THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE 269 
lied countries for the purpose of acquainting itself with the organi- 
zation of their army medical services. 
In the second half of 1916 the Zemstvo Union had grown to such 
an extent as to constitute a veritable state within a state. Its annual 
budget had risen to the huge sum of 600,000,000 rubles and was 
growing uninterruptedly. Hundreds of thousands of persons, women 
as well as men, drawn from all paths of life, were employed directly 
and indirectly in the service of the Union. Donations were con- 
stantly flowing into its treasury. Gifts and parcels for the troops 
were being received in such quantities that they had to be sent to the 
front by special trains in charge of special commissioners. While it 
cannot be said that cash donations played any considerable part in 
the enormous budget of the Union, it should be noted that these 
small gifts and contributions in cash came from every part of the 
country and all classes of the population, thus demonstrating the 
confidence that the Union enjoyed. Of course, there were instances 
now and then of important gifts. Thus one donor, who preferred to 
remain anonymous, presented the Union with a splendid estate cov- 
ering about 8,500 deciatines in the rich black soil belt of south Rus- 
sia, in the district of Epiphan, province of Tula, on condition that 
the Union should open in this estate elementary, secondary, and 
higher agricultural schools for the instruction of peasant children. 
The estate included arable land, meadows on the Don River, forests 
and coal mines, and its market price was about 1,000,000 rubles. A 
gift of this kind testified not only to a great deal of confidence in 
the Union, but also to the conviction of the donor that the Union 
would exist for many years after the War—a conviction shared by 
the public throughout Russia.