Fruits of Culture

Imagine if your entire village's survival depended on what the dead told the landowner at a seance. That is the crazy scenario in Leo Tolstoy's satirical play 'Fruits of Culture'. Written at a time when Russia's aristocracy was in decline and widespread famine was sowing the seeds of the coming Russian Revolution, it was a clear - and courageous - attack on the injustice meted out by the ruling classes. The peasants are in grave peril when the landowner refuses their request to buy land for...