"How Much Land Does a Man Need?" is a significant title. Pahom tries to answer this question. He feels if he had enough land, he would not fear the devil himself:

“If I had plenty of land, I shouldn’t fear the Devil himself!” The devil, overhearing this boast, decides to give Pahom his wish, seducing him with the extra land that Pahom thinks will give him security.

No doubt, Pahom feels that enough land would solve all his problems. He manages to purchase some land, but soon this land is not enough. He has just as many problems as before. 

Pahom seeks more and more land. He finds one deal after another. Then he hears about the land at the Bashkirs country. Pahom decides to check out this new, lush land. When he arrives, there is so much land. Pahom feels he can make a deal with the Bashkirs. They make the following deal. Pahom has a starting point at sunup. He can purchase all the land he can walk around in one day. The deal is that Pahom must make it back to the starting point by sundown.

As the sun rises, Pahom sets out. He begins walking around all the lush, green land. The problem is he cannot seem to get enough, thus, the title of "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" After walking all day, Pahom has covered more than enough land. His greed has caused him to try and cover too much land. By the going down of the sun, Pahom is running to get to the starting point. He is sweating and about to pass out. He makes it back but drops dead from sheer exhaustion. Pahom should have been content with less land to cover. He dies in his own selfish greed. To answer the title's question, a man only needs six feet of land which is enough to be buried in:

Pahom’s servant picks up the spade with which Pahom had been marking his land and digs a grave in which to bury him: “Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed.”
 

Justify the title of the story "How Much Land Does a Man Need?"

Tolstoy became an enthusiastic advocate of the ideas of American economist and reformer Henry George, who achieved worldwide fame for his fundamental idea that the government should control all the land and derive its sole income from taxing land for its full rental value. As an example of his idea, if a house in one place rents for $1000 a month and a comparable house in another place rents for $300 a month, then the difference of $700 is being paid for the land and should go to the government rather than to the landlord. The basis of this belief on the part of Henry George and Tolstoy, and earlier of the English philosopher Herbert Spencer, is that no one should be entitled to own any part of the earth, since no one created the earth. Henry George believed that poverty is the result of people owning land they do not use.

In "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" Tolstoy is dramatizing how human greed makes some men want to acquire far more land than they need. This means that others are deprived of land altogether and are forced to work for the men who control land they are not developing. If the government derived all its revenues from the so-called "single tax" on land, i.e., the entire rental value of the land and not of any "improvements" such as buildings, there would be no need for any income tax, sales tax, excise tax, or any of the other taxes imposed by national or local governments.

The following excerpt from the article on "Henry George" in Dictionary of World Biography, 19th Century, which is accessible via eNotes, explains the most important ideas of Henry George which were published in his Progress and Poverty. (See reference link below.)

Then, in 1879, George published Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Causes of Industrial Depressions, and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth—The Remedy. Injustices were explicit in the subtitle. The remedy was nationalization of land and imposition of one single tax (later The Single Tax). Land values, George argued, as personal knowledge of stark contrasts between extraordinary wealth and dire need in San Francisco and New York convinced him, were communal, societal creations inherent in the scarcity of land. Pressures of population, production necessities, or monopolistic urges thus raised land and rental values and depressed wages. The mere possession of land often made millionaires of nonproducers or noncontributors to human welfare. A tax, therefore, on such socially created rents would allow government to redistribute such gains to alleviate want and enhance community life. George was no socialist. Indeed, since the basis of local revenues was a general property tax and since George abhorred centralization over local responsibilities, he expected local governments to fulfill these necessary functions.

Tolstoy wrote at least one lengthy article about Henry George. He said that the ideas in Progress and Poverty were so simple and obvious that anyone who read the book would agree with them. Tolstoy became a social reformer in his later years and repudiated his own famous novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina because he regarded the aristocratic characters in these works as worthless parasites. Thereafter, he addressed his writings to uneducated Russian peasants and workers, which accounts for the simplicity as well as the didactic nature of their style.

What is the significance of the title of "How Much Land Does a Man Need?"

The title of Tolstoy's story is appropriate because, in the first place, it is a story about a man who causes his own death by trying to acquire more land than he needs or can ever use. His natural aquisitiveness is fired by all the beautiful land he sees and by the knowledge that it is all his for the taking. Tolstoy is illustrating the fact that most people use up their brief lives, and even briefer youths, in frantic activities that will be pointless in the end because they will die and have to lose everything they have acquired, even their own bodies, and perhaps their own souls. At the end of the story the protagonist is buried, and it is obvious that all the land he really needed was about six feet long, three feet wide, and six feet deep. The moral is that people ought to spend more time on spiritual values and less on material values. The man in Tolstoy's story is not much different from a lot of other men and women today who are consumed with materialistic values, who want one thing and then another and another and are never satisfied.

explain the significance of the title "How much land does a man require?"

