“Master and Man” is a short story, written in Russian, by Leo Tolstoy in 1895—a period of the author’s life often considered distinct from the early periods of his most famous novels. Having disowned these previous works, the 67-year-old began writing stories on ethical-religious themes. Set in post-reform Russia, when serfdom was abolished and capitalistic forms of work were redefining social life, “Master and Man” is also a commentary on the effects of the new mercantilism and the possibility of conversion despite changing social conditions. Far from mere didacticism, this story renders the themes of death, exploitation, social divisiveness, and religious redemption through the devices of realist description and psychological narration, which Tolstoy had been developing since his first writing experiments nearly five decades earlier; “Master and Man” represents one of their highest levels of achievement. This guide uses the 2004 Harper edition Great Short Works of Leo Tolstoy, translated by Aylmer Maude.

Vasily Andreevich Brekhunov is a provincial innkeeper, church elder, and merchant intent on journeying to a nearby landowner to inquire about the purchase of a grove. More than his other titles, Brekhunov has the spirit of a merchant; eager to make a profit on the grove, he adds church money to his purchase funds.

It is the day after St. Nicholas’s Day, a Russian Orthodox Christian holiday honoring a saint who, in folk wisdom, embodies mercy and temperance. The winter weather is fierce. Brekhunov’s wife beseeches him to take one of his workers, Nikita, with him as a guide. In keeping with the themes of St. Nicholas’s Day, Nikita hopes to resist the temptation of drinking. Marked by the Lenten holiday some weeks earlier, Nikita’s last drunken episode resulted in the loss of his warm clothes. Now, he holds fast to a vow not to drink, despite temptation.

Nikita is emphatically “not a master” in the sense that he owns no property (454); he must sell himself for work wherever it is available. Brekhunov, by contrast, is a master insofar as he is an owner of Nikita’s labor—he pays him half of what his work is worth, per year. Despite Brekhunov’s low payments to Nikita, and despite the fact that he often withholds even these, Brekhunov “was honestly convinced that he was Nikita’s benefactor” (454). Nikita is not so delusional; he knows he is like a slave to Brekhunov, even though he is not, as in the times of serfdom, actually owned. Rather, “he felt that […] as long as he had nowhere to go he must accept what he could get” (455).

Nikita prepares for Brekhunov’s journey by harnessing a favorite horse, Mukhorty with whom he has an intimate rapport. Once the sledge is ready, Brekhunov’s son, who along with the horse have gathered around a nurturing Nikita, makes his way to Brekhunov. Brekhunov, who stands ready in the warm clothes that Nikita lacks, delights in the sight of his son as his heir. Upon leaving their village, Brekhunov and Nikita enter a harsher environment. Snow covers their tracks and blurs the distinction between earth and sky. Initial conversation reveals the men’s differences in relation to Mukhorty, with whom Nikita suffers alongside and in whom Brekhunov takes an owner’s pride. Brekhunov presumes that Nikita is “flattered to be talking with so clever a man,” but in reality Nikita is fixated on avoiding Brekhunov’s swindling (460). The two men diverge in their opinions of which road to take, but Nikita must bend to the will of Brekhunov who, in his eagerness to complete the sale, wishes to take the more direct and dangerous route.

As poorly marked as Nikita feared it would be, the route is soon lost to the travelers under the falling snow. Nikita goes in search of the road, with snow filling up his boots. Not finding it, he instructs Brekhunov to drive right so as to keep the wind at their left, where it was previously blowing on Nikita. Brekhunov attempts to guess their location but proves to be wrong; he is far less savvy than Nikita in these matters. What Brekhunov mistakes for a forest turns out to be a village named Grishkino, where the travelers find momentary reprieve from the elements but do not linger, owing to Brekhunov’s impatience.

It is only within Grishkino’s borders that the wind seems quieter and the road easier, but once the travelers depart, the storm is stronger and the road discernible only to the intuitive horse. The travelers overtake a sledge of revelers who are relentlessly beating their own horse, which provokes Nikita’s disapproval: “what pagans!” (466). As the revelers recede from view, the travelers’ isolation intensifies. Nikita dozes off, waking with a halt when the sledge loses the road once more. He sets off to find it but cannot. Brekhunov recalls the revelers, wishing he could still hear them, but Nikita has no such faith: “maybe they have lost their way, too” (468). Brekhunov hands the reins to Nikita, who asked for them but only to hold them loosely so as to be guided by Mukhorty. Of the horse, Nikita says, “The one thing he can’t do is talk” (468). It is Mukhorty who, following the only road he can, leads the travelers back to Grishkino.

