In No. 96 (300) of *Pravda* I presented the principal data on resettlement in Russia.[16] These data concluded with the year 1911 and even then incompletely (for 11 months). Now Mr. Kaufman in *Rech'* takes data from recently published official calculations for the whole of 1911 and for 1912.

It turns out that the number of resettlers increased, but negligibly: from 190 thousand (1911) to 196 and a half thousand in 1912. The number of petitioners (*khodoki*), however, increased sharply: from 36 thousand (1911) to 58 thousand (1912).

The explanation of this phenomenon reveals to us even more profoundly the collapse of the new agrarian policy. Hitherto, from 3/4 to 4/5 of all resettlers came from the Little Russian and Central Black Earth provinces. This is the center of Russia, where the remnants of serfdom are strongest, where wages are lowest, where the peasant masses live under especially harsh conditions.

Ruined, impoverished, starving masses from this center—the "heart" of Russia—threw themselves into resettlement (1907–1909) and—finally produced 60% of those who returned from resettlement, i.e., they became ruined and embittered all the more.

Now has begun a wave of resettlement from a different region, namely from the Volga area, which until now has provided very few resettlers.

What is the matter?

The "crop failure," the famine of 1911!!… Famine has seized a new region of Russia. A new wave of starving people's flight to Siberia. We already know that Siberia will ruin and embitter even more—following the peasants of central Russia—the peasants of the Volga area as well.

In other words, resettlement to Siberia has shown in practice the impossibility of such a salvation first for the peasants of the center, now for the peasants of the Volga.

The "new" agrarian policy, ruining one region of Russia after another, peasants of one district after peasants of another, gradually clarifies to all peasants that salvation does not lie in this.

Written May 4 (17), 1913

Published May 9, 1913 in the newspaper *Pravda* No. 105. Signed: V. I.

Printed from the newspaper text