592 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY 



not uncommon in Russia to-day and are true to the past in nearly every 

 detail. The Eussian peasant accepts with scarcely a murmur what he 

 believes can not be changed. He is not likely even to question cir- 

 cumstances if he has bread enough. 



And during the period immediately following the emancipation it 

 would seem that there was for the most part bread enough. There were 

 hungry years even then, when the crops were poor or failed altogether, 

 but they were taken as a matter of course. No one was held to blame. 

 The peasants complained, it is true, at the necessity of paying for the 

 land which they firmly believed had always been theirs, but the pres- 

 sure of poverty was not yet such as to drive them to seek a remedy. 



Time, however, brought changes. Sons and daughters grew up and 

 married. Whether they remained in the home of their parents or built 

 izbas for themselves land must be provided for them. How else could 

 they live? But new units could be created only by dividing the fields 

 anew and every parcel was thereby made smaller. Now and then, 

 indeed, the community leased private land, but the rent was a difficult 

 problem. Occasionally, also, alas ! it was obliged to lease out some of 

 its own land for money paid in advance and imperatively needed for the 

 annual dues. Ordinarily this was a tract worked in common, not par- 

 celled out into lots, but its alienation decreased none the less the food 

 supply of the village. Thus the time came when the nadiel did not 

 yield enough to support those who cultivated it. They were obliged to 

 eke out a livelihood by earning money during the winter. Sometimes 

 a whole village made nails, or carved wooden spoons or painted icons. 

 Often the men sought work away from home. Some of them wandered 

 from place to place, accepting any employment that offered itself, living 

 most meagerly, saving every kopec and bringing back with them in the 

 spring perhaps forty rubles apiece, little more than twenty dollars. 

 Some went to the city and became cab-drivers, household servants of one 

 kind or another, porters in railway stations. It often happened that 

 all the men of one village who left home to earn money went to the 

 same city and engaged in the same employment. Those whose services 

 were not required to cultivate the land apportioned to their families 

 frequently stayed throughout the year, sending their earnings back to 

 help pay the dues to the state, comforting themselves in their exile with 

 the thought that in old age they could return to the land and depend 

 upon it for a livelihood. To return to it and share its fruits was 

 certainly their privilege. Every mujik family recognizes the right of 

 its own to come back, but the amount to be shared grew ever smaller. 



As the years passed and the Eussian peasantry increased in numbers 

 by leap and bounds, doubling itself in less than half a century, its lot 

 became constantly worse. The loaf scarcely large enough for four is 

 scanty food for eight. Small wonder that very many of the communities 

 were quite unable to make their annual payments to the state. Others 



