Note 31 — Chapter III · THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES OF THE PEASANTRY.

We read in the Appendix to the Statistical Reports for the Ranenburg District, p. 321: “Village Novoselki, former serfs of Barkoff. About 1877, pressed by the extreme need of daily bread, the peasants began sowing all the fields, without giving them rest for a single year (in Russia every field rests once in three years); the yield is now constantly going from bad to worse, and there is nothing to manure the soil with.”