i LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. % % !^^^ UNITED STATES OF AiVlERfCA. 2^ THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY THEIR AGRARIAN CONDITION, SOCIAL LIFE AND RELIGION ^^^d^.si^^y'^^y-- J BY STEPNIAK NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 1888 BVf?? \988 ■^ PREFACE <4 The deep-seated democratic feeling of the whole of our educated classes, which is the main-spring of our political rebellion, has left a well-defined im- pression upon modern Russian literature. Educated Russians, deprived of any means wherewith to help the people out of their present difficulties, have wanted at least to know all about their condition, and have caught wuth avidity at any information that men of letters w^ere able to give them. Hence a unique development of our literature upon this subject. In no other country has so large a number of prominent writers devoted themselves to bringing to light the condition, the needs, and the hopes of the toiling masses ; nowhere else have the educated classes given such an unswerving encour- agement to similar investigations. The statistical commissions, instituted by most of our eemstvos, have already described the actual position of many millions of peasant households, scattered over an area far surpassing in extent that of the whole of the German Empire, with the same precision and pro- fusion of detail as the reporters of the Pall Mall IV PREFACE, Gazette have devoted to the description of a few blocks of houses in Commercial Street at the time of the Trafalgar Square disturbances. A numer- ous body of writers, taking various points of view, has carefully elaborated in books and in magazine articles the enormous amount of rough material ac- cumulated in oflScial and non- official publications. Every branch of popular life of any importance, or presenting any complication, has been made a spe- cialty. The village commune has a complete litera- ture of its own. So has popular religion. We have talented writers, like Mrs. A. Efimenko, who have made for themselves a name and a literary position as investigators of the traditional juridical concep- tions of our people; or others, like Yousoflf, who is an authority upon the modern phase of ritualistic non-conformity. The works wliich have most stirred the public mind within the last twenty-five years have been those which have thrown some new light upon popu- lar life : " The Sketches of our National Economy after the Emancipation," by a well-known anonymous author; the ^'Letters from a Tillage," by Engel- hardt ; a book by Flerovsky, the works of Shapov, and the statistical essays of Professor Yansen. The magazine which for eighteen years of its existence held the foremost place among our periodicals, both as regards its circulation and its influence, was one which made the investigation of the life of the peo- ple its specialty. Among all the novelists and story- PREFACE. tellers of our generation there is none whoso works are read with such avidity as those of Gleb Uspensky on village life. The extraordinary development and variety of this kind of literature may well be taken as a conclusive proof that, apart from the great taste shown by our public for this class of subject, there must be some- thing really original and worth studying in our rural classes. Neither democratic tendencies nor patriot- ism could have withstood dulness and insipidity for so long a time. Our peasants have in fact something unusual about them. They have not lived upon the crumbs of in- tellectual food which have fallen from the tables of their cultured brethren. Their popular morals, their social aims, and their religion are all their own, and differ greatly from those prevailing with the upper classes. For the present generation the study of popular life has acquired an exceptional interest and impor- tance, as the manifold influences of the new times have wrought a general downfall of the very basis of rural life. Eussian peasants are passing through an actual crisis — economical, social, and religious — and the future of our country depends upon its solu- tion. In the book we now have the honor to lay before the English reader we have tried to show as briefly and as fully as possible the main features and the bearings of this double process of growth and decay, VI PREFACE. now to be observed within our rural classes. The task we set ourselves was to choose from among the ricli materials scattered throughout our literature for the last score of years, and to arrange the various separate pieces into one general picture. This work is therefore the natural supplement and completion of our two former books, which were devoted to the description of various aspects of the same crisis in the higher, though narrower, walks of our national life. Most of that which is described in these volumes refers to the bulk of the Russian peasantry ; but in dealing with the political views and social habits of our rural classes, and the changes they have under- gone since their emancipation, we have had the Great Russian peasants chiefly in view. It is they who have shaped Russian history in the past, and who will certainly play the leading part in her future. In conclusion, we* beg to acknowledge our obliga- tion to the Times^ in whose columns the chapters upon the Agrarian Question first appeared ; and to the Fortnightly Review^ which opened its pages to the chapters on " The Moujiks and Russian Democ- racy" (considerably enlarged for the present work), and to the first and third chapters of the section entitled "Paternal Government." The remaining matter, i.(^., three-fourths of the entire work, is now published for the first time. Stepniak. March, 1888. CONTENTS PAGE THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION 1 THE MOUJIKS AND THE RUSSIAN DExMOCRACY. . . 73 PATERNAL GOVERNxMENT 93 HARD TIMES , 141 POPULAR RELIGION 208 THE RASCOL . . . o . 236 RATIONALISTIC DISSENT 302 MODERN SECTARIANISM 339 THE TRAGEDY OF RUSSIAN HISTORY 375 THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. CHAPTER I. In all European countries the agrarian question is of great moment, but in none does it possess the same inter- est and importance as in Russia. Here the agricultural class" constitutes eighty-two per cent, of the entire popula- tion — equal for European Russia, exclusive of Finland and Poland, to about sixty-three million souls. Ireland alone, with seventy-three per cent, of her population engaged in husbandry, approaches at some distance this figure. Russia is, and must undoubtedly for many years remain, a peasant State in the fullest acceptation of the term. With us, there- fore, the agrarian question is the national question, and agra- rian concerns are national concerns, all others being depend- ent on and subservient to them. The tillers of the soil — our moujiks — must of necessity become the chief figures in our social and political life. On the moujik rests the finan- cial, military, and political power of the State, as well as its interior cohesion and prosperity. The inclinations, ideals, and aspirations of the moujiks will also play the principal part in the remoulding of Russia's future. For all interested in politics — statesmen and administrators, writers and schol- ars — the moujik must be the prime object of study, observa- tion, and investigation, as well as of practical manipulation. For the same reasons the Russian moujik has always at- tracted the attention of observant travellers who have desired 1 2 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. to make known to English -speaking readers the agrarian conditions of this strange country, of which so much is said and so little known. There are few among educated for- eigners who have not heard of the self-governing, semi- republican mir and the somewhat communistic Russian sys- tem of land tenure, with its periodical equalizations and divisions. Much less attention has been given by the Euro- pean public to the modern phases of Russian agrarian life, albeit this side of the question is perhaps the most interest- inor and instructive. The Emancipation Act of February 19, 1861, enfran- chising and settling the economical conditions of one-half of our rural population, the former serfs of the nobility, followed in 1866 by a second Act, settling the condition of the other half, the former State peasants, were by far the most extensive experiments in the way of agrarian leg- islation the world has yet seen. The peculiarities of our traditional system of land tenure, sanctioned to a great extent by the Emancipation Act, imparted to this experi- ment an additional interest. That these experiments have not proved a success no com- petent person can now den3^ Emancipation has utterly failed to realize the ardent expectations of its advocates and pro- moters. The great benefit of the measure was purely moral. It has failed to improve the material condition of the former serfs, who on the whole are worse off than they were before the Emancipation. The bulk of our peasantry is in a condi- tion not far removed from actual starvation — a fact which can neither be denied nor concealed even by the official press. The frightful and continually increasing misery of the toiling millions of our country is the most terrible count in the indictment against the Russian Government, and the paramount cause and justification of the rebellion against it. It would be a gross injustice to affirm that the Govern- THE RUSSIAN AGRAKIAN QUESTION. ~3 raent has directly ruined or purposely injured the peasantry. Whv should it act with such foolish and wanton wicked- ness ? We can well understand that a despotic government, caring only for its own selfish interests, should object to the commonalty being educated. But it is to the Government's own material advantage to have well-to-do taxpayers rather than the beggarly ones it has now. I admit willingly that the central government quite sincerely intended to benefit the peasants, not only morally but economically, by the agrarian arrangement of 1861 ; still more so by that of 1866, which is better than its predecessor in every respect, the Government in the latter case not having been hampered by a desire to conform to the wishes of the nobility. Leaving out of the question the immaterial point of in- tentions, I am ready to go the length of acknowledging that it would be incorrect to maintain that to the Government's unintentional blunders should be ascribed the ruin which has overtaken the peasants. The new agrarian arrangement is very unsatisfactory, and the system of taxation is simply mon- strous. I shall presently show how far both these elements contributed towards reducing the peasants to their present condition. But still it was not the Government's direct do- ing. There is one consideration which clearly proves this. Since the Emancipation the yield from the direct taxes im- posed on the peasants has increased. But until 1879 their burdens had increased twelve per cent. only. Since that time they have remained stationary, and of late years there is even a slight decrease in the direct taxes — very slight, yet still a decrease. As to the impoverishment of the masses, measured by the reduced consumption of food and the in- crease in the rate of mortality, it is frightful and intense, and shows no sign of abatement whatever. This is proof to demonstration that there must be at work another corrosive influence more inexorable and fatal and less under control even than the actions of the uncontrollable bureaucracy. 4 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. This influence lies in the new economical system, quite opposed to the traditions and ideals of the Russian peas- antry, and which has been forced on them by the Act of Emancipation. In these few pages I purpose to present a brief, yet as far as possible complete, account of the results of the Russian agrarian experiment, derived from the numer- ous and painstaking reports on the subject in which modern Russian literature is so rich. But what constitutes the basis of the traditional economic conceptions of our agricultural classes? The communal sys- tem of land tenure, the reader may suggest, is its most original and striking feature. On this, however, I shall not dwell. First, because it was affected but slightly by the Emancipation Act of 1861, which gave each village com- mune the option either of breaking up their land into pri- vate allotments and distributing it among independent fam- ilies, or keeping it as common property. Secondly, because the communal land tenure, though accepted by seventy-three per cent, of our peasantry, is only exceptional among the Ruthenians, who form the remainder of our rural popula- tion. The evil inflicted by the Emancipation Act is of a much wider reach and greater importance; it arises not from the way in which occupying owners divide their properties among themselves, but from the fact that they are fast be- ing divorced from the soil which they till. The Russian popular conceptions of land tenure, though they may seem somewhat heterodox to a Western lawyer or modern economist, are exactly the same as those which in past times prevailed among all European nations before they happened to fall victims to somebody's conquest. Russian peasants hold that land, being an article of univer- sal need, made by nobody, ought not to become property in the usual sense of the word. It naturally belongs to, or, more exactly, it should remain in the undisturbed posses- sion of those by whom, for the time being, it is cultivated. THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. ^ If the husbandman discontinues the cultivation of his hold- ing he has no more right over it than the fisher over the sea where he has fished, or the shepherd over the meadow where he has once pastured his flock. This does not, however, imply any question as to the right of the worker over the product of his labor. In Rus- sia a peasant who has improved and brought under till- age new land always obtains from the mir a right of un- disturbed possession for a number of years, varying in its maximum, in divers provinces, from twelve to forty years, but strictly conforming in each case to the amount of labor which had been bestowed on it by the peasant and his family. During this period the occupier possesses the full right of alienating his holding by gift or sale. But when the husbandman is supposed to have been fully remunera- ted for his work, all personal prescriptive right ceases. These notions cannot be called exclusively Russian ; they are deeply rooted throughout the Slavonic world, save among the few tribes who have been long subjected to Western influences and overdrilled by the feudal regime. The Turkish domination proved in this respect much more tolerant. The customs which prevail among the Balkan slavs are almost identical with those commonly accept- ed in Russia. Here, according to Bohishitch, the people do not recognize a right of property in virgin land. When cultivated it becomes the rightful property of its occupier, and remains his so long as he continues to improve it with the work of his own hands. A tenant who has cultivat- ed for ten years without interruption another man's land becomes ipso facto its legitimate proprietor, and ceases to pay rent on the ground that he has bought up by his ten years' payments the claims which the former landlord might have acquired. In Bulgaria, according to the same authority, the principle is pushed still further. Here sim- ple wage-laborers acquire th^ right of ownership over the 6 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. land on which they have been employed without interrup- tion for the ten years' period, so that farmers, in order to avoid being expropriated, change their laborers at least once before the expiration of every ten years. In Russia, until its close alliance with Western countries in Peter the Great's time, the popular notions as to land tenure were common to all classes, the Government includ- ed. ** There is no country," says Prince "Wassiltchikoff, in concluding his careful study of the history of our agrarian legislation, " in which the idea of property in land was so vague and unsteady as it was until very recently with us, not only in the minds of the peasants, but also of the rep- resentatives and heads of the State. The right of use, of possession, of the occupation of land, has, on the contrary, been very clearly and firmly understood and determined from time immemorial. The very word * property,' as ap- plied to land, hardly existed in ancient Russia. No equiva- lent to this neologism is to be found in old archives, char- ters, or patents. On the other hand, we meet at every step with rights acquired by use and occupation. The land is recognized as being the natural possession of the husband- man, the fisher, or the hunter — of him who * sits upon it.' " In the living language of peasants of modern times there is no term which expresses the idea of property over the land in the usual sense of the word. The expression " our land " in the mouth of a peasant includes indiscriminately the whole land he occupies for the time being, the land which is his private property (under recent legislation), the land held in common by the village (which is therefore only in the temporary possession of each household), and also the land rented by the village from neighboring land- lords. Here we see once more the fact of working the land identified with rights of ownership. When serfdom was introduced, and one half of the ara- ble land, with the twenty-three millions of human beings THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 7 tvho lived thereon, gradually became the property of thef nobility, the newly enslaved peasants found less difficulty in realizing the fact of their slavery than in understanding the law which allotted the land to those by whom it was not tilled. ** We are yours," they said to their masters, *' but the land is oursi" "Jfy vashi^ zemlia nasha^^ — this stereotyped, hundred-times-quoted phrase, vividly sums up the Russian peasant's conception of serfdom. When, after so many years of expectation, disappoint- ment, and delusive hopes, the longed-for day of emancipa- tion came for the down-trodden serfs, the idea of the im- pending enfranchisement assumed in the rural mind only one and the same shape through all the empire — that when once restored to freedom they would not be despoiled of that which they bad possessed as slaves — their land. The universal expectation, as proved by the universal disappoint- ment, was that the freed peasants would have all the land which they had previously tilled. As to the nobles, their former masters, the Czar would keep them, they thought, henceforward " on salary, as he kept his generals." This was the ingenuous and naive expression of a very clear and practical idea — that of the State buying out the landlords by means of a vast financial operation. This was precisely the measure advocated by Tchernyshevszy and the Govre- mennik party as the best and most convenient solution of the Russian agrarian problem. The Government, as might well be expected, was loath to adopt a course which seemed so hazardous and new. Fort- unately for itself it did not follow the opposite course, which would have been the signal for a tremendous popu- lar rising — the enfranchisement of the peasants without any land at all, as suggested by the reactionary anti-abolitionist party. The freed peasants were endowed with small par- cels of land carved out of the estates of their masters, who retained, however, the greater part of their properties. 