Why did Leo Tolstoy use a rural setting and choose a peasant for the protagonist in "How Much Land Does a Man Need"?

One reason why Leo Tolstoy characterized his protagonist as a peasant in his short story "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" is because peasants always face difficult lives of labor, yet, at the same time, society was changing for the Russian peasant at the time Tolstoy published his story in 1886.

The year 1886 was in the midst of Russia's industrial revolution, which started in the middle of the 19th century. Modernized agricultural techniques were integral to industrial revolutions in all countries. As the peasants began improving their farming techniques for mass production, they also began increasing in wealth, as depicted in the story. Tolstoy saw that, just as the industrial revolution brought a materialistic viewpoint to the people of all nations, the industrial revolution was equally affecting the Russian peasantry with greed and materialism. Hence, Tolstoy set his story in an agricultural backdrop, in the midst of the industrial revolution, in order to warn of the dangers of materialistic greed that industrialization was bringing with it.