« VlNBOillO X> • 'im " 10 Asvuan JHi I z r~~T \ \ o THE UttRAIIT OF o y \ Al« What a figure an uriadnik cut at the village fair! Dressed in his best — in summer a white military cap, white blouse, blue trousers tucked inside of shiny- black boots with spurs, a lacquered leather belt at the waist and a scabbard dangling from his side, he strutted slowly, from path to path, booth to booth, everyone humbly tipping his hat and the women vendors smiling and nodding their heads at him. Now he stopped at this booth, now at that, picked up a piece of cake or candy and marched on, stopped somewhere else, helped himself once more to some- thing and marched on again, and everywhere he went people paid him homage, as though he were some all-powerful being, whose good-will was indis- pensable to their very existence. And when there was a brawl or a fight — how all quieted down the moment he arrived on the scene, hke a class of tur- bulent youngsters when the teacher comes into the room! There was another official in the village of much higher rank than the uriadnik and with even greater powers of action. It was the zemsky nachalnik. He had entire jurisdiction over all rural institutions, administrative, executive, judiciary, and over all matters pertaining to the individual and collective affairs of the peasant. He could depose officials 72 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION elected by the mir, annul verdicts of the local courts and substitute his own; he might fine, arrest, punish transgressors of the law or violators of his will. If peasants ever showed a disposition to rebel against some landed proprietor, he had them flogged. He was recruited from the nobihty, and quite naturally strove to protect the interests of his class. And like the other officials he never missed an opportunity to exploit his position for personal profit. . If he had work to do on his estate, he just called on certain peasants and ordered them to report for duty. Of com'se he never paid them. Such was the legal and social position of the peas- ant. He was isolated from other classes of society; he had to submit to the rule of the commune, and the commune had to submit to the rule of the bureau- cracy and the dictates of a horde of unscrupulous officials. He was not free to go where he hked, or to do what he pleased. His opportunity for advance- ment was, therefore, sadly limited. He chafed under these limitations but he could not help himself. He had to acquiesce. CHAPTER V THE PEASANT AS A FARMER It was bad enough for the Russian peasant to be kept in ignorance; it was worse still to be syste- matically discriminated against legally and socially; it was worst of all to be held in a state of perpetual poverty. From ignorance and social disability he might escape, but from the clutch of poverty he could not extricate himself. It held him firmly in its grasp and shaped his very flesh and spirit. And the government not only made no effort to remove or loosen this clutch, but strained its energies and ingenuity to tighten and deepen it. Not that the government was actuated by a desire to see the peasant lacerated by material want. It hardly needs pointing out that it was decidedly to the government's advantage to pro- mote not indigence but prosperity in the village. But the landlords dominated the government, and what they were interested in chiefly, was the preser- vation of their precious privileges, which, it must be remembered, were derived from their mastery over the peasant. Hence to protect these privileges after freedom was granted to the serfs, it was nee- 74 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION essary so to limit his opportunities for economic advancement that he would continue to be dependent upon his former masters. Consequently, the Eman- cipation Act left the peasant in a far worse con- dition materially, than he was under serfdom. For then the landlord took good care of the peas- ant. He had to, if he had his own welfare at heart. It was to his advantage to feed the serf well, clothe him warmly, house him comfortably so that he would work better, produce more. The landlord allotted to each peasant an area of land large enough for him to raise all the food and the other things, hke flax and wool, necessary for his existence. It was a hard hfe the serf lived; he had no individual free- dom, no opportunity to develop his faculties, no other aim in life but that of the animal — to work, eat and sleep, and he was entirely at the mercy of his master. But he was never hungry. With the coming of the emancipation, however, the personal interest of the landlord in the serf quite naturally disappeared. The landlord was now chiefly concerned with the preservation of his property-possessions. At one time there was even a movement among the landed nobles to prevent any allotment of land to the peasant after the emancipation. There were, however, other land- lords who saw a menace in such a movement. They reaUzed that freeing the peasant without giving THE PEASANT AS A FARMER 75 him a chance to earn at least part of his living from his own land, was like placing a stick of dynamite under their own houses. They argued that that would lead to bloody uprisings. But even these more practical nobles were loathe to lose substantial portions of their estates, and they fought in govern- ment committees against generous allotments to the peasant. They were stubbornly opposed to allowing the mouzhik to hold the share of land he had been tilling as a serf for his own use — a share which was only large enough to grow the necessaries of life. In other words, the landlords were opposed to providing the peasant with enough land for his livelihood, this despite the fact that they were to receive an exorbitant price for every span of ground the peasant was to acquire. And for a very good reason, as far as they were concerned. Now that they would no longer have slave labor, they would have to hire help to cultivate their estates, and the only help available was the freed serf. But if the latter had enough land to furnish him a hving, he would not have much spare time to work outside, and he would not be likely to sell his services at too low a price. But if he were in a measure to depend for his livelihood upon outside labor, he would be glad to accept whatever wage was offered to him, and labor would be cheap. The landlords had their wish fulfilled. The divi- 76 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION sion of land after the emancipation was effected in full accord with their interests; 481,000 peas- ants ^ received no land at all. They were chiefly the dvorovye — the domestic help of the landlords; 550,000 received less than one dessyatin (2.7 acres) per masculine soul. These were the so-called pau- per's shares, allotted to those peasants who pre- ferred to have small parcels and not pay any redemp- tion fees, rather than to have larger ones and steep themselves in debt; 1,553,000 received less than two dessyatins per soul. In all, therefore, two and one- third million men-serfs, or 23.4 per cent of all that were registered on the estates of the landlords, received exceedingly small parcels of land or none at all. These peasants were from the very beginning of the emancipated era doomed to be proletarians. Of the peasants who had received more substan- tial allotments, those that had hved on the estates of the nobles fared much worse than those who had been under the control of the imperial family and the state. The former had the best portions of the land they had tilled as serfs, especially pasture and forest, sliced off from the shares now trans- 1 There were two classes of peasants, those who had been on the state lands and those who had been serfs on private estates. There were some minor differences in their status before the emancipation. After the emancipation these dif- ferences very largely disappeared. THE PEASANT AS A FARMER 77 f erred to their possession. This was especiallj'^ the case in the southern and southwestern provinces, where the land was the best in Russia. In 21 out of 36 provinces the cuttings amounted to 26.2 per cent of the original holdings; in the black soil re- gion these cuttings rose in places to 40 per cent. On the average each landlord's male serf received 3.2 dessyatins; each state peasant 6.7 dessyatins; each imperial peasant 4.9 dessyatins, giving an average of 4.8 dessyatins for each of all emancipated peasants. Thus to begin with when the peasant was freed from serfdom he at best had less land than he re- quired for the upholding not of a higher but of the same standard of living he had maintained during his period of servitude; and not only was his allot- ment of land smaller than it had been under serf- dom, the soil was of poorer quality, the very best portions were cut off and joined to the estates of the landlords. In subsequent years when with the increase in population followed divisions and subdivisions of land the holding of the individual mouzhik con- stantly diminished in size. In 1861 European Russia had a peasant population of 54,150,000 peasants. By 1916 it had almost doubled. During this period the land-holdings of the peasant fell from 4.9 dessyatins in 1861 to 3.3 dessyatins in 1880, to 2.6 dessyatins in 1900. Many peasants had lost 78 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION all their land. Either they had rented it away for long periods or else they withdrew from the mir entirely and devoted themselves to working for wages. According to A. Zolotareff, director of the Central Statistical Committee under the Ministry of Interior, there were in Russia in 1905, 2.2 million families who worked on land, but had no farms of their own. They constituted fifteen per cent of all who were engaged in agricultural pursuits. In the same year in forty-seven provinces of Euro- pean Russia out of the 11,956,876 peasant households, 23 per cent, had less than five dessyatiJis per house- hold, and 70 per cent, had less than ten dessyatins per household, whereas according to the computa- tion of government experts the average family required at least 12.5 dessyatins to provide it with adequate sustenance. In certain provinces the land shortage was particularly acute. Such were Kiev, Podolsk, Poltava, Kursk, Tulsk. This ins^officiency of land would not have been so widespread nor so poignant, if the surplus popula- tion of the village could have been absorbed by the cities and industrial centers. But Russia is woefully backward industrially, with comparatively few large cities and flourishing industrial centers. In western Europe during the second half of the nineteenth century with the growth of manufacturing, cities increased and multiplied rapidly. Even in semi- THE PEASANT AS A FARMER 79 feudal Austria the city population had increased from 19 per cent of the total in 1843, to 38 per cent in 1900, while in Russia it had grown from 10 per cent in 1863 to only 14 per cent in 1912. The fol- lowing table shows how small the city population is in Russia compared to that of other countries. The figures are for the year 1912. Name of Per cent of Per cent of country city population rural population England 78 22 Germany 56 44 United States 42 59 Italy 26 74 Russia 14 86 According to N. P. Oganovsky, one of the most searching students of Russian agrarian problems, out of the annual increase of two million souls in rural Russia the cities absorbed only about 350,000. The remaining 1,650,000 had to remain in the village and struggle for a living by working on constantly diminishing shares of land or selling their labor to anyone willing to buy it, no matter how small the compensation. But insufficiency of land and absence of city mar- kets for all or even a large portion of the surplus peasant laborers, were not the only conditions which fostered material privation in rural Russia. Agri- cultural backwardness, was another factor that con- 80 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION tributed lavishly toward the destitution of the mouzhik. Small as was his parcel of land, by apply- ing methods of intensive cultivation he could have substantially enlarged its fertility and drawn from the soil increased quantities of food, perhaps suffi- cient to provide him with ample nourishment. That would have surely been a happy escape from want, sorrow and agony. But considering the conditions under which the peasant lived, recourse to such an expedient was entirely out of the question. To begin with the peasant to this day is ignorant of advanced methods of farming. It was in the scheme of the old order to devote the bulk of its re- sources and efforts to outward expansion rather than to inward development. Consequently the old government built few agricultural schools in Russia, few experiment stations, and provided few experts to advise and encourage the adoption of improved methods of tillage. The zemstvos, it is true, had of their own accord striven to supply the necessary knowledge to the mouzhik, but they lacked finan- cial support and were constantly hampered in their activities, so that the result of their efforts is scarcely discernible. To this day the Russian peas- ant follows very largely the same methods of culti- vation his ancestors had practiced generations be- fore him. He inherits these just as he sometimes inherits his father's boots or sheepskin coat. THE PEASANT AS A FARMER 81 Moreover had he been the best informed man in the world as to modern ways of tilling the soil, he could not have put his knowledge into operation, be- cause he had no capital, and without capital he could not buy plows, seeders, tractors, fertilizers and other necessary equipment. The government made no effort to provide cheap credit for farm-improve- ments. Besides, under the best of circumstances and with the best of intentions the mouzhik had no incentive to improve his land. Owing to the community sys- tem of ownership prevalent among about three- quarters of the rural population in Russia, he could not claim the land as his own personal property. He was paying for it, but after all it was not his. It be- longed to the commune, and every few years the commune reapportioned and redistributed the land within its hmits in accordance with the newly cre- ated needs caused by increase in population. What was Ivan's this year, might be Stepan's the next, and vice versa. What object would there be for Ivan to invest capital, if he had it, and labor for the improve- ment of the fields he worked, if by the time he had improved them and was ready to reap the reward of his continued and painstaking labors, they might be transferred to his neighbor? Ivan's sole aim was to extract from the land all the wealth he could while he held it, and the next occupant had to shift 82 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION for himself as best he could. Such a process of culti- vation was, of course, detrimental to the mouzhik as well as to the nation at large, for it only tended to exhaust the latent fertility of the soil and further to impoverish the tiller and the whole nation. But even if the mouzhik had the incentive to im- prove his land, he could not do it advantageously under the communal system of ownership. He was in reality a slave of the commune, of its cus- toms, traditions, institutions. Theoreticallj'' the mir strove to mete out equality to every one of its mem- bers, and it surely was equality with a vengeance! It did not parcel out a contiguous plot of land to the occupant to work it as best he could and wished. It assigned to each menber a corresponding share in all of the tracts in its possession. Thus if there was a strip of swamp in the commune, every mouzhik had a share in it; if there was a sandy field, a stretch of loam, an upland, a lowland, rough, smooth, or level land, every one received his due portion in each seg- ment, so that in the aggregate he had a little bit of everything and not much of anything, like a diner in an American plan hotel. If the land was more or less uniform in quality, it was usually divided into three parts based upon the three-field system of cul- tivation in vogue in Russia, and each resident or rather member received his due share in each part. Moreover, everybody in the village had to work his THE PEASANT AS A FARMER 83 land about the same time, so as to release or block the roadways, whichever was desired, and to throw open or shut stubble and other fields for the pasturing of cattle or horses. Thus everybody in the mir sowed rye in the same field, wheat in the same field, flax in the same field and at the same time. One did as the other, and all did alike, to the detriment of each and all. That was the law of the mir, as irrevocable as the law of gravitation. Nor was this all. The land in Russia runs in long strips. In the case of the peasant each strip is very narrow, anywhere between two and ten yards in width, and since the strips do not all lie together, but are distributed over different sections, as many sections as there are types of soil, the peasant had to lug all of his tools from one field to another, and journey back and forth often with horse and wagon whenever this or that crop demanded attention, thus losing a prodigious amount of his own and his horse's time. The strips are also separated from one another by dead furrows or ridges, which in the aggregate make up thousands of dessyatins of fertile soil that raise nothing but weeds, which spread freely to nearby fields, contaminate and often ruin crops. Viewed from whichever viewpoint one chooses the communal form of land-ownership in the Russian village, in the form in which it had developed, 84 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION has been a decided drawback to the mouzhik, and has contributed substantially toward his economic ruin. The manner of ownership, the lay of the land, the three-field system — that is one field for winter crops, one for spring crops and one lying fallow — all of these have tended to promote inefficiency, extravagance and waste. And the old government did nothing to guide and help the mouzhik to over- come these obstacles to successful farming. True, in 1906 Stolypin endeavored to break up communal land ownership, and to establish homesteads, but his motive was so treacherous, his method so crude, his economic aid so insignificant, that, as we shall see later, his scheme proved an abject failure. Nor do we get a cheerful picture of things when we examine into the methods of work the peasant pursues in the tillage of the land. These methods are medieval. Western countries have long ago for- gotten what they were, but they still prevail in Rus- sia on a very extensive scale, partly because the mouzhik is ignorant, but chiefly because he is too poor to substitue for them newer, easier, more effi- cient methods. For one thing the mouzhik is not at all particular about the quality of the seed he uses. There may be weeds in his rye, all kinds of pernicious weeds, yet he does not clean them out, because, as a rule, he does not know how. The seed may be un- ripe, shrunken, hardly fit to put into the soil, but he THE PEASANT AS A FARMER 85 does put it in. He has to, if it is the best he has raised. Nobody will give him any better, and he cannot afford to buy any. Then, too, with very few exceptions he does not sow with a machine, but by hand, from a crib slung over his neck or from an apron tied round his waist. He scatters the seed over the surface of the field, and when crows come, and they are never tardy in coming, they pick up a good share of it, and when the wind blows, it sweeps a good deal of the seed into furrows, ridges or neighboring fields. Nor does the peasant fertilize his land at all ade- quately. In 1916 according to the report of the League of Agrarian Reforms the peasants had put on their fields 22,763.4 million pouds of stable manure. It takes 2,400 pouds to a dessyatin, if it is scattered at all properly. This means that if the above quan- tity of manure had been distributed adequately, it would have fertilized only 9,500 dessyatins, whereas the area of land seeded in 1916 was over 64 million dessyatins. The shortage of manure comes from a shortage of both stock and straw. In the black soil region alone, according to Maslov, there is a short- age of ten milhon heads of cattle and eight and a half milhon heads of horses. As far as straw is con- cerned in the provinces, where there is little or no forest, the mouzhik has to use it for fuel, and what he has left he puts into his garden, for a good garden he 86 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION must have above everything else. In some places the peasant sweeps the streets in the summer, and uses the sweepings for fertiUzer. But the amount gathered in this manner is quite insignificant. In western countries the lack of stable manure is made up by the plentiful use of conamercial fertilizer. But in Russia, especially among the peasants, such fertihzer is scarcely known. During the last years the import of it has gradually risen from 12 million pouds in 1909 to 27 million pouds in 1914. But even that is like a drop in the bucket. Fully as lamentable is the peasant's lot as far as technical equipment is concerned. To this day in most instances he has no adequate implements with which to work his land. According to the report of the Central Statistical Committee, fully half of the tools the peasant used in 1910 were of ancient make. Only about 52 per cent had plows of a modern type — light ones — that do not descend deep into the ground; 43 per cent used sokhas — crude plows of wooden frames and iron points; 25 per cent pulverized their fields with wooden harrows — wooden pecks and wooden frames; 70 per cent had wooden-framed but iron-pecked harrows; only 5 per cent could boast of modern drags. Disks such as the American farmer uses universally, are practically unknown in the Russian village. Not only does the mouzhik possess inadequate and THE PEASANT AS A FARMER 87 insufficient implements, in most instances he has not the power necessary to put to creditable operation the crude and lumbering machinery he does possess. Engines are entirely unkno'^Ti, excepting on the big landed estates of the nobility, and among the very wealthy peasants. And the scarcity of horses is ap- palling! In 1912, 31.5 per cent of the peasant house- holders had no horses at all; 32.1 per cent had only one horse per household; 22.2 per cent owned two horses per household, and only 14.2 per cent could pride themselves on possessing three or more horses. And what horses they are! The type is perhaps the most inferior in Europe — short, light, scrawny, quite incapable of arduous labor. And no wonder, for the most part they are not fed properly or suffi- ciently. In summer they are tm'ned on grass, as soon as it sprouts out of the ground — ^an extremely poor diet for a work horse, making him ''soft," flabby, inducing profuse perspiration, short-wind- edness, and rendering him susceptible to illness. The American farmer will seldom allow a work horse to touch grass during the working seasons of the year. In spring and at other occasions, when the work on the farm is particularly strenuous, the mouzhik feeds his horse a portion of grain, about three or four quarts a day — if he has any saved up. On the whole the peasant raises httle oats; lucky, indeed, is the mouzhik who has an abundance 88 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION of such fodder! Many a one is obliged to sell his horse in the fall or give it away for the winter just for the feeding. In many sections colts are killed by the thousands to save them from starvation. I shall never forget the scenes I witnessed in our village in autumn, after the pastures froze, when peasant after peasant led his prancing colt to the woods, and killed it there, leaving the carcass on the ground for dogs and wolves to fight over. I remember with what dismay and chagrin we boys talked about this "cruelty" of our fathers, and many a time wc asked them why they killed "our" colts — those playful, timid creatures we loved so much. But they only grunted a rebuke in reply. To ourselves we vowed that when we grew up, we should never do such a horrid thing. And yet — many of us have not kept that vow. How then can a mouzhik work his field, if he has no horses at all, or if he has only one horse, which was, as we have seen, the condition of about two-thirds of the peasantry in 1912? They do the best they can. If a mouzhik has no horse of his own, he has to hire one, which is rather expensive, and often exasperat- ingly inconvenient, for no horse can be hired, unless the owner has first attended to his own crops. This means that the peasant who depends upon hired horse-labor, is often late in putting in his seed and gathering his harvests. Besides, with one horse and THE PEASANT AS A FARMER 89 a poor one at that, which is usually the case, it is im- possible to do justice to the soil. Deep plowing is out of the question. At best one can roll over about four or five inches of soil, thus stirring only the upper layer, and depending, therefore, for a crop upon the sustenance the plants derive from this layer — shallow as it is. If rain happens to be abun- dant in summer, there is usually plenty of moisture in the upper plowed roll of the soil. But if rains are scarce during the growing season, the water that has soaked in during the spring, soon dries out: the soil where it is clay cracks; plants wilt and crops burn. In southern Russia the peasant who has no horse of his OTVTTi and is too poor or else cannot find one to hu'e, sows his crops navolokom, on the stubble, and drags it in with a cow. If the land was well plowed the year before, he is likely to reap a fair harvest. But as a rule, the peasant never plows his fields well, because of defective plows and consequently the mouzhik who sows on stubble, seldom reaps a sub- stantial harvest. In fact in most cases the yield is actually less than the amount of seed used. And the result is detrimental in a double way: it dimin- ishes the amount of food for stock, which leads to a reduction of the quantity of stock, and with a les- sening of the animal power at his command, the mouzhik is obHged to resort to sowing on stubble more and more. If he has no stubble land of his own. 90 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT .\ND THE REVOLUTION he exchanges for it a strip of good pasture or fallow land, for sow he must, somehow, somewhere. Because of all the conditions stated above, the peasant is wholly dependent for his crop upon atmospheric conditions. He cannot combat a drouth, he cannot control a flood, he is helpless against a storm. An unexpected and unfavorable natural phenomenon plays havoc with his crops. More than any other tiller of the soil in Europe is he the slave and not the master of natural forces. He harvests his crops very largely in the awkward and wasteful manner in which he sows them. He has few mowing machines, few horse-rakes, no ted- ders, scarcely any stacking apparatus, or horse-forks, such as the American farmer possesses. He usually cuts his hay with a straight and not an arched- handled scythe; rakes it by hand with a wooden rake, loads and unloads it by hand wdth a long w^ooden fork; he reaps his grain mostly with a sickle, thrashes it with a flail; now and then he buys a thrashing ma- chine in partnership with neighbors, but this ma- chine, driven in most cases by horse-power, does not clean the thrashings: winnowing machines are rare, and the cleaning is done by hand. The peasant gathers his thrashed product into a pile at one end of his barn, sweeps clean the barn floor, gets down on his knees with a small wooden scoop in his hand, dips the scoop into tlic pile, and flings the contents vig- THE PEASANT AS A FAEMER 91 orously to the other end of the floor — the chaff and straw being Hght fall to the ground nearby and thus separate from the grain. It is a clumsy, wasteful process, but in most cases it is the best the peasant can do. Considering the conditions under which the peas- ant is compelled to labor it is not at all surprising that compared with other countries his harvests are very poor. In the United States the farmer has made such remarkable progress in the adoption of methods which enable him to harness the forces of nature to his interests, that during the past fifty years his yields per acre have doubled, whereas in the case of the Russian peasant they have fallen off substanti- ally. The following table shows the pathetic condi- tion of the Russian farmer compared with that of the farmer in many other countries, as far as crops are concerned. The average yield per hectare ^ for all grains in the countries named below is : Quintals * Quintals Belgium 21.1 Uruguay 12.4 England 20.2 British India 12.1 Norway 19.7 Spain 11.8 Japan 19.0 Austria 11.4 HoUand 18.7 Rumania 10.5 Denmark 18.1 Bulgaria 9.5 Germany 16.8 Italy 9.4 1 Hectare — ^2.471 acres. * Quintal— 100 Kms. or 220.46 lbs. 92 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION Sweden Argentine Canada United States Hungary France Greece Quintals 15.6 14.5 14.3 13.6 13.6 13.2 12.8 Australia Algiers Serbia RUSSIA Quintals 8.3 8.2 8.2 6.4 Out of twenty-five agricultural countries Russia produces less per unit of area than any other! Such is the lot of the Russian peasant as a farmer. To some extent his condition has been improved through the efforts of the cooperatives and the zem- stvos. But in the vast majority of cases he is igno- rant of the contributions of science, is enslaved to the deadening traditions of the mir, has little land, lacks machinery, lacks horses. No wonder that year after in Russia, perhaps the richest agricultural country in the world, miUions of industrious farmers have had to face starvation. CHAPTER VI TAXATION The peasant had to pay all kinds of taxes, direct and indirect. He had to pay a poll-tax, which had existed since the day of Peter the Great, a state tax, a zemstvo tax, a local community tax, and, chief of all, the redemption fee. This fee was to compensate the landlords for the land they had lost in the allot- ments that had been made to the peasant. But the value of the land under consideration, appraised at the then prevailing market price, was 689,000,000 roubles, whereas the price fixed by the emancipators was 923,300,000 roubles, a difference of nearly a third of one billion roubles, which constituted nothing else than a ransom the peasant was obhged to pay for the dehverance of his person. As V. A. Lossitzky expressed it, ''The peasant population was forced to redeem not only its soil, but also its own personality; it had to pay the price of its souls." As a matter of fact it paid more than that. , The government, as is well known, collected the redemp- tion fee, and it made the peasant stand the entire cost of the transaction, and in addition it received from him big sums in interest and in fines for de- P4 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION layed payments. In all the peasant paid for the land 1,390,000,000 roubles, or just about twice what it was actually worth at the time it was sold, and then it must be remembered that owing to the revolution of 1905 the government was compelled to cancel further payments, so that the peasant paid less than the government had planned to extort from him. As far as the peasant was concerned, he regarded the redemption fee as an absolute injustice. He was sure he would receive the land free, and he did not understand why he should be made to pay for it. He had lived on it since days immemorial and had al- ways worked it. He felt it was his by all the rights of possession. In places he rebelled against the pro- posed fee to the landlords, but in the end he had to acquiesce in the arrangement, with the result that a few years after the emancipation he found himself in a peculiarly difficult position, drawing nearer and nearer to the line of starvation. In 1877 Professor J. E. Janson of Petrograd University pointed out the fact, much to the astonishment of intellectual Rus- sia, that the taxes the peasant had to pay exceeded the net income he derived from his land. In 1872 the former state peasants of the province of Nov- gorod paid in taxes the entire net income they de- rived from the sale of their farm produce, whereas the serfs paid between 61 and 456 per cent above TAXATION 95 their net income. In the government of Petrograd the tax exceeded the net income by 34 per cent; in Moscow by 105, in the black soil region from 24 to 200 per cent for former serfs and from 30 to 148 per cent for state peasants. In other provinces the difference between tax and net income was equally high, as indicated in the following table: Excess op Tax Above Net Income Percentage for state peasants For serfs Tver 144 152 Smolensk 66 120 Kostroma 46 140 Pskov 30 113 Vladimir 68 176 Vyatka 3 100 In every case, it is to be noted, the former serfs were the heaviest sufferers, principally because they paid correspondingly higher indemnity fees than had the state peasants and had received smaller allot- ments of land. Since this was the situation it would have been of decided advantage to the peasant to abandon his land entirely and become a wage laborer. He would then have been freed of the necessity of paying a re- demption fee, and could have enjoyed the full amount of his earnings minus certain small taxes. Many a peasant would no doubt have been glad to flee from the land, but he was anchored to it by 96 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION various legal and social restrictions. If he was in arrears he could not get a passport, and without a passport he could not travel far from his home in search of work, and it was not always easy to find a suitable and well-paying job in the vicinity of one's home. Then, too, if he renounced his right of loco- motion his personal property was disposed of at public auction, and he was reduced practically to a state of pauperism. Moreover, since the mir was collectively responsible for the tax of each individ- ual, it was not likely to allow liim freely to shp out and shift liis burden upon its already heavil}'- laden shoulders. And besides, there were the offi- cials, with rods in hand, empowered and ever ready hterally to flog the taxes out of a dehnquent peasant. Try as best he might he could not escape the finan- cial burden that was thrust upon him. It may be asked how could the peasant exist at all, if he was obliged to turn over to the state treasuiy more than was his net yield from the land, sometimes twice as much? Of course it was difficult and would have actually been impossible, if the land had not been rising in value, and if he had not supplemented his meager income from his farm with earnings derived from wage labor and the home manufacture of various articles for the market. And when these supplementary earnings did not suffice to make both ends meet, the peasant felt obliged to ''eat" his TAXATION 97 capital, that is, to sell his cow or horse, or else to borrow money from usurers. But more of this later. As far as the govermiient was concerned it could not remain indifferent to the constantly growing impoverishment of the peasant. Something had to be done to keep him from sinking into a state of pau- perism. Accordingly upon the initiative of the some- what Uberal minister Bunge, the excessively heavy redemption fee was slightly reduced in amoimt and the antiquated poll-tax was entirely abolished. That helped the peasant somewhat, but it created a deficit in the national budget, much to the discomfiture of the minister of finance. Thereupon the successor of Bunge, Vyshnegradsky, while realizing the impossl- bihty of restoring the direct tax to its former level, resolved to replete the state coffers with an indirect tax on the necessaries of fife. The scheme worked magnificently as far as the minister's aim was con- cerned. Between the years of 1885-1895 the minis- ter of finance collected through the indirect tax six times the amount the government had lost through the reduction of the direct tax. Count Witte, who succeeded Vyshnegradsky, saw still greater possibihties in the indirect tax. He was by far the most energetic and resourceful man that ever held a portfoho in the cabinet of the last Czar. He wished to modernize Russia economically, to in- troduce the gold standard, to extend the railway 98 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION system, to stimulate the growth of industrialism, all of which required huge sums of money, and to obtain this money he unceremoniously increased the tariff on articles of common use in the village. In 1902 the tax on tea was three times as high as it had been in 1880, on sugar five times as high, on petroleum four, on cotton six, on copper and iron about the same as on cotton. This greatly diminished the purchasing power of the peasant. He was not only prevented from rais- ing his standard of living, he was in many instances actually obliged to lower it. Sugar had always been a luxury to him. Now it was even more so. The same was true of tea. Cotton, the only cheap goods a peasant could buy, now leaped so high in price that for a while it was beyond his reach. This worked a particular hardship on the women in the village, for they were the chief consumers of cotton cloth. It was even worse with iron. Any farmer or home- owner knows what an absolute necessity iron prod- ucts are in the making and mending of agricultural implements, and the building and repairing of houses and barns. The peasant had to contrive