JURISDICTION OF THE LOCAL ORGANS OF THE SOVIETS
61. Regional, provincial, county, and rural organs of the
Soviet power and also the Soviets of Deputies have to perform
the following duties:
(_a_) Carry out all orders of the respective higher organs of
the Soviet power.
(_b_) Take all steps for raising the cultural and economic
standard of the given territory.
(_c_) Decide all questions of local importance within their
respective territories.
(_d_) Co-ordinate all Soviet activity in their respective
territories.
62. The Congresses of Soviets and their Executive Committees
have the right to control the activity of the local Soviets
(_i.e._, the regional Congress controls all Soviets of
the respective region; the provincial, of the respective
province, with the exception of the urban Soviets, etc.); and
the regional and provincial Congresses and their Executive
Committees have in addition the right to overrule the decisions
of the Soviets of their districts, giving notice in important
cases to the central Soviet authority.
63. For the purpose of performing their duties, the local
Soviets, rural and urban, and the Executive Committees form
sections respectively.
_It is a significant and notable fact that nowhere in the whole of
this remarkable document is there any provision which assures to the
individual voter, or to any group, party, or other organization of
voters, assurance of the right to make nominations for any office
in the whole system of government._ Incredible as it may seem, this
is literally and exactly true. The urban Soviet consists of “one
deputy for each 1,000 inhabitants,” but there is nowhere a sentence
prescribing how these deputies are to be nominated or by whom. The
village Soviet consists of “one deputy for each 100 inhabitants,”
but there is nowhere a sentence to show how these deputies are to
be nominated, or wherein the right to make nominations is vested.
The _Volost_ Congress is composed of “representatives of all village
Soviets” and the County Congress (_Oyezd_) of “representatives of
rural Soviets.” In both these cases the representatives are termed
“delegates,” but there is no intimation of how they are nominated, or
what their qualifications are. The Provincial Congress (_Gubernia_) is
composed of “representatives of urban and rural (_Volost_) Soviets.” In
this case the word “representatives” is maintained throughout; the word
“delegates” does not appear. In this provision, as in the others, there
is no intimation of how they are nominated, or whether they are elected
or designated.
It can hardly be gainsaid that the Constitution of the Russian
Socialist Federal Soviet Republic is characterized by loose
construction, vagueness where definiteness is essential, and a
marked deficiency of those safeguards and guaranties which ought to
be incorporated into a written constitution. There is, for example,
no provision for that immunity of parliamentary representatives
from arrest for libel, sedition, and the like, which is enjoyed in
practically all other countries. Even under Czar Nicholas II this
principle of parliamentary immunity was always observed until November,
1916, when the ferment of revolution was already manifesting itself.
It requires no expert legal knowledge or training to perceive that
the fundamental instrument of the political and legal system of
Soviet Russia fails to provide adequate protection for the rights and
liberties of its citizens.
Let us consider now another matter of cardinal importance, the complex
and tedious processes which intervene between the citizen-voter and the
“Council of People’s Commissars.”
(1) The electorate is divided into two groups or divisions, the
urban and the rural. Those entitled to vote in the city form, in the
first instance, the Soviet of the shop, factory, trades-union, or
professional association, as the case may be. Those entitled to vote in
the rural village form, in the first instance, the village Soviet.
(2) The Soviets of the shops, factories, trades-unions, and
professional associations choose, in such manner as they will,
representatives to the urban Soviet. The urban Soviets are not all
based on equal representation, however. According to announcements
in the official Bolshevist press, factory workers in Petrograd are
entitled to one representative in the Petrograd Soviet for every
500 electors, while the soldiers and sailors are entitled to one
representative for every 200 members. Thus two soldiers’ votes
count for exactly as much as five workmen’s votes. Those entitled
to vote in the village Soviets choose representatives to a rural
Soviet (_Volost_), and this body, in turn, chooses representatives
to the county Soviet (_Oyezd_). This latter body is equal in power
to the urban Soviet; both are represented in the Provincial Soviet
(_Gubernia_). The village peasant is one step farther removed from the
Provincial Soviet than is the city worker.
(3) Both the urban Soviets of the city workers’ representatives and the
county Soviets of the peasants’ representatives are represented in the
Provincial Soviet. There appears at this point another great inequality
in voting power. The basis of representation is one member for 2,000
city _voters_ and one for 10,000 _inhabitants_ of rural villages.
At first this seems to mean--and has been generally understood to
mean--that each city worker’s vote is equal to the votes of _five_
peasants. Apparently this is an error. The difference is more nearly
three to one than five to one. Representation is based on the number of
_city voters_ and the number of _village inhabitants_.
(4) The Provincial Congress (_Gubernia_) sends representatives to the
Regional Congress. Here again the voting power is unequal: the basis
of representation is one representative for 5,000 _city voters_ and
one for “25,000 inhabitants of the county.” The discrimination here is
markedly greater than in the case of the Provincial Congresses for the
following reason: The members of these Regional Congresses are chosen
by the _Gubernias_, which include representatives of city workers as
well as representatives of peasants, the former being given three times
proportionate representation of the latter. Obviously, to again apply
the same principle and choose representatives of the _Gubernias_ to the
Regional Congresses on the same basis of three to one has a cumulative
disadvantage to the peasant.
(5) The All-Russian Congress of Soviets is composed of delegates
chosen by the Provincial Congresses, which represent city workers and
peasants, as already shown, _and of representatives sent direct from
the urban Soviets_.
[Illustration: From Voter to National Government--Russia and U. S.
A.[6]]
[6] In all the Soviets, from County Soviets onward, city voters have a
larger vote in proportion to numbers than rural voters. (See text.)
It will be seen that at every step, from the county Soviet to the
All-Russian Congress of Soviets, elaborate care has been taken to
make certain that the representatives of the city workers are not
outnumbered by peasants’ representatives. The peasants, who make up 85
per cent. of the population, are systematically discriminated against.
(6) We are not yet at the end of the intricate Soviet system of
government. While the All-Russian Congress of Soviets is nominally the
supreme power in the state, it is too unwieldy a body to do more than
discuss general policies. It meets twice a year for this purpose. From
its membership of 1,500 is chosen the All-Russian Central Executive
Committee of “not more than 200 members.” This likewise is too unwieldy
a body to function either quickly or well.
(7) The All-Russian Central Executive Committee selects the Council of
People’s Commissars of seventeen members, each Commissar being at the
head of a department of the government.
A brief study of the diagram on the preceding page will show how much
less directly responsive to the electorate than our own United States
Government is this complicated, bureaucratic government of Soviet
Russia.
V
THE PEASANTS AND THE LAND
At the time of the Revolution the peasantry comprised 85 per
cent. of the population. The industrial wage-earning class--the
proletariat--comprised, according to the most generous estimate, not
more than 3 to 4 per cent. That part of the proletariat which was
actively interested in the revolutionary social change was represented
by the Social Democratic Party, which was split into factions as
follows: on the right the moderate “defensist” Mensheviki; on the left
the radical “defeatist” Bolsheviki; with a large center faction which
held a middle course, sometimes giving its support to the right wing
and sometimes to the left. Each of these factions contained in it men
and women of varying shades of opinion and diverse temperaments. Thus
among the Mensheviki were some who were so radical that they were very
close to the Bolsheviki, while among the latter were some individuals
who were so moderate that they were very close to the Mensheviki.
That part of the peasantry which was actively interested in
revolutionary social change was represented by the peasant Socialist
parties, the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists, and the Populists,
or People’s Socialists. The former alone possessed any great numerical
strength or political significance. In this party, as in the Social
Democratic Party, there was a moderate right wing and a radical
left wing with a strong centrist element. In this party also were
found in each of the wings men and women whose views seemed barely
distinguishable from those generally characteristic of the other. In
a general way, the relations of the Socialists-Revolutionists and the
Social Democrats were characterized by a tendency on the part of the
Socialists-Revolutionists of the Right to make common cause with the
Menshevist Social Democrats and a like tendency on the part of the
Socialists-Revolutionists of the Left to make common cause with the
Bolshevist Social Democrats.
This merging of the two parties applied only to the general program
of revolutionary action; in particular to the struggle to overthrow
czarism. Upon the supreme basic economic issue confronting Russia they
were separated by a deep and wide gulf. The psychology of the peasants
was utterly unlike that of the urban proletariat. The latter were
concerned with the organization of the state, with factory legislation,
with those issues which are universally raised in the conflict
of capitalists and wage-earners. The consciousness of the Social
Democratic Party was proletarian. On the other hand, the peasants cared
very little about the organization of the state or any of the matters
which the city workers regarded as being of cardinal importance. They
were “land hungry”; they wanted a distribution of the land which would
increase their individual holdings. The passion for private possession
of land is strong in the peasant of every land, the Russian peasant
being no exception to the rule. Yet there is perhaps one respect in
which the psychology of the Russian peasant differs from that of the
French peasant, for example. The Russian peasant is quite as deeply
interested in becoming an individual landholder; he is much less
interested in the idea of absolute ownership. Undisturbed possession of
an adequate acreage, even though unaccompanied by the title of absolute
ownership, satisfies the Russian.
The moderate Social Democrats, the Mensheviki, and the
Socialists-Revolutionists stood for substantially the same solution of
the land problem prior to the Revolution. They wanted to confiscate the
lands of great estates, the Church and the Crown, and to turn them over
to democratically elected and governed local bodies. The Bolsheviki,
on the other hand, wanted all land to be nationalized and in place of
millions of small owners they wanted state ownership and control. Large
scale agriculture on government-owned lands by government employees
and more or less rapid extinction of private ownership and operation
was their ideal. The Socialists-Revolutionists denounced this program
of nationalization, saying that it would make the peasants “mere
wage-slaves of the state.” They wanted “socialization” of all land,
including that of the small peasant owners. By socialization they meant
taking all lands “out of private ownership of persons into the public
ownership, _and their management by democratically organized leagues of
communities with the purpose of an equitable utilization_.”
The Russian peasant looked upon the Revolution as, above everything
else, the certain fulfilment of his desire for redistribution of
the land. There were, in fact, two issues which far outweighed all
others--the land problem and peace. All classes in Russia, even
a majority of the great landowners themselves, realized that the
distribution of land among the peasants was now inevitable. Thus,
interrogated by peasants, Rodzianko, President of the Fourth Duma, a
large landowner, said:
“Yes, we admit that the fundamental problem of the Constituent Assembly
is not merely to construct a political system for Russia, but likewise
_to give back to the peasantry the land which is at present in our
hands_.”
The Provisional Government, under Lvov, dominated as it then was
by landowners and bourgeoisie, never for a moment sought to evade
this question. On March 15, 1917, the very day of its formation,
the Provisional Government by a decree transferred all the Crown
lands--approximately 12,000,000 acres--to the Ministry of Agriculture
as state property. Two weeks later the Provisional Government conferred
upon the newly created Food Commissions the right to take possession
of all vacant and uncultivated land, to cultivate it or to rent it
to peasants who were ready to undertake the cultivation. This order
compelled many landowners to turn their idle lands over to peasants
who were willing and ready to proceed with cultivation. On April 21,
1917, the Provisional Government by a decree created Land Commissions
throughout the whole of Russia. These Land Commissions were created in
every township (_Volost_), county (_Oyezd_), and province (_Gubernia_).
They were to collect all information concerning landownership and local
administrative agencies and make their reports to a superior national
body, the All-Russian Land Commission, which, in turn, would prepare
a comprehensive scheme for submission to the Constituent Assembly. On
May 18, 1917, the Provisional Government announced that the question of
the transfer of the land to the peasants was to be left wholly to the
Constituent Assembly.
These local Land Commissions, as well as the superior national
commission, were democratically chosen bodies, thoroughly
representative of the peasantry. As might be expected, they were to
a very large extent guided by the representatives of the Party of
Socialists-Revolutionists. There was never any doubt concerning their
attitude toward the peasants’ demand for distribution of the land. On
the All-Russian Land Commission were the best-known Russian authorities
on the land question and the agrarian problem. Professor Posnikov, the
chairman; Victor Chernov, leader of the Socialists-Revolutionists;
Pieshekhonov; Rakitnikov; the two Moslovs; Oganovsky; Vikhliaev;
Cherenekov; Veselovsky, and many other eminent authorities were on
this important body. To the ordinary non-Russian these names will
mean little, perhaps, but to all who are familiar with modern Russia
this brief list will be a sufficient assurance that the commission
was governed by liberal idealism united to scientific knowledge and
practical experience.
