The awful famine which has lately been raging over an area as large as the territory of the Dreibund, and inhabited by a population as numerous as that of the “allied Republic,” has called the attention of the whole civilized world to the condition of the starving Russian peasant. A movement has been set on foot in this country to relieve the hard need of the sufferers. This has induced me to think that it would perhaps not be without some interest for the American student of economics to cast a glance at the rural conditions which have finally resulted in that tremendous calamity. I felt bound to improve the opportunity of having been educated in Russia, by introducing the American reader to some one portion of the vast Russian economic literature which, because of the language, remains as yet completely unknown to the scientific world at large.

Russians by education, though not by ethnical descent, who, in spite of having identified themselves with the cause of the Russian people, are now denied the honorable title of “Russian,” may find consolation in the fact that the first investigator of Russian history (SchlÖzer), the first grammarian who scientifically elaborated the laws of Russian grammar, our Brown (Vostokoff = von Osteneck), the best, if not the first Russian lexicographer, our Webster (Dahl), and finally the man who, it may be said, discovered for the Russian public the Russian village community, the mir (Freiherr August von Haxthausen), were all of foreign birth.

The last named discovery was destined to play a prominent part in the subsequent political history of Russia. Agrarian communism, spread throughout a vast country during an age of extreme economic individualism, when the last traces of such a form of possession were deeply buried in the past of European nations, gave rise for years to an erroneous theory both in Russia and in Western Europe, viz: that this was a specifically Russian or Slavic institution. In Russia it contributed greatly towards drawing the line between the two parties of the Russian educated class in “the epoch of the forties,” between the “occidentalists” (zapadniki) and the “slavophiles.”

The latter regarded the village community as being, with autocracy and orthodoxy, an emanation of the Russian “national spirit.” These three institutions were predestined in their belief to prevent Holy Russ from entering upon the impious ways of the “rotten West,” with its class antagonism, extremes of luxury and poverty, intestinal discords and civil wars.

Precisely for the same reasons, considering the village community as an integral part of the prevailing system of paternalism, the “occidentalists,” opposed to autocracy and orthodoxy, strove for the abolition of the mir as well as of bond serfdom.

The archaic communism of the mir appeared to them to stand in acute contradiction to Western liberalism or individualism. The “epoch of emancipation,” however, that came to realize the aspirations of the occidentalists, brought about a fundamental change of public opinion in regard to the village community.

The intellectual development in Russia was ever going on under the steady influence of Western ideas. The “epoch of the forties” coincided with the era during which socialistic and communistic ideas were in full blast throughout France. Thanks to the many Russian tourists and students who became imbued with these ideas during their sojourn in Paris, socialism, towards the end of “the forties,” attained no inconsiderable popularity among the educated class in Russia. Not to speak of Herzen or Bakunin—who were at that time closely affiliated with Proudhon, Karl Marx and other prominent representatives of the social movements of the day—Belinsky, who was the foremost Russian critic and publicist, equally renowned among all parties (except, of course, the bureaucratic party), became in his latter years a socialist. “Secret circles,” or, as they would be called in this country, debating clubs, swarmed in every large centre of intellectual culture. Among the young men connected with this movement, there was one who was later on to play a part of extraordinary importance in Russian history; this was Nicholas Gavrielovitch Tchernyshefsky.

The influence of Tchernyshefsky upon the development of Russia was far wider, and far more many-sided, than might be supposed. Philosophy, ethics, Æsthetics, criticism, political economy, politics, fiction:—these were the various fields of his activity; and everywhere his ideas determined the course of further development. It would require the elaborate study of a scholar to truly represent the historical value of Tchernyshefsky, who can justly be called the father of Russian Nihilism.

Nihilism was entirely misunderstood in Western countries. It will, perhaps, appear somewhat surprising to an English reader to learn that Jeremy Bentham’s doctrine of utilitarianism offered the philosophical foundation of Nihilism. The latter was in reality nothing but an attempt to construct socialism upon the basis of individual utility.

