STUDIES IN HISTORY, ECONOMICS AND PUBLIC LAW.

EDITED BY
THE UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
OF COLUMBIA COLLEGE.

Volume II.][Number 1.

THE ECONOMICS
OF THE
RUSSIAN VILLAGE.

BY
Isaac A. Hourwich, Ph.D.,
Seligman Fellow in Political Science, Columbia College.

New York.
1892.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.
THE RISE OF “PEASANTISM.”

The awful famine which has lately been raging over an area as large as the territory of the Dreibund, and inhabited by a population as numerous as that of the “allied Republic,” has called the attention of the whole civilized world to the condition of the starving Russian peasant. A movement has been set on foot in this country to relieve the hard need of the sufferers. This has induced me to think that it would perhaps not be without some interest for the American student of economics to cast a glance at the rural conditions which have finally resulted in that tremendous calamity. I felt bound to improve the opportunity of having been educated in Russia, by introducing the American reader to some one portion of the vast Russian economic literature which, because of the language, remains as yet completely unknown to the scientific world at large.

Russians by education, though not by ethnical descent, who, in spite of having identified themselves with the cause of the Russian people, are now denied the honorable title of “Russian,” may find consolation in the fact that the first investigator of Russian history (Schlözer), the first grammarian who scientifically elaborated the laws of Russian grammar, our Brown (Vostokoff = von Osteneck), the best, if not the first Russian lexicographer, our Webster (Dahl), and finally the man who, it may be said, discovered for the Russian public the Russian village community, the mir (Freiherr August von Haxthausen), were all of foreign birth.

The last named discovery was destined to play a prominent part in the subsequent political history of Russia. Agrarian communism, spread throughout a vast country during an age of extreme economic individualism, when the last traces of such a form of possession were deeply buried in the past of European nations, gave rise for years to an erroneous theory both in Russia and in Western Europe, viz: that this was a specifically Russian or Slavic institution. In Russia it contributed greatly towards drawing the line between the two parties of the Russian educated class in “the epoch of the forties,” between the “occidentalists” (zapadniki) and the “slavophiles.”

The latter regarded the village community as being, with autocracy and orthodoxy, an emanation of the Russian “national spirit.” These three institutions were predestined in their belief to prevent Holy Russ from entering upon the impious ways of the “rotten West,” with its class antagonism, extremes of luxury and poverty, intestinal discords and civil wars.

Precisely for the same reasons, considering the village community as an integral part of the prevailing system of paternalism, the “occidentalists,” opposed to autocracy and orthodoxy, strove for the abolition of the mir as well as of bond serfdom.

The archaic communism of the mir appeared to them to stand in acute contradiction to Western liberalism or individualism. The “epoch of emancipation,” however, that came to realize the aspirations of the occidentalists, brought about a fundamental change of public opinion in regard to the village community.

The intellectual development in Russia was ever going on under the steady influence of Western ideas. The “epoch of the forties” coincided with the era during which socialistic and communistic ideas were in full blast throughout France. Thanks to the many Russian tourists and students who became imbued with these ideas during their sojourn in Paris, socialism, towards the end of “the forties,” attained no inconsiderable popularity among the educated class in Russia. Not to speak of Herzen or Bakunin—who were at that time closely affiliated with Proudhon, Karl Marx and other prominent representatives of the social movements of the day—Belinsky, who was the foremost Russian critic and publicist, equally renowned among all parties (except, of course, the bureaucratic party), became in his latter years a socialist. “Secret circles,” or, as they would be called in this country, debating clubs, swarmed in every large centre of intellectual culture. Among the young men connected with this movement, there was one who was later on to play a part of extraordinary importance in Russian history; this was Nicholas Gavrielovitch Tchernyshefsky.

The influence of Tchernyshefsky upon the development of Russia was far wider, and far more many-sided, than might be supposed. Philosophy, ethics, æsthetics, criticism, political economy, politics, fiction:—these were the various fields of his activity; and everywhere his ideas determined the course of further development. It would require the elaborate study of a scholar to truly represent the historical value of Tchernyshefsky, who can justly be called the father of Russian Nihilism.

Nihilism was entirely misunderstood in Western countries. It will, perhaps, appear somewhat surprising to an English reader to learn that Jeremy Bentham’s doctrine of utilitarianism offered the philosophical foundation of Nihilism. The latter was in reality nothing but an attempt to construct socialism upon the basis of individual utility.

The village community, seen in the light of Nihilism, must evidently have presented quite a different aspect from that which it presented to both the slavophiles and the occidentalists of the preceding epoch. The first article of Tchernyshefsky upon the village community was written in 1857, on the eve of the emancipation of the peasants, and was in the form of a criticism on the papers that had appeared in the slavophile magazine Russkaya Beseda. Tchernyshefsky, though apparently an “occidentalist,” sided with the slavophiles, and in a series of brilliant articles laid down the basis of the so-called “peasantism” (narodnitchestvo) which since then, and until quite recently, has constituted the common ground of all liberal and radical aspirations in Russia, however greatly they may have differed upon other questions.

“Must Russian development of historical necessity follow in the tracks of Western Europe? Cannot Russia benefit by the lessons taught by the history of Western nations, and find out some new way of her own to avoid that evil of pauperism which necessarily accompanies private enterprise in production?”

These were the questions raised by Tchernyshefsky. Taking as a basis Hegel’s famous triad, he showed that Western Europe went from State regulation to individualism and laissez-faire, and now was entering upon a new path which tended toward coöperation and social regulation of economic phenomena. Why then should Russia pass through the intermediate phase, since she already possessed a national institution which permeated the whole economic life of the people, and embodied the principles of coöperation? The individualistic French farmer must inevitably succumb in the war of competition with the large landholder, for the latter is in a position to utilize all new agricultural improvements, while the former lacks all means of combination with his neighbors. On the other hand, supposing that the time has come for the introduction of improved machinery into Russian agriculture, would it require any revolution in the social relations prevailing in the Russian village? Not in the least; the land belongs to the community, and not to the individual; the forms of distribution of land are very various, and admit, not infrequently, even of collective mowing and subsequent distribution of the hay. If new machinery were to be introduced, the Russian community would combine at once the advantages of a large concern, and those of having each individual worker directly interested in his work. This latter, it is claimed, is the characteristic feature of small farm holding. Having thus proved the superiority of Russian communism in land, judged from the standpoint of individual utility, Tchernyshefsky goes on to the other very important question:

“Is it possible for Russia to leap over one phase of her historical development? Natura non agit per saltus.”

To answer this question he quoted the history of technical progress. There was a time when our forefathers produced fire by rubbing together pieces of dry wood. Man next found out how to strike the fire from flint, but centuries elapsed before matches were invented. Now suppose an African nation were to come into contact with European culture, would such a nation have to pass through all the inconveniences of the period of transition suffered by Europeans, or would it not rather adopt matches immediately? Applying the same principle to social institutions, Tchernyshefsky advocated nationalization of land, and communal landholding, as a basis for the emancipation of the peasants, which was then under the consideration of the government. In a paper entitled Is the Redemption of Land Difficult? he showed in figures the practicability of buying out the land by the government, and in a series of other articles he maintained that such a reform would prevent the formation of a proletariat in Russia.

The period that preceded the reform of 1861, was a time of universal enthusiasm for the liberal government on the part of the educated class. So much the greater was the disappointment when the reform was at last proclaimed. It has not been stated whether Tchernyshefsky himself was in any way connected with the “underground” agitation against the government, of which he was accused at so early a date as 1862. Tried in 1864, and exiled to Siberia, he was allowed to return to European Russia only in 1883, when the revolutionary party seemed to have been finally suppressed by the government. And yet for this whole period none but Tchernyshefsky was the spiritual leader of the social movement that sprang up from the disappointment caused by the manner in which the emancipation of the peasants had been carried out. It will be seen further that, owing to the origin and development of private ownership in land, nationalization of land became intimately connected, in the minds of the Russian peasants, with emancipation. Hence a series of riots in 1861-62, at the time when the reform was being put in force. The peasants claimed that they were duped by the “masters” and the officials, who were concealing from the people “the true will of the Czar.” The belief that the Czar desired to nationalize the land for the use of the tiller of the soil was so universal among the peasants that, in 1878, minister Makoff found himself under the necessity of issuing a special circular for the purpose of dispelling the gossip current upon the subject. The priests were ordered to read and explain this circular in all the churches; and on the 16th day of May, 1883, while receiving the elders of the peasants, who presented their congratulations on the solemn occasion of the Czar’s coronation, the latter told the delegates to disabuse the peasants’ minds of the false rumors of gratuitous distribution of land, that were being spread abroad by the enemies of the throne. Yet the influence of the said enemies of the throne was infinitesimal as compared with the extent to which these rumors became popular. On the contrary, instead of its being a case of the radicals influencing the people, it was precisely the radicals themselves who were influenced by this popular belief. The latter seemed to them a proof of the moral support their aspirations were to gain from the people; and if “the will of the people” is not to be fulfilled through the government, why, this will must be complied with against the government. Thus revolutionary peasantism came into being. After years of propaganda it broke out in 1873-1874 in a huge movement that was called “the pilgrimage amongst the folk.” Hundreds of boys and girls, chiefly college students, settled in villages as common laborers to make propaganda among the peasants for what they believed to be socialistic ideas. They hoped to be able, sooner or later, to foment a popular uprising that would result in the establishment of a new social order.

