THE ZEMSTVO AND THE LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT
Necessity of Reorganising the Provincial Administration--Zemstvo Created in 1864--My First Acquaintance with the Institution--
District and Provincial Assemblies--The Leading Members--Great Expectations Created by the Institution--These Expectations Not Realised--Suspicions and Hostility of the Bureaucracy--Zemstvo Brought More Under Control of the Centralised Administration--What It Has Really Done--Why It Has Not Done More---Rapid Increase of the Rates--How Far the Expenditure Is Judicious--Why the Impoverishment of the Peasantry Was Neglected--Unpractical, Pedantic Spirit--Evil Consequences--Chinese and Russian Formalism--
Local Self-Government of Russia Contrasted with That of England--
Zemstvo Better than Its Predecessors--Its Future.
After the emancipation of the serfs the reform most urgently required was the improvement of the provincial administration. In the time of serfage the Emperor Nicholas, referring to the landed proprietors, used to say in a jocular tone that he had in his Empire 50,000 most zealous and efficient hereditary police-masters.
By the Emancipation Law the authority of these hereditary police-
masters was for ever abolished, and it became urgently necessary to put something else in its place. Peasant self-government was accordingly organised on the basis of the rural Commune; but it fell far short of meeting the requirements of the situation. Its largest unit was the Volost, which comprises merely a few contiguous Communes, and its action is confined exclusively to the peasantry. Evidently it was necessary to create a larger administrative unit, in which the interests of all classes of the population could be attended to, and for this purpose Alexander II.
in November, 1859, more than a year before the Emancipation Edict, instructed a special Commission to prepare a project for giving to the inefficient, dislocated provincial administration greater unity and independence. The project was duly prepared, and after being discussed in the Council of State it received the Imperial sanction in January, 1864. It was supposed to give, in the words of an explanatory memorandum attached to it, "as far as possible a complete and logical development to the principle of local self-
government." Thus was created the Zemstvo,which has recently attracted considerable attention in Western Europe, and which is destined, perhaps, to play a great political part in the future.
The term Zemstvo is derived from the word Zemlya, meaning land, and might be translated, if a barbarism were permissible, by Land-
dom on the analogy of Kingdom, Dukedom, etc.
My personal acquaintance with this interesting institution dates from 1870. Very soon after my arrival at Novgorod in that year, I
made the acquaintance of a gentleman who was described to me as "the president of the provincial Zemstvo-bureau," and finding him amiable and communicative, I suggested that he might give me some information regarding the institution of which he was the chief local representative. With the utmost readiness he proposed to be my Mentor, introduced me to his colleagues, and invited me to come and see him at his office as often as I felt inclined. Of this invitation I made abundant use. At first my visits were discreetly few and short, but when I found that my new friend and his colleagues really wished to instruct me in all the details of Zemstvo administration, and had arranged a special table in the president's room for my convenience, I became a regular attendant, and spent daily several hours in the bureau, studying the current affairs, and noting down the interesting bits of statistical and other information which came before the members, as if I had been one of their number. When they went to inspect the hospital, the lunatic asylum, the seminary for the preparation of village schoolmasters, or any other Zemstvo institution, they invariably invited me to accompany them, and made no attempt to conceal from me the defects which they happened to discover.
I mention all this because it illustrates the readiness of most Russians to afford every possible facility to a foreigner who wishes seriously to study their country. They believe that they have long been misunderstood and systematically calumniated by foreigners, and they are extremely desirous that the prevalent misconceptions regarding their country should be removed. It must be said to their honour that they have little or none of that false patriotism which seeks to conceal national defects; and in judging themselves and their institutions they are inclined to be over-
severe rather than unduly lenient. In the time of Nicholas I.
those who desired to stand well with the Government proclaimed loudly that they lived in the happiest and best-governed country of the world, but this shallow official optimism has long since gone out of fashion. During all the years which I spent in Russia I
found everywhere the utmost readiness to assist me in my investigations, and very rarely noticed that habit of "throwing dust in the eyes of foreigners," of which some writers have spoken so much.
The Zemstvo is a kind of local administration which supplements the action of the rural Communes, and takes cognizance of those higher public wants which individual Communes cannot possibly satisfy.