In both there is a certain amount of common property: in the one case the house and nearly all that it contains, and in the other the arable land and possibly a little pasturage.

In both cases there is a certain amount of common responsibility: in the one case for all the debts, and in the other for all the taxes and Communal obligations.
And both are protected to a certain extent against the ordinary legal consequences of insolvency, for the family cannot be deprived of its house or necessary agricultural implements, and the Commune cannot be deprived of its land, by importunate creditors.
On the other hand, there are many important points of contrast.

The Commune is, of course, much larger than the family, and the mutual relations of its members are by no means so closely interwoven.

The members of a family all farm together, and those of them who earn money from other sources are expected to put their savings into the common purse; whilst the households composing a Commune farm independently, and pay into the common treasury only a certain fixed sum.
From these brief remarks the reader will at once perceive that a Russian village is something very different from a village in our sense of the term, and that the villagers are bound together by ties quite unknown to the English rural population.

A family living in an English village has little reason to take an interest in the affairs of its neighbours.