Certainly this juvenile movement must, under any circumstances, have inevitably proved a failure. Defeat was, however, accelerated by the merciless persecution of the Government. The events which followed are only too well known for it to be necessary for me to dwell on them. The final defeat of revolutionary peasantism after 1881, brought into the foreground a peaceable peasantist movement that excited little attention, but which will certainly be of great consequence for the coming development of Russia. Having suffered shipwreck in their revolutionary course, the peasantists came to the conclusion that scientific investigation of the economics of the village was the most essential preliminary for any rational political action. And scores of former revolutionists zealously took part in the statistical investigation started by the zemstvos (provincial assemblies).

It is true that the revolutionary peasantists cannot be credited with the initiative of this important work. The founder of the so-called “Moscow method” of statistical investigation, the late Vasili Ivanovitch Orloff, was a peaceable peasantist in 1875, when a young man of twenty-seven he took into his hands the Statistical Bureau of the Moscow zemstvo. Yet the many who helped him in his work, and who afterwards became somewhat prominent in spreading his system over new provinces, such men as Messrs. Greegoryeff, Werner, Shtcherbina, Annensky, etc., had previously spent several years in prison and in exile for “political offences.”

It is by no means exaggerated to say that in the hundreds of volumes of the censuses, ordered by the majority of the thirty-two zemstvos, Russia possesses a masterpiece of statistics which for its completeness, and for the mathematical exactness of its figures, has hardly been rivalled in any country. The following quotations will give some idea of the methods practiced by the Russian statisticians:

“We used to begin by making a minute extract from the Book of assessed taxes. Another highly interesting document found in the “bailiff’s board” (volostnoye pravlenie) was the Book of transactions and contracts. It had been kept for many years, and contained the terms of agreements made between peasants and landlords of the neighborhood for agricultural work, as well as the terms of those agreements made between peasants and contractors, where the work had been done outside the limits of the village. There were also to be found there rental agreements, made both by peasants and those outside the ranks of the peasants; loan agreements made by individuals, as well as by communities, with joint suretyship of all their members, etc. The third document was the Book for registering passports, from which we could learn approximately the number of peasants yearly leaving their villages for a time.… After these quotations had been made in the bailiff’s board, we made a tour through the villages under the jurisdiction of the board, and it was here that the local inquiries began, and the most valuable material was collected. In every community of every village[1] we called a regular meeting of the community’s members, and, in meeting assembled we took a census. We passed with every householder through a series of questions, tending to elucidate the economic capacity of his family, and capable of being put in figures. The method itself of collecting these data in full meeting insured the greatest possible correctness of the figures obtained; one householder often aided the other in remembering some fact, or corrected his misstatements. It frequently happened that some sheep or calf, which was intended for sale or was already sold, called forth a discussion as to whether it should not also be included in the list. The questions were asked with a view to ascertain from every household the following points: the area of land allotted at the emancipation, purchased as private property, or farmed; the way in which the soil was tilled, whether it was cultivated by the householder himself, or by some of his neighbors, whom, in such cases, he had usually hired, because he himself owned no horse, or finally, whether he had entered the ranks of the “husbandless” (i. e., destitute of husbandry),[2] who lease their lots or desert them altogether. We also ascertained what were the labor forces of the family, male and female; the entire number of heads of which it consisted; the business, apart from agriculture, of every adult member of the family, and whether the member sought work at a distance from home; the quantity of cattle; the size of the buildings; the shops belonging to every family. In a word, through the census a picture is drawn of the economic condition of all the households of the community. The number of those who can read, or who are learning to read, is also given in the census. Certainly the material collected appears to be of such a character as to furnish fundamental facts for the formation of a judgment as to the economic condition of the population.”[3]

The technical side of statistics, says Mr. Shtcherbina, the methods applied in the local investigations, are elaborated with the minutest detail.… The questions are several times crossed by each other, so as to mutually complete and verify the statements.[4]

The area covered by the investigations for the year 1890, is represented by the following figures:[5]

This is about one-fifth of the total population of European Russia.

As the unit for all information is identical with the economic cell—the peasant household—these investigations present us with the true scientific anatomy of Russian economic life. Nevertheless there may be cases in which plain truth is not exceedingly welcome. This holds true even of the most advanced reform parties. Why then should the Russian nobility be among the exceptions, if there are any? If the rent is exorbitant and the earnings of the farmer are scanty, it does not require a genius to draw the conclusion that there must be some connection of cause and sequence between the two facts. Still, this is precisely what the landlords would like to keep hidden from public notice. Hence strong opposition by the party of the nobility to the statistical investigations. The statisticians were generally charged with representing only such facts as favored their leanings toward land nationalization and expropriation of the landlords. The first outbreak of this opposition took place in 1882 in Ryazañ against Mr. Greegoryeff, Superintendent of the Ryazañ Bureau of Statistics, and his assistants. The assembly passed a resolution that the two volumes of the census which dealt with the districts of Dankoff and Ranenburg should be suppressed. These volumes were confined exclusively to raw material, and contained only tables and statements, without any generalizations. The excitement was so great that some of the members moved to buy out all copies which had already been put in circulation, though it should cost 100 roubles ($50) a copy, and to solemnly burn them as a public example. It is true that this extreme motion was not carried, but Mr. Greegoryeff was sent for four years into administrative exile at Kineshma, a small town of the province of Kostroma, and put under police surveillance as a political suspect. Thus Russian statistics have already had their martyr. Mr. Greegoryeff’s book, The Emigration of the Peasants from the Province of Ryazañ, founded on the same proscribed data, was subsequently honored with a prize by the University of Moscow.

Similar occurrences took place in Kazañ and Kursk. In the latter province the assembly proscribed the general review of the province, although the review consisted merely of the totals of the respective items for the several districts, and the volumes containing these items were in due time published by the assembly.

However, it must be admitted that Mr. Werner’s fate was not a specially hard one, since he was not even exiled, while his book, which caused his discharge from the Bureau, was awarded the same honor by the University of Moscow, as Mr. Greegoryeff’s investigation had received.

Finally the government saw fit to interfere, and a law was passed in 1888 forbidding any investigations into the relations between landlord and peasant, and putting the programmes of statistical investigations under the control of the administrative authorities. The work, however, had been done; a work that may be truly called the social work of the eighties.

Was it virtually a fallacious census, imbued with party spirit?

The present famine has offered the most striking proof of the authenticity of the much-assailed figures.

It will require years of study to sum up the results of the statistical investigations, and I have been necessarily forced to limit the scope of my essay to some one locality. I have selected the two districts of the province of Ryazañ,[6] the statistical data relating to which were attacked as unreliable by the nobility in 1882. This is the very locality in which Count Leo Tolstoi has carried on his work of philanthropy in feeding the hungry. It has seemed to me that it might be of some interest to know what information there was actually at command, as far back as 1882, respecting the districts now stricken with famine.

CHAPTER I.
GENERAL SKETCH OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANDHOLDING IN RUSSIA.

It seems now to be a fairly well established fact in science that at the dawn of the evolution of mankind the individual had not yet differentiated from the social aggregate. Archaic communism in the production of food and other necessaries, as well as in possession and consumption, is now, I imagine, universally recognized as the primitive form of social life. It is only during the higher stages of development that private ownership by individuals comes into existence; and private property in land was the latest to appear on the historical scene. The dissolution of the land community in Western Europe is a fact of comparatively very recent date. In Russia, where the process of evolution has been less rapid, we see this primeval institution preserved until to-day.

In Russia we do not find within historical times that tribal communism which Lewis H. Morgan met with among the American Indians. The Russian village community of historical times consists of a number of large families, often, yet not necessarily, of common ancestry, who possess the soil in common, but cultivate it by households. The ancient communal coöperation re-appears sporadically, upon various special occasions, in the form of the pómoch (help). Some householder invites his neighbors to help him in a certain work: to mow his meadow lot, to reap his field, to cut down wood for a new house he has undertaken to build, etc. This is considered as a reception tendered by the family to its neighbors, and different kinds of refreshments are prepared for the occasion. These constitute the only remuneration for the work done collectively by the guests. Of course, there is nothing compulsory in the custom, and no one is bound to answer the call in case he does not like to do so. On the other hand, the party benefited is under an obligation to appear at the call of all those who participated in the pómoch. This custom, which is now limited for the most part to extraordinary occasions and is more and more falling into disuse, apparently played a far more conspicuous part in former days, when rural settlements were scattered clearings in the midst of virgin forests, and pioneer work was constantly needed. Still even then it was but a social revival, hinting at a preceding epoch of closer communistic co-operation, yet at the same time pointing out the existing severance between the households of which the community was formed. In other words, the pómoch, being undoubtedly a revival of primeval communism, is at the same time a sign of the dissolution of communism into individual households.

However, it is essential to notice that the Russian household is not identical with the Roman family or its derivatives. The Roman paterfamilias is the absolute master of all living under his patria potestas; he is the unlimited owner of all property belonging to the household, even where such property is the product of the personal industry of particular members of the family. The modern family, on the other hand, is merely a union of individuals having their individual rights recognized by law, though sometimes not without certain limitations in favor of the head of the family. The Russian peasant family alone is a perfect communistic commonwealth. All the moveables belonging to the household, as well as its whole income, constitute the collective property of the family, but not of its head. The same holds good even of those parts of the Empire in which the village community disappeared long before the emancipation of the peasants. In Little Russia and White Russia, as elsewhere, the statute of 1861 recognized the rural institutions upheld by peasant common law. Thus the land was there allotted to the families, and it was subsequently reaffirmed by the Senate, in one of its interpretations, that the land does not belong to the head of the family, but does belong to the family as a whole.

