THE ACTIVITY OF THE PEASANTS* LAND BANK 



39 



obliged to pay sums which were son}etimes a real obstacle to the improve 

 ment of agriculture. 



The general course of the purchasing prices established by the bank was 

 as follows : 



Table VII. — Average Price Paid by the Bank for each Deciatine 



of land bought from Individ lUils, 



Year 



1906 

 1907 

 1908 

 1909 

 I9IO 

 I9II 

 I9I2 



I913 

 I9I4 



I915 



During the years which preceded the third period the bank bought lands 

 at a lower price. Iti 1904 the average price of a decia.tine was 69 roubles, in 

 1 91 5 it was 94 roubles. The average price from 1893 to 1905 was only 

 71 roubles while from 1906 to 1915 it reached 122.4 roubles. 



It should be added that while the price iiicreased owing to the large- 

 ness of purchases, the bank coiild sell the lands of which it disposed at a 

 lower price than that which the peasants paid to the proprietors when they 

 bought directly and without the bank's aid. 



§ 4. Sales of the bank's real estate. 



As a result of its large purchases of lands the bank concentrated in its 

 own ownership 5,919,222 deciatines, of which the larger part was bought in 

 the first three years of the third period, Immediately afterwards sales 

 increased and purchases diminished. The lands bought at a high price, often 

 when the peasants had depreciated them, represented a pure loss for the bank's 

 administration, and profits derived from those of them which the bank 

 held temporarily were always very much less than the percentages which 

 had to be paid to possessors of the bonds the bank had issued. In the be- 

 ginning of the period examined, on 12 June 1907, the circular of the com- 

 mittee for the regulation of the agrarian question asserted that " ever>' delay 

 in the sale of the real estate is undesirable, from the point of view both 

 of finances and of the regularization of the agrarian que.tion ". 



