GENERAL OUTLINE OF THE NEW RUSSIAN LAND REFORMS I55 



ficient to meet the requirements of the colonists for houses and other 

 buildings. 



At the same time, the land commissions, together with the zemstvo ad- 

 ministrations, have provided for the organization of 2,652 farms to serve 

 as models and 12,079 experimental farms, the zemstvo administrations 

 having long exerted themselves in various provinces for the promotion of 

 agricultural knowledge among the peasants. The amount directly spent for 

 the pirpose by the commissions in 1907-11 was about 7,000,000 roubles; 

 in addition, out of the credit opened in igii, 4,000,000 roubles were placed 

 at the disposal of the zemstvos and the various agricultural associations for 

 the work of land readjustment. We should also observe that the agricultural 

 co-operative societies and the zemstvo banks, organized on mutual principles, 

 find here a large field, open to them and their prosperous development in re- 

 cent years is a new indication of the hf e-giving power of the new land reforms, 

 the effects of which are felt throughout the whole field of agriculture. We 

 must, however, refrain from here entering into the details of these special 

 conditions, the rather as we shah continue to give a careful account of these 

 indirect effects of the land reform in the Bulletin of Economic and Social In- 

 telligence and shall be continually publishing them for the benefit of Western 

 Europe. 



§ 6. Success of the farm READJusT^rENT work carried 

 OUT UP to the present and its critics. 



Our account of the salutary work of the land commissions has been 

 so far principally based on Russian ofiicial publications ; and this has been 

 intentional, as these pubhcations, which give a quantit}' cf statistical data 

 and diagrams, showing the complete transformation of the Russian vill- 

 age by means of the vvork of the Commissions, have been up to this 

 little utihsed. 



Although it is not to be imagined that there has been in our days an 

 imitation of the famous villages of Potemkin, it still seems to us advisable 

 to complete the foregoing study by giving the comments of the critics of the 

 new land organization, and their remarks on the new development of the 

 conditions of the land held by the Russian peasants. We shall first give 

 the remarks of such critics as W. Ordinsky, W-^. A. Obolensky and A. Koe- 

 foed, who have travelled through the provinces, visited the \'illages, spoken 

 with the peasants and seen the surveyors at work, or again T. Stroganow, 

 who passes his life among the peasants. No one could form quite certain 

 conclusions with regard to a radical economic system of laws, whether in the 

 realm of industry or in that of agriculture, without personally studying, in 

 the midst of the infernal din of modern machinery, the technique of contem- 

 porary industry in all its phases or without having personally put his hand 

 to the plough, furrowed the field v/ith it and conducted the reaping 

 machine across the meadow. 



