to favoured individuals among the Noblesse, and in the reign of Paul
(1796-1801) a considerable number of estates were affected to the use
of the Imperial family under the name of appanages (Udyelniya imteniya);
but on the other hand, the extensive Church lands, when secularised by
Catherine II., were not distributed among the nobles, as in many other
countries, but were transformed into State Domains. Thus, at the date
of the Emancipation (1861), by far the greater part of the territory
belonged to the State, and one-half of the rural population were
so-called State Peasants (Gosudarstvenniye krestyanye).

Regarding the condition of these State Peasants, or Peasants of the
Domains, as they are sometimes called, I may say briefly that they were,
in a certain sense, serfs, being attached to the soil like the others;
but their condition was, as a rule, somewhat better than the serfs in
the narrower acceptation of the term. They had to suffer much from the
tyranny and extortion of the special administration under which they
lived, but they had more land and more liberty than was commonly enjoyed
on the estates of resident proprietors, and their position was much less
precarious. It is often asserted that the officials of the Domains were
worse than the serf-owners, because they had not the same interest in
the prosperity of the peasantry; but this a priori reasoning does not
stand the test of experience.

It is not a little interesting to observe the numerical proportion
and geographical distribution of these two rural classes. In European
Russia, as a whole, about three-eighths of the population were composed
of serfs belonging to the nobles;* but if we take the provinces
separately we find great variations from this average. In five provinces
the serfs were less than three per cent., while in others they formed
more than seventy per cent. of the population! This is not an accidental
phenomenon. In the geographical distribution of serfage we can see
reflected the origin and history of the institution.

* The exact numbers, according to official data, were--Entire
Population 60,909,309
Peasantry of all Classes 49,486,665

Of these latter there were--State Peasants
23,138,191
Peasants on the Lands of Proprietors 23,022,390
Peasants of the Appanages and other Departments 3,326,084
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