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We will give some examples of the methods by which the
peasants are fleeced. It is very usual when, e.g., a loan of
twenty-five roubles is made, for one month, to require a
repayment of fifty roubles; should these not be paid on the exact
day, a fine of five roubles a week is exacted. Among the cases
investigated by our author, the annual rate of interest ran up
to 120-140 per cent. in eighteen instances; 88-90 per cent. in
four others; and to 60 per cent. in twenty-eight more.
Frequently the lending is done on a kind of pawnbroking
system; clothes, household goods, agricultural implements,
stock, and land being pledged as securities. In other cases,
the borrowers pledge their labour, which is exacted at the
busiest season of the year and valued often at half the market
rate of wages. If, for example, a borrower has engaged to be
responsible for the complete working of a piece of his creditor’s
land—that is, to plough, sow, and reap it, he gets no more
than two or three roubles per hectare, while the customary
price is seven or eight roubles.
In the village of Tcherdakli, government Stavropol, the
peasants borrowed 100 roubles from the diatchok or sacristan, for
six months. As a “mark of gratitude,” i.e., interest, he got from
them the use of one and a-half hectares of good land for
sixteen years.
In the village district of Starososnimskaja, in the spring of
1886, ninety peasants borrowed from a kulack the sum of 1832.70
roubles, and pledged themselves to repay it on August 1
following, in 6,109 puds of rye, which the kulack valued at
28-30 copecks a pud. In addition to this, they had also to
pay 2,125 puds of hay, of which 1,000 puds were estimated
at four copecks each, and the rest at five copecks. At the same
time that these peasants were compelled to sell their grain at
thirty copecks per pud, their creditors were selling to other
hard-pressed peasants at seventy-five copecks to one rouble per pud.
In 1885, the peasants in Malouza, district Novo Usensk,
borrowed 300 roubles from a merchant for half a-year, and
gave him in payment seven yoke of the best draught oxen, two
large ploughs, two waggons, and two water casks; these last
are especially well made, and of considerable cost.
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