time amounted to 101,859,173 desiatins. In the period between 1906 and 1911 the peasants acquired through the Peasants' State Bank 5,252,000 desiatins; thus, at the present time (1912), about 30,000,000 desiatins of the land in Russia is owned by peasants. The greater part of this land (80 per cent.) was bought by them from the nobles. During the period from 1861 to 1905 the amount of land belonging to the nobles was decreased by about 26,000,000 desiatins, and in 1905 there were 53,292,838 in the possession of the nobles, or 52°3 per cent. of the land in private ownership. At the present time (1912) the amount in possession of the nobles is about 49,000,000 desiatins.

PART II.

There are no historical records to show with any exactitude what the system of land tenure by the smerdi (free labourers) had been in Kievan Rus. The only known documents relate to north-eastern Russia at the end of the XIVth and during the XVth centuries. According to these documents the system was communal. The question of the origin of the commune (obschina) and the time of its appearance has been the subject of much and heated discussion in Russian literature. It is now regarded as established that the obschina is of very ancient origin, and is the basic form of land tenure among the Slav races.

The Russian obschina is supposed to have originated in Kievan Rus after the breaking up of the Clans, the separate families, dvori, having formed themselves into unions, known as verve, in "Russkaya Pravda." The verve not only regulated the distribution and taxation of the land, but, to a certain extent, exercised administrative and judicial power over its members; its representatives, elected at the meetings of the heads of families, acting as intermediaries between the people and the Sovereign prince.

By degrees the increase of the Sovereign power caused the diminution and loss of the administrative functions of the obschina. It became purely agrarian in its functions, though its position was no less important than before. The obschina was responsible as a body for the land taxes due to the Sovereign and to its landlords, the fixing of the tax and the amount and quality of land held by each member of the community being entirely a matter for its internal administration, and not subject to interference from the State. The Moscow princes appreciated the obschina as a convenient instrument for their fiscal objects, and sometimes also made use of it for political purposes, as when, for instance, Ivan the Terrible, in his struggle with the boyare, looked for support to the common people, and reorganised the obschina into an economic and administrative selfgoverning body.

After the free migration of the peasants had been stopped, and they had by degrees become the serfs of their landlords, the obschina, not only held its ground, but was extended to places where it had not before existed, the pomiestchiki preferring to deal with it, as representing the peasants, rather than with the individuals themselves.

The Emancipation of the Serfs raised the problem of the continuance of the existence of the obschina, that is to say, the problem whether land should be given to the peasants as nadiel in a communal form or to individual proprietors. The solution was found in a compromise between the two extremes; the obschina was preserved in those places where it already existed, but the form of tenure of the land was made optional. Either the land of the whole community. might be divided among the individual members, or any individual might claim his share and become an independent proprietor provided that he paid the whole of his redemption money.

From that time until lately (1904-5), the attitude of the

Government has been on the whole in favour of preserving the obschina. It was regarded as a pillar of conservatism and a safeguard against the formation of a proletariat class. There was a tendency to take advantage of the new power to break up the obschina on the one hand, by the richer peasants who redeemed their land, in order to get rid of the responsibility which rested on the obschina as a body for the payment of taxes and redemption money to the State; and on the other hand, by the poorer peasants who found it profitable to sell their land, the result being that a certain amount of nadiel got into the hands of merchants and other persons not of the peasant class.

In 1893, the Government, therefore, took steps to check this tendency to leave the obschina, by making it permissible to do so only by consent of two-thirds of that body, while the selling of land given as nadiel was stopped by a law forbidding its sale by peasants except to other peasants.

The Government, while preserving the obschina, took measures to restrict its independence, by placing it under the control of the local nobility from among whom a Zemsky Natchalink was appointed by the Crown, to whom the resolutions passed by the obschina had to be submitted for confirmation before they could be carried out.

The events of 1905 and 1906 showed, however, that the hopes of the Government of getting conservative support from the peasants, to whom a large extension of the franchise. had been given, were destined to disappointment. After the dissolution of the first Duma, in which, contrary to the expectations of the Government, the peasants' representatives formed the extreme left party, their policy in respect to the obschina was completely reversed. A ukase was issued on November 9th, 1906, intended to destroy the obschina and create among the peasants a class of small landowners. This ukase repealed the law of 1893, and

restored to every member of the obschina the right to leave it, and claim his own share of land by right of property.

To encourage the speedy break up of the obschina, the Government not only made use of the local influence of officials, but offered loans on easy terms to the peasants who wished to leave it and establish themselves on their own farms.

At the beginning of 1906, the amount of land in the fifty provinces of European Russia, in communal property, was 99,013,000 desiatins, held by 9,009,900 heads of families (dvor), about three millions of whom had in their possession less than five desiatins each, a holding, which in Russia, is insufficient to maintain a family. From the time of the said ukase until the 1st of April, 1911, 2,116,600 applications to separate from the obschina have been made, of which 1,510,100 have already been granted, the amount of land taken up being 10,942,000 desiatins. The greater number of these applications were made by peasants who had already left agricultural pursuits and were following various trades and other callings; and by the very poorest peasants who only desired their share of land in order to sell it. The tendency among actual agriculturists to abandon the communal system and pass to that of individual property, is specially observable in the south-east and south-west of Russia, where the obschina had not long been established, and had never been strong. In Central Russia, the tendency towards the communal holding of land is more firmly rooted, and it is a remarkable fact that even where the obschina has been broken up, the peasants do not take each his land as his own individual property, but they form groups, each group applying to the administration of its share of the land, as far as the new conditions permit, the principles of the Communal System, and thus one large obschina breaks up into several small bodies somewhat resembling it.

PART III.

The principle of the system of the communal holding of land as it stands now in Russian law, is that the land belongs by right of property to the obschina or union of peasants, each member having only the right of possession. The subject of communal property is land, namely, arable land, pastures, forest, etc. The house plots belong by right of property to the families, and are held by them in hereditary possession. As proprietor, the obschina has the right to dispose of the communal land, to let it on lease, and even to sell it. The right of disposition has, however, been restricted in many respects by different recent enactments.

The pastures, forests, etc., are enjoyed in common by all members of the obschina, but ploughed fields are divided equally among them, the basis of partition usually being the number of males in the community. As this number varies from time to time, periodical re-division is necessary. This formerly took place in some of the obschinas every three or four years, and the result of it naturally was a tendency to destroy initiative in improving the land. The law of 1893 fixed the period of re-partition at every twelve years, and any peasant who had taken steps to improve his holding had a right to receive the same piece of land again, or else be compensated for his outlay.

The quality of the lands of the obschina being varied, each peasant is allotted a narrow strip of each quality, often at long distances apart. In addition to this inconvenience, a uniform system of rotation in culture is compulsory under such conditions in order to keep cattle on the pastures and separated from the other crops. As mentioned before, the obschina, as a body, is answerable for the community in the matter of taxes and other service of a public nature, the individual members of it are bound by mutual responsibility. Thus, the essential features of communal land tenure are