The Land Commissions were not created merely for the purpose of
collating data upon the subject of landownership and cultivation. That
was, indeed, their avowed and ostensible object; but behind that there
was another and much more urgent purpose. In the first place, as soon
as the revolutionary disturbances began, peasants in many villages
took matters into their own hands and appropriated whatever lands they
could seize. Agitators had gone among the peasantry--agitators of the
Party of Socialists-Revolutionists not less than of the Bolsheviki--and
preached the doctrine of “the expropriation of the expropriators.” They
told the peasants to seize the land and so execute the will of the
people. So long as czarism remained the peasants held back; once it was
destroyed, they threw off their restraint and began to seize the land
for themselves. The Revolution was here. Was it not always understood
that when the Revolution came they were to take the land?
Numerous estates were seized and in some cases the landowners were
brutally murdered by the frenzied peasants. On some of the large
estates the mansions of the owners, the laborers’ cottages, stables,
cattle-sheds, and corn-stacks were burned and the valuable agricultural
machinery destroyed. Whenever this happened it was a great calamity,
for on the large estates were the model farms, the agricultural
experiment stations of Russia. And while this wanton and foolish
destruction was going on there was a great dearth of food for the
army at the front. Millions of men had to be fed and it was necessary
to make proper provision for the conservation of existing food crops
and for increased production. Nor was it only the big estates which
were thus attacked and despoiled; in numerous instances the farms of
the “middle peasants”--corresponding to our moderately well-to-do
farmers--were seized and their rightful owners driven away. In some
cases very small farms were likewise seized. Something had to be done
to save Russia from this anarchy, which threatened the very life of the
nation. The Land Commissions were made administrative organs to deal
with the land problems as they arose, to act until the new Zemstvos
could be elected and begin to function, when the administrative work of
the commissions would be assumed by the Land Offices of the Zemstvos.
There was another very serious matter which made it important to have
the Land Commissions function as administrative bodies. Numerous
landowners had begun to divide their estates, selling the land off in
parcels, thus introducing greater complexity into the problem, a more
numerous class of owners to be dealt with. In many cases, moreover, the
“sales” and “transfers” were fictitious and deceptive, the new “owners”
being mere dummies. In this manner the landowners sought to trick and
cheat the peasants. It was to meet this menace that the Provisional
Government, on July 12, 1917, by special decree put a stop to all land
speculation and forbade the transfer of title to any land, outside of
the cities, except by consent of the local Land Commission approved by
the Ministry of Agriculture.
Chernov, who under Kerensky became Minister of Agriculture, was the
creator of the Land Commissions and the principal author of the
agrarian program of the Provisional Government as this was developed
from March to October. How completely his policy was justified may
be judged from the fact that while most of the landlords fled to the
cities at the outbreak of the Revolution in March, fearing murderous
riotings such as took place in 1906, in June they had nearly all
returned to their estates. The Land Commissions had checked the
peasant uprisings; they had given the peasants something to do toward
a constructive solution, and had created in their minds confidence
that they were going to be honestly dealt with; that the land would
be distributed among them before long. In other words, the peasants
were patiently waiting for freedom and land to be assured by legal and
peaceful means.
Then the Bolsheviki began to rouse the peasants once more and to play
upon their suspicions and fears. Simultaneously their propagandists in
the cities and in the villages began their attacks upon the Provisional
Government. To the peasants they gave the same old advice: “Seize the
land for yourselves! Expropriate the landlords!” Once more the peasants
began to seize estates, to sack and burn manor houses, and even to
kill landowners. The middle of July saw the beginning of a revival
of the “Jacqueries,” and in a few weeks they had become alarmingly
common. The propagandists of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists
did their best to put an end to the outrages, but the peasants were
not so easily placated as they had been in March and April. Hope long
deferred had brought about a state of despair and desperation. The
poor, bewildered peasants could not understand why such a simple matter
as the distribution of the land--for so it seemed to them--should
require months of preparation. They were ready to believe the
Bolshevist propagandists who told them that the delay was intended
to enable the bourgeoisie to betray the toilers, and that if they
wanted the land they must take it for themselves. “You know how the
Socialists-Revolutionists always talked to you aforetime,” said these
skilful demagogues; “they told you then to seize the land, but now they
only tell you to wait, just as the landlords tell you. They have been
corrupted; they are no longer true representatives of your interest. We
tell you, what you have long known, that if you want the land you must
seize it for yourselves!”
Anarchy among the peasants grew apace. Some of the wisest of the
leaders of the Russian revolutionary movement urged the Provisional
Government to hurry, to revise its plan, and, instead of waiting for
the Constituent Assembly to act upon the land program, to put it into
effect at once. The All-Russian Land Commission hastened its work and
completed the formulation of a land program. The Provisional Government
stuck to its original declaration that the program must be considered
and approved or rejected by the Constituent Assembly. In October, at
the Democratic Conference in Petrograd, the so-called Pre-Parliament,
Prokopovich, the well-known Marxian economist, who had become Minister
of Commerce and Labor, uttered a solemn warning that “the disorderly
seizing of land was ruining agriculture and threatening the towns and
the northern provinces with famine.”
It is one of the numerous tragedies of the Russian Revolution that at
the very time this warning was issued Kerensky had in his possession
two plans, either of which might have averted the catastrophe that
followed. One of them was the completed program of the All-Russian Land
Commission, largely Chernov’s work. It had already been approved by
the Provisional Government. It was proposed that Kerensky should make
a fight to have the Cabinet proclaim this program to be law, without
waiting for the Constituent Assembly. The other plan was very simple
and crude. It was that all the large estates be seized at once, as a
measure of military necessity, and that in the distribution of the
land thus taken peasant soldiers with honorable discharges be given
preference. In either case, Kerensky would have split his Cabinet.
When we consider the conditions which prevailed at that time, the
extreme military and political weakness, and the vast stakes at
issue, it is easy to understand why Kerensky decided to wait for the
Constituent Assembly. It is easy enough to say now, after the event,
that Kerensky’s decision was wrong; that his only chance to hold the
confidence of the peasants was to do one of two things, declare
immediate peace or introduce sweeping land reforms. Certainly, that
seems fairly plain now. At that time, however, Kerensky faced the hard
fact that to do either of these things meant a serious break in the
Cabinet, another crisis, the outcome of which none could foretell.
Moreover, we must bear in mind that Kerensky himself and those with
whom he was working were inspired by a very genuine and sincere
passion for democracy. They believed in the Constituent Assembly.
They had idealized it. To them it was in the nature of a betrayal
of the Revolution that a matter of such fundamental importance
should be disposed of by a small handful of men, rather than by the
representatives of the people duly elected, upon a democratic basis,
for that purpose. The Provisional Government was pledged to leave
the Constituent Assembly free and untrammeled to deal with the land
problem: how could it violate its pledge and usurp the functions of
the Assembly? If Kerensky’s course was a mistaken one, it was so only
because conscientious loyalty to principle is not invariably expedient
in politics; because the guile and dishonesty of his opponents
triumphed over his simple honesty and truthfulness.
On October 20, 1917, the Provisional Government enacted a law which
marked a further step in the preparation of the way for the new system
of land tenure. The new law extended the control of the Land Offices
of the Zemstvos--where these existed, and of the Land Commissions,
where the Zemstvos with their Land Offices did not yet exist--over all
cultivated land. It was thus made possible for the provisions of a
comprehensive land law to be applied quickly, with a minimum amount of
either disturbance or delay.
From the foregoing it will be readily seen that the Bolshevist _coup
d’état_ interfered with the consummation of a most painstaking,
scientific effort to solve the greatest of all Russian problems. Their
apologists are fond of claiming that the Bolsheviki can at least be
credited with having solved the land problem by giving the land to
the peasants. The answer to that preposterous claim is contained in
the foregoing plain and unadorned chronological record, the accuracy
of which can easily be attested by any person having access to a
reasonably good library. In so far as the Bolsheviki put forward any
land program at all, they adopted, for reasons of political expediency,
the program which had been worked out by the Land Commissions under
the Provisional Government--the so-called Chernov program. With that
program they did nothing of any practical value, however. Where the
land was distributed under their régime it was done by the peasants
themselves. In many cases it was done in the primitive, violent,
destructive, and anarchical ways of the “Jacqueries” already described,
adding enormously to Russia’s suffering and well-nigh encompassing her
destruction. By nothing else is the malefic character and influence
of Bolshevism more clearly shown than by the state in which it placed
the land problem, just when it was about to be scientifically and
democratically solved.
When the Constituent Assembly met on January 5, 1918, the proposed land
law was at once taken up. The first ten paragraphs had been adopted
when the Assembly was dispersed by Trotsky’s Red Guards. The entire
bill was thus not acted upon. The ten paragraphs which were passed give
a very good idea of the general character and scope of the measure:
In the name of the peoples of the Russian State, composing the
All-Russian Constituent Assembly, be it ordained that:
1. Right of ownership to land within the limits of the Russian
Republic is henceforth and forever abolished.
2. All lands contained within the boundaries of the Russian
Republic with all their underground wealth, forests, and waters
become the property of the people.
3. The control of all lands, the surface and under the surface,
and all forests and waters belongs to the Republic, as
expressed in the forms of its central administrative organs and
organs of local self-government on the principles enacted by
this law.
4. Those territories of the Russian Republic which are
autonomous in a juridico-governmental conception, are to
realize their agrarian plans on the basis of this law and in
accord with the Federal Constitution.
5. The aims of the government forces and the organs of local
self-government in the sphere of the control of lands,
underground riches, forests, and waters constitute: (_a_)
The creation of conditions most favorable to the greater
exploitation of the natural wealth of the land and the
highest development of productive forces; (_b_) The equitable
distribution of all natural wealth among the population.
6. The right of any person or institution to land, underground
resources, forests, and waters is limited only to the
utilization thereof.
7. All citizens of the Russian Republic, and also unions of
such citizens and states and social institutions, may become
users of land, underground resources, forests, and waters,
without regard to nationality or religion.
8. The land rights of such users are to be obtained, become
effective, and cease under the terms laid down by this law.
9. Land rights belonging at present to private persons, groups,
and institutions, in so far as they conflict with this law, are
herewith abrogated.
10. The transformation of all lands, underground strata,
forests, and waters, belonging at present to private persons,
groups, or institutions, into popular property is to be made
without recompense to such owners.
After they had dispersed the Constituent Assembly the Bolsheviki
published their famous “Declaration of the Rights of the Laboring
and Exploited People,” containing their program for “socialization
of the land,” taken bodily from the Socialists-Revolutionists. This
declaration had been first presented to the Constituent Assembly when
the Bolsheviki demanded its adoption by that body. The paragraphs
relating to the socialization of the land read:
1. To effect the socialization of the land, private ownership
of land is abolished, and the whole land fund is declared
common national property and transferred to the laborers
without compensation, on the basis of equalized use of the soil.
All forests, minerals, and waters of state-wide importance, as
well as the whole inventory of animate and inanimate objects,
all estates and agricultural enterprises, are declared national
property.
This meant literally nothing from the standpoint of practical
politics. Its principal interest lies in the fact that it shows that
the Bolsheviki accepted in theory the essence of the land program
of the elements comprised in the Provisional Government and in the
Constituent Assembly, both of which they had overthrown. Practically
the declaration could have no effect upon the peasants. Millions of
them had been goaded by the Bolsheviki into resorting to anarchistic,
violent seizing of lands on the principle of “each for himself and
the devil take the hindmost.” These would now be ready to fight any
attempt made by the Soviet authorities to “socialize” the land they
held. Millions of other peasants were still under the direction of the
local Land Commissions, most of which continued to function, more or
less _sub rosa_, for some time. And even when and where the local Land
Commissions themselves did not exist, the plans they had prepared were,
in quite a large measure, put into practice when local land divisions
took place.
The Bolsheviki were powerless to make a single constructive
contribution to the solution of the basic economic problem of Russia.
Their “socialization decree” was a poor substitute for the program
whence it had been derived; they possessed no machinery and no moral
agencies to give it reality. It remained a pious wish, at best; perhaps
a far harsher description would be that much more nearly true. Later
on, when they went into the villages and sought to “socialize” them,
the Bolsheviki found that they had not solved the land problem, but
had made it worse than it had been before.
