Responsibility in solido for the payment of taxes could hardly be thought of in a country of developed individualism. It presupposes a state of society in which not the individual but the aggregate alone counts in social relations. And such was indeed the social condition of Russia as late as the seventeenth century. The Council of the Commons (Zemskee Sobor) represented, not, as under modern constitutional governments, the individual voters, but the communities alone. These Councils were convoked on extraordinary occasions, one of their chief purposes being to assess certain additional taxes upon the communities represented therein, but never upon individual tax-payers. Even punishments were inflicted in solido upon the community where a murdered body had been found, or some other crime had been perpetrated, and the culprit remained undiscovered. Collective ownership in land appears to be the inseparable concomitant, if not the material basis, of such social conditions.
The study of the development of landed property among the odnodvortzy, however, brought about a revival of the views held by Prof. Tschitscherin, so far as this class of the Russian peasantry is concerned. Prof. Klutschefsky advanced the opinion that the growth of communal landholding was due to the policy of the Government, which saw in this form of ownership a means of guaranteeing the fiscal interest. The fact that the ukases of the Government interfered with the method of surveying the land among the odnodvortzy, as well as with the purchase and sale of their lots, seems to support this opinion. On the other hand, Mr. Semefsky, the famous historian of the Russian peasantry, thinks that the establishment of agrarian communism was due to the initiative of the peasantry, who came to the conclusion that this form of ownership suited their needs better than did quarterly possession. The Government acted only in accordance with the wishes of the peasants, as expressed in numberless petitions and land-suits, and granted the sanction of law to the results of economic development.
Mr. Pankeyeff, the statistician, inclines to the latter opinion. The investigations made by the statisticians of the zemstvo, showed that the struggle over the form of landholding was very obstinate and lasted for years. Oftentimes the contending parties had recourse to violence. The courts were encumbered with interminable suits, and not infrequently the courts and the government decided in favor of quarterly possession. Thus the decisive stand made by the government in favor of the village community is open to question. Moreover, the development of agrarian communism from quarterly possession after the emancipation, when the policy of the government took a turn directly favoring private property, is considered by the peasantists as a proof of the vitality of the communistic spirit among the peasantry. While the promoters of agriculture upon a large scale, on the one hand, and the Russian Marxists, on the other hand, point out the growing dissolution of the village community, the example of the quarterly landholding tends, in the view of the peasantists, to disprove their position. Mr. Pankeyeff claims that, even at present, quarterly landholding cannot be considered as a settled form of possession. A hidden strife is ever going on within the village between the rich and the poor, similar to that which previously led to the final victory of agrarian communism; and it seems very probable that the latter will soon triumph over quarterly possession all along the line.
There appears, however, to be room for yet a third view. The case can hardly be considered as one of evolution from private property to communal landholding; nor, consequently, can it serve to support the theory that derives communal landholding from the policy of the government.
As Mr. Pankeyeff correctly puts it, quarterly landholding, even in its present aspect, combines the features of private and communal property.
If we go back to the origin of quarterly landholding, we find that even the fees granted to the yeomen in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries cannot be construed as private property. The land was given in temporary or hereditary possession; the right of property remained with the state. The pasture, the forest, and the meadow were allotted to the village as a whole, not to the individual yeoman. The arable alone was apportioned to every one in separate plots. Though these plots were conferred on individuals, through inheritance, gift etc., yet this cannot be considered as a proof of private property in land. It must be borne in mind that wherever in Russia land is in abundance, its possession rests upon the title by occupancy. In Siberia such plots pass from father to son, or daughter, exactly as was the custom among the quarterly landholders some hundred years ago. And yet by all students of the Russian village community this is regarded as communal, not individual, landholding, since the supreme right over the land rests in the community. So long as there is no want of land, this right is exercised by using the stubble as common pasture after the harvest. As soon as land, with the increase of population, becomes too scarce to allow of unlimited exercise of the right of first possession, the supreme right of the community asserts itself through the subdivision of the “claims” (zaeemka). In the region under consideration the right of first possession[21] was still in use in the beginning of this century, and the movement toward subdivision of the arable land dates from then.[22]
In the district now under review we are able to observe the steps in the transition from possession by occupancy to subdivision of arable land. We find here the original form—quarterly ownership, and the final form—equal subdivision of the land by the community among its members, and the intermediate stage in which one part of the field is subdivided into fixed hereditary shares, and the other part in equal lots among all the members of the community.
In the districts of Dankoff and Ranenburg, in those communities where this intermediate form of possession is prevalent, forty-four per cent of the whole land (pasture, forest and meadow inclusive) is now considered as communal property. Formerly it was all common pasture. When want of land began to be felt, various tracts of the communal pasture were taken possession of by individual householders, and converted into arable land. This arable land was the first to be declared the property of the community, and subject to equal subdivision among the community’s members. The next step is subdivision of the quarterly arable. Thereby the intermediate form passes into communal landholding proper, or agrarian communism.[23]
The conclusion which can be drawn from the facts as presented above is that quarterly landholding, is but an archaic form of communal landholding, and follows no exceptional course in its development, though that development has been somewhat retarded.