Remedies Proposed--Migration--Reclamation of Waste
Land--Land-purchase by Peasantry--Manufacturing Industry--Improvement of
Agricultural Methods--Indications of Progress.

At the commencement of last chapter I pointed out in general terms
the difficulty of describing clearly the immediate consequences of the
Emancipation. In beginning now to speak of the influence which the great
reform has had on the peasantry, I feel that the difficulty has reached
its climax. The foreigner who desires merely to gain a general idea of
the subject cannot be expected to take an interest in details, and even
if he took the trouble to examine them attentively, he would derive from
the labour little real information. What he wishes is a clear, concise,
and dogmatic statement of general results. Has the material and moral
condition of the peasantry improved since the Emancipation? That is the
simple question which he has to put, and he naturally expects a simple,
categorical answer.

In beginning my researches in this interesting field of inquiry, I had
no adequate conception of the difficulties awaiting me. I imagined that
I had merely to question intelligent, competent men who had had abundant
opportunities of observation, and to criticise and boil down the
information collected; but when I put this method of investigation to
the test of experience it proved unsatisfactory. Very soon I came
to perceive that my authorities were very far from being impartial
observers. Most of them were evidently suffering from shattered
illusions. They had expected that the Emancipation would produce
instantaneously a wonderful improvement in the life and character of
the rural population, and that the peasant would become at once a sober,
industrious, model agriculturist.

These expectations were not realised. One year passed, five years
passed, ten years passed, and the expected transformation did not take
place. On the contrary, there appeared certain very ugly phenomena which
were not at all in the programme. The peasants began to drink more
and to work less,* and the public life which the Communal institutions
produced was by no means of a desirable kind. The "bawlers" (gorlopany)
acquired a prejudicial influence in the Village Assemblies, and in very
many Volosts the peasant judges, elected by their fellow-villagers,
acquired a bad habit of selling their decisions for vodka. The natural
consequence of all this was that those who had indulged in e