We have heard much concerning the nationalization of agriculture in
Soviet Russia, and of the marvelous success attending it. The facts,
as they are to be found in the official publications of the Soviet
Government and the Communist Party, do not sustain the roseate accounts
which have been published by our pro-Bolshevist friends. By July, 1918,
the month in which the previously decreed nationalization of industry
was enforced, some tentative steps toward the nationalization of
agriculture had already been taken. Maria Spiridonova, a leader of the
extreme left wing of the Socialists-Revolutionists, who had co-operated
with the Bolsheviki, bitterly assailed the Council of the People’s
Commissaries for having resorted to nationalization of the great
estates, especially in the western government. In a speech delivered in
Petrograd, on July 16th, Spiridonova charged that “the great estates
were being taken over by government departments and were being managed
by officials, on the ground that state control would yield better
results than communal ownership. Under this system the peasants were
being reduced to the state of slaves paid wages by the state. Yet the
law provided that these estates should be divided among the peasant
communes to be tilled by the peasants on a co-operative basis.” It
appears that this policy was adopted in a number of instances where
the hostility to the Bolsheviki manifested by the peasants made the
division of the land among them “undesirable.” Nationalization
upon any large scale was not resorted to until some months later.
Nationalization of the agriculture of the country as a whole has never
been attempted, of course. There could not be such a nationalization
of agriculture without first nationalizing the land, and that, popular
opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, has never been done in Russia
as yet. The _Economicheskaya Zhizn_ (No. 229) declared, in November,
1919, that “in spite of the fact that the decree announcing the
nationalization of the land is now two years old, _this nationalization
has not yet been carried out_.”
It was not until March, 1919, according to a report by N. Bogdanov
in _Economicheskaya Zhizn_, November 7, 1919, that nationalized
agriculture really began on a large scale. From this report we learn
something of the havoc which had been wrought upon the agricultural
industry of Russia from March, 1917 to 1919:
A considerable portion of the estates taken over by the
People’s Commissariat of Agriculture could not be utilized,
due to the lack of various accessories, such as harness,
horseshoes, rope, small instruments, etc.
The workers were very fluctuating, entirely unorganized,
politically inert--all this due to the shortage of provisions
and organization. The technical forces could not get used to
the village; besides, we did not have sufficient numbers of
agronomists (agricultural experts) familiar with the practical
organization of large estates. The regulations governing the
social management of land charged the representatives of the
industrial proletariat with a leading part in the work of
the Soviet estates. But, torn between meeting the various
requirements of the Republic, of prime importance, the
proletariat could not with sufficient speed furnish the number
of organizers necessary for agricultural management.
The idea of centralized management on the Soviet estates has
not been properly understood by the local authorities, and the
work of organization from the very beginning had to progress
amid bitter fighting between the provincial Soviet estates and
the provincial offices of the Department of Agriculture. This
struggle has not as yet ceased.
Thus, the work of nationalizing the country’s agriculture began
in the spring--_i.e._, a half-year later than it should have,
and without any definite territory (every inch of it had to
be taken after a long and strenuous siege on the part of the
surrounding population); with insufficient and semi-ruined
equipment; without provisions; without an apparatus for
organization and without the necessary experience for such
work; with the agricultural workers engaged in the Soviet
estates lacking any organization whatever.
Naturally, the results of this work are not impressive.
* * * * *
Within the limits of the Soviet estates the labor-union
of agricultural proletariat has developed into a large
organization.
In a number of provinces the leading part in the work of the
Soviet estates has been practically assumed by the industrial
proletariat, which has furnished a number of organizers, whose
reputation has been sufficiently established.
Estimating the results of the work accomplished, we must admit
that we have not yet any fully nationalized rural economy.
But during the eight months of work in this direction all the
elements for its organization have been accumulated.
* * * * *
A preliminary familiarity with individual estates and with
agricultural regions makes it possible to begin the preparation
of a national plan for production on the Soviet estates and for
a systematic attempt to meet the manifold demands made on the
nationalized estates by the agricultural industries: sugar,
distilling, chemical, etc., as well as by the country’s need
for stock-breeding, seeds, planting, and other raw materials.
The greatest difficulties arise in the creation of the
machinery of organization. The shortage of agricultural experts
is being replenished with great difficulty, for the position
of the technical personnel of the Soviet estates, due to
their weak political organization, is extremely unstable. The
mobilization of the proletarian forces for the work in the
Soviet estates gives us ground to believe that in this respect
the spring of 1920 will find us sufficiently prepared.
The ranks of proletarian workers in the Soviet estates are
drawing together. True, the level of their enlightenment is by
no means high, but “in union there is strength,” and this force
if properly utilized will rapidly yield positive results.
The sole purpose of these quotations is to show that at best the
“nationalization of agriculture” in Russia, concerning which we have
heard so much, is only an experiment that has just been begun; that
it bears no very important relation to the industry as a whole.
It would be just as true to say, on the basis of the agricultural
experiment stations of our national and state governments, that we
have “nationalized agriculture” as to make that claim for Russia. _The
records show that the “nationalized” farms did not produce enough food
to maintain the workers employed on them._
Apart from the nationalization of a number of large estates upon the
basis of wage labor under a centralized authority, the Committee for
the Communization of Agricultural Economy was formed for the purpose
of establishing agricultural communes. At the same time--February,
1919--the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets called on the
Provincial Soviets to take up this work of creating agricultural
communes. Millions of rubles were spent for this purpose, but the
results were very small. In March, 1919, _Pravda_ declared that “15,000
communes were registered, but we have no proofs as to their existence
anywhere except on paper.” The _Izvestia_ of the Central Executive
Committee, May, 1919, complained that “the number of newly organized
communes is growing smaller from month to month; the existing communes
are becoming disintegrated, twenty of them having been disbanded during
March.” City-bred workers found themselves helpless on the land and in
conflict with the peasants. On the other hand, the peasants would not
accept the communes, accompanied as these were with Soviet control. In
the same number of the _Izvestia_ of the Central Executive Committee,
Nikolaiev, a well-known Bolshevik, declared:
The communes are absolutely contradictory to the mode of
living of our toiling peasant masses, as these communes demand
not only the abolition of property rights, to implements and
means of production, but the division of products according to
program.
At the Congress of Trades-unions, which met in Moscow in May, 1919,
the possibility of using the communes as means of relieving the
wide-spread unemployment and distress among the city workers was
discussed by Platonov, Rozanov, and other noted Bolsheviki. The
closing down of numerous factories and the resulting unemployment
of large masses of workmen had brought about an appalling amount of
hunger. It was proposed, therefore, that communes be formed in the
villages under the auspices of the trades-unions, and as branches of
the unions, parcels of land being given to the unions. In this way, it
was argued, employment would be found for the members of the unions
and the food-supply of the cities would be materially increased. While
approving the formation of communes, the Congress voted down the
proposal.
On June 8, 1919, there was established the Administration of Industrial
Allotments. The object of this new piece of bureaucratic machinery
was the increase of agricultural production through land allotments
attached to, or assigned to, industrial establishments, and their
cultivation by the workers. This scheme, which had been promulgated as
early as February, 1919, was a pathetic anticlimax to the ambitious
program with which the Bolshevist Utopia-builders set out. It was
neither more nor less than the “allotment gardens” scheme so long
familiar in British cities. Such allotment gardens were common enough
in the industrial centers of the United States during the war. As
an emergency measure for providing vegetables they were useful and
even admirable; as a contribution to the solution of the agricultural
problem in its largest sense their value was insignificant. Yet we
find the _Economicheskaya Zhizn_, in November, 1919, indulging in the
old intoxicating visions of Utopia, and seeing in these allotments the
means whereby the cities could be relieved of their dependence upon the
rural villages for food:
Out of the hitherto frenzied rush of workmen into villages,
brought about by hunger, a healthy proletariat movement was
born, aiming at the creation of their own agriculture by
means of allotments attached to the works. This movement
resulted, on February 15, 1919, in a decree which granted to
factory and other proletariat groups the right to organize
their own rural economy.... The enthusiasm of the workmen
is impressive.... _The complete emancipation of the towns
from the villages in the matter of food-supply appears to be
quite within the realms of possibility in the near future,
without the unwieldy, expensive, and inefficient machinery of
the People’s Commissariat of Food Supply, and without undue
irritation of the villages._ This will, besides, relieve
enormously the strain on the crippled railways. And, what is
even more important, it points out a new and the only right way
to the nationalization of the land and to the socialization
of agriculture. And, indeed, in spite of the fact that the
decree announcing the nationalization of the land is now two
years old, _this nationalization has not yet been carried out_.
The attitude of the peasant to the land, psychologically as
well as economically, is still that of the small landowner.
He still considers the land his property, for, as before,
it is he, and not the state, that draws both the absolute
and the differential rent, and he is fighting for it, with
the food detachments, with all his power. If there is any
difference at all it is that the rent which formerly used to
find its way into the wide pockets of the landowners now
goes into the slender purse of the peasant. The difference,
however, in the size of the respective pockets is becoming
more and more insignificant.... In order to make the approach
to socialization of the land possible, it is necessary that
the Soviet authorities should, besides promulgating decrees,
actually take possession of the land, and the authorities can
only do this with the help of the industrial proletariat, whose
dictatorship it represents.
How extremely childish all this is! How little the knowledge of
the real problem it displays! If the official organ of the Supreme
Economic Council and the People’s Commissaries of Finance, Commerce
and Trade and Food knew no better than this after two such years as
Russia had passed through, how can there be any hope for Russia until
the reckless, ignorant, bungling experimenters are overthrown? Pills
of Podophyllum for earthquakes would be less grotesque than their
prescription for Russia’s ailment.
VI
THE BOLSHEVIKI AND THE PEASANTS
In the fierce fratricidal conflict between the Bolsheviki and the
democratic anti-Bolshevist elements so much bitterness has been
engendered that anything approaching calm, dispassionate discussion
and judgment has been impossible for Russians, whether as residents
in Russia, engaged in the struggle, or as _émigrés_, impotent to do
more than indulge in the expression of their emotions, practically all
Russians everywhere have been--and still are--too intensely partizan to
be just or fair-minded. And non-Russians have been subject to the same
distorting passions, only to a lesser degree. Even here in the United
States, while an incredibly large part of the population has remained
utterly indifferent, wholly uninterested in the struggle or the
issues at stake, it has been practically impossible to find anywhere
intelligent interest dissociated from fierce partizanship.
The detachment and impartiality essential to the formation of sound and
unbiased judgment have been almost non-existent. The issues at stake
have been too vast and too fundamental, too vitally concerned with the
primal things of civilization, the sources of some of our profoundest
emotions, to permit cool deliberation. Moreover, little groups of men
and women with strident cries have hurled the challenge of Bolshevism
into the arena of our national life, and that at a time of abnormal
excitation, at the very moment when our lives were pulsing with a
fiercely emotional patriotism. As a result of these conditions there
has been little discriminating discernment in the tremendous riot of
discussion of Russian Bolshevism which has raged in all parts of the
land. It has been a frenzied battle of epithet and insult, calumny and
accusation.
It is not at all strange or remarkable that their opponents, in Russia
and outside of it, have been ready to charge against the Bolsheviki
every evil condition in Russia, including those which have long
existed under czarism and those which developed during and as a result
of the war. The transportation system had been reduced to something
nearly approaching chaos before the Revolution of March, 1917, as
all reasonably well-informed people know. Yet, notwithstanding these
things, it is a common practice to charge the Bolsheviki with the
destruction of the transportation system and all the evil results
following from it. Industrial production declined greatly in the latter
part of 1916 and the early weeks of 1917. The March Revolution, by
lessening discipline in the factories, had the effect of lessening
production still further. The demoralization of industry was one of the
gravest problems with which Kerensky had to deal. Yet it is rare to
find any allowance made for these important facts in anti-Bolshevist
polemics. The Bolsheviki are charged with having wrought all the havoc
and harm; there is no discrimination, no intellectual balance.
