PROJECTS FOR REFORMING THE PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATION 305between the common peasantry and the upper classes. He therefore
advocated - as he had before 1812 - that individual family households
be transmitted untouched from generation to generation, and that their
owners be allowed to dispose of them freely like any other kind of
privately owned real estate. It would put an end to the constant
splitting up of peasant holdings. Of course, keeping the households
intact might lead to an increase in the number of landless agricultural
laborers, but Speransky was not very afraid of such a consequence.
The surplus of peasant labor would be drained off into the cities,
once the legal disabilities and restrictions on their movement and
residence had been lifted. As for inequality of condition and well
being, "it is quite natural; it exists everywhere, even under present
conditions ... , and [among] private and state peasants it depends on
their industry or their luck in agriculture. This very same inequality
which will develop mutual benefits and needs will also be the main
bond between landowners and hired hands." 1
It is true that such a solution would lead to "class differentiation"
in the villages, the great bugbear of the populists at the end of the
century. Speransky knew it and favored it. He believed that the peasant
should be given a chance to get rich, to acquire wealth, and even to
move into another social class. Not everybody would be able to do so,
but Russia was large and wealthy, so that even the unsuccessful individ-
uals would find a livelihood if they were at all willing to work. To
underline the social status of the property-owning peasant, Speransky
thought it desirable to make a legal distinction between the head of a
household (the "farmer" in the American sense) and the hired hands.^2
Quite a similar approach was taken by Stolypin over 75 years later,
though the historical parallel should not be overdone, as conditions
were so radically different. Anyway, it is doubtful that Stolypin was
well acquainted with Speransky's views on the peasantry.
Speransky definitely wanted to give the peasant the opportunity to
expand his economy, produce a salable surplus, acquire more machin-
ery, reinvest the capital earned in this manner, improve his standardof life, and become a small capitalist. To this end, the peasants should
be permitted not only to trade freely, but also be relieved of the
discriminatory taxes and duties. they paid at the present time. For
as long as there were only few rich commercial and industrial
entrepreneurs from the peasantry, they could not become the leaders of
their class or show the way and spur on their fellow villagers by their1 Quoted by Druzhinin, ap. cit., I, p. 182.
2 "Mery k ustroistvu gorodskikh i kazennykh sel'skikh obyvatelei," lac. cit. p. 814.