therefore, that when talking with peasants about their actual condition,
one constantly hears the despairing cry, "Zemli malo!" ("There is not
enough land"); and one notices that those who look a little ahead ask
anxiously: "What is to become of our children? Already the Communal
allotment is too small for our wants, and the land outside is doubling
and trebling in price! What will it be in the future?" At the same time,
not a few Russian economists tell us--and their apprehensions are
shared by foreign observers--that millions of peasants are in danger of
starvation in the near future.

Must we, then, accept for Russia the Malthus doctrine that population
increases more rapidly than the means of subsistence, and that
starvation can be avoided only by plague, pestilence, war, and other
destructive forces? I think not. It is quite true that, if the amount
of land actually possessed by the peasantry and the present system
of cultivating it remained unchanged, semi-starvation would be the
inevitable result within a comparatively short space of time; but the
danger can be averted, and the proper remedies are not far to seek. If
Russia is suffering from over-population, it must be her own fault,
for she is, with the exception of Norway and Sweden, the most thinly
populated country in Europe, and she has more than her share of fertile
soil and mineral resources.

A glance at the map showing the density of population in the various
provinces suggests an obvious remedy, and I am happy to say it is
already being applied. The population of the congested districts of the
centre is gradually spreading out, like a drop of oil on a sheet of soft
paper, towards the more thinly populated regions of the south and east.
In this way the vast region containing millions and millions of acres
which lies to the north of the Black Sea, the Caucasus, the Caspian, and
Central Asia is yearly becoming more densely peopled, and agriculture is
steadily encroaching on the pastoral area. Breeders of sheep and cattle,
who formerly lived and throve in the western portion of that great
expanse, are being pushed eastwards by the rapid increase in the value
of land, and their place is being taken by enterprising tillers of the
soil. Further north another stream of emigration is flowing into Central
Siberia. It does not flow so rapidly, because in that part of the
Empire, unlike the bare, fertile steppes of the south, the land has to
be cleared before the