8 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. The idea of the Government was to keep up the system of great landlords while creating around them a class of resi- dent owners. This may have seemed a fair compromise, but in reality it was not so. In the preamble of the Emancipation Act the intention of the Government was clearly defined. "To provide the peasants," it ran, " with means to satisfy their needs, and enable them to meet their obligations to the State (payment of taxes), the peasants will receive in per- manent possession allotments of arable land and other ap- pendages, as shall be determined by the Act." Hence, a small proprietor, according to the Government's own defini- tion, is a husbandman having a piece of land on which he can live, however poorly, and pay his taxes — a definition which economists will readily accept. A peasant in this position is indeed a regular " small proprietor," or resident owner. If, however, a man possess a patch of land of a few square yards on which he can grow a bushel of pota- toes, he is a " proprietor " all the same, but only from a ju- ridical point of view. In the eyes of an economist he is a pure proletarian, amenable to the economical laws regula- ting the conditions of this and not the other class. Now to which of these two cateojories do the enfran- chised Russian peasants belong? Certainly not to that of small proprietors, in the economical sense. Neither are they pure proletarians. They partake of both characters, in what proportion we shall see further on. Let it here suf- fice to say that the land was so parsimoniously apportioned that the enfranchised peasants were utterly unable to pro- vide themselves with the first necessaries of life. With few exceptions, the bulk of our peasantry are compelled to look to wage-labor, mostly agricultural, on their former masters' estates and elsewhere, as an essential, and often the chief, source of their livelihood. Thus the Act of Emancipation did not, as its promoters THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. ^ intended, create side by side small and large land-owners who could live and labor and thrive independently without obstructing and damaging each other's work. The peasants were not independent of the landlords. The landlords were not independent of the peasants. There existed in Russia at the time of the Emancipation no agrarian proletariat whatever. The landlords could nowhere find regular wage- laborers by whom they might replace their enfranchised serfs. The cultivation of the landlords' vast estates had either to be entirely dropped or their serfs compelled to till them for hire. This was the new principle on which Russian rural econ- omy had thenceforward to be based. It was decidedly op- posed to our national and inveterate traditions, as I have just shown. It was borrowed from Western countries. I do not say that it was not better than serfdom. It certain- ly was better. Neither do I affirm that those who intro- duced it had the slightest suspicion of the havoc which in one generation it was destined to produce. I am simply stating a sad but undeniable fact. In social and political life, as well as in the domain of art and fiction, imitations seem always to bear the same original sin ; while reproduc- ing with great fidelity the drawbacks, imitators ignore and forget the merits of their exemplars. Thus the Capitalist order came to us without any of the free elements of poli- ty which were its outcome in the countries of its birth. All the advantages in the impending struggle were there- fore on one side. The masses were left with no means of defence, and the Government threw the enormous weight of its material and political power into the scale of wealth and against labor. The victory of the protected few over the helpless many was thenceforth assured. It was also complete and frightfully rapid. In the following chapters I propose to describe the ways and means whereby this victory has been gained, and the 10 THE KUSSIAN PEASANTRY. consequences wbich it has entailed. As yet Russia is an enormous, albeit a comparatively simple, economical organ- ism. Through the puzzling and disorderly complication of private economical operations we shall discover a strik- ing unity of cause. It is a huge economical mechanism, combined upon one leading principle and having one con- sistent end. I shall begin by describing its central organs, those which impart movement and life to the whole — the banking and credit system, circulation of money, and the rest. CHAPTER II. For obtaining full control of tbe resources of the coun- try, Russian capitalists made use of two seemingly innocent means — the railways and credit. The construction of the railways was undertaken in the first instance by the Gov- ernment itself. Very soon, however, the business was trans- ferred to private companies, which the State supplied with capital, since at that time no private enterprise could raise such enormous sums as were involved in the construction of the railways. Up to January, 1883, 13,500 miles of per- manent way had been laid in Russia proper, and the to- tal amount of shares issued by the various companies was 2,210,000,000 rubles (about £22,000,000 sterling). Of this sum the Government supplied directly fifty-four per cent. — i,e,, more than half — the money being raised by several loans, chiefly foreign, the interest of which (four, four and a half, and five per qent.) is of course debited to the railway companies in their accounts with the State. In order to enable the companies to raise the remaining forty- six per cent, the Government guaranteed a minimum reve- nue, and undertook to make good out of the public funds any deficit that might arise. Nor is this all ; in cases of emergency the Government still continues to make supple- mentary grants to these companies, which have already been so generously subsidized from the national exchequer. With the public finances always in an unsatisfactory con- dition, this lavishness must needs be a grievous burden on the budget. In 1869 the national debt amounted to 1907.5 12 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTEY. millions of rubles, of which only 10.6 per cent, fell to the share of the railways. In January, 1883, the national debt had increased to 3267 millions of rubles, of which fully 28.3 per cent, had been contracted for the construction of rail- ways. Thus the railway debt increased in this period ab- solutely fivefold, and at three times the rate of the national debt itself. These outlays, it is true, figure in the budget as debts owing by the railway companies to the State — temporary loans which in due time will he repaid to the exchequer. But this is a mere fiction. The indebtedness of the rail- ways to the State is continually increasing in each category under which the advances are made — viz., direct subsidies, guarantees, and interest on obligations. In 1877 the de- ficit in the annual payment due from the railways to the State amounted to 450.5 millions of rubles, while those of all the other debtors of the State (the peasants included) totaled up to only 154.7 millions, the railway companies thus engrossing seventy-four per cent, of the famous " ar- rears " (nedoimki) which are the plague of our finances. In the following year the railway debts had increased to sev- enty-seven per cent, of the total arrears, and rose subse- quently to eighty per cent. In 1884 the total amount of railway debts was stated to be 886,000,000 rubles. In re- ality, however, it was more, because the Ministry passed a resolution to strike out of the list forty millions as " per- fectly hopeless." Thus the total of railway debts in 1884 was about one and a half times as much as the entire reve- nue of the State.* It might appear from this that the railways are the most disastrous of the many ruinous Russian State enterprises, and that the companies are running the country towards the verge of bankruptcy. In reality, however, it is not so. * Eiissian Almanac^ 1886, p. 192. THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. IS The prospects of the railways are as bright as anything can be in Russia. The railways are, on the whole, very pros- perous. They are extending rapidly, and the profits of the companies are increasing both absolutely and as compared with former years. In the period from 1870 to 1877 each mile earned in gross receipts on an average fourteen per cent, more than in the preceding period. The expenses having in the same time augmented considerably, the net increase is not so great, being three per cent, per mile. In the following five years the increase of the gross receipts was ten per cent, for each mile. The dividends received by the share-holders in 1870 amounted to 32.5 millions of rubles; in 1877 they were 71.7 millions, an increase of 2.5. Nevertheless, the indebtedness of the railways to the State shows for the same period an increase of one hundred and fifty per cent. This seems contradictory and rather puzzling. The ex- planation of the riddle is, however, very simple. The vari- ous railway lines are not equally profitable, and the Govern- ment, while leaving the extra profits of the best lines to their respective share-holders, has to make up the deficiency of the remainder. It comes practically to this : The State, which has sup- plied the railway companies either directly or indirectly with all their funds, surrenders the profits of the enterprise to individual capitalists, taking for itself only the losses. In other words, the peasants (for as they contribute eighty- three per cent, of the whole budget they are the real paymasters) are paying a group of individual capitalists a tribute amounting from 1878 to 1882 to an average of forty-six millions of rubles a year. Let us now ascertain what are the normal use and func- tions of this net-work of railways so dearly bought by the peasants. The railways transport freight and passengers, and statistics show that in Russia both are chiefly of rural origin. 