RUSSIA. 



613 



A new criminal code for Russia on which a com- 

 mission of jurists spent fifteen years makes strikes 

 criminal when directed against the Government 

 or when they lead to injuries to persons or dam- 

 age to property. The code of 1845 consisted of 

 1,711 paragraphs defining each particular offense 

 and grading the punishments from a reprimand 

 up, all other punishments, rising to transportation 

 and hanging, being reckoned as equivalent to so 

 many reprimands. The new code makes impris- 

 onment of various degrees of severity and dura- 

 tion practically the only kind of punishment, esti- 

 mates degrees of criminality according to the cir- 

 cumstances and state of mind, and classifies 

 crimes, instead of giving minute definitions, &o 

 that in a third of the number of paragraphs it 

 embraces a great many crimes that were un- 

 known when the old code was framed. 



Agrarian Disturbances. The nihilist stu- 

 dents, the socialist workmen, and others relegated 

 to country villages, to check the revolutionary 

 propaganda in the towns, found among the starv- 

 ing peasantry a fertile soil for propagating disaf- 

 fection and creating turmoil. The semstvos, 

 charged with the duty of collecting the agricul- 

 tural statistics, had to'employ strangers of intelli- 

 gence on this work, and many of these were rev- 

 olutionary agents. The agrarian conditions in 

 Russia are felt by everybody to be radically 

 wrong. The peasants have since their emancipa- 

 tion from serfdom had their view of the causes of 

 evils from which they particularly suffer, and 

 radical social thinkers have sympathized with 

 their view. The allotments of lands to the vil- 

 lages were generally inadequate, and they were 

 often the poorer lands. In the spring of 1902, 

 when in the provinces that suffered from famine 

 there was no grain left for either food or seed, 

 students and other agitators spread far and wide 

 a forged ukase telling the peasantry that the Czar 

 had decided to cut up the estates of the nobles 

 and divide the land among the peasants, having 

 found out lhat these lands were theirs by right, 

 and giving them permission to go to the granaries 

 and barns of the nobles and help themselves to 

 the seed, fodder, provisions, tools, and cattle they 

 needed. In the governments of Poltava and 

 Kharkoff the peasants proceeded to act on this 

 permission. With long processions of carts they 

 despoiled the grain-bins and fodder-stacks of the 

 great estates. On the farms of the Duke of Meck- 

 lenburg the laborers were strong and true enough 

 to drive them off. The authorities called out the 

 military, who put down the rioters with ruthless 

 severity, yet not easily nor quickly, because there 

 were 18,000 peasants helping themselves, and these, 

 when they saw the troops aiding the nobles and 

 large landowners to defeat what they supposed 

 was the will of the Czar, began to sack mansions 

 and to destroy in blind rage everything that they 

 did not carry off. Reenforcements of troops from 

 other provinces were necessary, and the Governor- 

 General of Kieff took command of the military op- 

 erations. When the peasants broke into the barns 

 on the estate of the Grand Duke of Oldenburg, in 

 the government of Voronezsh, the troops, despite 

 the appeal of the peasants that they were acting 

 within their rights, charged with bayonets, kill- 

 ing and wounding a large number. Similar scenes 

 took place on the properties of Prince Kotschulei, 

 Gen. Duvnovo, and the other principal landown- 

 ers. In Voronezsh the sugar estates were disman- 

 tled and large quantities of sugar were dumped 

 into the river. In some districts the peasants 

 held village meetings and appointed committees, 

 who waited on the landowners and ordered them 

 to vacate the lands wrongfully withheld from the 



peasants after the emancipation proclamation. 

 The agents of the landowners were driven off, and 

 the peasants proceeded in an orderly manner to 

 distribute the land and movables, leaving the no- 

 blemen 15 or 20 acres as their share of the estate. 

 It was not until the authorities intervened that the 

 work of destruction and incendiarism began. The 

 ravages extended to about 60 estates in Poltava 

 and 20 in Kharkoff. Landowners and their stew- 

 ards fled in terror. Some of the officials endeav- 

 ored to mollify the peasants, while others showed 

 extreme rigor, which became the rule when the 

 military authorities had the situation in hand. 

 Rioters who were caught were flogged inhumanly. 

 The disturbances lasted from April 1 to April 17. 

 The Government granted 800,000 rubles as imme- 

 diate aid to the nobles who were robbed and ap- 

 pointed a commission to value the damages and to 

 assess the whole ahiount on the communes accord- 

 ing to the part their members had taken in the 

 work of destruction, to be repaid in instalments 

 by an extra annual tax. M. de Plehwe, after vis- 

 iting the provinces in which the disturbances oc- 

 curred, decided to have the collection of agricul- 

 tural statistics suspended in Poltava, Kharkoff, 

 Tula, Sinbirsk, Samara, Penza, Orloff, Kursk, 

 Ekaterinoslaff, and Bessarabia, and to authorize 

 the governors of the 22 other provinces having 

 zemstvo institutions to suspend them if they 

 thought necessary. He warned the local authori- 

 ties to regard with suspicion traveling book agents 

 and peddlers and all schoolmasters and theological 

 students. The idea that the lands retained by 

 the nobles and those assigned to the Cossack col- 

 onies belong to the peasants was spread far and 

 wide. In the Caucasus persons collected money 

 from the Russian peasants by pretending to be 

 lawyers w r ho could establish them in their rights. 

 In June workmen demolished factories at Rostoff, 

 on the Don, and peasants simultaneously looted 

 the estates of landowners and smashed agricul- 

 tural machines, incited by strangers disguised in 

 gorgeous uniforms, who said the Czar sent them 

 to tell the people that machinery was a device for 

 grinding the poor by diminishing the number of 

 laborers. The troops killed and wounded many 

 rioters. In Saratoff, Kherson, Kieff, Voronezsh, 

 and in the northern Caucasus the lower classes 

 were wrought up by the teachings of incendiary 

 agents. A circular was distributed through the 

 length and breadth of the empire and attributed 

 to Tolstoi, urging the peasants and the workmen 

 to refuse to labor for employers for two years, at 

 the end of which all land and property would 

 then be abandoned to them. The crops in south- 

 ern and central Russia were good for the first 

 time in two years. About 300 peasants were 

 tried for participation in the agrarian disorders 

 of Poltava and Kharkoff. Prince Obolenski, the 

 new Governor, who had been shot at by an emis- 

 sary of the militant social democracy for letting 

 loose the Cossacks on the riotous peasants, ob- 

 tained leave to deal with them severely. 



The state of Russian agriculture was made the 

 subject of a commission, of which M. Witte was 

 president, with subordinate commissions in the 

 provinces. The zcmstros were excluded from di- 

 rect participation in the inquiry. The marshal 

 of the nobility in each province was the official 

 head of the "provincial commission, which was 

 made up of the landed gentry. The opportunity 

 of bringing forward projects of political reform 

 and constitutional liberty was not neglected by 

 the Liberals of Russia, although the commissions 

 were enjoined to confine themselves to economical 

 discussions and practical suggestions, within which 

 limits they were allowed the fullest scope. The 



