No matter how hard people try, having gathered in one small place several hundred thousand, to mutilate the land on which they are clutching, no matter how they stomp the earth so that nothing grows on it, no matter how they clean off any weed, no matter how they smoke with coal and oil - Spring remains spring even in the city. The sun warms, the grass comes to life, grows and turns green wherever it has been scraped off; jackdaws, sparrows and pigeons spring joyfully prepare nests, and flies buzz against the walls warmed by the sun. Fun plants and birds, and insects, and children. But people - big, grown-up people - do not stop cheating and tormenting themselves and each other. In such a joyful spring day (namely, April 28), in one of the nineties of the last century, in one of Moscow prisons, an overseer, rattling with iron, unlocks the lock in one of the cells and shouts: “Maslova, for trial!”

The story of this prisoner Maslova is the most ordinary. She was a daughter, who had been accustomed from a passing gypsy by an unmarried courtyard woman in a village with two young lady sisters of landowners. Katyusha was three years old when her mother fell ill and died. Old ladies took Katyusha to her, and she became a half-nanny-half-maid. When she was sixteen years old, their student nephew, a rich prince, an innocent young man, came to her young ladies, and Katyusha, not daring either him or even herself to admit it, fell in love with him. A few years later, the same nephew, just promoted to officers and already corrupted by military service, drove along the road to the war to aunts, stayed with them for four days and on the eve of his departure seduced Katyusha and, having thrust a hundred-ruble note on her on the last day, left. Five months after his departure, she probably found out that she was pregnant. She told the young ladies rudenesses, which she later repented of, and asked for a calculation, and the young ladies, dissatisfied with her, let her go. She settled by the village midwife, a wine merchant. The birth was easy. But the midwife, who took birth in a village with a sick woman, infected Katyusha with a maternity fever, and the child, a boy, was sent to an educational home, where he died immediately upon arrival. After some time, Maslova, who had already replaced several patrons, was found by a detective, who supplied the girls with a house for tolerance, and with Katyushin’s consent took her to the famous Kitaeva’s house. In the seventh year of her stay in the house of tolerance, she was put in jail and is now being taken to court along with murderers and thieves.

At this very time, Prince Dmitry Ivanovich Nekhlyudov, the same nephew of the same aunts-landowners, lying in bed in the morning, recalls last night the rich and famous Korchagins, whose daughters, as everyone assumed, should marry. And a little later, after drinking coffee, he famously drives up to the entrance of the court, and already, as a jury, putting on his pince-nez, he looks at the defendants accused of poisoning the merchant with the aim of stealing the money that was with him. “It cannot be,” Nekhlyudov tells himself. These two black female eyes looking at him remind him of something black and scary. Yes, this is she, Katyusha, whom he first saw when, in his third year at the university, while preparing his essay on land ownership, he spent the summer with his aunts. Without a doubt, this is the same girl, a maid pupil, with whom he was in love, and then in some crazy child he seduced and abandoned and which he never remembered about, because the memory too exposed him, so proud of his decency. But he still does not submit to the feeling of remorse that is already beginning to speak in him. What is happening seems to him only an unpleasant accident that will pass and not violate his present pleasant life, but the trial continues, and finally the jury must make a decision. Maslova, apparently innocent of what she was accused of, was found guilty, like her associates, though with some reservations. But even the chairman of the court is surprised that the jury, having stipulated the first condition “without the intent of robbery”, forget to stipulate the necessary second “without the intention to take the life”, and it turns out, by the decision of the jury, that Maslova did not rob and did not steal, but at the same time she poisoned a merchant without any apparent purpose. So, as a result of a miscarriage of justice, Katyusha is sentenced to hard labor.

It is embarrassing and disgusting to Nekhlyudov when he returns home after a visit to his rich bride Missy Korchagina (Missy really wants to get married, and Nekhlyudov is a good party), and in his imagination an extravagant woman with black squinting eyes arises with extraordinary liveliness. How she cried at the last word of the defendants! The marriage to Missy, which had recently seemed so close and inevitable, now seems completely impossible to him. He prays, asks God to help, and God who lived in him wakes up in his mind. All the best that a person can do, he feels capable of doing, and the thought of sacrificing everything for the sake of moral satisfaction and even marrying Maslova especially touches him. Nekhludoff seeks a date with Katyusha. “I came later to ask you for forgiveness,” he blurts out without intonation, like a learned lesson. “At least now I want to atone for my sin.” “There is nothing to atone for; what was, then has passed, ”Katyusha wonders. Nekhlyudov expects that upon seeing him, recognizing his intention to serve her and his repentance, Katyusha will be delighted and tender, but, to his horror, he sees that Katyusha is not there, but there is one prostitute Maslova. He is surprised and horrified that Maslova is not only not ashamed of her position as a prostitute (the position of a prisoner just seems shameful to her), but is proud of him as an important and useful activity, since so many men need her services. Another time, having come to her prison and made her drunk, Nekhlyudov announces to her that, against all odds, he feels obligated to God to marry her in order to atone not only with words but with deeds. “Well, then you would remember God,” Katyusha shouts. “I am a hard labor, and you are a master, a prince, and you have nothing to do with me.” What do you want to marry - this will never happen. I’ll hang myself soon. You enjoyed me in this life, but you want me to be saved in the next world! You are disgusting to me, and your glasses, and the fat, rotten whole face of yours. ”

However, Nekhlyudov, determined to serve her, embarks on a hassle for her pardon and correction of a judicial error made by him as a jury, connivance, and even refuses to be a jury judge, now considering any court to be useless and immoral. Every time he walks through the wide corridors of the prison, Nekhlyudov feels strange feelings - and compassion for those people who were sitting, and horror and perplexity in front of those who planted and keeps them here, and for some reason shame for himself, for being calm considers it. The old sense of solemnity and joy of moral renewal disappears; he decides that he will not leave Maslova, will not change his noble decision to marry her, if only she wants to, but it is difficult and painful for him.