to get along without the amount of iron he required for these purposes. He used very little of it on his buildings, with the result that something was constantly com- ing down, or breaking loose, and required repairs. His wagons he made almost entirely of wood, even TAXATION 99 the bolts. Of course, such wagons could not carry big loads, especially on the rough muddy Russian roads, and they wore out quickly. And as for agri- cultural implements we have seen in the previous chapter how large a part wood plays in their manu- facture. Witte went a step further. He made the sale of vodka a government monopoly, and thus committed the state to the operation of an institution that did so much to degrade the peasant and further to aggra- vate his economic misery. But Witte raised a big revenue, the amount drawn from the monopoly of liquor alone soon reached the stupendous sum of one- third of the total of the national revenue, and most of this one-third came from the peasant. However, with the increasing misery of the peasant and the frequent occurrence of famine, millions of this rev- enue had to be diverted to feeding the starving pop- ulation. Such a system of taxation slowly devoured the possessions of the peasant. But there was a limit to the property he could dispose of, and still be in a position to carry on his household activities. He clung desperately to his last horse and his last cow, as one would cling to something upon which his very life depends. Consequently, when the taxpayer came around, and he had no funds of his own, and he felt that he could not part with any more of his per- 100 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION sonal property, he resorted to the expedient of bor- rowing money, and since, until the coming of the cooperatives, there was no bank in the village or any other agency to advance loans upon moderate terms, he had to apply for the favor to the rich peasant or to the landlord, or to the middleman, neither of whom engaged in money-lending for the sake of the love of his destitute neighbor. These money-lenders al- ways sought to whip out all the profit they could from their clients, and they were not particularly regardful of the method they employed to attain their end. Of the three types of money-lenders the landlords, it must be stated, were the least exacting, and that by no means signifies that they were liberal; the wealthy peasant was the most grasping, and the middleman was not always inferior to him in prac- tices of dishonesty and cruelty. As far as the land- lord was concerned there was always a certain for- mality and an outward gentihty about him, but one can think of no redeeming traits in the kulack — literally fist, as the peasant loanmonger was called. Every village had its kulacks. They were ordinary peasants who by a streak of good luck or through superior ability rose to a position of affluence, and their only aim in hfe was to hoard up wealth by what- ever means possible. They usually fixed their own terms — interest of twenty, fifty or one hundred per TAXATION 101 cent was by no means rare — and the borrower had to accept them, however extortionate they might be, for he had to pay his taxes or else be sold out and punished. It would take many pages to narrate how the kulack plied his ignominious trade, and how he ravaged the poor population in the village. Perhaps it can best be done by citing a concrete instance. We had a kulack in a neighboring village. Michael was his name, a tall, gaunt, pale-faced peasant with a long russet beard, a heavy nose and prominent cheek bones. He was the richest man in the village, — at least rumor had it so, though one could not tell it from the way he lived. His house looked shabby, and the interior was as ugly and filthy as that of the or- dinary peasant. His sheep-skin coat was greasy, and he wore lapti — bast-shoes. Neither his wife nor his children seemed in any way to indicate that they were members of an affluent family. In summer they walked bare-footed, like the other peasants, and their Simday clothes were neither more gaudy, nor better made, nor of a quality superior to those of their neighbors. And that was rather characteristic of the kulack as a type — he never flaunted his wealth, not even to the point of visibly raising his standard of hving. Often he was nothing more than a miser. When tax-paying time came our poorer peasants 102 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION applied to Michael for loans. They preferred Mi- chael to the Polish landlord, because they knew him, they could talk things out freely with him in the pres- ence of neighbors, and they did not have to bother signing so many incomprehensible documents. In fact they preferred Michael even to the middleman, who in competition with Michael often advanced loans on more moderate terms. Michael gave them the money, and they agreed to return it sometimes in cash, but usually in grain or in labor on his land, which he had rented from some of his debtors and from the nearby landlord. If the borrower agreed to pay in labor the wage-rate was fixed at the time the loan was made, and decidedly to Michael's advan- tage. If the borrower complained that wages were sure to be higher all over the neighborhood, Michael endeavored to argue him out of his assurance, and if he failed in that he told him to go and search for the accommodation elsewhere. If the debt was to be paid in grain, Michael agreed to accept it at the cur- rent market value, minus the cost of transportation to the city-mill, but when fall came and the grain was brought to him, he usually managed to cut off five or even ten kopecks on the poud from the prevailing market price. And then Michael weighed the grain on his own scales, and many a peasant expressed suspicion — of the scales! All around, the borrower was at the mercy of the kulack. It was the same with TAXATION 103 the middleman. He, too, sought to take all the advantage he could of his patrons. And it was dan- gerous for any mouzhik to rouse the ill-will of the kulack or the middleman. Both shrewd, cunning, experienced, had a thousand ways of wreaking ven- geance upon an enemy. Thus we see that credit in the village was entirely in the hands of extortionists. Now and then there was a truly honest and charitable peasant or landlord who offered a loan to the mouzhik upon reasonable terms, or charged no interest at all. But such kind souls were as rare as honest officials. Since about 1908 the credit cooperatives greatly remedied the situation by enabling their members to obtain loans on moderate terms. Yet despite the hardships and evils entailed in bor- rowing money, the peasant persisted in contracting loans. He had to. When the tax-collector rapped at his door, and he had no funds of his own, he had to obtain them somewhere. He borrowed right and left. He often borrowed, when he had everything mortgaged — horse, cow, next year's crop, even his own labor. The tax had to be paid. Even if he was in a position, when he no longer worked his land, having rented it away for years in advance in pay- ment of loans already made, he was still responsible for his share of the tax. And the chinovniks showed no mercy. They did all they could to wring the tax 104 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION from him. They flogged or jailed him, or hired him out to earn his tax, or auctioned off his personal effects and left him entirely destitute. They left no stone unturned and no torture within the limit of their powers untried, in an effort to whip out of him his debt to the state. But when he was stripped of everything, when he had sold everything he could, mortgaged everything he had left, and still lacked the sum required of him, his tax remained unpaid. No law, no threat, no tor- ture, could squeeze it out of him, when he was pros- trate and starving. The result was that arrears in taxes continued to accumulate with ever-increas- ing regularity. In the nineties only in a few counties in the Samara government, the officials had requisi- tioned peasant property to the amount of nine mil- lion roubles to liquidate arrears in taxes. Yet in 1892 in these same counties the arrears constituted 71.9 per cent of the sum owed to the government. In certain provinces taxes had remained unpaid for five years. According to Milyukov in the period of 1871-80 the arrears in taxes on every dessyatin of land the peasant held, averaged nineteen cents; in the period of 1881-90, they rose to twenty-four cents; in that of 1891-1900 — to fifty-four cents, thus showing a progressive increase in debt. Alexin- sky has shown this increase in the table at top of page 105. TAXATION 105 Percentage of entire amount in arrears 1871-75 22 1881-85 30 1886-90 42 1891-95 45 Such a condition of indebtedness reacted dis- astrously upon the personal ambition of the peasant and his powers of initiative. This is graphically described by Bekhtayev, himself a landlord. In speaking of the peasant of the central provinces, he says: *'A further diminution of the property of the peasants in the central provinces would hardly seem possible, because nothing is left that can be sold (by the authorities to pay the arrears). Thus the peas- ant's contribution to the exchequer has decreased not by law but by force of circumstances. The peasants pay now only what they can, not what they ought to ; for the whole amount of the tax can in no way be collected. The worst of it is, that being insolvent the peasants are anxious not to save anything that may be sold for taxes. This hopeless state of poverty, unavoidable and unalterable, takes away every wish to save or to raise the standard of living, even if a possibility presented itself. The practical sense of the peasants permits them to improve nothing but the buildings, because these, whether they are good or poor, cannot be sold for arrears. And so the peas- 106 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION ants do not strive to earn money for any other pur- pose of private economy, and if they acquire some they very sensibly prefer to squander it, rather than to hand it over to the collectors." That some of the government economists reahzed the destructiveness of the prevalent form of taxation, is evidenced in the following report made in 1903 by Schwaneback, a member of the commission under Minister of Finance Kokovtsev, that was delegated by the Czar to make an inquiry into the cause of the indigence of the rural population. "As a result of the overtaxation of the last decade from the nine central and eastern provinces of Russia the exchequer received only 407 milUon roubles, instead of the full amount of 450 millions. These arrears made up more than fifteen per cent of the assessed sum. It is evident that the population was actually unable to pay more than it really did. In fact they did not even pay this sum, because at the very time the government was obliged to spend 203 milHons for feeding the same population. Thus the exchequer was able to keep only half of what it was paid, and its real loss was 44 per cent of the amount assessed. The overcharge in taxation is evidently aimless, and it would be better to leave the money with the population." Only in 1905 owing to the outbreak of revolution was the direct tax of the peasant considerably re- TAXATION 107 duced by the cancellation of further payments of the redemption fee. But this cancellation was like the favor of a man who gives with one hand and robs with the other. It was made up largely in further in- creases of the indirect tax, which in 1914 constituted 60 per cent of the total national revenue. Thus we see what a trial it was for the peasant to keep up the payment of taxes. It would seem almost as though he were created for the sole purpose of working and saving and suffering in order to keep up the flow of gold into the state coffers. No wonder that he grew to look upon the payment of taxes as upon a sort of torture chamber — to be destroyed at the earliest opportunity. When the Czar was over- thrown, and he felt that the new government was physically impotent, lacking powers of coercion, he stopped in many places to pay taxes. It seemed to make no difference to him that the new government was something different from Czarism, was of great promise to Russia, and, therefore to him. He had suffered so much because of the taxes that had been exacted from him in the past, that he seemed deter- mined to put an end to their continued payment. CHAPTER VII HOME INDUSTRIES AND WAGE-LABOR Considering the smallness of the income the peas- ant derived from his land and the exorbitant taxes he was obhged to pay, it would have been utterly im- possible for him to maintain himself aUve, despite the rising value of his land if he had had no oppor- tunity to augment his earnings through other forms of employment. As a matter of fact he was always searching for such employment. He was not exacting as to the conditions of labor or compen- sation. He could scarcely afford to be, for he had to keep himself occupied all the time at something that yielded an income, no matter how small. It was a matter of self-preservation with him. What were the forms of employment open to him aside from his work on his own land? First there were the so-called home industries, in which he produced for the market flax, Hnen, pottery, tubs, troughs, pails, barrels, axe-handles, baskets, chairs, sleds, wagons and a variety of other things. The Russian peasant is, as a rule, a skilled artisan, the men excel in carpentering and the women in fancy embroideries. Because of the industrial HOME INDUSTRIES AND WAGE-LABOR 109 backwardness of the country, there was considerable demand for home manufactures of various kinds. The conditions under which the peasant carried on these industries were conducive neither to good health nor to large productivity. He worked in his home, usually during the winter months only, and we already know what an unsanitary place the peasant home is, especially during the cold weather, when the windows are sealed hermetically. He had only the crudest of tools to work with. He made slow prog- ress, but he kept assiduously at his task, working long hours, twelve, fourteen, sixteen a day, his wife and children helping him. It was a sweatshop in- dustry in the fullest sense of the word. The earnings for such labor were quite low. It could hardly be otherwise in the absence of organ- ized markets, good highways, adequate transporta- tion facihties and in the presence of widespread com- petition. The buyers were sometimes neighbors, sometimes middlemen. The latter missed no oppor- tunity to drive a shrewd bargain. If the peasant was hard pressed for funds, and needed money in advance, he had to accept whatever the middleman offered him for his wares. In later years, however, the zemstvos and more recently the cooperatives, have sought to combat this evil by providing facilities to reach a good market and to purchase raw mater- ials without the aid of the middleman. 110 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION The coming^ of factories further lowered the remu- neration of the peasant for work done at his home bench in the case of many articles, such as dry goods and furniture, for example. A peasant woman could not weave on her lumbering loom as cheaply as could a German machine in a shop. A man could not make a chair as cheaply as could the factory, when he had to do all his work by hand from cutting down the tree to varnishing and polishing the finished product. The same was true of many other articles. At a conference of traders in home manufactures Lycenko, one of the delegates, stated that owing to factory competition the value of the work of a woman at the spinning board had shrunk to five kopecks a day. Only wares which had a purely artistic appeal, such as fancy pottery and embroideries commanded sub- stantial prices. But such wares had a very limited market. Yet despite the low price, the mouzhik con- tinued to manufacture articles in his home. It afforded some compensation, and that was better than nothing. Only in the so-called commercial province has the peasant been able to derive a sub- stantial income from his home-made products. Another form of employment which constituted a source of income to the peasant, was agricultural labor. The landlords had their big estates to take care of. They could not possibly do it with their own labor, even if they had tried — which they never had — HOME INDUSTRIES AND WAGE-LABOR 111 because of the feudal notion of the incompatibiUty of manual labor with the dignity of a gentleman. They had to hire all their workers from plowman to stable- boy. This afforded numerous jobs for the peasant, who hired out to the landlords by the year, by the season, but mostly by the day. Opportunity for such labor varied with different sections. In some it was greater than in others. A good deal depended upon the condition of the crop — the better it was, the greater the demand for help on the estates. In some places a peasant could find abundant work near his home, in others he had to travel a consider- able distance to find a market for his labor. In the thickly populated black earth region or in other provinces, where the peasant had httle land and large famihes he journeyed in search of work to the more sparsely settled border provinces. This journey usually began in spring before the frost was quite out of the groimd. Men, women, boys and girls, formed into parties, and journeyed together. They seldom rode on boats or trains, even if they Uved in a region where such conveyances had already come into existence. They walked, mostly barefooted, so as to save their shoes, many with stout canes in their hands and heavy packs slung over their backs. When the weather was good and the roads dry, the journey was quite tolerable, even though the feet of the pedestrians ached from cuts and blis- 112 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION ters. But when heavy rains came, they had to wade through pools of slush often knee-deep, then- clothes soaked in rain and mud, their bodies drenched with sweat. They took little money with them. Some had none to take. They lived chiefly on dried bread, which they carried with them from home. Those who had cash stopped now and then at some inn and enjoyed a sumptuous meal — of shtchui (veg- etable soup), bread and tea. Others begged for food, when their provisions ran low, and still others helped themselves, whenever the helping seemed safe. No wonder that during the period this mi- gration continued, the authorities in many villages through which it passed, found it necessary to double their guards. The journey to the border provinces lasted any- where between three days to half a month, some- times a whole month, depending upon where the laborer was from, and where he was going. No mat- ter how keen his privations and discomforts while on the road, he did not, as a rule, turn back, im- less smitten with rheumatism or some other serious ailment. Upon arrival at his destination he searched for the buyer of his "goods." Sometimes the buyer was a representative of the landlord, sometimes he was an employment agent or a contractor, who had undertaken to do certain jobs on various estates. HOME INDUSTRIES AND WAGE-LABOR 113 Invariably the employment agent or the contractor took advantage of the ignorance, creduUty, and de- fencelessness, of the mouzhik, and lured him into fraudulent bargains. It was not so bad with the representative of the landlord, who had no personal axe to grind. During the period that the immigrant laborer was waiting for the buyer to take him to his work-place, he lived outdoors in the market place. If it rained he sneaked for shelter into some wood- shed or barn. The treatment he was accorded on the estate varied with different landlords. He worked long hours, fourteen and sixteen a day, and the foreman or man- ager came round quite often to prod him on with loud words or choice epithets. German foremen, of whom there were very many on Russian estates, gained a particularly notorious reputation for their meanness to hired help. On estates that were pros- perous the peasant laborer received fairly good food. There were exceptions, of course. On the farms, where the owner was in straitened circumstances or where the crop happened to be poor, the table fare was pitiful, so much so, that many a laborer, by no means used to luxurious dishes, felt constrained to leave before his term of service had expired even at the risk of forfeiting what wages the landlord owed him. Often a landlord intentionally placed poor food before the hired mouzhik, or resorted to some 114 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION other petty method of exasperating him, so as to drive him into quitting his job and thus making him forfeit his earnings. The worst aspect of the hired man's hfe on the estate was his lodging place. He had to stay in a barn, shed, in some yard or orchard. ^Vherever a landlord had a special Hving place for his hired help, it was usually a barracks with no windows, no furniture and no furnishings, ex- cepting straw on the floor on which the laborer slept in his clothes. Men and women often lodged in the same barracks. As far as the law was concerned, in regulating the relations between the landlord and hired help, it considered the former the weaker party needing support and protection. According to the rules of 1863 regulating the relations between landlord and hired man, the landlord had a right to collect a fine from his workingman for voluntary absence from work, either because of laziness or di'unkenness. The amount of the fine was usually fixed beforehand in the contract. If, however, the contract did not pro- vide for it, the amount collected as a fine was twice the daily wage of the dehnquent worker for each day he was off duty. The landlord also had a right to discharge the worker, if he found him rude or impu- dent to any member of his family, or to any of the managers or foremen on the estate. These rules, however, did not seem to satisfy the HOME INDUSTRIES AND WAGE-LABOR 115 landlords. They complained that the mouzhik was spoiled, that he loafed too much, absented himself too often from work, recklessly violated contracts, and that they were helpless in combating his bad habits with the hmited power the law had bestowed upon them. They clamored for increased authority to deal with the dehnquent mouzhik. Here and there was a landlord who told complaining colleagues, that they themselves were largely to blame for the unsatisfactory labor conditions that prevailed on the big estates. He pointed out the fact that in then- effort to obtain cheap help they took unjust advan- tage of the mouzhik by advancing to him a certain sum of money, when he was hard pressed for funds, and making him sign the kind of a labor contract they wished — a contract which the mouzhik could not be expected faithfully to fulfill. He also pointed out that many landlords were in the habit of not paying their men when they agreed to, that some held wages back for months and even for a year, and that others paid m checks, which could be imme- diately converted into ready money only upon the payment of a fee to the middleman. Further, he chided the landlords for their maltreatment of the worker, for feeding him poorly, beating him, in- sulting him, and doing nothing to make him feel comfortable during his leisure hours. These criticisms, however, had no effect upon the 116 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION demands of the big body of landlords for further and more rigorous measures to control the mouzhik la- borer. In their hst of recommendations to the gov- ernment they even urged the reintroduction of corporal punishment. The result of their efforts was the promulgation of the new rules of 1886, which were supposed to be amendments to the regulations is- sued in 1863, but which were in reahty a subversion of those rules. For rudeness to members of the land- lord's family or to managers, the landlord now had the right to discharge a worker, whereas a laborer no longer possessed the right to withdraw from a con- tract if he was insulted or beaten. The landlord was no longer under the obligation to apply to the Justice of Peace to have a fine imposed upon a worker. He could levy his own fine. If a worker violated his agreement, he was hable to criminal prosecution, but if a landlord broke his, the law did not regard it as a criminal misdemeanor. If a worker deserted the estate, the landlord could call upon the police to lo- cate him and bring him back by force. If a worker felt outraged against the treatment of the landlord, he had a right to sue the latter, but not in the peasant court, and if through ignorance he ever did file a charge against a landlord in such a court, the land- lord quite naturally ignored the summons and with impunity. To sue a landlord in a higher (zemsky) court necessitated a good deal of formality, the hiring HOME INDUSTRIES AND WAGE-LABOR 117 of an " advokat " — attorney, the signing of documents and the payment of a fee to the advokat and then the chances were overwhelmingly against a favorable verdict for the complainant, for the reason that the higher com-t was dominated by the landed nobiUty. Moreover, when a peasant ventured to seek justice in such a court, and his claim was rejected, he was re- sponsible to the landlord for the time he lost in suing him and for the damage he may have caused in leav- ing certain work undone. Such legislation only tended to force the peasant laborer into a state of voluntary servitude. In 1902 the landlords went a step further. They complained that the observance of so many holidays, on which the workers were idle, was detrimental to their interests, and they petitioned for the lifting of the legal ban on work on such days. To meet this complaint an edict was issued on the 10th of May, 1904, authorizing voluntary agricultural labor on Sundays and feast-days, both religious and civil, and the priests were enjoined to refrain from hindering a worker to comply with the new ruling. Shortly after the passage of this regulation the landlords in their written contracts with laborers specified, that they were to work on Sundays and holidays, if it should be necessary. This affected only peasants who hired out by the month, season, or year. But there were hundreds of thousands of such. 118 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION Wages for agricultural labor were on the whole very low. It could hardly be otherwise when there was an abundance of idle "hands" in the village, and where to keep from starvation the rural worker had to contrive to be always employed. In different sections under different conditions wages varied. The closer the estate was to a railroad or to a com- mercial center the higher were the wages. In the more thickly populated peasant regions wages were, of course, lower than in the more sparsely settled provinces. Then, too, if crops were unusually good, pay for agricultural labor was higher. If crops were poor, or a failure, the mcmzhik was glad to accept anything that was offered to him. He was in such dire distress that he could not afford to reject any bid however small for his time and energy. In the gov- ernment of Poltava between the years 1890-1900 the average wage by the day was 33 kopecks, by the month 3 roubles and 6 kopecks, by the year 29 roubles and 46 kopecks, whereas in the United States, ex- cepting the south, for the year 1900 agricultural labor commanded 17 dollars a month, more than a Russian laborer in Poltava earned in a year! In the provinces of Minsk, Grodno, Wilno, Kovno, Mohil- yev, Vitebsk, Smolensk, Viatka, Perm, Kursk, Orel, Tula Ryazan, Tambov, Voronezh, Saratov, Simbirsk, Penza, Kazan Ufa, Samara, Kherson, Kiev, Podolsk, Volhynya, Kharkov, Cemigov, — in other words in 27 HOME INDUSTRIES AND WAGE-LABOR 119 other provinces, wages were either sHghtly lower or about the same or sHghtly higher than in Poltava dur- ing the period of 1890-1900. According to the table prepared by the United States Secretary of Agri- culture in 1892, and as given by Peter Maslov, the average annual wage for farm labor in various coun- tries was as follows : Great Britain 770 (in francs) United States 1250 France 625 Holland 500 Germany 450 Italy 250 India 150 Russia 153 (according to reports of landlords) The Russian farm laborer received only three francs a year more than his Hindoo brother, despite the fact that owing to differences in climate and cus- toms the Russian's requirements involved a larger expenditure of money than did those of the Hindoo. During the first decade of this century wages for agricultural labor mounted upward but not in pro- portion to the rise in the prices of necessary com" modities and land-rent, the latter of which, as we shall presently see, swallowed a goodly portion of the mouzhik^s earnings from all sources. The following table prepared by Dr. Simon Blank and based upon reports of the zemstvos, shows the comparative 120 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION scale of wages at various periods in each of 44 prov- inces. Wages pek Day in Kopecks MALE WORKERS FE^LA.LE WORKERS With Without With Without Provincet board board board board GO 00 1-H CO Ci 00 00 GO 1 — 1 Oi 00 00 I— 1 GO 00 CO "co" 00 GO T— 1 00 T— ( 00 GO I-H "50 "0" GO 1—1 47 61 CO 00 21 00 T— 1 22 I-H 26 CO T-H 29 0" 00 I-H 31 05 I-H Vologda "39 ~36 ~6 "38 Olonetz 38 44 51 56 57 70 21 25 29 34 37 45 St. Petersburg 42 48 57 58 58 77 27 30 35 37 39 42 Novgorod 34 38 46 49 50 62 21 23 27 31 32 40 Pskov 34 34 39 45 45 53 21 21 23 28 28 35 Vilno 26 28 36 37 36 49 18 18 22 26 24 33 Grodno ? 25 32 29 29 42 ? ? ? 19 19 27 Kovno 31 33 45 47 47 66 19 21 27 31 30 39 Mohilev 29 32 40 38 40 51 IS 18 23 24 24 32 Minsk 25 31 38 33 36 47 17 ? 22 22 24 32 Vitebsk 33 35 42 43 45 57 19 21 25 27 28 35 Smolensk 33 35 45 44 45 57 19 21 26 27 29 36 Vladimir 38 44 58 51 58 76 19 23 31 28 32 43 Moscow 37 43 53 48 56 70 19 22 28 26 30 38 Kaluga 30 35 45 40 44 62 16 20 25 23 26 35 Tver 35 39 51 45 48 66 21 24 32 28 32 41 Jaroslav 47 47 63 60 61 79 26 28 38 36 37 52 Kostroma 37 43 55 46 53 70 22 25 32 28 34 42 Vyatka 26 30 37 35 39 50 16 19 23 22 26 33 Perm 34 35 45 46 46 59 20 20 27 30 29 38 Kursk 26 27 37 35 33 48 16 18 24 21 23 31 Orel 24 25 35 32 33 42 15 15 20 20 20 27 HOME INDUSTRIES AND WAGE-LABOR 121 Wages per Day in Kopecks — Continued MALE WORKERS FEMALE WORKERS With Without With Without board board board board Promm9S CO 00 ■—1 o Ci 00 o o o OC C5 00 I— 1 o GO 00 05 00 C5 1—1 00 00 00 1—1 CO 00 T— 1 CO 1—1 o o i-^ CO 1—1 o o 1—1 00 00 1—1 CO T— 1 00 1—1 00 g Tula Yi 30 40 36 37 "51 15 ~15 21 To 20 27 Ryazan 28 30 41 38 39 53 13 15 20 19 20 27 Tambov 23 26 34 33 34 43 14 15 19 18 19 24 Voronezh 27 28 40 35 37 51 16 18 24 20 23 32 Saratov 31 32 41 44 39 52 17 17 22 22 23 29 Simbirsk 28 25 38 38 31 50 14 13 20 20 18 28 Penza 23 22 33 31 31 43 13 13 18 18 17 25 Kazan 28 28 33 36 38 43 17 17 20 22 23 28 Nizhni- Novgorod 32 36 45 42 51 60 18 19 24 26 26 33 Ufa 27 25 35 35 34 47 17 16 23 22 21 31 Samara 31 30 42 38 36 54 17 17 23 22 22 30 Bessarabia 40 36 43 51 46 58 28 25 33 37 33 42 Kherson 31 34 38 41 42 50 21 24 29 29 32 38 Taurida 39 46 50 54 65 66 27 29 32 34 39 46 Jekaterinoslav 29 34 47 39 45 64 IS 22 31 27 30 44 Don region 37 47 51 ? ? 68 23 24 33 ? 30 44 Podolsk 26 27 31 32 32 37 18 20 24 22 24 30 Kiev 25 26 33 32 34 40 18 20 25 24 25 31 Volhynya ? 24 29 32 30 40 ? 16 19 20 21 26 Kharkov 28 28 40 37 36 50 17 20 27 25 25 35 Tshernigov 26 27 37 35 35 50 16 18 23 24 23 33 Poltava 26 26 35 33 33 44 17 19 24 23 24 32 122 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION Agricultural labor was, indeed, cheap in Russia, so cheap that in the long run it proved ruinous even to a good many landlords. It caused them to be satisfied with the norm and standard of agricultural technique on their farms, and they did not seek to introduce modem machinery and to institute scien- tific processes of cultivation. Why should they, when human labor was so comparatively inexpensive, and when there was always an abundance of it? In con- sequence the farms of these self-satisfied landlords deteriorated, the soil wore out, productivity slumped, and they sank deeper and deeper in debt. Econom- ically cheap labor was a curse to every element con- cerned, even to the government, which had to bolster the impoverished land-owning nobles with frequent and generous loans to save them from total ruin. The peasant, of course, was the chief sufferer. He was not even always successful in finding a buyer for his labor, because there was not enough work on the big estates for all the -peasants that were looking jar jobs. In winter there was never a heavy demand for laborers on the estates of the landlords, and in summer when crops were poor, and under Russian methods of cultivation failure of crops was no rare occurrence, there were not many jobs to be had. But even when crops were bountiful there was not enough work for all the idle hands in the village. In 21 provinces in Central Russia out of five milhon HOME INDUSTRIES AND WAGE-LABOR 12S available farm proletarians in the summer, not more than two and a half milUons could find places to work. In 1909 there were according to Alexinsky seven million workers in rural Russia who were idle a good portion of the year, and yet seventeen million souls depended upon their labor for support. CHAPTER VIII THE OTHER ALTERNATIVES There were a number of other alternatives to which the peasant might resort to augment his in- come. For one thing he could emigrate — leave his village and start on a hunt for work anywhere it could be found, in the city, in a foreign country, or in some unsettled part of Russia, such as Siberia and Central Asia. Emigrating to the city would have been least diffi- cult and least expensive. But as has ah'eady been pointed out in a preceding chapter there are com- paratively few cities in Russia, so few that at most they can absorb not more than one-fifth of the an- nual increment in the rural population. Only when big industries are developed in Russia will it be pos- sible for the peasant to find sufficient work in the city. Thousands of peasants who have journeyed to the city in the hope of finding employment there, having had to borrow money from usurers, or to sell a much-needed cow or horse, or hog, to obtain the funds for the trip, were dismally disappointed upon reaching their destination. They could find no place to work and had to return home, sometimes on foot, begging their way along. THE OTHER ALTERNATIVES 185 Emigration to a foreign country likewise offered no satisfactory settlement of the problem of unem- ployment in the Russian village. In the first place the trip to a foreign country was fraught with many difficulties, both legal and financial. The prospective emigrant was obliged to procure a special passport from the governor of the province. Since he was himself either ilUterate or else entirely inexperienced in the manner of filing an application for such a permit, he was under the necessity of engaging an attorney, and that involved considerable expense. In certain cases if the applicant was within three years of militaiy age, he could not get a passport at all. It was not impossible, however, to leave the country without a passport, if one had the fee to pay to an agency which by arrangement with the frontier guards, smuggled the emigrant across the border. There were numerous such agencies in Russia. It was chiefly through them that political suspects and other disaffected persons managed to escape abroad. Then to embark upon a trip to a foreign country was an expensive enterprise for a peasant. It cost, for example, about one hundred dollars to come from Russia to this country in the steerage, not a big sum to an American, but a fortune to a mouzhik. If he was poor, he had to borrow it from the kulak or middleman, and we have already learned what extortionists these money-lenders were. 126 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION The government did not protect the peasant from the rapacity of loan sharks. Then there was the problem of where to emigrate? None of the Em^opean comitries welcomed inmii- grants, not a large influx of them. China and Japan were, of course, out of the reckoning and AustraUa and Africa were scarcely heard of in rural Russia. There remained the American continent. The word emigration in fact implies a journey to America, for few people in Russia ever thought of starting out in search of opportunity in a foreign land, until the fame of America as a place of untold riches and un- heard of possibilities spread among the masses. It was only at the beginning of the eighties of the past century that there began a wave of emigration of noticeable and ever-swelhng dimensions from Russia to America. The Jews led in the exodus. The Poles, the Finns, the Lithuanians and other op- pressed peoples followed. The letters these emigrants were writing home, the sums of money they were sending to friends and relatives, made the name of America popular in Russian cities and from there this popularity spread to the villages, and stirred many a mouzhik into a desire to seek his fortune in the much talked-of and far-away America. Since the Japanese war many Russian peasants have come to this continent, chiefly to the United States, yet not in numbers sufficient to reheve the stress of pov- THE OTHER ALTERNATIVES 127 erty and unemployment at home. According to official Russian figures between 1904-1913 about two million