The second group with enough grain for their subsistence, but not enough for purposes of fodder-13,083,410 or 20.4%. The third group with a surplus over and above the necessary food and fodder-5,715,513 or 8.9%. We see that in a great majority of cases, the peasant's own means of subsistence on his allotment of land fell below the minimum essential for bare existence. This condition of affairs could have but two results. Either the peasant must starve, or he must be willing to give all the spare time and labor of himself and his farm stock to his landlord to make up this food deficit. What actually took place was a combination of these alternatives. The peasant starved more or less all the time and at the same time he was selling the labor of himself, his family and his horse, at a rate which no classical economist ever dreamed of. There was no Lassalle's "iron law of wages" for the Russian peasant, no such western luxuries for the Empire of the Tsar. Man and child and horse worked pro rata not for the minimum cost of maintenance, but often for a fifth of it or less; it depended upon the food deficit, that was to be made up. The same conditions naturally governed land rent. The results were twofold: chronic starvation with intervals of acute famine on one hand; on the other, growing dependence upon the landlord, the development of a peonage system, and the increase of bitter hostility towards the landlord class. There is a tendency on the part of some to represent the Russian famines, as for instance the one which is raging in 35 Russian provinces at present, as calamities of Nature. This is misleading. Underfeeding, bordering on starvation, is the Russian peasant's normal status quo. Acute famine with scurvy and death in its train is often but the result of an insignificant falling off of the crop. That the peasant class is physically degenerating and deteriorating from year to year is an open secret. Even the governmental records cannot fail to indicate. Take, for instance, the statistics showing the number of those exempt from military service on account of disease, insufficient height and other physical defects. PERCENTAGE OF RECRUITS REJECTED FOR PHYSICAL DEFECTS THROUGHOUT THE 50 PROVINCES OF EUROPEAN RUSSIA. It is to be remembered, moreover, that, since the Russian army has grown twice as rapidly as the country's population, the requirements have become much less stringent. Men who would have been rejected some years ago are now pressed into the service. Therefore, the increase in the percentage of the rejected shown by this table does not fully express the growing physical deterioration of the people. ... Parallel to the economic and physical deterioration of the peasant goes his growing dependence upon the neighboring landlord. "The peasant can never clear himself from indebtedness to the local landlord and, being so dependent on the landlord, he is compelled to do all sorts of work." "Accordingly," a Russian authority on the subject, M. Lipski, tells us, "there can be no question that the renting of single dessiatines of land is in the hands of the landlord a powerful means of lowering wages." "There can scarcely be any question as to the fact that the renting of single dessiatines in the province of Tombav has lost long ago its rental character; it should not be looked upon as one of the very hardest forms of labor contract. At the same time it is perfectly clear what rôle is played by the land that is leased out in dessiatines. It is an instrument through which the free peasant becomes a serf, who is giving his labor on conditions dictated by want."1 The peasant is expected to pay the abnormally high rent not in money, but in labor, which is rated as a rule 50% below the very low standard wage. Such a system of peonage and chronic starvation has not tended to promote among the peasantry a good feeling toward the landlord class, nor could such economic conditions be exactly regarded as a stable and permanent foundation for a civil society. It, therefore, took no prophet to foresee that something was likely to happen; there were signs and premonitions as early as 1902. 1 Lipski, Ceny na rabotchia ruki pri zablagovernennom nairne, St. Petersburg, 1902, pp. 107-112. In the middle of March, 1902, the peasantry in some counties of the provinces of Poltava and Kharkoff started an agrarian movement on a rather extensive scale. They were starving. The movement began by their appeal to the neighboring landlords for free food and fodder. The landlords naturally refused. Thereupon, on March 28, a few hundred peasants went to one of the estates of the "Russian" Duke Mecklenburg-Strelitz and helped themselves to several thousand poods1 of potatoes. thing happened on about 100 estates in the provinces of Poltava and Kharkoff. From some of the estates they took only grain for food and fodder; in others, they occasionally drove away horses and cattle or helped themselves to agricultural machinery; a number of manors they handled more roughly-pulling them to pieces, and burning five or ten. The same The government applied the usual remedy-merciless flogging and stationing Cossacks there, who spent the time in the wholesale raping of peasant women.2 In this connection Prince Obolensky, the Governor of Kharkoff, became especially famous. He ordered the peasants to be flogged regardless of whether they had taken part in the movement or not. According to the description of his activity given by Prince Gregory