HOPE FOR THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY 597 



last decade. They cultivated these large tracts to advantage, using im- 

 proved machinery. There is, however, much to be said on the side of 

 those who insist that technical advance in agriculture can be furthered 

 best in connection with private property. This is the assumption on 

 which the law of June 1911 rests. There is in this law definite evi- 

 dence of the change of emphasis in the land policy of Russia. The 

 government still wishes to encourage the transformation of communal 

 property into private property, but it brings less pressure to bear in this 

 direction. On the other hand, it lays tremendous stress upon uniting 

 the various parcels of land belonging to one owner, whether that owner 

 be an individual or a community. The law makes the most elaborate 

 provision for the settlement of every imaginable difficulty arising from 

 the lack of clear demarcation of boundary lines and the confusion of 

 tenures. There are areas in Eussia which wear the aspect of a veritable 

 puzzle — fields of different villages intermingled, church, state and 

 private property enclosed in one piece of communal property, holdings 

 partly communal and partly private and so on almost without end. 

 Out of this chaos the government proposes to bring order — but only upon 

 request. When a family, or a number of families, or a village, or a group 

 of villages forming a community, desire to have their land surveyed and 

 rearranged, they appeal to the district commission whose members repre- 

 sent the central government, the local government and the peasants 

 themselves. This commission appoints one of its number, or a surveyor, 

 to examine the locality in question and to confer with the petitioners as 

 to their wishes. The entire matter having been explained to it, the com- 

 mission decides whether the project is in harmony with the principles 

 laid down by law to govern all the new land arrangements, and, ac- 

 cording to its decision, either refers the project back to the peasants 

 for changes, or orders that it be worked out in detail. When this has 

 been done, those whose lands are concerned are requested to pass upon 

 the plan in its final form. It is their privilege to accept or reject it, but 

 every effort is made by the members of the district commission to over- 

 come objections by persuasion or by practicable modifications. When 

 accepted the plan is sent to the commission of the province. Upon the 

 approval of this commission the work is put under way as soon as sur- 

 veyors can be spared for it. 



The character of the work done by these surveyors depends upon 

 circumstances. A few illustrations will serve to make it clear. When 

 the peasants were emancipated it often happened that a group of vil- 

 lages, being the property of one and the same lord, received their nadiel 

 as one community. This land was not a single piece but was made up of 

 many irregular pieces. Certain ones belonged to each village, had been 

 cultivated by it in the days of serfdom. These were rarely continuous 

 and were mixed with the pieces belonging to the other villages of the 