Similarly, many of their opponents have charged against the Russian
Bolsheviki much brutality and crime which in fairness should be
attributed rather to inherent defects of the peasant character,
themselves the product of centuries of oppression and misrule. There
is much that is admirable in the character of the Russian peasant,
and many western writers have found the temptation to idealize it
irresistible. Yet it is well to remember that it is not yet sixty
years since serfdom was abolished; that under a very thin veneer
there remain ignorant selfishness, superstition, and the capacity
for savage brutality which all primitive peoples have. Nothing is
gained, nobody is helped to an understanding of the Russian problem,
if emphasis is laid upon the riotous seizures of land by the peasants
in the early stages of the Bolshevist régime and no attention paid to
the fact that similar riotings and land seizures were numerous and
common in 1906, and that as soon as the Revolution broke out in March,
1917, the peasant uprisings began. Undoubtedly the Bolsheviki must be
held responsible for the fact that they deliberately destroyed the
discipline and restraint which the Land Commissions exercised over the
peasants; that they instigated them to riot and anarchy at the very
time when a peaceful and orderly solution of the land problem was made
certain. It is not necessary to minimize their crime against Russian
civilization: only it is neither true nor wise to attribute the brutal
character of the peasant to Bolshevism.
The abolition of the courts of justice and the forms of judicial
procedure threw upon the so-called “People’s Tribunals” the task of
administering justice--a task which the peasants of whom the village
tribunals were composed, many of them wholly illiterate and wholly
unfit to exercise authority, could not be expected to discharge other
than as they did, with savage brutality. Here is a list of cases taken
from a single issue (April 26, 1918) of the _Dyelo Naroda_ (_People’s
Affair_), organ of the Socialists-Revolutionists:
In Kirensk County the People’s Tribunal ordered a woman, found guilty
of extracting brandy, to be inclosed in a bag and repeatedly knocked
against the ground until dead.
In the Province of Tver the People’s Tribunal has sentenced a young
fellow “to freeze to death” for theft. In a rigid frost he was led out,
clad only in a shirt, and water was poured on him until he turned into
a piece of ice. Out of pity somebody cut his tortures short by shooting
him.
In Sarapulsk County a peasant woman, helped by her lover, killed her
husband. For this crime the People’s Tribunal sentenced the woman to be
buried alive and her lover to die. A grave was dug, into which first
the body of the killed lover was lowered, and then the woman, hands and
feet bound, put on top. She had been covered by almost fifteen feet
of earth when she still kept on yelling “Help!” and “Have pity, dear
people!” The peasants, who witnessed the scene, later said, “But the
life of a woman is as lasting as that of a cat.”
In the village of Bolshaya Sosnovka a shoemaker killed a soldier
who tried to break in during the night. The victim’s comrades, also
soldiers, created a “Revolutionary Tribunal,” which convicted the
shoemaker to “be beheaded at the hands of one of his comrades to whose
lot it should fall to perform the task.” The shoemaker was put to death
in the presence of a crowd of thousands of people.
In the village of Bootsenki five men and three women were accused
of misconduct. The local peasant committee undertook to try them.
After a long trial the committee reached the verdict to punish them
by flogging, giving each one publicly thirty-five strokes with the
rod. One of the women was pregnant and it was decided to postpone the
execution in her case until she had been delivered. The rest were
severely flogged. In connection with this affair an interesting episode
occurred. One of the convicted received only sixteen strokes instead
of thirty-five. At first no attention was paid to it. The next day,
however, rumors spread that the president of the committee had been
bribed, and had thus mitigated the punishment.
Then the committee decreed to flog the president himself, administering
to him fifty strokes with the rod.
In the village of Riepyrky, in Korotoyansk County, the peasants caught
a soldier robbing and decided to drown him. The verdict was carried out
by the members of the Revolutionary Tribunal in the presence of all the
people of the village.
In the village of Vradievka, in Ananyensky County, eleven thieves,
sentenced by the people, were shot.
In the district of Kubanetz, in the Province of Petrograd, carrying out
the verdict of the people, peasants shot twelve men of the fighting
militia who had been caught accepting bribes.
These sentences speak for themselves. They were not expressions of
Bolshevist savagery, for in the village tribunals there were very few
Bolsheviki. As a matter of fact, the same people who meted out these
barbarous sentences treated the agents of the Soviet Government with
equally savage brutality. The Bolsheviki had unleashed the furious
passion of these primitive folk, destroyed their faith in liberty
within the law, and replaced it by license and tyranny. Thus had they
recklessly sown dragons’ teeth.
As early as December, 1917, the Bolshevist press was discussing the
serious conditions which obtained among the peasants in the villages.
It was recognized that no good had resulted from the distribution of
the land by the anarchical methods which had been adopted. The evils
which the leaders of the Mensheviki and the Socialists-Revolutionists
had warned against were seen to be very stern realities. As was
inevitable, the land went, in many cases, not to the most needy, but
to the most powerful and least scrupulous. In these cases there was no
order, no wisdom, no justice, no law save might. It was the old, old
story of
Let him take who has the power;
And let him keep who can.
All that there was of justice and order came from the organizations
set up by the Provisional Government, the organizations the Bolsheviki
sought to destroy. Before they had been in power very long the new
rulers were compelled to recognize the seriousness of the situation.
On December 26, 1917, _Pravda_ said:
Thus far not everybody realizes to what an extent the war
has affected the economic condition of the villages. The
increase in the cost of bread has been a gain only for those
selling it. The demolition of the estates of the landowners
has enriched only those who arrived at the place of plunder
in carriages driven by five horses. By the distribution of
the landowners’ cattle and the rest of their property, those
gained most who were in charge of the distribution. In charge
of the distribution were committees, which, as everybody was
complaining, consisted mainly of wealthy peasants.
One of the most terrible consequences of the lawless anarchy that had
been induced by the Bolsheviki was the internecine strife between
villages, which speedily assumed the dimensions of civil war. It was
common for the peasants in one village to arm themselves and fight
the armed peasants of a neighboring village for the possession of
the lands of an estate. At the instigation of the Bolsheviki and of
German agents, many thousands of peasants had deserted from the army,
taking with them their weapons and as much ammunition as they could.
“Go back to your homes and take your guns with you. Seize the land for
yourselves and defend it!” was the substance of this propaganda. The
peasant soldiers deserted in masses, frequently terrorizing the people
of the villages and towns through which they passed. Several times the
Kerensky Government attempted to disarm these masses of deserters, but
their number was so great that this was not possible, every attempt
to disarm a body of them resolving itself into a pitched battle. In
this way the villages became filled with armed men who were ready to
use their weapons in the war for booty, a sort of savage tribal war,
the village populations being the tribes. In his paper, _Novaya Zhizn_,
Gorky wrote, in June, 1918:
All those who have studied the Russian villages of our day
clearly perceive that _the process of demoralization and
decay is going on there with remarkable speed_. The peasants
have taken the land away from its owners, divided it among
themselves, and destroyed the agricultural implements. _And
they are getting ready to engage in a bloody internecine
struggle for the division of the booty._ In certain districts
the population has consumed the entire grain-supply, including
the seed. In other districts the peasants are hiding their
grain underground, for fear of being forced to share it with
starving neighbors. This situation cannot fail to lead to
chaos, destruction, and murder.[7]
[7] Italics mine.--J. S.
As a matter of fact the “bloody internecine struggle” had been going
on for some time. Even before the overthrow of Kerensky there had been
many of these village wars. The Bolshevist Government did not make any
very serious attempt to interfere with the peasant movements for the
distribution of land for some time after the _coup d’état_. It was too
busy trying to consolidate its position in the cities, and especially
to organize production in the factories. There was not much to be done
with the farms at that season of the year. Early in the spring of 1918
agents of the Soviet Government began to appear in the villages. Their
purpose was to supervise and regulate the distribution of the land.
Since a great deal of the land had already been seized and distributed
by the peasants, this involved some interference on the part of the
central Soviet power in matters which the peasants regarded themselves
as rightfully entitled to settle in their own way.
This gave rise to a bitter conflict between the peasants and the
central Soviet authorities. If the peasants had confiscated and
partitioned the land, however inequitably, they regarded their deed
as conclusive and final. The attempt of the Soviet agents to “revise”
their actions they regarded as robbery. The central Soviet authorities
had against them all the village population with the exception of the
disgruntled few. If the peasants had not yet partitioned the land they
were suspicious of outsiders coming to do it. The land was their own;
the city men had nothing to do with it. In hundreds of villages the
commissions sent by the Bolsheviki to carry out the provisions of the
land program were mobbed and brutally beaten, and in many cases were
murdered. The issue of _Vlast Naroda_ (_Power of the People_) for May,
1918, contained the following:
In Bielo all members of the Soviets have been murdered.
In Soligalich two of the most prominent members of the Soviets
have literally been torn to pieces. Two others have been beaten
half dead.
In Atkarsk several members of the Soviets have been killed. In
an encounter between the Red Guards and the masses, many were
killed and wounded. The Red Guards fled.
In Kleen a crowd entered by force the building occupied by the
Soviets, with the intention of bringing the deputies before
their own court of justice. The latter fled. The Financial
Commissary committed suicide by shooting himself, in order to
escape the infuriated crowd.
In Oriekhovo-Zooyevo the deputies work in their offices guarded
by a most vigilant military force. Even on the streets they are
accompanied by guards armed with rifles and bayonets.
In Penza an attempt has been made on the lives of the Soviet
members. One of the presiding officers has been wounded. The
Soviet building is now surrounded with cannon and machine-guns.
In Svicherka, where the Bolsheviki had ordered a St.
Bartholomew night, the deputies are hunted like wild animals.
In the district of Kaliasinsk the peasantry has decidedly
refused to obey orders of the Soviets to organize an army by
compulsion. Some of the recruiting officers and agitators have
been killed.
Similar acts become more numerous as time goes on. The movement
against the Soviets spreads far and wide, affecting wider and
wider circles of the people.
The warfare between villages over confiscated land was a very serious
matter. Not only did the peasants confiscate and divide among
themselves the great estates, but they took the “excess” lands of
the moderately well-to-do peasants in many instances--that is, all
over and above the average allotment for the village. Those residing
in a village immediately adjoining an estate thus confiscated had,
all other things being equal, a better chance to get the lands than
villagers a little farther distant, though the latter might be in
greater need of the land, owing to the fact that their holdings were
smaller. Again, the village containing many armed men stood a better
chance than the village containing few. Village made war against
village, raising armed forces for the purpose. We get a vivid picture
of this terrible anarchy from the following account in the _Vlast
Naroda_:
The village has taken away the land from the landlords,
farmers, wealthy peasants, and monasteries. It cannot, however,
divide it peacefully, as was to be expected.
The more land there is the greater the appetite for it; hence
more quarrels, misunderstandings, and fights.
In Oboyansk County many villages refused to supply soldiers
when the Soviet authorities were mobilizing an army. In their
refusal they stated that “in the spring soldiers will be needed
at home in the villages,” not to cultivate the land, but to
protect it with arms against neighboring peasants.
In the Provinces of Kaluga, Kursk, and Voronezh peasant
meetings adopted the following resolutions:
“All grown members of the peasant community have to be home
in the spring. Whoever will then not return to the village
or voluntarily stay away will be forever expelled from the
community.
“These provisions are made for the purpose of having as great a
force as possible in the spring when it comes to dividing the
land.”
The peasantry is rapidly preparing to arm and is partly armed
already. The villages have a number of rifles, cartridges,
hand-grenades, and bombs.
Some villages in the Nieshnov district in the Province of
Mohilev have supplied themselves with machine-guns. The village
of Little Nieshnov, for instance, has decided to order fifteen
machine-guns and has organized a Red Army in order to be able
better to defend a piece of land taken away from the landlords,
and, as they say, that “the neighboring peasants should not
come to cut our hay right in front of our windows, like last
year.” When the neighboring peasants “heard of the decision”
they also procured machine-guns. They have formed an army and
intend to go to Little Nieshnov to cut the hay on the meadows
“under the windows” of the disputed owners.
In the Counties of Schigrovsk, Oboyansk, and Ruilsk, in the
Province of Kursk, almost every small and large village has
organized a Red Guard and is making preparations for the coming
spring war. In these places the peasants have taken rich booty.