Russians left their native land, but most of them, we should remember, were Jews, Poles and members of other subject peoples. It is impossible to estimate just what was the number of peasants who arrived on this continent during the above- mentioned period, but it surely did not exceed half a million, an insignificant number compared to the increase of the population in rural Russia during this interval. Emigration to America, therefore, despite its in- viting prospects did not and could not provide any appreciable amelioration to the constantly accumu- lating misery of the Russian peasant. There remained Russia's own unsettled regions, Hke Siberia and Central Asia, to which the surplus population of the village could emigrate. In many ways these countries were the best and most desir- able places to which the Russian peasant could go. After all though they might be far away from his home village, they were part of Russia, where the Russian language was spoken, and despite the pres- ence there of primitive peoples and the absence of even those crude marks of civilization, to which he had been accustomed in his native village, they did not seem so far away as America. Besides there the peasant could find what he understood best, and 128 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION wanted most — land! According to Professor Mig- ouline there are one and a quarter billions of dessyor- tins of land in Siberia and 314 million dessyatins in Central Asia, vast portions of which could be made available for agricultural and stock-raising purposes. How the proper utilization of these vast areas would relieve the congestion and ever-growing mis- ery of the peasant can best be judged, when we re- flect, that European Russia, which has an acreage of 415 milhon dessyatins, supports 120 milhon peasants, whereas Siberia has only a population of ten and Central Asia eight milUons. Of course proportion- ately there is not as much available land in Si- beria and Central Asia as in European Russia, and in any computation of the possibihties of colonization in these regions proper allowance must be made for that. But much of the land there can be made available, and if that were done vast masses of peasants could settle there and be contented. One would, therefore, imagine that the government would strive to facihtate emigration to Siberia, and there were so many ways in which the government could make itself serviceable to the prospective pioneer. It could for one thing make it cheap and easy for him to obtain a passport; it could offer finan- cial help to those who needed it; it could estabUsh a network of information bureaus, where the prospec- THE OTHER ALTERNATIVES 129 tive emigrant could learn of the conditions in the new country, the lands that were most available, the easiest way of reaching them, and many other things that might be of help to him. It could also build a chain of relief stations along the road. It could do a multitude of things, but it did not, even though the colonization of these sparsely inhabited countries would have been of decided profit to the government, not only in reducing indigence and, therefore, enlarg- ing the tax-paying capacity of the peasant in Euro- pean Russia, but also in the income it could derive from new settlers in new and flourishing communities. Instead, however, of faciUtating emigration to the new countries, the government had for a long time done all within its power to hamper it. An ukase issued on July 25, 1889, stated that ''all persons who emigrate without having previously obtained per- mission from the Minister of Interior and the Min- ister of Crown Lands, shall be sent back in charge of the proper authorities to the communities in which they are registered." And yet those who did apply for such permission waited for months before a reply reached them, and then not many were favored with the proper authorization. In several provinces by an act passed in 1896 a peasant was even for- bidden to begin disposing of his household goods preparatory to his departure, unless he could show to the officials that he had a sum of 300 roubles in 130 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION cash. The reason offered for this ruling, which the stupidest mouzhik could easily evade by borrowing money for the occasion from a neighbor, was that the government desired to prevent the emigration of those who had not sufficient means to make the journey in comfort! The real reason the government had set itself against emigration to « the new countries was the same that had actuated it in the passing of the agri- cultural labor laws — a desire to maintain economic prosperity and stability of the landowning class. The departure of a large number of peasants to Siberia and Central Asia would have operated to the injury of the landlords in a double way — it would have re- duced the supply of available farm help and, there- fore, would have caused a rise in wages, and it would have also reduced the number of renters and, there- fore, forced down the price of rent. Yet despite the interference of the government, the peasant persisted in emigrating to the unsettled regions in search of a new home and a better hfe. He first began to leave for Siberia soon after the emanci- pation, in small numbers, at the rate of about 2000 a year. Early in the eighties with the growth of the misery in the European Russian villages there was a noticeable increase in the mmiber of emigrants, and in the following years this increase swelled as shown in the table at top of page 131 : THE OTHER ALTERNATIVES 131 Year Number of emigrants to Siberia 1881-82 74,000 1890 43,378 1891 82,150 1896 202,302 1897 86,575 1898 205,646 1899 223,981 1900 230,000 1901-05 68,000 average for each year 1905-10 401,000 1911-15 203,000 Not all of those who went to the new country re- mained there. Many found conditions so severe, that they felt obliged to return to the old home. Between 1898-1909 an average of 10.4 per cent wandered back to European Russia. In 1912 the number of the re- turned emigrants from Siberia was unusually large, 28.5 per cent, because it was growing increasingly difficult to find suitable places for settlement. There was still an abundance of land in Siberia and in northern Manchuria, but it had to be improved, and that required an army of workers and considerable capital, which the peasant did not have and could not obtain. Consequently a large number of peas- ants who had heard of the vast areas of vacant and fertile land in Siberia, and had sold off their posses- sions and wandered there with their families, were painfully disappointed upon their arrival at the much-longed for destination. They found there 132 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION deserfs and swamps, infested with plagues, and im- penetrable forests, far from railroads, highways and any marks of civilization. They tramped from place to place in a desperate endeavor to discover a suitable plot of ground for settlement. Many of them per- ished from cold, hunger and disease. Many others struggled back to their native villages, starved, ruined and homeless. Emigration to Siberia, therefore, while a blessing to hundreds of thousands of peasants, having enabled them to acquire a fair amount of property, to build good homes, and to enjoy a considerable degree of prosperity, could not under the old regime offer de- liverance to a large number of them. Only when a progressive enterprising government comes to di- rect the destinies of the Russian people, a government that will spare neither money nor energy to make the now uninhabitable regions of Russia's unsettled possessions suitable for human abode, a government which will drain the swamps, clear the forests, irrigate the deserts, lay new railroads, open new mines, build new industries, only then will Siberia and Cen- tral Asia and Turkestan afford Uving space to millions of new settlers. There remained another expedient to which the peasant could resort in his search for relief from misery— buying and renting land. By increasing his allotment either through purchase or rental he THE OTHER ALTERNATIVES 133 could, it would seem, increase his earning power and ward off starvation and pauperism. Of course he always searched for new land, and never missed an opportunity to take possession of it, either for per- manent or temporary use, if it was at all possible for him to do so. But — To buy land it was first of all necessary to have either money or credit, and the ordinary peasant who owned less land than was required for his self- support, had neither. The peasant land bank estab- lished in 1883 for the sole purpose of helping the peasant to buy new land, did not help the poor peas- ant, for it advanced loans only to apphcants who possessed a substantial amount of property, from twelve to twenty-five per cent of the price of the purchased acreage. Besides, prices for land were in- ordinately high for two reasons. First, those who owned big tracts of land, the landlords, the mon- asteries and the crown, were not particularly eager to part with any considerable portions of their land- possessions, and secondly with the abolition of serf- dom other elements of society, like the merchants, who had not formerly engaged in agriculture, now began to invest heavily in land. In fact in the first years after the emancipation the merchants bou^t more land than had all the peasants in forty provinces in European Russia. Between 1863-94 the first purchased an acreage to the value of 745 134 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION million roubles, and the latter to the amount of only 524 million roubles. Of all the land the peasants bought between 1865- 1895, 81.5 per cent was acquired by the larger land- owners. The average peasant, therefore, derived practically no help from the peasant land bank. But even the wealthier mouzhik soon found himself so heavily entangled in financial difficulties that he could not extricate himself from them. It came about in a most natural manner. Since the revolu- tion which followed the Russo-Japanese war the government offered more substantial help to peasants who qualified for loans. It not only appropriated larger sums for their credit, it also opened for sale large areas of crown land and acted as agent for the landlords in their transactions with the peasants, chiefly, it must be noted, for the sake of insuring to the sellers a good price for their land. Between the first of January, 1906, and the first of January, 1916, the peasant land bank disposed of 9,461,003 dessyatins of land at an indebtedness to the peasant of 1,398,224,507 roubles. The price of the land was very high, averaging in the period of 1911-1915 as much as 131.6 roubles a dessyatin, about three times as high as it had been in the years of 1883-1890, though income from land during this interval had not increased to the same degree. But since it was the best the peasant could do, he did not hesitate to make THE OTHER ALTERNATIVES 135 extensive purchases. He wanted land. Price did not seem to disturb him very much, excepting when he had to make payments. Then he scurried and bustled about, and when he could not scrape together the required sum, he made no payments, with the result that arrears to the land bank continued to mount higher and higher, as shown in the following table : Year Amount of arrears in roubles Percentage of debt 1911 9,071,900 21.3 1912 13,135,800 26.1 1913 15,382,800 27.2 1914 18,414,200 30.1 1915 33,685,000 51.6 1916 46,525,400 68.5 At best, therefore, the acquisition of land through purchase, because of the conditions governing eligi- bility for credit at the Peasant Bank, and because of exorbitant prices, could offer only limited help to a very limited number of peasants. As far as the poor peasants were concerned they were in no position to buy land. But what of renting land? On the whole it was even less advantageous than buying. Rent was ex- cessively high, because the demand for leases was inordinately large. And in this instance the well-to- do peasant was again at a decided advantage over 136 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION his poorer neighbor. He rented land only, when he felt that the income would yield a profit. Otherwise it was more remunerative for him to hire out during his leisure days and work for wages. Usually be- cause he was in a position to pay in advance, he could obtain a lease at a lower rate and for a num- ber of years, thus avoiding the necessity of making a bargain every year, and running the risk of having the rental fee raised. The poorer peasant, however, rented land under any circumstances, wherever and whenever he could. He rented land even if he knew beforehand that the returns would not any more than compensate him for his labor. He did not seek profit. He was content with wages. Because he could not pay in advance he paid a higher fee, and could obtain a lease for only one year, so that the landlord had a chance to raise the rental every year. Still, the poor peasant persisted in renting land, even when his income yielded no more than low wages in the form of straw or pasture for his cows, and even when the rental fee exceeded the income. He was so hard pressed economically that he stopped at nothing to lease a strip of land. He borrowed. He mort- gaged his stock, sold his implements, pawned his labor in advance, ran into arrears, heavier and heavier every year, and continued to rent land. Like a gambler he was always hoping that something would happen, a banner crop or high prices, which THE OTHER ALTERNATIVES 137 would redeem him from his ever-increasing indebt- edness and poverty. And yet there was not nearly enough land to supply the demand for leases. In all the peasants rented about twenty-five million dessy- atins a year, on the whole a small area for a popula- tion of over one hundred and twenty million peas- ants. CHAPTER IX THE IDEOLOGY OF THE PEASANT 1. Political Such was the condition of the Russian peasant before the Revolution of March, 1917. He was de- hberately squeezed into a vise and the clamps were constantly tightened round him. Until 1861 he was kept in serfdom; when he was freed, he was given little land; he was obliged to pay extortionate prices for this land; he was held in ignorance; he was denied rights of citizenship; he was made a slave of the mir, the state and the prey of a horde of rapacious officials; in every way he was hampered in his efforts to better his condition. He was looked upon not as a human being with sensibilities, tastes, desires, wants, that merited consideration and required satisfaction, but as an inferior creature, fit only to serve others. Wliat could be more illustrative of the truth of this state- ment than the laws that were passed to regulate the conditions of agricultural labor, which practically made the landlords masters of their peasant laborers, or the laws restricting emigi-ation and binding the peasant to the village, even when he had nothing to THE IDEOLOGY OF THE PEASANT 139 do there, except to welter in filth and poverty, all for the purpose of maintaining a vast supply of cheap labor and a big army of profit-yielding renters? As conservative a wTiter as E. J. Dillon, says, ''The peasantry was no more than a wealth-creating ma- chine for the behoof of the ruling classes, and the rulers took so little thought of their own interests, that they failed to keep the machinery properly lu- bricated or in smoothly running working condition." The results of these systematic repressions are sad enough. One can see them in the village, in the filth and sloth that abounds inside and outside of the peasant homes; one can read them in the census re- ports of the Russian government and in the bulky tones of zemstvo-sta^tistiGs; one can hear them in the everyday language of the peasant, in his songs, sayings and prayers. When asked how he is getting on, the peasant would shrug his shoulders, and say, "Like a fish on ice," or '4ike a fly in tar." The brutal fact is that the Russian peasant has been starving. Try as hard as he might, he simply could not make both ends meet. Since about 1875, scarcely a year has passed but in some one or series of provinces hunger visited the peasant districts as regularly as snow, and lingered even longer, v In 1891-1892 no less than thirty milUon peasants in the rich black soil region were stricken with famine, which resulted in the virtual extinction of many villages. 140 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION True, there was a crop-failure in that region in the years mentioned. But even in years of abundant yields the average peasant did not have enough to eat or else had to contrive to live on foods that did not possess the nutritive elements the body requires. In 1899, 1902, and 1906, famines on a large scale again assailed many peasant districts, and devastated many villages. According to A. Maress, in 1897, 70.7 per cent of the peasant population did not pro- duce enough food for their sustenance; 20.4 produced just enough food for themselves and stock, and only 8.9 per cent had harvested a surplus of agricultural products. According to Milyukov the yields in grain on peasant lands slumped during the first forty years after the emancipation to 88 per cent of what they had been under serfdom, and grain, especially rye, it must be remembered, is the chief article of nourish- ing food in the peasant's diet. Not only did the peas- ant raise less grain, he had to sell more, so as to keep down the constantly mounting pile of debts, which means, that he had to compel himself to reduce to a minimum the consumption of the most nourishing food he produced. Milj^ukov figures that the peasant averages sixteen pouds of bread a year, whereas the soldier was allowed by the government twenty-nine pouds a year. Having less bread to eat the peasant began to consume more potatoes, three times as much as he had in the first years after the emancipation. THE IDEOLOGY OF THE PEASANT 141 Potatoes are quite filling and dull the pangs of hun- ger, when a sufficient quantity has been consumed, but they do not provide the body with the necessary tissue-building elements. JMeat, too, the peasant had to use more sparingly, and also milk products, for the number of cows in his possession diminished constantly — one-tenth between 1870 and 1900. No wonder there is so much illness in the Russian village, and the rate of mortality keeps increasing instead of diminishing as in other countries. At the end of the eighteenth century Russia's death rate was 20 per thousand, and at the end of the nineteenth century it was 35 per thousand, twice as high as in the United States. And no wonder also that in many sections one-third of the children born in the village do not survive their first year. Said Saltykov, Russia's gifted satirist : ''Why does our peasant go in bast shoes instead of leather boots? Why does such dense and wide- spread ignorance prevail throughout the land? Why does the mouzhik seldom or never eat meat, butter or even animal fat? How does it happen that you rarely meet a peasant who knows what a bed is? Why is it we all discern in all the movements of the Russian mouzhik a fatahstic vein devoid of the impress of conscience? Why, in a word, do the peasants come into the world hke insects and die hke summer flies?" « There are critics, Russians and foreigners, who in 142 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION reply to the questions of Saltykov have said, that the peasant himself is to blame for his misery, that he is what he is, because he is lazy, shiftless, extravagant, that he indulges in drink too much, and spends too lavishly on factory-made clothes and hats and other articles of apparel, which drain his meager resources uselessly. It is true, indeed, that when Hquor was on sale in Russia, the peasant consumed a good deal of vodka, that he often even sold a much-needed sack of grain and pawned his sheepskin coat to satisfy his craving for alcohol. It must be remembered, however, that the government did everything within its power to lure him into spending his money in its vodka shops. The peasant did not drink in moderate quantities every day. He drank by spasms, and in ''gulps" not beakers but bottles at a time, and usually on Sundays and hohdays, when he did not work. He went to church, and from church to the vodka shops, which opened as soon as church serv^- ices were over! Sundays and holidays were the days on which the peasant gorged himself with vodka, and the government could easily have prevented this dissipation by keeping closed the vodka shops on these days. But the government wanted rev- enue, and, therefore, flaunted temptation before the mouzhik^s eyes. It is true, also, that the peasant was beginning to buy factory-made materials for his clothes ia ever- THE IDEOLOGY OF THE PEASANT 143 increasing quantities, not, however, because he was growing extravagant in his desire to ape the city pop- ulation in dress, but because, as Milyukov points out, he was really economical, and wanted to use the cheapest possible cloth for his garments — cahco or something as low-priced which was worth less per yard than the homewoven cloth. As for the alleged laziness of the peasant, it is scarcely more than a legend. Anyone that has ever been in a Russian village and seen the peasant at work with his crude, Imnbering, inefficient imple- ments, knows what a hard-working person he is. See him in the field bent with a sickle over his grain, or knee-deep in a swampy meadow swinging a heavy straight-handled scythe, under a scorching sun; or see him in a stuffy barn swinging a flail from early morning until late in the evening; or see him standing on top of a log resting upon a high support, or beneath it, and pulling laboriously at a saw, up and down, with gusts of saw-dust flying into his beard, eyes, nose, mouth, and hair. Consider also that in nearly all of his tasks he uses implements, which an Ameri- can farmer would gather into a pile and set afire, before he would ever bother working with them, and you cannot help wondering at the industriousness of the mouzhik and his milimited patience and perse- verance. The tragedy of the peasant was not that he was lazy — he would have perished had he allowed 144 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION himself to be — but that he did not have enough work, because of conditions over which he had no control, and what work he had, did not yield enough income to supply him with the necessaries of life. These are the facts of the everyday life of the peasant, before the coming of the Revolution. A clear and complete understandmg of them and of the forces that shaped the peasant's existence, is surely indispensable to a correct estimate of the nature of the Russian Revolution, for it is from them that the Revolution has sprung, and it is on them that it feeds. It is this economic and social environment that has molded the peasant's basic conceptions of hfe, those desires and aspirations which form the propelling force of the Revolution. What are these conceptions? What does life mean to the peasant? What are his ideas of government? of society? of justice? What does he want, and what is he struggling for? For one thing, the peasant's conception of the state is exceedingly vague. Under the old regime he knew there was a Czar, he knew he had to go to the army and perfoim a host of other disagreeable and dan- gerous duties. But he did not understand the func- tion and purpose of the state, for the state in which he lived was not an outgrowth of his needs, and could never, therefore, become part of his hfe. Not that his attitude toward the Russian state was THE IDEOLOGY OF THE PEASANT 145 critical. It was practically a foreign element in his consciousness. He was kept in ignorance. If he was fortunate to be admitted to a school, instead of studying history, civics, he crammed his mind full of dates, names of emperors, their relatives, near and distant, fables, formulas, hymns. He scarcely ever read newspapers, or periodicals, or books. He traveled little, and when he did, as when he went to the army or took a trip to the city in search of work, he, of course, saw something of the big world, and new concepts were formed in his mind, but not extensively enough to enable him to view himself in perspective, as part of a big powerful organism called the state, the purpose and intricate workings of which he could comprehend and evaluate. He hved in the village among people as ignorant as himself, and if better educated, forbidden to communicate to him their knowledge, especially on poHtical subjects. He was surrounded by woods, prairies, marshes, far from the roar and din of civihzation, with scarcely a breath of the outside world ever disturbing the heavy monotony that hung over his life, performing his tasks day after day, year after year, in the same crude, inefficient, slow manner, eating the same foods, wearing very largely the same clothes, living in the same hovel, going to the same church, listening to the same droll chants and unenhghtening exhor- tations and with no big outlook on life. It is true. 146 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION that since the Revolution of 1905 events have oc- curred, hke the elections to the fateful Dumas, and the general uproar which preceded and followed these elections, which have jarred the peasant into some comprehension of the meaning of pohtical institutions, their functions, powers and aims, but even with these added experiences, and essentially because of the painful disillusionment that came of them, his pohtical consciousness has expanded but Httle, so httle that he has not been thinking much in pohtical terms and has not been strugghng for political ends. A related matter in the peasant's conception of the state is the peasant's conception of ''zakon," law. He had no part in making the laws that governed him. He never was even consulted as to what laws he deemed necessary for the protection and promo- tion of his welfare. He knew only that they were things to be obeyed. He seldom knew when laws were made, until he was told of them by officials, or until he violated them and was punished for the vio- lation. Besides different officials interpreted laws in different ways to suit the inmiediate occasion and their self-interest. These laws were not expressive of his conceptions of justice and did not minister to his welfare. On the contrary, as pointed out in the discussion of the legal and social position of the peas- ant, they constantly curbed and repressed his oppor- THE IDEOLOGY OF THE PEASANT 147 tunities and desires for advancement. Says A. Nastyrev who has made a special study of the peas- ant's attitude toward law: ''Law in the eyes of the mouzhik is something terrible, mysterious, incom- prehensible, that in the name of which the govern- ment terrorizes, abuses, mutilates, whips out arrears in taxes, exiles to Siberia, disembowels corpses, pulls down houses, kills stock, drafts into the army, drives children to school, compels vaccination, etc., ad in- finitmn." And Kocharrovsky, another leading au- thority on peasant Ufe, says, ''The role of law in the hfe of the peasant is something similar to a dreadful natural phenomenon, the purpose of it is not imder- stood, but its power is felt to be irresistible." The remarkable thing about this attitude toward state law is the fact that even after the Czar was over- thrown and revolutionary governments came into power, the peasant continued as formerly to be sus- picious and hostile to ruHngs from "above." Said Peshekhonov, Minister of Supphes in the second Provisional Government: "The old power is gone; a new power has come into being, but the masses have no confidence in it." Kerensky in nearly all of his addresses, but especially in the one he dehvered at the Moscow Conference, lamented the fact that the distrust and contempt the masses had entertained toward the old regime, they transferred toward the new order. And Lenine in a speech on January 17th, 148 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION 1919, after fifteen months of Bolshevist rule in Russia, deplored the fact that '^ millions of inhabi- tants grew accustomed to regard the Central Power of the nation as an organization of landlords, ex- ploiters and murderers." Indeed, it will take not a little time and not a little direct personal participa- tion in law-making, before the peasant will lose his distrust of rulings from "above." There are a number of wTiters, and Mr. E.J. Dillon is one of them, who seem to be under the impression that the Russian is a sort of born anarchist, instinc- tively rebellious against all forms of outward restraint. Is he more so than is the ^\merican. Frenchman, or Englislmian? If they had had his experiences with state law, they too would have grown impatient and rebellious against it, only because of a higher develop- ment of individuahty, they would have manifested their opposition in a much more effectual manner. King George the third must have regarded the American colonists as anarchists; so must have Charles the first adjudged his countrymen; so must have Louis the sixteenth viewed liis subjects; so must have every autocrat since the earUest days of history looked upon those of his subjects who exhibited de- fiance of existing laws. The fact is, that as far as the peasant is concerned he gladly submits to laws, the purpose and working of which he understands and approves. He conscientiously upholds and obeys the THE IDEOLOGY OF THE PEASANT 149 various regulations which the village "skhod^' adopts from time to time in the administration of its local affairs. Furthermore the very existence of thousands of cooperative societies in the Russian villages is proof positive of the capacity of the mouzhik to ad- here to discipline and to submit to the regulations of a collective body, which constitutes a fundamental attribute of a law-abiding citizen in a free state. Nor is the Russian peasant a patriot. We can hardly expect him to be. A man is a patriot and "zealously supports its (his country's) authority and interests," as Webster defines the word, when he knows his country, and is convinced rightly or wrongly that it is part of him, and that he is part of it. He may have only a very limited voice in the direction of its affairs, as did the Germans under the Kaiser, but he seems to feel that those who do rule over it, rule for him, make him the beneficiary of its blessings, and that any calamity which befalls his country is a ca- lamity which befalls him personally. But under the old regime what did the Russian peasant know of his country? What had it done for him? Patriotism was constantly preached to the peas- ant in the army, in church, at various public gather- ings, but it meant nothing to him, and never struck root in his consciousness. As long as the legend of the goodness of the Czar clung to his mind, he was ready to offer himself not for his country, but for his Czar. 150 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION But when the reaHties of life blasted that legend from his mind, there remained nothing, not even the least shadow of a symbol to rouse his devotion to the na- tion of which he was a part. All the great things that Russia has produced for the world, hterature, art, music, in short what one would call cultiu*e, which might inculcate a sense of national pride in the in- tellectual, are as foreign to him as the fourth di- mension. As long as he cannot be made to feel that Russia is his country, his motherland, that it exists for him, not he for it, he will remain ban-en of the sentiment of patriotism and national spirit, no matter how profuse and eloquent the exhortations which are ^ addressed to him. At present he thinks only of him- self, his own needs, his own woes. The rest of Russia does not concern liim — it is so big, so remote. He will deal with it only in so far as it will deal with him. He will fight only when his personal welfare is at stake, for he really has nothing else to fight for. He knows of nothing else. That was why when the Czar was overtlu-own, he very largely stopped paying taxes. Why should he go on paying big sums of money to the people ''above"? he questioned. And when he failed to obtain from the city the suppUes he needed — calico, leather, iron, implements, — he as readily stopped sending grain to the city when Shin- garev, the Constitutional Democrat, was Minister of Agriculture, or when Cliemov, Social-Revolutionary, THE IDEOLOGY OF THE PEASANT 151 had succeeded Shingarev, as he had when Rittich was occupying that oflfice under the Czar. Hungry men, women and children in the city, a starving army, famishing men of his own class, of his own village, perhaps, in the army, did not stir him into hurrying his rye to the freight trains, when in return for it he could not obtain the goods he needed. Fiery exhortations were of no avail. He was not a citizen of a country. He was a resident. No wonder that the Russian army, made up mostly of peasants, collapsed so utterly and so tragically after the Czar was overthrown. I This in brief is the political ideology of the peasant. His vague conception of pohtical institutions, his lack of active patriotism, his distrust of law and authority from above, indicate how immature and raw is his pohtical consciousness. He thinks not in positive but in negative political concepts, not of what he beheves to be politically right and proper, but of what he know^s to be wicked and vicious. He has never formulated a constructive political pro- gram, had never thought one necessary, and has paid little heed to those who have endeavored to m"ge one upon him. In the course of the first con- gress of the Peasant Union in 1905 a social-demo- cratic representative proposed a resolution recom- mending to the peasants that they instruct their delegates to the much-hoped-for Constituent Con- 152 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION vention to urge the formation of a democratic repub- lic. The resolution was voted down by a vast majority on the ground that its adoption would frighten the peasant masses away from the Union! The opposition was right. The peasant's mind was almost barren of positive political concepts. Parhament, constitution, president, legislature, ini- tiative and referendum, proportionate representa- tion, these words are quite obscure to him. Only now under the pressure of epochal events is he slowly ac- quiring a political consciousness and positive politi- cal concepts. It will take, however, not a httle time before these will crystallize into a definite effectual poUtical program. But at present the mouzhik is interested chiefly in a thorough change of his eco- nomic and social condition by whatever methods possible. In the absence of a political education and pohtical experience, in the absence of a vital interest in mere pohtical reform and under the pressure of intolerable poverty, the peasant has come to think of hfe almost exclusively in terms of social and economic changes, and whenever political methods have been suggested to him, he has valued them only in so far as they held forth promise of realizing his social and economic goal quickly and effectively. CHAPTER X THE IDEOLOGY OF THE PEASANT (Continued) 2. Social In passing now to a consideration of the peasant's social ideology it is first necessary to take cogni- zance of his rather pecuhar attitude toward private property. Both reactionary Slavophils and SociaUsts of the '' Populist," so-called brand, regarded the peasant as a born communist, uncontaminated by the spirit of individualism of the capitalistic West, and, therefore, free from the vices of this individualism, such as greed for personal gain and ambition to attain riches at whatever cost to character and to the welfare of one's neighbor. The peasant commune, they de- clared, prevented the concentration of property and power in few hands and the consequent formation of conflicting social classes. This commune was to them a holy institution, by means of which the peasant could make a short cut to a higher social order, es- caping the travail and agony of capitaUstic develop- ment, and destined, therefore, to lead peacefully all mankind to a superior stage of social evolution. 