ST. PETERSBURG. l$ 



peasants who own their land in common. Except for 

 the disturbing influences of insolvent peasants who 

 have recklessly got over their heads in debt, or from 

 other causes, have become landless, the Russian village 

 commune or mir is a collection of families and kins- 

 folk who own the right of tillage each to a certain 

 portion of their common land. This is the ideal mir. 

 But with the mir as with everything else, in Russia as 

 elsewhere, the real and the ideal seldom agree. 



The mir of Tchudovo, the blacksmith said, contained 

 2000 people, of which something over 500 were " souls," 

 that is to say, sharers in the land. The rest were 

 the children, small shopkeepers and vodka-sellers, the 

 " pope " or priest, the grain merchant who lived in the 

 mansion of the former nobleman, and landless " bat- 

 raks," who worked for wages at anything they could 

 find to do. The blacksmith's son was the most intel- 

 ligent of the three. We asked him about the mir and 

 the various things that make up the sum and sub- 

 stance of the Russian peasant's life. The people of 

 Tchudovo, he said, had been wiser than many of their 

 neighbors. The mirs had a right to borrow money 

 from the banks or from private capitalists, giving the 

 land as security. Many had done this, and by pledging 

 themselves to ruinous terms were in sorry straits, 

 having hard work to keep their heads above water and 

 pay their taxes. 



"We have had better sense, though," said he, smil- 

 ing with the peculiar grin of a simple rustic soul who 

 is not to be easily taken in, " and have never borrowed 

 money, and so our mir is very well off." 



" If your mir is well off, why, then, are there so many 