The village community, seen in the light of Nihilism, must evidently have presented quite a different aspect from that which it presented to both the slavophiles and the occidentalists of the preceding epoch. The first article of Tchernyshefsky upon the village community was written in 1857, on the eve of the emancipation of the peasants, and was in the form of a criticism on the papers that had appeared in the slavophile magazine Russkaya Beseda. Tchernyshefsky, though apparently an “occidentalist,” sided with the slavophiles, and in a series of brilliant articles laid down the basis of the so-called “peasantism” (narodnitchestvo) which since then, and until quite recently, has constituted the common ground of all liberal and radical aspirations in Russia, however greatly they may have differed upon other questions.

“Must Russian development of historical necessity follow in the tracks of Western Europe? Cannot Russia benefit by the lessons taught by the history of Western nations, and find out some new way of her own to avoid that evil of pauperism which necessarily accompanies private enterprise in production?”

These were the questions raised by Tchernyshefsky. Taking as a basis Hegel’s famous triad, he showed that Western Europe went from State regulation to individualism and laissez-faire, and now was entering upon a new path which tended toward coÖperation and social regulation of economic phenomena. Why then should Russia pass through the intermediate phase, since she already possessed a national institution which permeated the whole economic life of the people, and embodied the principles of coÖperation? The individualistic French farmer must inevitably succumb in the war of competition with the large landholder, for the latter is in a position to utilize all new agricultural improvements, while the former lacks all means of combination with his neighbors. On the other hand, supposing that the time has come for the introduction of improved machinery into Russian agriculture, would it require any revolution in the social relations prevailing in the Russian village? Not in the least; the land belongs to the community, and not to the individual; the forms of distribution of land are very various, and admit, not infrequently, even of collective mowing and subsequent distribution of the hay. If new machinery were to be introduced, the Russian community would combine at once the advantages of a large concern, and those of having each individual worker directly interested in his work. This latter, it is claimed, is the characteristic feature of small farm holding. Having thus proved the superiority of Russian communism in land, judged from the standpoint of individual utility, Tchernyshefsky goes on to the other very important question:

“Is it possible for Russia to leap over one phase of her historical development? Natura non agit per saltus.”

To answer this question he quoted the history of technical progress. There was a time when our forefathers produced fire by rubbing together pieces of dry wood. Man next found out how to strike the fire from flint, but centuries elapsed before matches were invented. Now suppose an African nation were to come into contact with European culture, would such a nation have to pass through all the inconveniences of the period of transition suffered by Europeans, or would it not rather adopt matches immediately? Applying the same principle to social institutions, Tchernyshefsky advocated nationalization of land, and communal landholding, as a basis for the emancipation of the peasants, which was then under the consideration of the government. In a paper entitled Is the Redemption of Land Difficult? he showed in figures the practicability of buying out the land by the government, and in a series of other articles he maintained that such a reform would prevent the formation of a proletariat in Russia.

The period that preceded the reform of 1861, was a time of universal enthusiasm for the liberal government on the part of the educated class. So much the greater was the disappointment when the reform was at last proclaimed. It has not been stated whether Tchernyshefsky himself was in any way connected with the “underground” agitation against the government, of which he was accused at so early a date as 1862. Tried in 1864, and exiled to Siberia, he was allowed to return to European Russia only in 1883, when the revolutionary party seemed to have been finally suppressed by the government. And yet for this whole period none but Tchernyshefsky was the spiritual leader of the social movement that sprang up from the disappointment caused by the manner in which the emancipation of the peasants had been carried out. It will be seen further that, owing to the origin and development of private ownership in land, nationalization of land became intimately connected, in the minds of the Russian peasants, with emancipation. Hence a series of riots in 1861-62, at the time when the reform was being put in force. The peasants claimed that they were duped by the “masters” and the officials, who were concealing from the people “the true will of the Czar.” The belief that the Czar desired to nationalize the land for the use of the tiller of the soil was so universal among the peasants that, in 1878, minister Makoff found himself under the necessity of issuing a special circular for the purpose of dispelling the gossip current upon the subject. The priests were ordered to read and explain this circular in all the churches; and on the 16th day of May, 1883, while receiving the elders of the peasants, who presented their congratulations on the solemn occasion of the Czar’s coronation, the latter told the delegates to disabuse the peasants’ minds of the false rumors of gratuitous distribution of land, that were being spread abroad by the enemies of the throne. Yet the influence of the said enemies of the throne was infinitesimal as compared with the extent to which these rumors became popular. On the contrary, instead of its being a case of the radicals influencing the people, it was precisely the radicals themselves who were influenced by this popular belief. The latter seemed to them a proof of the moral support their aspirations were to gain from the people; and if “the will of the people” is not to be fulfilled through the government, why, this will must be complied with against the government. Thus revolutionary peasantism came into being. After years of propaganda it broke out in 1873-1874 in a huge movement that was called “the pilgrimage amongst the folk.” Hundreds of boys and girls, chiefly college students, settled in villages as common laborers to make propaganda among the peasants for what they believed to be socialistic ideas. They hoped to be able, sooner or later, to foment a popular uprising that would result in the establishment of a new social order.