A warmer air, full of the sounds of the holiday, envelops them, but Brekhunov refuses to stay the night, concluding, “It’s business and it can’t be helped” (469). Nevertheless, he agrees to rest for a time. In freezing cold, Nikita leads Mukhorty to a barn, where hens cluck, sheep amble, and a dog yelps; Nikita talks to all of them. Brekhunov rests in the household of a peasant family, who offer him vodka. Upon entering the house, Nikita prays to icons located there and averts his eyes from the table. When offered a drink, Nikita hesitates but does not take it. The family advises the travelers to stay the night and Brekhunov refuses, describing business in terms of time: “Lose an hour and you can’t catch it up in a year” (473). He appeals to Nikita, who can only oblige him: “If we’re to go, let us go” (473).

Before departing, the travelers stay for a conversation about changes in village life, with peasants leaving for wage labor and breaking up the traditional family. A young son, Petrushka, quotes from a book of fables to ease the building tension, suggesting that the family cannot be broken at once but “twig by twig” (474). Brekhunov has different advice, turning to the “master-elder” to underscore that figure’s control: “You got everything together [“made the earnings”] and you’re the master” (475).

Nikita, who had been drinking tea, reluctantly steps out into the yard as he and Brekhunov prepare to depart. Petrushka follows with more quoted fables, describing the storm as “wailing like a child” (475). Despite the family’s warnings against further travel, neither Petrushka, who is cheered by his lines, the peasant elder, who wants the guests to leave, nor Nikita, who is “accustomed not to have his own way,” insist on staying (475). Petrushka guides the travelers as far as the turn in the road.

Nikita struggles to keep warm as Brekhunov drives, urging the reluctant horse who “knew he was going the wrong way” (477). Nikita searches for the road for a third time and, as before, recedes and reappears from view against the whitened backdrop of the storm. Nikita once again takes the reins and leads Mukhorty to the right, where he believes the road to be, but disorientation sets in: “At times the sledge seemed to stand still and the field to run backwards” (478). When Mukhorty stops abruptly, Nikita jumps down from the sledge and slips down a hill, which he reproaches as if it is a sentient being: “[W]hat a thing to do!” (478). Struggling back up the hill, Nikita loses sight of the sledge but finds his way by the shouts of Brekhunov, who is eager to return to the village. Nikita warns against returning for fear of the ravine into which he had just fallen; they are trapped for as long as the terrain remains invisible.

Now totally reliant on Nikita, Brekhunov waits while Nikita attempts to forge a safe path. Using the last of his strength to find a spot providing some shelter from the wind, Nikita prepares to stay the night “as if in an inn” (481). Brekhunov is initially panicked by the prospect, suggesting they keep going, but Nikita refuses on behalf of Mukhorty, who would die from the effort.

Brekhunov lights a cigarette as Nikita comforts the horse and positions shafts vertically in the snow; this is so “good folk” will be able to dig them out should they be covered. Brekhunov struggles with his matches, one of them briefly illuminating a gold ring on his finger and the straw that Nikita had carefully spread in the sledge. Nikita turns over the sledge to make a shelter, but when Brekhunov discerns that there is no room for two, Nikita digs a hole for himself behind the sledge after covering Mukhorty. Brekhunov looks on disapprovingly, “as in general he disapproved of the peasant’s stupidity and lack of education” (483).

Brekhunov stays awake thinking of the sole aim of his life: “how much money he had made and still might make” (483). Before falling asleep, he considers the details of the deal for the grove and reflects on his acquired wealth. When he awakens, he looks at Mukhorty and Nikita and considers taking the cloth from the horse to drape over Nikita, concerned that he “may be held responsible for him” (486). He decides against this act, owing to his reluctance to brave the cold and endanger the horse.

