d, the mutual relations are far from being so closely
interwoven as in the case of the household.

From these brief remarks it will be readily apparent that a Russian
village is quite a different thing from a provincial town or village in
America. While it is true in a sense that in our villages the citizens
are bound together in certain interests of the community, yet each
family, outside of a few individual friends, is more or less isolated
from the rest of the community--each family having little to interest it
in the affairs of the other. In a Russian village, however, such a state
of indifference and isolation is quite impossible. The heads of
households must often meet together and consult in the village assembly
and their daily duties and occupations are controlled by the communal
decrees. The individual cannot begin to mow the hay or plough the fields
until the assembly has decided the time for all to begin. If one becomes
a shirker or drunkard everyone in the village has a right to complain
and see that the matter is at once taken care of, not so much out of
interest for the welfare of the shirker, but from the plain selfish
motive that all the families are collectively responsible for his taxes
and also the fact that he is entitled to a share in the communal
harvest, which unless he does his share of the work, is taken from the
common property of the whole.

As heretofore stated on another page of this book, the land belonging to
each village is distributed among the individual families and for which
each is responsible. It might be of interest to know how this
distribution is made. In certain communities the old-fashioned method of
simply taking a census and distributing the property according to same
is still in use. This in a great many instances is quite unfair and
works a great hardship--where often the head of the household is a widow
with perhaps four or five girls on her hands and possibly one boy.
Obviously, she cannot hope to do as much as her neighbor, who, perhaps,
in addition to the father, may have three or four well-grown boys to
assist him. It might be logically suggested, then, that the widow could
rent the balance of her share of the land and thus take care of same. If
land were in demand in Russia, especially in the Archangel region, as it
is in the farming communities of this country, it might be a simple
matter--but in Russia often the possession of a share of land is quite
often not a pr