14 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. The passengers first. We have to observe before any- thing else that passengers of the third class make eighty- three per cent, of the whole, and pay sixty-seven per cent, of all the receipts for fares. Thus even here, as everywhere else, the peasant is the main prop of the business. Why do our peasants travel so much ? Not, of course, for pleas- ure or for health, but in search of work. The traffic re- turns are very significant as to the extent to which the receipts are derived from the agricultural classes. During the winter months the passenger traffic is at its lowest ebb. In March, when field labor begins in the vast southern re- gion of the empire, we observe on the other hand a sud- den increase of 19.5 per cent. In April, when field labor extends to the central zones, there is a still greater increase — twenty-four per cent, over the previous month. In the following months the increase continues, though less rap- idly ; the workers are at their posts busy with their work. In August the number of passengers attains its maximum; the workers have done, and return after the harvest to their homes in a body. In September the passenger traffic drops suddenly to 33.74 per cent., and goes on decreasing until the followin tain. The rent of land, hired from neighboring lords for THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 33 sliort terms, generally a year, is very heavy, owing to the fierce competition of the whole body of peasants. In the thickly populated black earth region the rent has risen since the Emancipation three and four fold in twenty years. On the character of the harvest depends entirely the peas- ants' chance of profit, if there be any. Agricultural work for wages is still more precarious. If in the far distant provinces, whither the peasants rush in swarms from the thickly popu- lated centres, the crops are good, the local people keep to their own fields, wages run high, the new-comers find employ- ment readily, and return to their homes with money in their pockets. If, however, the harvest be bad they earn noth- ing, and have to make their way back barefoot and penni- less, begging in Christ's name a crust of bread to keep themselves alive. The in-door industries, in which the majority of Great Russian (Central) peasants are mostly engaged, are less remunerative than formerly, owing to the competition of the great manufactories on the one hand, and the gangrene of usury, to which all these home-working artisans are more and more exposed, on the other. Work in manufactories is naturally the most certain. Put it requires a special training, and occupies less than a million hands, one-half of whom are ordinary town prole- tarians. Thus the economical position of our peasants is most strained and precarious. Notwithstanding their sur- prising industry and courage, their future is never sure. A deficit in their yearly budget is always possible, and indeed of frequent occurrence, leaving them no alternative save insolvency at the hands of the Government or a diminished consumption of food. These expedients, however, cannot be adopted indefinitely. The patience of tax-collectors is very short, and when exhausted is quickly followed by severe floggings and the forced sale of the insolvent's be- longings. 3 34 THE KUSSIAN PEASANTRY. The power of self-restraint is very great with our peas- ants, and the elasticity of their stomachs is simply surpris- ing. But even these qualities have their limits. Both children and adults, when the last crust of bread is con- sumed, will ask for more; and the cattle, which with Russian peasants are an object of even greater solicitude than their children, cannot be left to starve. The peasant makes up his mind and looks around for some "benefactor" from whom he can borrow something. Here we must pause. We are now at the turning-point of our social life, and the new figure which has to play the most prominent part therein is stepping on to the stage — we mean the " benefactor" or usurer. He is of two strongly marked types. The more numerous, and by far the more important of the class, socially and politically, are those who have themselves sprung from the ranks of the peasants. These are koulaks, or miV-eaters, as our people call them. They make a class apart — the aristocracy, or rather the plu- tocracy, of our villages. Every village commune has always three or four regular koulaks, as also some half-dozen small- er fry of the same kidney. The koulaks are peasants who, by good-luck or individual ability, have saved money and raised themselves above the common herd. This done, the way to further advancement is easy and rapid. They want neither skill nor industry, only promptitude to turn to their profit the needs, the sorrows, the sufferings, and the mis- fortunes of others. The great advantage the koulaks possess over their nu- merous competitors in the plundering of the peasants lies in the fact that they are members, generally very influential members, of the village commune. This often enables them to use for their private ends the great political power which the self-governing mir exercises over each individual member. The distinctive characteristics of this class are very unpleasant. It is the hard, unflinching cruelty of a THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 35 thoroughly uneducated man who has made his way from poverty to wealth, and has come to consider money-making, by whatever means, as the only pursuit to which a rational being should devote himself. Koulaks, as a rule, are by no means devoid of natural intelligence and practical good- sense, and may be considered as fair samples of that rapa- cious and plundering stage of economic development which occupies a place analogous to that of the middle ages in political history. The regular landlords, remnants of the old nobility, or new men, who have bought their land and stepped into their shoes, also play a very conspicuous part in the opera- tions of rural credit, though, being total strangers in the communes, they afe naturally less directly responsible for the interior decomposition of our village life. Acting as a rule through their managers and agents, who have no per- sonal interests to serve, these large proprietors are in reality the least exacting of the gang. Yet when in difficulty the peasant will always try the koulaks first, who are peasants like himself. He dreads the formalities, the documents, the legal tricks and cavils which the big people have in store for a " benighted " man. In the extensive operations of rural credit, consisting chiefly of small advances, but amounting in the aggregate to many millions of rubles yearly, the koulaks and rural usurers generally gain a far greater profit than do the land- lords proper. The petty capitalists who settle in the villages for busi- ness purposes, small shopkeepers, wine dealers, merchants, who always combine their special trade with more or less extensive land culture, occupy an intermediary position be- tweeii that of the koulaks and the big landlords. They are outsiders like the latter, having by our laws no share in the administration of the commune, which is exclusively con- trolled by born or naturalized^easants. But by their edu- 36 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. cation (or better, absence of education) and general tenor of life they arc as near to the peasants as the koulaks, and by no means inferior to the latter in knowledge of local conditions, or in pluck, roughness, and cruelty. Such are the classes who control rural credit. Whatever be its individual source in each particular case, it is based on the same principle and produces the same social results. I sTaall therefore analyze its forms and influence cumula- tively. Regular credit — i.e.y advance of money to be returned in money, with the addition of interest — is very rare in our villages, unless it refers to trifling sums advanced by rural pawnbrokers. Peasants receive too little ready money to be able to depend on it for the discharge of their obligations. Loans are generally made only to whole villages or to peas- ants' associations under the guarantee and responsibility of the mir. As to the interest required, and the general char- acter of these loans, they remind us rather of Shylock's bond than of ordinary business transactions. In January, 1880, a large village of the Samara province, Soloturn, borrowed from a merchant of the name of Jaroff the sum of £600, interest being paid in advance, and bought from Jaroff s stock 15,000 pouds of hay for their starving cattle. Repayment was to be made on October 1st, 1880, under the condition that £5 should be added for every day's delay. When the time of payment arrived the peasants brought £200 on account of their debt to Jaroff, who made not the slightest objection to w^aiting for the balance. For eleven months thereafter he kept quiet But in September, 1881, he brought an action against the vil- lage for £1500. The magistrate before whom the case was tried, being evidently in a frame of mind not unlike that of Antonio's judges, decided against the plaintiff. But Jaroff was not much discouraged thereby. Confident in bis right, he appealed to a higher court and won his case. THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 37 And as this proceeding caused farther delay, the claim, by accumulation of interest, had doubled, and Jaroff got judg- ment for £3000 in satisfaction of a debt of £600, of which £200 had been repaid !