OUR LAND LAWS: WHAT SHOULD BE THEIR BASIS

Evening Star, Issue 4009, 31 December 1875, Page 1 (Supplement)

OUR LAND LAWS: WHAT SHOULD BE THEIR BASIS

By C. W. Purnell.

{Continued.)

Russia. —The Village Community, or Commune, lies at the base of the agrarian organisation of Russia, and never having been complicated, as in Germany, by feudal customs, has retained its pristine vigor until the present day. The Russian Village Community differs in some important respects from the German, but its animating principle is the same. It furnishes a conspicuous example of the acknowledgment of the right of the nation, in its collective capacity, to the land, and gives an equally conspicuous denial to the justice of that system the progeny of mercantile ideas of the worst kind—which permits any individual to purchase as much land as he pleases, and to deal with it when obtained as though it were a bale of goods. To comprehend how firmly welded the Commune is in the Russian Constitution we must carry our thoughts back to the period antecedent to the year 1861. Prior to that date nearly all the Russian peasantry, and many of the townspeople, were serfs, occupying different grades of servitude indeed, but all veritably slaves, inasmuch as they were deprived of personal freedom. .Altogether 48,000,000 persons belonged to the fettered class, and were divided into Crown, appanage, and private serfs, the first being, as might be guessed, the best off. Some of the serfs on the nobles’ estates, and they counted two and twenty millions, were slaves of the lowest and most degraded order, their lot reminding one of that of the negroes .on certain of the Mississipi and Louisiana plantations before the American Civil War. Yet, while exorcising despotic power over the peasants, the nobles were never able to deprive them of their title to the Commune lands. The noble heaped personal services upon the villager and made his wretched life more wretched, but did not dare to break through the ancient custom and tear him from the soil altogether. Nor did the Crown attempt to do so. The condition of the Crown peasants, indeed, was much easier than that of the private serfs; but it is a striking proof of the deeprootedness of this custom of the Commune, that the Crown never offered to disturb it. The sway of a Sovereign could not be more despotic than was that of the Czar before the accession of Alexander 11. to the Throne of Russia. Nicholas was regarded almost as a god by the mass of of his subjects, and if when Jupiter nodded, nutu totum tremcfecit Olympum , the nod of Nicholas was hardly less awful to the Russians. He knouted, and slow, and banished whom he pleased, but in his most irritable and savage moods he lot the commune lands alone. In truth, the custom existed before serfdom began. Grant Puff, in Iris “ Studies ou European politics,” says;

- “ The communal institutions of Russia are far older than its serfdom. They saw that evil begin, as they have seen it end.” Russian serfdom arose in comparatively modern times. - An excellent account of the agrarian * organisation of Russia is given by Dr, J. Eckardt, in his “ Modern Russia.” One thiid of the land in a manor, whether belonging to the Grown or to a private individual, fell, according to custom, to the direct use of the lord, the rest belonged to the Village Com* munity, and was left to its undivided possession. Nominally and legally the land was owned by the lord, just as the serfs were owned by him, but practically it belonged to the latter, who regarded their share of the domain as the private property of the Commune, exempt from the lord’s control. So strong was this feeling that most of the Communes, since the emancipation, have refused to avail themselves of the right accorded them by the Act of Emancipation to purchase the proprietary right of the lord, on the plea that the land is, and always has been their own. All the occupiers of the estate stood in equal, and almost unlimited dependence on their masterj and were hound, amongst other things, to cultivate the part of the domain allotted to his use. The equitable ownership of the soil of the village was vested in the villagers as a body, and the land was periodically plotted, usually about every ninth year, in equal parcels amongst all the families in the place. Every member of the community had an equal claim to the use of a share of the village territory ; and if a peasant, with the permission of his lord, took up his abode in a city for a time in order to work as an artisan or engage in commerce, he could, on any day, return to his village and obtain a share of the land at the next allotment, even though ho had ’ become wealthy during . his absence. | At the allotment, the. arable land was divided into narrow strips, 100 to i 500 fathoms long, and from three to six broad , the wood, pasture [ land, fisheries, etc., being left to the undivided possession of the ; whole community. This plan of cut- . ting up the arable laud of the village [ into narrow strips, for temporary ocou--5 pation, was adopted by the Teutonic 5 village communities of Germany, and i its traces were likewise visible in some \ parts of England until a recent date. The framers of the Emancipation ) Laws, recognizing facts, strove to con--1 vert the Communes into legal owners of the soil, but otherwise the principles on which the Communes existed were ■ left untouched. “In the management of the estate j in the relation of each member to the entire community; in the periodical allotments; in the manner and style of taxation; and in the division of the land, absolutely nothing , was altered. The right was indeed » secured to the communities of dividing 1 their district, after they had acquired it r as property, and to subdivide the sepa- - rate portions, but no use was ever . made of this right and the land was - retained as common possession.” - The Commune did not exist in s the Baltic Provinces, inhabited chiefly t by a population of German des--3 cent, in the Provinces which formerly 2 made part of Poland, nor in a portion 3 of Russia Minor. Even in Russia - Proper there were a few small free- : holds, but they were looked upon as - abnormal, and throughout a territory - where fifty millions of serfs, besides - free men, dwelt, the Village Commu--1 nity was supreme, “ a system which,” i says Professor Maine, “is known to - be of immense antiquity. In whatever s direction research has been pushed in t Indian history, general or local, it has I always found the community in exisv tence at the farthest point of its proi gress.” The vast extent of territory - over which this mode of occupying t land Las, at one period or another, 1 prevailed, was unknown, even to 3 scholars, until within the last few - years, and still lacks full recognition. 3 There is, of course, a community of liv--1 ing intertwined with this community of 3 land tenure, and in Russia the social b communism became remarkably deve--3 veloped, each village commune being 1 subdivided into families, consisting of a , number of persons residing together, . and yielding obedience to a patriarch, 3 who kept the common purse, and exer--3 cised very large social powers over the s members of the family, of which he was , * the representative so far as the outsido p world was concerned. The emanoipap tion laws have resulted in a cousider--3 able disintegration of the communal 1 system in this respect, but to the del cided benefit of the people j otherwise, , the commune holds its ground, and is ; regarded by the Russian Socialists, 3 whose ranks contain the bulk of the ini tellectual classes of Russia, and “ Young f Russia” almost to a man—as the basis i upon which a new and better nationa. j organisation can be built, and all the . Sclavonic races of Europe raised to a . higher grade of civilisation. > {To be continued.)