Moreover, an old Russian family greatly resembled a community even in the number of its members. Mr. Krasnoperoff, in a paper which appeared some ten years ago in the Otechestvenniya Zapiski, described a family he met with in the province of Mohileff. The family numbered ninety-nine members, and was composed of a grandmother, with her children and married grandchildren, all of whom were living together and working for their own common benefit. Such households are, indeed, isolated exceptions at the present day, but they were universal in the past.

Thus ownership of land by the community without, and complete communism within the family, were the fundamental elements in the structure of the village at the dawn of Russian history.

The rise and growth of private property in land soon came in to restrict the domain of the village community.

In the early days of mankind coöperation is essential to success in the struggle for life which man is carrying on daily against his natural surroundings. Landholding, whether collective or individual, must be large enough to admit of coöperation. Therefore private ownership in land first appears in history in the form of large holdings. Now, so long as population is thin, and vacant land lies practically free to anybody, it would be useless to occupy large estates if there were no means of compelling the husbandman to labor in the landlord’s fields instead of for his own benefit. Indeed, private property in land in the early periods of history goes hand in hand with the personal dependence of the tiller of the soil.

In the Muscovite State we find two forms of individual landed property: patrimony (vottchina) or freehold, and fee (pomest’ye) or benefice.

While fee was an institution of public law, patrimony owed its origin to private law and to a more ancient epoch. Patrimonies were to be found in the Republic of Novgorod, and in some other States of the Russian Federation, before their conquest by the Great Princes of Muscovy, afterwards Czars of all the Russias. The rise of this form of property is intimately bound up with the growth of slavery in ancient Russia. Slavery, like patrimony, was also an institution of private law, arising from the transaction of loan. The payment of the debt was secured, as in the civil law (jus civile), by the person of the debtor. Unquestionably this was the only possible security in an historical epoch when landed property had no value, save when human labor was applied to it. As in Rome, war was the constant cause that put the peasant under the necessity of contracting loans. As in Rome, there could hardly be found two years of uninterrupted peace in the course of the first centuries of Russia’s history. Destruction, by force of arms and rapine, usually compelled the plundered peasant to alienate his liberty to the “better man” (vir bonus, καλὸς κἀγαθός) who furnished him with cattle, seed, and implements. The peasant sold himself either for a term of years, or for life, and in the course of time the state of serfdom became hereditary. The labor of these slaves (zakup, kabalniy holóp) was used by the creditors to cultivate their estates, or to reclaim new acres from the forest. Amidst the wilderness of primitive forests, such parcels of cultivated land had already a certain value which attracted settlers. Here we have the origin of patrimonies in Russia during the “period of federation and witenagemote.”

Left, however, as it was, to private intercourse and initiative, the spread of individual landed property, like the number of slaves, remained comparatively limited. It was only as political institutions that individual landholding and personal dependence of the peasant were to become the foundations of social life in Russia.

The fee was the virtual germ of Russian private property in land.

Not only in Russia, but also in many other countries, private property in land owed its origin to relations of public law. Public land (ager publicus) was primarily held by officers on the ground of, and for the purposes of their office as a benefice. In proportion as the offices became hereditary, and the relations growing out of administration of public affairs developed into personal dependence of the common people upon the office holders, the tenure of land by reason of office became hereditary, and subsequently developed into an institution of private law. The next step was in the direction of freeing the landholder from the duty of public service connected with the tenure of his land. Thus his possession became independent. On the other hand, the free ownership of land by the people was replaced, in the course of evolution, by dependent possession. And finally, with the abolition of the personal dependence of the peasant, his right to land expired.

Such was, taking a bird’s eye view, the evolution of private property in most European countries. In Russia the course was essentially the same.

Old republican and semi-republican Russia of “the period of federation and witenagemote” knew no firm government. The prince was elected and deposed by the people, and it was very difficult for him to hold his position for more than any single year amidst the dissensions of the hostile factions of turbulent citizens. Usually princes tramped their whole life long from one principality to another, attendants tramping with them. War was their chief business and war was also their chief source of income. Moreover, through a confiscation of the judicial functions by the prince, a part of the wergild paid by the convicted wrongdoer to the right party, found its way into the treasury of the prince to be distributed among his followers. No bond wedded the prince and his followers to the land until the nomadic elected prince was replaced by the Muscovite Great Prince and Lord of All the Russias. Struggle with the Tartar conquerors—a struggle that lasted for two centuries—furthered the growth of centralization and of monarchical authority, and the former free attendant of the prince became the servitor of his sovereign. The State in Russia has always been a self-sufficing entity, which claimed the services of everybody, without owing in return anything to anybody. And this still remains to-day the fundamental principle wherein Russian public law differs from constitutional law. If, perchance, the state engaged in suppressing crime, it was not for the sake of justice or defense to the people, but rather for fiscal considerations, or for the sake of the safety of the state, threatened by gangs of brigands and highway robbers. It was the duty of the “servitor” (sloozhiliy chelovek) to prosecute bandits, to defend the frontiers from invasion by nomadic tribes, and to appear in case of war among his sovereign’s troops with a number of armed men. To furnish the “gentleman” with the necessary means for the support of his detachment, and in general for the discharge of his office, he was granted a certain tract of land “in fee.” The peasant who settled upon this lot was bound to pay a certain tax (in kind) to the “gentleman” to whom the power of taxation was delegated by the State. However, it was no easy task to enforce the exact payment of the taxes, since the peasant could run away at any time he chose as soon as he found the payments becoming burdensome.

Indeed, even in modern Russia, wherever land is in abundance, agriculture is to a great extent a nomadic pursuit. A field is cultivated uninterruptedly for from two to three years, and the peasant then leaves it and turns to another fresh lot. It is only after a period of not less than twenty years that the peasant will perhaps return to the first lot. It may be, however, that he will change his place for an entirely new one.

In olden times the facilities for migration were the same as they now are in Siberia. This state of things gave rise to competition among the gentry, who vied with one another in cutting down the rate of payments exacted from the peasants. The gentry constantly complained of being unable to fulfil their duties toward the State so long as this self-willedness on the part of the peasants continued. In order to secure exact fulfilment by each of his duties toward the state, freedom of migration was first limited, and then gradually abolished. The free peasant became bound to the soil, glebæ adscriptus. Yet this dependence was based entirely upon public law. The peasant was made subject to the gentleman, not for the gentleman’s sake, but for the benefit of the state. The only restriction of civil rights imposed upon the peasant by his dependence was the prohibition of emigration; and even in that no distinction existed between the peasant and the gentleman, since the latter was also forbidden to quit his fee. Throughout the Muscovite period the peasant was considered as a citizen, and was protected by the state against abuses of power on the part of the gentleman. The latter was not even the owner of the land; it belonged to the state, or to the Czar, as the personification of the state. Land was allotted to the gentleman for service, and for lifetime only, and could escheat by the state for cause. Inasmuch, however, as the gentleman’s son also entered the service of the Czar, it became little by little a custom to transfer to the son his father’s fee. Thus the fee became hereditary.

Peter the Great effaced all the distinctions that were characteristic of the preceding epoch. By compelling every landholder to enter the service of the state, and by establishing a uniform law of inheritance for all real estate belonging to the nobility, he merged in one patrimonies and fees. On the other hand, by imposing the poll tax upon peasants, and by making the landholder responsible for the exact payment of this tax, he put slaves and serfs upon a common footing, and made the latter personally dependent upon the landlord. His successors restricted the civil rights of the peasants and took away from them the right to sue their masters. At the same time the latter were granted the right to exile their peasants to Siberia, and to sell them, even where such sale entailed the separation of the wife from her husband, of the child from its parents. On the other hand, after the time of Peter the Great, the duty of service was gradually relaxed, and at last definitively abolished by Peter III in 1762.

It was by this ukase that private property in land and serfdom were finally recognized in Russia as institutions of private law.[7] But immediately after the “Charter to the Nobility” was granted by Peter III, the question of emancipation began to agitate the peasants. Three generations were too short a period in which to implant in the minds of the peasantry the new principles brought into social relations by the St. Petersburg Emperors. The conservative mind of the peasant was wedded to the old customs of the Muscovite common law. He knew no Emperor; for him there was still a Czar, who owned all the lands of his country for the good of his people. The gentleman was bound to serve the Czar; the peasant was bound to provide the gentleman with the necessary means; hence bond serfdom and fee. And was the idea really so obsolete? Were not the gentlemen daily granted large estates for services they had rendered to the Czar? Now, since the Czar in his grace has freed the gentleman from service, there is no longer any ground upon which the gentleman can be justified in detaining the land in his possession, nor is there any reason for keeping the peasant in dependence upon the gentleman. Consequently “Land and Liberty!” (Zemlya ee Volya!) It is now plain enough why the nobility conspired to assassinate the Emperor Peter III Theodorovitch. After the “dear father” had narrowly escaped his fate, the lords declared him dead; but fortunately he succeeded at last, after eleven years of exile, in recruiting an army of loyal subjects to help him in taking lawful possession of his throne, usurped by his perfidious wife. The war over, the people will be graciously vouchsafed “Land and Liberty.”

