THE    SERFS  417

by  far  the  greater  part  of  the  territory  l)elonged  to  the  State,  and
one-half  of  the  rural  population  were  so-called  State  Peasants
( Gosuddrstvenniye  Icrestyanye ).
Regarding  the  condition  of  these  State  Peasants,  or  Peasants
of  the  Domains,  as  they  are  sometimes  called,  I  may  say  briefly
that  they  were,  in  a  certain  sense,  serfs,  being  attaclied  to  the  soil
like  the  others ;  but  their  condition  was,  as  a  rule,  somewhat  better
than  the  serfs  in  the  narrower  acceptation  of  the  term.  They  had
to  suffer  much  from  the  tyranny  and  extortion  of  the  special  ad-
ministration under  which  they  lived,  but  they  had  more  land  and
more  liberty  than  was  commonly  enjoyed  on  the  estates  of  resident
proprietors,  and  their  position  was  much  less  precarious.  It  is
often  asserted  that  the  oHicials  of  the  Domains  were  worse  than
the  serf-owners,  because  they  had  not  the  same  interest  in  the
prosperity  of  the  peasantry;  but  this  a  'priori  reasoning  does  not
stand  the  test  of  experience.
It  is  not  a  little  interesting  to  observe  the  numerical  proportion
and  geographical  distribution  of  these  two  rural  classes.  In  Euro-
pean Russia,  as  a  whole,  about  three-eighths  of  the  population  were
composed  of  serfs  belonging  to  the  nobles ;  *  but  if  we  take  the
provinces  separately  we  find  great  variations  from  this  average.
In  five  provinces  the  serfs  were  less  than  three  per  cent.,  while  in
others  they  formed  more  than  seventy  per  cent,  of  the  population !
This  is  not  an  accidental  phenomenon.  In  the  geographical  dis-
tribution of  serfage  we  can  see  reflected  the  origin  and  history  of
the  institution.
