censors excised it at the last moment from the journal Russian Wealth in 1886 and from Russian Antiquity in 1888. Later in 1888, the weekly Russkoye Delo (The Russian Cause) published an abbreviated version edited by Tolstoy, who also provided a supplementary essay, in issues 12 and 13. The Ministry of Internal Affairs issued a caution and all copies were later destroyed.^[1][2][3]

A French translation and two English versions, titled Labor and Toil, appeared in 1890.^[4][5] Finally in 1906, Tolstoy's publishing house The Intermediary published The Triumph of the Farmer of Industry and Parasitism in full, along with Tolstoy's introduction.^[1]

References