It is in Galicia that the conditions obtaining in Russia are largely duplicated. Geographically, racially and socially, Galicia is a part of Russia. Galicia is a preponderatingly agricultural land and possesses the densest agricultural population in Europe. Modern industry is relatively little developed, its place being held to a great extent by the domestic system of industry. The contrast between the large and small estates is sharper here than perhaps in any other section of Europe. The Polish nobility, in whose hands the large estates are mostly found, are the ruling social and political, as well as economic, power in Galicia. The autonomous Galician Diet is practically the instrument of their interests. A middle class has been gradually rising and contesting their supremacy. The peasantry is one of the most illiterate, degraded, and oppressed in all Europe.
IV. SUMMARY
This brief review of the economic and social conditions in Russia, Roumania and Austria-Hungary has shown that, broadly speaking, these countries present points of similarity in their situation and their recent movement. In all of these countries, economic and social conditions closely resembling those that obtained in the countries of Western Europe several centuries ago were found until comparatively recent times. The abolition of serfdom in Russia and in Roumania, and of feudal dues in Austria-Hungary, paved the way for the entrance of these states into modern European civilization. The succeeding period has been marked by a rapid transition from the old domestic economy to a modern exchange economy, through the growth of industry and commerce. The medieval conditions of the earlier period have nevertheless not been entirely obliterated. They exist, in Russia, in the privileges and powers of the nobility, in the inferior status and oppressed condition of the peasantry, in the strong class distinctions, in the restraints upon economic activity and upon movement. Though in smaller measure, the same conditions are found in Austria-Hungary, especially in Galicia. In Roumania, so far as the peasantry is concerned, the pre-emancipation conditions remain practically, if not legally, in force. Owing to the increase of population, the minute subdivision of the estates of the peasants, the backwardness of their agricultural methods, and their over-taxation, the position of the peasants has been rendered precarious. Revolutionary uprisings directed chiefly against the landed proprietors have been a recurring expression of their discontent.
An important consequence has been the rapid evolution of the industrial and commercial, or the middle class. The growth of the middle class has been accompanied by a struggle in each of these countries between the privileged classes of the feudal state and the middle class, including in the latter the educated classes and the industrial workers of the towns.
It is in this middle class that the Jews are chiefly to be found. Owing to this fact, as well as through the action of historical conditions, the Jews occupy an exceptional position in the economic activities and the social life of each of the countries of Eastern Europe. A survey of their economic and social position in each country will serve to clarify the last thirty years of their history in Eastern Europe and to give some of the causes underlying their vast movement from these countries to Western Europe and particularly to the United States.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Kovalevsky, La crise russe (Paris, 1906), p. 111.
[3] Cf. Witte, Vorlesungen über Volks- und Staatswirtschaft (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1913), p. 40.
Milyoukov, Russia and its Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 1905), p. 439.