The Russian peasantry; their agrarian condition, social life and religion

Front matter

i LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. %

UNITED STATES OF AiVlERfCA. 2^

THEIR

Preface

tellers of our generation there is none whoso works are read with such avidity as those of Gleb Uspensky on village life.

The extraordinary development and variety of this kind of literature may well be taken as a conclusive proof that, apart from the great taste shown by our public for this class of subject, there must be something really original and worth studying in our rural classes. Neither democratic tendencies nor patriotism could have withstood dulness and insipidity for so long a time.

Our peasants have in fact something unusual about them. They have not lived upon the crumbs of intellectual food which have fallen from the tables of their cultured brethren. Their popular morals, their social aims, and their religion are all their own, and differ greatly from those prevailing with the upper classes.

For the present generation the study of popular life has acquired an exceptional interest and importance, as the manifold influences of the new times have wrought a general downfall of the very basis of rural life. Eussian peasants are passing through an actual crisis — economical, social, and religious — and the future of our country depends upon its solution.

In the book we now have the honor to lay before the English reader we have tried to show as briefly and as fully as possible the main features and the bearings of this double process of growth and decay,

VI PREFACE.

now to be observed within our rural classes. The task we set ourselves was to choose from among the ricli materials scattered throughout our literature for the last score of years, and to arrange the various separate pieces into one general picture. This work is therefore the natural supplement and completion of our two former books, which were devoted to the description of various aspects of the same crisis in the higher, though narrower, walks of our national life.

Most of that which is described in these volumes refers to the bulk of the Russian peasantry ; but in dealing with the political views and social habits of our rural classes, and the changes they have undergone since their emancipation, we have had the Great Russian peasants chiefly in view. It is they who have shaped Russian history in the past, and who will certainly play the leading part in her future.

In conclusion, we* beg to acknowledge our obligation to the Times^ in whose columns the chapters upon the Agrarian Question first appeared ; and to the Fortnightly Review^ which opened its pages to the chapters on " The Moujiks and Russian Democracy" (considerably enlarged for the present work), and to the first and third chapters of the section entitled "Paternal Government." The remaining matter, i.(^., three-fourths of the entire work, is now published for the first time.

Stepniak.

March, 1888.

Contents

PAGE

THE MOUJIKS AND THE RUSSIAN DExMOCRACY. . . 73

PATERNAL GOVERNxMENT 93

THE RASCOL . . . o . 236

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION.

Chapter I

In all European countries the agrarian question is of great moment, but in none does it possess the same interest and importance as in Russia. Here the agricultural class" constitutes eighty-two per cent, of the entire population — equal for European Russia, exclusive of Finland and Poland, to about sixty-three million souls. Ireland alone, with seventy-three per cent, of her population engaged in husbandry, approaches at some distance this figure. Russia is, and must undoubtedly for many years remain, a peasant State in the fullest acceptation of the term. With us, therefore, the agrarian question is the national question, and agrarian concerns are national concerns, all others being dependent on and subservient to them. The tillers of the soil — our moujiks — must of necessity become the chief figures in our social and political life. On the moujik rests the financial, military, and political power of the State, as well as its interior cohesion and prosperity. The inclinations, ideals, and aspirations of the moujiks will also play the principal part in the remoulding of Russia's future. For all interested in politics — statesmen and administrators, writers and scholars — the moujik must be the prime object of study, observation, and investigation, as well as of practical manipulation.

For the same reasons the Russian moujik has always attracted the attention of observant travellers who have desired 1 to make known to English -speaking readers the agrarian conditions of this strange country, of which so much is said and so little known. There are few among educated foreigners who have not heard of the self-governing, semirepublican mir and the somewhat communistic Russian system of land tenure, with its periodical equalizations and divisions. Much less attention has been given by the European public to the modern phases of Russian agrarian life, albeit this side of the question is perhaps the most interestinor and instructive.

