The region which has been selected for the present discussion comprises two Districts: Dankoff and Ranenburg, (or Oranienburg) in the province (Gubernia) of RyazaÑ. They are situated in Middle Russia, between North latitude 53° and 53° 31´, East longitude 38° 40´ and 40° 10´, and enjoy a moderate climate, at least when judged by Russian ideas. The soil is mostly pure black earth, the rest being made up of black earth mixed, or alternated with other soils.[16]

According to the census taken by the zemstvo in 1882, the entire peasant population of this region numbered 36,126 families, composed of 232,323 males and females, and living in 653 village communities.

Agrarian communism is the prevailing form of land tenure; the right of property belongs to the community, while the land is either used in common, or subdivided in equal shares among the members of the community, according to some scale, adopted by the same.

It is the pasture alone that remains to-day in the common use of all the members of the community. Arable land and meadow are subdivided, and remain in the temporary possession of the several householders. But after harvest and mowing they return into communal usage, for pasture.

Still, side by side with agrarian communism, we meet with that peculiar form of hereditary tenure known as “quarterly” (tschetvertnoye) possession.[17] The difference between agrarian communism and quarterly possession consists in the fact that under the former, the plots are fixed by the mir, whereas under the latter they are fixed through inheritance, gift, etc. Yet it is not the land itself, but some ideal share in the common possession, that is held by the individual, precisely as under agrarian communism. The arable land, though considered by law as private property, is virtually subdivided by the community according to the same rules as those practiced wherever agrarian communism is dominant—the pasture, the forest, and the meadow are in the possession of the community. The forest and the meadow are redivided yearly. The villages differ as to the standard of subdivision: in some of them the lots of the peasants are proportioned to the size of the inherited lots of arable land, in some they are equal. The pasture is used in common.

It is a well established fact that the actual agrarian communism among the majority of the State peasants of the region in question is a phenomenon of very recent date and has evolved from hereditary possession.[18]

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the present gubernias of Middle Russia formed the boundaries of Muscovy adjoining the dominions of the Porte and the military Republic of Little Russia. To defend the borders of the state a kind of national militia, or yeomanry, was settled along the frontiers. As usual, it was granted land in fee. The gradual transformation of fee into patrimony by force of legislation did not, however, concern this class of tenants in fee, as they did not count among the gentry. Nevertheless, the process went on, thanks to the natural play of economic forces. Mr. Pankeyeff, in his essay on the subject, does not show us the causes of the frequent sales of small fees during the eighteenth century. As the times coincided with the period during which the resources of the country were strained to the utmost in order to keep up the aggressive annexation policy of the Empire, it seems very probable that this mobility of the land belonging to the yeomen (odnodvortzy, as they were designated after 1719) was due to the burdens imposed by the State. On the other hand, the policy of the government in regard to this class tended to bring them down to the level of the peasantry. Alienability of land was obviously opposed to these views of the government, since thereby many members of this class became landless. The attempt was therefore made to put a stop to it by a series of ukases forbidding the sale of lands belonging to the odnodvortzy. To insure obedience to its ukases the government, in 1766, changed the method of allotting land to the odnodvortzy, in conformity with the communistic method used by the peasantry. It was ordered that land should henceforth be measured for the entire village in one tract, and not in individual parcels to every householder, as had been previously done; and at the same time the alienation of lots was forbidden. Thus the community was entrusted with the subdivision of the land among its members. The distribution was based originally upon the dimensions of individual possession of former times. It generally led, however, through many intermediate forms to the establishment of equal distribution, i. e. to agrarian communism. According to the information gathered by the Ministry of Public Domains, toward the fifties, the odnodvortzy, as regards the forms of possession, were divided as follows:[19]

In all the villages inhabited by these 533,201 persons, agrarian communism came to be substituted for the once generally prevailing quarterly possession. In the region now in question there were, according to the census taken by the Government in 1849, 287 villages inhabited by odnodvortzy in the whole gubernia of RyazaÑ. According to the forms of landholding they were divided as follows:

Here also agrarian communism developed from quarterly possession. The process went on after 1849, without even stopping after the reform of 1866, by which the land held by the former odnodvortzy was recognized as their private alienable property. The progress of agrarian communism between 1849 and 1882 can be seen from the following table:[20]

EXTENSION OF QUARTERLY POSSESSION.

What appears here in most striking contradiction with the ideas universally adopted by modern writers, is the inverse historical correlation between these two forms of possession. This fact seems to offer a new argument in favor of the theory which regards community of land as a derivative form of ownership owing its origin to the policy of the State. Prof. Tschitscherin, the author of this theory, maintains that the land community was called into life by the ukases of Peter I establishing the poll tax and the responsibility in solido of all members of the community for the punctual payment of the tax.

A full discussion of the issue in controversy does not come within the scope of this essay; for whatever may have been the origin of the land community, its existence during the past two centuries is a fact beyond dispute; and it is only the period after the emancipation that constitutes the immediate subject under consideration. Moreover, the theory belongs to an epoch when the study of the history of the Russian peasantry was yet in its infancy. In the course of the last thirty years this special branch of knowledge has progressed enormously, and Prof. Tschitscherin’s views have been since abandoned by the students of the history of Russian law. A few remarks will suffice for the purpose of the present discussion, inasmuch as no one to-day believes that communism in land sprang, like Minerva, from the head of some administrative Jupiter.