* In the Novousen district of the same province the peas- ants of the village of Shendorf, being in great distress dur- ing the winter of 1880, borrowed from a clergyman named K £700, undertaking to pay him in eight months £1050 {i.e.y fifty per cent, for eight months) on condition that in case of default they should give Mr. K , pending repayment, 3500 dessiatines of their arable land at an an- nual rent of ten copecks per dessiatine. As the peasants were unable to fulfil their engagement, Mr. K received the 3500 dessiatines for 350 rubles, and forthwith re-let the land to the peasants themselves at the normal rent, which in this province is about five rubles (lOs.) per des- siatine. Thus he obtained £1715 on a capital of £700, or interest at the rate of about 250^ a year.f I have quoted these examples because they possess much of what the French call couleur locale, and are eminently suggestive of the spirit and flavor of the financial transac- tions practised in our villages. They give also an idea of the great distress which prevails among peasants during the winter months, because nobody, unless on the verge of star- vation, would enter into such engagements as those I have described. The winter is, indeed, the hardest season of the year for our peasantry. The spring, too, has its difiiculties, but by then field work is beginning on the neighboring land- lords' estates, and the peasants have a chance of earning a trifle. In the winter their resources are at their lowest ebb, for in September the corn was sold to pay the autumn taxes, while others fall due in the spring. If the household * Annals, No. 272. f Idem. 38 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. be not well off it generally has some arrears to make up, wbicli are " flogged out " in winter. In a word, and to use their own expression, calamities beset the poor peasants from every quarter, " like snow on their heads," and they cannot avoid turning towards their " benefactors," and con- senting to the most Shylockian conditions. Regular money credit, even at the heaviest interest, is, as I have said, exceptional. Individual peasants never obtain it from a rich man, because he will not trust them without good security. Credit is mostly given on the security of the peasants' work, their hands being their most valuable possession. It assumes the form of payment in anticipation for work to be done in the next season — a sort of hypothe- cation of work, to be performed several months thereafter. Agreements of this kind are always legalized at the com- munal oflSces, and often copied in their register books ; it is very easy, therefore, to obtain a fair idea of their charac- ter. Investigators of various branches of our agrarian work have preserved for us these interesting documents. I now have before me three such deeds — one referring to the beet-root sugar plantations of the south-west ; a second to the rafting of wood and timber down the rivers, an occu- pation in which the peasants of the northern sylvan regions find their chief livelihood ; and a third, which refers to purely agricultural work. In two the terms are almost identical, and even in the third the difference is but slight. Mr. Tchervinsky says that in his province there are special scribblers, who, having learned the wording of these docu- ments by heart, make their living by rewriting them for each occasion, changing only the names. Mr. Giliaransky tran- scribes the form of agreement for agricultural work from a printed original. I will give here a summary of the lat- ter, as being the most important and characteristic, and as affording a fair idea of the others. These agreements always begin by setting forth in great THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 39 detail the work to be done, and fixing the number of des- siatines to be sown, ploughed, or harvested. Then follow a series of paragraphs intended to secure due observance of the conditions on the part of the peasant : **I, the undersigned, agree to submit myself to all the rules and customs in force on the estates of N. N. During the period of work I will be perfectly obedient to N. N.'s managers, and will not refuse to work at nights, not only at such work as I have undertaken to do, as set forth above, but any other work that may be required of me. Moreover I have no right to keep Sundays and holidays." For securing good work the imposition of heavy penalties is agreed to beforehand by the subscriber, generally four or five times in excess of any damage his negligence can occasion, thereby affording a hundred pretexts for malversa- tions, and yet quite failing in preventing the work from being on the whole very badly done. A very important proviso remains to be noticed. The agreement never omits to mention that it retains its bind- ing power for an indefinite number of years. Thus, if the landlord should not require his debtor to work in the immediately following summer (as might happen were the harvest deficient, and labor cheap and easily obtainable) he is free to call on him to liquidate his debt in the following year, or even the year after, thus securing for himself cheap labor at the time when wages are likely to be at their max- imiim. The concluding paragraph is to the same effect. It states that should the debtor he unable or unwilling to discharge his debty or a part of it, in work, and desire to discharge it in ready money, he must pay a prescription amounting to four or five times the original loan. The reader will perceive that the peasants do no violence to the exact etymological value of the word in calling the winter agreement kabala, or bondage. As to the purely economical side of the question — the 40 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. rate of usury enforced under this system of anticipated pay- ment of wages — we have only to compare the difference between the averao:e wao-e of the laborer hired in summer and that of the unfortunates who are compelled to give themselves *'in bondage" during the lean months of winter. Here I quote a few well authenticated statements refer- ring to the entire agricultural zone of the Empire. Accord- ing to Mr. Trirogoff, the harvesting of one dessiatine in the province of Saratoff costs on an average eight rubles if carried by laborers engaged in the summer at market rates, while the laborer engaged in the winter receives three or four rubles for the same work. It is no uncommon thing, he adds, to see laborers of each class working side by side, the one for ten the other for three and a half rubles per dessiatine. Mr. Giliaransky states that in the Samara prov- ince the whole rotation of agricultural work for a dessia- tine of land costs fifteen to twenty rubles at ordinary rates. But those laborers who are engaged in the winter are on an average only paid five rubles. In the Tamboff prov- ince, according to Mr. Ertel, free laborers receive from nine to eleven rubles, while the "bondage" (winter engaged) laborers are paid only from four to five. In the Kieff prov- ince, on the beet-root plantations, the free workers receive eight rubles and upward for fifteen days' work, the bond- age laborers only three. In the Kamenez-Podolsk province (south-west) the daily wage of free laborers is forty-five copecks in the spring and sixty copecks in summer, while the bondage laborers are paid in the same season fifteen and twenty copecks. Thus in the Samara province the money-lenders exact an interest equal to three hundred per cent.; in Saratoff, two hundred per cent. ; in Tamboff, one hundred and eight ; in Kieff, one hundred and sixty-six ; in the Kamenez-Podolsk, two hundred per cent, on their capital, lent for a period gen- erally not exceeding nine months. THE RUSSIAN AGEARIAN QUESTI01^» 41 This looks very ugly. But if the reader thinks these are exceptional extortions, of which a few greedy usurers alone are guilty, he is mistaken. There is no lack of ex- ceptions, but they present an even blacker picture. In November and December, 1881, the judge of the Valuj dis- trict (Voronej province) had to give judgment upon forty- five suits against as many groups of peasants for failure to fulfil their eno;aocement with their landlord, J . The facts were that during the winter months of 1881 the lat- ter advanced to the peasants of several surrounding villages a quantity of straw wherewith to feed their cattle. The peasants had promised, as usual, to harvest for him a fixed number of dessiatines, but many — in all forty-five groups — had failed to observe the conditions agreed upon. To give an idea of these conditions, I may mention that one of the groups, in a moment of sore distress, had engaged to harvest, in return for twelve cubic yards of straw advanced to them, no less than thirty-five dessiatines of corn. They harvested twenty-one dessiatines, which