It must be borne in mind, however, that the lines between the classes in the Russian village are as yet far from being as sharply drawn as in countries with developed capitalism. It would seem that laborers permanently employed outside of their farms must unquestionably be classed among the proletarians. And yet we find the majority of them maintaining the standard of farmers.[108] This is due to the existence of the compound family, the average household numbering two adult male workers, which enables one of them to carry on farming, while the other is employed outside.[109] Only the minority of the households in question that have only one adult worker, and accordingly we find that independent farming has been given up only by the minority of those householders who are permanently employed as farm laborers.[110] These are the genuine rural proletarians with whom the earnings from wage labor constitute the main source of income. Still they are landholders, and inasmuch as they have no live stock of their own, their plots are tilled chiefly by means of wage labor: +--------------------------------+----------------+----------------+ | | Korotoyak. | Nizhnedevitsk. | | Farm laborers whose plots are +--------+-------+--------+-------+ | | House- | Per | House- | Per | | | holds. | cent. | holds. | cent. | +--------------------------------+--------+-------+--------+-------+ | Tilled by hired laborers | 371 | 64 | 237 | 66 | | Leased | 205 | 36 | 124 | 34 | +--------------------------------+--------+-------+--------+-------+ | In all | 576 | 100 | 361 | 100 | +--------------------------------+--------+-------+--------+-------+ Thus we have the very peculiar economic type of a wage-laborer who is at the same time employer of wage labor. It is obvious that the characteristics of a modern European proletarian could not properly be extended to the Russian agricultural laborer. Class distinctions are very easily perceived, of course, when the classes have already ripened to a certain degree. In the embryonic stage, the true tendency of the development going on is disguised by the many transitional forms combining the characteristic features of opposite classes. The peasantist of “the seventies,” whose opinions were influenced by European socialism, had no idea of class antagonism within the ranks of the peasantry themselves, regarding it as confined entirely to the “exploiter”--_kulak_ or _miroyed_[111]--and his victim, the peasant imbued with the communistic spirit.[112]