wooden dishes, and spoons, and for the payment of taxes, which were small in amount and often paid by the proprietor.  In these circumstances the quantity of money in circulation among the peasants was infinitesimally small, the few exchanges which took place in a village being generally effected by barter.  The taxes, and the vodka required for village festivals, weddings, or funerals, were the only large items of expenditure for the year, and they were generally covered by the sums brought home by the members of the family who went to work in the towns.

Very different is the present condition of affairs.  The spinning, weaving, and other home industries have been killed by the big factories, and the flax and wool have to be sold to raise a little ready money for the numerous new items of expenditure.  Everything has to be bought—­clothes, firewood, petroleum, improved agricultural implements, and many other articles which are now regarded as necessaries of life, whilst comparatively little is earned by working in the towns, because the big families have been broken up, and a household now consists usually of husband and wife, who must both remain at home, and children who are not yet bread-winners.  Recalling to mind all these things and the other drawbacks and advantages of his actual position, the old muzhik has naturally much difficulty in striking a balance, and he may well be quite sincere when, on being asked whether things now are on the whole better or worse than in the time of serfage, he scratches the back of his head and replies hesitatingly, with a mystified expression on his wrinkled face:  “How shall I say to you?  They are both better and worse!” ("Kak vam skazat’?  I lutche i khudzhe!”) If, however, you press him further and ask whether he would himself like to return to the old state of things, he is pretty sure to answer, with a slow shake of the head and a twinkle in his eye, as if some forgotten item in the account had suddenly recurred to him:  “Oh, no!”

What materially increases the difficulty of this general computation is that great changes have taken place in the well-being of the particular households.  Some have greatly prospered, while others have become impoverished.  That is one of the most characteristic consequences of the Emancipation.  In the old times the general economic stagnation and the uncontrolled authority of the proprietor tended to keep all the households of a village on the same level.  There was little opportunity for an intelligent, enterprising serf to become rich, and if he contrived to increase his revenue he had probably to give a considerable share of it to the proprietor, unless he had the good fortune to belong to a grand seigneur like Count Sheremetief, who was proud of having rich men among his serfs.  On the other hand, the proprietor, for evident reasons of self-interest, as well as from benevolent motives, prevented the less intelligent and less enterprising members of the Commune from becoming bankrupt.