Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 13 - From Marx to Mao

526 NOTESthe land as private property. The full owners were comparativelyfew and constituted the most well-to-do element in the countryside.State peasants—a category of peasant who tilled state lands andwho, in addition to the poll-tax, paid feudal quit-rent to the stateor the leaseholder of state property. They also performednumerous services (road repairs, billeting of soldiers, stage-horseposting, etc.): Under Peter I this category included odnodvortsi,chernososhniye peasants, half-croppers, Siberian ploughmen of theNorthern maritime country, and peoples of the Volga and Uralregions (Tatars, Chuvashes, Mordovians, Udmurts, and Komi).Later other categories were added—“economy” peasants (serfswho passed to the state from the secularised church estates), statepeasants of the western territories and Transcaucasia, UkrainianCossacks, and others. The forms of land tenure and land ownershipamong the state peasants were extremely varied, and this conditioncontinued even after the Peasant Reform.State peasants with communal holdings had no right to ownland as private property; they used arable and other lands belongingto the village commune.State peasants with quarter holdings—descendants of former servicemenin the lower ranks (children of boyars, Cossacks, thestreltsi, dragoons, soldiers, etc.) who guarded the southern andsouth-eastern borderlands of the State of Muscovy. The Tsar ofMuscovy rewarded their services with an endowment of a quarterlot (half a dessiatin) and they settled in single households (hencetheir name odnodvortsi). Communal landownership arose amongthem in addition to their quarter holdings.These odnodvortsi, being freemen, for a long time held an intermediateposition between the nobles and peasants, and had theright to acquire serfs. Under Peter I they were turned into statepeasants, and their land became the property of the state. Actually,however, the state peasant’s with quarter holdings disposedof their lands as their own private property; in this they differedfrom the state peasants with communal holdings, who had no rightto buy, sell, or bequeath their land.State peasants who formerly belonged to landlords—a category ofstate peasants, acquired by the state from private owners ordonated to the state, etc. Although regarded as state peasants theyenjoyed fewer rights; they were given equal rights in 1859 on theeve of the 1861 Reform, but certain distinctions remained.Crown-land peasants—a category of peasants who tilled the crownlands. Besides the poll-tax, they paid feudal quit-rent, performedvarious services, and were subjected to exactions in kind, all ofwhich went for the maintenance of members of the tsaristhousehold. When the crown lands took shape in 1797 the status ofthe peasants living on these estates was defined as somethingbetween state and landlords’ peasants. The abolition of serfdomwas first applied to the crown-land peasants in 1858, but did not