TENUKE AND USE OF LAND. §7 



the whole of the far north, consists entirely of ur mans, taigas (uninhabited expanses 

 of forest), tundras and wildernesses, a part being absolute desert, and a part being at the 

 disorderly disposition of tribes of wandering natives. Finally, all the lands best fitted for 

 agriculture and cattle raising, are in the usufruct of the peasants and of the more civilized 

 natives. The latter use the land either on the basis of mere actual prescription, or on that of 

 ancient documents existing in a great many native communities. The foundation of the 

 peasants usufruct is extremely varied in its nature. The activity of the Government in intro- 

 ducing order into the use of the land by the peasants, which has already continued during 

 several decades, is even now far from showing complete results. There still remain not a 

 few peasant communities, and even whole volosts, in which the existing enjoyment of the 

 land is restricted within no definite limits. The peasants dwell upon the Cro>vn lands and 

 use them to the extent permitted by their working powers and the amount of their capital. 

 They plough, mow and harvest, cut timber, catch fish, as the expression is, wherever only 

 <^hatchet, scythe and plough may go». But the greater part of the peasant population use 

 the land within definite limits, although these limits are without complete legal force. 



Siberia has not yet seen a final land survey, like that which has established the surface 

 relations of European Russia. Land has been allotted to the greater part of the peasants in the 

 proportion of eighteen dessiatines per caput of the male population, according to the returns of 

 the tenth census of 1859, with the addition, whenever possible, of three dessiatines for convict 

 settlers. In some cases the provisions of land were made for a whole volost with a population 

 ranging from 4 to 15 thousand souls, in others separately for each settlement; in yet other 

 cases, for small groups containing each a few villages. In the first case, the territory of the 

 whole volost was surrounded with one common boundary line, within which the peasants of 

 all the settlements were given the right at their discretion either to use the land in common 

 or to confine themselves by mutual agreement to separate subdivisions thereof. In the second 

 case, such estates were laid out for the settlements by Government surveyors, and the volost 

 consequently lost completely its territorial unity and preserved only an administrative impor- 

 tance. Finally, in the third case, both the volost and the settlement, remained only adminis- 

 trative units, while the group of settlements became the territorial unit. 



The use of the laud within each separate territorial unit, more or less extensive, was 

 also organized in extremely various ways. It is true, the Russiau peasant, at all times and 

 in all places, at any rate in the explored parts of Siberia, brought with him the communal 

 principle and even ingrafted it upon the natives. But this single principle was clothed in 

 the most various forms. This is indeed comprehensible, for the forms of land tenure, if not 

 entirely, yet to a considerable degree, are conditioned by the density of the population and 

 the relative supply of land; and in this respect Siberia presents an extraordinary variety. 

 Side by side with localities where there is, even till now, much more land than the popula- 

 tion can till, there are, especially in Western Siberia and in particular in the Tobolsk 

 government, not a few places where there arc not more than six to eight dessiatines of 

 land really fit for agriculture, per male inhabitant. There are, finally, even localities where 

 the tillable land has to be created by means of artificial irrigation, or on the contrary, by 

 the removal of the superabundance of water. "While furthermore, some places rich in arable 



