examples could be easily multiplied. We shall here only point out a 
very popular form of disguised separation of holdings, viz. so-called “five- 
family holding” which is still greatly favoured by the Government. To 
illustrate the widespread individualistic disintegration of villages, we shall 
give here the evidence taken from the two, perhaps, most popular Soviet 
books about villages. Thus, Yakovlev in his book “Village as it is”, dealing 
with the Province of Kursk, tells about the “kulak bud” formed by a for- 
merly well-to-do peasant who was deprived of everything by the revolution, 
but has recovered his position. “I have gathered a group of 20 households 
and we are separating our holdings” — declares this peasant in the book 
of Yakovlev. And here is a dialogue from another book which has produced 
great sensation and aroused a real storm in the Communist camp by its 
alleged denunciations; I mean the book of Bourov: “Village at the 
crossways’ : 
“Once I asked Jmurkin*): Tell me, Jmurkin, why is the village thus 
going all to pieces? There is hardly any village where the peasants have 
not separated, or are not trying to separate, their holdings. — This is quite 
simple, replied Jmurkin. It is now very difficult for us to live in the 
village in the old way, the main cause being our dissensions. The father is 
quarrelling with his son; the son is suing his father. That is why they separate. 
A peasant who wants to run his farm in a new way cannot do it in the 
old village where society is ruling. Suppose everybody agrees as to some 
economic improvement, and only two or three people persist, often out of 
obstinacy,  self-consciousness or ignorance, and there is nothing to be done 
with them... And then there is the intermixture of fields, and the remo- 
teness of holdings. From this point too, it is much more convenient to 
separate one’s holding. Take me, for instance: I have now all my land 
next to me, in my own holding. And here all my land, the whole of my 
farm is put together in one place and can be seen as if on the palm of a 
hand. That is why everything is going to pieces and breaking up... For 
gconomic reasons.’ 
These two examples illustrate very well the marked tendency of the 
peasants towards personal tenure. This tendency, however, is vigorously 
opposed by the Soviet Government which, though Marxian in its origin 
and label, is carrying out at present with extraordinary persistence a purely 
populist, communal-equalising policy. The quarrel between the advocates 
of vital individulistic principles in the village who screen up their defence 
with the shield of Marxism and Leninism, on one hand and the egalitarian 
“populist” doctrine on the other. broke up in the higher spheres of the 
*) Jmurkin — a “cultural worker”, ohne of the main personages in Bourov’s 
book. 
) 
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