TENUEE AND USE OF LAND. "' 89 



is free. Everyoue mows where he will, and the hay becomes the property only of him, who 

 cnts and preserves it. Free and accessible to all is the forest also, and only he may seize 

 for his own exclusive use a given portion of wood, who has enclosed it with a ditch, cleared 

 it of dead wood, and in general expended his labour upon it to protect it from tire. Finally, 

 the pastures are also free; every member of the community may feed his cattle over the 

 whole area appointed by the community for this purpose, but no one may enclose a single 

 plat of pasture for his own exclusive use. 



The occupation and free forms of enjoyment of land till to-day prevail in the greater 

 part of Siberia; but with the increasing density of the excess of land, compared with the 

 standard of labour, the free form begins to become as oppressive for the immigi-ant population 

 as the occupation form had once appeared to be. Then gradually, at the cost of a severe 

 struggle between the different groups of peasantry, entering into the composition of the 

 community, a passage is accomplished to a communal form of enjoyment of the land in 

 the narrow sense of the term, accompanied with a redivision. This passage begins ordinarily 

 with that group of lands of which in each given place there is felt comparatively the gi'eatest 

 lack. The free and occupation forms, on the contrary, are preserved longest of all in 

 regard to those lauds, of which there is an abundance in the given commune and to those 

 whose bringing under cultivation demands particularly a great expenditure of labour. The 

 passage to a re-deal begins sometimes with the ploughed land, sometimes with the meadows, 

 and sometimes with the forests or cedar groves. 



The very forms of repartition met with iu Siberia are exceedingly various. In regard 

 to meadows everywhere, and when there is comparatively much arable land, forms of redis- 

 tribution prevail which are completely distinct from those elaborated by the commune of 

 European Russia. The principal distinctive peculiarity of Siberian repartitions is the striving 

 to avoid the breaking up of the laud into small lots; the latter are seldom less than a 

 dessiatine. Another not less characteristic feature is, that it is not so much the area which 

 is taken as the basis for the distribution of the land among the commoners, as the productive- 

 ness and other qualities of the soil, which determine its value for each given owner. Each 

 commoner is allowed to take at his discretion a greater quantity of poor land remote from 

 the homesteads or inconveniently situated, or on the contrary, a smaller quantity of good 

 land or that which is situated near the liouse. In the localities where there is little arable 

 land, principally the northern region of the agricultural part of the government of To- 

 bolsk, on the contrary, methods of repartition have been established, on the whole agreeing 

 with the Great Russia methods and characterized by a strict quantitative and qualitative 

 equalization which is attained by breaking up the allotnieiil per head into a large luimber of 

 small lots. 



The lands belonging to the Crown, peasant or native, occupied or waste, cover in 

 Siberia vast areas measured by millions of square versts ami hundreds of millions of dessia- 

 tines. Compared with the few millions, now forming the population of Siberia, these expanses 

 seem iuQnite and the thought involuntarily arises that Siberia can make room for many tens 

 of millions more of iidiabitants, and for many tens, if not hundreds, of years guarantee 

 European Russia from over pupiilaliDU and serve, as it were, as a reserve, capable of taking 