154 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION The peasant, according to these theorists, did not even possess a sense of private property, a behef that is still professed by some orthodox PopuHsts. Sober science and the trend of events, however, have exploded these romantic theories of the Slavophils and Populists. It has been definitely ascertained that the commune is by no means a distinctive Rus- sian institution, that it existed in western Europe in one form or another, when the communal form of landed ownership corresponded with the then ex- isting stage of economic development. The commune which prevailed in Germany in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was in its constituency, func- tions and methods of procedure almost an exact counterpart of the Russian mir. Later when the commune was dissolved in Germany, and many Ger- man peasants migrated to Russia to the government of Saratov, they continued to live in a communal manner, and subsequently when many of them left Russiay and migrated to the prairies of Nebraska, Kansas and the Dakotas, they imported their com- munism with them. In point of sheer perfection these German communes as they now exist in Amer- ica, are far in advance of the Russian mir, for in them absolute cooperation prevails — all members not only owning the land in common but working it jointly, and all sharing alike in the fruits of their collective labor, whereas in the mir, each member works his own THE IDEOLOGY OF THE PEASANT 155 assigned plot, and whatever crops he gathers are his personal possession. It is obvious, therefore, that there is nothing distinctively Russian in the peasants commune, and that its existence in the form of the mir, is not at all expressive of a certain particularly noble, inherently Russian form of ideahsm, but is rather a symptom of a backward economic develop- ment. Economic pressure from above and below have preserved the mir in Russian life. On the one hand the government in its effort to perpetuate the social system that prevailed under serfdom and to create an effective tax-collecting instrument, so bound the peasants together in the mir, that they could not separate from it or only with difficulty, and on the other hand the peasant himself struggled desperately to earn his bread, with httle land at his disposal, so little that if he had cut it up into individual parcels, he would scarcely have had any pasture and wood- land, and could hardly have kept any stock or had any fuel and lumber; and in time of economic de- pression he would have been obHged to sell it and join the army of proletarians, for whom there was not enough work in the country. That perhaps would have proved in the long run no more or even less of a calamity than remaining attached to a de- vitaHzed strip of land. Yet the mere occupation of such a strip of land in the absence of other profitable 156 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION and steady work, was a sort of insurance against complete destitution. That was why the peasant on his part strove to uphold the commune. Still it must be emphasized that despite these constraining forces, the aims of the government and the indigence of the peasant, the commune was actually deteriorating ^ socially; distinct classes of kulacks and poor peasants were coming into existence; power and property were concentrating; the poor peasant, being forbidden to sell his land, was renting it away for a long period and thus practically sundering his connection with it. The capitalistic differentiation which the Slavophils and PopuHsts had deprecated, was actually fast in- vading the mir and disrupting the economic and social equality that was supposed to have reigned there undisturbed. t/ Thus there is as much justification in ascribing to the peasant an innate devotion to the principle of communism, as there is to credit him with an innate preference for keeping his pigs in the house during the cold months. Both were matters of necessity, ly'not choice. As a matter of fact the mouzhik has acquired a deep and keen sense of private property. His house, stock, implements, crops, are his personal possession, and it has never been avenged by the staunchest Popuhst that the peasant does not be- lieve in having and holding as much of these as he can secure, or that he favors their periodic redistri- THE IDEOLOGY OF THE PEASANT 157 bution so as to equalize their shares among all mem- bers of the village. Nor is it correct to assert that only as far as land is concerned does the peasant manifest no sense of private property. After all his conceptions are not so finely spmi as to lead him to regard a horse or hog or a pair of boots as objects of private property, and a meadow or a stretch of forest as something beyond the possibility of becoming his individual possession. In reality whenever and wherever an opportunity has presented itself, the peasant has gladly acquired property in land, all that he could afford and sometimes more, too, as the arrears to the land-bank so eloquently testify; and no one will dispute the fact, that there is not a peas- ant Uving who is in the least averse to coming into proprietorship of a farm. Says Tugan-Baranovsky one of Russia's leading economists: ''Our peasant is by no means a proletarian; he has his own house- hold, which he loves passionately, and with which he will part only under the pressure of extreme necessity. . The dream of our peasant is the pos- session of a profitable farm of his own." Yet, though possessing a distinct sense of private property in land, the attitude of the Russian peasant toward such property is rather different from that of the western or American farmers. The latter because of their sojourn in an environment of individualism, deeply intensified by the rapid gi-owth of industrial- p/ 158 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION ism, having been accustomed to independent owner- ship of land, and having enjoyed a comparative de- gree of economic prosperity, have come to regard private property in land as much and as sacred a right as that of going to school or getting married. Our New Hampshire dairyman, as well as our Kansas wheat-grower and Colorado cattle-rancher and Cal- ifornia fruit-farmer firmly beheve in the right of any individual to have and to hold all the land that is deeded to him, and to do with it whatever he pleases, to rent, sell or exchange it for a home, a shop, an automobile. He looks upon private property in land as the most fimdamental inviolate right of the indi- vidual. But the conditions in the hfe of the Russian peasant have not bred in him the same devotion to the institution of private property in land. In the first place the peasant is not given to trading in land. Even the richer peasant, when he purchases an addi- tional holding, does so usually, not for the pmpose of selling but of working or renting, if he cannot work it himself. One is safe in saying that perhaps in no other country in the world has the farmer been so little given to deahng in land as a commodity of ex- change as in Russia. One does not meet in Russian agricultural or agrarian Uterature the phrase "peas- ant land-speculator" for there are scarcely any such speculators. Of course the communal form of owner- ship prevented the selling of land. But even in THE IDEOLOGY OF THE PEASANT 159 places where the commune does not prevail, or where lands have been pm-chased on an extensive scale, speculative exchange in land on the part of peasants, is conspicuously absent. The peasant's experience />^ with land is limited only to that of a tiller, a laborer. He associates, therefore, the ownership of the land with the working of it. He beUeves that the land in its natural state is nobody's, the creation of God^ and that none others but those who work it with their own hands, shall have the right to possess them- selves of it. The streams and fields, and forests, he is convinced, were created only for those who want to apply their own labor to them. All Russian authorities, conservative and liberal, are agreed as to this fundamental notion of the peasant, a notion which is by no means distinctively Russian, but which, as Maslov points out, prevailed in the six- teenth century in western Em-ope, and which is common to all peoples at the beginning of capitaUs- tic development, but which disappears in the course of industrial growth, because of the social and eco- nomic differentiations that such growth creates. It is interesting to note in this connection that in southern Russia where sectarianism has met with much favor, and where the peasant reads the Bible a good deal and interprets it in the light of his own experiences, the beUef is common that according to the written word of God, as recorded in the Bible, it 160 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION is wrong to sell or gamble in land, or do anything else but work it with one's own hands. The sectarian peasant contends, that even the Czar is forbidden by God to take land from the people who work it, and he quotes passage after passage from the Bible in corroboration of his contention. The following are some of the scriptural passages he most frequently cites in defense of his beliefs : "So shall ye divide this land unto you according to the tribes of Israel. ''And it shall come to pass that ye shall divide it by lot for an inheritance unto you, and to the strangers that sojourn among you, which shall beget children among you; and they shall be unto you as bom in the country among the children of Israel; they shall have inheritance with you among the tribes of Israel. "And it shall come to pass, that in what tribe the stranger sojourneth, there shall ye give him his inheritance, saith the Lord God." (Ezekiel, ch, 47, verses 21-23.) "Moreover the prince shall not take of the people's inheritance by oppression, to thrust them out of their possession ; but he shall give his sons inheritance out of his own possession, that my people be not scattered every man from his possession." (Ezekiel, ch. 46, verse 18.) "The land shall not be sold forever: for the land 'HE IDEOLOGY OF THE PEASANT 161 is mine, for ye are strangers and sojourners with me." (Leviticus, ch. 25, verse 23.) ^'For I mean not that other men be eased and ye burdened. But by an equahty, that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for your want; that there may be equahty." (2 Corinthians, ch. 8, verse 13.) ''Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field till there be no place, that they may be placed in the midst of the earth." (Isaiah, ch. 5, verse 8.) The Stundists, or the Russian Baptists as they are sometimes called, have been particularly zealous in citing the above and other biblical quotations as proofs of the inviolate claim of the working peasant to the land of Hussia. Another condition which sustains the aforemen- tioned belief in the peasant, is his landlessness or land poverty. Here again we notice a marked con- trast in the position of the American farmer or the French, Dutch, Belgian peasant and that of the Russian mouzhik. The American farmer has an abundance of territory for pasture as well as for tillage, and he has enjoyed on the whole quite a sub- stantial amount of prosperity. The French, Belgian, Dutch, German homesteader, though possessing a small acreage, in some instances actually much smaller on the average than that of the mouzhik, 162 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION has because of the practice of intensive methods of cultivation, the presence of nearby, well-paying markets and amply developed transportation facih- ties been able to reap more or less satisfactory finan- cial rewards. In the case of the mouzhik, as we have already learned in a previous chapter, fifteen per cent of the householders engaged in farm-work in 1905 possessed not a span of land of their own, and seventy per cent of those tilling their own allotments possessed an area anywhere between one and ten dessyatins, at best less than was actually required to maintain the low standard of hving to which the Russian peasant is accustomed. Add to this the other disagreeable features in the agricultural life of the mouzhik, the sovereignty of the mir, and its stultifying effect upon personal initiative, the high rent, the low wages of labor, the utter impossibihty for any but the very fortunate few to come into possession of additional holdings, and it is easy to conceive why the primitive notion of the land being the creation of God, therefore the possession of those who work it, has remained so firmly rooted in the mind of the Russian peasant even in those places, as in Ulo-aine, where individual ownership in land has always prevailed, and this despite the pressure of social differentiation, which the growth of capitalism was introducing. A third factor in molding the peasant's attitude THE roEOLOGY OF THE PEASANT 163 toward private property in land is his belief that labor is entitled to all that it produces — a notion that is likewise an inevitable outcome of his past experience. In the first place he has always sustained himself by his labor. It has been his sole weapon in the struggle for existence — all that he has ever at- tained and enjoyed has come to him essentially by means of his labor. Secondly, in his environment he sees labor producing everything — clearing forests, raising crops, erecting buildings. In the absence of a complex industrial mechanism, with the simple semi-primitive forms that prevail in Russian village hfe, all the processes of production are minutely known to the peasant and practiced solely by him. Under these circumstances it is rather natural that he though unversed in the science of economics, ignorant even of the existence of such a science, should come to ascribe to labor a preeminent role in the creation of wealth — the wealth of course known to him — and, therefore, entitled to the full enjoy- ment of such wealth. In explaining this ideological phenomenon, which does not prevail in western countries, A. Yefimenko says: ''In western countries the pressure of the upper layer of society upon the lower was so great, that it successfully crushed out of the latter those juridical conceptions, which were originally common to them as workers. The development of the economic 164 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION order, which tore the peasant from his land, the laborer from the product of his labor, which made labor the indirect and not the direct means of satis- fying the wants of the laborer, further helped to destroy these conceptions. Such was the case in the west. But in Russia the situation is to a very large degree different. Our peasant having remamed on his land has preserved in a much larger measure the immediate connection between the laborer and the product of his toil, and has, therefore, retained the juridical ideas of this particular type of labor." This conception of labor has found abundant ex- pression in the social relations of the peasants toward each other. ''The right of invested labor," says Kocharovsky, whom the reserved Tugan-Baranovsky calls the leading authority on peasant life, "as a basis for all forms of property rights, exists decidedly in all the manifestations of popular customary law. That is why the sphere of distribution of the rights of labor coincides with the province of customary law in general." In the peasant courts, for example, which date back to olden times, and in which justice is administered on the basis of customary law and tradition, labor has always been recognized as having rights prior and superior to property and even kinship. Stepniack gives the following summary of the verdicts of these tribunals which were col- lected by a government commission, and which THE IDEOLOGY OP THE PEASANT 165 clearly define the peasant's attitude toward labor and property: ''Kinship has no influence whatever in the dis- tribution and proportioning of shares at any division of property. It is determined by the quantity of work each has given to the family. The brother who has hved and worked with the family for the longer time, will receive most, no matter whether he be the older or the younger. He will be excluded from the inheritance altogether, if he has been living some- where else, and has not contributed in some way to the common expenses. The same principle is ob- served in settling the differences between the other gi'ades of kinsfolk. The cases of sons-in-law, step- sons, and adopted children are very characteris- tic. If they remained a sufficient time — ten years or more — with the family, they receive, though strangers, all the rights of legitimate children, whilst the legitimate son is excluded if he did not take part in the common work. "This is in flagrant contradiction to the civil code of Russia, as well as of other European countries. The same contradiction is observable in the question of women's rights. The Russian law entitles wo- men — legitimate wives and daughters — to one-four- teenth only of the family inheritance. The peasant's customary law requires no such limitations. The women are in all respects dealt with on an equal 166 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION footing with the men. They share in the property in proportion to their share in the work. Sisters as a rule, do not inherit from brothers, because in mairy- ing they go to another family, and take with them as dowry the reward of their domestic work. But a spinster sister, or a widow, who returns to hve with her brothers, will always receive or obtain from the tribunal her share. "The right of inheritance being founded on work alone, no distinction is made by the peasant's cus- tomary law between legitimate wives and concu- bines. ''It is interesting to note that the husband, too, inherits the wife's property, if she has brought him any, only when they have hved together sufficiently long — above ten years; otherwise the deceased wife's property is returned to her parents. ''The principle ruling the order of inheritance is evidently the basis of the verdicts in all sorts of htigation. Labor is always recognized as giving an incontrovertible right to property. Accordmg to common jurisprudence, if one man has sown a field belonging to another — especially if he has done it knowingly — the court of justice will unhesitatingly deny the offender any right to the eventual product. Our peasants are as strict in their observance of boundaries, when once traced, as are any other agri- cultural folk. But labor has its imperishable rights. THE IDEOLOGY OF THE PEASANT 167 The customary law prescribes a remuneration for the work executed in both of the above-mentioned cases — in the case of unintentional as well as in the case of premeditated violation of property. Only in the first instance, the offender who retains all the product, is simply compelled to pay to the owner the rent of the piece of land he has souti according to current prices with some trifling additional present; whilst in the case of violation knowingly done, the product is left to the owner of the land, who is bound, nevertheless, to return to the offender the seed, and to pay him a laborer's wage for the work he has done. ''If a peasant has cut wood in a forest belonging to another peasant the tribunal settles the matter in a similar way. In all these cases the common law would have been wholly against the offender, the abstract right of property reigning supreme." Of coiu-se not always are cases decided upon the basis of the above-mentioned principles. There are numerous and frequent exceptions, due to the fact that powerful influences from the outside such as bribery, intimidation by officials, have exerted a \dtiating effect upon the peasant courts, and have forced them to issue decrees at variance with the traditional conceptions of justice. It would also be incorrect to assert that all peasants approve of the customary principles bearing on the relation be- tween property and labor. The peasant trader, the 168 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION kulack and all those who have accumulated a sub- stantial amount of property in land and other utilities, decidedly oppose these principles, and for the same reason, for which the other peasants favor them — both are primarily concerned in the promotion of their economic interest. But the number of affluent peasants in Russia is propor- tionately small, and I am not concerned with them in this discussion of The Russian Revolution, for they are not part of the Revolution in the sense in which the poor peasants are. The vast majority of the peasants adhere to and uphold their traditional conceptions of the rights of labor not as Kocharovsky explains, because of a high cultural development, which they manifestly do not possess, but because of the historical condi- tions which molded their ideas of right and wrong. These conditions and conceptions, to wit, the absence of trading in land, landlessness and land poverty, the attitude toward property in land and toward the rights of labor, account for the peasant's conviction that he has an inalienable right to the land. Even when he was a serf, the property of the master, he persistently declared that the land was his, as is lucidly expressed in the popular saying: "My washi, a zemlia nasha" — "we are yours, but the land is ours." He looks upon the landlords not as owners, but as usurpers of the land. He THE roEOLOGY OF THE PEASANT 169 cares not for their deeds, titles, and other legal safeguards. They mean nothing to him. *'In the consciousness of the people," said a representative from Vladimir at the Congress of the Peasant Union in 1905, ''land is the gift of God, like air and water. Only he who wants to work it should get it, each according to his needs." And the peasant deputy Anikine in a speech in the Duma said: ''We need the land not for sale or mortgage, not for speculation, not to rent it and get rich, but to work it. The land interests us not as merchandise or commodity, but as a means to raise useful products. We need the land only to plant." All the utterances of peasants express a similar spirit, hence the slogan of the Rus- sian agrarian movement, "Zemlia narodu" — "the land to the people, the working people." Indeed in land, and in land alone, does the mouzhik see a panacea for all his ills. Land! Land! Land! From one end of Russia to the other this word has resounded with ever-increasing loudness. The only hope that has sustained the peasant in the centuries of bondage, was his undying behef that some day something would happen, which would make him the sole possessor of the land in Russia, and then an end would come to his privations. Little has he realized, that the expropriation of the pomieshtchiks and other holders of big estates will not throw open an unhmited land fund out of which a man could 170 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT .\ND THE REVOLUTION carve a strip as need arose and join it to his allot- ment. In all not more than sixty million dessyatins can be added at present to the peasant holdings — a vast area, indeed, but if divided among about sixteen million householders, it would add only enough to the allotment of each substantially to ameliorate his condition for a short time, and would in the course of a few years leave him helpless again, unless the transfer of this land were accompanied by a general improvement in the industrial condition of the country, which would make it possible for a por- tion of the rural population to move to the city and settle there, and more important by far, unless new methods of tillage were introduced, new machinery brought in, new railroads built, new highways laid, so as to enable the peasant to raise bigger crops and dispose of them in well-estabhshed markets, without much ado and with little loss. Only now under the impact of the brutal reaUties of life, which the Revo- lution has lashed to the surface, is the mouzhik be- ginning to appreciate more fully the need of these improvements. And yet it was rather natural that he should have, during the past ages, cherished the hope and the belief, that the division of the non-peasant lands would provide him with the means of an ample hveh- hood. He really knows of nothing else that would offer relief. Other fields of activity have been prac- THE IDEOLOGY OF THE PEASANT 171 tically closed to him. Commercial life has scarcely had any opening for him — men from other classes of society have very largely monopoUzed that field of endeavor. In the city there has been no work for him, and in the village not enough, and to search for work in other places has been extremely difficult, firstly, because there have been very few such places, and, secondly, because of legal and economic diffi- culties to reach them, as has already been described in a preceding chapter. Of adopting modem meth- ods of tillage he has never thought much, because with the exception of the few zemstvo and coopera- tive agencies and the still fewer government advis- ory committees, no one in Russia has ever sought to convey the necessary information to him, and even were he possessed of this information he could nob apply it at all advantageously, under the conditions which prevailed in the Russian village. Search as hard as he might, aside from an increase in his land- holding he could find nothing that offered hope of rehef. Then, too, the peasant loves the land — its freedom, spaciousness, beauty, of which he is very sensitive, as is illustrated in his songs and stories, buoy and exhilarate him. He speaks of the land in endearing terms — matushka-zemlia, mother earth, poilitza, drink-giver, and kormilitza, food-giver, are expres- sions that have become part of his everyday speech. 172 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION He loves the work in fields, as he loves no other kind of work. Besides, he has lived on land since days immemorial, and there is no other place where he feels so much at home and at ease. Moreover, all around him he sees landlords who have everything, enjoy everything, beautiful homes, elegant clothes, abundance of food; who ride in stately carriages, drawn by sprightly horses; whose children frolic at balls and dances, and gallop merrily about the coun- try on horseback. The landlord, the peasant rea- soned had everything, because he had much land. Anyone who had much land could be happy. Hence he was sure that increase in his holding would lift him to a higher level of Hving. But does the peasant have any definite program of realizing his aim to take possession of the land? He has. Practically all Russian writers are agreed that the agrarian movement is moving in the direction of nationalization of land. This, they aver, is at any rate the purport of peasant utterances, whether in the form of a resolution at a congress or a speech in some representative assembly. The resolu- tion adopted by the congress of the Peasant Union, in 1905, the first organization of its kind in Russian history having national significance, states: ''To put an end to the sufferings of the people resulting from a shortage of land, is possible only by means of trans- ferring all land to the possession of the nation for the THE IDEOLOGY OF THE PEASANT 173 use of those who cultivate land with the labor of their own families or in a cooperative manner." The second congress of the Union passed a similar reso- lution with regard to the disposition of land. Of course this Union in its constituency represented only the petty peasant landholders and mainly those of Great Russia, where the communal form of ownership is universal, and not those of Ukraine where private ownership very largely prevails. But the spirit of the resolutions and debates of the Peas- ant Union is expressive of the entire Russian peas- antry. "Zemlia narodu" — ''the land to the people" is a universal slogan in rural Russia, as dear to the mouzhik in the north as in the south. The Ukrainian Rada in the "Universal" (manifesto) it issued on November 20, 1917, expressed itself in favor of the nationahzation of the land. And the Peasant Soviet Congress, though made up largely of peas- ant intellectuals and members of the educated classes outside of the peasant population, was never- theless expressing the feelings of the peasant masses in the resolution stating that "the elaboration of land reforms is to be based ... on the transfer of all lands now belonging to the state, monasteries, churches, and private persons to the possession of the nation." We must, however, distinguish between national- ization as understood by the peasant masses, and as 174 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION conceived by the various political parties and ideol- ogists who advocate nationalization in one form or another. The latter mean by the word, either that the state shall own the land and rent it to the peas- ants, or that the state shall actually operate all land as one big industry, the peasant being merely a worker of the state. But what the peasant means, when he says that the land shall become the property of the nation, is that the nation shall acquire con- trol of all the lands not worked by their owners and i^ shall distribute them among those who till the soil with their own labor. The peasant does not favor nationalization in the sense that all the land, includ- ing his, shall revert to the ownership of the state. As Kautsky says: ''Under no circumstances will they (the peasants) consent to turn their own land over to the possession of the state." Maslov speak- ing of the resolutions of the Peasant Union favoring nationalization of land, says that the petty land- holders whom the Union represented ''dream only of rendering inviolate their own individual ownership." And Lenine, the boldest champion of nationalization of land, is constrained to admit that nationalization does not mean to the peasant that the state shall operate the land as a vast industry. In his report of the proceedings of the unification congress of the various socialist (Marxian) parties, held in 1906, he says: "The partitionists (a section of the conference) THE IDEOLOGY OF THE PEASANT 175 arguing against nationalization, tell me that the peasant does not want what he says he wants, when he speaks of nationaUzation. Judge not by the word but by the substance of the matter they say. The peasant wants private owTiership, the right to sell his land, and the words 'God's land,' etc., are only a reflection of his desire to take the land away from the landlord. All that is true, I replied to the partitionists." However, many of the leaders of the sociaHst revolutionary party resolutely deny that the peasant wishes to come into individual o-vvnership of the land. In connection with this hunger for land it is es- sential to point out the peasant's attitude toward the landlord. It is not, of course, one of friendship or good-will. The peasant has not yet forgotten the days of serfdom, when he was merely a piece of prop- erty in the hands of the nobles. In nearly every village there are men, now gray-haired and wrinkled, who vividly remember the days of serfdom, and who on Sundays and hohdays, at family gatherings or village assembhes, delight in recounting their former experiences on the landed estates. However, to the credit of the peasant be it said, that he bears no grudge against the landlords for their past sins. He is not actuated by a desire to wreak vengeance for former misdeeds. In all of his complaints and appeals to the government he never spoke of these. 176 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION He is chiefly interested in removing present injus- tices — which to him means removing the landlords from the land, to which, as I have already empha- sized, he believes they have no right, no more than to a monopoly of the air or water. He blames them chiefly for his own wretched condition. For a long time he was even under the impression that the Czar wished to give their land to him, and had issued a decree to that effect, but that they had stolen it and prevented its enactment. Moreover, he saw the landlords showered with privileges, and himself swamped with repressions. The officials favored them, the law favored them. Both oppressed him. All these conditions have bred in the mouzhik a feel- ing of deep-seated hostility toward the landlords, the holders of that precious possession which he thinks is his by right. He would fain be friends with them, if they would only turn their land over to him. If he at times resorts to violence, it is because he feels himself grossly abused by them, and sees no means of removing the grievance except through violent direct action. Now that we ha"we surveyed the conditions under which the peasant has been living, the ideas which these conditions have created, as exemplified in his attitude toward government, society, law, property, labor; now that we have learned of the desires and aspirations of the peasant, the inevitable conclusion y THE IDEOLOGY OF THE PEASANT 177 is forced upon us, that as far as he is concerned, the Russian Revolution never could be essentially a political event Uke the French, American, and the various mild English revolutions, but that in the very nature of things, it was destined to crystallize into a mighty crusade for fundamental radical social changes, or, to put it more concretely, into a social war, a class war, a war against the landlord class, and not merely against the autocratic regime. As a matter of fact the peasant would have gladly supported the Czar if Nicholas had had foresight and intelhgence enough to enable him to realize his aspirations. The peasant has as yet manifested no keen hunger for political rights, not because he is averse to them, but because he has not yet come to appreciate their importance, and because he feels in a sort of mysterious way that a favor- able reversal of his social and economic position will usher in a thoroughgoing improvement in every other phase of his life. As one of the delegates at the congress of the Peasant Union in 1905 exclaimed: '' WTien we get land, we'll get everything else." That seems to be the prevalent feeUng among the peas- antry. At the congresses of the Peasant Union there were delegates, who indeed, spoke of the necessity of waging war for freedom as well as for land, but even these deputies, says V. Groman in his exhaustive summary of the work of these congresses, stressed 178 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION land above everything else. It is true, of course, that the slogan "Land and Freedom," as much as that of "Land to the People," has been the watchword of the agrarian movement in Russia. But the word freedom is used in a loose, hazy sense, and does not express any definite poHtical or even cultural aims. Of these the peasant is only now beginning to think. CHAPTER XI BATTLING FOR LAND Strange how revolutions occur! Many of us are under the conviction that they are the creation of leaders, agitators, who after insidious planning and plotting issue a secret order, and a revolution stalks forth in full blast like an army to battle when the command is given. Were this really so, were leaders so altogether omnipotent, there would scarcely be a community in the world but would be in the throes of perpetual revolution, for there is hardly a com- munity, but harbors certain disaffected spirits who, for motives base or noble, would gladly disrupt the prevailing order of things. Fortunately, however, leaders can do nothing without followers — and it is only a truism to say that there can be no followers, unless there is a cause and a will to follow. Now leaders may be instrumental in rousing this will, in transmuting it into burning words, in formulating it into concrete issues, but they can neither create nor destroy it. Who ever thinks of the American rev- olution as being chiefly the accomphshment of George Washington, Patrick Henry and the other valiant spirits of the colonial days? It was not they, their 180 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION will, that made the American revolution; it was the American revolution that made them. If their pleadings and exhortations had not been the verbal expressions of the sentiments and desires of the embittered colonists, they could no more have stirred and led them into a crusade against the mother-country, than they could set an iceberg aflame. And who ever can think of the overthrow of the Czar in March, 1917, as the feat of a group of clever conspirators, leaders of revolutionary- parties? The March revolution was as much a sur- prise to these leaders as it was to the outside world. A real revolution, a rising of the masses, is an event of spontaneous social combustion. The spark may be thrust from above, but the explosion always occurs below, and, of course, there never can be an explosion unless there are chemicals to explode. This at any rate is true of the peasant revolutions in Russia. Some of these have since been identified with names of leaders, just as some mihtary vic- tories in history have been linked with the names of generals, though long ago Tolstoy has pointed out in ''War and Peace," that it is soldiers who always win battles. Not the least striking feature of the peasant revolutions is the fact that leaders have been able to lead in so far and as long as they have followed the desires of their constituents. Their personal character, social position, religious affilia- BATTLING FOR LAND 181 tions, have not interested the peasant. He has been chiefly concerned with their aims. If these taUied with his own, he clung to them with all the zest and desperation of a zealot. The first and one of the most sanguinary peasant revolutions occurred in 1669-1670. It was led by Stenka Razin, now a national hero, beloved by all the peasants in the Volga region, his name and deeds hallowed in a multitude of songs and stories and soon to be commemorated in a statue at Moscow. Stenka Razin was a cossack. In 1665 he and his two brothers participated in a miUtary campaign against Poland under the command of Yurii Dol- goruki. The oldest Razin was the chief of the cossack division. One day he appeared before Yurii Dolgoruki and asked for the release of his men who yearned to go back to their haunts on the Don. Being volunteer soldiers, like all the cossacks of the time, the cossack chief was quite within his rights in petitioning for the release of his division. Dolgoruki, however, denied the petition, whereupon Razin left of his own accord. He was searched, apprehended, hanged. It is reported that Stenka and Frol Razin witnessed the execution of their older brother. Stenka was outraged. His brother — cossack het- man — strung up on a tree like a dog for exercising the inaUenable right of a free warrior, a free man! Not only