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several generations and many families. Married sons,
brothers of the father or of the mother, have down to a
very recent period constantly worked in the same house
or on the same farm, yielding obedience to the authority
of the eldest, and with property in common. This family
relation is now being broken up, because in it (as in the
state) the paternal authority has been inflated till it has
become unnatural and oppressive.
In the mean time, the municipality is only the larger
family, as the state is only the union of all the
municipalities into one great family, whose father is the Tsar.
The Russian family has two decided characteristics: the
unlimited authority of the father, and the undivided
possession by the children. The Russian state, absolute
monarchy, has developed the first; the Russian
municipality, mir, the second. In fact, these two characteristics—the
power of the Tsar and the ownership of land in
common—are the two fundamental principles which
distinguish the Russian people from all others. It is very
true that many other countries, Denmark among the
rest, have long known a similar common ownership of
property; but elsewhere it has been abolished with the
abolition of serfdom, or with the emancipation from
villanage; here, on the contrary, it still survives. While
the common family (or the organization which may be
termed a family partnership) is undergoing dissolution
since the emancipation of the serfs, the municipal joint
property has not only held its own since then, but it has
even increased at the expense of private property. In
the department of Moscow, since 1861, of 74,480 farms
only nineteen have abandoned the joint proprietorship;
and at the present time, in the whole of Greater Russia,
of all the peasant farm lands 90-98 per cent are owned
in common. Even in White and Little Russia common
ownership has made inroads.
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