This legend found its way readily into the minds of the peasants, who for a whole year, under the leadership of the rebellious Cossack Emilian Pugacheff, alias “Emperor Peter Theodorovitch,” held half Russia in their power. It would be, of course, a rash conclusion to seek to establish any immediate connection between the bloody uprising of 1773-1774 and the discussion of the question of emancipation in the “Commission for the Enactment of a New Code,” called by Catherine II. in 1767. Yet it is worth noticing that such a question did arise, and that the emancipation of the peasants was pleaded for by the representative of the Don Cossacks, who were shortly to lead the insurrection. And, indeed, many of those who represented the Cossacks in the commission were later on active in the civil war. The suppression of the latter led to the expansion of serfdom, since the “pension system” of that epoch consisted, of necessity, only in grants of “peasant souls.” Thus in the reign of Catherine II. about one million “state serfs” were given into the private possession of landlords, for military, or civil (or “personal”) merit.

The reigns of her successors were marked by an uninterrupted series of peasant uprisings, agrarian crimes, and half-measures on the part of the government to loosen the bonds of serfdom. At the same time, after the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars, abolitionist ideas began to win their way among the land-owning, upper classes. The insurrection of December 14th (26th), 1825, had among its chief purposes the abolition of serfdom. The disastrous termination of that insurrection did not stop the propaganda of the abolitionist ideas which reached even to the palace, through the famous Russian poet Zhukoffsky, instructor of Alexander II.

The political necessity of emancipation, as guaranteeing the safety of the state, was brought still farther home to the minds of the ruling classes by the general excitement among the peasantry which followed the Crimean war, and broke out in numberless riots of a most alarming character throughout the country. “We must free the peasants from above, before they begin to free themselves from below,”—these were the historical words addressed by Alexander II to the Assembly of the Nobility in Moscow, August 31st (September 12th), 1858. Yet such political farsightedness could hardly have developed, had not the economic conditions been ripe for the change. Indeed, after the Crimean war it became obvious to the government that Russia, with her old-fashioned methods of transportation, could play no prominent part in the “European concert.” Now it was perfectly evident that an extensive system of railways could not possibly be supported out of the resources of agriculture alone, in a country in which nine-tenths of the people were serfs, either of the state or of the landlords, and had to bear out of their scanty income the expenses of a large military state, and of an aristocracy. Industry and commerce were necessary for the maintenance of the state. The emancipation of the peasants was the scheme to attract domestic and foreign capital to industrial pursuits in Russia. By placing money in the hands of the landlords it was sought to promote the progress of agriculture, and the growth of industries intimately connected therewith. By setting at liberty twenty million serfs, who were the subjects of the landlords, wage-workers were created for industrial enterprises.

The economic significance of the reform of February 19th, (March 3d,) 1861, lies in the fact that, on the one hand, it completed the evolution of private property in land, and that, on the other hand, it effected at a single blow the expropriation of the peasantry on a large scale.

Before the emancipation anything like distinction between the land of the lord and that of the peasant existed on those estates on which the duties of the serf toward his master were discharged in compulsory labor. Yet even there the distinction was not clearly marked, for the peasants enjoyed the right of pasture in common with the lord, and were furnished a modicum of wood from the lord’s forest. The distinction, moreover, was not a rigid one, since the lord could, at his option, transform the corvée into tallage (taille)—compulsory labor into compulsory payments. The latter form prevailed on many estates. In such cases the lord enjoyed merely the legal ownership, Ober-Eigenthum (dominium ex jure Quiritium) while to the peasant belonged the real possession, Nutzeigenthum (possessio ex jure gentium). Now the severance of a tract of land from the fields held by the community transformed communal possession into private property of the gentleman. The owner who tilled the soil was transformed into a tenant or into a wage-laborer.

There was a party among the nobility at the time of the emancipation who would have liked to see a still more decided reform in the same direction. In compliance with the wishes of the members of this party it was accordingly proposed to transfer all the land into the private property of the noble, while leaving to the peasant merely his homestead (i. e. house, yard and garden). But, after consideration, this radical plan was abandoned, for fear lest it might prove seriously dangerous to the public peace.

Unquestionably, the principles in accordance with which the reform was carried out stood in striking contradiction to the aspirations of the peasants, who held fast to the idea expressed by the old saying: “We are yours, but the land is ours!” Hence general disappointment of the peasantry with the reform, which failed to grant the people “land” as well as “liberty.” Now, since the land is the Czar’s and has been unlawfully seized by the masters, can there be any doubt that the gentlemen and the officials have conspired together against the will of the Czar? We here arrive at the source of those wide-spread legends of land nationalization that were so popular with the peasants for a quarter of a century after the emancipation.

To obviate all incitement to acute outbreaks of popular discontent, the government, as far as possible, avoided drastic measures.

In order to meet the wishes of those who leaned toward the Irish system of landholding, the government satisfied itself with offering to every community the choice either of agreeing to pay the redemption tax for the normal lots, or of taking in lieu thereof the so called “donated lots” extending to one-fourth of the normal lots, and free from the redemption tax. At the same time these lots became at once the absolute property of the donees.

Similarly, the government did not proceed to an immediate assault upon agrarian communism, though considering the same as an obstacle to agricultural progress. Wherever communism was in existence, the land was allotted to the community as a whole. But a road was opened to the spontaneous and gradual dissolution of the community. The “homesteads,” i. e. the house, the yard and garden, were declared the property of the family. Further, the community was empowered to divide the field into private property, upon a vote of two-thirds of the householders. Finally every individual householder was granted the right of enclosing his lot, after having complied with certain formalities, and paid the whole amount of amortization. It was hoped that as soon as the way had been opened to private property, the latter would not fail to take the place of communism. These expectations were, however, fulfilled but in a comparatively meagre measure. The reason lay in the fact that the government could not make up its mind to break entirely with the old regime.

In order to smooth the opposition of the nobility to the emancipation of their serfs, the redemption of land was not made compulsory. The State undertook the part of middleman between the gentleman and the peasant, under certain normal conditions. But the agreement was to be made voluntarily between the parties. The gentleman alone was given the privilege of rendering the redemption compulsory at his own option, by making an abatement of one-fifth of the normal rate of installments. In case no such action was taken by him, and no mutual understanding could be reached, the peasant remained in a transitional state of dependence upon his former master. His obligation was to be discharged either in pecuniary payments or in forced labor. This state of moderated serfdom lasted throughout the reign of Alexander II., surnamed “the Liberator,” and was abolished in 1883 by a law ordering the compulsory settlement of the relations between the so-called “temporary obligors” and their masters.[8]

In so far as this state of dependence remained in existence, the destructive influence of the “Statute of Redemption” upon the rural community was suspended.[9]

Whatever may have been the effect of permitting the dependence of the peasant to be continued, the support offered to the community by the old fiscal system, which has remained up to this very day, was still more influential.

It would be idle to criticise the Russian financial system from the standpoint of justice in taxation. The law of self-preservation is the first law of all being. To cover her nine hundred million budget, official Russia has got simply to take money wherever it can be found. Now where can it be found in Russia? The State can tax either the producer or the consumer, or both. Where is the producer to be sought for purposes of taxation? Is it in industry, which is being fostered by means of bounties and prohibitive tariffs? Is it the noble landlord, for whom State mortgage banks are established, and State lotteries issued, whose solo notes are discounted by the State Bank, etc? Then there remains none but the peasant to pay the taxes. Should on the other hand the consumer be taxed, then again it is the 80 per cent. peasants who must pay the major part of the indirect taxes.[10] In a word, whether the burden weigh upon producer or consumer, it must needs be the Russian peasant to whom will fall the lion’s share—in paying the taxes. And truly the peasantry, like the “burghers,” are designated as a “taxable order,” but the burghers are too few to cut any figure as compared with the peasant.

What follows?

A great sensation was produced in 1877 by a book on Russian taxation by Prof J. E. Janson, of the University of St. Petersburg.[11] On the strength of the Reports of the Commission of Inquiry into the Condition of Agriculture in Russia, 1872, and of the Proceedings of the Commission on Taxation, he brought to light the startling fact that the amount of taxes paid by the peasant toward 1872 considerably exceeded the net income of his land.[12] This means that it did not pay for the peasant to own land, since he had to cover a part of the taxes from his wages, while, by deserting his plot, he would enjoy the whole amount of his wages with the exception of a small poll tax. And indeed many a peasant would be glad to run away from his farm, if he was only permitted to do so. But the fulfilment of the peasant’s obligation toward the State was secured by the curtailment of his personal liberty. In case of arrears he would get no passport, and no one is allowed in Russia to go farther from home than 30 versts (about 20 miles) without a passport, under penalty of being imprisoned and forwarded home by étape. Should, however, the peasant renounce his right of locomotion, then public sale of his homestead and personal effects, and corporal punishment[13] inevitably follow arrears in the payment of taxes. Moreover all the members of the community are responsible, jointly and severally, for the exact payment of the taxes assessed upon the community as a whole. Therefore wherever, and so long as, the taxes exceed the rent brought in by the land[14] the ancestral tenet of communal supremacy is emphatically observed, and the most scrupulous justice and equality are maintained in the distribution of the land.