was his brotherly love wounded, his cossack 182 THE RUSSL\N PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION pride was stabbed, and he vowed that he should avenge the cruel deed of Yurii Dolgoruki. He would punish the hoyars and voyevodas — nobles and rulers of the time, who had arrogated unto themselves all poHtical power, and were exercising it with contemp- tuous indifference for the rights and conveniences of others. Stenka resolved to strip them of this power. But how was he to do this? He was an obscure cossack. He had no following, and no wealth, no prestige with which to attract one. Here his instinct for leadership came into play. He was, indeed, a shrewd, far-seeing pohtician. He heard the rmnble of discontent reverberate from one end of the country to the other — it was only a few years after the fettering of the peasant to the land and to the will of the nobles. He saw with what ferocity the latter were treating the newly-made serf. He saw the mouzhik fleeing in the thousands from bondage, hiding in woods, fields, river-banks, h\dng on loot and plunder, forming into bands and marching forth often in clear daylight to vent hot wrath upon their oppressors. He saw castles aban- doned to the torch, their owners strung up on trees, their heads chopped off. He saw the spirit of re- bellion, rapine, murder, stalk through the land, and he resolved to capitalize the forces behind it for his own ends. BATTLING FOR LAND 183 The historian Kostomarov assures us that Stenka was not ambitious, that he coveted neither poUtical power nor material aggrandizement. Nor on the other hand was he at all actuated by altruistic mo- tives. He was no idealist. The sufferings of the peasant did not stir him to compassion. He was in fact a man without sympathy for his fellow-mortals. It was hke play for him to chop off a man's leg or arm, or to thrust a hook into his ribs and hoist him up a pole. He was no villain, but his manner and conduct were at times shockingly savage. The only reason he resolved to make the liberation of the peasant his cause, was because he wanted an army of crusaders against the nobles, and the peasant was ripe for such a crusade. His magnificent personahty was an invaluable asset to him. Tall, massive, powerful, with ghnting eyes, of indomitable will-power, keen ingenuity, with not a shadow of fear in him, he commended the admiration of both friend and enemy. A man of many and varied moods, now gay, now gloomy, now given to dissipation, now sunk in reverie, contemptuous of rehgion, of law, of social restraint, without honor in his deaUngs with the enemy, he was, nevertheless, always truthful and generous to friends and supporters. He was com- manding, but never haughty; severe, but never imposing. Withal he was very democratic. Caste 184 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION he despised. In days of greatest triumph he Uved in a sod-hut hke the other cossacks, ate the food they ate, wore the clothes they wore, though he had booty enough to wallow in luxury. He opened his campaign cautiously as though groping his way to the most promising path of pm*- suit. His initial exploit was an act of pure piracy. With a small band of cossacks he captured a fleet of supply and prison barges on the Volga. The cap- tain of the fleet and all the officers including a monk who was guard of certain church supplies, he un- ceremoniously drowned. The crews and the party of exiles that were on their way to serve sentences in the Astrakhan jails, he immediatelj'' hberated, and addressed them in the following words: *'I extend to you full freedom. I shall not compel any of you to abide with me. But whoever wants to join me, shall become a free cossack. I have come to wage war only against the boyars and the rich. I am prepared to divide everything with the poor and common people." These words soon spread like wildfire and caused joyous commotion in serf-Russia. It seemed as though the serf had been eagerly waiting for some- one to address to him such a message, and now that it was uttered he was ready to burst into action. At last a redeemer had arisen sent by God to punish and overthrow the landlord-tyrants, and to give to BATTLING FOR LAND 185 him freedom, land, riches — the things he coveted so deeply ! From all over the country, from farm, forest, jail, barracks, he fled to enlist in Stenka's ranks. He worshiped the cossack chief, called him affection- ately Little Father, trusted implicitly in his wisdom, and beheved whole-heartedly in his good luck and superhuman powers. Stenka's fame spread rapidly, and his strength grew greater from day to day. We read and hear much these days of propaganda. To the average American it is a new word with a sinister meaning and rightly so, in view of the das- tardly purposes to which the organs of pubHcity have been put. Propaganda, however, is an ancient weapon, as old as the greed and goodness of man. Stenka Razin was surely a master of it. Astute, clear-sighted, with a profound understanding of the workings of the human imagination, he fully appre- ciated the power of the weapon of publicity, of mak- ing known to the peasant the aims of his campaign, and he spared no effort to wield this weapon as strenuously and extensively as circumstances per- mitted. He organized a corps of so-called agitators and dispatched them far and wide to proclaim his message to the peasant population. "We come," these emissaries said, "from our Uttle father Stepan Timofeyevitch to destroy your voyevodas and to set you free," words which could not but inspire to action the chafing fettered mouzhik. Stenka also 186 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION composed proclamations, letters, as they were then called, explaining the object of his crusade, and he had them smuggled into serf-communities on big estates and read to the peasants. They were like lighted matches dropped into inflammable sub- stances. The peasants banded together, pounced upon their masters, destroyed their homes, seized movable property and then marched in a body to join Stenka's forces. Everywhere the peasant wel- comed the signal to rise in rebellion against the land- lord-nobles. Whenever Stenka moved to attack a village or city he always had his emissaries precede him. In bolshevik-like fashion they sought to acquaint the opposing army and the population in enemy terri- tory with the purpose of his campaign, and to per- suade both soldier and civilian to turn upon their superiors. In such a manner Stenka won his great- est victory — the conquest of the rich city of Astrak- han. He advanced upon the city in barges, and before he was even within attacking distance of the opposing army his propagandists had already fil- tered their way into the ranks of the latter, and were zealously spreading the message that Stenka was their redeemer, that he was coming to liberate them from the oppression of the nobles, and that if they would join him, they could easily capture the city of Astrakhan, and aU the wealth there would BATTLING FOR LAND 187 be theirs to divide and enjoy as they pleased. The message electrified the enemy soldiers, who were as a rule peasants or of peasant origin. They seized their officers, tied, strangled, and flung them into the Volga. When Stenka drew near, they shouted: **We greet you, little father, the subduer of all our tyrants." To which Stenka replied: "I greet you, brothers! Revenge yourselves upon your tor- mentors, who have made you suffer worse than had the Turks and Tartars. I have come to grant you liberties and privileges. You are my brothers, my children, and you shall be as rich as I am, if you re- main brave and faithful to me." Uproarious joy greeted these words, which when they reached the city, conveyed there by special messengers, stirred the poor into ecstacy. House-maids, cooks, jan- itors, street-cleaners, coachmen, barge-haulers, water-carriers, all those who were of the servant class, men and women, made common cause and launched into a fierce crusade against their masters and rulers, tied, lashed, stabbed them, sparing neither women, nor children, nor even priests. They swarmed round public buildings — jails, court- houses, military offices — smashed doors and win- dows, broke inside, hurled piles of documents into the street, set them ablaze, and danced hilariously around the flames as did the revolutionaries in Petrograd in March, 1917. When Stenka moved 188 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION into the city it was already in possession of the mobs, and in accordance with his custom on such occasions he announced to his followers that they could do whatever they pleased, a privilege of which they proceeded to take immediate advantage. They moved into the homes of the rich, dressed in their garments, ate of their food, quaffed their wines, danced in their halls, rode in their carriages, and married even their daughters and wives. The latter dared not resist, and those that did, paid with their lives. A more complete reversal of social relationships than that which followed in the city of Astrakhan after its seizure by the serf-element can hardly be conceived. This was the first instance in Russian history when the so-called lower classes, or proletarians, as we should call them in modern terminology, gained complete control of a big rich city. Stenka's victories caused a panic among the nobles and officials. Town after town capitulated to the cossack leader of the rebellion. Armies sent against him were persuaded to join him and turn against their commanders. Even in Moscow, the citadel of bureaucracy and landlordism, voices rose counselling the government to throw open the gates to the rebels and to welcome Stenka with bread and salt. These seditious utterances intensified the terror of BATTLING FOR LAND 189 the landlord-nobles. The spirit of insurrection was creeping into the capitol, the very seat of their power, and threatened to devour the very foundation of their authority and safety! To combat the revolu- tion they not only hastened to mobilize a powerful army, but also opened a vigorous propaganda cam- paign against Stenka Razin, so as to blast the moral support he was everywhere gaining among the peasant population. They knew how loyal the peasant was to the Czar, and how devoted he was to the church, so they proclaimed Stenka a foe of both, a traitor and a heathen. Priests denounced him as the antichrist, Satan incarnate, luring the ignorant into perfidy and damnation. In such manner the officials and landlords had hoped to cause mutiny in his ranks and to hasten the collapse of the rebel movement. But they thoroughly misjudged the psychology of the peasant, even as so many foreign diplomats to-day have misjudged it, much to their own dis- comfiture and often disaster and shame. Being of a concrete turn of mind with only elementary per- ceptions of life, with no political or racial or social traditions, the peasant has always gladly rallied round leaders who were waging wars for his eman- cipation regardless of the racial origin, pohtical pro- fessions and rehgious affihations of these leaders, re- gardless even of their personal character. The serfs 190 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION then as well as the mouzhik of to-day have judged their leaders not by what others have said of them, but by what they know of their aims and activities from their personal contact with them. Stenka might be a heathen, a traitor, but wherever he conquered territory, he hberated serfs, gave them land and booty, allowed them to attend to their own administrative affairs. That the peasant knew, and that rendered him impervious to the ''counter- revolutionary" appeals of Stenka's enemies. Stenka, however, felt the need of striking back at the propaganda of his foes. He would not run the risk of their being able at some unforeseen time to convert their accusations into a rallying slogan against him. He countered their attacks upon him by announcing that he was not fighting against the offices of the Czar and the church, but against the nobility and against all who were in league with the nobility. The ruling Czar, he accused, was in league with them, the ruling priests were in their hire. Both Czar and priest were corrupt, cruel — enemies of the people. He would put a new Czar upon the throne and a new patriarch at the head of the church. He would lift into power the Czar's son, who was falsely reported dead, who had only fled from the tyranny of his father but was now in his (Stenka's) care. The Czarevitch, he announced, was a friend of the people, and as such would welcome the exter- BATTLING FOR LAND 191 mination of nobles and officials so as to pave the way for the liberation of the serfs. He also promised to place at the head of the church the deposed pa- triach Nikon, a man of God, and a lover of the people. The propaganda of the officials and landlords fell upon barren soil. The peasant remained attached to Stenka. The revolution swept all of southern Russia in the Don and Volga basins, and spread swiftly north- ward. Everywhere the peasant welcomed Stenka Razin as a redeemer, a saviour, and Stenka did all in his power in word and act, to retain the faith the mouzhik had reposed in him. He shared his booty with his followers and treated them all alike, as equals. For over a year his crusade rocked Russia. Mobs of infuriated peasants swept over the fertile plains, sacked estates, burned castles, devastated cities and villages, murdered thousands of thousands of land- lords and officials. Sooner or later, however, the movement was destined to collapse. In fact the larger it grew the weaker it became. Its chief defect was the absence of a well-built central organism, that could direct and coordinate its activities at the front, in the rear and in the enemy's camps. Because of that the rebels had no well-discipUned, properly- trained army; they lacked war suppUes, and, what 192 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION was equally fatal, good military leaders. Stenka's subordinates were brave fighters but mediocre gen- erals. In the end the Moscow government strangled the revolution. Stenka and his brother Frol were captured. Put in chains and hitched to a lumbering cart, they were led on foot over the pubUc thorough- fares, to the capitol, exhibited to the populace in their punishment and ignominy as a warning to would-be defiers of estabhshed authority of what would happen to them, should they venture to follow in the footsteps of the cossack rebels. Frol com- plained of his tortures and wept. But not Stenka. He was stoic, never muttered a word of complaint. Limb after limb was slowly severed from his body, his bones were broken one by one, his hands and feet were twisted and turned and wrenched and chopped off; water, now hot, now cold, now salted, was poured alternately over his bleeding flesh — all in an effort to wring a confession of guilt from him. But he would make no confession, conscious to the end that he had committed no wrong. The only words he spoke during those hours of excruciating torture were words of admonition to his brother Frol for being so weak and womanish in his suffer- ings. At last in accordance with the barbarous custom of the times he was quartered ahve. The spirit of rebelhon, however, did not die in the peasant. It lay smouldering in him and whenever BATTLING FOR LAND 193 an opportune occasion came it flared up again in blazing fury. A century later such an occasion arose. It was in the reign of Katherine the second, and the empress herself unwittingly supplied the spark that set the fuel of rebellion aflame. She, as is known, had abolished compulsory mihtary service for nobles. Now the peasant had somehow imbibed the fantastic notion that the reason he was turned into a serf was, because the Czar was so poor that he had no way of compensating the nobles for their services other than through serf-labor, and he believed de- voutly that as soon as other means of remunerating the nobles should be discovered, serfdom would be aboUshed. Therefore, when Katherine no longer required the nobles to render army service to the state, the peasant demanded his liberation. He saw no reason why it was necessary that he should continue in bondage to the nobles when it was no longer necessary to compensate them for special serv- ice. He cried out for freedom, and his cry was con- stantly growing louder and more ominous. Katherine and the nobles sought to stifle this cry by force and to bring the peasant to submission. But — far away in the wilds of the Orenbourg steppes a cossack had heard it and it was sweet music to his ears. Yemelyan Pougatchev was the cossack's name — a name well known in Russian history. Tall, stately, with shaggy eyebrows, overhanging deepset cunning 194 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION eyes, of obscure origin, entirely illiterate, of dis- solute habits, valiant, sagacious, dauntless, bred in the cossack tradition of hate against tyrannous restraints, he, like Stenka, despised the nobles and officials of Russia, but unlike Stenka he was ani- mated by a big personal ambition. He dreamed of ascending the throne, a goal he could not attain until after he had overpowered the nobles. A master psychologist he seized upon the current spirit of un- rest among the serfs and played upon it so skill- fully, that his ranks soon swelled with thousands of followers and he launched his campaign against the established rulers. To make himself more accep- table to the peasant he annomiced that he was none other than Peter the third whom his wife Katherine was supposed to have ordered murdered. He pro- claimed that the nobles and the empress had sought his death, because he had proposed to abolish serf- dom by offering to compensate the nobles with a certain amount of specie for losses they might sus- tain through the deprivation of serf-labor. For- tunately, he explained, he eluded the assassins and escaped, and now that he, the only rightful claimant to the throne, was free once more, he would wage pitiless war against the cruel empress and the nobles, and, wherever victorious, he would abolish serfdom and distribute the land and other possessions of his enemies among the serfs. BATTLING FOR LAND 195 Pougatchev's message stirred the peasant. Liberty and Land ! These he was promised by a new saviour. Of course he would fight under Pougatchev — fight until death! From the Urals to Saratov, Russia was once more convulsed with rebellion. Serfs from everywhere fled to Pougatchev's quarters and joined his armies. Thousands upon thousands of manors were burned, their owners hideously tortured and put to death. Armies sent against the rebel-forces were hurled back and often were actually won over by skillful propa- ganda. The Moscow government for a long time seemed helpless and was threatened with annihila- tion. Pougatchev, of course, reahzing that his suc- cess depended upon the faith of the serf in his mission, abohshed serfdom in conquered territory, and, true to his word, he divided the possessions of the land- lords among his followers. Subordinates whom he caught appropriating disproportionately large shares of booty he summarily put to death. In outward appearance, in word and in act, Pougatchev betrayed nothing of his far-reaching personal ambitions. He conducted himself hke a true crusader for the rights of the bondaged peasant. The Pougatchev rebellion, however, like that of Stenka Razin, suffering from a lack of trained or- ganizers, lacking a powerful centralized war-machine, was destined to collapse. The Moscow govern- 196 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION ment in the end crushed it. Pougatchev was appre- hended. A weaker man than Stenka Razin he broke down under torture and made a full confession of his plot. That, however, did not save him — he, too, was quartered alive. Thus ended the mightiest two insurrections of the Russian peasant prior to the revolution of 1905. In these insmTections we clearly discern the under- lining general tendency of the peasant revolutionary movement, its fundamental aims and purposes and methods. It has been first and foremost a struggle against landlords, a class struggle indeed, bitter and ferocious. Wliatever the immediate or exciting cause, whether it be the personal tyranny of the land- lord, or high prices of rent, or low prices of labor, or miendurable usury; whatever the mode of warfare whether outright kilhng of the landlord, or lashing, imprisonment, or destruction of his estate, or all of these combined; whatever the period in histor}^ whether before or during or after the emancipation, in the seventeenth or in the twentieth centuries, the fundamental goal of the rebellious peasant has al- ways been the same — the winning of land and free- dom. Though in the interval between the Pougatchev uprising and the Revolution of 1905 there was no nation-wide insurrection of peasants, yet scarcely a year passed but was marked by sanguinary up- BATTLING FOR LAND 197 risings here and, there in various sections of the country. According to the Ministry of Inter- nal Affairs between the years of 1835-54, 144 land- lords were killed by mutinous peasants, and in the interval of 1835-44, 298 peasant men and 118 women were banished to Siberia for assassinating their mas- ters. During and following the Crimean war prac- tically the whole of serf-Russia was seething with local revolts, which necessitated the use of military arms to quell. During 1861-63 immediately after the emancipation proclamation was made public, the peasant, disappointed with the concession doled to him, mutinied once more. Then a lull followed, and beginning with 1870 insurrections on a large scale broke out again, due entirely to the gi'owing eco- nomic crisis following upon the increase in population without corresponding increase in material resources. As the economic crisis gamed in intensity, as land- shortage increased, quantity of live-stock decreased, and famine became more periodic and more wide- spread, discontent moimted higher and uprisings grew more rampant and more violent. Beginning with the twentieth century the spirit of unrest swept all peasant Russia in Em'ope, Caucasus and Siberia The government and the nobles treated outbursts of revolt not as a desperate search after material self- satisfaction, but as acts of wickedness, punishable by imprisonment and violence, and that only deep- 198 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION ened the exasperation of the mouzhik. In 1903-4 the Russian village was a veritable smouldering volcano of unrest, and occasional spurts of revolu- tionary fire and lava wrought havoc on numerous estates. Matters were gradually moving to a climax. In all of these manifestations of mutiny we must note the absence of formal revolutionary organiza- tions in the village, and for the most part also the absence of revolutionary leaders. Agitators of va- rious shades of political opinion were not lacking, but at best they only accelerated the process of revolutionary activity. In fact when agitators had first made their appearance in the village in the seventies, the peasant looked upon them with dis- trust and scorn, drove them from the villages and often actually turned them over to the pohce. In his ''Virgin Soil" Turgenev draws a masterful pic- ture of the early activities of revolutionary propa- gandists in the village and the attitude of the pea- sant toward them. Then came the Revolution of 1905. The uprisings of the peasant were a surprise to the revolutionary parties as much as to the government, for though all knew that the peasant had been in a rebellious mood, none had reckoned upon the widespread, determined war which he had suddenly launched against the landlords. Not in 130 years, since the days of Pougatchev, had there been such commotion BATTLING FOR L.\ND 199 and riotousness in rural Russia. With every con- ceivable weapon at hand the peasant hurled him- self upon his ancient enemy — burned castles, hay and grain-stacks, seized produce, stock, implements, and land. Particularly desperate and sanguinary were the uprisings against landlords who offered resistance. In the Baltic sections where the Lettish peasant is better educated and better organized, and where the German barons were notoriously the most ruthless landlords in Russia, the battles the peasant fought were the bloodiest of the entire Revolution. The Revolution of 1905 in city and village failed. But the government realized the menace of the rebellious village, and to ward off future outbreaks, it proceeded to introduce reforms. The legal posi- tion of the peasant was somewhat improved. Even before the Revolution, on March 25th, 1903, the collective responsibility of the mir for each individual taxpayer was abolished. On the 24th of August of the same year, corporal punishment was likewise done away with. After the Revolution a few other concessions were granted. The peasant was ad- mitted to higher schools of education, and to various branches of government service, from which he had been previously barred. The authority of the Z em- sky Nachalnik over him was curbed, nominally at least, and the processes of procuring a passport were simplified. On the other hand, the old district 200 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION courts, juggling balls in the hands of intriguing officials and landlords, remained unchanged, and the mir as formerly had the right to exile a member to Siberia without trial, while corporal punishment was practiced despite its abohtion by law; and, fur- thermore, the Zemsky Nachalnik continued to exer- cise his powers of coercion and intimidation. More interesting was the new economic policy of the government, fathered by the astute Stolypin. His aim was to render impotent the revolutionary movement in the village, and to achieve this he resolved to break up the commune so as to destroy the social unity of the peasant and thus prevent concerted action, and also to create a class of pros- perous peasant land proprietors, who in defense of their economic interests would gravitate to the sup- port of the landlords and the government against the poor and rebellious peasant. To this end he promul- gated the now famous and elaborate homestead act, according to which a peasant might upon application separate himself from the commune, build up a homestead, and enjoy all the privileges and comforts that go with individual ownership of land. If the government had thrown open vast areas of new lands to the peasant, free, or at a small price, Stolypin's scheme might have proved, successful. The peasant would have acquired a homestead, grown attached to it, and might have forgotten the BATTLING FOR LAND 201 Revolution. But since the area of land available for homestead purposes was very limited, Stoly- pin's poHcy could not but result in failure. In all, 2,400,000 heads of families appHed for permission to separate from the commune, though government offi- cials, by all manner of tricks, sought to stimulate separation from the mir and thus hasten its break-up. These appHcants, however, were mostly from prov- inces that had only been recently colonized, or where, owing to the lay of the land, homesteading had proved to be more desirable, and on that account the commune had not struck deep roots there. There were fifteen such provinces out of a total of fifty in European Russia, and they furnished sixty per cent of the applicants for homesteads. Not all applicants actually established homesteads. Slightly more than half did not. They merely hastened to estabUsh their right to the private ownership of land, so as to be in a position to sell it. Only 1,140,000 heads of families had built homesteads. But many of these soon discovered that owing to shortage in land their separation from the commune was a decided dis- advantage. They had neither woodland, nor pasture, nor tillable land sufficient to raise summer feed for then' stock and bread for themselves. In consequence many of them were compelled to dispose of a portion of their stock, and in the case of the Russian peasant diminution of number of heads of stock always 202 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION leads to economic deterioration. During the last few years prior to the Revolution there was a tend- ency on the part of many homesteaders to return to the commune, while the number of applicants for separation had slumped heavily. In 1915 it was only one-seventh of what it had been in 1908, the year in which the homestead act had proved most popular. Stolypin's scheme, then, while it benefitted greatly a small number of peasants, failed on the whole to bring rehef to the vast bulk of the peasantry. Fully seventy per cent of them continued to suffer from land-shortage and all that the term implies. CHAPTER XII THE CADETS AND THE PEASANTS The war greatly aggravated the agrarian crisis in Russia, for reasons that are quite obvious to anyone familiar with the economic life of that country. In the first place the mobilization of about eighteen million soldiers drained seriously the supply of labor. Secondly, the war caused an acute shortage of agri- cultural implements and materials for repair. Har- nessed to war purposes, Russia's industries greatly curtailed the manufacture of farm tools, scanty even under normal conditions. At the same time, it was exceedingly difficult to import them, for Germany from whom before the war Russia was buying large quantities of agricultural machinery — of plows alone forty-three per cent of the entire supply — was cut off. As for the other industrial nations, especially of the Allied group, they were inconveniently removed from Russia, and with the blockade in operation in the Baltic and in the Dardanelles, commercial rela- tions with them became exceedingly difiicult. Be- sides, their output of agricultural implements was materially reduced by the war. Not having new machinery the peasant continued to use his old 204 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION dilapidated tools, which he could not even repair, because proper material was lacking. A third cause contributing to the new agrarian crisis was the de- crease of live-stock in the village. The best horses were drafted into the army, and cattle the mouzhik was tempted to sell because of the inordinately high prices. Under these circumstances acute suffering was imminent. Ti-ue, the peasant possessed more money than ever before, but it was paper money — metal coins had practically disappeared from ch'cu- lation — and its value was constantly diminishing because of the constantly rising prices. In reality the peasant was growing poorer — he was disposing of a large portion of his principal, and his paper money could not buy kerosene, iron, leather, oils, sugar. The longer the war lasted the poorer he be- came. Add to this the personal sorrows that visited tens of thousands of families in the country-side as a result of the war, and we can easily understand how thoroughly prepared the peasant was for a revolution. He welcomed the March upheaval with joy. It meant to him the immediate possibility of real- izing his long-cherished dream of coming into full possession of the land. AU other problems shrank in importance before the one of expropriating the pomiestchiks. The industrial collapse, the military disasters, the necessity of pooling together all available resources and energies and of forgetting THE CADETS AND THE PEASANTS 205 personal aims and ambitions, if victory over Ger- many was to be achieved, did not stir him. He cared not so much for victory over Germany as for the conquest of the landlords, for of what good, he reasoned, was to him the defeat of Germany, if the landlords remained in power and in possession of the land? He lost interest in the external war and cen- tered his attention upon the internal readjustment. This was evidenced in his refusal to release stored grains for the market, when nothing but paper money was offered as payment, by his refusal to pay taxes, by his indifference to the liberty loans which the Pro- visional Government had floated, and still more flagrantly by the spontaneous widespread seizure of landlords' estates, all of which tended further to dis- rupt the already shattered economic organism of the coutitry. The Russian newspapers for that period printed long and detailed accounts of these so-called agrarian disturbances. Judging from these accounts there was on the whole comparatively little destruction of life and property. The reason for this was that the landlords in the absence of military forces to defend them, offered scarcely any resistance, and that the peasant was animated not as much by a desu'e to wreak vengeance as by a wish to possess himself of the land. That does not mean that the crusade against the landlords did not involve attacks 206 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION upon life and property. In many places mansions were demolished, bams burned, household effects, from furniture to linen, paintings, pianos, libraries, torn, smashed, and set on fire. Considering, however, the magnitude and character of the movement there was, upon the whole, less violence than might have been expected. How then did the various poUtical parties who were bidding for the support of the peasant propose to solve this most burning of all domestic problems? Upon the correct solution of this problem hinged not merely the success of these parties, but the fortunes of the Revolution. Without the support of the peas- ant no party, however rich its intellectual resources and however abundant its active energies, could possibly remain in power or wield marked political influence, and no task of national magnitude, how- ever laudable its aim, could possibly be executed. Though not the initiating and immediately directing force in Russian political hfe, the peasant, neverthe- less, is the determining factor. For any political party to leave the peasant out of the reckoning or to reckon with him insufficiently, is to invite disaster. The first party that ascended to power after the Czar was overthrown, were the Cadets, Constitu- tional Democrats. Not all the ministers in the new Cabinet were Cadets. Three were Octobrists, former supporters of the autocracy and avowed THE CADETS AND THE PEASANTS 207 monarchists. One, Kerensky, was a socialist. The Cadets, however, held seven, a majority of the portfoUos. Professor Paul Milyukov, the founder of the party and its most brilliant exi^onent, became Minister of Foreign Aifau's, which was the most delicate and important office. He was the leading spirit in the Cabinet — its very constituency was largely the result of his labors — so that many writers and public men refer to it as the Milyukov Ministry. What was or rather is the agrarian program of the Cadets? To gain a clear and comprehensive as well as sympathetic conception of it, it is necessary to give a brief survey of the origin of the party, its constituency, its political aims, and its past activi- ties. The party was founded in 1905 by Milyukov. Originally it was made up of college professors, publicists, lawyers, zej?istvo-woTkers, liberal noble- men, small shopkeepers, business-men and all other elements to whom autocracy was either economically or intellectually intolerable, and to whom the radi- calism of the other opposition parties, all socialist of various shades, was repugnant. After the March Revolution, when the monarchist parties had lost the very foundation of their existence, the Cadets absorbed them, too. The outstanding feature of the Cadet philosophy of government — parliamentarism — is the poUtical 208 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION expression of the economic interests and the social ideology of the elements that make up the party. On the one hand are the intellectuals — teachers, publi- cists, lawyers, men of an academic stamp of mind, students of parhamentary institutions and constitu- tional forms of government, and by traditions, habits of thought, temperament and traming, averse to violent changes in govenunent. They are not of the masses, nor even in close contact with them, but are earnestly interested in their welfare. In a parha- mentary form of government, preferably a constitu- tional monarchy, in the slow sohd development of a parliamentary state, patterned more or less after the Anglo-Saxon model, they see a panacea for all Rus- sia's ills. They are sticklers for legality and regu- larity. Though they advocate many advanced social measures such as an eight-hour labor day, social insurance, progressive inlieritance and income taxes, and other measures of a similar nature, they insist that these must be inaugurated only in a legal manner, after a constitution has been adopted and government machinery set up. In other words, they condition the fulfillment of their social reforms upon the attainment of their political goal. Direct action of any nature, they deprecate. On the other hand, are the commercial classes who chafed under the restraints of the old government, which ham- pered them seriously in their promotion of industry THE CADETS AND THE PEASANTS 209 and commerce. In political liberties, in the slow growth of a parliamentary state, in the gradual orderly transition from one system of government to the other, they see an opportunity to develop and expand Russian trade and industry without the serious interruptions and catastrophic setbacks incident to a violent reversal of existing institutions. It is quite natural, then, that the Cadets