represented at cur- rent prices one hundred and five rubles, but being unable to harvest the remaining fourteen dessiatines they had to pay one hundred and thirty rubles more. Thus two hun- dred and thirty-five rubles were demanded for about five rubles' worth of straw. I leave the reader to calculate how much per cent, such usury denotes. In the Oufa province there are two great villages called XJsman and Karmaly, with about 1200 inhabitants. The peasants hold in common 3890 dessiatines of land. In 1880 they borrowed from a clerk named Rvanzeff 1019 rubles wherewith to pay their taxes. For this loan they agreed to let to him all their 3890 dessiatines of land for three years at two rubles a dessiatine, whereas the minimum rent in this district is six to seven rubles. In 1881 the peasants, now left without land, rented their own holdings from Rvanzelf at seven to eight rubles a dessiatine, thus giv- 42 THE PwUSSIAN PEASANTRY. ing this gentleman a profit of 20,895 rubles, or an interest of 2000 per cent, for the first year, and three times that amount if all the three years are taken together, on a capi- tal of 1019 rubles * Here is another instance, which is not confined to a few groups of individual peasants. In 1879, in the province of Oufa, the whole harvest was bought from the Bashkir peas- ants for an advance of twenty copecks per poud (40 lbs.) made durins: the winter. The next autumn it was resold to the same Bashkirs for one ruble twenty copecks (120 copecks) per poud, making an interest of 500 per cent, for about eight months. This is really exceptional, though many pages could be filled with similar examples, which each year brings to light. It is what is called in Russia " usury." The transactions as to which I have calculated the approximate interest in various provinces are not considered usurious at all. They are only "private winter engagements," which are imposed every year on millions of peasants in every region of the Empire — in the agricultural and in the industrial, as well as in the sylvan. Far from considering it as something to be ashamed of, the money-lenders always pose as the peasants' " benefactors," in that they have consented to lend them money on such easy terms. Whatever be the name we give to it, usury always re- mains usury, and everywhere possesses the attribute of grad- ually swallowing up all those who have the misfortune to step within its bounds, like a quaking bog. After discharg- ing out of his very modest and strained resources such exorbitant claims as I have described (no matter what form the usury takes), the peasant will, generally speaking, be worse off the next autumn than he was the year before. Pie will have greater difficulty in defraying the taxes and in * 6^0^05, 1882, No. 113. THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 43 providing for his own wants. Unless unusually good-luclc befall him, he will be obliged during the winter to apply once more, and probably for a larger advance, to his " bene« factor." Very often he will have been unable to execute all the heavy obligations previously undertaken. Some arrears will still remain to be added, with accumulated interest, to his debt of work, a debt from which he can never, except by the help of some windfall or godsend, escape. Only very large families, which are becoming less com- mon, are able to extricate themselves from the usurer's net, in which they have been by dire misfortune entangled. When the liability is divided among twelve or more adults they may compensate for the absence of one or two of their number "given in bondage" by increased diligence on the part of those that remain. But small families al- most inevitably succumb. Mr. Trirogoff tells us that the peasants themselves are convinced that when a man has once been caught by the rural usurer he must remain " in bondage" to the end of his days. And in nine cases out of ten this proves true. Thus the new economical r^^me which has struck root in Russia is not only extending but acquiring a permanent force. "In the Saratoif province whole districts are in a state of bondage." * " In the Samara province there are many villages, small and great, which have the bulk of their working strength pawned, or given in bondage, to use the peasant's expression, for many years to come, to sundry large corn growers." f In the Ousman district alone (Tam- boff province), according to Mr. Ertel's very moderate esti- mate, the winter engagements amount to 240,000 rubles, equal to about 500,000 rubles a year at market value. There is no province, no district, in which the system does not extensively obtain. * Trirogoff. f Giliaransky. 44 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTKY. In sorae provinces it becomes from the first a permanent bondage without the money-lender having the trouble and expense of rebinding his client every year, or of involving him in the net of accumulated interest. One of the experts for the Kherson province made the following statement before the official inquiry commission, as registered in its official records: *'With us," he said, "there exists another mode of harvesting, extremely ruinous for the peasants. They receive from some landlord a loan of ten rubles (£1), and in return are under the obligation of harvesting, in lieu of interest, one dessiatine of corn and two dessiatines of hay, and of refunding the capital sum in the autumn. If, how- ever, the money is not refunded, the same agreement holds good for the next year, and so on. New loans are not refused, but are made under the same conditions. Thus the peasants gradually fall into a state of bondage worse than was the old serfdom, for they are generally unable to refund the capital, and obliged to work from year to year quite gratuitously." In the province of Kieff yet another form of bondage obtains which approaches still more nearly the form of the old serfdom. Here the landlord advances eighteen rubles, for which sum he is entitled to receive in lieu of interest two days' work per w^eek, i,e,, one hundred and four days a year. The women have to do similar slave-work as interest for an advance of twelve rubles. The advance of one-half of these sums entitles the landlord to one day a week. If the peasant misses a day he is mulcted in fifty copecks (a woman thirty-five copecks), the amount being put to his debit. When these mulcts reach the sum of nine rubles for a man and six for a woman, another day a week is added by way of interest to their debt.* At this point, however, exploitation of the peasant's labors ^ Kieff Telegraph, 1875, No. 52. THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 45 receives a self-acting check. Credit on the hypothecation of future earnings is limited by the amount of work which it is physically possible for the debtor to perform. In the fertile steppes of the south-wester-n region, so highly favored by nature and the Emancipation Act, which gave them the largest allotments, and in isolated districts where the peas- ants are exceptionally well off,- the struggle between land- lords and peasants has ended in the subjugation of the latter in the way I have described, but has gone no further. In all these places credit assumes chiefly the form of the hypothecation of future labor. But in less favored regions, and especially in the densely populated central provinces of the Empire, other and more desperate and ruinous forms of credit are being developed with alarming rapidity. Potential property, labor, ceases to be a sufficient guarantee for the money-lenders. The impoverished peasants, driven to despair by famine or by fear of a forced sale of their effects, borrow money right and left, undertaking to give the lenders three times more work than they are physically able to perform. To avoid disappointment and the troubles of litigation, the usurers demand as security substantial property — the very imple- ments of agricultural work, the cattle and the land. Both produce identical and almost equally rapid results. Depri- vation of cattle and loss of land go on simultaneously. The peasant's indispensable instruments of labor, the cattle, are sold in enormous quantities. The sales arc made during the winter months and in the spring, chiefly at the time when the taxes and arrears are " flogged out." This accounts for the curious fact that in the provincial towns a pound of meat is sometimes cheaper than a pound of bread. Exports of cattle have increased for the same reason enor- mously ; the increase since 1864 is equal to 1335 per cent. Statistics likewise disclose, in the thirteen provinces of Central Russia, a decrease of 17.6 per cent, in large cattle 46 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. and a redaction of 27.8 per cent, in the quantity of harvest- ed corn, notwithstanding the increase (6.6 per cent.) of the population since 1864; the inventory of horses taken in 1882 for military purposes shows that one fourth of the peasant households no longer possess horses at all.