Land Policy and Land Conditions
in Soviet Russia.
By Cyrill Zaitzeff and Prof. Peter Struve,
Fellow of the Russian Emp. Academy, Hon. L. L. D., Cambridge.
CONTENTS: Former Agrarian Relations; Stolypin's Reform; Bolshevist Agrarian
Revolution; Bolshevist Revolution and Marxism; Bolshevist Agrarian Legislation did
not succeed in bringing about an equalizing effect; The attempt of organising the
land-culture on a socialistic basis; Socialistic Serfdom; Economical Catastrophe;
Refuasl of the Equalizing Principle; Communistic Principles in the New Legislation;
Return to the Stolypin Legislation; The “NEP” strengthens the Struggle for Land;
Continental Threat with New Universal Repartition; Real Land Conditions in Present
Russia; Tendency to Individual Tenure; Hired Labour in Villages; Landless House-
holds; Lease of Land; Statistics of Cereal Production.
1. Some Introductory Remarks.
Tee historical development of the land relations in Russia differs upon
many points from the European development. But these points of
difference are not as yet sufficiently clearly grasped and realised both in
Russia and in the West.
Generally, the scheme of the development of Russian agrarian relations
is represented in the following way: originally there existed a free peasantry
possessing and cultivating its own land under some “village-community”
regime. Afterwards, as a result of joint efforts of the privileged private
owners and of the State, it was subjected to servitude and turned into
serfs, private and State. the s. c. “village community” being somehow
preserved.
In that scheme there are two moments, two assertions. The second
assertion — with the exception of the would be “primitive” village-commu-
nity — is a mere statement of fact. It is true that the originally free
peasants, who enjoyed the right to move from one landowner to another,
in the Moscow epoch were turned into serfs, i. e. lost the right to move
and were gradually tied by bonds of slavery to the privileged landlords as
their personal property. State peasants remained bound to the land, but
the State, as embodied in the person of the Tzar, gradually began to regard
the peasants themselves and their land as, on the whole, an object which
the State could dispose of at its will. In the course of such disposal of the
peasants and of the land tenanted by them, the peasants dependent on the
State and the Tzar became to some extent agricultural slaves of the privi-
leged landlords, until at the beginning of XIXth century all transfer of
State lands tenanted by peasants into private hands was stopped.
