What Shall We Do?

Street encounters in Moscow lead Leo Tolstoy to examine the distance between charitable feeling and the conditions of poverty. Having moved to the city in 1881, he describes people asking for help and follows a detained peasant to a police station. His exchanges with officials expose the routine treatment of begging as an offence, while his work sawing wood with two peasants gives the account another view of earning a living.

These social essays also bring hardship into the lodging house. A washerwoman grows too ill to work, falls behind with her rent, and faces pressure to leave because her cough keeps other lodgers awake. Such closely observed cases sit alongside the book's Christian statements about sharing possessions and responsibility to others. Readers interested in Russian social conditions or the ethics of helping people can follow an argument that begins with particular lives and asks what practical responsibility those encounters create.