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36 PROBLEMS CONFRONTING RUSSIA
land was used in common, and belonged to the peasant
community as a whole—the mir. Accord ng to the changes
in the number of " souls," this land was constantly
subdivided by the community under the direct control of the
landlord, who had the right to demand a certain amount
of work to be done by the peasants on his own estate in
return for their allotment. When serfdom and the right
of the landlord to the labour of the peasants was abolished
by Alexander II in 1861, the common land remained at
the disposal of the latter, and the landlord received from
the State, as compensation for the loss of their labour,
money certificates bearing percentages, and subject to
redemption. The State in its turn mposed upon the village
communities as a whole a tax, arranging for the payment
of the percentage to the landlord and the gradual
redemption of the money certificate. These certificates have now
all been redeemed.
The peasant community, the mir, had to fix the amount
to be paid by each person. It had the power to exact
penalties from those who did not pay their quota at the
right time, and even possessed the right to administer
corporal punishment or to exile to Siberia any persons so
condemned. To a great extent the mir thus took over the
rights previously exercised by the landlords, and the peasants
found themselves economically in a state of even greater
dependence than before the abolition o’ serfdom. The
harshness of this system was the direct result of the
above-mentioned principle that the village community as a whole
was responsible for the payment of the taxes. This system,
the krugovaia porouka, meant practically that the
industrious, sober, and worthy peasant had to pay for the lazy,
drunken, and worthless one. Socialistic cranks tried to
find in the krugovaia porouka a cure for all social evils.
The mir system was praised as a panacea and an ideal
arrangement for counteracting all the ills that exist, owing
to the difference between those who have and those who
have not. Unfortunately, in practice the advantages of
the mir and of the krugovaia porouka proved to be illusory.
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