Page:Morgan Philips Price - Siberia (1912).djvu/63

 Rh autocratic power has hitherto been strong enough to prevent these castes from ever acquiring political power and formulating policies for their own objects. It is indeed probable that as Russia emerged from a feudal state of society, and as social castes gradually came to be formed, the powers of these castes became clearly defined by laws and regulations of the autocracy. Hence economic and political antagonisms between the social castes have been far less developed than in other countries of Western Europe. What struck me most in Krasnoyarsk and other towns of Central Siberia was that, although socially the castes seemed to mix in everyday life, nevertheless for official and administrative purposes they remained very clearly defined. Thus I used to find that so-and-so called himself a peasant ("krestyan") from a certain district, and so-and-so an urban citizen ("meshchaneen") without land; one man was registered with a guild licence to trade up to a certain annual value, another was an urban merchant of the second guild, while another had been born a Cossack and was liable to Cossack military service. In addition to these, I often came upon the case of a peasant who, although living in a town, retained his land under his village commune. As a member of that social caste he was still liable for his taxes on that land to his commune, although he was no longer living the life of a peasant. Everyone, in fact, has to be registered in some social caste. Again, the trades are classed in guilds according to the volume of their business, and pay guild taxes to the Government; the peasants who are settled on the land are registered in another class, and so on. But all this does not prevent the castes from mixing in everyday