Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/41

 by modern socialists to contrast with and to supersede private ownership and capitalism. It is not a higher and better stage of economic and social development, but the primitive stage (I by no means suggest the first of all stages) of fallowing, the primitive stage of landholding in accordance with which land having little or no value could be occupied and held at will as res nullius.

Like the soil, the dwellings in Old Russia were of little value, consisting merely of wooden shanties and wattle-and-dab huts, such as were practicable in the forest-clad plains. The extensive Russian lowlands were therefore defenceless against hostile inroads, all the permanent possessions being easily destroyed by fire. It is true that the attacking parties, and especially the inhabitants of the steppes, were likewise poorly equipped. The European who to-day sees the Kremlin for the first time is impressed by the positively childish mode of fortification against the Tatar hordes of cavalry.

Owing to sparseness of population and continuous danger of hostile attack from robber horsemen, it was absolutely indispensable that the various members of the family and of the tribe should co-operate for labour and for defence. The family grew to become a tribe, the members of the latter remaining for a time aware of mutual dependence. Moreover, the family was often large, for the pagan Russians, the well-to-do at least, practised polygamy.

The soil and the house had little value; but for strategic reasons the family had to hold rigidly together; and the primitive Russian, work-shy like the members of all other races at this stage, had to be constrained to labour. Consequently the so-called patriarchalism was anything but a moral and democratic institution. On the contrary, it was a means of coercion, consecrated mainly by religious ties—by ancestor-worship which was already firmly established among the Slavs of that day.

Thus originated agrarian communism. Such objects as had value (weapons, for example) and pretia affectionis were private property; so were the dwellings; so was everything except the soil.

This communism, therefore, had no dominant or notable significance for the society of that day. To the Old Russians, the prince, the boyar, and the monastery, with the private possessions of these, seemed far more important than their