should exhibit a dread of the Revolution, with its direct mass action. Ever since the founding of their party, the Cadets have striven to bring the opposition to the old government under their control, to temper its passion and prevent it from hazardous and vio- lent action. They were ever ready to welcome the smallest concession granted by the government — rather than resort to revolutionary action to obtain substantial reforms. They cheerfully accepted Min- ister Bulygin's project for a consultative Duma, which was only a sop to an aroused people. Their argument was that once the principle of parliamen- tarism was recognized, even though its embodiment was inadequate, they would be in a position ulti- mately to transform the imperfect institution in accordance with their own conceptions. Only when the first Duma was dissolved and their hopes were shattered, did the Cadets exhibit a genuine revolu- tionary spirit, which was manifest in the Voborg manifesto calling upon the people to refuse to pay 210 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION taxes and to resist drafting into the army. But that was only an outburst of momentary rage, a flitting gesture of desperation, and not a genuine change of tactical principles, for soon after that they slumped into a position of acquiescence. When the second Duma was dismissed and the election laws were so manipulated as to permit a small class of landlords to control a majority of the deputies, the Cadets bowed in submission. And though the third Duma was a mere hollow shell of a parhament, they strove desperately to save it from the fate of its predecessor. They compromised, capitulated, swallowed insults, all in order to save the Duma. Better an impotent Duma, than no Duma at all, they argued. Their dread of revolution was even more vividly expressed in their attitude toward the March up- heaval. Several months before the occurrence of that epochal event, when the rumble of discontent was constantly gaining in volume, Milyukov said: ''If a revolution is necessarj^ to bring about victory- Cover Germany) I do not want victory." And later just a short time before the coming of the Revolu- tion, when provocateurs spread the rumor that Mil- yukov was going about the factories of Petrograd counselUng the workers to revolt, he issued a state- ment vogorously denying the rumor and then em- phasized the fact that he had not the least sympathy with activities imputed to him. When the Revolu- THE CADETS AND THE PEASANTS 211 tion finally heaved into being, sudden, spontaneous, leaderless, Milyukov was in despair. ''In fifteen minutes," he said watching the surging crowds in the streets, ''it will be squashed in blood," and had he possessed the power he would have persuaded the frantic mobs to disperse and he would have blotted out from their minds the very thought of Revolu- tion. Only after the soldiers and cossacks dis- patched to suppress the rebellious populace had joined in the processions, and it became evident that the old regime was a mere corpse, requiring merely to have its remains removed; only when the Revolution was an accomplished fact did Milyukov and his colleagues in the Duma change front and welcome the unbidden and much dreaded visitor. The Duma being the only more or less popular organization in existence, assumed charge of affairs, elected a provisional committee which in turn chose the Cabinet, virtually putting the Cadets, then the most influential party in the Duma, at the helm of the new government. The coming of the Cadets into power was, therefore, nothing more than a happy accident — there was no one else, no party, no organization, no institution at that time prepared to dispute the authority of the Duma. And when the Cadets came mto power their dread of the Revolution was undiminished, and they strove to press its course into the channel of their 212 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION political conceptions. According to A. A. Bublikov, a prominent conservative member of the Duma, who practically of his own accord had seized control of the railroads and had thereby paralyzed all activi- ties of the old regime, and who was chairman of the committee that made the Czar a prisoner, when Milyukov was asked what would be the program of the new ministry he rephed, "Of course the program of the bloc." The bloc was a coalition of all poUtical parties in the Duma excepting the extremes of either end, who had agreed, says Bublikov, "upon quite a moderate program for the purpose of waging a parUamentary struggle against the Czar's ministry." In other words, the weapon which the Cadets had used against the Czar, they now intended to make the program for Russia after the Czar was over- thrown. Not only had the Cadets embraced a policy which no longer possessed vitality, they stubbornly fought for the preservation of the monarchy, for the perpet- uation of the throne and the office of the Czar. WTiat they wanted was not a republic but a constitutional monarchy with a parliament and a ministry respon- sible to it, modelled largely after the British form of government. How the urban masses viewed the effort to save the dynasty is best illustrated in the following two incidents. In his book the "Russian Revolution," THE CADETS AND THE PEASANTS 213 Bublikov tells of an address delivered before an audience of railroad workers in Petrograd by Guch- kov, Minister of War in the first Provisional Govern- ment, upon his return from the trip he made to ob- tain the act of abdication from Nicholas Romanov. After reading the act of abdication, Guchkov ex- claimed, ''Long live Emperor Michael the second." (Michael was the Czar's brother.) "The working- men," says Bublikov, "grew furious and closing their shops they announced their firm determination to de- stroy the act and to lynch Guchkov." With great difficulty a railroad official succeeded in keeping the workers from carrying out their resolution. Milyn- kov had a somewhat similar experience. When he appeared in the big Duma hall to announce the for- mation of the new Cabinet, he stated that Grand Duke Michael would become the regent and the for- mer Czar's son Alexey the heir to the throne. A storm of protest broke loose. On all sides were heard shouts, "Down with the Romanovs! Down with the Grand Dukes! Down with the dynasty! We want no monarchs! Long live the republic!" The soldiers were especially hostile, " What does it mean?" they argued, "we have fought and fought and fought and he wants to thrust a monarch upon our necks!" They pelted Milyukov with sharp questions, their indignation and anger growing more intense. At last to pacify them Milyukov felt 214 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION obliged to explain that he was merely expressing his own personal opinion, which was not at all binding upon the country. Whatever, therefore, one may think of the Cadet poHtical program, the indisputable fact is, that there is almost an unbridgeable chasm between the Cadets and the masses. The Cadets are scholars, saturated with western poHtical thought and tradi- tion, advocates of western especially Anglo-Saxon political institutions, averse to revolutionaiy tactics under all circumstances, bent upon subjecting the evolution of Russia to their formulas, whereas the masses do not even understand the language of the Cadets, have as yet cultivated no regard for con- stitutional formalities, are impelled in their thoughts and actions by their immediate wants, and are ready to resort to any method available, however desper- ate, to attain their goal. No wonder that E. J. Dillon, a conservative writer, with utter contempt for Russian radicalism, is constrained to say: ''The Cadets who deserved their reputation of being the best organized party in the Empire, had not firm hold on the nation, because they were not of it, they could not place themselves at its angle of vision, were incapable of appreciating its world- philosophy, were not rooted in the people. Hence they did not enlist the peasant and the workingman in their party and stood only for themselves." THE CADETS AND THE PEASANTS 215 From all that has been said above it would be logical to infer that the agrarian program of the Cadets would not correspond with the wishes of the peasant. Let us examine it. It can be divided into two parts, one dealing with temporary measures to be adopted before the summoning of the Constituent Convention, the other presenting a final solution of the land problem to be adopted by the National Convention that was to settle all the fundamental problems of the nation. As regards the temporary measures they were intended chiefly to preserve peace in the village, to prevent seizm^es of land, confiscation of five-stock, grains, machinery and other property. The land- lords were to remain in possession of their land, the peasant of his. Land committees, local and national, were to arbitrate any differences that might arise between landlord and peasant as regards rentals, wages of labor and other matters of conflict, and were in general to help the peasant "pull through" until the convocation of the Constituent. The right of private property was to remain inviolate, and land- lords might sell and mortgage their land or do with it anything else they pleased. It was wise, indeed, on the part of the Cadets to seek to prevent anarchy in the village. But the most tactful and determined land-committees in the world could not possibly have averted it as long as the 216 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION landlords continued to enjoy the right of sale or mortgage. The poor peasant especially would have rebelled against this right for he could not watch with composure any transfer of land to any city folks, rich peasants or foreign syndicates. He would have regarded such acts as an attempt on the part of the landlords to deprive him of what he thought was his by all the moral rights of possession. Furthermore, new sales and mortgages would have created" new claims, new disputes, for the Constit- uent to settle. In case of foreign investors, there surely would have been many of them, for the land- lords, in fear of unfavorable action in the Constit- uent, would have hastened to bargain off their estates to any possessors of ready cash, many of whom in Russia were foreigners or had foreign financial connections; the Constituent might be face to face with a deUcate international problem in trying to dispose of what was legally property of foreigners. Immediate prohibition of all forms of sale and mortgage in land was imperative. But the Cadets would have none of it. ^Vhen the peasant Congress passed a resolution urging such prohibition, the Cadets denounced it, and when the Social- Revolutionary Chernov succeeded the Cadet Shin- garev as Minister, of Agriculture after the fall of the first Provisional Government, they used all their influence to prevent him from issuing such a regula- THE CADETS AND THE PEASANTS 217 tion. When he finally defied them and issued a decree prohibiting transaction in purchase of land, they were so inflamed that they charged him with being a traitor, a German agent, and turned upon his person a stream of abuse. Not even after a court of honor had exonerated Chernov of their accusa- tions, did they abandon their assaults upon his character. Thus the temporary agrarian measures proposed by the Cadets were not only inadequate but sub- versive of the very ends they were intended to achieve. But it is in their final solution of the agrarian program that we most clearly discern the remarkable divergence between Cadet theory and peasant reahty. The Cadets, like all other poHtical parties excepting the Bolshevists, insisted that the final disposition of the land question should be left to the authority of the Constituent. They were, however, in no hurry to summon the assembly. In their incurable dread of the Revolution they strove desperately to post- pone it in the hope that the flush of revolutionary fervor would subside and then they would have a better chance of dominating the assembly. They knew that if the Constituent were summoned soon, the peasant representing the vast majority of the population would swamp it with his delegates and while in the heat of revolutionary passion would 218 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION carry through his own program, which was not at all after their heart. Therefore, at the outbreak of the Revolution they advocated the postponement of the Constituent until after the war, which they were determined to fight through to victory. They soon discovered, however, that the people were in no mood to tolerate such a poUcy and they abandoned it, contenting themselves with a vigorous opposi- tion to the inmiediate summoning of the national assembly. Diu-ing March and April, 1917, while they held the reigns of government, they scarcely made a move to prepare the nation for the much longed-for convention. They merely promised to summon it, but appointed neither time nor place and nominated no commission to prepare the ma- chinery for the elections. After the fall of the Mil- yukov ministry, when the cry calhng for the Constit- uent mounted dangerously higher and higher from day to day, an announcement was finally made that it would be convened on the 30th of September, 1917. That, however, did not suit the taste of the Cadets, though their representatives in the Cabinet had approved of the announcement. They urged a further postponement, claiming that the people could not be properly prepared for elections within the allotted space of time. The Kerensky adminis- tration finally yielded to pressure, and the elections were postponed until the 30th of November. THE CADETS AND THE PEASANTS 219 All of this could not but displease the peasant. He was concerned solely with the speedy solution of the land problem, and any measure that was calculated to retard his coming into possession of the land, could not but rouse his suspicion and impatience and goad him into acts of violence. The Cadet tactics, therefore, instead of abating, only heightened the revolutionary passion of the mouzhik, which circum- stance demonstrates anew how woefully the Cadets misjudged the working of the peasant's mind. It is, however, in the mode of the Cadets' final solution of the land problem, that we perceive the most marked difference between their program and the peasant's aspirations. The main features of this solution are embodied in their program adopted in April, 1917, in the article entitled the ''Agrarian Law." The article opens with a statement to the effect that the party is aware of the gravity of the eco- nomic crisis in the village, and favors the enlarge- ment of the peasant landholdings, 'Ho be effected through the confiscation of state, appanage, cabinet and monastery lands and also through the compul- sory ahenation of privately owned lands to the extent that may be found necessary." Such lands shall be turned into a state land-fund out of which the peas- ant shall be allotted a new share, through the instru- mentahty of the Government land commissions. The amount of land each peasant shall receive shall be 220 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION equal to his alimentary norm, which is defined as "such an area of land which, under the given circum- stances, and taking into consideration the income derived from other sources, wherever such exist, shall be sufficient to cover the average requirements for food, house, clothing and the payment of taxes." The land shall not become the private property of the recipient, but shall be held by him only as long as he shall work it. The manner of holding, whether individual or communal, shall be left to the choice of each locality. The landlords shall be compensated for the land. The amount of compensation shall be based upon the normal, that is, average income de- rived in the given locality, not from rentals but from personal operation of the estate. This income shall serve as a basis of capitalization. If, for example, the income from a dessyatin is ten roubles and the current rate of interest is five per cent, the dessyatin is valued at two hundred roubles. Payments shall be made in interest-bearing securities issued by the Government out of the taxes collected from all citi- zens. These are the main features of the Cadet program. How do they tally with the actual and potential aspirations of the peasant? To begin with, the Cadets do not propose to alien- ate all the land of the pomieshtchiks, whereas the peasant does, with the possible exception of such areas as the owners may want to till, not with hired, THE CADETS AND THE PEASANTS 221 but with their own hands. Of course, if there were an unUmited amoimt of arable land in Russia, if there were enough to carve out generous allot- ments to the peasant without the need of breaking up all the big estates, the Cadets might, through compromise and concession in other respects, suc- ceed in carrying out this particular feature of their program. But the available land in Russia is scarcely sufficient to meet the needs of the many milUons of peasants, and it is hard to conceive how any one of them should he be possessed even of a more or less substantial allotment, will acquiesce in his neighboring landlord's holding a big estate. His appetite for land will not be satisfied as long as there shall be such estates and, therefore, an opportunity to add another strip to his farm. Secondly, the ahmentary norm the Cadets propose as a basis for each individual allotment will not satisfy the peasant for any length of time, even should he at first agree to that arrangement, which in the majority of cases he will not. The very notion that he is entitled to no more than the barest neces- sities of hving will in course of time prove repugnant to him. Besides, the Cadets do not propose that the peasant shall himself determine what this ahmen- tary norm shall be. The government shall do that — ^presumably a government that would favor the Cadet program and would, therefore, be interested in 222 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION reducing to a minimum the amount of expropriated land, ultimately therefore the alimentary norm of the peasant, which practically means his standard of living. Further, no such alimentary norm is pro- posed for the landlords. They shall be at liberty to maintain whatever standard of living they choose. This surely would be clearly a case of class legislation in favor of the landlords, and would offer to the radical elements a mighty weapon with which to rouse the hostility of the mouzhik. Granted, however, that the peasant at first accepts the alimentaiy norm and the minimum expropria- tion of estates, he will be content with such a reform only as long as the attainment of the barest neces- sities of Ufe constitutes his sole immediate goal. Once he has reached this goal, he will strive for other things. Sheer instinct and also that education which even the Cadets promise to him, will lead to an in- crease of his wants. He will want a daily newspaper, which very few peasants can now afford, magazines, books, better clothes, better furniture, better wagons and buggies; he will want to build larger, more attrac- tive homes; he will want to go to towTi to the "movies" or to some other entertainment; being exceedingly musical, he will want musical instru- ments and other things, which may seem luxuries at first, but which with the development of his individ- uality will become necessities, just as the telephone THE CADETS AND THE PEASANTS 223 and automobile have become with the American farmer. But being chained to a fixed alimentary norm, he will be prevented from raising his standard of living. Further, to the peasant the Cadets' proposal to compensate the landlords for whatever land should be aUenated from them, is even more objectionable than their scheme for the distribution of land. Of course the Cadets do not propose to have the peasant remunerate the landlords. The government shall do that out of the general tax collected from all citizens. Now the vast majority, about 80 per cent of the citizens in Russia, are peasants, consequently by and large most of the compensation for the landlords will come out of the mouzhik's coffers. True, the Cadets propose an income and inheritance tax, which should it be heavy enough, might throw the burden of tax- ation upon the richer classes. But representing the interests of these classes as they do, the Cadets are not likely to favor such a measure, especially when one takes into consideration the fact that the Cadets regard Russian capital as a precious infant needing all the possible care to enable it to grow strong and convert Russia into a powerful industrial nation. It follows, therefore, that the burden of remunerating the landlords will fall upon the mouzhik. Now that would not be so bad if the amount of compensation were moderate. From the peasant's 224 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION point of view it is exorbitant. The Cadets propose to insure to the landlords an income equal to the average they derived not from rentals but from "sobstvennoy otrahotki,'' that is, from personal oper- ation of the farm. The distinction between rentals and income from personal operation is more or less illusor}'. It stands to reason that while in certain locahties there may be quite a substantial discrepancy between the two, on the whole the one tends to at- tain the level of the other, for if a landlord can derive a larger income by renting land, than he can by managing his own tillage of crops, he will, of course, do so, especially when one takes into consid- eration the fact that the demand for rent-land was much greater than the supply. If, therefore, the Cadets propose to guarantee to the landlords an income that shall be equal to the average they derived from personal management of their estates, they really guarantee to them the income derived from renting their land, and rentals, as has already been pointed out, were exorbitant, and were one of the chief causes of the impoverishment of the mouzhik. Now the biggest part of compensation the landlords are to receive, will come from the peasant. This has been pointed out in the preceding paragraph. In other words, the Cadets through their scheme of land-indemnity to be paid to the pomieshtchiks would actually compel the peasant to continue to pay big THE CADETS AND THE PEASANTS 225 rentals for whatever additional land he may acquire. The only differences between the system that pre- vailed under the Czar and the one the Cadets propose to inaugurate, is that the amount of rent under the latter would be somewhat reduced, and that instead of paying directly to the landlords, the peasant would have to pay it to them indirectly in the form of a state tax. Under these circumstances with the best of intentions the Cadets cannot hope materially to improve the condition of the mouzhik. He will not have the means to purchase better tools, better seed, fertilizer and the other things necessary to raise the productivity of his soil. Of course the Cadets prom- ise to extend liberal aid to him so as to enable him to improve his technical equipment. But where will they obtain the means for such aid? They will float loans, indorse liabiUties. And then what? They will have to pay their debts in the future and only through taxation, the bulk of which will come out of the peasant's pocket. As a matter of fact the peasant is thoroughly and vigorously opposed to any form of land indemnities. He does not regard the pomieshtchiks as owners but as usurpers. He has no respect whatever for their claim to their inviolate rights to the land. In all of the peasant's utterances on the subject, whether in the form of written resolutions or speeches, the point with regard to compensation has been made emphati- 226 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION cally clear. The peasant simply refuses to sanction any form of remuneration to the landlords. Perhaps the finest and most conclusive evidence on the matter is embodied in the numerous speeches of the peasant deputies in the second Duma, when the question of compensation was under discussion. These deputies, it must be remembered, acted under detailed in- structions from their constituents, so that their utterances reveal not only their personal attitude, but also that of the peasant masses. I shall quote portions of several speeches of peasant deputies relating to the subject of land-indemnities. The simphcity, crudeness and occasional confusion in expression only lend emphasis to the ideas presented. Peasant deputy Nyetchailo said: ''We are told to buy this land, which belongs to the people. Buy it? Are we newly arrived foreigners from England, France or some other country? Why then should we have to buy our own lands? We have paid for them a ten-fold price with our labor, our sweat, our blood and our money." Peasant deputy Ku-sonov from Saratov, one of the poorest provinces, said: "We are talking of land these days as of nothing else. We are told it is a sacred inviolate possession. I think if the people want it, there can be no invio- lateness about it. Gentlemen of the nobility! You think we have forgotten the time when you used us THE CADETS AND THE PEASANTS 227 as stakes in playing at cards and exchanged us for dogs! We know we were your sacred inviolate property. But the land has been stolen from us. The peasants who have sent me here have said: that the land is ours! We have come here not to buy, but to take it." Deputy Fomitchev said : ''We, the representatives of the peasants, cannot accede to the demand for compensation, because compensation would only be a noose round our necks." Peasant deputy AfTanasyev, representing one mil- lion peasants from the Don region, said : "Work, sweat and make use of the land. But if you want to hve on the land, if you do not want to work it, if you do not want to apply your labor to it, you have no right to draw any benefit from it." Deputy Semyonov said: "For two hundred years we have been waiting for the treasure to fall from heaven. But in vain. The land has remained in the hands of the big landlords, who have acquired it through the sacrifices of our fathers and gi'andfathers. But the land is not theirs, it is God's. I understand perfectly well, that the land belongs to the toiling people, to those who sweat over it. Deputy Purishkevitch (a rabid reactionary) says ' Help ! Revolution ! ' What does it mean? Yes, if the land is taken from them, they and not we will 228 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION make a revolution. We shall continue to fight for our rights, but we shall be a peaceful people. Have we 150 dessyatins each like the priest? And what of the land of the monasteries and churches? What do they need it for? No, gentlemen, it is time to stop hoarding fortunes and hidmg them in your pockets. It is time we also actually began to live. The country will understand everything, gentlemen. I understand everj^thing perfectly well. We are hon- est citizens. We do not occupy ourselves with politics, as one of the preceding orators has said. They (the landlords), fattened on our blood and our lives, loaf around. We shall remember this, but we shall not offend them, we shall even give them land. If we figure 16 dessyatins for each household in our section, there will still remain fifty dessyatins for every one of them. Thousands, millions of our people are starving, and they are feasting, and when we are in the army and fall ill, we are told 'he has land in his native place.' But where is this place, this native country!' We have none, or only such where it is recorded on paper where we were born, and what our religion is. But we have no land. Yes, I want to tell you, that our people have instructed me to have all the church monastery, state appanage, and pomieshtchiks' lands transferred to those who will work them. I want to tell you that my people have sent me here to demand land and freedom and THE CADETS AND THE PEASANTS 229 civil liberties, and we shall go on with our work, and shall not point out landlords here and peasants there. We shall all be equal, each a lord in his own place." Deputy Morozov said: ^ "We must take the land away from the priests and pomieshtchiks. They (the priests) speak of the Holy Gospel and read to us the words 'Ask and it shall be given imto you, knock and it shall be opened unto you.' We have been asking, asking, but they have not given unto us; we have been knocking, knocking and they have not opened unto us. Shall it become necessary for us to break the door and take things by force? Gentlemen, do not allow the doors to be broken. Give voluntarily. Then we shall have freedom and liberty, and you shall live well, and we shall live well." Deputy Sakhnov from the province of Kiev said: "At present the peasants are very poor, because they have no land. The peasant suffers at the hands of the pomieshtchiks, who oppress him terribly. Why is it the pomieshtchiks can have so much land and the peasant only the one kingdom in heaven? Gentlemen, when the peasants sent me here, they instructed me to defend their interests and to demand that all the lands of the church, monasteries, appan- ages, pomieshtchiks shall be taken without compen- sation. Know, gentlemen representatives of the people, a hungry man cannot sit still, when he ob- 230 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION serves that despite his woe, the government is on the side of the landlords. He cannot help wanting land, even if it is against the law; necessity compels him to want it. A hungiy man is ready for everything, because need compels him to disregard all considera- tions, for he is hungry and poor." One could quote numerous pages of speeches embodying similar thoughts and sentiments. De- spite the incoherence, commonplaceness, question- able granmiar of these utterances, they voice the conceptions and desires of the peasant more pro- foundly and more vigorously than the multitude of carefully prepared theses with their cautious phrasing and finely spun logic, that have been written by various students of the peasant problem. From these speeches it is only too obvious how the peasant regards compensation. But the Cadets aver that confiscation of land without compensation will precipitate an economic crisis. In the words of Izgoyev, one of their most brilliant writers, "the land is burdened with heavy debts; large industrial enteiprises are financially connected with it. If it should come about that the debts on the land in Russia are not paid, our entire financial structure will be upset. Our credit will collapse, and since foreigners are greatly interested in our industrial and banking institutions and in our national loans, having invested huge sums of money THE CADETS AND THE PEASANTS 231 in them, we shall run the risk of having foreigners estabhsh control over our finances as has already been done with Greece, Turkey, Persia, China." There is more panic than logic in the warning of Iz- goyev. Perhaps he would have been justified in con- juring the specter of a national financial crash and the possibility of foreign control, if the indebtedness on the land of the pomieshtchiks that would be subject to alienation were equal to its market value, which it is not. According to Z. S. Kazenelenbaum of Moscow University, a student of pronounced Cadet sympathies, there are in all about fifty million dessya- tins of arable land in possession of landlords. While the maximum value of this land is between 5.9 and 5 billions of roubles, the indebtedness upon it is but 2.5 billions, that is about one-half of the minimum value. The government could, therefore, confiscate aU the lands of the pomieshtchiks^ make good all the liabilities against it, both foreign and domestic, and thereby avert the possibility of an internal financial collapse and the possibility of foreign inter- vention, which the Cadets dread, and still save to the taxpayers a debt of 2.5 billion roubles, the annual interest on which alone would amount to 150 milHon roubles or about half of what that interest was for the entire national debt in 1907. The Cadets know as well as any one that no government — excepting an ultra-revolutionary — would deliberately plunge 232 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION the nation into a serious financial crisis, and that those parties who oppose compensation would as a matter of sheer self-protection make some arrange- ments whereby the heavy mortgages on the pomiesh- tchiks' lands could be hfted. But Ufting these mort- gages is one thing, supporting handsomely thousands of landlords by allowing them a yearly stipend equal to their average income from their land is quite another. Thus the Cadet agrarian program does not fit in with the desires and aspirations of the mouzhik. Inveterate compromisers that they are, the Cadets attempt to reconcile the peasant and landlord, which simply cannot be done, for the interests of the one are in every respect diametrically opposed to those of the other. No wonder that when the workers and soldiers of Petrograd demanded the resignation of Milyukov, because of his adherence to the foreign pohcies of the Czarist regime, as expressed in his note to the AUies pledging Russia to abide by all the agreements with them, secret and open, the Cadets found no support whatever in rural Russia, and Milyukov had to resign. No wonder also in the elections to the Constituent held in November, 1917, the Cadets elected no more than 8 deputies out of a total of 800! No one would, of course, accuse the leaders of the Cadet party of indifference to the lot of the peasant. THE CADETS AND THE PEASANTS 233 On the contrary, men like Milyukov, Hessen, Roditchev, Struve, Petrunkevitch, are big of heart, and are only too eager to help the mouzhik rise out of his poverty. Were it merelj^ a question of personal sacrifice these men would gladly offer their all to elevate the peasant to a prosperous condition. But they do not approach the Russian peasant in terms of his own immediate needs and wishes. Steeped in western ideas of government, they measure Russia only with the western political yardstick, which the peasant does not and has not the desire to under- stand. The Cadets, however, have as yet been unable to grasp the fundamental error of their agrarian pro- gram. Defeat and disaster and isolation have taught them little. They still profess faith in their solution of the agrarian crisis, despite the fact that the peasant has overwhelmingly rejected it in resolution, speech and at the polls. In an article in the ''New Europe" of February 13, 1919, Milyukov reiterates that only the Cadet program can satisfactorily settle the land question. He writes as follows: "Others ask in the same manner whether it would not be well in order to introduce social peace in Russia to start with a radical agrarian program. My answer is always the same. Before political elections can take place or agrarian reforms carried through, we must first emerge from the present state of chaos, 234 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION introduce some degree of order and at least safe- guard the life and property of the citizens." It would be really interesting to know how Mil- yukov proposes to establish the order he advocates as a prerequisite for internal reconstruction. Is it through propaganda and exhortation? He and his colleagues have agitated brilUantly, have exhorted passionately, yet have failed disastrously. Is it through force? There can be no other alternative. Force was what Stolypin resorted to in the Revolu- tion which followed the Russo-Japanese War. Is it possible that Milyukov, who is by temperament averse to violence and bloodshed, would sanction a campaign of pacification a la Stolypin? Has he forgotten his own scorching denunciations of the unspeakable minion of Czardom? CHAPTER XIII THE SOCIAL-REVOLUTIONARIES AND THE PEASANT With the fall of the Milyukov Ministry and the coming of the coalition government the task of solving the land problem fell to the lot of the mod- erate elements in the Socialist parties, particularly to the Social-Revolutionaries. Victor Chernov, leader of the last-named party, became Minister of Agriculture, and Kerensky, with whose name the new Provisional Government was identified, was also a leader in the Social-Revolutionary party. It must be remembered, of course, that the new administra- tors of the department of Agriculture, were not always in a position to exercise their own judgments and to enforce their own principles. They were seriously hampered in the Cabinet by the opposition of the more conservative ministers. On the whole, however, the agrarian pohcies of the new Provisional Government reflected the attitude of the moderate and chiefly moderate Social-Revolutionary parties toward the peasant. More than any other pohtical party the Social- Revolutionaries have the distinction of being of «36 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION native growth. The Cadets, we have ah*eady learned, have borrowed exhaustively from current western conceptions and practices of political institu- tions. The Social-Democrats, whether Menshevist or Bolshevist, proudly profess their inviolate adhe- rence to Marxian socialism. Only the Social-Rev- olutionaries have evolved a philosophy that is but faintly tinged with foreign thought. They repre- sent a purely Russian type of socialism. The pivotal point of their philosophy rests upon the so-called "peculiarly Russian institution," the peas- ant commune. Direct descendants of the populists of the sixties and seventies, they see in the peasant commune a ready instrmnent for the establishment of a sociahst state. Russia, they declare, because of the presence of this commune, can escape the agony and travail of capitalistic development, and unlike western Em'ope, can at once pass into a sociahst form of national economy. Their attitude toward the materiahstic conception of history and the class struggle, the comer-stones of Marxism, is on the whole negative. Nor do they draw any distinction between the intellectual and manual workers. The chief interest of the Social-Revolutionaries has always been the peasant. They do not ignore the industrial proletariat. In their official program they have incorporated numerous provisions calcu- late to improve the welfare of the factory worker, SOCIAL-REVOLUTIONARIES AND THE PEASANT 237 and, like the Marxians, they champion as their ulti- mate goal nationalization and sociahzation of indus- try. But their main endeavors have always been in the interest of the mouzhik, in whose commune they discern a panacea for Russia. In fact the Social- Revolutionaries have come to be associated with the peasant so closely, that they have been regarded as the peasant party, and surely the peasant has not been backward in showing his allegiance to them. In all elections since the coming of the first fateful Duma, the peasant has always supported them or their alhes, the Laborites. How then did the Social-Revolutionaries propose to solve the land problem, now that they were at the helm of the Ministry of Agriculture, and that one of their most popular leaders, Kerensky, was the head of the new government? The Social-Revolutionaries, hke the Cadets, pro- posed to leave the permanent solution of the land problem to the Constituent, and pending the opening of that august body they worked out a series of provisional ameliorating measures. As regards their permanent solution of the land question, that is, the land law they were prepared to urge upon the Constituent, we find its principles stated in their party platform in the following passage: " In the question of rebuilding the land regime the Party of the Social-Revolutionaries, in the interest 238 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION of socialism and the struggle against the bourgeois- property foundations, strives to lean upon the com- munal and labor conceptions, traditions and forms of existence of the Russian peasantry, especially on the conviction widely spread among them that the land is nobody's, and that the right to its use is acquired only through labor. In conformity with its general views on the problems of the revolution in the village, the party demands socialization of Land, that is, the removal of land from the proc- esss of exchange and private ownership of individ- uals and groups and the placing of it under pubhc ownership on the follomng basis: all lands pass into the administration of central and local bodies of self-government, beginning with the democratically organized casteless \'illage and city communes and ending with the regional and central institutions (administrations of settlements, migrations, and land fimds) ; the use of land is determined by equita- ble utilization, that is by providing a consuming norm derived from personal, either individual or group labor; a rental levied in the form of a special tax, is devoted to social needs; the use of land not of a specifically local significance — the vast forests and fisheries — is regulated by the central organs of self- government; the sub-surface deposits become the property of the state; the land becomes pubhc prop- erty without compensation; those sustaining losses SOCIAI^REVOLUTIONARIES AND THE PEASANT 239 through this reversal of property rights, are entitled to no more aid than is necessary to maintain existence during the interval of adaptation to the new condi- tions of hfe." The main features, then, of the land-law as pro- posed by the Social-Revolutionaries, are, the aboH- tion of all forms of private property in land; no compensation to losers of land; allotment of land only to those toiling with their own hands, and not with hired labor; the amount of land apportioned to be determined by the consuming norm of the peasant. The Social-Democrats have always denounced the Social-Revolutionaries as Utopians and dreamers. Russia, they insist, must pass through a capitalistic development, must attain that concentration of wealth, which Marx declared was necessary for any country to reach before it could develop the produc- tive instrumentahty indispensable to a socialist state, and before it could possibly develop a class- conscious proletariat ready and fit to assume control of industries. The attempt to eliminate the class struggle from the village and to lump all peasants, rich and poor, together as though all were actuated by the same motives, the Social-Democrats have likewise bitterly assailed. The entire theory of the Social-Revolutionaries with the commune as its fundamental base, the Russian Marxians have volubly attacked and ridiculed. 