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Government made the following well-sounding promise:—“To provide
the peasants with the means of satisfying their wants and
enable them to fulfil their duties toward the State” (i.e., to
pay taxes); “for this purpose they shall receive in inalienable
possession allotments of cultivable land and other belongings,
which in this Act are to be specified.”
How has this promise been kept?
The so-called “dvorovije,” or serfs attached personally to
their lords, and not occupying any land, became proletarians
in the cities. The serfs proper did receive allotments, which
were handed over to the “mir,” or village community, which
was to be responsible for the payment of the “redemption
money” for the land as well as the taxes. The Government
paid out the landlords in a lump sum, so that the peasants
were henceforth responsible directly to the Government for
everything. The price paid to the landlords was supposed to
represent the capitalised “obrok” or rent (about 9-12 roubles
per allotment). But the valuation was actually made, not on
the market value of the land, but on the supposed loss to the
landlord caused by the emancipation, which in most cases
reached a much higher figure. To illustrate by a parallel,
it would have been the same in the United States if, on the
emancipation of the slaves, the liberated negroes had received
allotments and been made to pay the cotton planters the
purchase-money for their freedom, instead of simply a fair
rent for their land.
This was the first hardship imposed on the unfortunate
mushiks. In the second place, the allotments were ridiculously
insufficient to supply even their limited needs. To maintain a
peasant family at least ten to fourteen hectares are required.
(A hectare is about two and a-half acres.) To understand
this apparently high estimate, as it would be considered in
England, it must be remembered that out of the produce the
peasant had to pay the extraordinary high rent referred to
above, and the Government taxes, which in Russia are, of
course, far heavier than in England, and also that the survival
of the “three field” system and other drawbacks of Russian
agriculture made the produce of far less value per acre
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