Merchant Accountancy

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The biggest millionaires, the tycoons of our big industry, belong to a “council of congresses of industrial and commercial representatives”. This council of congresses issues its own periodical, Promyshlennost i Torgovlya. The interests of our Kit Kityches are defended by this journal in its ponderous, elaborate and mostly semi-literate articles.

They show particular discontent at the injustice of Zemstvo representation and Zemstvo taxation. Believe it or not, the feudal landowner is unfair to poor Kit Kitych! Here is an instructive table showing the composition of the elected membership at uyezd Zemstvo assemblies (Promyshlennost i Torgovlya, 1913, No. 3):

	Number of members	Percentages
From the First Electoral Assembly (landed nobility)	5,508	53.4
From the Second Electoral Assembly (commercial and industrial enterprises, etc.)	1,294	12.6
Jointly from the First and Second Assemblies	290	2.8
From village communes	3,216	31.2
[Total] In 34 gubernias with Zemstvos	10,308	100.0

There is indeed a crying injustice in the matter of representation in the Zemstvos. The conclusion to be drawn is obvious and incontestable—the Zemstvos in Russia have been put entirely into the hands of the feudal landowners.

These interesting figures must give any educated person cause to ponder over the conditions that give rise to such unequal representation.

It would, of course, be ridiculous to expect the Kit Kityches and their hack writers to be capable of pondering over general political questions or to be interested in political knowledge. The only thing that interests Kit Kitych is that be pays “a lot” and a member of the nobility pays “little”. The writer hired by Kit Kitych quotes the total amounts of Zemstvo impositions (as fixed by the official scale)—First Electoral Assembly (24.5 million rubles in 34 gubernias with Zemstvos), Second Electoral Assembly (49 million rubles) and village communes (45.5 million rubles). He divides these impositions by the number of members and in this way determines “the cost of one seat”! Thus it turns out that a seat for a nobleman “costs” 4,500 rubles, for a merchant 38,000 rubles and for a peasant 14,000 rubles.

That is how the hired advocates of the merchant class argue—election rights are calmly examined as though they were an article of commerce. As though those who pay the impositions fixed by the Zemstvo thereby purchase the right to representation.

Of course, there actually is glaring inequality in Zemstvo impositions. The full burden of that inequality, however, is not borne by the industrialists, but by the peasants and workers. If the peasantry pay 45.5 million rubles that they squeeze out of their poor, exhausted, over-cultivated land while the landowners pay 24.5 million rubles, that can mean nothing but the extortion of millions of rubles tribute from the “muzhiks” in the form of Zemstvo impositions in addition to all their other burdens.

This the Kit Kityches do not see. What they are after is that privileges, instead of going to the nobility alone, should be shared “on an equal footing” with the merchants.