They took and devastated 160 estates, 14 breweries, and 26
sugar refineries. Some villages have even marked the spot where
the machine-guns will have to be placed in the spring. In Volsk
County in the Province of Saratov five large villages--Kluchi,
Pletnevka, Ruibni, Shakhan, and Chernavka--expect to have
war when the time comes to divide the 148,500 acres of Count
Orlov-Denisov’s estate. Stubborn fights for meadows and forests
are already going on. They often result in skirmishes and
murder. There are similar happenings in other counties of the
province; for instance, in Petrov, Balashov, and Arkhar.
In the Province of Simbirsk there is war between the community
peasants and shopkeepers. The former have decided to do away
with “Stolypin heirs,” as they call the shopkeepers. The
latter, however, have organized and are ready for a stubborn
resistance. Combats have already taken place. The peasants
demolish farms, and the farmers set fire to towns, villages,
threshing-floors, etc.
We have received from the village of Khanino, in the Province
of Kaluga, the following letter:
“The division of the land leads to war. One village fights
against the other. The wealthy and strong peasants have
decided not to let the poor share the land taken away from
the landlords. In their turn, the poor peasants say, ‘We will
take away from you bourgeois peasants not only the lands of
the landlords, but also your own. We, the toilers, are now the
government.’ This leads to constant quarrels and fights. The
population of the neighboring village consists of so-called
natives and of peasants brought by landlords from the Province
of Orlov. The natives now say to those from Orlov: ‘Get away
from our land and return to your Province of Orlov. Anyhow,
we shall drive you away from here.’ The peasants from Orlov,
however, threaten ‘to kill all the natives.’ Thus there are
daily encounters.”
In another village the peasants have about 5,400 acres of land,
which they bought. For some reason or other they failed to
cultivate it last year. Therefore the peasants of a neighboring
village decided to take it away from them as “superfluous
property which is against the labor status.” The owners,
however, declared:
“First kill us and then you will be able to take away our land.”
In some places the first battles for land have already taken
place.
In the Province of Tambov, near the village of Ischeina, a
serious encounter has taken place between the peasants of the
village of Shleyevka and Brianchevka. Fortunately, among the
peasants of Brianchevka was a wise man, “the village Solomon,”
who first persuaded his neighbors to put out for the peasants
of Shleyevka five buckets of brandy. The latter actually took
the ransom and went away, thus leaving the land to the owners.
In some instances the Bolsheviki instigated the peasants to massacre
hundreds of innocent people in adjacent villages and towns. They did
not stop, or even protest against, the most savage anti-Jewish pogroms.
Charles Dumas, the well-known French Socialist, a Deputy in Parliament,
after spending fifteen months in Russia, published his experiences
and solemnly warned the Socialists of France against Bolshevism.
His book[8] is a terrible chronicle of terrorism, oppression, and
anarchy, all the more impressive because of its restraint and careful
documentation. He cites the following cases:
[8] _La Vérité sur les Bolsheviki_, par Charles Dumas.
On March 18, 1918, the peasants of an adjoining village
organized, in collusion with the Bolsheviki, a veritable St.
Bartholomew night in the city of Kuklovo. About five hundred
bodies of the victims were found afterward, most of them
“Intellectuals.” All residences and stores were plundered and
destroyed, the Jews being among the worst sufferers. Entire
families were wiped out, and for three days the Bolsheviki
would not permit the burial of the dead.
In May, 1918, the city of Korocha was the scene of a horrible
massacre. Thirty officers, four priests, and three hundred
citizens were killed.
In May, 1918, the relations of the Soviet Government to the peasantry
were described by Gorky as the war of the city against the country.
They were, in fact, very similar to the relations of conquering
armies to the subjugated but rebellious and resentful populations of
conquered territories. On May 14th a decree was issued regarding the
control of grain, the famous compulsory grain registration order. This
decree occupies so important a place in the history of the struggle,
and contains so many striking features, that a fairly full summary is
necessary:[9]
[9] The entire text is given as an appendix at the end of the volume.
While the people in the consuming districts are starving,
there are large reserves of unthreshed grain in the producing
districts. This grain is in the hands of the village
bourgeoisie--“tight-fisted village dealers and profiteers”--who
remain “deaf and indifferent to the wailings of starving
workmen and peasant poverty” and hold their grain in the hope
of forcing the government to raise the price of grain, selling
only to the speculators at fabulous prices. “An end must be
put to this obstinacy of the greedy village grain-profiteers.”
To abolish the grain monopoly and the system of fixed prices,
while it would lessen the profits of one group of capitalists,
would also “make bread completely inaccessible to our many
millions of workmen and would subject them to inevitable death
from starvation.” Only food grains absolutely necessary for
feeding their families, on a rationed basis, and for seed
purposes should be permitted to be held by the peasants. “_The
answer to the violence of grain-growers toward the starving
poor must be violence toward the bourgeoisie._”
Continuing its policy of price-fixing and monopolization of the
grain-supply, the government decreed “a merciless struggle with
grain speculators,” compulsion of “each grain-owner to declare the
surplus above what is needed to sow the fields and for personal use,
according to established normal quantities, until the new harvest,
and to surrender the same within a week after the publication of this
decision in each village.” The workmen and poor peasants were called
upon “to unite at once for a merciless struggle with grain-hoarders.”
All persons having a surplus of grain and failing to bring it to the
collecting-points, and those wasting grain on illicit distillation of
alcohol, were to be regarded as “enemies of the people.” They were to
be turned over to the Revolutionary Tribunal, which would “imprison
them for ten years, confiscate their entire property, and drive them
out forever from the communes”; while the distillers must, in addition,
“be condemned to compulsory communal work.”
To carry out this rigorous policy it was provided that any person who
revealed an undeclared surplus of grains should receive one-half the
value of the surplus when it was seized and confiscated, the other half
going to the village commune. “For the more successful struggle with
the food crisis” extraordinary powers were conferred upon the People’s
Food Commissioner, appointed by the Soviet Government. This official
was empowered to (1) publish at his discretion obligatory regulations
regarding the food situation, “exceeding the usual limits of the
People’s Food Commissioner’s competence”; (2) to abrogate the orders of
local food bodies and other organizations contravening his own plans
and orders; (3) to demand from all institutions and organizations the
immediate carrying out of his regulations; (4) “_to use armed forces
in case resistance is shown to the removal of grains or other food
products_; (5) to dissolve or reorganize the food agencies where they
might resist his orders; (6) to discharge, transfer, commit to the
Revolutionary Tribunal, or subject to arrest officers and employees of
all departments and public organizations in case of interference with
his orders; (7) to transfer the powers of such officials, departments,
and institutions,” with the approval of the Council of People’s
Commissaries.
It is not necessary here to discuss the merits of these regulations,
even if we possessed the complete data without which the merit of
the regulations cannot be determined. For our present purpose it
is sufficient to recognize the fact that the peasants regarded the
regulations as oppressive and vigorously resisted their enforcement.
They claimed that the amount of grain--and also of potatoes--they were
permitted to keep was insufficient; that it meant semi-starvation
to them. The peasant Soviets, where such still existed, jealous of
their rights, refused to recognize the authority of the People’s Food
Commissaries. No material increase in the supply of “surplus grain”
was observed. The receiving-stations were as neglected as before. The
poor wretches who, inspired by the rich reward of half the value of the
illegal reserves reported, acted as informers were beaten and tortured,
and the Food Commissaries, who were frequently arrogant and brutal in
their ways, were attacked and in some cases killed.
The Soviet Government had resort to armed force against the peasants.
On May 30, 1918, the Council of People’s Commissaries met and decided
that the workmen of Petrograd and Moscow must form “food-requisitioning
detachments” and “advance in a crusade against the village bourgeoisie,
calling to their assistance the village poor.” From a manifesto issued
by the Council of People’s Commissaries this passage is quoted:
The Central Executive Committee has ordered the Soviets of
Moscow and Petrograd to mobilize 10,000 workers, to arm them
and to equip them for a campaign for the conquest of wheat from
the rapacious and the monopolists. This order must be put into
operation within a week. Every worker called upon to take up
arms must perform his duty without a murmur.
This was, of course, a mobilization for war of the city proletariat
against the peasantry. In an article entitled, “The Policy of Despair,”
published in his paper, the _Novaya Zhizn_, Gorky vigorously denounced
this policy:
The war is declared, the city against the country, a war that
allows an infamous propaganda to say that the worker is to
snatch his last morsel of bread from the half-starved peasant
and to give him in return nothing but Communist bullets and
monetary emblems without value. Cruel war is declared, and
what is the more terrible, a war without an aim. The granaries
of Russia are outside of the Communistic Paradise, but rural
Russia suffers as much from famine as urban Russia.
We are profoundly persuaded--and Lenin and many of the
intelligent Bolsheviks know this very well--that to collect
wheat through these methods that recall in a manner so striking
those employed by General Eichhorn (a Prussian general of
enduring memory for cruelty) in Ukrainia, will never solve the
food crisis. They know that the return to democracy and the
work of the local autonomies will give the best results, and
meantime they have taken this decisive step on the road to
folly.
How completely the Bolshevist methods failed is shown by the official
Soviet journal, _Finances and National Economy_ (No. 38), November,
1918. The following figures refer to a period of three months in the
first half of 1918, and show the number of wagon-loads demanded and the
number actually secured:
_1918_ _Wagon-loads _Wagon-loads _Percentage
Demanded_ Secured_ of Demand
Realized_
April 20,967 1,462 6.97
May 19,780 1,684 7.02
June 17,370 786 4.52
In explanation of these figures the apologists of Bolshevist rule have
said that the failure was due in large part to the control of important
grain-growing provinces by anti-Bolshevist forces. This is typical of
the half-truths which make up so much of the Bolshevist propaganda.
Of course, important grain districts _were_ in the control of the
anti-Bolshevist forces, _but the fact was known to the Bolsheviki and
was taken into account in making their demands_. Otherwise, their
demands would certainly have been much greater. Let us, however,
look at the matter from a slightly different angle and consider how
the scheme worked in those provinces which were wholly controlled by
the Bolsheviki, and where there were no “enemy forces.” The following
figures, taken from the same Soviet journal, refer to the month of
June, 1918:
_Province_ _Wagon-loads _Wagon-loads _Percentage
Demanded_ Secured_ of Demand
Realized_
Voronezh 1,000 2 0.20
Viatka 1,300 14 1.07
Kazan 400 2 0.50
Kursk 500 7 1.40
Orel 300 8 2.67
Tambo 675 98 14.51
On June 11, 1918, a decree was issued establishing the so-called Pauper
Committees, or Committees of the Poor. The decree makes it quite clear
that the object was to replace the village Soviets by these committees,
which were composed in part of militant Bolsheviki from the cities
and in part of the poorest peasants in the villages, including among
these the most thriftless, idle, and dissolute. Clause 2 of the decree
of June 11th provided that “both local residents and chance visitors”
might be elected. Those not admitted were those known to be exploiters
and “tight-fists,” those owning commercial or industrial concerns, and
those hiring labor. An explanatory note was added which stated that
those using hired labor for cultivating land up to a certain area might
be considered eligible. An official description of these Committees
of the Poor was published in _Pravda_, in February, 1919. Of course,
the committees had been established and working for something over six
months when _Pravda_ published this account:
A Committee of the Poor is a close organization formed in all
villages of the very poorest peasants to fight against the
usurers, rich peasants, and clergy, who have been exploiting
the poorest peasants and squeezing out their life-blood for
centuries under the protection of emperors. _Only such of the
very poorest peasants as support the Soviet authority are
elected members of these committees._ These latter register
all grain and available foodstuffs in their villages, as well
as all cattle, agricultural implements, carts, etc. It is
likewise their duty to introduce the new land laws issued by
order of the Soviets of the Workers’, Soldiers’, Peasants’, and
Cossacks’ Deputies.
The fields are cultivated with the implements thus registered,
and the harvest is divided among those who have worked in
accordance with the law. The surplus is supplied to the
starving cities in return for goods of all kinds that the
villagers need. _The motto of the Communist-Bolshevist Party is
impressed upon all members of these committees_--namely, “Help
the poor; do not injure the peasant of average means, but treat
usurers, clergy, and all members of the White Army without
mercy.”
