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