The Emancipation Act of February 19, 1861, enfranchising and settling the economical conditions of one-half of our rural population, the former serfs of the nobility, followed in 1866 by a second Act, settling the condition of the other half, the former State peasants, were by far the most extensive experiments in the way of agrarian legislation the world has yet seen. The peculiarities of our traditional system of land tenure, sanctioned to a great extent by the Emancipation Act, imparted to this experiment an additional interest.

That these experiments have not proved a success no competent person can now den3^ Emancipation has utterly failed to realize the ardent expectations of its advocates and promoters. The great benefit of the measure was purely moral. It has failed to improve the material condition of the former serfs, who on the whole are worse off than they were before the Emancipation. The bulk of our peasantry is in a condition not far removed from actual starvation — a fact which can neither be denied nor concealed even by the official press.

The frightful and continually increasing misery of the toiling millions of our country is the most terrible count in the indictment against the Russian Government, and the paramount cause and justification of the rebellion against it. It would be a gross injustice to affirm that the Govern-

THE RUSSIAN AGRAKIAN QUESTION. ~3

raent has directly ruined or purposely injured the peasantry. Whv should it act with such foolish and wanton wickedness ? We can well understand that a despotic government, caring only for its own selfish interests, should object to the commonalty being educated. But it is to the Government's own material advantage to have well-to-do taxpayers rather than the beggarly ones it has now. I admit willingly that the central government quite sincerely intended to benefit the peasants, not only morally but economically, by the agrarian arrangement of 1861 ; still more so by that of 1866, which is better than its predecessor in every respect, the Government in the latter case not having been hampered by a desire to conform to the wishes of the nobility.

Leaving out of the question the immaterial point of intentions, I am ready to go the length of acknowledging that it would be incorrect to maintain that to the Government's unintentional blunders should be ascribed the ruin which has overtaken the peasants. The new agrarian arrangement is very unsatisfactory, and the system of taxation is simply monstrous. I shall presently show how far both these elements contributed towards reducing the peasants to their present condition. But still it was not the Government's direct doing. There is one consideration which clearly proves this. Since the Emancipation the yield from the direct taxes imposed on the peasants has increased. But until 1879 their burdens had increased twelve per cent. only. Since that time they have remained stationary, and of late years there is even a slight decrease in the direct taxes — very slight, yet still a decrease. As to the impoverishment of the masses, measured by the reduced consumption of food and the increase in the rate of mortality, it is frightful and intense, and shows no sign of abatement whatever. This is proof to demonstration that there must be at work another corrosive influence more inexorable and fatal and less under control even than the actions of the uncontrollable bureaucracy.

This influence lies in the new economical system, quite opposed to the traditions and ideals of the Russian peasantry, and which has been forced on them by the Act of Emancipation. In these few pages I purpose to present a brief, yet as far as possible complete, account of the results of the Russian agrarian experiment, derived from the numerous and painstaking reports on the subject in which modern Russian literature is so rich.

But what constitutes the basis of the traditional economic conceptions of our agricultural classes? The communal system of land tenure, the reader may suggest, is its most original and striking feature. On this, however, I shall not dwell. First, because it was affected but slightly by the Emancipation Act of 1861, which gave each village commune the option either of breaking up their land into private allotments and distributing it among independent families, or keeping it as common property. Secondly, because the communal land tenure, though accepted by seventy-three per cent, of our peasantry, is only exceptional among the Ruthenians, who form the remainder of our rural population. The evil inflicted by the Emancipation Act is of a much wider reach and greater importance; it arises not from the way in which occupying owners divide their properties among themselves, but from the fact that they are fast being divorced from the soil which they till.

The Russian popular conceptions of land tenure, though they may seem somewhat heterodox to a Western lawyer or modern economist, are exactly the same as those which in past times prevailed among all European nations before they happened to fall victims to somebody's conquest. Russian peasants hold that land, being an article of universal need, made by nobody, ought not to become property in the usual sense of the word. It naturally belongs to, or, more exactly, it should remain in the undisturbed possession of those by whom, for the time being, it is cultivated.