* A peasant who has lost his cattle can no longer be con- sidered a tiller of the soil. His imprescriptible right as the member of a village community to a share in the land becomes purely nominal and practically void. Yet, though he may give up agricultural work in his allotment, and can no longer in any way turn it to account, he still remains liable for the taxes. Very often the peasant's road to ruin is reversed ; the sale of his cattle not sufficing to meet his engagements, he is obliged to part, bit by bit, with his land. True, the laws in force do not permit peasants to sell their allotments for which the price of redemption — payment for which in most cases extends over forty-nine years from 1861 — has not been provided. But the law in this regard is evaded by the expe- dient of long leases. The letting of land by peasants to capitalists of the upper classes — burghers, clergymen, or nobles — is exceptional. It is done wholesale by entire mirs, and generally for short periods. Letting to koulaks, or peasant capitalists, is, on the contrary, quite common and much in vogue. It is done wholesale and retail both by groups and by individual peasants. The law cannot inter- fere with the mutual relations of members of the same community. At the present time the new peasant hour- geoisie^ the koulaks, legally have got into their hands vast quantities of inalienable communal land under the form of long leases, which they will hold until the " next redistribu- tion.'' The peasants, the nominal proprietors, work on it meanwhile as agrarian proletarians. * Janson. THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 47 There are no complete estimates as to the area of land engrossed by this new rural aristocracy, but isolated inqui- ries in the central provinces, where the process of social fer- mentation has been the most marked, prove it to be very considerable. Writing about one of the Tamboff districts, which are rather favored by the agrarian settlement — the Ousman district, where the majority of the population were formerly State peasants — Mr. Ertel states that in an average and rather prosperous district, which he selected for investi- gation, 25,258 peasants' households (one-third) pawned some of their land every year. The total area of land pawned to the koulaks was 8419 dessiatines a year in the mean. Mr. Tereshkevitch, chairman of the Statistical Board of the Poltava province, in a work to which was awarded the great gold medal of the St, Petersburg Geographical Socie- ty, shows that in the Poltava province, the land of the for- mer Cossacks, inalienable by law, is concentrated, to the ex- tent of 24 to 32.6 per cent, of the total area, in the hands of rich koulaks. Here 16.5 to 29.8 per cent, of the popu- lation are downright landless proletarians. Nearly one-half (forty-three to forty-nine per cent.) have their land cur- tailed, sometimes to one-fourth^ one-fifth, and one-sixteenth of a dessiatine ; so that, according to the peasant's graphic expression, ** the rain falls from your own roof on to your neighbor's land." The koulaks, however, who constitute 5.4 per cent, of the population, have twenty dessiatines (54 acres) and upwards per household, and among them are many who hold 100 dessiatines (270 acres), sometimes 300 dessiatines (810 acres), of the richest black soil, per house- hold.* Having no positive figures for the whole Empire, I shall not venture to estimate, even approximately, how great a proportion of the peasants' land the mir-eaters, or koulaks, * Eeport of the Geographical Society for 1885. 48 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. have already devoured. But we can gauge the havoc they have wrought in another way — by the number of agricul- tural proletarians, landless and homeless, that modern Rus- sia possesses. In the epoch of Emancipation Russia had no agricultural proletariat whatever. It was expected that our traditional system of land tenure, with periodical redistributions, would preserve Russia forever from this drawback of old civiliza- tions. Some ten years later, however, it was discovered that agrarian proletarianism had already come to be a fact. In 1871, according to the calculations of Prince Vasltchi- koff, districts existed in Russia where five, ten, and even fifteen per cent, of the rural population had become down- right proletarians. " Since that time " (I am quoting the words of so unimpeachable an authority as the chairman of the St. Petersburoj Cono-ress of Russian Farmers, held on the 4th of March, 1886) "the agrarian proletariat has increased with alarming rapidity. From the statistical investigations of the Moscow and other zemstvos, we are able to affirm that the number of proletarians has increased at least from fifteen to twenty-five per cent. This shows that one-fifth of the whole population of the Empire (one-third of the rural population of Russia proper), or about twenty millions of souls, are agrarian proletarians. Thus the number of proletarians we have at present is equal to the number of serfs Russia possessed before the Emancipation. And I will not venture to judge how far the life of our modern agrarian proletarian is preferable to that of the former serfs." Further on in the same speech the causes of this devasta- tion and miserable condition of our agriculture are pointed out: "Thriving estates are those where the proprietors use * bondage' (kahala) labor — rair- eaters and usurious land- lords (practising the winter engagement system) — and per- THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION, 49 baps that of peasants with large families. For all the rest, agriculture has become a risky and not very profitable busi- ness. The * bondage' labor, which is chiefly used by the landlords, is a labor of the lowest quality, much inferior to that of the former serfs; while the 'bondage' peasants themselves, wasting an enormous quantity of their working time on the landlords' estates, are unable to cultivate their own, and even tolerably, and must drop husbandry alto- gether." 4 CHAPTER V. The results of emancipation, a measure from which so much was expected, must needs greatly disappoint all who are in favor of peasant ownership, especially if they have likewise put some trust in the Russian communaL system of land tenure. But those who hold the opposite view will probably conclude that the process of peasant spoliation, though a painful process, and an unavoidable evil, is yet in some sort an advantage, since it may be the beginning of a new development of agriculture which will eventually put Russia on a level with Western countries, and force on it the same system of land tenure. It is quite evident that Russia is marching in this direc- tion. If nothing happens to check or hinder the process of interior disintegration in our villages, in another genera- tion we shall have on one side an agricultural proletariat of sixty to seventy millions, and on the other a few thousand landlords, mostly former koulaks and mir-eaters, in possession of all the land. When starvation has depleted the market of some ten or fifteen millions of superfluous agricultural pro- letarians, the landlords will doubtless introduce an improved system of agriculture of the regular European type, and the remainder of our rural population will become common wage-laborers. Then and only then will there begin true agricultural progress in Russia. In the present transitory stage, however, the landlord system is technically as bad as it well can be. It is chiefly based on bondage labor, which is cheaper than any other — cheaper than machinery, cheaper than that of the worst paid common laborers, who must be THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 51 nourished, after all, at their master's expense, and get some- thing (from £4 to £5 a year) for taxes and clothing. As to bondage labor, it can be got for next to nothing after the first payment. Then the work done merely represents the exorbitant interest on the trifling sums advanced years before, to which may have been added, out of pity, a few sums equally trifling. But the peasant enslaved by usury has repaid his.cxtortion- ers in another way — by the utter negligence, slovenliness, and dirtiness of his work. He is bound to labor on the landlord-creditor's land, and ostensibly conforms to the con- ditions of his bond. No power on earth, however, can pre- vent his working as hastily and as badly as he is able — from doing his " level worst," as an American would say. No amount of superintendence can compel diligence, unless, indeed, the landlord has one superintendent for every bonds- man. These men cannot be terrorized and beaten into carefulness and industry as were the former serfs. On the other hand, neither is he in the least impressed, as the free wage-laborer is, by dread of dismissal. He has, in a word, no motive whatever to work well, and every reason on earth to get rid of his ungrateful task as quickly as may be. The work supplied by the bondage system is of the worst possi- ble description. Mr. Giliaransky says, " Where the free peasants harvest five stacks, the bondage people harvest only four or three and a half. In the field you recognize at first sight the work done by bondage peo- ple and by free laborers. With the latter the freshly mown field presents a nice even surface, showing no trace of for- mer vegetation, while the bondage laborers always leave long strips of grass unmown. In the fields of well-to-do peasants you will find not a handful of spikes or straw, the closely cut stubble-field extends even and uniform like a hair -brush on every side. But the fields of the big land- lords, after the bondage people's harvesting, are pictures of 52 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. haste and dirt. Here and there you see black spots, as if swine had been grubbing ; these are places where the chil- dren, in helping their elders, have uprooted the crops with their hands. Great clumps of unreaped grain are left be- hind, and the whole field, covered with scattered spikes and straw, seems rather creased and trampled than mown." With such methods as these no improvement in husband- ry can be thought of. Scientific culture is impossible. The cereal