240 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION Nevertheless the peasant found in the Social- Revolutionary pronouncements an expression of his own innate desires. "Land and Freedom," "All Land to the People/' these popular slogans of the Social-Revolutionaries caught his imagination. The peasant masses, it must be noted, do not really understand the significance of the socialization scheme, which the Social-Revolutionary party advo- cates. That it imphes the abolition of his own right to private property in land, even to the small strip he acquired under the old regime, he does not imagine, and would not at all be disposed to accept. He is at- tracted chiefly by the promise of the Social-Revolu- tionaries to confiscate the big estates and to distribute them among those who claim their right to them, that is, to those who till them. Meantime a series of temporary measures were put through by the new Ministry of Agriculture. An elaborate system of land committees was in- stituted upon whom devolved the task of carrying out the immediate ameliorating measures. There were township, county, province committees and also one national or central. The functions of these committees, especially those of a local character, was to enforce whatever decrees the Central Land Committee or the Pri visional Government might issue, and to assist in any way they could in the maintenance of order in the villages and thus SOCIAI^REVOLUTIONARIES AND THE PEASANT 241 help bring the nation peacefully to the Constituent. All differences that might arise between peasant and landlord or peasant and peasant with respect to the price of rentals, the wages of farm labor, the disposi- tion of available public and private lands, that had not been cultivated by the peasant, they were to settle. They were also to help secure seed, imple- ments, animal or machine power for the use of the peasant. In case the local committees could not settle a point of difference, the matter was presented to the next higher, that is county committee, and from there it might be carried higher until it reached the Central Land Committee, which was the final arbiter. The make-up of these committees was of a repre- sentative character. In the towns they were elected, five in each, by all men and women residents, twenty years old and over. In the county they were made up of one representative from each volost (town) committee, and four from the county zemsky assem- bly; in the province one from each county, one from the capital, four from the provincial zemsky assem- bly, and the Central Land Committee was made up of twenty-five members appomted by the govern- ment, all experts in agrarian and agricultiual matters, one from each pofitical party, three from the Workers' and Soldiers' Soviets, six from the Peasant Central Soviet and one from each of the province committees 242 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION as well as three from the Provisional Committee of the now defunct Duma. The process of setting up these committees was by no means easy owing to the size of the country, poor means of transportation and the general break-down of the economic and poUtical organizations caused by the war and the revolution. To facihtate the work of these committees the Minister of Agriculture issued the decree forbidding all further private transactions in land. Such a decree was absolutely necessary to enable the land committees to dispose of non-peasant lands during the interval pending the opening of the Constituent in a manner more or less satisfactory to the peasant. However, the success of the Provisional Govern- ment and the Social-Revolutionaries in holding the allegiance of the mouzhik depended not upon their temporary measures of relief, but upon the ultimate solution of the land problem in accord with the wishes of the peasant. Rightly or wrongly the peasant was eager to come into control of the land at once. He was fearful lest he should again be cheated out of what he regarded was his due. In other words, to sustain the faith of the peasant the Provisional Government and the Social-Revolu- tionaries should either have hastened the sunmioning of the Constituent, or else should have issued a decree at once confiscating all the land. Says SOCIAL-REVOLUTIONARIES AND THE PEASANT 243 Bublikov, a man of keen business insight, whom no Russian will accuse of being contaminated with radical doctrines: "The Provisional Government should have pro- claimed the land the property of the state, the gov- ernment meanwhile assuming temporary possession of it and leaving its final disposition to the Constit- uent." Action, quick and decisive, was in the opin- ion of Bublikov indispensable in order to sustain the faith of the peasant in the existing regime, for in a revolution with institutions and laws in a fluid state and practically no forms of outward restraint in existence, emotions, ideas, and allegiances shift up and down with tremendous rapidity. But Kerensky and Chernov and all their advisers and counsellors did not dare to act in accord with the manifest will of the peasant. Not because they had lost their sympathy for the mouzhik. Leaders of the peasant party, they, more fully than others, appreciated his desperate condition. Nor were they in any way actuated by motives of personal gain. Their fiercest enemies have not accused them of that. To understand the reason for their failure to act decisively we must first inform ourselves of the general pohtical condition of the time, and the policies the government in power had sought to pursue. The tragedy of Kerensky's government was that it 244 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION was caught in the toils of a horrible fatality. It was a coalition government, that did not coalesce. The conflicting interests represented in the government could under no circumstances be made to unite. As far as Kerensky was concerned he strove honestly and strenuously to reconcile the forces of the war and the Revolution, and no right-minded person will denounce him for his failure to effect such a rec- onciliation. It was simply beyond the powers of any individual or set of individuals to harmonize two gigantic forces arrayed against each other. War demands unity, sacrifice, forgetfulness of self, constant effort, whereas revolution disrupts order, shatters unity, invites social clashes, hampers concerted effort. War demands a complete cessa- tion of inner struggles, and the concentration of a nation's wealth and strength upon the fight against the external foe, whereas a revolution impUes the outburst of inner struggles. A review of Kerensky's position and poUcies fully substantiates the above assertions. Kerensky in his desire to prosecute the war, or at least to remain a partner of the AUies, wished to maintain military discipUne in the ranks, but interested in preserving ''the fruits of the Revo- lution," and in fear of counter-revolutionary plots in the army among old-regime officers, he issued the decree of the democratization of the army, placing a check upon the powers and activities of the officers, SOCIAL-REVOLUTIONARIES AND THE PEASANT 245 and thereby wrecking what Uttle discipUne had remained in the army after the overthrow of the Czar. He wanted to have a revolutionary army that would fight with vigor and zest for a revolutionary cause, and yet he failed even to induce the Allies to revise or discard the secret treaties into which they had entered with the Czar, and thus had not only robbed himself of the biggest moral argument to promote the revolutionary war-spirit in the army, but had yielded to his enemies the most powerful weapon they could wield to annihilate the war- spirit of the soldier by enabhng them to tell the latter that the continuation of the war was not for a rev- olutionary but for a purely imperialistic cause. No happier was the Kerensky administration with the task of maintaining harmony between capital and labor. The war, of course, demanded such unity between these two classes so as to keep up the al- ready greatly depleted productivity of the country. But the Revolution inspired the workers to demand new concessions and conditions to which Russian capital had not been accustomed, and which it in many instances had declared that it would not and could not grant. All of Kerensky's efforts to bring peace between capital and labor failed most tragi- cally, for neither class was wilhng to renounce its hostility to the other. In consequence of all this the production of coal, iron, steel, ammunition, arms, 246 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION implements, railroad supplies, kerosene and other things all classes, especially the soldier, needed des- perately, slumped heavily, and with a lack of com- modities, unrest could not be expected to subside, and yet the greater the unrest the greater was the diminution of supplies, and hence the greater the sources of social irritation. It was a vicious circle of cause and effect, resulting in galloping economic deterioration. Under these circumstances had Ker- ensky and Chernov attempted to "confiscate the land, they would only have tended further to dis- rupt the war-mechanism, which they wished to strengthen, for no sooner would such a decree have been issued, than the influential business elements in the country, nearly all heavy investors in land, and always the first to suffer losses at any encroach- ment of the government upon the sacredness of private property, would have turned against the government, and without their support there was not even a remote possibihty of continuing the war at that time. And yet Kerensky would not step out of the war. It was a tragic situation, but there was no way out of it for Kerensky and the moderate Social-Rev- olutionaries. About all they could do was to deluge the people with fervid oratory. Kerensky appealed eloquently to the patriotism, the conscience, the civic pride and the personal self-esteem of the SOCIAL-REVOLUTIONARIES AND THE PEASANT 247 people, especially the soldiers, peasants and pro- letarians. Now in the early days of the Revolu- tion, as long as it was still a question of exterminating the old regime, and while the people were still aglow with the thrill of the miraculous victory over Czar- ism, the eloquent utterances of Kerensky swayed them into his support. But when the flush of exultation had ebbed; when the hour had arrived for the settlement of the pressing problems of the moment; when sudden cleavages and violent clashes between the various hostile social groups had broken loose, the power of words, the inspiration of the eloquent phrase had lost its magic hold of the masses. Acts, only acts, could have sustained faith and en- thusiasm for Kerensky's regime. And yet Kerensky dared not act decisively for the war and simultane- ously for the Revolution, for any act favoring the one tended to imdermine the other and vice versa. All of the makeshift instruments of support that Kerensky and his advisers had summoned into existence — the Moscow Conference, the Democratic Conference, the Preliminary Parliament — were a brilliant illustration of the helpless impossible posi- tion of the Coalition Government considering the circumstances under which it came into existence, and the aims it sought to promulgate. In all of these assembhes Judging by the speeches deUvered and the resolutions proposed and disposed of there, 218 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION practically all that the delegates did was to denounce and berate each other, and about all Kerensky could do was to mount the platform at frequent intervals and urge the various factions with all his innate sincerity and often with tears in his eyes, to forget their differences, to be good, and to trust each other. Such a condition was bound to react disastrously upon the morale of the peasant. From day to day his discontent mounted and his defiance of existing authority grew bolder, all the more so because of the scarcity of necessary commodities. In many provinces acts of violence increased constantly. In the Rostov province, for example, the peasants armed with clubs, ousted the government agents who had come to ask for the delivery of grain. In Kiev peas- ants buried their grain underground. They would not sell it, when they could get nothing but paper money for it. In Orenburg the slogan spread in the villages ''sow less, it will be taken from you anyway." In Samara peasants decided not to send a pound of bread to the "city idlers." Land committees, swept along by the rising discontent, usurped their author- ity — confiscated land at will and even implements, stock, grain and fodder. Said Peshekhonov, Minis- ter of Supphes, in Kerensky 's cabinet, in an appeal to the peasants in the fall of 1917: "In many places the peasants have committed SOCIAL-REVOLUTIONARIES .\ND THE PEASANT 249 unlawful acts, which are quite detrimental to this year's crop. The peasants do not allow the use of agricultiu-al machines in the harv^esting of crops and in the plowing of fields; they remove from the landed estates war-prisoners and city laborers; they compel proprietors to pay war-prisoners higher wages than the government had an-anged; they raise the prices of their labor contrary to contracts; they seize by force crops, tools, machmery; they do not allow the harvesting of grains, the plowing and preparation of fields for new planting." It would only clutter the pages of this book to quote further similar complaints from Chernov, Kerensky, the Soldiers' and Workers' as well as the Peasant's Central Soviets. Of course it is easy to condemn the peasant for his failure to respond to the appeals of various leaders and parties, for his lack of patriotism, for his implacable selfishness, for his disregard of existing legal authority. We should remember, however, that in his past, in his opportu- nities for self-development, in his education or rather lack of it, in his social privileges or lack of them, in his contact with the government and its various agents and agencies, there was nothing that could inculcate in him a civic pride, a national conscious- ness, a patriotic fervor and a respect for governmental authority. We must always seek to understand the peasant in terms of his and not our environment. 250 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION In the end the situation grew so desperate, that Kerensky and Avxentjev ordered the suppression and arrest of the disobedient land committees, and this only tended further to intensify the hostiUty of the peasant. Events were moving to a climax. In Tambov the peasants had practically effected a complete land-revolution in defiance of the govern- ment. To stave off further chaos and anarchy in the village, the Kerensky administration hurriedly prepared a decree for the immediate expropriation of the big estates. This decree more than any other fact demonstrates the intensity of the agrarian crisis during the last days of the Provisional govern- ment. But it was too late to act. The forces of the opposition had gathered too much momentum. CHAPTER XIV THE BOLSHEVIKI AND THE PEASANT Just as the Social-Revolutionaries began their career with a program almost entirely devoted to the needs and interests of the peasant, paying but slight heed to those of the city proletariat, so the Social- Democrats or Marxians of Russia entered upon their poUtical career with a program dedicated almost exclusively to the problems of the industrial laborer, practically ignoring those of the peasant. Looking upon life from the vantage point of orthodox Marx- ism, they were wedded to the theory that the Russian peasant was fated to go through the process of proletarization. Land, like industry, they preached, was destined to concentrate into ever fewer hands, the number of landless peasants to increase, grow class-conscious and wage an ever-gromng war against the landowners, until socialization of land, Uke sociaUzation of industry, became a fact. It must be understood that the Social-Democrats did not completely disregard the immediate needs of the peasant. On the contrary, in their general struggle for poUtical, social and cultural betterment they were concerned about the mouzhik as much as about the 252 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION proletariat. Only to them the peasant problem was not distinct from the labor problem, and the solution of the former they understood strictly in terms of the latter. To the most insistent cry of the peasant for land, they offered no reply. This very cry seemed to them to be an indication that the peasant was a potential bourgeois, who upon the acquisition of a homestead and implements, would become a defender of the institution of private property, and would align himself with other classes of the bourgeoisie in the struggle against the proletariat, both rural and urban. Such, indeed, was the attitude of all Euro- pean Marxists toward the peasantry of Europe. And when the German Socialist Congress in Breslau passed a resolution by a big majority, barring the peasantry from a distinct place in their program, the Russian Social-Democrats hailed the decision with exultation, and felt greatly relieved at not having taken the peasant, like the city laborer, under their wings. Life, however, proved stronger than the resolution of the Russian Marxists. The growing restlessness of the peasant, constant outbreaks of rebellion in the village, and a closer study and understanding of the conditions and the psychology of the peasantry, convinced them that the economic problems of the village demanded specific and immediate attention. Nickolai Lenine was among the first Russian Marx- THE BOLSHEVIKI AND THE PEASANT 253 ists to comprehend the situation, and it was he who prepared the first agrarian program of the Russian Social-Democrats, which was adopted at the London conference in 1903. It was a very mild program. Its outstanding feature was the advocacy of the return to the peasant of the strips of land that had been cut off from his holdings after the emancipation {otrezki). It also favored the cancellation of further indemnity fees, the abrogation of the existing indi- rect tax, which pressed heavily upon the peasant, and the adoption of a direct tax. Lenine's aim, according to his own words, in urging such an agra- rian program, was to open wide the road of capitalis- tic development in Russian peasant agriculture, and to remove the existing obstacles to the free growth of the class struggle in the village. In other words, the aim of the Russian Marxists had not changed. They were as firm as ever in their theory of Rus- sia's transformation into a socialist state through the class struggle. They only changed their tactics in dealing with the peasant, so as to accelerate the consummation of this aim. Then came the Revolution of 1905. As already mentioned in a previous chapter the part the peasant played in the Revolution was a revelation to all the rest of Russia. The extent and intensity of the agrarian disorders, convinced the Social-Democrats that Lenine's program of "otrezki" (literally cut- 254 THE RUSSIAN PEAS.\NT AND THE REVOLUTION tings), that is, the return of these to the mouzhik, would by no means satisfy him. Peasant resolutions and utterances at hundreds of gatherings breathed determination to seize all the big estates. More than ever the Marxists realized what a tremendous revolu- tionary force the peasantry were, and that no rev- olution ever would be successful without their support. Furthermore, they perceived that, after all, the chasm that existed between the economic interests of the peasant and those of the proletariat could by proper tactics be filled, the revolutionary energies of both classes combmed and steered along a common channel. Therefore, like nearly all the political parties eager to win the support of the peas- ant, the Social-Democrats at their third congress in 1905, adopted quite a radical agrarian program the keynote of which was expressed in the ''tactical" resolution in which they pledged themselves to instruct "all party organizations to spread the idea among the masses, that the Social-Democracy sets for itself the task of offering the most energetic support to all revolutionary enterprises of the peas- antry, conducive to the improvement of their condition, even to the point of confiscating the private, state, church, monastery and appanage lands." Three specific agrarian plans were presented for consideration at that congress, the Menshevist, the THE BOLSHEVIKI AND THE PEASANT 255 Bolshevist and the Partitionist. Since the last one played but an insignificant part in the debates and the subsequent agrarian activities of the Social- Democrats, it may be entirely ignored as far as the purpose of the present discussion is concerned. As regards the two others it must be emphasized that both aimed at the same result — the furtherance of the capitalistic development of Russian agriculture and the promotion of the proletarization of the village. The differences clung round the methods of hastening that process — differences so funda- mental as far as the general tactics of the Mensheviki and Bolsheviki were concerned, that they persistently clove the two factions apart, until they finally split them into two hostile parties. The Mensheviki under the leadership of Maslov, an expert in agrarian affairs, proposed municipaliza- tion of land, that is its transfer, with the exception of certain local holdings, into the control of ''the large bodies of local administration, which have been democratically elected." The peasant was to receive his land through these self-governing bodies and pay his rental to them. The Bolsheviki, on the other hand, with Lenine as their spokesman, proposed nationalization of land, that is, the abolition of all forms of private property in land and its transfer to the control of the state, as represented by centrally constituted bodies, the peasant receiving his land 256 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION from, and paying his rental to the state. Both Maslov and Lenine proposed to have all the land turned over to the use of the peasant, only Maslov favored his munieipahzation scheme, chiefly because he believed that the placing of the control over the land in local, democratically elected bodies, would be the most powerful protection against the return of a reactionary regime. On the other hand, Lenine urged nationahzation, chiefly because he beheved that that would more fully aid in the promotion of the class struggle in the village. To Maslov's argu- ment that nationahzation of land might pave the way to the restoration of the old regime, Lenine repUed that the success of any radical land reform depended upon the thorough democratization of the national government. If such democratization did not take place, the big estates would continue to remam in the possession of the landlords and restora- tion was possible anyway; and if there was such democratization, the landlords would be expro- priated, and there would be no danger of restoration. In this controversy Lenine leaned more toward revolutionary and Maslov toward peaceful tactics. The Mensheviki wanted the land confiscated with- out compensation, in a legal manner by a duly convened state authority, through orderly poUtical action, while Lenme advocated immediate seizure of estates by the peasants themselves. His program THE BOLSHEVIKI AND THE PEASANT 257 provided for 'Hhe establishment of peasant com- mittees for the immediate annihihation of all traces of the power and privileges of landlords and for the actual administration of seized lands prior to the inaugiu:'ation of the new land regime by the National Constituent Assembly." When the March revolution came, scarcely any of the Socialist leaders had regarded that event as anything more than a political or bourgeois revolu- tion, ushering in poHtical democracy and the oppor- tunity to pursue economic development along the well-trodden path followed by other democratic nations. Then I.enine arrived in Russia from Switzerland. He had all the time favored revolu- tionary action and championed the idea of a perma- nent revolution. It was now his turn to shock his friends, both Bolsheviki and Mensheviki, when on the fifteenth of April, 1917, in a speech at a unification meeting of the two factions, he openly stated that the time had come to '' discard the soiled Unen of European democracy" and to press the Revolution as far to the left as it would go, for the proletariat of the rest of the world would respond and would follow Russia in the struggle for the final great Social Revolution. At the close of that speech, it is not uninteresting to point out, Goldenburg and Steklov, both Bolshevik leaders, vigorously criticised Lenine for his attitude toward the Revolution. They 258 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION called him a dreamer, who during his sojourn in a foreign land had ahenated himself from Russian reahties. Only Madame KoUontay, Minister of Social Welfare under the Bolsheviki, fully shared his views. He, however, remained firm in his advocacy of the Social Revolution, and the subsequent events and conditions in Russia — the decay of the morale of the army, the breakdowTi of the national economic structure and the general violent unrest in the country, offered a fertile soil for the growth of his conception of the Revolution. Not that the Russian masses, especially the peas- antry, shared Lenine's theory of the Social Revolu- tion. The peasant, it must be stated, does not even comprehend the significance of the phrase Social Revolution. The peasant is not a theorist. Ignorant of history and poUtics, a hard-headed reahst, he gauges the world in terms of his inunediate material interests. Lenine's plans for the ultimate recon- struction of Russia and the world by means of the dictatorship of the proletariat, did not in the least interest him. Nowhere in peasant revolutions or peasant journals of that time can one discover a keen curiosity in these plans. As a matter of fact in the early days of the Revolution the term Bolshevik was quite new to the peasant. During the Revolution of 1905, the Bolsheviki had mustered but an insignifi- cant following in the villages — it was the Social- THE BOLSHEVIKI AND THE PEASANT 259 Revolutionaries who had an overwhehning influence over the peasantry — and after the Revolution the Bolshevik party had become practically extinct, surviving only in the minds of its leaders, who were mostly in Siberia — in jails and in foreign exile. But Lenine's theories, Bolsheviki programs with regard to the immediate tasks of the Revolution, coincided with and were expressive of, the immediate yearnings of the masses, yearnings, which soon after the overthrow of the Czar found vent in actions of evergrowing magnitude. A mere glance at the inter- nal situation will suffice to corroborate this state- ment. The soldier, maltreated, betrayed, defeated in the war, compelled to endure untold hardships, often fighting, according to the testimony of General Yanushkevitch, with clubs, stones or with his boots, had lost interest in the war and yearned for its end, and the Bolsheviki promised him peace. The workers, kept under the Czar without even elemen- tary civil, political, and economic rights, barred from the opportunity to improve their economic condition through collective effort, denied the right of organization, strikes, collective bargaining, en- tirely at the mercy of the employers, who were protected by the Czar's armies, compelled to toil long hours under unsanitary conditions for a pitiful wage, with some legal but no real protection — excepting the charitable disposition of the employer — ■ 260 THE RUSSIAN PExYSANT AND THE REVOLUTION against disease, accident, old age and unemployment, now cried out for a thorough change in their condi- tion. And the Bolsheviki urged them to demand complete control of industry, and counselled them to secure this control by means of revolutionary action. And as for the peasant, whose imdying dream was more land, the Bolsheviki encouraged him to help himself. Said Lenine in his catechism wTitten in April, 1917, in reply to the question as to whether the peasants ''shall at once take possession of the land," * ' Yes. The land must be seized at once. Strict order should be maintained through the agency of the Council of Peasant Deputies. The production of bread and meat should be increased, for the soldier must be fed. The damaging of cattle, implements, etc., cannot be allowed." And in a letter addressed to the peasant congress on the 3d of June, 1917, he repeated his message to the mouzhik in the following words: ''There is a debate on as to whether or not the peasantiy shall at once take possession of the land in their localities without paying the pomiesht- chiks rent and without waiting for the the Constit- uent Assembly. Our party beheves that waiting for the action of the Constituent is inadmissible." Now we may believe that the tactics of the Bolshe- viki in encouraging the peasant, soldier and worker to proceed to act in accordance with their own immediate desires, was ruinous to Russia and detri- THE BOLSHEVIKI AND THE PEASANT 261 mental to the rest of the world. This is a matter of personal opinion. One's individual opinion, how- ever, should not obscure from him the fact, that the Bolshevist program, and the desire and practice of the soldier, peasant and worker were in harmony. Still it is doubtful if the Bolsheviki would have swept into power at the time and in the manner the}^ had, if a series of external circumstances had not favored their fortunes. The enormous strain of the war, the intense suffering of the poorer classes, especially in the cities; the demoraUzation of the army, which not even machine guns could stop; the failure of the Allies to help Kerensky morally, by declaring null and void the imperialistic treaties they had made with the Czar, and economically, bj'" pouring into Russia cargoes of necessary supphes; the rise of General Kornilov against the Provisional Government and the fear of a counter-revolution in favor of the old regime, which the event had created, and finally and especially the failure of the Provi- sional Government to hasten the smnmoning of the Constituent — all these paved the way to power for the Bolsheviki. Kerensky really was not overthrown. Like the Czar, he fell from the sheer weight of his tragic impotence. Of course there was vigorous opposition to the activities of the Bolsheviki in putting themselves in power. The right Social-Revolutionaries, the Men- 262 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION sheviki, the Cadets, and the Central Peasant Soviet, which, it must be remembered, was made up espe- cially of the peasant intelligentzia and was under the leadership of the right wing of the Social- Revolutionaries, all these passionately condemned the Bolsheviki for placing themselves in power. Yet as far as the vast masses were concerned, if there was any opposition among them, it was decidedly passive, for all the afore-mentioned parties could not muster sufficient physical force to ma.ke even a conspicuous resistance to the Bolsheviki. The Bolsheviki alone possessed an ample amount of physical force not only to make their position secure, but to render ineffective the efforts of the opposition. Neither the Cadets nor any of the CoaUtion governments had ever been in a similar position. Now we may think the Russian masses stupid for their indifference or acquiescence in the advent of the Bolshevist govern- ment. We may deem them childishly credulous for having been swayed by the words ''Land, Bread, Peace," which was the slogan of the Bolsheviki. The fact, however, remains that any summons to revolt against the new government found practically no response in the barracks, work-shop or village. No less vehement an opponent of the Bolsheviki than Harold Williams says: "The Bolsheviki have con- quered almost the whole of Russian territory. They are victorious in the civil war less by force of arms THE BOLSHEVIKI AND THE PEASANT 263 than by virtue of the strange infection of their agitation among the masses. It seems inevitable that the whole of Russia must turn Bolshevik, before she can begin to return to a normal condition." Once in power the Bolsheviki reahzed the im- portance of prompt action. They inmiediately began negotiations for peace so as to make good their promise to the soldier, and nationahzation of fac- tories so as to make good their promise to the prole- tariat, and at two in the morning on the eighth of November, 1917, the second day they were in power, they issued a new land decree, to make good their promise to the peasant. This decree was not a creation of their own. They had prepared no land decree prior to the fall of Kerensky. The land decree they issued was a resolution of the right Social- Revolutionaries adopted by the Peasant Congress. It reads as follows : Decree on the Land Of the Congress of Workmens' and Soldiers' Delegates passed at the meeting of October 26, 2 a. m. (Russian style). . 