Question

What opinion about Russian society does Leo Tolstoy express in this excerpt from The Death of Ivan Ilyich?

The peasant class in nineteenth-century Russia was full of honest and compassionate people.

Educated professionals gained influence in Russian society in the nineteenth century.

In the nineteenth century, middle-class Russians were rich and well-educated.

Peasants more readily accepted unpleasant facts of life, while the middle class tried to deny them.