From the railway station at Viazma, where I arrived one morning at sunrise, I had some twenty miles to drive, and as soon as I got clear of the little town I began my observations.  What I saw around me seemed to contradict the sombre accounts I had received.  The villages through which I passed had not at all the look of dilapidation and misery which I expected.  On the contrary, the houses were larger and better constructed than they used to be, and each of them had a chimney!  That latter fact was important because formerly a large proportion of the peasants of this region had no such luxury, and allowed the smoke to find its exit by the open door.  In vain I looked for a hut of the old type, and my yamstchik assured me I should have to go a long way to find one.  Then I noticed a good many iron ploughs of the European model, and my yamstchik informed me that their predecessor, the sokha with which I had been so familiar, had entirely disappeared from the district.  Next I noticed that in the neighbourhood of the villages flax was grown in large quantities.  That was certainly not an indication of poverty, because flax is a valuable product which requires to be well manured, and plentiful manure implies a considerable quantity of live stock.  Lastly, before arriving at my destination, I noticed clover being grown in the fields.  This made me open my eyes with astonishment, because the introduction of artificial grasses into the traditional rotation of crops indicates the transition to a higher and more intensive system of agriculture.  As I had never seen clover in Russia except on the estates of very advanced proprietors, I said to my yamstchik: 

“Listen, little brother!  That field belongs to the landlord?”

“Not at all, Master; it is muzhik-land.”

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,