The lots are strictly proportioned to the number of males in each family, or to that of the workers (from the ages of 15-18 to 55-60), or even to the number of “eaters”; democratic principles being so far lived up to as to efface all distinction between male and female “mouths.” The terms of distribution vary according to the kinds of land. Meadows are subdivided every summer. Arable is usually distributed at intervals of greater length. Yet, in the meantime, for some reason or other, land may become vacant, or fall to the disposal of the community. It often happens that some householder requests to be relieved of a part of his land on the ground of the decrease in the number of workers in his family, e. g., because his son has been enlisted in the army. At the same time there may be other families who are “strong,” i. e., well-off and numerous enough to pay the taxes for an additional tract of land. In such cases a partial subdivision between the households is made by the community. After a time, with the increase in the number of these partial subdivisions, the complexity and inequality of distribution necessitate a fresh general subdivision. The land is once more minutely redivided among the villagers. The optimistic enthusiast of the community would fancy that at last it stood firmly rooted in the soil, in spite of all unfavorable environments.

And yet, notwithstanding the strictest minuteness in the distribution of land, wherein the sovereignty of the mir over private interests is manifested, the equilibrium of the rural community must be defined as utterly unstable, since it rests upon such a shaky basis as over-taxation of the land. The economic development of Russia, however, tends to eliminate the disproportion between tax and income.

By taking one-half of the land out of the occupancy of the community, the government put the peasant under the necessity of seeking land or employment outside of his own farmstead. To secure to the landlords an abundant supply of farm hands, the emigration of the former serfs to districts where there was plenty of vacant land was so throttled with red tape that it was practically equivalent to prohibition.[15] Moreover, in 1866 the emancipation of the State peasants brought about the repeal of the old law, which encouraged emigration, under certain conditions, through the support of the State. As opposed to this the “Statute of the peasants freed from bond serfdom,” which was now to be applied to the former State peasant, brought with it a new restriction of his personal rights.

The peasants now found themselves tied to the place in which they had been born. The increased demand for land could not but react upon the peasants’ plots, by raising the rent that they brought, and so neutralizing the effects of over-taxation. The fiscal influence which tends to counteract the dissolution of the village community is thus passing away.

CHAPTER II.
COMMUNITY OF LAND.

The region which has been selected for the present discussion comprises two Districts: Dankoff and Ranenburg, (or Oranienburg) in the province (Gubernia) of Ryazañ. They are situated in Middle Russia, between North latitude 53° and 53° 31´, East longitude 38° 40´ and 40° 10´, and enjoy a moderate climate, at least when judged by Russian ideas. The soil is mostly pure black earth, the rest being made up of black earth mixed, or alternated with other soils.[16]

According to the census taken by the zemstvo in 1882, the entire peasant population of this region numbered 36,126 families, composed of 232,323 males and females, and living in 653 village communities.

Agrarian communism is the prevailing form of land tenure; the right of property belongs to the community, while the land is either used in common, or subdivided in equal shares among the members of the community, according to some scale, adopted by the same.

It is the pasture alone that remains to-day in the common use of all the members of the community. Arable land and meadow are subdivided, and remain in the temporary possession of the several householders. But after harvest and mowing they return into communal usage, for pasture.

Still, side by side with agrarian communism, we meet with that peculiar form of hereditary tenure known as “quarterly” (tschetvertnoye) possession.[17] The difference between agrarian communism and quarterly possession consists in the fact that under the former, the plots are fixed by the mir, whereas under the latter they are fixed through inheritance, gift, etc. Yet it is not the land itself, but some ideal share in the common possession, that is held by the individual, precisely as under agrarian communism. The arable land, though considered by law as private property, is virtually subdivided by the community according to the same rules as those practiced wherever agrarian communism is dominant—the pasture, the forest, and the meadow are in the possession of the community. The forest and the meadow are redivided yearly. The villages differ as to the standard of subdivision: in some of them the lots of the peasants are proportioned to the size of the inherited lots of arable land, in some they are equal. The pasture is used in common.

It is a well established fact that the actual agrarian communism among the majority of the State peasants of the region in question is a phenomenon of very recent date and has evolved from hereditary possession.[18]

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]

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:

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.

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.

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.

CHAPTER III.
THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES OF THE PEASANTRY.

The old laws governing the State peasants, before the reform of 1866, fixed the normal size of the plots at eight dessiatines (about 21 acres) to each male “of the revision” (i. e., included in the last preceding census) for the “regions where land is scarce.”

By the reforms of 1861 and 1866, not a single class of peasants was granted the extent of land that the state of agriculture in the district under consideration called for,[24] and the average tract owned by the more comfortably situated State peasant is only a little more than one-half of this normal plot as it was empirically fixed; of course, the normal extent of a farm is subject to change through increase of population and progress of agricultural methods. Let us see how large is the extent of land actually required by, but not in the possession of, the peasantry of the districts under review.

The table on the top of the next page gives the total number of communities, in which all the householders were able to carry on farming with their own stock and implements.

The favorable condition of these few communities was due to the fact that the land rented and acquired as private property by the prevailing majority equalled in extent the communal tract. The communities in question occupied, as a whole, over one-half more land than the average.

Still land tenure is unequally distributed among the peasantry, thanks to legal discrimination. The main distinctions date from the reforms of 1861 and 1866. Here is the proportion of land to population in the several classes of the peasantry of our region:

That the disproportion is not the result of subsequent alterations in population or property can be seen from the comparison between the average lot fixed by law for the former serf in 1861, and that given to the former state peasant in 1866:

This inequality is due to the influence of landlord interests upon the reform of 1861, considerable tracts of land having been cut off from the former peasant possessions and granted in absolute property to the masters.[25] It goes without saying that the free peasant must have sunk below the level of the serf. By the side of the former serfs even the state peasants appear as an “upper class.” And yet the average quantity of land held by the state peasants falls short of the extent proved by experience to be necessary for farming in the districts under consideration.

Want of land urged the peasant to convert everything into arable land, and that to such an extent that no improvements worth mentioning were left for the use of the cattle.

The total hay yield of the meadows belonging to the peasants who live under agrarian communism[26], is 458,000 poods[27], and this has to be distributed among 83,079 head of large cattle[28]. This makes on an average 5½ poods, i. e. 200 pounds to every head for the Russian winter, lasting at least half a year. In other words, there is about one pound of hay a day for every head of cattle.

Nor is the condition any better in the summer, since the pastures, where there are any, are very scanty; and this is due to conversion of pasture into arable land, as already mentioned, as well as into homesteads for the increased population. This reduces to a paltry figure the number of cattle raised by the peasants.[29] Two working horses to a farm can hardly be considered as representing, even for Russian agriculture, a particularly high standard. The actual extent to which stock-breeding is carried on by the peasants falls below even this minimum, save among the 415 quarterly proprietors in the Ranenburg district, who are a kind of peasant “four hundred” in their own way, owing to the extent of allotted land that they own.

The depressed condition of stock-breeding reacts in its turn upon agriculture. Apart from this there is another universal cause that diverts the cattle manure from its natural use. I refer to the lack of woods.

With respect to possession of forests, so necessary in a climate like Russia, most of the state peasants were originally in a privileged condition, compared with the former serfs, to whom, as a rule, no woodland at all was allotted.[30] However, time has effaced all distinction between the privileged communities and those less fortunate. Of the former forests there remain at present only shrubs, and young bushes, of no practical value. State peasant and former serf are equally dominated by the want of fuel, a want which must be satisfied with the only burning material at hand, viz: with dung. In many a community this precludes the fertilizing of the soil altogether; in a great many others it is but the land next to the homestead that is manured, and the poorest among the peasants have no manure at all worth carrying to their fields. It is needless to speak of the extent to which this contributes to the rapid exhaustion of the soil.[31]

Apart from these general conditions, we cannot pass by without notice certain special circumstances that continually depress the level of the peasants’ agriculture in a number of villages inhabited by former serfs.

The reform of 1861 was not carried out without serious troubles which in certain cases called for the intervention of armed force. As an example we may quote the village Speshnevo, bailiwick (volost) Hrushchefskaya, Dankoff district. We find the following in the Statistical Reports:

“In 1861 the peasants refused to accept the present tract, which was allotted to them in the place of one they had formerly held. The latter was far superior as regards both situation and quality. They stopped ploughing for seven years and finally agreed to accept the tract only after a detachment of soldiers had arrived at the village.”

“The village is now surrounded by property that is owned by strangers. The plots owned by the peasants begin at a distance of 1400 feet, and extend about 3½ miles. The peasants are very frequently fined for damage done by the cattle to the fields of the landlords of the neighborhood.”[32]

Behind this dry, matter-of-fact statement, is hidden the story of a system of trickery practiced, at the time of the emancipation, by the masters and the subservient officials. The land was, in some cases, purposely divided in such a way as to create for the peasants the necessity of an easement or servitude (servitus itineris, actus, aquæ etc.), in the master’s estate. The tract given in possession to the peasants is situated, at least in part, far away from their villages, sometimes without even a road for driving, and stretched in a long and narrow strip. Not to speak of the waste of time in going to and fro, it would not pay to manure the distant tracts. Thus in addition to the immediate injury to the peasants aimed at by this system, a large portion of land is lost to all rational culture.[33]

In short, the effects of the scarcity of land are summed up in the lack of animal power, which is no unimportant drawback to agricultural progress, and in the predatory character of the peasant farming.

