In 1885, the Diviner estate Divin-Pavlinovo passed into the possession of the former landowner Yagmin’s wife, Alexandra Yagmin. Paul Yagmin himself had fled Divin (incognito) to France, since he was a participant and one of the leaders of the Polish uprising of 1883.
By nationality he was a Pole, and his wife – a German woman. Both of them treated our peasants unkindly. {
41} In 1896, this estate passed into the hands of another owner. His name was Ivan Shevich.
In 1899, the Divin-Pavlinovo estate passed from I. E. Shevich into the hands of a noble of the Orel province, Ivan Teplov, a gentleman of the bedchamber of the imperial court. The new owner of the Divin estate was constantly at the service of the royal court. Thus, he did not live permanently in the estate, but only visited, and not often. All of the management of the estate was in the hands of the manager, Vladimir Chernov.
Beginning in 1911, the Stolypin agrarian law came to power, in accordance with which peasants were able to purchase land. The manager of the Divin estate, V. N. Chernov had the trust of the owner I. Teplov for the right to sell the land. This sale of parts began in 1911. The price was: from 50 to 200 rubles per one
dessiatine. One
dessiatine is equivalent to 1.09 hectares. Land assigned for sale, was broken into plots of 25, 30 and 40 acres surveyed in advance. During the transaction, each purchaser of a plot of land received the plan and a document for the acquired lot. These documents were notarized by the notary A. Kreivis in Kobryn.
Purchasers of the land had different prices for a
dessiatine. This price was dependent on the quality of the land, as well as the distance from the center of the town and the dirt road.
Sales of plots from the Divin estate were sold to peasants in installments. Initially, the peasant-buyer paid only part of the money– he put down a deposit. The rest of the cost of the site was paid to the bank in annual installments. The total sum of the cost was divided into several years before the full payment was complete. All of the repayments were facilitated by the Tula Land Bank.
The composition of land being sold off was diverse: there was arable land with pine and deciduous forest, arable land without forest, but the largest area consisted of marshy grasslands with a variety of shrubs.
However, the very center of the estate, where the country estate was situated, adjoined by the best arable lands and grasslands, remained unsold. The First World War served as the cause of this.
