Big Landlord and Small Peasant Landownership in Russia

In connection with the recent anniversary of February 19, 1861[abolition of serfdom in Russia], a reminder of the present distribution of land in European Russia will not be out of place.

The last official statistics of land distribution in European Russia were published by the Ministry of the Interior and date from 1905.

According to these statistics there were (in round numbers) about 30,000 big landlords owning over 500 dessiatines each, their total land amounting to about 70,000,000 dessiatines.

Some 10,000,000 poor peasant households owned the same amount of land.

It follows that an the average there are about 330 poor peasant families for each big landlord, each peasant family owning about 7 (seven) dessiatines, while each big landlord owns about 2,300 (two thousand three hundred) dessiatines.

To show this graphically, we have drawn the above diagram.

The large white rectangle in the middle stands for the estate of a big landlord. The small squares around it represent the small peasant holdings.

Altogether there are 324 squares, and the area of the white rectangle equals 320 squares.