Even this account of these committees of the poor indicates a terrible
condition of strife in the villages. These committees were formed to
take the place of the Soviets, which the Food Commissars, in accordance
with the wide powers conferred upon them, could order suppressed
whenever they chose. Where the solidarity of the local peasantry
could not be broken up “chance visitors,” poor wretches imported for
the purpose, constituted the entire membership of such committees. In
other cases, a majority of the members of the committees were chosen
from among the local residents. There was no appeal from the decision
of these committees. Any member of such a committee having a grudge
against a neighbor could satisfy it by declaring him to be a hoarder,
could arrest him, seize his property and have him flogged or, as
sometimes happened, shot. The military detachments formed to secure
grain and other foodstuffs had to work with these committees where they
already existed, and to form them where none yet existed.
The _Severnaya Oblast_, July 4, 1918, published detailed instructions
of how the food-requisitioning detachments were to proceed in villages
where committees of the poor had not yet been formed. They were to
first call a meeting, not of all the peasants in a village, but only
of the very poorest peasants and such other residents as were well
known to be loyal supporters of the Soviet Government. From the number
thus assembled five or seven must be selected as a committee. When
formed this committee must demand, as a first step, the surrendering
of all arms by the rest of the population. This disarming of the
people must be very vigorously and thoroughly carried out; refusal to
surrender arms to the committee, or concealing arms from the committee,
involved severe punishment. Persons guilty of either offense might be
ordered shot by the Committee of the Poor, the Food Commissar or the
Revolutionary Tribunal. After the disarmament had been proclaimed,
three days’ notice was to be served upon the peasants to deliver their
“surplus” grain--that is, all over and above the amount designated by
the committee--at the receiving station. Failure to do this entailed
severe penalties; destroying or concealing grain was treason and
punishable by death at the hands of a firing-squad.
The war between the peasantry, on the one hand, and the Bolshevist
officials, the food-requisitioning detachments and the pauper
committees, on the other, went on throughout the summer of 1918.
The first armed detachments reached the villages toward the end of
June. From that time to the end of December the sanguinary struggle
was maintained. According to _Izvestia_ of the Food Commissariat,
December, 1918, the Food Army consisted of 3,000 men in June and
36,500 in December. In the course of the struggle this force had lost
7,309 men, killed, wounded, and sick. In other words, the casualties
amounted to 30 per cent. of the highest number ever engaged. These
figures of themselves bear eloquent witness to the fierce resistance
of the peasantry. It was a common occurrence for a food-requisitioning
detachment to enter a village and begin to search for concealed weapons
and grain and to be at once met with machine-gun and rifle-fire,
the peasants treating them as robbers and enemies. Sometimes the
villagers were victorious and the Bolshevist forces were driven away.
In almost every such case strong reinforcements were sent, principally
Lettish or Chinese troops, to subdue the rebel village and wipe out
the “counter-revolutionaries” and “bourgeoisie”--that is to say,
nine-tenths of the peasants in the village.
Under these conditions things went from bad to worse. Naturally, there
was some increase in the amount of grain turned in at the receiving
stations, but the increase was not commensurate with the effort and
cost of obtaining it. In particular, it did not sustain the host
of officials, committees, inspectors, and armed forces employed in
intimidating the peasants. One of the most serious results was the
alarming decline of cultivation. The incentive to labor had been taken
away from the hard-working, thrifty peasants. Their toil was penalized,
in fact. A large part of the land ordinarily tilled was not planted
that autumn and for spring sowing there was even less cultivation. The
peasants saw that the industrious and careful producers had most of
the fruits of their labors taken from them and were left with meager
rations, which meant semi-starvation, while the idle, thriftless,
and shiftless “poorest peasants” fared much better, taking from the
industrious and competent. Through the peasantry ran the fatal cry:
“Why should we toil and starve? Let us all be idle and live well as
‘poor peasants’!”
Thus far, we have followed the development of the agrarian policy
of the Bolsheviki through two stages: First of all, peasant Soviets
were recognized and regarded as the basis of the whole system of
agricultural production. It was found that these did not give
satisfactory results; that each Soviet cared only for its own village
prosperity; that the peasants held their grain for high prices while
famine raged in the cities. Then, secondly, all the village Soviets
were shorn of their power and all those which were intractable--a
majority of them--suppressed, their functions being taken over by
state-appointed officials, the Food Commissars and the Committees
of the Poor acting under the direction of these. As we shall see in
subsequent chapters, these stages corresponded in a very striking way
to the first two stages of industrial organization under Bolshevist
rule.
The chairman of the Perm Committee of the Party of
Socialists-Revolutionists, M. C. Eroshkin, visited the United States in
the winter of 1918-19. It was the good fortune of the present writer
to become acquainted with this brilliant Russian Socialist leader and
to obtain much information from him. Few men possess a more thorough
understanding of the Russian agrarian problem than Mr. Eroshkin, who
during the régime of the Provisional Government was the representative
for the Perm District of the Ministry of Agriculture and later became a
member of the Provisional Government of Ural. In March, 1919, he said:
The Russian peasant could, in all fairness, scarcely be
suspected of being a capitalist, and even according to the
Soviet constitution, no matter how twisted, he could not be
denied a vote. But fully aware that the peasants constitute
a majority and are, as a whole, opposed to the Bolsheviki,
the latter have destroyed the Soviets in the villages and
instead of these they have created so-called “Committees of
the Poor”--_i.e._, aggregations of inebriates, propertyless,
worthless, and work-hating peasants. For, whoever wishes to
work can find work in the Russian village which is always short
of agricultural help. These “Committees of the Poor” have been
delegated to represent the peasantry of Russia.
Small wonder that the peasants are opposed to this scheme which
has robbed them of self-government. Small wonder that their
hatred for these “organizations” reaches such a stage that
entire settlements are rising against these Soviets and their
pretorians, the Red Guardsmen, and in their fury are not only
murdering these Soviet officials, but are practising fearful
cruelties upon them, as happened in December, 1918, in the
Governments of Pskov, Kaluga, and Tver.
By removing and arresting all those delegates who are
undesirable to them, the Bolsheviki have converted these
Soviets into organizations loyal to themselves, and, of course,
fear to think of a true general election, for that will seal
their doom at once.
Mr. Eroshkin, like practically every other leader of the Russian
peasants’ movement, is an anti-Bolshevik and his testimony may be
regarded as biased. Let us, therefore, consider what Bolshevist writers
have said in their own press.
_Izvestia_ of the Provincial Soviets, January 18, 1919, published the
following:
The Commissaries were going through the Tzaritzin County in
sumptuous carriages, driven by three, and often by six, horses.
A great array of adjutants and a large suite accompanied these
Commissaries and an imposing number of trunks followed along.
They made exorbitant demands upon the toiling population,
coupled with assaults and brutality. Their way of squandering
money right and left is particularly characteristic. In some
houses the Commissaries gambled away and spent on intoxicants
large sums. The hard-working population looked upon these
orgies as upon complete demoralization and failure of duty to
the world revolution.
In the same official journal, four days later, January 22, 1919,
Kerzhentzev, the well-known Bolshevik, wrote:
The facts describing the village Soviet of the Uren borough
present a shocking picture which is no doubt typical of all
other corners of our provincial Soviet life. The chairman of
this village Soviet, Rekhalev, and his nearest co-workers have
done all in their power to antagonize the population against
the Soviet rule. Rekhalev himself has often been found in an
intoxicated condition and he has frequently assaulted the local
inhabitants. _The beating-up of visitors to the Soviet office
was an ordinary occurrence._ In the village of Bierezovka _the
peasants have been thrashed not only with fists, but have often
been assaulted with sticks, robbed of their footwear, and cast
into damp cellars on bare earthen floors_. The members of the
Varnavinsk _Ispolkom_ (Executive Committee), Glakhov, Morev,
Makhov, and others, have gone even farther. They have organized
“requisition parties” which were nothing else but organized
pillagings, in the course of which _they have used wire-wrapped
sticks on the recalcitrants_. The abundant testimony, verified
by the Soviet Commission, portrays a very striking picture
of violence. When these members of the Executive Committee
arrived at the township of Sadomovo they commenced to assault
the population and to rob them of their household belongings,
such as quilts, clothing, harness, etc. No receipts for the
requisitioned goods were given and no money paid. _They even
resold to others on the spot some of the breadstuffs which they
had requisitioned._
In the same paper (No. 98), March 9, 1919, another Bolshevist writer,
Sosnovsky, reported on conditions in the villages of Tver Province as
follows:
The local Communist Soviet workers behave themselves, with rare
exception, in a disgusting manner. Misuse of power is going on
constantly.
_Izvestia_ published, January 5, 1919, the signed report of a
Bolshevist official, Latzis, complaining that “in the Velizsh county
of the Province of Vitebsk _they are flogging the peasants by the
authority of the local Soviet Committee_.” On May 14, 1919, the same
journal published the following article concerning conditions in this
province:
Of late there has been going on in the village a really
scandalous orgy. It is necessary to call attention to the
destructive work of the scoundrels who worked themselves into
responsible positions. Evidently all the good and unselfish
beginnings of the workmen’s and peasants’ authority were either
purposely or unintentionally perverted by these adventurers
in order to undermine the confidence of the peasants in the
existing government in order to provoke dissatisfaction
and rebellion. It is no exaggeration to say that no open
counter-revolutionary or enemy of the proletariat has done
as much harm to the Socialist republic as the charlatans of
this sort. Take, as an instance, the third district of the
government of Vitebsk, the county of Veliashkov. Here the
taxes imposed upon the peasants were as follows: “P. Stoukov,
owning 17 dessiatines, was compelled to pay a tax of 5,000
rubles, while U. Voprit, owning 24 dessiatines, paid only
500 rubles. S. Grigoriev paid 2,000 on 29 dessiatines, while
Ivan Tselov paid 8,000 on 23 dessiatines.” (Quoting some more
instances, the writer adds that the soil was alike in all
cases. He then brings some examples of the wrongs committed by
the requisitioning squads.)
The same issue of this Soviet organ contained the report of an official
Bolshevist investigation of the numerous peasant uprisings. This
report stated that “The local communists behave, with rare exceptions,
abominably, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that we were
able to explain to the peasants that we were also communists.”
_Izvestia_ also published an appeal from one Vopatin against the
intolerable conditions prevailing in his village in the Province of
Tambov:
Help! we are perishing! At the time when we are starving do
you know what is going on in the villages? Take, for instance,
our village, Olkhi. Speculation is rife there, especially with
salt, which sells at 40 rubles a pound. What does the militia
do? What do the Soviets do? When it is reported to them they
wave their hands and say, “This is a normal phenomenon.” Not
only this, but the militiamen, beginning with the chief and
including some communists, are all engaged in brewing their
own alcohol, which sells for 70 rubles a bottle. Nobody who is
in close touch with the militia is afraid to engage in this
work. Hunger is ahead of us, but neither the citizens nor the
“authorities” recognize it. The people’s judge also drinks,
and if one wishes to win a case one only needs to treat him
to a drink. We live in a terrible filth. There is no soap.
People and horses all suffer from skin diseases. Epidemics are
inevitable in the summer. If Moscow will pay no attention to
us, then we shall perish. _We had elections for the village and
county Soviets, but the voting occurred in violation of the
Constitution of the Soviet Government._
_As a result of this a number of village capitalists, who,
under the guise of communists, entered the party in order to
avoid the requisitions and contributions, were elected._ The
laboring peasantry is thus being turned against the government,
and this at a time when the hosts of Kolchak are advancing from
the east.
Lenin, in his report to the Eighth Congress of the Communist Party last
April, published in _Pravda_, April 9, 1919, faced the seriousness of
the situation indicated by these reports. He said:
All class-conscious workmen, of Petrograd, Ivano-Voznesensk,
and Moscow, who have been in the villages, tell us of instances
of many misunderstandings, of misunderstandings that could not
be solved, it seemed, _and of conflicts of the most serious
nature_, all of which were, however, solved by sensible workmen
who did not speak according to the book, but in language which
the people could understand, and not like an officer allowing
himself to issue orders, though unacquainted with village life,
but like a comrade explaining the situation and appealing
to their feelings as toilers. And by such explanation one
attained what could not be attained by thousands who conducted
themselves like commanders or superiors.
In the _Severnaya Communa_, May 10, 1919, another Bolshevist official,
Krivoshayev, reported:
The Soviet workers are taking from the peasants chicken, geese,
bread, and butter without paying for it. In some households
of these poverty-stricken folk they are confiscating even the
pillows and the samovars and everything they can lay their
hands on. The peasants naturally feel very bitterly toward the
Soviet rule.
