II26 RUSSIA 



Odessa 505,600, Riga 331,300, Kharkov 236,042, Lodz 208,330; and twenty-one other 

 towns have between 100,000 and 200,000. Census work has been done in the chief cities 

 since the general numbering of the people in 1897, and it is considered certain that St. 

 Petersburg now contains over two million inhabitants. The urban population of the 

 whole Empire is 23,177,700, including Finland (459,000), Caucasus (i,577>5), Si- 

 beria (1,050,600) and Central Asia (1,385,500). The rural population is 143,825,700, 

 of which European Russia counts 104,790,100. According to information issued by 

 the Chief Medical Inspector of the Ministry for Internal Affairs, the death rate of 

 European Russia in 1909 was 28.9 and the birth rate 43.8 per 1,000. This was a less 

 favourable year from a sanitary point of view than the two preceding, and the increase 

 of the population was lower than for 12 years previously, except in 1905. For 20 

 years down to 1910 the birth rate generally fluctuated between 47.10 in 1903 and 

 49.5 in 1891. 



An idea may be formed of the insanitary condition of the cofintry from the following 

 figures: the total number of sick persons registered by doctors rose from 56,835,200, or 339 

 per 1,000, in 1904 to 81,746,072, or 524 per 1,000, in 1909. These details be- 

 Public health. come terribly significant when it is considered that there is only one doctor in 

 European Russia per 7,100 of the population and in Asiatic Russia per 14,900. Information 

 as to the health of army recruits also bears upon this subject. In 1908 the number of 

 men registered as liable to serve with the colours was 1,280,887, of whom 679,266, or 53 per 

 cent, were medically examined, with the result that 73,496, or 10.8 per cent, were found totally 

 unfit for military service, and 58,606, or 8.6%, were enrolled in the second category of the 

 militia reserve as being unfit for the regular army on account of sickness and bodily defects, 

 whilst 74,425, or 10.7%, were allowed further time for recovery from illness and physical 

 development. 



The past three years in Russia have been notable for several important legislative 

 acts and reforms affecting large classes of the population. Much attention has been 

 bestowed upon reorganisation of peasant administration, peasant justice, land tenure, 

 migration, colonisation and labour insurance. 



As a matter of important benefit for the great mass of Russian peasantry, the third 

 Duma (which came into being in November 1907) passed a bill in 1910, which ranks next 

 to the one designed to emancipate them from their village communes. 

 'justice. This was the reform of local justice to replace the system introduced in 1889 



by Count Tolstoy, the famous reactionary Minister of Alexander III. 

 According to that system, small cases were tried by Volost Courts, the volost being a 

 collective administrative unit comprising many villages and communes. More impor- 

 tant cases were dealt with by iheZemskieNachalniki or Rural Administrators, who com- 

 bined administrative and judicial functions. These administrators were to be recruited 

 chiefly from amongst the local landed gentry, and in this way Count Tolstoy desired 

 to re-establish the influence of the landlords, which had been lost ever since the peasant 

 reforms of 1861. Tolstoy's measure was most unpopular from the very beginning, and 

 both the volost judges who were elected by the peasants, and the Rural Administrators 

 appointed by the Government, proved themselves incompetent to satisfy modern re- 

 quirements. As soon as the constitutional regime was introduced the Government 

 recognised the urgency of reform in this direction with a view to substituting both volost 

 courts and rural administrators by trained justices of the peace as in the towns. When 

 the bill came before the legislature both houses accepted the abolition of the judicial 

 functions of the rural administrators, but the projected abolition of the volost courts was 

 strongly opposed in the State Council, and this gave rise to severe criticism. The bill 

 was finally voted by the Council in 1911 with retention of the volost courts under the 

 supervision of local boards of magistrates, constituting in this instance courts of appeal. 



One of the most remarkable features of the years 1910 and 1911 was the manifestation 

 of nationalism by the Government and the Duma. This showed itself in the carrying 

 Nationalism tnrou 8h of several bills tending to withstand the centrifugal forces which 

 were at work amongst the foreign and heterodox races under Russian rule, 

 and which the cosmopolitan disposition of former central authorities had allowed to 

 attain dangerous proportions. The work of the Government and Duma in this 