This can be easily figured from the yields of rye and oats, the principal crops raised by the peasantry[34]:

Unless the small productivity of agriculture is made up for by the size of the farm, the balance must needs close with a deficit. This is exactly what has been stated in figures by the statistical investigation of the gubernia of Voronezh, where balances of all moneys received and expended were made out by the statisticians for each one of the registered families. The results are shown in the following table:[36]

If we examine the items of expenses, we find rye and flour among those necessaries which the farmer has to procure in the market during a portion of the year. The deficit of a peasant farm is consequently one of daily bread.[38]

To give some idea of the standard of life of the Russian peasant, we append a summary review of three peasant budgets of the gubernia of Tamboff.[39]

1. Gabriel, the son of Michea, surnamed Trupoff, who owns four horses and holds 15 dessiatines (40 acres) of land, is, in faith, one of the chosen ones among the Tamboff peasantry. Verily it is worth while going through the budget of these peasant “four hundred.” The total expenditure of a family of four adult persons and three children does not exceed 510 rubles a year, say (in round figures) $10 a week.[40] All the dresses of two rustic Lady Astors amount to the exorbitant figure of sixteen rubles a year, while the gentlemen are satisfied with one hat once in five years, and one girdle of the value of eighty cents once in a decade. To make both ends meet they have to content themselves with, upon an average, about one and a half pounds meat a day, for seven persons, and to do without tea, rejoicing over one glass of brandy a day, for the whole family. All the sundries expended make up the sum of ten dollars a year, or less than one cent a day to every grown up man or woman. This frugality enables them to add to their wealth 7.79 rubles in a year, when the harvest is 10:1 to the seed. Now this is about twice as much as the Ryazañ average, and exceeds by one-half the Ryazañ maximum. Should we reduce the yield from 10:1 to the average 6.5:1 for rye and to 6.8:1 for oats, as given in the Reports for the district of Borisoglebsk, it would cause a deduction from the income, as follows:

This would give a deficit of 86.61 rubles a year. To cover this deficit Gabriel Trupoff used to engage in various occupations besides his farming.

2. The second family is likewise one of the best off, since they can even allow themselves the luxury of consuming one pound of tea, and five pounds of sugar yearly. Their farm yields them however a total income of only 358.80 rubles and the balance, 660.45, must be provided from other sources.

3. Finally, the third family of “peasant-proprietors” draws a yearly income of 27.80 rubles from farm and house, while the entire expenditure amounts to 241.80 a year, or 20.15 a month for 8 persons. Although it causes a yearly deficit of 65.20, which must be covered through loans, and probably through the sale from time to time of their chattels, yet they are tax-payers, and contribute 8.00 yearly toward the expenses of the state.

In short, it is manifest that even the most favored classes of the Russian peasantry are hardly able to make a living, however moderate, by farming on their plots. Hence the economic dependence of the Russian peasant, evidenced in various ways.

There is yet another very important feature of modern peasant economy which is brought to light by the budgets. A by no means insignificant part of the entire peasant consumption is to be provided for in the market outside of farming,[41] and consequently a corresponding portion of the peasant’s labor must be spent in production for the market. Thus the archaic peasant husbandry based upon natural economy has been to a very considerable extent superseded by money economy.[42] In other words, Russian farming has developed from the production of use-values or utilities to a production of commodities.

CHAPTER IV.
TAXATION OF THE PEASANT.

When the balance of a peasant farm is closed, year in, year out, with a deficit, it is only of secondary importance whether there be added to it a score of rubles or not, in taxes. In either case the farmer has to look for employment outside of his homestead that he may be able to keep body and soul together. Nor is it of great moment that the taxes must be paid in money, since at any rate not a small part of the produce must be carried to the market to be converted into money for the purchase of implements, clothing, and even of food for the peasant and his cattle.[43] But the economic influence of taxation is marked by its compulsory character, as well as by its unequal pressure upon different classes of the people.

It may be regarded as an established rule that the burden of taxation is, in Russia, in inverse ratio to the means of the taxpayer.[44]

The former serf is taxed more, absolutely (every male and every worker), and relatively (every acre of land), than is the former State peasant. The difference is literally the tribute paid to the landlord class for the emancipation of their serfs.

Indeed, the greater part of the contributions of the former serf is composed either of his redemption tax, or of the payment due to his master (taille):

AMOUNT OF TAXES (IN RUBLES) TO ONE “REVISION” MALE.

That there is one part of the payments to the landlord which is in reality nothing but a redemption tax for the person of the serf,[45] appears clear from the comparison between the amount of rent paid by the former State peasant to the treasury, and that of the taille paid by the “temporary obligor” to his master, since in neither is any portion set apart for redemption of the land. And the amount of taille paid is made the basis for the amortization.

On the other hand, the least amount in taxes is paid by those among the former serfs who have already redeemed their lots (“absolute proprietors”) or who received the so-called donated lots, i. e., the least is levied from those who are free from the obligation to their former masters.

Here, however, we are again face to face with the characteristic feature of the Russian financial system: the “absolute proprietor,” who owns from six to ten times as much land as the donee, and who breeds more than twice as much stock as the latter, is taxed from four to eight times less upon every acre. It would be absurd to suspect even a Russian financial administration of the intention to overtax the neediest while relieving the burdens of the better-off. Yet this is the necessary result of a financial system which belongs to a different historical epoch, and has survived the overthrow of its economic foundations through a social revolution.

Let us take as a unit every male of the revision, (i. e., the official unit of taxation); let us then compare with one another the assessments levied upon both exceptional classes of absolute proprietors and donees, on the one hand, and let us again compare with each other the assessments levied upon the remaining classes of the peasantry. We shall see that every male is taxed on the whole at an approximately uniform rate. This is the usual system of taxation in every primitive state, where land is in abundance and human labor is the main source of wealth. The labor powers of men being approximately equal, assessment per capita insures a rude equity in taxation. But after the reforms of 1861 and 1866, which added new and sharp distinctions to those already in existence among the peasantry, taxation per capita became a power that accentuated the social inequalities, and hastened, through its extortion, the ruin of the feeble.

Indebtedness of landed property is the inclined plane usually leading toward expropriation of the small farmer, as well as of the aristocratic landlord. In Russia the three minor subdivisions of the peasantry, viz. the “absolute proprietors,” the “donees” and the “quarterly possessors,” are the only ones who enjoy the title of property in their land, and consequently they alone are in a position to mortgage to private persons. The bulk of the peasantry[46] have no right of alienating their plots. Chronic indebtedness upon the latter takes, therefore, as its only possible form that of arrears in taxes, which is precisely the sore place of the Russian administration.

The amount of “arrears” due by the peasants to the treasury is represented by no inconsiderable figure, as may be seen from the following table:

It is needless to dilate upon the consequences to the budget of a deficiency of about one-half of the direct taxes paid by the most numerous class of the population. Yet the average figures for the entire region do not convey any true idea of the real disturbance caused to the concrete communities which are unable to stand the burden of their payments. The number of those communities, as well as the rate of indebtedness, is very considerable, and the burden is, moreover, very unequally distributed among the communities indebted, the consequence being that some are entirely crushed.[47]

In the district of Ranenburg, this den of “sturdy nonpayers,” we find only 9.6 per cent. of the former serfs and 2.1 per cent. of the former State peasants who give no annoyance to the “constituted authorities.” The rest, that is to say, 293 communities out of 340, are in arrears for not less than 6.70 rubles. The burden is aggravated by its unequal distribution. We find one third of the former State peasants owing above one-half of the arrears of their class, while above three-eighths of the former serfs are responsible for 70 per cent. of the entire debt of their class. These, the most heavily indebted groups, are made up of those communities which are in arrears for more than the tax levied for the use of the land, the rent paid to the treasury by the former state peasant, the taille or the redemption tax imposed upon the former serf. In other words, one-third of the former State peasants, and three-eighths of the former serfs, are unable to bear the fee levied for the use of their land.[48] Finally, this fact attracted the attention of the central government, and in 1882, the zemstvos were required by the Minister of the Interior to report upon “the communities in which husbandry had fallen into ultimate destitution,”[49] and a relief in the amount of the redemption tax was desirable. The committee elected by the zemstvo of the district of Ryazañ applied, as we learn, to the Reports of the Statistical Bureau. The same could hardly be done for the districts under consideration, since the Reports were subsequently proscribed by the zemstvo of the gubernia of Ryazañ.[50] If the Reports were taken into account, all the above three-eighths of the former serfs would perhaps have to be classed among those whose husbandry “has fallen into ultimate destitution,” since above one-fourth owed to the treasury 20.10 rubles, and one-ninth above 34 ruble to an average household. This one-ninth was in chronic arrears of from one to two annual instalments.

Whatever may be the absolute amount of the arrears, the point is that they bear upon the peasant’s live stock, which is the only valuable part of his movable property, and is consequently the first to be taken hold of by the auctioneer. Arrears in taxes are, therefore, a constant threat to the very existence of the peasant’s farming.[51]

Moreover they bind the peasant to the spot, and thus restrict the market for his labor.

This, however, is only an evil of the transitional epoch. A change of great moment has taken place in so short a period as the ten years which separate the census of the zemstvo from the investigations of the above mentioned Commissions of the central government.

Overtaxation has been swallowed up in the increase in value of the land. The rent of the peasant’s plot in both districts of the gubernia of Ryazañ exceeds the taxes by from one to three rubles (i. e. the taxes absorb, in an average, from 78 to 91 per cent. of the rent.)[52] Though rise of rent is by no means a blessing for the Russian peasant, partly tenant, partly agricultural laborer as he is, yet the benefit he gains as taxpayer is the possibility of disposing of his labor by leasing his plot to any one willing to pay the taxes thereon.

Thus the old question of chronic arrears is to-day easy to be settled through public sale of the peasant’s stock. Flogging as a measure of financial policy can be dispensed with, so far at least as the insolvent debtor is concerned; for the taxes are secured by the land, over and above the body of the taxpayer.

