The lot of former manorial farmhands

After the abolition of serfdom, the village of Vetkhava in the Bienica rural district (volost) of the Ashmiany district (1 verst from Zalesse station) received only 48 desiatinas of land for 16 separate families of former farmhands, that is, 3 desiatinas per family. And from that time right up to this year not one inch of land has been added to the village, and they have nothing to buy any with. The village now numbers 22 separate households. The people are wasting away, waiting for better days, and year after year they sell their labor for next to nothing on the manorial land of the surrounding landlords. And the landlords' land has enclosed the narrow little fields of the Vetkhava people on all sides. Vetkhava is a small peasant island in a sea of landed estate belonging to the Zalesse manor of the Princes Ogiński, and now of Mr. Wysocki. This gentleman suddenly took it into his head to settle the servitude question with the villages that were formerly the manor's "subjects": Mikhnevichy, Zarudzichy and Alianets. And he intends to allot the land due to the villages out of the servitude wherever he pleases. The peasants of the villages named do not agree to the division of the servitude, and they do well, for otherwise they will ruin the people of Vetkhava. The point is that Vetkhava was not counted among those villages that have the right to use the whole servitude area to graze their livestock. And if the Vetkhava people did use the servitude, it was only thanks to the solidarity and support of their neighboring villages. But if the servitude question is now settled in a way unfavorable to the Vetkhava people, then it is "the end" for the poor village: keep your livestock in the barn all year round, or sell it and perish yourself, or work for the Zalesse manor, for permission to graze, as many days as the landlord may wish.

When, at last, will a better lot come to the poor village of Vetkhava?