Certainly this juvenile movement must, under any circumstances, have inevitably proved a failure. Defeat was, however, accelerated by the merciless persecution of the Government. The events which followed are only too well known for it to be necessary for me to dwell on them. The final defeat of revolutionary peasantism after 1881, brought into the foreground a peaceable peasantist movement that excited little attention, but which will certainly be of great consequence for the coming development of Russia. Having suffered shipwreck in their revolutionary course, the peasantists came to the conclusion that scientific investigation of the economics of the village was the most essential preliminary for any rational political action. And scores of former revolutionists zealously took part in the statistical investigation started by the zemstvos (provincial assemblies).

It is true that the revolutionary peasantists cannot be credited with the initiative of this important work. The founder of the so-called “Moscow method” of statistical investigation, the late Vasili Ivanovitch Orloff, was a peaceable peasantist in 1875, when a young man of twenty-seven he took into his hands the Statistical Bureau of the Moscow zemstvo. Yet the many who helped him in his work, and who afterwards became somewhat prominent in spreading his system over new provinces, such men as Messrs. Greegoryeff, Werner, Shtcherbina, Annensky, etc., had previously spent several years in prison and in exile for “political offences.”

It is by no means exaggerated to say that in the hundreds of volumes of the censuses, ordered by the majority of the thirty-two zemstvos, Russia possesses a masterpiece of statistics which for its completeness, and for the mathematical exactness of its figures, has hardly been rivalled in any country. The following quotations will give some idea of the methods practiced by the Russian statisticians:

“We used to begin by making a minute extract from the Book of assessed taxes. Another highly interesting document found in the “bailiff’s board” (volostnoye pravlenie) was the Book of transactions and contracts. It had been kept for many years, and contained the terms of agreements made between peasants and landlords of the neighborhood for agricultural work, as well as the terms of those agreements made between peasants and contractors, where the work had been done outside the limits of the village. There were also to be found there rental agreements, made both by peasants and those outside the ranks of the peasants; loan agreements made by individuals, as well as by communities, with joint suretyship of all their members, etc. The third document was the Book for registering passports, from which we could learn approximately the number of peasants yearly leaving their villages for a time.… After these quotations had been made in the bailiff’s board, we made a tour through the villages under the jurisdiction of the board, and it was here that the local inquiries began, and the most valuable material was collected. In every community of every village[1] we called a regular meeting of the community’s members, and, in meeting assembled we took a census. We passed with every householder through a series of questions, tending to elucidate the economic capacity of his family, and capable of being put in figures. The method itself of collecting these data in full meeting insured the greatest possible correctness of the figures obtained; one householder often aided the other in remembering some fact, or corrected his misstatements. It frequently happened that some sheep or calf, which was intended for sale or was already sold, called forth a discussion as to whether it should not also be included in the list. The questions were asked with a view to ascertain from every household the following points: the area of land allotted at the emancipation, purchased as private property, or farmed; the way in which the soil was tilled, whether it was cultivated by the householder himself, or by some of his neighbors, whom, in such cases, he had usually hired, because he himself owned no horse, or finally, whether he had entered the ranks of the “husbandless” (i. e., destitute of husbandry),[2] who lease their lots or desert them altogether. We also ascertained what were the labor forces of the family, male and female; the entire number of heads of which it consisted; the business, apart from agriculture, of every adult member of the family, and whether the member sought work at a distance from home; the quantity of cattle; the size of the buildings; the shops belonging to every family. In a word, through the census a picture is drawn of the economic condition of all the households of the community. The number of those who can read, or who are learning to read, is also given in the census. Certainly the material collected appears to be of such a character as to furnish fundamental facts for the formation of a judgment as to the economic condition of the population.”[3]