Thus economic evolution has loosened the legal bonds which formerly chained the Russian peasant to the soil.

CHAPTER V.
COMMUNAL TENURE AND SMALL HOLDINGS.

Two economic features determined the further development of Russia, after the abolition of serfdom. Personal dependence of the serf was replaced, as above shown, by economic dependence of the “peasant-proprietor” compelled to seek work for wages beyond the limits of his own holding. Inequality of condition among the peasants, created by legal discrimination and furthered by the fiscal system, furnished the basis for the division of labor by which the peasants tried to fill up the holes in their farming. What were these occupations, and how did they react upon the village community?

In the times of serfdom the village community, as above mentioned, enjoyed certain rights to the land which was used by the master himself. Pasture, and water, and way in the landlord’s estate were free to the community. The emancipation deprived the peasants of these privileges and put them under the necessity of entering into agreements, of one kind or another, with the landlord for the use of these easements.

Where lack of water, or the necessity of a way through the landlord’s estate, has been artificially created by the reform, it is obviously the community as a whole that must contract the agreement.

In so far, however, as rented pasture is concerned, the usual communistic rule is put on trial by the growing inequalities that have arisen in the business of stock breeding within the village community. About one fourth of the community is composed of the poorest families, who own no horses, and oftentimes no cattle at all.[53] It is obvious that whenever the use of a pasture is rented for horses or cows, a not inconsiderable part of the community is practically excluded from the agreement. The assessment of the obligation in proportion to the shares held by the several householders in the communal land would be unjust to the poorest part of the community.

Another basis for the distribution is found, in many instances, in the number of heads of cattle belonging to each householder, i. e. outside of the province of agrarian communism; the poor are thus released from the burden of payments. But, on the other hand, the community becomes virtually the voluntary partnership of its wealthier members. The economic tendency of the time is shown by the following figures:[54]

We find the province of communism extended in only two villages of the former state peasants, who had nothing to do with the landlords’ pasture before the emancipation. On the other hand, the right of pasture held by the mir in the landlord’s fields in the times of serfdom has disappeared in 408 out of the 562 free communities. Yet wherever pasture is rented, the mir prevails, and individual agreements are the rarest exception. The latter form is, however, likely to keep pace with the development of money economy in rural relations. So long as the easement is granted in consideration of a certain amount of farm work to be done, (and this is now the ordinary rule), it is to the landlord’s advantage to secure the collective labor of a whole community at once, instead of entering into a special agreement with each peasant for a small service. The fulfilment of the obligation is secured by the joint suretyship of the community, while to sue each peasant for failure to perform two or three days’ work would be far too troublesome. It certainly matters little to the landlord, how the labor is distributed among the several members of the community, and it was but in 12 cases out of 105 that the agreement was made for so much work to be done per head. On the other hand payment was stipulated for at so much per head in 14 out of 37 cases, in which the transaction was one of money. But as soon as the agreement is made in this form, the householders can act individually as well as through the mir, and this was in reality the case in 6 communities out of the 156, the peasants managing to get their cattle counted as part of the landlord’s flock.

We notice here how economic inequality weakens the tie of communism, even where that communism has its roots set deep in the prevailing methods of agriculture, the cattle grazing in one flock upon the common pasture under the surveillance of the communal shepherd.

Quite naturally we find individualism to be the rule as soon as we come to the tenure of arable land, which is cultivated by the householders individually:

As appears from this table, in so far as peasant farming has survived on the landlord’s estate, agrarian communism has been almost entirely superseded by individual tenancy.

Should not, however, the few cases of communal tenure be considered, on the contrary, as signs of a budding agrarian communism? Is it not a fact that peasant tenancy has sprung into existence from nothing within recent times, and that in 48 villages agrarian communism has acquired a foothold even in that tenancy which was always considered as being essentially an individualistic form of landholding?

Such was the argument of an optimistic school of peasantists, which gained much credit in Russia in a few years ago.[58] In reality, however, nothing like a growth of communism can be seen in the recent rise of communal tenancy. As a matter of fact the latter is restricted solely to communities of former serfs.[59] Consequently it is but the title of possession that has changed, and that from tenure in perpetuity into tenancy at will, for periods of from 3 to 12 years.

On the other hand, the land which had been before the emancipation occupied by the village community of the serfs, is now held by the individual tenant.

Let us compare the area of land held by the tenants in 1882 with the tracts carved out of the peasants’ possession in 1861.[60]

Really worth thinking over is the question; why could not communal tenure stand the competition of individual peasant tenancy?

In the first place the lots leased by the community are considerably larger than those rented by individual peasants.[61] Moreover by the joint suretyship of all the members of the community a security is offered lacking in small individual contracts. Quite naturally the terms on which land is rented by the community are more favorable for the peasants than those of individual contracts.[62]

The result of cheaper rent is the better condition of the communities in question as compared with the average.[63]

Why then should not other communities imitate this praiseworthy example? The answer seems to be found precisely in the higher economic level of the communities concerned, which carries with it greater uniformity of interests:

The language of the figures is unequivocal. Wherever land is leased by the mir, the prevailing majority is made up of tenants, while under ordinary circumstances they form but a small minority. On the contrary above one-half of the village assembly consists at large of those householders who are indifferent to the question, and would not put themselves to the trouble of incurring responsibility.

Thus it is in the growing heterogeneity of the village that the cause of the decline of communism in tenancy is to be sought.

On the other hand, the same reason accounts for the substitution of the usual method of distribution of land and burdens by the community, through subdivision of the rented land in proportion to the money invested by each householder.

The question arises whether that can really be called tenure by the community, where a part of its members keep out of the agreement, and the land is held severally, and pro rata to the capital invested? It seems to be rather a joint partnership.

Yet partnership is by nature an individualistic contract, whether the parties to such contract be the “elders” of the mir, or common business men.[65] We consider therefore rental partnership only as a stage of transition from communal to individual tenancy.

As above mentioned, in those very communities where communal tenure is yet in existence, side by side with it individual tenancy has taken root:

Thus communism in tenancy is passing away; small holdings for a term of one summer have become to-day the dominant form of rental agreements.[66]

CHAPTER VI.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE FARMER INTO THE AGRICULTURAL LABORER.

In the vast majority of cases tenure at will did but take the place of the old relations between master and serf.[67] The obligation of the serf toward his master was discharged on some estates in labor (corvée), on others by payments, either in money or in kind. It is only natural to find the old practice inherited by modern economy:

The patriarchal custom of division of the product itself between landlord and tenant (métayage) has now become about entirely obsolete, and is now to be found only in combination with extra payments in money. Forced labor on the part of the peasant for the benefit of the landlord continued in use. Abolished by law, it has been upheld until to-day, through the economic pressure of the need of land. The free tenant was compelled to bind himself to do a certain amount of work for the landlord. If he failed in this he could not get the opportunity of renting land. Pecuniary agreements were in vogue on those estates alone, whose owners did not care for farming.

The economic tendency of the time, however, is toward money economy and “free contract.”[69] As in the matter of taxation, the change is brought about by the rise of rent.

On the one hand, the amount of work done by the tenant for the landlord has enormously increased, thereby diminishing the demand for compulsory labor.

On the other hand, whenever the rent is to be paid in cash, at least one part must be advanced in the spring, i. e. at a time when most of the peasants are short of money. Moreover, the extraordinarily heavy rents exacted have made the leasing of land a very hazardous business; one bad yield is sufficient to upset all the tenant’s calculations, and to throw him into insolvency.[70] The circle of tenants who can pay their rents in cash has thus been reduced to the “stronger” householders.[71] The natural consequence was increased offers of farm labor in exchange for land, on the part of those who could not afford to lay out ready money.

Thus in the process of the economic evolution, compulsory labor becomes obsolete. It was only in the minority of cases that the promise of labor was required as an essential part of the rental agreement, and even then it was only in exceptional cases that farm work was to be performed for the full amount of the rent. Generally only a part of the latter was to be covered through labor; the rest could be paid, at the option of the tenant, either in work or in money.

In this transitional form of agreement prevalent in 1882, the peasant appears, properly speaking, as tenant and laborer at once. The next step is toward the differentiation of both.

The purely money form of rent has already won the field over about one half of the whole area of rented land.

That this is the form which is finally to prevail, follows from the fact, undisputed by Russian statisticians, that peasants in good standing avoid working on the landlords’ estates, and prefer to pay their rent in money. The miserable remuneration for farm work is the very obvious reason of this dislike.

These are the average amount of rent and the average price paid for the full work of cultivating, and harvesting one dessiatine, and carrying the crops to the barn:

The average figures can be considered, however, merely as representing static conditions at any given moment. The tendency of the movement is rather indicated by the extreme limits.

When work is offered in payment of rent, wages very often sink far below the level. At the same time rent is ever on the rise.

Let us take for purposes of comparison, some communities in which piece wages are lowest, and some others in which rent is highest:

As the ratio of rent to wages is moving from 3:1 towards 5:1, it finally becomes questionable whether we should class among tenants or among laborers a peasant who has to till five dessiatines for the landlord in exchange for one dessiatine given to himself.

Thus land tenure is degenerating into wage labor.

CHAPTER VII.
THE WAGES IN THE RURAL DISTRICTS.

The amphibious character of the peasant, who is at once farmer and laborer, proves a very important factor in shaping the relations of Russian economic life.

In Russia we have the case of the so called allotment system on a large scale. The influence of this system was picturesquely elucidated by John Stuart Mill when he stated that “it makes the people grow their own poor rates.”[72] Exactly the same is observed in Russia.