Responsibility in solido for the payment of taxes could hardly be thought of in a country of developed individualism. It presupposes a state of society in which not the individual but the aggregate alone counts in social relations. And such was indeed the social condition of Russia as late as the seventeenth century. The Council of the Commons (Zemskee Sobor) represented, not, as under modern constitutional governments, the individual voters, but the communities alone. These Councils were convoked on extraordinary occasions, one of their chief purposes being to assess certain additional taxes upon the communities represented therein, but never upon individual tax-payers. Even punishments were inflicted in solido upon the community where a murdered body had been found, or some other crime had been perpetrated, and the culprit remained undiscovered. Collective ownership in land appears to be the inseparable concomitant, if not the material basis, of such social conditions.

The study of the development of landed property among the odnodvortzy, however, brought about a revival of the views held by Prof. Tschitscherin, so far as this class of the Russian peasantry is concerned. Prof. Klutschefsky advanced the opinion that the growth of communal landholding was due to the policy of the Government, which saw in this form of ownership a means of guaranteeing the fiscal interest. The fact that the ukases of the Government interfered with the method of surveying the land among the odnodvortzy, as well as with the purchase and sale of their lots, seems to support this opinion. On the other hand, Mr. Semefsky, the famous historian of the Russian peasantry, thinks that the establishment of agrarian communism was due to the initiative of the peasantry, who came to the conclusion that this form of ownership suited their needs better than did quarterly possession. The Government acted only in accordance with the wishes of the peasants, as expressed in numberless petitions and land-suits, and granted the sanction of law to the results of economic development.

Mr. Pankeyeff, the statistician, inclines to the latter opinion. The investigations made by the statisticians of the zemstvo, showed that the struggle over the form of landholding was very obstinate and lasted for years. Oftentimes the contending parties had recourse to violence. The courts were encumbered with interminable suits, and not infrequently the courts and the government decided in favor of quarterly possession. Thus the decisive stand made by the government in favor of the village community is open to question. Moreover, the development of agrarian communism from quarterly possession after the emancipation, when the policy of the government took a turn directly favoring private property, is considered by the peasantists as a proof of the vitality of the communistic spirit among the peasantry. While the promoters of agriculture upon a large scale, on the one hand, and the Russian Marxists, on the other hand, point out the growing dissolution of the village community, the example of the quarterly landholding tends, in the view of the peasantists, to disprove their position. Mr. Pankeyeff claims that, even at present, quarterly landholding cannot be considered as a settled form of possession. A hidden strife is ever going on within the village between the rich and the poor, similar to that which previously led to the final victory of agrarian communism; and it seems very probable that the latter will soon triumph over quarterly possession all along the line.

There appears, however, to be room for yet a third view. The case can hardly be considered as one of evolution from private property to communal landholding; nor, consequently, can it serve to support the theory that derives communal landholding from the policy of the government.

As Mr. Pankeyeff correctly puts it, quarterly landholding, even in its present aspect, combines the features of private and communal property.

If we go back to the origin of quarterly landholding, we find that even the fees granted to the yeomen in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries cannot be construed as private property. The land was given in temporary or hereditary possession; the right of property remained with the state. The pasture, the forest, and the meadow were allotted to the village as a whole, not to the individual yeoman. The arable alone was apportioned to every one in separate plots. Though these plots were conferred on individuals, through inheritance, gift etc., yet this cannot be considered as a proof of private property in land. It must be borne in mind that wherever in Russia land is in abundance, its possession rests upon the title by occupancy. In Siberia such plots pass from father to son, or daughter, exactly as was the custom among the quarterly landholders some hundred years ago. And yet by all students of the Russian village community this is regarded as communal, not individual, landholding, since the supreme right over the land rests in the community. So long as there is no want of land, this right is exercised by using the stubble as common pasture after the harvest. As soon as land, with the increase of population, becomes too scarce to allow of unlimited exercise of the right of first possession, the supreme right of the community asserts itself through the subdivision of the “claims” (zaeemka). In the region under consideration the right of first possession[21] was still in use in the beginning of this century, and the movement toward subdivision of the arable land dates from then.[22]

In the district now under review we are able to observe the steps in the transition from possession by occupancy to subdivision of arable land. We find here the original form—quarterly ownership, and the final form—equal subdivision of the land by the community among its members, and the intermediate stage in which one part of the field is subdivided into fixed hereditary shares, and the other part in equal lots among all the members of the community.

In the districts of Dankoff and Ranenburg, in those communities where this intermediate form of possession is prevalent, forty-four per cent of the whole land (pasture, forest and meadow inclusive) is now considered as communal property. Formerly it was all common pasture. When want of land began to be felt, various tracts of the communal pasture were taken possession of by individual householders, and converted into arable land. This arable land was the first to be declared the property of the community, and subject to equal subdivision among the community’s members. The next step is subdivision of the quarterly arable. Thereby the intermediate form passes into communal landholding proper, or agrarian communism.[23]

The conclusion which can be drawn from the facts as presented above is that quarterly landholding, is but an archaic form of communal landholding, and follows no exceptional course in its development, though that development has been somewhat retarded.