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exhausted. A Siberian colonist of the old type may thus
have twenty different pieces of cultivated land scattered
far and wide in the forest, some of them, perhaps, as
much as a dozen miles away from his home. Finally, the
long journeys to and fro between his home and these
scattered plots taking too much time and trouble, he builds a
hut for himself and an enclosure for the cattle, and spends
part of the year at some of his occupied places. This is
then called a “zaimka” or occupation. Sometimes it
happens that, finding sufficient fertile soil, he moves away
entirely to the new place. Others, perhaps, will come after
him, and thus a new “olstschina” (community) arises.
In such a system of free occupation and “plundering”
of the soil conflicts will often, of course, arise between the
colonists, and these conflicts en dernier ressort are usually
settled by the community, which thus asserts its
fundamental right of ownership to the land. “The community
is the possessor and distributor of the land.”
A strong animosity exists between the old settlers and
the new, the former considering the latter as intruders, and
not without reason, for with the influx of the famine-stricken
masses from Russia the comparatively well-to-do old
Siberian peasantry will be reduced to poverty. The
newcomers settling within the borders of an old settlement
have each the right of obtaining some 38 acres of land,
which means that the old settlers are deprived of a
corresponding area of their land with little or no recompense
for it. To retaliate for this intrusion the members of
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