If the husbandman discontinues the cultivation of his holding he has no more right over it than the fisher over the sea where he has fished, or the shepherd over the meadow where he has once pastured his flock.

This does not, however, imply any question as to the right of the worker over the product of his labor. In Russia a peasant who has improved and brought under tillage new land always obtains from the mir a right of undisturbed possession for a number of years, varying in its maximum, in divers provinces, from twelve to forty years, but strictly conforming in each case to the amount of labor which had been bestowed on it by the peasant and his family. During this period the occupier possesses the full right of alienating his holding by gift or sale. But when the husbandman is supposed to have been fully remunerated for his work, all personal prescriptive right ceases.

These notions cannot be called exclusively Russian ; they are deeply rooted throughout the Slavonic world, save among the few tribes who have been long subjected to Western influences and overdrilled by the feudal regime. The Turkish domination proved in this respect much more tolerant. The customs which prevail among the Balkan slavs are almost identical with those commonly accepted in Russia. Here, according to Bohishitch, the people do not recognize a right of property in virgin land. When cultivated it becomes the rightful property of its occupier, and remains his so long as he continues to improve it with the work of his own hands. A tenant who has cultivated for ten years without interruption another man's land becomes ipso facto its legitimate proprietor, and ceases to pay rent on the ground that he has bought up by his ten years' payments the claims which the former landlord might have acquired. In Bulgaria, according to the same authority, the principle is pushed still further. Here simple wage-laborers acquire th^ right of ownership over the land on which they have been employed without interruption for the ten years' period, so that farmers, in order to avoid being expropriated, change their laborers at least once before the expiration of every ten years.

In Russia, until its close alliance with Western countries in Peter the Great's time, the popular notions as to land tenure were common to all classes, the Government included. ** There is no country," says Prince "Wassiltchikoff, in concluding his careful study of the history of our agrarian legislation, " in which the idea of property in land was so vague and unsteady as it was until very recently with us, not only in the minds of the peasants, but also of the representatives and heads of the State. The right of use, of possession, of the occupation of land, has, on the contrary, been very clearly and firmly understood and determined from time immemorial. The very word * property,' as applied to land, hardly existed in ancient Russia. No equivalent to this neologism is to be found in old archives, charters, or patents. On the other hand, we meet at every step with rights acquired by use and occupation. The land is recognized as being the natural possession of the husbandman, the fisher, or the hunter — of him who * sits upon it.' " In the living language of peasants of modern times there is no term which expresses the idea of property over the land in the usual sense of the word. The expression " our land " in the mouth of a peasant includes indiscriminately the whole land he occupies for the time being, the land which is his private property (under recent legislation), the land held in common by the village (which is therefore only in the temporary possession of each household), and also the land rented by the village from neighboring landlords. Here we see once more the fact of working the land identified with rights of ownership.

When serfdom was introduced, and one half of the arable land, with the twenty-three millions of human beings tvho lived thereon, gradually became the property of thef nobility, the newly enslaved peasants found less difficulty in realizing the fact of their slavery than in understanding the law which allotted the land to those by whom it was not tilled. ** We are yours," they said to their masters, *' but the land is oursi" "Jfy vashi^ zemlia nasha^^ — this stereotyped, hundred-times-quoted phrase, vividly sums up the Russian peasant's conception of serfdom.

When, after so many years of expectation, disappointment, and delusive hopes, the longed-for day of emancipation came for the down-trodden serfs, the idea of the impending enfranchisement assumed in the rural mind only one and the same shape through all the empire — that when once restored to freedom they would not be despoiled of that which they bad possessed as slaves — their land. The universal expectation, as proved by the universal disappointment, was that the freed peasants would have all the land which they had previously tilled. As to the nobles, their former masters, the Czar would keep them, they thought, henceforward " on salary, as he kept his generals." This was the ingenuous and naive expression of a very clear and practical idea — that of the State buying out the landlords by means of a vast financial operation. This was precisely the measure advocated by Tchernyshevszy and the Govremennik party as the best and most convenient solution of the Russian agrarian problem.

