Stremov undoes the August victory

Karenin's victory of the seventeenth of August undoes him. The committee investigates the subject races from six points of view and returns answers beyond doubt, being the outcome not of human thought but of official labours — Reports from Governors and Bishops resting on Reports from district authorities resting on Reports from parish priests. Then Stremov crosses to Karenin's side, supports his measures and proposes more extreme ones; carried to extremes they prove so stupid that officials, public opinion, intellectual women and the press all fall on Karenin as their originator, while Stremov claims to have followed blindly. Nobody can now tell whether the subject races are perishing or flourishing. With his position shaky from this and from the contempt attaching to a deceived husband, Karenin asks to go and investigate in person, and returns the post-fare for twelve horses, which Betsy admires and Princess Myagkaya resents. Passing through Moscow he is caught in the street by Oblonsky and Dolly and pressed to dinner; asked twice about Anna, he says she is well.

The tower of Reports resting on Reports is Tolstoy's flattest joke about administration and his most serious charge: the machine produces certainty about famine and belief without touching either. Stremov destroys Karenin by agreeing with him, which no code anticipates. The chapter ends with Dolly having to ask her husband for coat money in the street, and being told to charge it.