Here, then, is a mass of Bolshevist testimony, published in the
official press of the Soviet Government and the Communist Party.
It cannot be set aside as “capitalist misrepresentation,” or as
“lying propaganda of the Socialists-Revolutionists.” These and
other like phrases which have been so much on the lips of our
pro-Bolshevist Liberals and Socialists are outworn; they cannot avail
against the evidence supplied by the Bolsheviki themselves. If we
wanted to draw upon the mass of similar evidence published by the
Socialists-Revolutionists and other Socialist groups opposed to the
Bolsheviki, it would be easy to fill hundreds of pages. The apologists
of Bolshevism have repeatedly assured us that the one great achievement
of the Bolsheviki, concerning which there can be no dispute, is the
permanent solution of the land problem, and that as a result the
Bolsheviki are supported by the great mass of the peasantry. Against
that silly fable let one single fact stand as a sufficient refutation:
According to the _Severnaya Communa_, September 4, 1919, the Military
Supply Bureau of Petrograd alone had sent, up to April 1, 1919, 225
armed military requisitioning detachments to various villages. Does not
that fact alone indicate the true attitude of the peasants?
Armed force did not bring much food, however. The peasants concealed
and hoarded their supplies. They resisted the soldiers, in many
instances. When they were overcome they became sullen and refused to
plant more than they needed for their own use. Extensive curtailment
of production was their principal means of self-defense against what
they felt to be a great injustice. According to _Economicheskaya
Zhizn_ (No. 54), 1919, this was the principal reason for the enormous
decline of acreage under cultivation--a decline of 13,500,000 acres
in twenty-eight provinces--and the main cause of the serious shortage
of food grains. Instead of exporting a large surplus of grain, Tambov
Province was stricken with famine, and the plight of other provinces
was almost as bad.
In the Province of Tambov the peasants rose and drove away the Red
Guards. In the Bejetsh district, Tver Province, 17,000 peasants rose in
revolt against the Soviet authorities, according to Gregor Alexinsky.
A punitive detachment sent there by Trotsky suppressed this rising
with great brutality, robbing the peasants, flogging many of them, and
killing many others. In Briansk, Province of Orel, the peasants and
workmen rose against the Soviet authorities in November, 1919, being
led by a former officer of the Fourth Soviet Army named Sapozhnikov.
Lettish troops suppressed this uprising in a sanguinary manner. In the
villages of Kharkov Province no less than forty-nine armed detachments
appeared, seeking to wrest grain from the peasants, who met the
soldiers with rifles and machine-guns. This caused Trotsky to send
large punitive expeditions, consisting principally of Lettish troops,
and many lives were sacrificed. Yet, despite the bloodshed, only a
small percentage of the grain expected was ever obtained. There were
serious peasant revolts against Soviet rule in many other places.
The District Extraordinary Commissions and the revolutionary tribunals
were kept busy dealing with cases of food-hoarding and speculation. A
typical report is the following taken from the Bolshevist _Derevenskaia
Communa_ (No. 222), October 2, 1919. This paper complained that the
peasants were concealing and hoarding grain for the purpose of selling
it to speculators at fabulous prices:
Every day the post brings information concerning concealment of
grain and other foodstuffs, and the difficulties encountered by
the registration commissions in their work in the villages. All
this shows the want of consciousness among the masses, who do
not realize what chaos such tactics introduce into the general
life of the country.
No one can eat more than the human organism can absorb; the
ration--and that not at all a “famine” one--is fixed. Every one
is provided for, and yet--concealment, concealment everywhere,
in the hope of selling grain to town speculators at fabulous
prices.
How much is being concealed, and what fortunes are made by
profiteering, may be seen from the following example: The
Goretsky Extraordinary Commission has fined Irina Ivashkevich,
a citizeness of Lapinsky village, for burying 25,000 rubles’
worth of grain in a hole in her back yard.
Citizeness Irina Ivashkevich has much money, but little
understanding of what she is doing.
Neither force nor threats could overcome the resistance of
the peasants. In the latter part of November, 1919, sixteen
food-requisitioning detachments of twenty-five men each were sent from
Petrograd to the Simbirsk Province, according to the _Izvestia_ of
Petrograd. They were able to secure only 215 tons of grain at a very
extraordinary price. Speculation had raised the price of grain to 600
rubles per pood of 36 pounds. The paper _Trud_ reported at the same
time that the delegates of forty-five labor organizations in Petrograd
and Moscow, who left for the food-producing provinces to seek for
non-rationed products, returned after two months wholly unsuccessful,
having spent an enormous amount of money in their search. Their failure
was due in part to a genuine shortage, but it was due in part also
to systematic concealment and hoarding for speculation on the part
of the peasants. Much of this illicit speculation and trading was
carried on with the very Soviet officials who were charged with its
suppression![10]
[10] The _Bulletin_ of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets
(No. 25), February 24, 1919, reports such a case. Many other similar
references might be quoted. _Pravda_, July 4, 1919, said that many
of those sent to requisition grain from the peasants were themselves
“gross speculators.”
How utterly the attempt to wrest the food from the peasants by armed
force failed is evidenced by figures published in the Soviet journal,
_Finances and National Economy_ (No. 310). The figures show the amounts
of food-supplies received in Petrograd in the first nine months of 1918
as compared with the corresponding period of the previous year. The
totals include flour, rye, wheat, barley, oats, and peas:
_Jan.-Mar._ _Apr.-June_ _July-Sept._ _Total for
Nine Mos._
_Tons_ _Tons_ _Tons_ _Tons_
In 1913 24,626 24,165 20,438 69,229
In 1918 12,001 5,388 2,241 19,639
If we take barley and oats, which were drawn mainly from the northern
and central provinces and from the middle Volga--territories occupied
by the Bolsheviki and free from “enemy forces”--we find that the same
story is told: in the three months July-September, 1918, 105 tons of
barley were received, as against 1,245 tons in the corresponding period
of the previous year. Of oats the amount received in the three months
of July-September, 1918, was 175 tons as against 3,105 tons in the
corresponding period of 1917.
Armed force failed as completely as Gorky had predicted it would.
References to the French Revolution are often upon the lips of the
leaders of Bolshevism, and they have slavishly copied its form and even
its terminology. It might have been expected, therefore, that they
would have remembered the French experience with the Law of Maximum
and its utter and tragic failure, and that they would have learned
something therefrom, at least enough to avoid a repetition of the same
mistakes as were made in 1793. There is no evidence of such learning,
however. For that matter, is there any evidence that they have learned
anything from history?
Not only was armed force used in a vain attempt to wrest the grain
from the peasants, but similar methods were relied upon to force the
peasants into the Red Army. On May 1, 1919, _Pravda_, official organ of
the Communist Party, published the following announcement:
From the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party.
The Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party announces
the following--
_To all provincial committees of the Communist Party, to
Provincial Military Commissaries._
The All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets, at the
session of April 23d, unanimously adopted the decree to bring
the middle and poor peasants into the struggle against the
counter-revolution. According to this decree, every canton must
send 10 to 20 strong, capable soldiers, who can act as nuclei
for Red Army units in those places to which they will be sent.
Just as they had resisted all efforts to wrest away their grain and
other foodstuffs by force, so the peasants resisted the attempts at
forcible mobilization. Conscripted peasants who had been mobilized
refused to go to the front and attempted mass desertions in many
places, notably, however, in Astrakhan. These struggles went on
throughout the early summer of 1919, but in the end force triumphed. On
August 12, 1919, Trotsky wrote in _Pravda_:
The mobilization of the 19-year-old and part of the 18-year-old
men, the inrush of the peasants who before refused to appear
in answer to the mobilization decree, all of this is creating a
powerful, almost inexhaustible, source from which to build up
our army.... From now on any resistance to local authorities,
any attempt to retain and protect any valuable and experienced
military worker is deliberate sabotage.... No one should dare
to forget that all Soviet Russia is an armed camp.... All
Soviet institutions are obliged, immediately, within the next
months, not only to furnish officers’ schools with the best
quarters, but, in general, they must furnish these schools with
such material and special aids as will make it possible for the
students to work in the most intensive manner....
Bitter as the conflict was during this period and throughout 1919, it
was, nevertheless, considerably less violent than during the previous
year. This was due to the fact that the Bolsheviki had modified their
policy in dealing with the peasants in some very important respects.
Precisely as they had manifested particular hatred toward the
bourgeoisie in the cities, and made their appeal to the proletariat,
so they had, from the very first, manifested a special hatred toward
the great body of peasants of the “middle class”--that is to say, the
fairly well-to-do and successful peasant--and made their appeal to the
very poorest and least successful. The peasants who owned their own
farms, possessed decent stock, and perhaps employed some assistance,
were regarded as the “rural bourgeoisie” whom it was necessary to
expropriate. The whole appeal of the Bolsheviki, so far as the peasant
was concerned, was to the element corresponding to the proletariat,
owning nothing. The leaders of the Bolsheviki believed that only the
poorest section of the peasantry could make common cause with the
proletariat; that the greater part of the peasantry belonged with
the bourgeoisie. They relied upon the union of the urban proletariat
and the poorest part of the peasantry, led by the former, to furnish
the sinews of the Revolution. Over and over again Lenin’s speeches
and writings prior to April, 1919, refer to “the proletariat and the
poorest peasants”; over and over again he emphasizes this union, always
with the more or less definite statement that “the proletariat” must
lead and “the poorest peasants” follow.
In April, 1919, at the Congress of the Russian Communist Party, Lenin
read a report on the attitude of the proletariat and the Soviet power
to the peasantry which marked a complete change of attitude, despite
the fact that Lenin intimated that neither he nor the party had ever
believed anything else. “No sensible Socialist ever thought that
we might apply violence to the middle peasantry,” he said. He even
disclaimed any intention to expropriate the rich peasants, if they
would refrain from counter-revolutionary tendencies! Of course, in thus
affirming his orthodoxy while throwing over an important article of his
creed, Lenin was simply conforming to an old and familiar practice.
When we remember how he berated the Menshevist Social Democrats and
declared them not to be Socialists because their party represented
“fairly prosperous peasants,”[11] and the fact that the Soviet
Constitution itself sets forth that the dictatorship to be set up is
“of the urban and rural proletariat and the poorest peasantry,[12]”
Lenin’s attempt to make it appear that he had always regarded the
middle and rich peasantry with such benign toleration can only move us
to laughter.
[11] _The New International_, April, 1918.
[12] Article II, chap. v, paragraph 9.
To present Lenin’s change of front fairly it is necessary to quote at
considerable length from his two speeches at the Congress as reported
in _Pravda_, April 5 and 9, 1919:
During the long period of the bourgeois rule the peasant
has always supported the bourgeois authority and was on
the side of the bourgeoisie. This is understandable if one
takes into account the economic strength of the bourgeoisie
and the political methods of its rule. We cannot expect the
middle peasant to come over to our side immediately. But
if we direct our policy correctly, then after a certain
period hesitation will cease and the peasant may come over
to our side. Engels, who, together with Marx, laid the
foundations of scientific Marxism--that is, of the doctrine
which our party follows constantly and particularly in time
of revolution--Engels already established the fact that the
peasantry is differentiated with respect to their land holdings
into small, middle, and large; and this differentiation for the
overwhelming majority of the European countries exists to-day.
Engels said, “Perhaps it will not be necessary to suppress by
force even the large peasantry in all places.” And no sensible
Socialist ever thought that we might ever apply violence to
the middle peasantry (the smaller peasantry is our friend).
This is what Engels said in 1894, a year before his death,
when the agrarian question was the burning question of the
day. This point of view shows us that truth which is sometimes
forgotten, though with which we have always theoretically been
in accord. With respect to landlords and capitalists our task
is complete expropriation. But we do not permit any violence
with respect to the middle peasant. Even with respect to the
rich peasant, we do not speak with the same determination as
with regard to the bourgeoisie, “Absolute expropriation of the
rich peasantry.” In our program this difference is emphasized.
We say, “The suppression of the resistance of the peasantry,
the suppression of its counter-revolutionary tendencies.” This
is not complete expropriation.
