_Ranenburg. _Dankoff. Per cent._ Per cent._ Total of the community 100 100 Lessors 25 24 ---- ---- Remainder 75 76 Vote required for subdivision 66⅔ 66⅔ ---- ---- Opposition sufficient to stay the same.[148] 9 10 We know that the lessor class is constantly growing with the increase of the population, and the spread of the movement from the village. Thus the young generation grows indifferent to the custom of the village community. The old-fashioned households, on the other hand, are accumulating the plots of the declining farmers, and show a pronounced opposition to agrarian communism. There still remain the intermediate groups of the “weak” householders, who faithfully preserve their allegiance to the _mir_. The position of these groups is, however, very unstable. It follows that the formation of classes within the _mir_ tends to perpetuate the expropriation of the “weak” families, and the concentration of communal land, formerly held by them, in the hands of the “strong.” It is true that it is only the right of possession which is conferred upon the lessee of communal land. But there are many facts that go to show the possible evolution of possession into property. Attention has been called in Russian economic literature to the tendency toward private property developing among the former serfs out of the redemption of their plots. At the time of the Ryazañ census there were 364 communities concerned in the region under consideration, and it was in 100[149] out of this number that the opposition against the redivision of the communal land came to the front. Those who had been paying the redemption tax at the time when the taxes exceeded the net income of the lots, objected to the decrease of the latter after the land had acquired a certain value. The wealthier householders had threatened to pay at once the whole amortization debt that hung over their plots, so as to compel the community to deed them over to their owners at the time, according to law[150].