The Government, as might well be expected, was loath to adopt a course which seemed so hazardous and new. Fortunately for itself it did not follow the opposite course, which would have been the signal for a tremendous popular rising — the enfranchisement of the peasants without any land at all, as suggested by the reactionary anti-abolitionist party. The freed peasants were endowed with small parcels of land carved out of the estates of their masters, who retained, however, the greater part of their properties.

The idea of the Government was to keep up the system of great landlords while creating around them a class of resident owners.

This may have seemed a fair compromise, but in reality it was not so. In the preamble of the Emancipation Act the intention of the Government was clearly defined. "To provide the peasants," it ran, " with means to satisfy their needs, and enable them to meet their obligations to the State (payment of taxes), the peasants will receive in permanent possession allotments of arable land and other appendages, as shall be determined by the Act." Hence, a small proprietor, according to the Government's own definition, is a husbandman having a piece of land on which he can live, however poorly, and pay his taxes — a definition which economists will readily accept. A peasant in this position is indeed a regular " small proprietor," or resident owner. If, however, a man possess a patch of land of a few square yards on which he can grow a bushel of potatoes, he is a " proprietor " all the same, but only from a juridical point of view. In the eyes of an economist he is a pure proletarian, amenable to the economical laws regulating the conditions of this and not the other class.

Now to which of these two cateojories do the enfranchised Russian peasants belong? Certainly not to that of small proprietors, in the economical sense. Neither are they pure proletarians. They partake of both characters, in what proportion we shall see further on. Let it here suffice to say that the land was so parsimoniously apportioned that the enfranchised peasants were utterly unable to provide themselves with the first necessaries of life. With few exceptions, the bulk of our peasantry are compelled to look to wage-labor, mostly agricultural, on their former masters' estates and elsewhere, as an essential, and often the chief, source of their livelihood.

Thus the Act of Emancipation did not, as its promoters intended, create side by side small and large land-owners who could live and labor and thrive independently without obstructing and damaging each other's work. The peasants were not independent of the landlords. The landlords were not independent of the peasants. There existed in Russia at the time of the Emancipation no agrarian proletariat whatever. The landlords could nowhere find regular wage-laborers by whom they might replace their enfranchised serfs. The cultivation of the landlords' vast estates had either to be entirely dropped or their serfs compelled to till them for hire.

This was the new principle on which Russian rural economy had thenceforward to be based. It was decidedly opposed to our national and inveterate traditions, as I have just shown. It was borrowed from Western countries. I do not say that it was not better than serfdom. It certainly was better. Neither do I affirm that those who introduced it had the slightest suspicion of the havoc which in one generation it was destined to produce. I am simply stating a sad but undeniable fact. In social and political life, as well as in the domain of art and fiction, imitations seem always to bear the same original sin ; while reproducing with great fidelity the drawbacks, imitators ignore and forget the merits of their exemplars. Thus the Capitalist order came to us without any of the free elements of polity which were its outcome in the countries of its birth. All the advantages in the impending struggle were therefore on one side. The masses were left with no means of defence, and the Government threw the enormous weight of its material and political power into the scale of wealth and against labor. The victory of the protected few over the helpless many was thenceforth assured. It was also complete and frightfully rapid.

In the following chapters I propose to describe the ways and means whereby this victory has been gained, and the consequences wbich it has entailed. As yet Russia is an enormous, albeit a comparatively simple, economical organism. Through the puzzling and disorderly complication of private economical operations we shall discover a striking unity of cause. It is a huge economical mechanism, combined upon one leading principle and having one consistent end. I shall begin by describing its central organs, those which impart movement and life to the whole — the banking and credit system, circulation of money, and the rest.

