This was the first Tolstoy that I’ve read and it certainly didn’t disappoint. How Much Land Does a Man Need is a short story that explores themes of greed and ambition.

The story begins with Pahom, a member of a Russian peasant commune, declaring, “If I had plenty of land, I shouldn’t fear the Devil himself!” Unbeknownst to him, the Devil was listening in on the conversation and decides to take this challenge. The Devil fuels the man’s ambition by giving him access to patches of land of increasing size. Every time the man gets a little bit more, his desire for more grows stronger. The story culminates with a final test of his greed. Pahom is taken to a massive patch of perfect farmland and is given a single day to walk about on foot, marking out as much land as he can for himself. There is no limit. The only constraint is that he must return to his starting point before the day is over or else he will receive no land. After marking out a huge amount of land, much more than he could dream of using, he realizes that he doesn’t have enough time to make it back to his starting point before his time is up. He runs as fast as he can, pushing himself to the very brink of what his body is capable of. He returns back to the starting spot with only a moment to spare — securing his fortune. When the witnesses go to congratulate him, they realize that he has died from the overexertion. They bury him in a hole, 6 feet long. It turns out he didn’t much land after all — the devil won.

One concept illuminated by this story is the positive feedback loop between success and desire. At the beginning of the story, Pahom has the simple desire to own just a little bit of land. Once he gets some, he realizes that he actually wants more. More land leads to more desire, and more desire leads to more land. Once the feedback loop gets started, the cycle accelerates and gains momentum. Pahom’s doom was literally the result not being able to keep up — he couldn’t acquire enough to match his desire. However, let’s imagine that Pahom did manage to get back alive and secure his new land. Surely he would’ve had more land than he had ever dreamed of. But would that have been enough for him? Or would the cycle have continued on? I think that even if he had made it past this trial, his doom was all but certain — you can’t outrun an avalanche.

This story is a cautionary tale about the powerful cycle of success and desire. However, I think the takeaway is more nuanced than “success is evil and desire is a sin”. Instead, I think it is about knowing when enough is enough. A pithy way of phrasing it might be, “More is more. Until it isn’t.”

In the beginning of the story, his desire is instrumental in him becoming a landowner for the first time, something that increases his happiness.

When he went out to plough his fields, or to look at his growing corn, or at his grass meadows, his heart would fill with joy. The grass that grew and the flowers that bloomed there, seemed to him unlike any that grew elsewhere.”

If he’d stopped there — breaking the feedback loop — he would have been better off than he was before. Of course, not everything would be perfect. There would continue to be inconveniences in his life but on balance, his desire would have led to a net improvement in his quality of life. Unfortunately, he didn’t stop there. As he acquired more, his desire grew while the joys he felt from attaining his desires diminished. The cycle is like a drug addiction. The drug is the success, the craving is the desire, and the high is the net happiness.

If all of our endeavors came with a clear cost/benefit analysis, knowing when to get off the roller coaster would be easy. But they don’t. Luckily, I think that we can get by without being so precise if we regularly reflect on whether what we have is enough. Are we in control of the ship, or is it steering itself?