In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the present gubernias of Middle Russia formed the boundaries of Muscovy adjoining the dominions of the Porte and the military Republic of Little Russia. To defend the borders of the state a kind of national militia, or yeomanry, was settled along the frontiers. As usual, it was granted land in fee. The gradual transformation of fee into patrimony by force of legislation did not, however, concern this class of tenants in fee, as they did not count among the gentry. Nevertheless, the process went on, thanks to the natural play of economic forces. Mr. Pankeyeff, in his essay on the subject, does not show us the causes of the frequent sales of small fees during the eighteenth century. As the times coincided with the period during which the resources of the country were strained to the utmost in order to keep up the aggressive annexation policy of the Empire, it seems very probable that this mobility of the land belonging to the yeomen (odnodvortzy, as they were designated after 1719) was due to the burdens imposed by the State. On the other hand, the policy of the government in regard to this class tended to bring them down to the level of the peasantry. Alienability of land was obviously opposed to these views of the government, since thereby many members of this class became landless. The attempt was therefore made to put a stop to it by a series of ukases forbidding the sale of lands belonging to the odnodvortzy. To insure obedience to its ukases the government, in 1766, changed the method of allotting land to the odnodvortzy, in conformity with the communistic method used by the peasantry. It was ordered that land should henceforth be measured for the entire village in one tract, and not in individual parcels to every householder, as had been previously done; and at the same time the alienation of lots was forbidden. Thus the community was entrusted with the subdivision of the land among its members. The distribution was based originally upon the dimensions of individual possession of former times. It generally led, however, through many intermediate forms to the establishment of equal distribution, i. e. to agrarian communism. According to the information gathered by the Ministry of Public Domains, toward the fifties, the odnodvortzy, as regards the forms of possession, were divided as follows:[19]
| Forms of Possession: | Number of Males and Females: |
|---|---|
| Quarterly | 452,508. |
| Communistic | 533,201. |
In all the villages inhabited by these 533,201 persons, agrarian communism came to be substituted for the once generally prevailing quarterly possession. In the region now in question there were, according to the census taken by the Government in 1849, 287 villages inhabited by odnodvortzy in the whole gubernia of Ryazañ. According to the forms of landholding they were divided as follows:
| Forms of Landholding. | Number of villages. | Number of Males and Females. | Land in dessiatines. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quarterly possession | 176 | 11,265 | 64,811 |
| Agrarian communism | 56 | 21,283 | 84,448 |
| Mixed | 55 | 12,627 | 49,508 |
Here also agrarian communism developed from quarterly possession. The process went on after 1849, without even stopping after the reform of 1866, by which the land held by the former odnodvortzy was recognized as their private alienable property. The progress of agrarian communism between 1849 and 1882 can be seen from the following table:[20]
EXTENSION OF QUARTERLY POSSESSION.
| Population (males and females.) | ||
|---|---|---|
| In 1849. | In 1882. | |
| Ranenburg | 19,714 | 4,213 |
| Dankoff | 10,509 | 6,089 |
What appears here in most striking contradiction with the ideas universally adopted by modern writers, is the inverse historical correlation between these two forms of possession. This fact seems to offer a new argument in favor of the theory which regards community of land as a derivative form of ownership owing its origin to the policy of the State. Prof. Tschitscherin, the author of this theory, maintains that the land community was called into life by the ukases of Peter I establishing the poll tax and the responsibility in solido of all members of the community for the punctual payment of the tax.
A full discussion of the issue in controversy does not come within the scope of this essay; for whatever may have been the origin of the land community, its existence during the past two centuries is a fact beyond dispute; and it is only the period after the emancipation that constitutes the immediate subject under consideration. Moreover, the theory belongs to an epoch when the study of the history of the Russian peasantry was yet in its infancy. In the course of the last thirty years this special branch of knowledge has progressed enormously, and Prof. Tschitscherin’s views have been since abandoned by the students of the history of Russian law. A few remarks will suffice for the purpose of the present discussion, inasmuch as no one to-day believes that communism in land sprang, like Minerva, from the head of some administrative Jupiter.