Volkonski, he ordered even an innocent deacon to be flogged. And when the latter protested, saying that he was a servant of the Church, and that it was against the law to flog him, the Governor is said to have told the Cossacks, "Flog him now, I will look into the law later." Finally, a contribution of 800,000 rubles, to cover the expenses of the punitive expedition, was imposed upon the starving peasantry of the locality. Thus were the first signs of the great agrarian movement met and dealt with by the government. The crying needs of the peasantry were overlooked, the agrarian outbreak was regarded merely as the work of a few evil-minded agitators. Many representative noblemen gave fair warning of what was coming. Thus, for instance, a gentleman named M. Breshovski, 11 pood 40 pounds. * This fact was established by the following leaders of the Russian bar: Teslenko, Muravioff, Kalmanovitch, Staal, Rapp, Moreff, Volkenstein and Belorussoff. See their declaration in the "Osvobozhdenie " for 1902, N. 8, p. 121. 3" Osvobozhdenie " for 1904, N. 46, p. 403. a member of one of the agricultural committees appointed by the government, did not mince matters; he frankly announced that "one must be blind not to see that the ignorant and dark mass that has been sleeping at our feet, is lifting its head. The time may come when this mass, whose name will be legion, will proclaim in a thundering voice its demands, when it will address the upper classes: 'Canaille, tu mange mon pain!' Men who are looking at things in a sober way must understand that the time urgently demands meeting the needs of the lower classes." But the government looked at things differently. To "meet the needs of the lower classes," it appointed Plehve as dictator of all the Russias. A man of marked ability, he was never a social favorite. His death was almost hailed throughout Russia with joy and thanksgiving, while his birth is still an apple of discord among at least four nationalities. Anti-Semites claim Plehve to be a Jew, Jews are positive that he was a Pole, Poles would perjure themselves to prove that he was a Russian, and Russians know him to have been a German. But this brilliant, single-minded, Russian statesman, this anonymous, modest author of the Kisheneff massacre and affairs of similar character, introduced no new or original principle in dealing with the agrarian situation. He merely created a new corps of mounted rural police, which costs the peasantry 10,000,000 a year, and the function of which is to suppress local agrarian disorders. That was the law of May 5, 1903. There was also another tendency in the ruling circles of St. Petersburg; a tendency represented by Witte, who was then already losing his grip on the affairs of state. He was clearsighted enough to understand that all the mounted policemen or Cossacks will be of no more use to the government when the day of reckoning shall come than a pasteboard sword. He realized that the government, who for purposes of its own created the village community, had thereby undermined all sense of private property among the peasantry and for the want of this sense the supporters of the crown will some day pay, and pay dearly. 1 S. N. Procopovitch, Mestnie liudi o nushdakh Rossii, p. 89. Witte understood that the commune's several and joint liability for taxes, besides having pernicious economic effects, establishes a principle of solidarity among the peasant body, which some day may prove anything but welcome to the ruling class. No legislation of positive constructive significance was included in Witte's program, or at any rate effected. But he succeeded in passing a law abolishing the several and joint liability of the village communities for taxes. This was the law of March 12, 1903. If we should add to this law the Ukas of March 26, 1904, limiting the operations of the Peasant-Bank, the temporary suspension of immigration to Siberia on account of the Japanese war, and the law of May 10, 1904, allowing the peasants to work on church and legal holidays—the scope of legislation affecting the peasantry during the Plehve régime is exhausted. The death of Plehve, the severe defeats in Manchuria, the growing unrest throughout the country, general and universal disapproval of his Majesty's foreign and interior policy, compelled the government to change its course. Public opinion was infuriated by the results of the Manchurian adventures; there remained, therefore, nothing for the government to do but to try a policy of leniency. On the occasion of the birth of a son and heir to the throne, the Emperor issued a manifesto cancelling all the tax arrears of the peasantry, and abolishing corporal punishment and chastisement of peasants. This was the Manifesto of August 11, 1904. True, the tax arrears could not be collected, and the abolition of flogging, as we shall soon see, remained a dead letter. But, nevertheless, it was the first step that the government had taken since 1861 to meet the needs of the peasant class.1 With this manifesto began the liberal era of the Russian government, which lasted but a few months. The people realized that this liberalism was forced by the blows of the Japanese armies and by the terrorists' bombs; they appreciated the weakness of the government and instead of being appeased, the whole of educated Russia started a concentrated campaign against the government, demanding further and more vital concessions. 1 See Veselovski, Krestianski vopros, etc., 1907, p. 29. |