ACTIVITIES BEFORE THE WAR 37
The expenditure of all provincial and district zemstvos for 1914
was as follows:
Expenditure in 1914.
Education
Public health
Public welfare
Agronomic and economic measures
Veterinary services
Roads
Maintenance of administration
Other expenditure, service of debts, etc.
Total
In rubles
106,975,000
82,574,000
5,147,000
28,896,000
10,462,000
17,511,000
23,434,000
72,513,000
847.512.000
These figures do not cover, however, the whole of the revenue and
expenditure. They do not include the trading activities of the zem-
stvos nor their insurance work, which was carried on with a special
insurance fund. If we include these items, there can be no doubt that
the zemstvo budget for 1914 was in excess of 400,000,000 rubles.
The Russian Government budget for 1914 was 3,600,000,000
rubles, or only nine times as large as the zemstvo budget for the
forty-three provinces. Notwithstanding the extraordinary growth of
the government budget during the few years immediately preceding
the World War, the zemstvo budgets were expanding more rapidly.
The budget of the zemstvos in thirty-four provinces increased from
171,687,700 rubles in 1910 to 292,049,800 rubles in 1914; during
the same period the state budget increased from 2,522,000,000
rubles to 8,613,000,000 rubles. While the state budget increased by
only 39 per cent during these four years, the zemstvo budget in-
creased by "70 per cent.
The vast importance of the zemstvos in the life of the Russian
state prior to the War becomes still more apparent when we com-
pare, not the budgetary totals, but the appropriations made for the
various branches of state and zemstvo activity. Thus, under the
budget of 1914, the government expenditure under the head of Min-
istry of Education amounted to 155,300,000 rubles, whereas the
expenditure of all the zemstvos on education amounted to 107,000,-
000 rubles; government appropriations for the Ministry of Agricul-
ture were 145,000,000 rubles; the expenditure of the zemstvos for
