40 RUSSIA THEN AND NOW 



serfdom by the act of Alexander the Second, thirty 

 years ago. The peasants have never learned how to 

 use their liberty, aye, slaves yet to ignorance and a 

 non-personal machine-religion, they know not the 

 meaning of the word liberty. 



A writer in the Contemporary Review, March, 

 1892, said: "Bad harvests in Russia are so much a 

 matter of course that the peasant has learned to 

 await them as he awaits the coming of the tax 

 gatherer.' The taxes then were of three kinds, 

 imperial, by the State, which includes the Ecclesi- 

 astical rates ; local, by the Zemstvo, and communal 

 by the village Commune. The Zemstvo is a kind 

 of local administration which supplements the 

 action of the rural communes and takes cognizance 

 of those higher public wants which individual 

 communes cannot satisfy. The principal duties 

 are to keep the roads and bridges in proper repair, 

 to provide means of conveyance for the rural police 

 and other officials, to elect Justices of the Peace, 

 to look after primary education and sanitary 

 affairs, to watch the state of the crops, to take 

 measures against approaching famine, and in the 

 event of famine occurring to attend to the admin- 

 istration of relief. 



