Share-Cropping, type of land tenure (giving land for temporary use) in which the landowner is paid rent in the form of a certain proportion of what is produced on that land (one-half, one-third, one-tenth, etc.). Share-cropping arose in slave-owning society, and was widely developed under feudalism. It characterised the economic dependence of the peasants in possession of the means of production on the feudal lord who owned the land. The typical forms of 322 share-cropping in Russia and Western Europe were quit-rent in kind and onetenth of the harvest appropriated by the church. As a survival of feudalism, sharecropping existed in Russia up to the 20th century. Lenin noted that by 1914, depending on the region of Russia, the land tilled by peasants in return for a half of their harvest amounted to 21-68 per cent of the peasants’ own lands. Share-cropping still exists, especially in economically less developed countries, as a form of the exploitation of small peasants by the bourgeoisie and landlords.