18 
RUSSIA IX EUROPE 
committees to examine and report directly to him and advise 
what action, if any, shall be taken. 
There is a code of laws, full of commentaries, with a vast num- 
l)er of orders, decrees, and statutes issued by the czar at differ- 
ent times and under different circumstances; also innumerable 
circulars, open and secret, general, special, and local, forming a 
tangled growth, so that it is impossible to decide either what the 
law is or what are the rights of the individual. It is difficult for 
the czar or his ministers to know how far an order has been 
executed, for with a censorship of the press it is impossible for 
either the people or the ruler to know much of the conduct of 
affairs. 
Russia is divided into eighty-five governments and six terri- 
tories of different areas and population, over each of which is a 
governor, responsible to the czar, and a council, wdth a strong 
centralized administration. The power of the governor is nearly 
as absolute and unlimited in his territory as that of the czar 
over the whole empire. Each government is divided into dis- 
tricts. The governor appoints officials in the various districts, 
who are responsible to him, and these officials appoint jDolice 
officers in the several villages, responsible only to them. The 
salaries of the lower officers are very small, and as thej’’ are 
barely sufficient for their support this has led to more or less 
corruption, although in Russia, as in other countries, embezzle- 
ment has not been confined to any class or rank. This was 
greatly lessened under the late czar, Alexander III, in the cen- 
tral government and in the great administrations. 
THE MIR. 
In Great and Little Russia, Avherever the Slav inhaliits, the vil- 
lage community, called the mir, has been persistent and exists 
today in a form not widely different from that which prevailed 
in ancient Arya and all over Europe and Asia. There are 
, 107,493 of these communes in Russia. All the land is held 
by the mir, owned in common, and is divided into three })or- 
tions — arable, forest, and pasture. The homes are all in the 
village. The fields, cut into long, narrow strips, are periodically 
divided among the families, so that each family shall have strips 
according to its size and numbers. There is a redistribution 
every few years. Nearly all the women and the greater part of 
the men are engaged in the cultivation of the land. All the 
