Their land is generally taken by a class of small usurers (_koulaks_) who have grown up in every Russian village since the emancipation. These koulaks are in most cases fellow-peasants who have saved some money, but they are frequently strangers who have come and opened a store in the place, and have no right of their own to a share in the land and in the councils of the village. Stepniak mentions one province where as much as from 24 to 36 per cent. of the land is concentrated into the hands of these rich usurers. Even the peasants who still retain their land in their own hands are often deeply indebted to them, and in some cases part with bits of their land without parting with all; and the general tendency of the present economic situation is to divide the peasantry of every village into a class of comparatively rich peasants, on the one hand, holding and cultivating most of the land, and a larger class of rural proletarians, without land and having nothing to live by but their manual trade. The tendency, in short, is towards the break-up of the communal tenure, and instead of the Russian Commune invading Europe, as Cavour once said there was fear it would do, we are likely to see the individual tenure of Western Europe invading Russia and superseding primitive rural institutions in that country, as it has already superseded them in others. "It is quite evident," says Stepniak, "that Russia is marching in this direction. If nothing happens to check or hinder the process of interior disintegration in our villages, in another generation we shall have on one side an agricultural proletariat of sixty or seventy millions, and on the other a few thousand landlords, mostly former koulaks and mir-eaters, in possession of all the land." It is legally permissible at present for a Russian commune, if it so choose, to abolish its communal system of property and adopt individual property instead of it; and although this has been very seldom done as yet, we are told by Thun that the rich peasants and the very poor peasants are both strongly in favour of the step, because it would give the one permanent ownership of the land and the other permanent relief from its burdens. When a commune gets divided in this way into a rich class of members and a poor class, the old brotherliness and mutual helpfulness of the Russian village are said by the same authority always to disappear and a more selfish spirit to take their place; but then it should be remembered how much easier it is to assist a neighbour out of a little difficulty of the way than to meet the unremitting claims of a class that have sunk into permanent poverty. Anyhow, the temptation is equally strong on both parties to escape from the worries of their present situation through the rich buying out the poor.