in a province constituted a province-zemstvo.  Both types concerned themselves with much the same range of activities.  They built roads and telegraph stations; they maintained model farms and agricultural experiment stations similar to those maintained by our state governments.  They maintained schools, bookstores, and libraries:  co-operative stores; hospitals and banks.  They provided the peasants with cheap credit, good seeds, fertilizers, agricultural implements, and so forth.  In many cases they provided for free medical aid to the peasants.  In some instances they published newspapers and magazines.

It must be remembered that the zemstvos were the only representative public bodies elected by any large part of the people.  While the suffrage was quite undemocratic, being so arranged that the landlords were assured a majority over the peasants at all times, nevertheless they did perform a great democratic service.  But for them, life would have been well-nigh impossible for the peasant.  In addition to the services already enumerated, these civic bodies were the relief agencies of the Empire, and when crop failures brought famine to the peasants it was always the zemstvos which undertook the work of relief.  Hampered at every point, denied the right to control the schools they created and maintained, inhibited by law from discussing political questions, the zemstvos, nevertheless, became the natural channels for the spreading of discontent and opposition to the regime through private communication and discussion.

To bureaucrats of the type of Pobiedonostzev and Von Plehve, with their fanatical belief in autocracy, these organizations of the people were so many plague spots.  Not daring to suppress them altogether, they determined to restrict them at every opportunity.  Some of the zemstvos were suspended and disbanded for certain periods of time.  Individual members were exiled for utterances which Von Plehve regarded as dangerous.  The power of the zemstvos themselves was lessened by taking from them such important functions as the provisioning of famine-stricken districts and by limiting in the most arbitrary manner the amount of the budget permitted to each zemstvo.  Since every decision of the zemstvos was subject to veto by the governors of the respective provinces, the government had at all times a formidable weapon at hand to use in its fight against the zemstvos.  This weapon Von Plehve used with great effect; the most reasonable actions of the zemstvos were vetoed for no other reason than hatred of any sort of representative government.

V