The technical side of statistics, says Mr. Shtcherbina, the methods applied in the local investigations, are elaborated with the minutest detail.… The questions are several times crossed by each other, so as to mutually complete and verify the statements.[4]

The area covered by the investigations for the year 1890, is represented by the following figures:[5]

This is about one-fifth of the total population of European Russia.

As the unit for all information is identical with the economic cell—the peasant household—these investigations present us with the true scientific anatomy of Russian economic life. Nevertheless there may be cases in which plain truth is not exceedingly welcome. This holds true even of the most advanced reform parties. Why then should the Russian nobility be among the exceptions, if there are any? If the rent is exorbitant and the earnings of the farmer are scanty, it does not require a genius to draw the conclusion that there must be some connection of cause and sequence between the two facts. Still, this is precisely what the landlords would like to keep hidden from public notice. Hence strong opposition by the party of the nobility to the statistical investigations. The statisticians were generally charged with representing only such facts as favored their leanings toward land nationalization and expropriation of the landlords. The first outbreak of this opposition took place in 1882 in RyazaÑ against Mr. Greegoryeff, Superintendent of the RyazaÑ Bureau of Statistics, and his assistants. The assembly passed a resolution that the two volumes of the census which dealt with the districts of Dankoff and Ranenburg should be suppressed. These volumes were confined exclusively to raw material, and contained only tables and statements, without any generalizations. The excitement was so great that some of the members moved to buy out all copies which had already been put in circulation, though it should cost 100 roubles ($50) a copy, and to solemnly burn them as a public example. It is true that this extreme motion was not carried, but Mr. Greegoryeff was sent for four years into administrative exile at Kineshma, a small town of the province of Kostroma, and put under police surveillance as a political suspect. Thus Russian statistics have already had their martyr. Mr. Greegoryeff’s book, The Emigration of the Peasants from the Province of RyazaÑ, founded on the same proscribed data, was subsequently honored with a prize by the University of Moscow.

Similar occurrences took place in KazaÑ and Kursk. In the latter province the assembly proscribed the general review of the province, although the review consisted merely of the totals of the respective items for the several districts, and the volumes containing these items were in due time published by the assembly.

However, it must be admitted that Mr. Werner’s fate was not a specially hard one, since he was not even exiled, while his book, which caused his discharge from the Bureau, was awarded the same honor by the University of Moscow, as Mr. Greegoryeff’s investigation had received.

Finally the government saw fit to interfere, and a law was passed in 1888 forbidding any investigations into the relations between landlord and peasant, and putting the programmes of statistical investigations under the control of the administrative authorities. The work, however, had been done; a work that may be truly called the social work of the eighties.

Was it virtually a fallacious census, imbued with party spirit?

The present famine has offered the most striking proof of the authenticity of the much-assailed figures.

It will require years of study to sum up the results of the statistical investigations, and I have been necessarily forced to limit the scope of my essay to some one locality. I have selected the two districts of the province of RyazaÑ,[6] the statistical data relating to which were attacked as unreliable by the nobility in 1882. This is the very locality in which Count Leo Tolstoi has carried on his work of philanthropy in feeding the hungry. It has seemed to me that it might be of some interest to know what information there was actually at command, as far back as 1882, respecting the districts now stricken with famine.