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and found there such traits of character and qualities of
sterling worth as awoke their wondering admiration. True,
beneath their nominal Christianity they retained many pagan
ideas and practices, and to the upper classes showed suspicion
and mistrust. But in their life with each other they displayed
an honesty, reliability, and devotion to the common good that
contrasted sharply with the corruption of the aristocracy.
The rise of the modern democratic movement in Russia dates
from the pioneer work of these explorers in the peasant world;
since then thousands of men and women belonging to the
upper classes have “gone to the people,” to learn their life
and do their part in bridging the gulf that yawns between,
and many of these have made valuable contributions to our
knowledge of different sides of the mushik’s life. It is of deep
significance that Count Tolstoi, with his extensive learning,
penetrating genius, and deep knowledge of men, points his
educated countrymen who are seeking for a religion of the
heart and conscience “to the peasants” whom he has learnt to
know better than any other man.
The centre of the peasant’s life is the mir, or village
community. The origin of this institution is obscure; according
to Tchitcherin and others it is not older than the sixteenth
century, and was instituted by a ukase of Tsar Fédor
Ivanovitch; others recognise in it a survival of ancient usage, dating
from a time before the rise of autocracy. However that may
be, whether the mir in title and official connection is or is not
a thing of recent creation, it is certain that in its purest form
it embodies convictions and practices that lie so deep in the
Russian peasant’s nature that they can only be explained as
the result of long ages of use.
The mir is the village community itself assembled to decide
all questions that affect the life of the community, where all
are equal and officialism is unknown. It has, indeed, a starosta,
or village elder, as president and executive agent, but his power
is not over the mir, but from it.
Of all the matters that occupy the mir naturally the land is
the chief, and it is here that its peculiar nature is most revealed.
The Russian peasant has no conception of land as private
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