As Brekhunov tries to sleep different thoughts overtake him amidst the usual counting of gains and debts—namely, “a stealthily approaching fear […] and the regret that he had not remained in Grishkino” (486). He is vexed with Nikita for seeming resigned and hopeful that morning is approaching, but after checking his watch, he realizes that “almost the whole night was still before him” (487). After a wolf approaches, Brekhunov is wide awake. Desperate to quell the sense of powerlessness rising within him, Brekhunov begins to fidget, lighting cigarettes and tying and untying his belt. The idea enters his head to mount Mukhorty and leave Nikita to freeze, reasoning that “he won’t grudge his life, but I have something to live for, thank God” (489). After some effort, Brekhunov mounts the horse and departs, though not before Nikita awakens to see him.

Nikita had been sitting still in the effort not to freeze, not answering Brekhunov’s calls because “he did not want to move or talk” (489). Just as Brekhunov had reflected on his life, Nikita considers his own life of “unceasing […] toil of which he was beginning to feel weary” (490). Nikita does not fear death as an inevitability over which he has no control; death is not like the orders of Brekhunov’s but is rather that of “the Chief Master,” God, whom Nikita trusts. Nikita considers his sins and slips into reminiscence of the past day, reflecting that for Brekhunov, “it would seem hard to leave a life such as his! It’s not the likes of us” (490).

Nikita had only just fallen asleep when Brekhunov mounts the horse and, lifting himself up from his hole, exposes his spot to fill with snow. With nowhere to position himself and “as cold as though he had on nothing but a shirt,” Nikita grows frightened but calls out to God, comforted “by the consciousness that he was not alone” (491). Lying down where Brekhunov had been, Nikita shivers until he loses consciousness—either in death or in sleep, “equally prepared for the one as for the other” (491).

Brekhunov’s escape fails. Mukhorty sinks in a snowdrift so that Brekhunov is forced to dismount, allowing Mukhorty to run away. Brekhunov trudges after him, terrified at the thought of his death—so unexpected, “speedy and meaningless” (493). Like Nikita, Brekhunov appeals to God, recalling the services of the holiday in material terms: the tapers of an icon which he had sold, and the candles he would offer the saint should he survive. However, this material version of religion seems irrelevant to “his present disastrous plight” (494). Brekhunov resolves to follow the horse’s tracks; although they are hardly visible, he nevertheless stumbles upon Mukhorty, who returned to Nikita. The snowdrift into which Mukhorty sunk was the same one as before.

Brekhunov’s terror leaves him, but he fears that it should return and thus seeks to occupy himself. He tightens his belt, as is his custom before a sale, and sets about untangling Mukhorty from his bridle when he notices Nikita’s head peering out from the snow. Nikita whispers that he is dying and conveys his last wishes: “Give what is owing to me to my lad, or to my wife, no matter” (495). Brekhunov pauses and suddenly, “with the same resolution with which he used to … [make] a good purchase,” digs Nikita out of the snow, opens his fur coat and lays down atop Nikita, exhorting him to “lie still and get warm” (495).

Brekhunov begins to experience a strange and increasingly joyous sensation. He ceases to think of himself and loses track of time. Reminiscences pass through his mind, intermingled with concern for Nikita and finally “blending into nothing” as he falls into a dreamless sleep (497). Brekhunov’s consciousness returns at dawn, when he dreams that he is in church attempting to give a candle to a woman, yet he remains unable to move. Suddenly, he sees himself in his bed at home and the feeling of waiting for death is joyful. He remembers where he is, lying atop Nikita, and feels himself at one with—and even alive through—Nikita. Brekhunov recalls his life as “Vasily Andreevich Brekhunov” but feels separate from all those material preoccupations that were not, as he now knows, “the real thing” (498). He feels free and dies.

Nikita awakens to the sensation of Brekhunov’s dead weight upon him; that sensation begins as a dream, in which Nikita is stuck under a cart that grows colder and colder and is loaded with goods for Brekhunov. Mukhorty, too, dies at dawn and Nikita feels that he is next, losing consciousness until passersby dig him out of the snow; the travelers had been extremely close to both the road and a village. When Nikita comes to consciousness during his rescue, he is initially sorry not to have awoken in the next world. He lies infirm for months, loses three toes to frostbite, and lives on for another 20 years—working the whole time before dying in peace.