THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

North Otago Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2095, 20 January 1879, Page 3

THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY.

The condition of the Russian peasantry (says the Pall Mull G izelte) hr.s lately been illustrated by Pi nice Yolkonski. His report on thr district of Ranenburg, in the province of Riazan, is to the effect that the peasant solf-govornnient, instituted under the Emancipation Act, is permeated with bribery and corruption, and that the second most prominent feature in peasant life, from one end of Russia to the other, is the wholesale dissipation of commuual or public funds. "Bribe-tak-ing," says the Prince, "prevails everywhere ; and the larger the communp, or volost (group of villages) the greater are the proportions which that evil acquires. All take bribes ; the communal assembly takes bribes from its officers for bestowing on them the privilege of taking bribes ; the office holders take biibes from individual members of the assembly ; the volost both takes and gives bribes. One of these assemblies was clever enough to • take money from those of its members who had been appointed to audit the accounts of the communal elder, or mayor, on the ground that the members thus appointed had acquired the valuable right of checking the communal cash," Bribery has become so customary that the elder of another volost made in his official cash-book entries of the bribes he had been called upon to pay, one of which was to the following effect : — " Bribe given to the assessor of police in order that he should not take horses and carts" (gratis for journeys or transporting goods.) The disappearance of communal funds, owing partly to negligence, but chiefly to robbery, is frequently accounted for in the communal budget as a " mistake in cash." Every village, continues the Prince, has one or more vampires or miroyeds — meaning literally, " commune eaters." By spending a considerable amount af money in treating with drink the more influential members of the communal assembly^ they secure election to the office of village elder, volostnoi elder, or judge. Once installed in office they seek it make to jield as much as possible. A peasant having a claim of twenty-five 1 outles on a commune would be compelled to spend fifteen roubles in drink before he could obtain payment. The predominating features in the volostnoi (parochial) administration, says our authority, are " arbitrarinP9s and absence of accounts, particularly in the volostsof the ex-peasantry of the Crown," while the self-government of the ex-seifs is distinguished by ''ignorance of affairs and of the art of reading and writing." Tn many communes the so-called tax-books are not kept on the plea that the officers who are supposed to keep them are unable to read or write ; and there are communes in which the public accounts are still kept on tallies. The Russian provincial journals are full of similar stories. Thus a newspaper published at Saratoff, on the Volga, gives an account of a meeting of a volostnoi court of justice, at which the judges — all of the peasant class — were so drunk that they oply succeeded in reaching the judicial bei^ch by groping along the walls of the couit-house. It is evident that when the Russian Government has quite done with reforms in Bulgaria there will be plenty of useful work in Russia Proper for Prince Dondoukoff Korsakoff and his staff.