theory, its working and its anticipated consequences,
in a series of articles published at the time.[48]

[48] In the _Daily Telegraph_.

Down to the year 1861 the Russian serfs had been mostly bound to the
soil. They were emancipated by Alexander II., who ordered each
landowner to make over to the serfs as much of his landed property as
was being actually cultivated by these. Wherever this amount seemed
too extensive for the support of a family it was whittled down and the
residue left with the landlord. Each of the various lots thus
expropriated was given not to an individual, nor to a family, but to
the village community. Each field was cut into as many strips as there
were farms, and each farm had the use of one. Every year the peasants
had to pay a certain sum to the landlord until the land was wholly
redeemed, and liability for these payments, like the possession of the
land, was common. Hence the drunkards and the lazy paid little or
nothing. It was the community which decided when the sowing and when
the reaping should take place. The results of this system were
baneful. And little by little the more enterprising peasants who had
no motive to improve the value of the land which they were allowed for
a time to cultivate, migrated to the towns and joined the growing army
of working men.

How long this state of things would have continued, if these immediate
consequences had formed the only objection to it, is uncertain. But
the Revolution of 1905-6 rendered it wholly untenable. The peasantry,
on whom the Tsar and the Government counted for support, readily
followed the lead of every anarchist and revolutionary who dangled the
promise of free land before their eyes, and gutted or burned the
manors of the landlords. With no conception of the sacredness, nor,
indeed, of the nature of property, they seized what they could by
force, and were gravely disappointed when it was re-taken from them by
law. Stolypin's scheme, as he himself propounded it to me, was to
enable the peasant to acquire the land he tilled, and not merely the
scattered strips, but a compact farm capable of supporting himself and
his family. And the system of collective liability for payments to the
State was abolished, together with that of collective land-ownership.

This was in truth a genial reform, and the business-like way in which
it was carried out did credit to the late Minister and the people.
Even now it is far from completed, but