I shall, of course, be charged with pessimism, as I have been recently on account of my views on the emigration of the peasants. (_Cf._, _The public and the Statute on Emigration, by A. Bogdanoffsky, p. 38, in the Severny Vestnik_, May, 1892). The usual method of reasoning followed takes some such course as this: Granted that the case is presented true to life as it actually stands, the evil consequences are nevertheless due to the present abnormal condition of the peasantry, and under normal circumstances, the objections are “no good.” Unhappily, however, these very “abnormal” conditions are developing spontaneously, while the creation of “normal” conditions is beyond the jurisdiction of the well-wishers of the peasantry. CHAPTER XIII. AGRICULTURE ON A LARGE SCALE. The peasantist ideas with regard to the village community found their necessary complement in an economic theory which gathered to itself a large following in Russia some ten years ago. The founder of this school, a young writer who concealed his name under the initials _V. V._, advanced the thesis that the development of capitalism in Russia is precluded by her economic constitution, as well as by her belated appearance on the international market. Export of grain had been the only vacancy left by European capitalism for the enjoyment of its younger brother in Russia. But then there you have “our Transatlantic friends,” the Yankees, who are going to turn us out of the Western ports. Production for the international grain market is a phantastic dream of Russian “large agriculture.” The reality belongs to the peasant, who produces for home consumption. Large estates are in decay. Small peasant farming is spreading in all the dominions of the nobility. Economic development will compel the noble to cede to the triumphant ploughman the use of the land, while taking for himself the modest role of an absentee.[152] At last the word was uttered which was so eagerly longed for. The Russian peasantists labored at the riddle how to reconcile the theory of Karl Marx with the teachings of Tchernyshefsky. If capitalism is the laboratory in which socialism is concocted; if furthermore, capitalism has grown out of the expropriation of the peasant, then the consistent Russian socialist must foster the dissolution of agrarian communism, to which all his sympathies are pledged, and contribute to the development of capitalism, of which he himself is a bitter enemy.[153] Mr. V. V. found the solution of the riddle in reaching the conclusions of Tchernyshefsky through the materialistic method of Karl Marx.