Maxime Kovalevsky Quotes
it would be impossible to liberate the serf otherwise than by endowing him with land.
Maxime Kovalevsky, 1851-1916, Sociologist and Legal Historian, Modern Customs and Ancient Laws of Russia, 1891
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He was the Russian Reformer who ended serfdom and gave land to the peasants and then was assassinated. Ironically, both Alexander II and Lincoln were assassinated—because of their reform efforts—Lincoln for going too far; the Czar for not going far enough. See the Nickname that was given to the Czar: {622809}.
Cities operated on an entirely different plane than the rural countryside which was divided up and given to nobles and the peasants on the land were serfs—virtual slaves to the noble. Cities allowed more equality, opportunity, freedom, modernity, and education. However, serfs would vote with their feet and move into cities leaving the princes devoid of their surf labor. The Emperor tried to stave off this trend by preventing the cities from admitting the surfs who were otherwise generally welcome as they, like immigrants classically provided an excellent source of compliant, low cost labor. Ironically, there are third world countries who even in modern times are trying to restrict the immigration of peasants to the cities.
These unfortunate characteristics of Germany at that time, produced the aggressive nation that started two world wars. Looking at Germany a century later, the country has changed radically—especially the three factors described in this quote. Germany has become very much like the rest of Western Europe and America.
This was the basic document issued after the Russian Revolution establishing the basic legal and economic structure of the new Soviet State.
At the time the number of small, independent land owners was diminishing.
He had just been released from jail for urging mass demonstrations to prevent tenant farmers from being evicted.
The Freedmen’s Bureau was an institution established after the Civil War to provide assistance to the newly emancipated and free slaves. Every constructive step taken by the Bureau was opposed and obstructed by “unreconstructed” Southerners and some Northerners. They had very limited resources and there was little known technically about how to accomplish their mission. However, tens of thousands of individual new freed Negroes profited immensely and there were some systemic successes such as Du Bois describes Quotation 643644. There were also some failures as described herein.
At the time, land was much more of a necessity for the average person than today in America. But in early America and much of the rest of the world today, without land one had little or no opportunity to do almost anything. So equality of land distribution was necessary for equality of opportunity. America never solved the problem of equality of land distribution; we just developed an economy where land was not longer so critical to opportunity.