Chapter II

For obtaining full control of tbe resources of the country, Russian capitalists made use of two seemingly innocent means — the railways and credit. The construction of the railways was undertaken in the first instance by the Government itself. Very soon, however, the business was transferred to private companies, which the State supplied with capital, since at that time no private enterprise could raise such enormous sums as were involved in the construction of the railways. Up to January, 1883, 13,500 miles of permanent way had been laid in Russia proper, and the total amount of shares issued by the various companies was 2,210,000,000 rubles (about £22,000,000 sterling). Of this sum the Government supplied directly fifty-four per cent. — i,e,, more than half — the money being raised by several loans, chiefly foreign, the interest of which (four, four and a half, and five per qent.) is of course debited to the railway companies in their accounts with the State. In order to enable the companies to raise the remaining forty-six per cent, the Government guaranteed a minimum revenue, and undertook to make good out of the public funds any deficit that might arise. Nor is this all ; in cases of emergency the Government still continues to make supplementary grants to these companies, which have already been so generously subsidized from the national exchequer.

With the public finances always in an unsatisfactory condition, this lavishness must needs be a grievous burden on the budget. In 1869 the national debt amounted to 1907.5

12 THE RUSSIAN PEASANTEY.

millions of rubles, of which only 10.6 per cent, fell to the share of the railways. In January, 1883, the national debt had increased to 3267 millions of rubles, of which fully 28.3 per cent, had been contracted for the construction of railways. Thus the railway debt increased in this period absolutely fivefold, and at three times the rate of the national debt itself.

These outlays, it is true, figure in the budget as debts owing by the railway companies to the State — temporary loans which in due time will he repaid to the exchequer. But this is a mere fiction. The indebtedness of the railways to the State is continually increasing in each category under which the advances are made — viz., direct subsidies, guarantees, and interest on obligations. In 1877 the deficit in the annual payment due from the railways to the State amounted to 450.5 millions of rubles, while those of all the other debtors of the State (the peasants included) totaled up to only 154.7 millions, the railway companies thus engrossing seventy-four per cent, of the famous " arrears " (nedoimki) which are the plague of our finances. In the following year the railway debts had increased to seventy-seven per cent, of the total arrears, and rose subsequently to eighty per cent. In 1884 the total amount of railway debts was stated to be 886,000,000 rubles. In reality, however, it was more, because the Ministry passed a resolution to strike out of the list forty millions as " perfectly hopeless." Thus the total of railway debts in 1884 was about one and a half times as much as the entire revenue of the State.*

It might appear from this that the railways are the most disastrous of the many ruinous Russian State enterprises, and that the companies are running the country towards the verge of bankruptcy. In reality, however, it is not so.

* Eiissian Almanac^ 1886, p. 192.

THE RUSSIAN AGRARIAN QUESTION. IS

The prospects of the railways are as bright as anything can be in Russia. The railways are, on the whole, very prosperous. They are extending rapidly, and the profits of the companies are increasing both absolutely and as compared with former years. In the period from 1870 to 1877 each mile earned in gross receipts on an average fourteen per cent, more than in the preceding period. The expenses having in the same time augmented considerably, the net increase is not so great, being three per cent, per mile. In the following five years the increase of the gross receipts was ten per cent, for each mile. The dividends received by the share-holders in 1870 amounted to 32.5 millions of rubles; in 1877 they were 71.7 millions, an increase of 2.5. Nevertheless, the indebtedness of the railways to the State shows for the same period an increase of one hundred and fifty per cent.

This seems contradictory and rather puzzling. The explanation of the riddle is, however, very simple. The various railway lines are not equally profitable, and the Government, while leaving the extra profits of the best lines to their respective share-holders, has to make up the deficiency of the remainder.

It comes practically to this : The State, which has supplied the railway companies either directly or indirectly with all their funds, surrenders the profits of the enterprise to individual capitalists, taking for itself only the losses. In other words, the peasants (for as they contribute eighty-three per cent, of the whole budget they are the real paymasters) are paying a group of individual capitalists a tribute amounting from 1878 to 1882 to an average of forty-six millions of rubles a year.

