The most common complaint made against it is that it has enormously increased the rates.  On that point there is no possibility of dispute.  At first its expenditure in the thirty-four provinces in which it existed was under six millions of roubles; in two years (1868) it had jumped up to fifteen millions; in 1875 it was nearly twenty-eight millions, in 1885 over forty-three millions, and at the end of the century it had attained the respectable figure of 95,800,000 roubles.  As each province had the right of taxing itself, the increase varied greatly in different provinces.  In Smolensk, for example, it was only about thirty per cent., whilst in Samara it was 436, and in Viatka, where the peasant element predominates, no less than 1,262 per cent.!  In order to meet this increase, the rates on land rose from under ten millions in 1868 to over forty-seven millions in 1900.  No wonder that the landowners who find it difficult to work their estates at a profit should complain!

Though this increase is disagreeable to the rate-payers, it does not follow that it is excessive.  In all countries rates and local taxation are on the increase, and it is in the backward countries that they increase most rapidly.  In France, for example, the average yearly increase has been 2.7 per cent., while in Austria it has been 5.59.  In Russia it ought to have been more than in Austria, whereas it has been, in the provinces with Zemstvo institutions, only about 4 per cent.  In comparison with the Imperial taxation the local does not seem excessive when compared with other countries.  In England and Prussia, for instance, the State taxation as compared with the local is as a hundred to fifty-four and fifty-one, whilst in Russia it is as a hundred to sixteen.* A reduction in the taxation as a whole would certainly contribute to the material welfare of the rural population, but it is desirable that it should be made in the Imperial taxes rather than in the rates, because the latter may be regarded as something akin to productive investments, whilst the proceeds of the former are expended largely on objects which have little or nothing to do with the wants of the common people.  In speaking thus I am assuming that the local expenditure is made judiciously, and this is a matter on which, I am bound to confess, there is by no means unanimity of opinion.

     * These figures are taken from the best available
     authorities, chiefly Schwanebach and Scalon, but I am not
     prepared to guarantee their accuracy.

Hostile critics can point to facts which are, to say the least, strange and anomalous.  Out of the total of its revenue the Zemstvo spends about twenty-eight per cent. under the heading of public health and benevolent institutions; and about fifteen per cent. for popular education, whilst it devotes only about six per cent. to roads and bridges, and until lately it neglected, as I have said above, the means for improving agriculture and directly increasing the income of the peasantry.