This analysis was based on what Marx and Engels saw as the exceptional characteristics of the Russian village commune or the mir.

At that time Ostrów was a village commune.

The landed interests elected ten members, the cities and towns eight, the commercial and industrial boards two, the village communes sixteen.

Indeed, the survival - even reinforcement - of the old village commune with its arrangements for periodic equitable land-redistribution safeguarded the peasant economy.

Certainly, it would be far better to go back to village communes, if they really are communes.

Then, the inhabitants of a Danish village would work together, forming Landsbyfællesskaber (village communes).

During the next three years, Plekhanov read extensively on political economy, gradually coming to question his faith in the revolutionary potential of the traditional village commune.

Except in the most westerly provinces, the land was redeemed not by individual peasants but by the village commune.

The revolution, when it came, must be a peasant revolution, transforming autocratic, serf-ridden Russia into a land of autonomous and free village communes.

After 37 years, Gongqing gradually grew from a village commune into a small city.