Nekhlyudov intends to go to St. Petersburg, where Maslova’s case will be heard in the Senate, and in case of failure in the Senate, file a petition in the highest name, as advised by the lawyer. If the complaint is left without consequences, it will be necessary to prepare for a trip for Maslova to Siberia, so Nekhlyudov goes to his villages to settle his relations with the peasants. These relations were not living slavery, canceled in 1861, not slavery of certain persons to the owner, but the general slavery of all landless or low-land peasants to large landowners, and not only did Nekhludoff know this, he also knew that it was unfair and cruel, and, while still a student, he gives his father’s land to the peasants, considering the land ownership the same sin as the serfdom had previously. But the death of his mother, the inheritance and the need to dispose of his property, that is, land, again raise for him the question of his attitude to land ownership. He decides that, although he has a trip to Siberia and a difficult relationship with the world of prison, for which money is needed, he still cannot leave the business in the same position, but must, at the expense of himself, change it. To do this, he decides not to cultivate the land himself, but, giving it at an inexpensive price to the peasants for rent, to give them the opportunity to be independent of the landowners in general. Everything is arranged as Nekhludoff wants and expects: the peasants receive land thirty percent cheaper than the land given in the district; his income from the land is reduced by almost half, but with excess it is enough for Nekhlyudov, especially with the addition of the amount received for the forest sold. Everything seems to be fine, but Nekhlyudov is always ashamed of something. He sees that the peasants, despite the fact that some of them say thanks to him, are unhappy and expect something more. It turns out that he deprived himself of a lot, and the peasants did not do what they expected. Nekhludoff is dissatisfied with himself. What he is dissatisfied with, he does not know, but all the time he is sad and embarrassed.

After a trip to the village, Nekhlyudov felt disgusted by his whole being towards the environment in which he lived until now, the environment where the sufferings so painstakingly hidden by millions of people to ensure the comforts and pleasures of a small number of people were so carefully hidden. In Petersburg, however, Nekhlyudov immediately has several things to do, for which he undertakes, becoming more familiar with the world of prisoners. In addition to Maslova’s cassation appeal in the Senate, there are still troubles for some political, as well as the case of sectarians who refer to the Caucasus because they did not properly read and interpret the Gospel. After many visits to necessary and unnecessary people, Nekhlyudov wakes up one morning in St. Petersburg with the feeling that he is doing some muck. He is constantly haunted by bad thoughts that all his current intentions - marrying Katyusha, giving land to the peasants - that all these are unrealizable dreams, that he will not endure all this, that all this is artificial, unnatural, and he must live as he always lived. But no matter how new and difficult what he intends to do, he knows that now this is his only life, and returning to the past is death. Returning to Moscow, he informs Maslova that the Senate approved the court’s decision that it is necessary to prepare for shipment to Siberia, and he himself goes after her.

The party with which Maslova is walking has already passed about five thousand miles. Before Perm, Maslova goes with the criminals, but Nekhlyudov manages to get her moving to the political, which are the same party. Not to mention the fact that the political ones get better mad, eat better, are less rude, Katyusha’s transfer to the political one improves her position by stopping the harassment of men and living without reminding her of the past that she’s now wants to forget. Two political women are walking with her: a good woman, Marya Shchetinina, and a certain Vladimir Simonson, who was exiled to the Yakutsk region. After the depraved, luxurious and pampered life of the last years in the city and the last months in prison, the current life with political, despite the severity of the conditions, seems to be good to Katyusha. Going from twenty to thirty miles on foot with good food, daytime rest after two days of walking physically strengthens her, and communication with new comrades reveals to her such interests in life that she had no idea about. She not only did not know such wonderful people, but also could not imagine. “I cried that they sentenced me,” she says. - Yes, the century should thank. She knew what she would never have known in her whole life. ” Vladimir Simonson loves Katyusha, who with a female instinct very soon realizes this, and the realization that she can arouse love in such an extraordinary person raises her in her own opinion, and this makes her try to be as good as she can be. Nekhlyudov offers her a marriage of magnanimity, and Simonson loves her as she is now, and loves her just because she loves, and when Nekhlyudov brings her the long-awaited news of the obtained pardon, she says that she will be where Vladimir Ivanovich Simonson is.

Feeling the need to be left alone to ponder everything that happened, Nekhlyudov arrives at the local hotel and, without going to bed, walks up and down the number for a long time. His business with Katyusha is over, she does not need him, and this is shameful and sad, but this does not torment him. All the social evil that he has seen and recognized lately and especially in prison, torments him and requires some kind of activity, but there is no possibility of not only defeating evil, but even understanding how to defeat it. Tired of walking and thinking, he sits down on the couch and automatically opens the gospel given to him by one passing Englishman as a keepsake. “They say that there is permission for everything,” he thinks and begins to read where he opened, and the eighteenth chapter from Matthew opened. From this night begins a completely new life for Nekhlyudov. How this new period of life will end for him, we will never know, because Leo Tolstoy did not tell about this.