It will be remembered[139] that the terms of the agreement include the payment of the taxes with from one to three rubles yearly per plot for the enjoyment of the owner. It is evident that lease on such terms means practically expropriation of the owner.
Thus, under the rule of the mir, about one-fourth of the householders, nominally counted among “peasant proprietors,” are on the way toward expropriation, or have already become expropriated. As to the lessees of the peasant plots, they must be at the top of the tenant class,[140] by reason of the terms of lease. The landlord gives the tenant credit for his rent, at least in part, till after harvest, and, in case of need, part of the rent is permitted to be paid in labor. The peasant lets his plot, either in full for the payment of taxes, or in part, by reason of lack of money. In either case it must be advanced in the fall. It is by no means unusual for the lease to be contracted for a term of from six to twelve years,[141] the rent for the whole being payable in advance. This is very often the case with the plots of emigrants, leaving home for purposes of colonization, and with those who are permanently employed outside. It goes without saying that rent is advanced only at a considerable reduction of the rates.[142] This difference gave rise to speculation in peasant land. A hundred shares are leased by a wealthy peasant or merchant, to be re-rented in the spring in small plots to the poorer among the lessees.[143] The fact that alienability of the peasant land had become a rule in the community, was first stated by Mr. Trirogoff as far back as 1879.[144] The observer, however, was not aware of the economic significance of the phenomenon when he advanced the opinion that alienability of land exhibits the great capacity of adaptation intrinsic in the community.
In reality the contrary is the case. The fact that communal land is disposed of by private agreement, means the displacement of agrarian communism by economic individualism. This was most strikingly demonstrated when the question of the general redivision of the communal land came up before the free mir in the beginning of the eighties.
CHAPTER XII.
THE REDIVISION OF THE COMMUNAL LAND.
Peasant Russia of the time of serfdom was a kind of a single tax realm. Land was treated by the peasantry as the only source of taxable income. Accordingly, the terms of the general subdivisions of the land were adapted to the censuses (revisions), made by the government for the assessment of the poll-tax, at average intervals of fifteen years.
The division of the nation into “taxable orders” and “privileged orders” did not correspond to the new idea of equality before the law, proclaimed by the reformers who surrounded Alexander II. A commission was appointed in 1858 to consider the question of the repeal of the poll-tax, and of a general reform in the financial system. After twenty-five years of hard labor (very liberally remunerated, I feel bound to state, to the credit of the government), the Commission brought about the repeal of the poll-tax[145]. In the meantime the censuses were held in abeyance, since they had for their sole purpose the assessment of the tax. The general redivision was consequently delayed. Wherever, and so long as the rent did not cover the taxes, partial subdivisions took place yearly to readjust the assessment of the taxes to the changed condition of the several tax-payers. Rise of rent made the intervention of the community unnecessary, and the practice of partial subdivisions fell into disuse. Yet, while at first everybody had been anxious to be relieved from his share of land, which imposed a heavy obligation upon the holder, everybody now became eager for land, since it brought a certain income. Inequality of landholding, which developed with the growth of population, produced a keen antagonism within the village. About the time of the Ryazañ census, in a few communities the strife was already over, having resulted in the victory of the mir. But in the great majority the controversy had just reached its climax.
In 6 bailiwicks (out of the 45), i. e. in 87 communities, a serious obstacle to the subdivision arose from the lease of communal land.
A strong opposition was shown by the wealthy members of the community, who held the lots of the emigrants, and of outside workers, for long terms, and had advanced the rent for the whole period of lease. The subdivision would necessarily have had the effect of rendering their agreements void[146], while it would have been useless to have sued the lessors[147]. The remedy lies in the fact that, under given circumstances, the present law enables a small minority to put a stop to the subdivision.