The fundamental difference in our attitude toward the
bourgeoisie and toward the middle peasantry is complete
expropriation of the bourgeoisie, but union with the middle
peasantry that does not exploit others. This fundamental line
_in theory_ is recognized by all. _In practice_ this line is
not always observed strictly, and _local workers have not
learned to observe it at all_. When the proletariat overthrew
the bourgeois authority and established its own and set about
to create a new society, the question of the middle peasantry
came into the foreground. Not a single Socialist in the world
has denied the fact that the establishment of communism
will proceed differently in those countries where there is
large land tenure. This is the most elementary of truths and
from this truth it follows that as we approach the tasks of
construction our main attention should be concentrated to a
certain extent precisely on the middle peasantry. Much will
depend on how we have defined our attitude toward the middle
peasantry. Theoretically, this question has been decided, but
we know from our own experience the difference between the
theoretical decision of a question and the practical carrying
out of the decision.
* * * * *
... All remember with what difficulty, and after how many
months, we passed from workmen’s control to workmen’s
administration of industry, and that was development within our
class, within the proletarian class, with which we had always
had relations. But now we must define our attitude toward a new
class, toward a class which the city workmen do not know. We
must define our attitude toward a class which does not have a
definite steadfast position. The proletariat as a mass is for
Socialism; the bourgeoisie is against Socialism; it is easy
to define the relations between two such classes. But when we
come to such a group as the middle peasantry, then it appears
that this is such a kind of class that it hesitates. The middle
peasant is part property-owner and part toiler. He does not
exploit other representatives of the toilers. For decades he
has had to struggle hard to maintain his position and he has
felt the exploitation of the landlord-capitalists. But at the
same time he is a property-owner.
Therefore our attitude toward this class presents enormous
difficulties. On the basis of our experience of more than a
year, and of proletariat work in the village for more than a
year, and in view of the fact that there has already taken
place a class differentiation in the village, we must be most
careful not to be hasty, not to theorize without understanding,
not to consider ready what has not been worked out. In the
resolution which the committee proposes to you, prepared by
the agrarian section, which one of the next speakers will
read to you, you will find many warnings on this point. From
the economic point of view it is clear that we must go to the
assistance of the middle peasant. On this point theoretically
there is no doubt. But with our level of culture, with our
lack of cultural and technical forces which we could offer
to the village, and with that helplessness with which we
often go to the villages, comrades often apply compulsion,
which spoils the whole cause. Only yesterday one comrade
gave me a small pamphlet entitled, _Instructions for Party
Activity in the Province of Nizhninovgorod_, a publication of
the Nizhninovgorod Committee of the Russian Communist Party
(Bolsheviki), and in this pamphlet I read, for example, on page
41, “The decree on the extraordinary revolutionary tax should
fall with its whole weight on the shoulders of the village rich
peasant speculators, and in general on the middle elements of
the peasantry.” Now here one may see that people have indeed
“understood,” or is this a misprint? But it is not admissible
for such misprints to appear. Or is this the result of hurried,
hasty work, which shows how dangerous haste is in a matter like
this? Or have we here simply a failure to understand, though
this is the very worst supposition which I really do not wish
to make with reference to our comrades at Nizhninovgorod? It is
quite possible that this is simply an oversight. Such instances
occur in practice, as one of the comrades in the commission has
related. The peasants surrounded him and each peasant asked:
“Please define, am I a middle peasant or not? I have two horses
and one cow. I have two cows and one horse,” etc. And so this
agitator who was traveling over entire districts had to use a
kind of thermometer in order to take each peasant and tell him
whether he was a middle peasant or not. But to do this he had
to know the whole history and economic life of this particular
peasant and his relations to lower and higher groups, and of
course we cannot know this with exactness.
Here one must have practical experience and knowledge of
local conditions, and we have not these things as yet. We are
not at all ashamed to admit this; we must admit this openly.
We have never been Utopists and have never imagined that we
could build up the communistic society with the pure hands
of pure communists who would be born and educated in a pure
communistic society. Such would be children’s fables. We must
build communism on the ruins of capitalism, and only that class
which has been tempered in the struggle against capitalism
can do this. You know very well that the proletariat is not
without the faults and weaknesses of the capitalistic society.
It struggles for Socialism, and at the same time against its
own defects. The best and most progressive portion of the
proletariat which has been carrying on a desperate struggle in
the cities for decades was able to imitate in the course of
this struggle all the culture of city life, and to a certain
extent did acquire it. You know that the village even in the
most progressive countries was condemned to ignorance. Of
course, the cultural level of the village will be raised by
us, but that is a matter of years and years. This is what
our comrades everywhere forget, and this is what every word
that comes to us from the village portrays with particular
clearness, when the word comes not from local intellectuals and
local officials, but from people who are watching the work in
the village from a practical point of view.
* * * * *
When we speak of the tasks in connection with work in the
villages, in spite of all difficulties, in spite of the
fact that our knowledge has been directed to the immediate
suppression of exploiters, we must nevertheless remember and
not forget that in the villages with relation to the middle
peasantry the task is of a different nature. All conscious
workmen, of Petrograd, Ivanovo-Vosnesensk, and Moscow, who
have been in the villages, tell us of instances of many
misunderstandings, of misunderstandings that could not be
solved, it seemed, and of conflicts of the most serious nature,
all of which were, however, solved by sensible workmen who did
not speak according to the book, but in language which the
people could understand, and not like an officer allowing
himself to issue orders though unacquainted with village life,
but like a comrade explaining the situation and appealing
to their feelings as toilers. And by such explanation one
attained what could not be attained by thousands who conducted
themselves like commanders or superiors.
The resolution which we now present for your attention is drawn
up in this spirit. I have tried in this report to emphasize
the main principles behind this resolution, and its general
political significance. I have tried to show, and I trust I
have succeeded, that from the point of view of the interests
of the revolution as a whole we have not made any changes.
We have not altered our line of action. The White-Guardists
and their assistants shout and will continue to shout that we
have changed. Let them shout. That does not disturb us. We are
developing our aims in an absolutely logical manner. From the
task of suppressing the bourgeoisie we must now transfer our
attention to the task of building up the life of the middle
peasantry. We must live with the middle peasantry in peace. The
middle peasantry in a communistic society will be on our side
only if we lighten and improve its economic conditions. If we
to-morrow could furnish a hundred thousand first-class tractors
supplied with gasolene and machinists (you know, of course,
that for the moment this is dreaming), then the middle peasant
would say, “I am for the Commune.” But in order to do this we
must first defeat the international bourgeoisie; we must force
them to give us these tractors, or we must increase our own
production so that we can ourselves produce them. Only thus is
the question stated correctly.
The peasant needs the industries of the cities and cannot
live without them and the industries are in our hands. If
we approach the situation correctly, then the peasant will
thank us because we will bring him the products from the
cities--implements and culture. It will not be exploiters
who will bring him these things, not landlords, but his own
comrades, workers whom he values very deeply. The middle
peasant is very practical and values only actual assistance,
quite carelessly thrusting aside all commands and instructions
from above.
First help him and then you will secure his confidence. If this
matter is handled correctly, if each step taken by our group in
the village, in the canton, in the food-supply detachment, or
in any organization, is carefully made, is carefully verified
from this point of view, then we shall win the confidence of
the peasant, and only then shall we be able to move forward.
Now we must give him assistance. We must give him advice, and
this must not be the order of a commanding officer, but the
advice of a comrade. The peasant then will be absolutely for us.
* * * * *
... We learned how to overthrow the bourgeoisie and suppress
it and we are very proud of what we have done. We have not
yet learned how to regulate our relations with the millions
of middle peasants and how to win their confidence. We must
say this frankly; but we have understood the task and we have
undertaken it and we say to ourselves with full hope, complete
knowledge, and entire decision: We shall solve this task, and
then Socialism will be absolute, invincible.
At the same time, at a meeting of the Moscow Soviet, Kalinin, a peasant
and a Bolshevik, was elected president of the Central Executive
Committee. His speech, reported in _Severnaya Communa_, April 10, 1919,
sounded the same note as the speeches of Lenin--conciliation of the
middle peasantry:
My election is the symbol of the union of the proletariat
and the peasantry. At the present moment when all
counter-revolutionary forces are pressing in on us, such a
union is particularly valuable. The peasantry was always our
natural ally, but in recent times one has heard notes of doubt
among the peasants; parties hostile to us are trying to drive
a wedge between us and the peasantry. _We must convince the
middle peasants that the working-class, having in its hands
the factories, has not attacked, and will not attack, the
small, individual farms of the peasant._ This can be done all
the more easily because neither the old nor the new program of
communists says that we will forcibly centralize the peasant
lands and drive them into communes, etc. Quite to the contrary,
we say definitely that we will make every effort to readjust
and raise the level of the peasant economic enterprises,
helping both technically and in other ways, and I shall adhere
to this policy in my new post. Here is the policy we shall
follow:
We shall point out to province, district, and other executive
committees that they should make every effort in the course
of the collecting of the revolutionary tax, _to the end that
it should not be a heavy burden on the middle peasant_; that
they should make self-administration less costly and reduce
bureaucratic routine. We shall make every effort so that the
local executive committees shall not put obstacles in the way
of exchange of articles of agriculture and of home consumption
between cantons and peasants--that is, the purchase of farm
and household utensils that are sold at fairs. We shall try to
eliminate all friction and misunderstandings between provinces
and cantons. We shall appeal to the local executive committees
not only not to interfere with, but, on the contrary, to
support, separate peasant economic enterprises which, because
of their special character, have a special value. The mole of
history is working well for us; the hour of world revolution
is near, though we must not close our eyes to the fact that
at the present moment it is all the more difficult for us to
struggle with counter-revolution because of the disorganization
of our economic life. Frequently they prophesied our failure,
but we still hold on and we shall find new sources of strength
and support. Further, each of us must answer the question as
to how to adjust production, carry out our enormous tasks,
and use our great natural resources. In this field the unions
of Petersburg and Moscow are doing very much, because they
are the organizing centers from whose examples the provinces
will learn. Much has been done in preparing products, but much
still has to be done. We in Petersburg fed ourselves for three
months, from the end of June to the beginning of September, on
products from our Petersburg gardens.
The new attitude toward the peasantry revealed in the speeches of
Lenin and Kalinin was already manifesting itself in the practical
policy of the Soviet power. Greatly alarmed by the spread of famine in
the cities, and by the stout resistance of the peasants to the armed
requisitioning detachments, which amounted to civil war upon a large
scale, they had established in many county towns in the grain-producing
provinces central exchanges to which the peasants were urged to bring
their grain to be exchanged for the manufactured goods so sorely
needed by them. The attitude toward the peasants was more tolerant
and friendly; the brutal strife practically disappeared. This did not
bring grain to the cities, however, in any considerable quantity. The
peasants found that the price offered for their grain was too low,
and the prices demanded for the manufactured goods too high. According
to _Izvestia_ of the Central Executive Committee, No. 443, the fixed
price of grain was only 70 per cent. higher than in the month preceding
the Bolshevist _coup d’état_, whereas the prices on manufactured goods
needed by the peasants, including shoes, clothing, household utensils,
and small tools, average more than 2,800 per cent. higher. The peasant
saw himself once more as a victim of the frightful parasitism of the
cities and refused to part with his grain. The same issue of _Izvestia_
explained that the exchange stations “have functioned but feebly and
have brought very little relief to the villages”; that the stations
soon became storehouses for “bread taken away from the peasants by
force at the fixed prices.” When cajoling failed to move the peasants
the old agencies of force were resorted to. The grain was forcibly
taken and the peasants were paid in paper currency so depreciated as to
be almost worthless. Thus the villages were robbed of grain and, at the
same time, left destitute of manufactured goods.
At the Congress of the Communist Party, following the speeches of
Lenin, from which we have quoted, it was decided that the work of
securing grain and other foodstuffs should be turned over to the
co-operatives. A few days earlier, according to _Pravda_, March 15,
1919, a decree was issued permitting, in a number of provinces, “free
sales of products, including foodstuffs.” This meant that the peasants
were free to bring their supplies of grain out in the open and to
sell them at the best prices they could get. The situation was thus
somewhat improved, but not everywhere nor for long. Many of the local
Soviets refused to adopt the new policy and, as pointed out by the
_Izvestia_ of the Petrograd Soviet, March 24, 1919, continued to make
forced requisitions. There was, however, some limitation upon the
arrogant and brutal rule of the local Soviets; some restrictions were
imposed upon the dictatorship of the Committees of the Poor.