of smaller " shots " sometimes mixed up with lands of other villages and landowners. The blocks of land belonging to the same community were again subdivided into strips, which were sometimes 2 to 3 yd. broad and some hundred yards long. Each household held a certain number of strips 20-30-50, some- times even 100-1 50. The strips were scattered at a great distance from the farmyard, and the driving to them entailed a consider- able waste of time and work: this hampered greatly the farming arrangements of the villagers. A peasant of the province of Novgorod calculated that he and his horse had to make about 1,548 versts (a verst is about mile) every summer merely to go to and from his field situated at a distance of 3 versts from his farmyard. But some strips lay at a distance of 15-20 v. and even more. The intermixture of strips separated from each other only by narrow balks obliged the whole community to follow the same system of cultivation, which was usually the three-fields one. The very large extent of fallow land, the poor manure pro- duced by weak, badly fed cattle, the carelessness of the holders who were not sure of keeping their land permanently all this had the most ruinous effect on the peasants' farming. Under such conditions, hampering individual energy and initiative, the production on the peasants' holdings was very low indeed. The average value of the gross produce in 27 provinces 1 of one dessiatine of peasants' land was 8r. 99k., while the average cost of production per dess. was sr. 22k.; so that the net produce per dess. amounted only to 3r. 77k. The productiveness of the squires' estate was 12-18% higher than that of the peasants, but if we take into consideration that a large area of landowners' land was taken on lease by the peasants, the difference in the results of cultivation would be much greater. Mr. Yermolov puts it at about 50%.
Decay of the Peasantry. The growing impoverishment of the peasantry during the whole period which followed the Emanci- pation of 1 86 1 is reflected in the following description of peas- ants' life under normal conditions, taken from a memoir of the Zemstvo of Tula:
The peasant's life is hard and unsightly even in periods of com- parative welfare. Generally he lives in a cottage of 89 yd. width and no more than 3 yd. in height. Cottages without chimneys are still very common, the smoke being let out through a hole in the roof. The roof is almost always thatched. In many provinces the walls are covered with dung for the sake of warmth. A peasant's family, sometimes a numerous one, is huddled together in a space of 20-30 sq. yards. The floor of the cottage is almost always bare soil, because lambs, calves, pigs and even cows are put in during the cold weather. Skin diseases are very common among the population. Meat, bacon, oil, butter appear on the peasant's table only on ex- ceptional occasions, perhaps two or three times a year; his usual fare is composed of bread, porridge, kvass, cabbage and onions.
A very characteristic sympton of the decay of the peasants' farming is the reduction of the number of horses and the increase in the numbers of horseless households. A comparison of the figures of the horse statistics in 1888 and 1893-4 proves that in 31 provinces the number of horses had fallen by 10-88 per cent. The number of horseless households had increased during the same period in 23 provinces of central Russia from 21-56% to 26-85 P er cent - More than 25% of the households have no horses at all; another 25% have only one horse each.
Let us now examine a peasant's normal budget as it is pre- sented in the remarkable work of Mr. F. A. Shcherbina (edited by Prof. A. J. Chuprov). A medium budget of a peasant was balanced at 54r. 92k. The budget of a medium peasant house- holder consisted of the following items:
Income from :
Canada United Stat( Hungary Argentine Germany France Rumania Russia
- s
Pro- Con- duction sumption 1,696 1,326 1,151 1,108
651 552 1,322 509
417 497 421 480 875 420 445 tfl
Corn on his land Corn on household land . Straw and hay . Gardening .... Cattle-breeding . Trade or craft . Sundries ....
Total
16 r. 20 k. i r. 92 k. 8 r. 16 k. 2 i. 63 k. 9 r. 99 k. 8 r. 47 k. 7 r. 26 k.
55 r- 63 k.
1 Statistics of the Taxation Department 1903.
Expenses : Corn .... Food for cattle . Vegetables and fruit . Meat .... Rent .... Taxes .... Sundries
18 r. 10 k.
8 r. 45 k. I r. 30 k.
3 r- 9 k-
1 r. 2k.
2 r. 65 k. 20 r. 10 k.
Total . . . . . . . . . . 55 r- 54 k.
Assuming that 19 puds of corn per head are the minimum necessary during one year and that 7-5 puds are sufficient for fodder, Mr. Maress calculated that 70-7% of the peasant popu- lation had less than 19 puds per head, 20-4% had between 19 and 26-5 puds per head, and only 8-9% had more than 26-5 puds per head. This means that 70-7% of the farming population could not live on the income from their land and would be reduced to semi-starvation if they could not find any supplemen- tary means of existence. No wonder the standard of living of the great mass of the people stood exceedingly low. The follow- ing figures 2 enable us to form a judgment as to the comparative consumption of corn in various countries; in studying them one must remember that corn was the staple food in Russia and that meat played a negligible part in the bill of fare of the people.
Average Corn Consumption and Production, per head (in kilograms) : 1909-14.
The state of mind produced by this situation among the peasantry may be gathered from the opinions expressed by peasant deputies in the Second Duma in the course of the debates on agrarian reform. One of the members of the Right, Prince Sviatopolk Mirski, had said that the ignorant and inexperienced mass of the Russian people had to be guided by the landlords as a flock is guided by shepherds. Kisselev, a peasant belonging to the group of toil, replied:
" I should like the whole of peasant Russia, the whole of the Russian land, to remember well these words of the noble descendant of Rurik. . . . We have had enough of that kind of thing! What we want are not shepherds, but leaders, and we know how to find them without your help. With them we shall find our way to light, to truth, to the promised land! "
Afanassiev, a non-party deputy, an ex-soldier, said, among other things:
" In the Japanese war I led a number of mobilized soldiers through estates (of the squires). It took us forty-eight hours to reach the meeting place. The soldiers asked me: ' Where do you lead us? ' ' To Japan.' ' What for? ' ' To defend our country.' They replied : ' What is that country? We have been through the estates of the Lissetskys, the Besulovs, the Padkopailovs. . . . Where is our land? Nothing here belongs to us." "
The same deputy said on another occasion : " Work, sweat and use the land ! But if you do not wish to live on the land, to till it, to work on it, you have no right to own it! "
The great majority distrusted projects of expropriation based on the idea of compensating the former landowners, as likely to lead to unfair adjudications to the advantage of the squires. Some of the leaders were calculating how much should be taken outright, without any compensation ; a few demanded the whole. Pianych, a socialist, exclaimed: " Throw them all off!"
Government Policy. In order to meet this disastrous situation the Government made attempts in three directions the increase of the size of peasants' holdings, emigration and the improvement of agricultural methods. It would be erroneous to think that the deficiency in land could be entirely removed by new distributions from the estates of the squires and the domains of the Crown. In 1906 the distribution of land among different classes of land-
1 Nordman, Peace Problems: Russian Economics, p. 36.