Let us now ascertain what are the normal use and functions of this net-work of railways so dearly bought by the peasants. The railways transport freight and passengers, and statistics show that in Russia both are chiefly of rural origin.

The passengers first. We have to observe before anything else that passengers of the third class make eighty-three per cent, of the whole, and pay sixty-seven per cent, of all the receipts for fares. Thus even here, as everywhere else, the peasant is the main prop of the business. Why do our peasants travel so much ? Not, of course, for pleasure or for health, but in search of work. The traffic returns are very significant as to the extent to which the receipts are derived from the agricultural classes. During the winter months the passenger traffic is at its lowest ebb. In March, when field labor begins in the vast southern region of the empire, we observe on the other hand a sudden increase of 19.5 per cent. In April, when field labor extends to the central zones, there is a still greater increase — twenty-four per cent, over the previous month. In the following months the increase continues, though less rapidly ; the workers are at their posts busy with their work. In August the number of passengers attains its maximum; the workers have done, and return after the harvest to their homes in a body. In September the passenger traffic drops suddenly to 33.74 per cent., and goes on decreasing until the followin<x March.

The passenger traffic, in fact, corresponds with the cycle of agricultural work. It is represented by a single wave, having its greatest amplitude in the autumn and its lowest in the winter. This is an indirect but striking confirmation of Mr. Tchaslavsky's calculations that even in the out-door employment of our peasantry the agricultural branch has an overwhelming preponderance over the industrial.

The fluctuations in the passenger traffic show that they are the natural corollary of the periodical migrations of the tillers of the soil. The month of August, when the workers are returning wholesale to their penates, leaving behind them the produce they have harvested, presents, as we have seen, the greatest amplitude of the migratory wave. The

THE RUSSIAN AGRAKIAN QUESTIOlSr. 1#

same wnonth gives the lowest returns for heavy freights carried at low speeds. Time is required for the collection of the produce by the hands which forward it to its destination. In September the heavy traffic returns show a rise of 19.46 per cent., and the rise continues in October; but in November there is a sudden drop of 20.5 per cent. What does it mean ? The hard winter has frozen the rivers, thus hindering the carriage of corn and other agricultural products to the railway-stations by wat^r, the usual method, the transport by horses and oxen and carriages being too expensive. During the winter months there is little shipping of produce; but in March, when the rivers of the southern provinces are reopened to navigation, traffic increases 14.57 per cent. In May, when the navigation is open throughout Russia, the increase is 40.27 per cent., the same high rate being maintained in June. The pressure is then over, heavy traffic diminishes, and the diminution goes on until the following September. Goods traffic, in fact, like the passenger traffic, corresponds with the cycle of the agricultural year, with this difEerence — that while the shipping of merchandise, owing to climatic conditions, is divided into two pulsations, the movement of passengers has but one.

Now let us consider the other part of the mechanism — first, the all-powerful agent which sets in motion all this vast machinery — money. Ordinary banks were first introduced into Russia in 1864. Before that time the "Bank of the State" — the official bank of the Empire — was practically the sole institution of the sort in Russia. In 1864 its capital amounted to fifteen millions of rubles, with 262.7 millions of private deposits. Of this sum forty-two millions only were used for commercial purposes, by way of advances on mercantile paper. In 1877 the capital of all the banks amounted to 167.8 millions, the deposits to ?07,5 millions of rubles. In these thirteen years banking capital was increased more tlian elevenfold, a^d the deposits more than threefold (3j). At the same time the method of employing banking capital imderwent a thorough change. In 1864 only fifteen per cent, of the capital was, as we have seen, employed in discounts. In 1877 almost the whole — ninety-six per cent. — was used in this way. Loans and discounts for business purposes show a still more rapid increase. From 23.7 millions in 1864 the bills under discount rose to five hundred millions of rubles, more than twenty-one times as much. With the enormous increase in banking capital the rapidity of its circulation has moreover doubled. In 1863 the entire deposits were turned over about twice in a twelvemonth (1.85). Thirteen years later they were turned over nearly five times in the same period.