estates was in itself a fairly complicated process, for the role and the 
meaning of the landlords’ estates differed greatly according to circumstances. 
Prior to the Bolshevist revolution, according to the data supplied by 
another Soviet statistician, in 36 Governments and Provinces of European 
Russia the non-peasant (so-called “private”) ownership of land was expressed 
in the following figures. ] 
Of the total area of 139 mill. desiatin*) 23.4 mill. desiatin were owned 
private landowners 
Of the 71 m. desiatin of arable land ¢.5 m. desiatin belonged to 
private landowners 
Of the 45.5 m. desiatin of sowing area 4 m. desiatin belonged to pri- 
vate landowners 
3.9 mill. belonged to private 
landowners. 
In percentage figures this gives: 16.9; 13.3; 7.3; 3.5. 
(F. Halevius in the review “On the agrarian front”, No. 11—12, 1927, 
p- 93.) 
Hence it is clear how insignificant was the quantitative meaning of the 
Bolshevist agrarian revolution as far as the redistribution of land between 
the social classes was concerned, for — however strange it may seem to an 
anitiated foreigner — Russia, even before the agrarian revolution, had been a 
country with a greatly prevalent peasant ownership of land and peasant 
rural economy. 
Inasmuch as the peasants seized the lands which they rented from the 
landlords and cultivated with their own means, the ground rent simply 
changed hands. But in cases where landlords themselves ran their estates 
and in Russian conditions did it well, the important fact was not the 
seizure of land by the peasants, but the seizure of agricultural capital by 
them. That seizure did not amount to a transfer of that capital from 
one owner to another, but involved the destruction of that capital and 
thereby a degradation of the agricultural production in general. But like 
all destructions of capital, even most terrible, this destruction in itself’ but 
caused if not a momentary, at least a temporary and reparable damage to 
the agricultural production of the country. 
Much more lasting and destructive were the immediate effects of the 
process of partition and equalization of land, inasmuch as it involved the 
lands and the farms of the peasants themselves. Stolypin's reform, if it 
did not lay the foundation of, at least gave a strong impetus to, the for- 
mation and development of large and middle-sized peasant farms as single 
Of the total head of cattle amounting 
to 111.2 milion 
BY 
desiatin — 2,86 acres.