MAXIM WINAWER.
The opponents of expropriation seek shelter behind the excuse that the peasants attack the principle of private ownership. While it is true that there are socialists in the duma who prefer communal holdings to private ownership, the object of the peasants is not to dispossess small holders, but simply to give the peasants access to the large estates. The situation resembles, in some respects, the situation in Ireland, except that in Russia the land is to be turned over to the communities. I made some inquiry regarding the question of joint ownership and learned from one of the best informed men in Russia that there is a growing sentiment in favor of individual ownership. Ownership in common does not give to each individual that stimulus to improve his land, which is the important element in individual ownership. In riding through a country one can distinguish with considerable accuracy between the farms cultivated by their owners and those cultivated by tenants, because the tenants, as a rule, are unwilling to make permanent improvements. One Russian economist estimates the income from the owned lands of Russia at thirty per cent above the income of the same area of communal lands. He attributes it to the ability of the land owners to supply themselves with proper tools and to furnish or borrow at low rates the money needed for cultivation, but it is possible that this difference may be in part due to the fact that ownership makes the incentive to labor greater, and offers a richer reward to superior effort.[10]
GROUP OF RUSSIAN DUMA WITH MR. BRYAN IN CENTER
There is an upper house, or council of empire as it is called, which shares the legislative power with the duma, but it does not receive much attention because its composition is such that it cannot reflect public sentiment, and cannot oppose the will of the people except at the risk of its existence. Half of the members of this council are appointed by the emperor and the other half elected by different interests. The nobility elect some, the universities some and the zemstows some.
The duma does not recognize the council of empire as a co-ordinate branch of the government and will not be slow to express itself in favor of a radical change in the method of selecting the members of this upper house, or even its abolition, if it stands in the way of measures which have a large majority in the duma.
What will be the outcome in Russia? A Russian would hardly venture a prediction, and for an outsider, prophecy is even more hazardous. The situation could scarcely be more complicated. Generations of misrule have brought an accumulation of questions, all pressing for solution. The duma wants a great many things done and wants them done at once, while the government, if it remains under the influences of the bureaucracy, will give as little as possible. So far, the government has been unfortunate in that it has delayed making concessions until still greater concessions were demanded. The program of the present ministry has been so completely repudiated that the emperor may find it easier to appoint a new ministry than to humiliate the present one by compelling it to propose what it has heretofore refused. If a new ministry is formed and the duma is consulted about its personnel, Ivan Petrunkevich will probably be the premier. He is a member of the duma and the head of the parliamentary organization of the constitutional democrats. He has already proposed a constitution to Nicholas II. If the duma is disregarded and a ministry formed from the emperor's present advisers, it will at least be more liberal than the one now in office.