Page:Statesman's Year-Book 1871.djvu/419

 POPULATION. 383

give immediately 20 per cent., while the remaining 80 per cent, were disbursed as an advance by the Government to the owners, to be repaid, at intervals extending over forty-nine years, by the freed peasants. According to an official report, the whole of these arrange- ments were completed at the end of July, 18G5, so that, from this date, serfdom ceased to exist in Russia.

Besides the 22,000,000 of serfs belonging to private owners, there were, according to a census taken some years ago, 22,225,075 Crown peasants — that is, 10,583,038 men, and 11,641,437 wo- men. The emancipation of this class began previous to that of the private serfs, and was all but accomplished on September 1, 1863. By an imperial decree of July 8, 1863, land was granted to the peasants on the private and appanage estates of the Crown, and to the peasants who belonged to the imperial palaces, which they are to pay for in forty-nine years in instalments, each equal in amount to the ' obrok,' or poll-tax formerly yielded by them. The peasants on these Crown estates, about 2,000,000 in number, were thereby elevated to the rank of rent-paying peasants, a situation in which they will remain for forty- nine years, when they become freehold landowners.

An important, though not very numerous class of the population of Russia are the foreign settlers which the Government succeeded in attracting to the country at various periods. The enormous extent of excellent but waste land, and the small and thinly-scattered population in all parts of the empire, early suggested the idea to the Government of bringing these deserts into cultivation by inviting colonists from other countries. Ivan Vasilievitch invited Germans to Moscow, of which the German ' Sloboda ' still affords evidence. Michael Fedorovitch, in 1617, brought several thousand inhabitants from Finland and Carelia, and established them between Tver and Moscow. Peter I. settled a great many Swedish prisoners, and in 1705, after the capture of Narva and Dorpat, carried away about 6,000 of the inhabitants, and planted them in scattered parties in various parts of the empire. But Catherine II., immediately after the commencement of her reign, conceived the idea of peopling with immigrant foreigners the desert and waste lands of the southern provinces of the empire, and through them of disseminating industry and agricultural science among her subjects,' as it is expressed in the ukase of 1763.

The first colonists received from the Russian Government the necessary travelling expenses from their homes to their places of destination ; they were allowed the importation, duty-free, of their effects, to the value of 300 silver roubles ; they had houses built at the expense of the Crown ; and they had provisions and money for the first year, and a large sum as a loan, without interest, for a