COMMUNITY OF LAND.
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]
_Forms of Possession:_ _Number of Males and Females:_
Quarterly 452,508.
Communistic 533,201.
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:
+---------------------+---------+---------------+------------+
|Forms of Landholding.|Number of|Number of Males| Land in |
| |villages.| and Females. |dessiatines.|
+---------------------+---------+---------------+------------+
|Quarterly possession | 176 | 11,265 | 64,811 |
|Agrarian communism | 56 | 21,283 | 84,448 |
|Mixed | 55 | 12,627 | 49,508 |
+---------------------+---------+---------------+------------+
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.
_Population (males and females.)_
In 1849. In 1882.
Ranenburg 19,714 4,213
Dankoff 10,509 6,089
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.