planters understand all this only too well, and, taking the bondage work as it is, make splendid profits by specu- lating on the enormous extension of tillage, thus compensat- ing by the extent of land cultivated for the very low techni- cal quality of the culture. Such few estates as are in a satisfactory, sometimes even a model state of cultivation, are those where the proprietors have adopted the heroic resolution of keeping an adequate number of permanent laborers, and paying them fair wages ^— in other words, of investing considerable capital, and getting for it small though regular returns. Such capital- ist heroism is, however, necessarily exceptional. The great majority of capitalists find it much more advantageous to spend as little as possible on each acre, keeping only a small staff of managers on permanent wages, speculating on the extreme cheapness of labor, and avoiding the costly luxury of scientific agriculture. The koulaks and mir-eaters, the new land forestallers of peasant origin, are in a much better position as touching bondage work than are their fellow loan-mongers of the up- per crust. These rural Crassuses very often wield the same influence in their diminutive village republics as their pro- tagonist, the famous Roman usurer, wielded in Rome, and for the same reasons; a koulak is not to be trifled with, and a poor peasant, his debtor, will think twice before cheating him as he would cheat a landlord. He well knows that the koulak will find a thousand occasions for revenge. More- THE RUSSIAN AGJiARIAN QUESTION. 53 over, the koulak and all the members of his family work together on the same fields as their bondsmen, keeping con- stant watch over them. On the whole, the koulaks and mir-eaters, as all observers agree, obtain by the bondage system tolerably good work. Working for a koulak exhausts the peasant's strength, while work on a landlord's estate, is little more than a waste of time. Employing a much greater proportion of bondage work relatively to their capital than the regular landlords, and possessing the above-mentioned advantages, the koulaks and mir-eaters grow in numbers, riches, and power with startling rapidity. But being in so advantageous a position, the koulaks have even less inducement than the regular landlords to change their tactics and waste money on any permanent improvements. So long as there is a crowd of people on whom they can impose their yoke so cheaply and .easily, their culture will continue to be as loose and preda- tory as it has hitherto been ; only, instead of exhausting the land, as the regular landlords are doing, they are ex- hausting the laborer. Thus the concentration of land in the hands of individual proprietors has imparted as yet neither order nor progress to our agriculture. The process of land concentration, if not stopped, will doubtless achieve in time both these re- sults, but in another way — by starving out an adequate part of our rural population. It may be added that this chari- table work is going on with the greatest success. I will not go into details, neither will I harrow the reader by sen- sational pictures. I shall only quote figures, some statisti- cal, which speak for themselves. The rate of mortality in the whole of Russia is very high, fluctuating between 35.4 and 37.3 per thousand. Taking thirty-six as the mean, we find that in Russia, with its thin population and a climate as healthy as that of Norway and ,Sweden, the mortality is one hundred per cent, greater than 54 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. in the latter, and one hundred and twelve per cent, greater than in the former of those countries. It is sixty-four per cent, greater than in Great Britain, thirty-seven per cent, greater than in Germany, and thirty-nine per cent, greater than in France. According to Dr. Farr, a mortality exceeding seventeen per thousand is an abnormal mortality, due to some pre- ventable cause. This standard is reached in Norway, and approached very nearly in Sweden, and in the rural districts of England (where it is eighteen per thousand), and even in several large centres of population in the United States. In England, whenever the death-rate rises to twenty-three per thousand, a medical and sanitary inquiry of the district is prescribed by law, this mortality being considered due to some preventable cause. It cannot be otherwise in Russia, with a death-rate of between 35.4 and 37.3. And it is not at all difficult to discover that this preventable cause lies in the misery of the unhappy country. The Congress of the Society of Russian Surgeons expressed exactly the same opinion at their last annual meeting, held on the 18th of December, 1885, under the presidency of M. S. P. Botkin, body-surgeon to the Emperor. After ascertaining the exact death-rate, they expressed the opinion that the primary cause of this frightful mortality is deficiency of food (bread). It is thus obvious that the reduction of one-seventh in the peasants' consumption of bread during the last twenty years, as is shown by the computation of corn exports and corn production, has not come out of the people's superflui- ties, but is literally wrung from their necessities. The Congress of Russian Surgeons of December, 1885, brought to light some other very suggestive facts. This high rate of mortality is not uniform throughout the Em- pire ; it is much greater in its central than in its peripheral regions. The high birth-rate in Russia, due to the very early marriages of our agricultural population, atones in part THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 55 for the devastation produced by untimely deaths. Statistics show an average yearly increase of 1.1 per cent, (or about 1,200,000) in the number of the unfortunate subjects of the Czar. But there is no such increase in the central provinces, where the population is more dense, and the ruin of the masses proceeds with the greatest rapidity. In the thirteen provinces — that is to say, the whole of Central Russia — the mortality, always on the increase, reached when the last census was taken (1882) sixty-two per thousand per annum. Nothing approaching this pre- vails in any other part of Europe. It would be incredi- ble were it not officially attested. The birth-rate in these provinces being forty-five (the normal rate for the whole Empire), this is equal to a decrease of seventeen per thou- sand per year. In the heart of Russia the population is be- ing starved out. The medical report, moreover, notices that the provinces where the mortality is greatest are those where the land pro- duces a full supply of bread. The starving out of the peas- ants who till it is therefore the work of " art," as I have just described, and not of nature. Another most suggestive fact which points to the same conclusion is that Russia is the only country in the world where the mortality over a large area of open country is greater than that in the towns. In all countries possessing statistical records it is the reverse, the hygienic conditions of life and work in the open air being all in favor of the rural population. In England, for instance, the mortality is 38.8 per cent, higher in towns than in the country ; in France, twenty-four per cent. ; and in Sweden, thirty-seven per cent. In Prussia the difference is less than in any other part of Western Europe — 7.1 per cent.; yet even there it is in favor of the villages. In Russia there are fourteen provinces, with a population as great as that of the Aus- trian Empire, and an area three times as large, in which 56 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. the death - rate of the villages is higher than that of the largest towns. In the villages of the province of Moscow the mortality is 33.1 higher than in Moscow city ; in the province of St. Petersburg the difference is 17.5 ; in Kazan and Kieff, with more than 100,000 inhabitants each, the mortality. is less by twenty-seven and thirty per cent, than in the villages of their respective provinces.* I hardly need to add that such a striking anomaly can in no wise be put to the credit of the exceptional perfection of the hygienic arrangements of our big cities. The largest, the two capitals included, are in this respect much more nearly allied to Asiatic than to European towns. Another startling fact is, that the official returns relating to recruits for the period from 1874 to 1887, published in 1886 by the central Statistical Board, show that the num- ber of able-bodied young men decreases every year with appalling regularity. In 1874, when the law of universal military service was for the first time put in action, out of the total number of young people tested by the recruiting commissioners seventy and a half per cent, were accepted as able-bodied. The next year showed even a somewhat higher rate— seventy-one and a half per cent, of able-bodied. But since that date the decrease has gone on uninterrupted- ly. It was 69.4 in 1876. Then 69, 68.8, 67.8, 67.7, 65.8, 59.1, and finally, in 1883, fifty-nine per cent. This means a decrease of twelve and a half per cent, in nine years in the number of able-bodied people among the flower of the nation — that is, the youth of twenty years of age, of whom eighty-five and a quarter per cent, come from the peas- antry. These facts need no comment. They admit of only one explanation : hunger and poverty have wrought fearful havoc among our rural population. This is the last work * Professor Jansan's Statistics,--vol.i.r p. 264. THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. 57 t)f our present regime. It is to tlii's we have come aft