GEOGRAPHY IN RUSSIAN HISTORY 19 



smaller, for the mir, as the village community is called, had no means 

 of expanding and taking in new lands. The picture of the Eussian 

 peasantry drawn by Tolstoi, Tchekov and others reveals a pathetic state 

 of suffering, misery and discouragement in the wake of what was 

 planned to be a great economic and social reform. Stagnation in the 

 economic life of the people was thus added to political and intellectual 

 stagnation. 



Even to-day millions of the Eussian peasants are not only too poor 

 to employ any but the simplest instruments of agriculture, but the 

 smallness of their acres make the macliinery we are accustomed to out 

 of the question. On the other hand, there are large estates with the 

 finest modern machinery, while the peasant proprietor is gradually over- 

 coming the difficulty by cooperative buying. Six million households 

 were associated with cooperative associations in 1911, and 310 out of 

 the 370 Zemstvos were last year engaged in the sale of agricultural 

 machinery. Long years of experience in the semi-communal dealings 

 of the "mir" have trained the Eussian peasants in the qualities neces- 

 sary for cooperative enterprise. 



In the meantime the Zemstvos and the government technical schools 

 are doing all in their power to develop more scientific agriculture and 

 the prospects are good for a thorough reform in agricultural methods 

 in Eussia in the near future. Fortunately, a reform inaugurated by the 

 late premier Stolypin in 1905 and now being slowly forced upon a 

 reluctant and conservative peasantry is working a deep and far reaching 

 agrarian revolution. By the application of the Stolypin measure, the 

 Eussian peasant can now withdraw from the village community and 

 obtain the consolidation of his holdings, to which he gets the individual 

 title. The larger consequences, aside from better agriculture, are many. 

 The enterprising and thrifty peasant will get on and prosper, while the 

 shiftless will lose what land he has. There will be created in Eussia a 

 new class of small but independent farmers on the one hand, and an 

 agricultural proletariat on the other. That the latter will sooner or 

 later find its way to the cities and supply the much needed labor for the 

 steadily growing industrial Eussia is also clear. This however is the 

 very reason for the violent opposition to Stolypin's reform by many 

 leading statesmen and economists, who point with pride to the fact that 

 up to the present Eussia has not had a class corresponding to the indus- 

 trial proletariat of western Europe. 



For years the appalling losses through fire in the Eussian towns and 

 villages was a matter much commented on, but no effort at prevention 

 was seriously undertaken. Stone is scarce throughout Eussia for the 

 geological strata are horizontal, hence the houses, barns and other build- 

 ings are of necessity constructed of wood, clay, brick and straw. The 

 rural villages present a jumble of thick thatched roofs as inflammable 