The greater part of the work in agriculture, as well as in industry, is performed by farmers.[73] With them the earnings from outside labor are to cover only a part of their expenses, which cannot be provided for by farming. It is obvious that wages alone must fall below the usual standard of life.[74]

We have seen how, in the course of the evolution from farmer to wage worker, the tenant first becomes farm laborer. Accordingly it is natural to find farm labor prevailing among the local occupations of the peasants:

The transitional stage between husbandman and help is occupied by the householder who alternates his own farming with working on the landlord’s estate. In either case the workman comes with his own horse and implement.[75]

The relation between employer and employee is, with a very few exceptions,[76] one of money economy.

Owing to the circumstances above discussed, the farmer is ever in quest of ready money. In his quality of “peasant proprietor” he enjoys “the blessing of credit,” that is to say, he is always in debt to the landlord. Unquestionably, the favor is not granted for the sake of pure neighborliness. Money is advanced in fall time, or in winter, in reward for farm work to be performed next summer, and sometimes in a year or two.[77] The noble descendant of Rurik[78] gains the benefit of 50 per cent. yearly upon an average on the reduced rate of hire.

Low pay for piece work beats down the workman proper, who has to depend entirely upon his employment. The wages for day-labor may serve as an illustration:

BOARD FURNISHED BY THE EMPLOYER.

Furthermore, the comparison between agriculture and industry brings out the fact that skilled labor[79] is paid in the rural districts at nearly the same rate as farm work.[80] The case is perfectly analogous to that of agricultural labor. In many of the households in question there are, besides the artisan, other male members of the family who carry on their farming.[81] In fall and winter the farmer, who is at the same time an artisan, would work for any price. A tailor, e. g., travelling around his village, earns in the fall from 1.50 to 2.50 a week, while boarding with the customer. On the other hand, the maximum in wages is paid to carpenters, whose trade is carried on in the summer, so as to preclude competition on the part of the farmer.[82]

Certainly, the maximum of two rubles, say $2.00, a week, and board, to a skilled carpenter, falls short of the minimum in some civilized countries. It is in this rate of wages that we must seek the reason for the slow development of industry in the rural districts.

Indeed, it is but for a small part of the hands who have been “freed” from farming, that room could be found in local industry:

The ranks of the rural proletarians, who had no working horses with which to carry on their farming, grew four times as fast as rural industry, though it might be expected that the latter would have been fostered by low wages. The example of the quarries in the bailiwick Ostrokamenskaya, District of Dankoff, can be used to make the matter plain.

About fifty men are engaged there in breaking stone, and working it into millstones. Some of them work in small partnerships, and sell the stone to middle men; some are in the employ of petty contractors. A rent of 25.00 per head is levied by the owner of the place; the net income of an independent worker is from 75.00 to 100.00 for the summer, which is more than the income in any other trade. The hired workman, however, is paid only from 35.00 to 60.00, the profit of the entrepreneur amounting to 47-66 per cent. in a season. Where the product of a man’s semi-annual labor sells for 125 rubles, no mechanical improvements could make the commodity cheaper. So long as ten per cent. a month can be made by the petty employer, at a practically nominal outlay of money, he will successfully compete with big capitalistic enterprises. Indeed, we see that five men are about the average number of workers employed in any one concern.[83] There are, certainly, a few capitalistic concerns: distilleries, sugar factories, steam flour mills, coal mines. A railway line is crossing the district, and employs some of the peasants. But here, as elsewhere, the proletarian is beaten on the labor market by the farmer.

In distilleries a farmer can be got to work in winter merely for mash, which is used as fodder for his cattle. Money wages naturally oscillate between the very modest limits of 5.00 and 9.00 a month, out of which the workingman must board at his own expense. In sugar factories the wages are between 6 and 8 rubles a month in winter, i. e. between $0.75 and $1.00 a week![84]

It follows from what has been here shown that it is only the farmer who can get along with the rates paid in rural industry. The peasant who is unable to farm could hardly eke out an existence. He has the choice either of becoming a pauper[85] or of leaving his village.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE RURAL SURPLUS POPULATION.

The movement of population away from the rural districts, which is an economic law in capitalistic countries, plays a very conspicuous part in modern Russian economy.

Colonization of the border districts and periodical migration in quest of work, are tending to absorb the natural increase of the peasant population:

There is thus but a minor fraction of the surplus population that has forever left the native village with the chance of settling somewhere else as farmers.[86] It is still to agriculture that most of the wandering peasantry are looking, not as farmers, however, but as wage laborers, while a vast minority flock to the cities.[87]

As to this class of the peasantry, it is commonly regarded by the Russian press as standing on the lowest round of the ladder of village life. It does not seem generally to occur to the public mind that a regular movement of the working population, like the movement of mercury in the barometrical tube, has to select the line of least resistance. Indeed, it is distinctly shown by comparison that the wages are higher outside than within the village.

Difference of wages stimulates the movement, which when once started in a village, goes on at an ever increasing rate.[88]

This rural surplus population, nominally counted as peasant proprietors, is in reality even now severing the bond that has hitherto linked it to its birthplace. Those who year after year spend the summers as farm-laborers in the South or in the East have already said farewell to farming.[89] The case of artisans who leave the village for the summer season is similar. A peasant who has given up his farming for the sake of working outside has very little to gain by returning for the winter, when the supply of labor in the village far exceeds the demand. After a time some of them move their families to the place in which they have found employment, and part with the old homestead forever.

Those who are employed in factories, in St. Petersburg and Moscow, in coal mines and in railroad service, may have started by spending only their winter leisure in town. But imagine the position of the peasant who manages to put aside, out of his four rubles a week, from 50 to 70 rubles a year to send home.[90] To such a man the attraction of a large capitalistic concern running winter and summer, is one that will hold him captive for years.

How far this estrangement of the peasant from his native village has gone, can be learned from the following figures:[91]

The ownership of a home holds the peasant fast to his village even after he has already abandoned farming.[92] The peasant however, who is year by year employed far away from home, has settled, through the sale of his house, his account with the old village.[93]

We have here consequently an indication of the recent growth of Russia’s town proletariat.

CHAPTER IX.
THE DISSOLUTION OF THE PATRIARCHAL FAMILY.

The Russian village community, as has been stated above, was a compound integer of which the unit was the communistic household. The individualistic tendency of the economic evolution after the emancipation did not fail to affect this cell of archaic communism. The dissolution of the compound family became the evil of the day within the village, and the most warmly discussed topic both in literature and in administrative circles. The peasantist regarded the decline of the “pillars”[94] of Archaic communism with the deepest regret. “O tempora, o mores!” clamored the bureaucrat, indignant at the spirit of “disobedience to the elder” which was permeating the village. Of greater importance, perhaps, was the perfectly justified apprehension as to whether the dissolution of the peasant family might not have an injurious effect upon the taxpaying power of the household. It might be questioned by individualists whether the peasant, as a human being, was necessarily to be guided in his domestic life solely by regard for the public purse, but from the standpoint of Russian public law, such objections do not hold water. To use an analogy, the stock farmer, when mating his animals, does not take in consideration the possible condition of their mutual affection, his object being solely the maintenance and improvement of the breed. Is not the wise ruler the shepherd of his human flock? Thus about 1885[95] a law was passed forbidding the “self-willed” division of the compound family without due authorization by the village assembly, whose resolutions are subject to the control of the officers of the State.

This new dictate of paternalism has certainly caused much annoyance in the village, and it must unquestionably have failed in achieving the desired end. The matter has been excellently elucidated by Mr. Gleb Oospensky, one of Russia’s foremost writers, as well as by Mrs. Epheemenko and Prof. Engelhardt.

So long as the occupations of all the members of the family were identical, the tie of co-operation bound them closely together. The income of the family, due to their collective labor, constituted accordingly their collective property. The authority of the “major” of the household was respected on the ground of his greater experience, which comes with age, as well as of his administrative ability.[96] When altered circumstances forced the family to look for its income to a variety of sources, the basis of the ancient household received a fatal shock. The carpenter who worked all through the summer in some far distant town was no longer an active member of the agricultural co-operative circle. On the other hand, his income being greater than that of his elder brother who was still employed as a farm laborer in the neighborhood, the spirit of individualism revolted against the old communistic rule. The age-long despotism of the elder over the younger members of the family became unendurable. The women, who had to suffer most, were the champions in this “fight for individuality.”[97] The head of the family could oppose no moral authority to this spirit of “disregard of age,” inasmuch as, with all his agricultural experience, he had nothing to say in industry. Thus the growing economic differentiation within the family made its dissolution into separate couples unavoidable.

This presentation of the case, made as the result of individual observation, was fully proved by the figures subsequently collected by the statisticians.

This is the comparative membership per household before, and a quarter of a century after, the emancipation, and the distribution of the peasantry according to the membership of the several families:

In 1858 the average family had from two to three adult male workers above the age of 18, while in 1882 it had only from one to two male workers. This shows that before the emancipation the compound family, consisting either of the father and his married sons, or of married brothers, was the rule. To-day the typical family is represented either by a young couple with little children, or by the father and his boys below 18, who are counted only as “half-workers,” or finally by the father and one of his adult sons. In all, the family has decreased by from three to four persons. It points out plainly that separation of the younger couple from the old stock is already an accomplished fact.[99] That this individualistic tendency develops as outside jobs gain in importance in the household economy is shown by the following figures: