The vagueness of class distinctions at a primitive stage of economic development--The peasantist conception of class antagonism in the village--Results of statistical investigation--Farmers deriving a net profit from agriculture--Farmer and business man--Concentration of the land and a strong patriarchal household--The employing farmer developing side by side with the dissolution of the compound family--The rural proletariat--Lack of land--The dissolution of the patriarchal family complete--The Russian proletarian as wage-laborer and employer at the same time--The transitional class--Deficit in the balance of farming resulting from the division of the co-operative family--The farmer as wage laborer--Imminent transition into the proletarian class--“The struggle of generations” in the village a reflected form of class antagonism. CHAPTER XI. INDIVIDUAL OWNERSHIP AND AGRARIAN COMMUNISM 123 Their effects upon the distribution of landed property--Lease of communal land a step toward expropriation of the poor--Speculation in peasant lots--Mobilisation of communal land. CHAPTER XII. THE REDIVISION OF THE COMMUNAL LAND 130 The censuses for the assessment of the poll tax--Redivisions of land--General redivisions--Partial redivisions brought into disuse by the rise of rent--Lease of communal land a check to its redivision by the _mir_--Vote required for redivision--Privilege for the wealthy minority--Concentration of communal land in private hands--Influence of redemption--Antagonism of economic interests within the village--Dissolution of the community going on. _Note_: The “inalienability” scheme. CHAPTER XIII. AGRICULTURE ON A LARGE SCALE 138 The peasantist view of the matter--_The destinies of capitalism in Russia_, by V. V.--Large agriculture and peasant farming--Backwardness of large agriculture--The latter still prevailing over small peasant tenure--Agriculture progressing with the increase of the estate--The beginnings of capitalistic agriculture--Decrease in the dominions of the nobility--Growth of capitalistic property in land--Displacement of the small tenant by the capitalist farmer--Progressive tendencies of capitalistic management--Substitution of the small farmer by the proletarian laborer--Economic dependence of the nobility upon the small farmer--Imminent ruin of the landed nobility. CHAPTER XIV. CONCLUSION: THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE FAMINE 157 The bearing of the above discussion upon Middle Russia at large--The economic policy of the Government--Crédit Foncier for the peasants, and its failure--The famine a result of agricultural backwardness--Failure of the peasantry and of the landed nobility--The rise of capitalistic agriculture. APPENDICES. STATISTICAL TABLES.