Russian local government during the war and the Union of Zemstvos

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1794855874

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-179223

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Polner, Tichon I. http://d-nb.info/gnd/172311195

Title:: Russian local government during the war and the Union of Zemstvos

Place of publication:: New Haven

Publisher:: Yale Univ. Press

Year of publication:: 1930

Scope:: XXV, 317 S.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter VIII. Assistance to farming

Collection:: Economics Books

154 THE ZEMSTVOS DURING THE WAR was gratuitous, and even in those instances where remuneration was received the money went to the purchase of clothing for the stu- dents. Before going out to stations assigned to them, they were often given a course of lectures and sometimes provided with the oppor- tunity of gaining practice in mowing or in the handling of the more complicated agricultural machines. Reports on the organization and the work done by student farm-labor squads are available for twenty-three provinces, although it is probable that the number of provinces in which they operated was considerably larger.® Prisoners of War. The prisoners of war were under the jurisdiction of the general staff. Their status was regulated by numerous rules and regulations which provided that they might also be employed as laborers. In order, however, to obtain prisoners of war for farm work, a great deal of red tape had to be gone through. The peasant in need of prisoners of war had to file his application with the zemstvo board. Then the board, if it consented to allocate a number of prisoners of war for such work and to look after them, would inform the gover- nor of the province of its decision. The governor would then for- ward the application of the board to the general staff. Upon the ar- cival of the prisoners of war at the place designated, the zemstvo board would distribute them over the district. Sometimes complaints were heard that the zemstvo distributed the prisoners chiefly among the owners of large estates, and indeed the census of 1916 showed that only 38 per cent of all prisoners had been employed on peasant farms and the balance on the estates of the landlords. There is, however, no reason to attribute this necessarily to bias on the part of the zemstvo board in favor of the landlords. In the first place, we must remember that the large landowners undoubtedly required all the help they could possibly get, much more urgently than the peas- ants and that practically the entire reduction in the area sown which at one time so greatly alarmed the Government and the public oc- curred on large estates rather than on the peasant farms. On the other hand, we frequently find in the documents dealing with this subject instances of emphatic refusal by the peasants to take ad- vantage of the labor of prisoners of war. This was the case, for 8 Iswestia (Bulletin), Nos. 37-88, pp. 106-108; No. 39, pp. 95-100.

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