In the whole gouvernement of Samara there are 120 soviet estates. On an average there are 100-300 workers on each estate. I visited estate No. 6. There, 100 workers are employed. Of these 7 are office people. The estate is 500 dessiatins in area, but only 200 dessiatins are cultivated (1 dessiatin - 2.7 acres). The permanent workers are paid 2000 rubles per month. With "bonus" they may come to 4000 rubles. Day laborers receive 100 rubles per day. The working day is 8 hours. In the summer, however, they worked 2 hours overtime, for which they were paid 3 hours wages. The buying power of money in this neighborhood is: a pair of new shoes 16,000 rubles; a pair of old shoes 8,000 rubles; an earthenware teacup with saucer 750 rubles.
The Economic Position of the Peasants
The land is not to be sold, but under the formula: each one receives only as much land as he can cultivate, shuffling can take place. Thus: in the district of Seelman in the German Volga colony, the poor peasants give one dessiatin of land for 6 Ibs. of butter and 10 eggs. They need food stuffs. Land they can always get again, if they only want to cultivate it.
The German colonies on the Volga have existed for 163 years. The capital is Katrinenstadt, but is now re-baptized to Marxstadt. The second, i. e., the soviet revolution broke out there 3% months later, in February 1918. There also the peasants of the whole colony took the land from the large land owners before the decree was issued which adjudged them the land. Already under Kerensky they took the land unto themselves.
Besides the government estates there are two other forms of possessing and working the land. First, there is the personal ownership. There are richer peasants and there are poorer peasants, exactly as in Germany there are smaller and bigger peasants and cottagers. Second, we have the so-called artels. An artel is a Russian workers' partnership. In this case it means a peasant partnership, mostly inside a commune or a village. There is still a third collective form of working the land. In the spring and the fall the peasants work the land by mutually assisting one another with plowing, sowing and reaping.
The bolshevik-communists oppose this form of possessing and working the soil. In their VIII. party convention during the past year they have adopted a program in which they specify their position on the peasant question, as follows :
"Considering that small peasant husbandry will continue to exist for a long time, the Communist Party of Russia is trying out a series of endeavors which have for their purpose to increase the productivity of peasant labor. To such measures belong the regulation of the cultivation of the peasant's soil (discontinuance of the three-fallow system, the narrow strip field, etc.)."
Inequality of wealth and the difference in the standard of living is still by no means evened out among the peasants. They did divide the land between themselves, but, according to my observations, the individualist tendencies of the peasants were more conspicuous in this partitioning of the land than the communist tendencies. In the village of Riliensko, in the gouvernement of Nischni-Novgorod, there was government land when the revolution broke out. The peasants divided this land so that each peasant received one dessiatin. This proves that they preferred personal possession to communal possession. In the village of Wuskristiansk in the gouvernement of Samara each peasant has now more land than before. A family of five persons receives 4 dessiatins of land. This village has 10,000 inhabitants. Among these are 250 communists, while the social-revolutionaries are a little more numerous.