The Economics of the Russian Village

The Economics of the Russian Village is by Isaac A. Hourwich, Ph.D., Seligman Fellow in Political Science, Columbia College, New York, 1892. The contents list names a chapter titled General Sketch of the Development of Landholding in Russia, whose listed topics include, among others, The Russian village community of historical times, Survivals of communal co-operation, and Origins of private property in land. The text says the first article of Tchernyshefsky upon the village community was written in 1857, on the eve of the emancipation of the peasants.

The text gives questions raised by Tchernyshefsky, asking whether Russian development must of historical necessity follow in the tracks of Western Europe, and whether Russia cannot benefit by the lessons taught by the history of Western nations. Chapter XII, The Redivision of the Communal Land, says that Peasant Russia of the time of serfdom was a kind of a single tax realm. A table gives the loss of working cattle toward January, 1892, for bailiwicks including Ivanteyeffskaya and Lipovetzkaya.