Page:Morgan Philips Price - Siberia (1912).djvu/169

 Rh the length and breadth of the Yenisei Government. This marvellous publication I subsequently obtained, and found of much interest as demonstrating the extraordinary administrative system of the Russian Government, which succeeds in penetrating even to the wildest spots of Siberia. The villages are thus kept together in small geographical divisions, which are utilized by the Government for administrative purposes. Over each Uchastok, the Uyesdy Nachalnick appoints a Stanovy Preestof, who is a police official in charge of civil law and order; a Krestyansky Nachalnick, who collects the taxes; and a Mirobny Sud, or justice of the peace, whose duty it is to hear all judicial cases which the peasants cannot settle among themselves. This, briefly, is the administrative machinery which seemed to be at work in this part of Siberia.

From the above conversation I gained the knowledge that the staresta is the delegate of the commune to represent them before these officials. Moreover he pays the communal taxes for the peasants in their names, and generally presides over the meetings of the commune. Thus the commune or the majority of the male peasants in the village have a very democratic power, based on household suffrage, and the staresta is really more of a delegate than a representative.

I was anxious to find out from them how the administrative machinery was applied to the native Finnish and Tartar tribes, and I asked them whether the Abakansk Tartars, whom I knew to be not distant neighbours of theirs, were divided into communes, volosts and Uchastoks. They told me that the Abakansk Tartars also elected a staresta, or elder, and divided themselves into large communes