On arriving at the country-house I told my friends what I had seen, and they explained it to me. Smolensk is no longer one of the poorer provinces; it has become comparatively prosperous. In two or three districts large quantities of flax are produced and give the cultivators a big revenue; in other districts plenty of remunerative work is supplied by the forests. Everywhere a considerable proportion of the younger men go regularly to the towns and bring home savings enough to pay the taxes and make a little surplus in the domestic budget. A few days afterwards the village secretary brought me his books, and showed me that there were practically no arrears of taxation.
Passing on to other provinces I found similar proofs of progress and prosperity, but at the same time not a few indications of impoverishment; and I was rapidly relapsing into my previous state of uncertainty as to whether any general conclusions could be drawn, when an old friend, himself a first-rate authority with many years of practical experience, came to my assistance. He informed me that a number of specialists had recently made detailed investigations into the present economic conditions of the rural population, and he kindly placed at my disposal, in his charming country-house near Moscow, the voluminous researches of these investigators. Here, during a good many weeks, I revelled in the statistical materials collected, and to the best of my ability I
tested the conclusions drawn from them. Many of these conclusions I had to dismiss with the Scotch verdict of "not proven," whilst others seemed to me worthy of acceptance. Of these latter the most important were those drawn from the arrears of taxation.
I hope I am committing no indiscretion when I say that the old friend in question was Prince Alexander Stcherbatof of Vasilefskoe.
The arrears in the payment of taxes may be regarded as a pretty safe barometer for testing the condition of the rural population, because the peasant habitually pays his rates and taxes when he has the means of doing so; when he falls seriously and permanently into arrears it may be assumed that he is becoming impoverished. If the arrears fluctuate from year to year, the causes of the impoverishment may be regarded as accidental and perhaps temporary, but if they steadily accumulate, we must conclude that there is something radically wrong. Bearing these facts in mind, let us hear what the statistics say.
During the first twenty years after the Emancipation (1861-81)
things went on in their old grooves. The poor provinces remained poor, and the fertile provinces showed no signs of distress.
During the next twenty years (1881-1901) the arrears of the whole of European Russia rose, roughly speaking, from 27 to 144 millions of roubles, and the increase, strange to say, took place in the fertile provinces. In 1890, for example, out of 52 millions, nearly 41 millions, or 78 per cent., fell to the share of the provinces of the Black-earth Zone. In seven of these the average arrears per male, which had been in 1882 only 90 kopeks, rose in 1893 to 600, and in 1899 to 2,200! And this accumulation had taken place in spite of reductions of taxation to the extent of 37
million roubles in 1881-83, and successive famine grants from the Treasury in 1891-99 to the amount of 203 millions. On the other hand, in the provinces with a poor soil the arrears had greatly decreased. In Smolensk, for example, they had sunk from 202 per cent, to 13 per cent. of the annual sum to be paid, and in nearly all the other provinces of the west and north a similar change for the better had taken place.
These and many other figures which I might quote show that a great and very curious economic revolution has been gradually effected.
The Black-earth Zone, which was formerly regarded as the inexhaustible granary of the Empire, has become impoverished, whilst the provinces which were formerly regarded as hopelessly poor are now in a comparatively flourishing condition. This fact has been officially recognised. In a classification of the provinces according to their degree of prosperity, drawn up by a special commission of experts in 1903, those with a poor light soil appear at the top, and those with the famous black earth are at the bottom of the list. In the deliberations of the commission many reasons for this extraordinary state of things are adduced. Most of them have merely a local significance. The big fact, taken as a whole, seems to me to show that, in consequence of certain changes of which I shall speak presently, the peasantry of European Russia can no longer live by the traditional modes of agriculture, even in the most fertile districts, and require for their support some subsidiary occupations such as are practised in the less fertile provinces.
In 1901 an additional famine grant of 33 1/2 million roubles had to be made by the Government.
Another sign of impoverishment is the decrease in the quantity of live stock. According to the very imperfect statistics available, for every hundred inhabitants the number of horses has decreased from 26 to 17, the number of cattle from 36 to 25, and the number of sheep from 73 to 40. This is a serious matter, because it means that the land is not so well manured and cultivated as formerly, and is consequently not so productive. Several economists have attempted to fix precisely to what extent the productivity has decreased, but I confess I have little faith in the accuracy of their conclusions. M. Polenof, for example, a most able and conscientious investigator, calculates that between 1861 and 1895, all over Russia, the amount of food produced, in relation to the number of the population, has decreased by seven per cent. His methods of calculation are ingenious, but the statistical data with which he operates are so far from accurate that his conclusions on this point have, in my opinion, little or no scientific value.