West an indolent, apathetic race.  If the traveller happens to come from the East—­especially if he has been living among pastoral races—­the Russians will appear to him energetic and laborious.  Their character in this respect corresponds to their geographical position:  they stand midway between the laborious, painstaking, industrious population of Western Europe and the indolent, undisciplined, spasmodically energetic populations of Central Asia.  They are capable of effecting much by vigorous, intermittent effort—­witness the peasant at harvest-time, or the St. Petersburg official when some big legislative project has to be submitted to the Emperor within a given time—­but they have not yet learned regular laborious habits.  In short, the Russians might move the world if it could be done by a jerk, but they are still deficient in that calm perseverance and dogged tenacity which characterise the Teutonic race.

Without seeking further to determine how far the moral defects of the peasantry have a deleterious influence on their material welfare, I proceed to examine the external causes which are generally supposed to contribute largely to their impoverishment, and will deal first with the evils of peasant self-government.

That the peasant self-government is very far from being in a satisfactory condition must be admitted by any impartial observer.  The more laborious and well-to-do peasants, unless they wish to abuse their position directly or indirectly for their own advantage, try to escape election as office-bearers, and leave the administration in the hands of the less respectable members.  Not unfrequently a Volost Elder trades with the money he collects as dues or taxes; and sometimes, when he becomes insolvent, the peasants have to pay their taxes and dues a second time.  The Village Assemblies, too, have become worse than they were in the days of serfage.  At that time the Heads of Households—­who, it must be remembered, have alone a voice in the decisions—­were few in number, laborious, and well-to-do, and they kept the lazy, unruly members under strict control.  Now that the large families have been broken up and almost every adult peasant is Head of a Household, the Communal affairs are sometimes decided by a noisy majority; and certain Communal decisions may be obtained by “treating the Mir”—­that is to say, by supplying a certain amount of vodka.  Often I have heard old peasants speak of these things, and finish their recital by some such remark as this:  “There is no order now; the people have been spoiled; it was better in the time of the masters.”

These evils are very real, and I have no desire to extenuate them, but I believe they are by no means so great as is commonly supposed.  If the lazy, worthless members of the Commune had really the direction of Communal affairs we should find that in the Northern Agricultural Zone, where it is necessary to manure the soil, the periodical redistributions of the Communal land would be very frequent; for in a new distribution the lazy peasant has a good chance of getting a well-manured lot in exchange for the lot which he has exhausted.  In reality, so far as my observations extend, these general distributions of the land are not more frequent than they were before.