Russian local government during the war and the Union of Zemstvos

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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 II. Activities of the zemstvo institutions on the eve of the war

Collection:: Economics Books

16 THE ZEMSTVOS DURING THE WAR seeds were an important feature in the organization of agricultural ald to the peasahts. This business developed very rapidly and at the beginning of the twentieth century, if the traditional wooden plow of the Russian peasant had practically everywhere given place to the modern iron plow and if a large number of peasant farms had been equipped with up-to-date winnowing and threshing machines, and grain in the south of Russia was being harvested almost univer- sally with the aid of mowing and reaping machines, this transforma- tion was due in a very large measure to the work of the zemstvo stores of agricultural implements. In 1913 there were in the zemstvo provinces 839 such stores many of which had branch offices. Their turnover ran into scores of millions of rubles. Thus, according to M. Veselovsky* the turnover of the agricultural stores of only four provincial and fifty-seven district zemstvos in 1914 had been 6,895,000 rubles. The zemstvo agricultural stores were operating in close contact with the rural cooperative societies, which were developing very rap- idly during the years immediately preceding the War, and it was with their assistance that the zemstvos stores conducted their trade in seeds, machines, and implements. Many district zemstvos also or- ganized, through the agency of their stores, temporary loans of im- proved agricultural machinery to the peasantry, thereby doing much to make modern machinery popular. For the purchase of agricultural machines and implements at home and abroad, the zem- stvos formed special associations. The most important of these was that of Orel, which included nine provincial and forty-one district zemstvos; another important association of this kind was that of Kiev, uniting two provincial and twenty-one district zemstvos in southwestern Russia. Among measures designed to improve agriculture, and taken also partly in the interest of public health, we must note the hydro-tech- nical enterprises launched by twenty-six provincial and three dis- trict zemstvos, for digging and drilling wells, building dams, and other works to improve the land, such as the draining of swamps and marshes, etc. In localities with a highly developed cottage industry the zem- stvos succeeded in accomplishing a considerable amount of useful t Zemstvo Yearbook for 1916.

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