Tolstoy experienced a religious conversion in his late middle age and began writing fiction that was quite different from his novels about the upper-class Russians, notably War and Peace and Anna Karenina. He broke away from the Russian Orthodox Church and studied the teachings of Jesus directly. Although he was an aristocrat, he tried to live a humble life in accordance with the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament. He began writing simple tales about lower-class people intended to teach Christian morals. In "How Much Land Does A Man Need" he is saying that life is very short and that wasting life in acquiring a lot of possessions is a mistake because you will die and lose everything you have acquired. (The same moral is taught in another beautiful story titled "What Men Live By.") At the end of "How Much Land Does a Man Need" the narrator says that all the land the greedy protagonist really needed was a plot about six feet long, three feet wide, and six feet deep in which to bury him. He had shortened his own life with his greediness and egotism. What makes the story interesting is not the moral but the unique idea that a man is given the unusual opportunity to acquire all the land he can walk around in one day. Tolstoy had the talent to make the reader feel that he himself is out walking on the vast plains of Russia and even to feel the changing temperature as the day progressed and the sun moved across the sky.

What is the significance of the title "How Much Land Does A Man Require?"

Tolstoy in his later years became an admirer of the American philosopher/economist Henry George and an advocate of George's program for social reform explained in his bookProgress and Poverty. Briefly, George believed that no one should be entitled to own any part of the earth, since no one created it and since those who come first can monopolize all the land and force people born later to pay them to use the land. Eventually the entire earth could be monopolized by men who did not use it. George believed that the government should own all the land and rent it out at the fair market rental value. The government should derive all its revenue from this rent and not charge any taxes of any kind.

Tolstoy's story "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" illustrates how some men will try to acquire much more land than they can use, because they can either charge others to use that land or force others to work the land for them as sharecroppers or serfs. The story shows the influence of thinkers like Henry George, Herbert Spencer, the British philosopher, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the French philosopher, among others.

The Devil is included in the story because Tolstoy considered the existing system of land ownership wicked and devilish, the cause of much of the human suffering that existed in his native land and elsewhere in the world, including the American Deep South where slavery still flourished.

What is the significance of the title "How Much Land Does A Man Require?"

The title "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" is appropriate. It is a question that offers reflection. Pahom is greedy. He desires more and more land. He covets his neighbor's land. Then he purchases more land. Finally, he ends up at the Bashkirs' land. He can have all that he can walk around in one day. Due to his greed, Pahom tries to cover too much land. While trying to race back to the starting point, he collapses and dies.

Then the question is important. How much land does Pahom really need. Ironically, Pahom has more than enough at his burial. Since six feet of land is all that Pahom needs at his death, all of his other land will go to waste. He will not be able to enjoy it.

So the question is a good question. If Pahom had really thought about it, he had more than enough land. When all is said and done, a man only needs six feet of land in which to be buried. Pahom's greed killed him. He died because of his lust for more and more land. In the end, his burial ground covered six feet. The title is apporpriate because it makes the reader think. It causes the reader to reflect upon the nature of the question. How much Land does a man need is a title with a twist of irony. If Pahom had reflected on the question and thought about its seriousness, he might still be alive.   

What is the significance of the title "How Much Land Does A Man Require?"

As I explained in answer to a similar question, Tolstoy used the title because he wanted to answer it himself at the end of his story. Tolstoy experienced a religious conversion in his late middle age and began writing fiction that was quite different from his novels about the upper-class Russians, notably War and Peace and Anna Karenina. He broke away from the Russian Orthodox Church and studied the teachings of Jesus directly. Although he was an aristocrat, he tried to live a humble life in accordance with the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament. He began writing simple tales about lower-class people intended to teach Christian morals. In "How Much Land Does A Man Need" he is saying that life is very short and that wasting life in acquiring a lot of possessions is a mistake because you will die and lose everything you have acquired. (The same moral is taught in another beautiful story titled "What Men Live By.") Tolstoy created a particular kind of character to suit his purposes, one who had an insatiable lust for possessions. Not all men would behave as he did. Anyone who has seen the vast flat steppes of Russia or pictures of them can imagine how some men could get carried away with the desire to possess more and more. At the end of "How Much Land Does a Man Need" the narrator says that all the land the greedy protagonist really needed was a plot about six feet long, three feet wide, and six feet deep in which to bury him. He had shortened his own life with his greediness and egotism. What makes the story interesting is not the moral but the unique idea that a man is given the unusual opportunity to acquire all the land he can walk around in one day. Tolstoy had the talent to make the reader feel that he himself is out walking on the vast plains of Russia and even to feel the changing temperature as the day progressed and the sun moved across the sky.