1. All private ownership of land is aboUshed immediately without any indemnification. 2. All landowners' estates, hkewise all the land of the Crown, monasteries, church lands, with all their hve stock and inventoried - property, homestead 264 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION constructions and all appurtenances, pass over into the disposition of the Volost Ijand Committees and District Soviets of Peasants' Delegates until the Constituent Assembly meets. 3. Any damage whatever done to confiscated property belonging from now on to the whole people, is regarded as a grievous crime, punishable by the Revolutionary Court of Justice. The District So- viets of Peasant Delegates shall take all necessaiy measures for the observance of the strictest order during the confiscation of the lando^vners' estates, for the determination of the dimensions of the plots of land and which of them are subject to confiscation, for the drawing up of an inventory of the whole confiscated property, and for the strictest Revolu- tionary Guard of aU the farming property on the land with aU the constructions, implements, cattle, supphes of products, etc., passing over to the people. 4. For guidance dming the reahzation of the great land reforms until their final resolution by the Constituent Assembly shall serve the following peasant Nakaz (Instruction) drawn up on the basis of. 242 local peasant iiakazes by the editor's office of the Izvestia of the All-Russian Soviet of Peasant Delegates and pubhshed in No. 88 of said Izvestia. (Petrograd No. 88, August 19, 1917.) The question re the land may be decided only by the general Constituent Assembly. THE BOLSHEVnCI AND THE PEASANT 265 The most equitable solution of the land question should be as follows : "1. The right of private ownership of the land is abolished forever; the land cannot be sold, nor leased, nor mortgaged, nor alienated in any way. All the lands of the State, the Crown, the Cabinet, the monasteries, Churches, possession lands, entailed estates, private lands, pubhc and peasant lands, etc., shall be alienated without any indemnification; they become the property of the people and the usufructory property of all those who cultivate them (who work them). ''For those who will suffer from this revolution of property the right is recognized to receive public assistance only during the time necessary for them to adapt themselves to the new conditions of exist- ence. " 2. All the underground depths — the ore, naphtha, coal, salt, etc., and also the forests and waters, having a general importance, shall pass over into the ex- clusive use of the States. All the minor rivers, lakes, forests, etc., shall be usufruct of communities, pro- vided they be under the management of the local organizations of self-government. "3. The plots of land with highest culture — gardens, plantations, nursery gardens, seed-plots, greenhouses, etc. — shall not be divided, but they shall be transformed into model farms and handed 266 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION over as the exclusive usufruct of the State or com- munities, in dependence on the dimensions or importance. "4, Homestead lands, town and country lands with private gardens and kitchen gardens, remain as usufruct of their present owners. The dimen- sions of such lands and the rate of taxes to be paid for their use, shall be estabUshed by the laws. ''5. Studs, governmental and private cattle-breed- ing and bird-breeding enterprises, etc., become the property of the people and pass over either for the exclusive use of the state, or a community, depending on their dimensions and their importance. ''All questions of redeeming same shall be sub- mitted to the examination of the Constituent Assem- bly. "6. The right to use the land shall belong to all the citizens (without distinction of sex) of the Rus- sian State, who wish to work the land themselves, with the help of their families, or in partnership, and only so long as they are capable of working it themselves. No hired labor is allowed. ''In the event of a temporary incapacity of a mem- ber of a village community during the course of two years, the community shall be bound to render him assistance during this period of time by cultivating his land. "Agriculturists who in consequence of old age or THE BOLSHEVIKI AND THE PEASANT 267 sickness shall have lost the possibility of cultivating their land, shall lose the right to use it, and they shall receive instead a pension from the State. ''7. The use of land shall be distributive, i. e., the land shall be distributed among the laborers in dependence on the local conditions at the labor or consumptive rate. ''The way in which the land is to be used may be freely selected: as homestead or farm, or by com- munities, or associations, as will be decided in the separate villages and settlements. ''8. All the land, upon its ahenation, is entered in the general popular land fund. The local and central self-governing bodies, beginning with the demo- cratically organized village and town conmaunities and ending with the Central Province institutions, shall see to the distribution of the land among the persons desirous of working it. ''The land fund is subject to periodical redistribu- tions depending on the increase of the population and the development of the productivity and culti- vation. "Through all changes of the limits of the allot- ments the original kernel of the allotment must re- main intact. "The land of any members leaving the community returns to the land fund, and the preferential right to receive the allotments of retiring members belongs 268 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION to their nearest relations or the persons indicated by them. ''The vahje of the manuring and improvements invested in the land, in so far as the same will not have been used up when the allotment will be re- turned to the land fund, must be reimbursed. "If in some place the land fund will prove to be insufficient for the satisfaction of the local popula- tion, the surplus of the population must emigrate. ''The organization of the emigration, also the costs thereof and of providing the emigrants with the necessary stock, shall be borne by the State. "The emigration is carried out in the following order: first the peasants without land who express their wish to emigrate; then the depraved members of the conmiunities, deserters, etc.; and lastly by drawing lots on agreement. "All of what is contained in this Nakaz, being the expression of the will of the greatest majority of conscious peasants of the whole of Russia, is pro- nounced to be a temporary law which pending the opening of the Constituent Assembly, shall be put into execution as far as possible immediately and in some parts of it gradually, as will be determined by the District Soviets of the Peasant Delegates. "The land of the peasants and cossacks serving in the ranks shall not be confiscated." This decree has little in connnon with the nation- THE BOLSHEVIKI AND THE PEASANT 269 alization scheme which Lenine had been advocating since 1906. It is in fact a program which the Social- Democrats had for years been denouncing as stupid and Utopian. The opponents of the Bolsheviki, therefore, did not tarry in pointing out to Lenine and his followers their flagrant inconsistency in enacting as the land law a program they had always ridiculed. Certain of the leaders of the opposition in exaspera- tion at the act of the Bolsheviki, called it nothing less than sheer theft. In defense, the Bolsheviki urged the explanation that the Social-Revolutionary agrarian program fitted the changed condition that had been effected by the Revolution, and if the Social-Revolutionaries wished to call their procedure an act of dishonesty, it made no difference to them. They pointed out that they had been opposed to socialization of land in a bourgeois state, for in such a state with industry and capital in the control of private individuals, socialization of land was im- practicable. But with the overthrow of the bour- geois state, and with the establishment of a socialist form of national economy, such as they aim at, sociahzation of land, they argued, is not only logical but indispensable. However, the subsequent land decrees the Bol- sheviki issued, the one in September, 1918, and the other, the final one, in February, 1919, fully explain- ing their aims and methods and outlining detailed 270 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION provisions for the distribution and cultivation of the land, as well as their efforts to carry out these pro- visions, indicate quite a radical departure from the principles of land-sociahzation as understood by the Social-Revolutionaries. In adopting the resolution of the latter as their initial decree, the Bolsheviki evidently aimed merely to assure the peasant that the land was his and also to remove from the hands of their most dangerous opponents the most formid- able weapon they had— the agrarian program that had been acclaimed by the peasantry, which was in fact a synthesis of numerous peasant resolutions. The real aim of the Bolsheviki land-system is stated in the preamble of the decree of February, 1919, and in a speech Lenine delivered at a convention of delegates of agricultural communes in December, 1918. The preamble reads : 'Tor the purpose of completing the aboUtion of exploitation of man by man; the organization of rural economy on socialistic principle through the adoption of all conquests of scientific and technical knowledge; the training of the toiling masses in the spirit of sociahsm; and also for the purpose of uniting the proletariat with the poor rural classes in their struggle with capitalism, — it is necessary to change the individuaUstic form of land-operation from the individuahstic to the communistic. Large Soviet homesteads, conomunes, cooperative forms of culti- THE BOLSHEVIKI AND THE PEASANT 271 vation and other modes of communistic utilization of the land, are the best methods of attaining this goal. Therefore, all forms of individuaUstic use of land must be looked upon as old and transitory." In the afore-mentioned speech Lenine said : ''The policy of the Soviets in agriculture is the introduction of communism all over the country. In this direction they are working systematically. For this purpose the Soviets are organizing land communes under their own management. To this end are made provisions that the priority of use of land belongs to the state, then to the pubhc organi- zations, next to agricultural communes. These provisions are necessary for the transition to com- plete communism." This being the aim of the Bolsheviki the question arises how successful have they been in reaUzing it? The Bolsheviki, of course, will lu-ge that the inaugura- tion of any new land regime in such a vast country as Russia, with nearly eighty per cent of the people actually deriving their living wholly or in part from the cultivation of the soil, with a backward agri- cultural technique and a backward industrial system, with an ancient and very largely shattered trans- portation system, and in the absence of a sufficient number of agricultural experts and engineers indis- pensable to an equitable distribution of land in any form, is a process that requires years for its consum- 272 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION mation. So that it would hardly be lair, they would say, to judge the appHcation and the working of the new land law at this time, especially in view of the fact that owing to efforts on the part of native factions and foreign governments to overthrow the existing govermiient by force of arms, the Soviets have been obhged to divert a major portion of their talent and resources to combating the opposition, and have thereby been prevented from centering their energies on the solution of their internal problems. All of which is tnie, and in an impartial appraisal of the Bolsheviki land-system, allowance must be made for these conditions. Still, from all that the Bolshe- viki have already done in the effort to establish a new agricultural regime in Russia during their two years of rule, it is possible to judge as to how the peasant reacts toward the principle of communism they wish him to adopt. This after all is the crux of the matter. Theory or no theory, logic or no logic, the essential factor to be considered is how these fit into the realities of life. Now, as already pointed out in a preceding chapter, conmiunal form of land-ownership has prevailed among a vast majority of the Russian peasantry for centuries. But the communism to which the peasant has been accustomed — that is the equitable periodic redistribution of the land — is an entirely different affair from the communism the Bolsheviki aspire to THE BOLSHEVIKI AND THE PEASANT 27^! translate into a reality. Under the old system the peasant could do what he pleased with his stock, implements and crops. The land belonged to the commune, but the mouzhik worked it as his private property and gathered and disposed of his crops as he chose. Under the proposed Bolshevist land- regime all work the land in common; from the head agronome to the commonest laborer, all are members of the self-governing cooperative commune; there is no employer and no employee; class distinctions de- rived from the possession of property do not exist; the crops are divided among all members of the commune. This is something entirely new to the peasant. It is in flat contradiction to the system of land-owner- ship to which he has been accustomed. It demands complete divorce from the institution of private property in every form. Now whenever we propose a new principle or new method of political, social or economic readjustment, those to be affected by it, before consenting to its apphcation, quite naturally want proof, concrete and indisputable, that the new way v/ill prove more desirable and profitable to them than did the old one. The Bolsheviki, of course, could offer no such proof, for their scheme of communizing the land had never been tried on a large scale. All they could do was to offer theo- retical explanations, arguments, to seek to persuade the peasant with words into an adoption of their 274 THE RUSSIAN PEAS.\NT AND THE REVOLUTION program, and the peasant is too practical a person to trust in words only, especially when he is urged to make as complete a departure from established usage as communization of land would involve. Not even the promise of the Bolsheviki to extend generous help to the communes, could tempt the peasant into an acquiescence in their proposed land-system. The peasant insists upon conduct- ing his own agricultural economy independently. The plot of land he cultivates he regards as his individual possession, regardless of what the Bol- shevist law may proclaim it to be. Such has been the hostility of the peasant to comanmiization of land that the Bolsheviki have been obliged to abandon the plan of coercing the peasant into its adoption. In a letter to the sredniaki, that is, the peasants having a household and small farm of their own, the rural element that has been most hostile to communism, Trotzky wrote: "The Soviet power does not either force or intend to force the peassLnt-sredniaki to accept the com- mmiistic system of land economy." True, the Bolsheviki have organized many com- munes. Between April 1st and November 1st, 1919, they made an especially vigorous effort to communize land and brought the total number of established communes to two thousand, with a population of 170,000 and an area of 075,000 acres. But it is THE BOLSHEVIK! AND THE PEASANT 275 significant to note that only landless and poor peasants have agreed to join the communes. The peasant with an independent holding is unqualifiedly opposed to the experiment. So that at present the agricultural system in vogue in Russia is that of small landholders — which is entirely out of harmony with the fundamental aim of the Bolsheviki to abolish practically all forms of private property and to kill even the desire for its existence. The division of the land, or that part which has not been taken over by the Soviets for communal and other experimental purposes, naturally proved to be a tremendously difficult task. In some portions of Russia, chiefly in the south and far north, it has not yet even been fully effected. The chief difficulty lay in the fact that in many villages the richer peas- ants gained control of the Land Committees and subordinated their efforts to personal aggrandize- ment. Says V. Karpinsky in his review of the working of the Bolsheviki land-law: ''During the time of the expropriation of the land-owners the poor peasantry is invariably remaining in the back- ground. The hon's share usually falls into the hands of the powerful peasant." That naturally roused considerable discontent among the shghted element in the village. Of course if there had been a powerful state organization in existence, feared if not respected by all classes in the village, the attempts at personal 276 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION gain at the expense of one's neighbor, would doubt- less have been nipped at the earliest period of its manifestation. But there was no such state organ- ization, and none could be launched and intrenched within a short period of time. In every volost, in every village, the local Committee was practically sovereign and was, therefore, in a position to ex- ercise unchallenged jm'isdiction in the matter of redistribution of land. Under such circumstances it was often easy for the richer peasant to swing a preponderance of advantage to himself. The poorer peasant, however, did not hesitate to fight against his richer neighbor, when the latter managed to retain for himself an imdue proportion of land, and often land that was once divided to the satisfaction of the richer peasant had to be redistrib- uted. To strip the richer peasant of his power in every way, the Bolsheviki introduced the class struggle in the village. They organized so-called pauper's committees that were to combat the well- to-do peasant by means of direct action. This led to such serious disturbances, that the Bolshe\'iki felt obhged to abandon the class struggle and the pauper's committees, and to allow matters in the village to adjust themselves through the collective effort of the peasants themselves. The experiences of the Bolsheviki with the peasant are full of significance as to the character of the THE B0LSHE\1KI AND THE PEASANT 277 peasant and the possible future course of Russian history. They demonstrate that the peasant can neither be flattered nor persuaded nor coerced into adopting plans which he deems inimical to his wel- fare. He is determined to obey his own understand- ing of what his problem is, and how it can be solved. He accepts leadership, but follows it only in so far as the aims and methods proposed to him are in his judgment compatible with his best interests. Sec- ondly, the peasant is staunchly opposed to com- munism. With very few exceptions he insists upon individual proprietorship. The question arises, how can Bolshevism ever become a reality in Russia with the bulk of the people opposed to the basic principle of its philosophy? If Russia is to be a country of small landholders, if the peasant should adhere to his present insistence upon individual ownership of land, if with the aid of modem machmery and modern methods of tillage he should increase the fertility of his soil, grow bigger crops, enjoy greater profits, accu- mulate property, is he not likely in the future to be even more of a sobstvennik, a devotee of private prop- erty, than he is now? Fm*thermore, in a country which is so overwhelmingly agricultural, can commu- nism in industry exist side by side with individuaUsm in agriculture? It is precisely because they do not be- lieve these things possible, that many Russian social- ists have been opposed to the Bolshevist program. CHAPTER XV THE GIST OF THE PEASANT PROBLEM Whatever the form of the future Russian govern- ment, one thing is certain, the landlords will never again get control of the land they have lost. Perhaps in the distant future a new army of big landholders, individuals or syndicates, will spring into existence. That depends upon the ultimate mode of Ri^ssia's economic development. The former landed-aristoc- racy, however, is done away with forever. Their influence and their privileges, like the Czar that pro- tected them, are driven away for all time. Even if a monarchist government or military dictatorship should by chance happen to leap into power for a time, it cannot with the best of intentions, give back to the old aristocracy the land that the Revolution has torn away from them. At best it can offer them a small indemnity. There is only one way in which they can regain their estates, and that is to kill the peasantry, and there are over one hundred miUion peasants to be killed. As to the form of land ownership in Russia it is safe to predict that for a long, long time to come it will be on the basis of private proprietorship. Says THE GIST OF THE PEASANT PROBLEM 279 V. Karpinsky, a Bolshevist writer, in his review of the working of the Bolshevist agrarian pohcies during the first year of their operation: ''How soon the sociahzation of land will become universal all over Russia, depends first upon the sentiment of the people of the country with respect to sociahzation, and secondly on the possibility of the agricultural communes, which are in a minority, to convince the majority of private owners of land, of the practica- bihty and greater profitableness of communistic agricultural labor." In other words, as already intimated in the preceding chapter, only when it can be demonstrated to the complete satisfaction of the peasant, not in argument but in achievement, that he will derive greater personal gain from a com- munal system of land ownership, only then can it be expected that he will as a matter of sheer self-interest accept agricultural communism. And can any one • foretell first, whether such an achievement is possible, and secondly how long a period will have to elapse be- fore it can be made universal in Russia? Until then Russia will remain a country of small landholders. Of course a certain amount of communism will always prevail among the Russian peasantry, be- cause of certain peculiar conditions that make com- munism advantageous. Pastures, woodlots, where- ever they are scanty, will be owned in common, as has been the case hitherto in a large part of Russia. 280 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION Agricultural machinery will be also owned in part- nership, for the simple reason that the average peasant is too poor to make an investment in a com- plete set of necessaiy farm-tools. And besides, it would not pay him to make such an investment, because the average size of the peasant farm is bound to be small — too small to wan'ant the posses- sion of full mechanical and technical equipment. Two or three mowing machines, one thrashing machine, one tractor, will suffice for the ordinary village of one hundred inhabitants. The land, too, all of it, will in certain sections be owned in common as formerly, but operated separately. Then through the remarkable spread of the cooperative societies in the Russian village, sale and piu-chase of grain, produce and machinery will be carried on collectively. In other words, communism will prevail among the peasantry to the extent that the peasant will find it profitable. SeK-interest and only self-interest, is the peasant's daily guide in his economic hfe as much as in his political predilections. However, the peasant now has the land, not all of it and in places still improperly distributed, but it will remain his ultimately regardless of any pohti- cal changes that may come. Incidentally it must be pointed out that though the Bolsheviki were the first to legahze the confiscation of the large estates, they hardly deserve the credit for giving the land to THE GIST OF THE PEASANT PROBLEM 281 the mouzhik. Decree or no decree the land was destined to pass into the hands of the peasant. The peasant was seizing it by force of arms. The Bol- sheviki merely legalized, modified and strove to direct a process that had already set in on a large scale. Considering the cn-cumstances that pre- vailed in Russia no government in the world could have prevented the peasantry from helping them- selves to the land. To have tried to suppress the efforts of the peasant in that direction, as Kerensky and his Minister of Interior, A^rxentiev, had tried, was like putting one's shoulder to a dam to stop the flood from bursting through. But the allotment of non-peasant lands to the mouzhik cannot solve the Russian agrarian crisis. It is only the first radical step toward its correct solution. The peasant in his ignorance had always imagined, that should he come into control of the pomieshtchiks and other estates, which loomed so large to him individually, all his troubles would come to an end. As a matter of fact there is not nearly enough land in Russia to satisfy all peasants. At most there are about fifty million dessyatins addi- tional land available for tillage now, and there are about sixteen million peasant families, about three- fourths of whom are either possessed of tiny allot- ments or are entirely landless. Of course, there are swamps to be drained, forests to be cleared, deserts 282 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION to be irrigated — Russia is after all so enormous in size — but it must not be forgotten there are new generations to be taken care of. The annual in- crement in the peasant population is two milHon persons, and at best the processes of preparing new land for settlement, cannot any more than make ready sufficient ground for the sustenance of the new generation of farmers. The final solution of the agrarian crisis in Russia, is in a large measure woven in with the final up- building of the general economic organism of the country. Agrarian matters constitute a vital part of this organism, and like any vital part of a living body, its fortunes are inextricably interwoven with the well-being of the entire organism. That this is so can be gleaned from the circumstance, that one of the chief causes of the poignancy of the agrarian crisis in Russia is the fact that Russian industry is so backward, that it can absorb only a very small percentage of the surplus population in the village. Nearly eighty per cent of the people in Russia are engaged in agriculture, entirely too large a number for the amount of available land, though this is enor- mous. Room has to be provided for the exodus of the siuplus ''hands" in the village, so as to reheve there the pressure of congestion, and this is en- tirely dependent upon the process of industrial development in the country. THE GIST OF THE PEASANT PROBLEM 283 There are, nevertheless, a number of specific measures that can and must soon be launched in order to retrieve the peasant from his economic misery, and without the adoption of which he never can rise to a substantially higher economic level. Since the amount of available land is too small to enable each family to possess itself of all it can till, it is obvious that efforts must be exerted to bring to the peasant the opportunity of making the most of what he has, and the first thing to be done in that direction is to improve his methods of tillage so as to enlarge his productivity. One essential requisite to promote productivity is to alter the land arrangements that have been in vogue in the Russian village since days irmnemorial. The long strip-system involves not only a waste of land in the furrows and ridges that separate one strip from the other, but also a precious waste of time and human as well as animal energy, caused by the necessity to travel from one strip to another. Whether the peasant has a homestead like the American farmer with his land around his buildings, or whether he continues to live in the village with his land lying outside, his allotment should consist of one contiguous field, or at least as nearly contiguous as circumstances shall permit. Then he can move from one field to another, from one crop to another, now with this tool and now with that, without having 284 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION to waste precious time and energy. Likewise the three-field system needs to be eliminated, and in its place a proper scientific rotation of crops introduced, so as to enable the peasant to use all the land all the time instead of having a thu'd of it lie fallow every year, as has hitherto been the case. The greatest need of the peasant, however, is agricultui'al machinery. He cannot be expected to produce bountiful crops with the lumbering dilapi- dated implements he has been accustomed to using. In 1910, out of 14.6 million plows, in peasant Rus- sia, 6.5 miUion were sokhas — ^made partially or wholly of wood — and 0.8 of a million were kosuli, and only 7.3 miUion were real plows, most of them, however, of the light type; and out of 18 million harrows, 5 million were entirely of wood, 12 milhon of wooden frames and iron pecks, and only one iniUion real drags, but there were scarcely any disks, such as are common on ever}'- American farm. It is obvious that with such tools the most intelligent and industrious mouzhik can- not hope to derive large yields from the soil. The first essential requisite in good farming is proper plowing and proper dragging — the breaking up of the lumps and the smoothing of the surface so as to make a good seed-bed. Anyone with any experience on an American farm knows with what care and dihgence the American farmer prepares his seed-bed. *'It is one-half of the crop, my boy," said an old New THE GIST OF THE PEASANT PROBLEM 285 York farmer once to the writer in making him drag over a piece of corn-land, which he had thought was fit for planting. The peasant must dispense with his wooden plows, wooden harrows, his flails and his sowing cribs. He must stop sowing his grain broadcast by hand with- out covering it up well, so that crows can feed on it and winds and storms play with it. He must drill in his grain, so as to distribute it uniformly over the land, and cover it up beyond the reach of bird and wind. These things he must do, and many others which experience has proven to be indispensable to profitable farming. Another gi-eat need is a system of agricultural schools, experiment stations, agricultural confer- ences such as all of our agTicultural colleges and schools are periodically conducting, and also frequent lectures on various appropriate phases of farming. After all, though a farmer since days immemorial, the peasant knows little of modem methods of til- lage. The needed information must be imparted to him in some manner comprehensible to him. An institution similar to that of the county agent so imiversal in our western states, that is, an expert in a certain locahty ready to instruct, encourage and guide him in advanced methods of farming, would be of invaluable aid to the peasant. It is encom-aging to note the efforts of the cooperatives in this direction. 286 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION To make it possible for the peasant to acquire new implements it will be necessary to extend financial aid to him. A sj^stem of long-term credits upon moderate rates, is one of the first requisites. Then the system of taxation under whatever form of gov- ernment, must be so regulated, as not to press too heavily upon the mouzhik as was the case under the old regime. The fact is that the peasant, having be- come quite conscious of his powers, will never con- sent to the payment of exorbitant taxes. The ex- periences of all the governments since the overthrow of the Czar from the Cadets to the Bolsheviki, have demonstrated how reluctant he is to pay a fee to the government. And because of that the problem of taxation is destined to be a dehcate issue, and the easiest way to dispose of it, is to aboHsh insomuch as is possible all indirect taxation and institute a graduated income and inheritance tax. All political parties favor such a tax. This will not only keep the peasant pacified, but will offer him the oppor- tunity to divert his income to necessary agricultural improvements, upon which his future welfare so largely depends. Another vital matter in connection with the finan- cial position of the peasant is the marketing of his produce, and the first essential in enabling him to receive the most for his goods, is to prevent the re- currence of a preferential tariff treaty, such as Ger- THE GIST OF THE PEASANT PROBLEM 287 many wrung out from the Czar in 1904. Russia, as is known, has been a great grain-exporting nation. It is chiefly by means of grain and other raw materials, that she has been able to pay for her imports and to meet the interest on her national loans. During the five years prior to the war Russia exported 24 per cent of her wheat, 37 per cent of her barley, 8 per cent of her oats, and 3 per cent of her rye. A full third of this grain was shipped to Germany, and according to the aforementioned treaty, while Ger- man finished products and certain raw materials were received free of duty or at a small tariff in Russia, on Russian grain exported to Germany a heavy custom tax was levied by the German government, namely, 42 kopecks on a 'pcmd of wheat, 38 kopecks on a 'poud of rye and oats, 23 kopecks on a 'poud of Indian com and 10 kopecks on a poud of barley. The reason for the lower rates on corn and barley was because these grains were indispensable to German stock-raising. With such heavy duties on grain, the chief commodity that the peasant had to sell, it was natural that he should be receiving extremely low prices. Such a system of exchange would surely prove ruinous to the Russian peasantry. Whatever the pressure of outside nations who are more or less in control of the world-market and to whom Russia is greatly indebted jBnancially, and whoever these nations may be, whether England, France or Germany again, it is to 288 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION be hoped that no Russian government will ever again allow itself to be intimidated or cajoled into granting trade privileges and concessions such as Germany had enjoyed before the war. Of course the cooperative societies in Russia, which have had such phenomenal growth in recent years, have already done much and will with the strengthening of their organization do much more to aid the peasant in the purchase of the conmiodities he needs, and the marketing of the produce he offers for sale. The aim of these cooperatives is to eliminate the middleman and to bring producer and consumer together in all their trade exchanges. In 1913, according to N. P. Makarov, 1672 cooperatives disposed of the grain of their members to mills and foreign buyers at a saving of between 10-15 kopecks a j)oud. According to Morozov the peasant pays annually 23 milhon roubles in fees to middlemen on eggs alone. Now the cooperatives market their own eggs. The cooperatives aim to do all of their own buying and selhng not only of grains but of other products, such as flax, vegetables and fruits. To facilitate the economic development of the village and the countiy in general in every possible way, it is surely necessary to improve Russia's transportation system. A. country as large as Russia, nearly twice the size of the United States, has only about one-fifth the railroad mileage that America THE GIST OF THE PEASANT PROBLEM 289 has. Due to the war, the Revolution and the AUied blockade, it has been difficult to build new railroads even for military purposes, and what is worse, it has been even more difficult to obtain rolHng stock so as to maintain those in operation in good condition. From all obtainable reports the Russian railroads are in a woeful condition at present, and, as long as such is the situation, there can, of course, be no rapid economic advance in the country, particularly in the village. The situation is not much better as far as highways are concerned. In Russia these are atrocious. There are the chaussee — ^paved roads, but they are few and far between. The peasant has neither the knowledge nor the means to build good roads. He usually fills up holes and muddy places with brush and a thick layer of sod. When spring comes, the floods wash off the sod, the roads turn into rivers of slush, and are altogether impassable for weeks at a time. The building of paved highways is one of the most paramount needs of Russia. Then there are canals to be dug. Russia has perhaps the finest navigable river system in the world. Her rivers flow in all directions, north and south and east and west. A network of canals to connect these rivers will materi- ally enlarge transportation facihties. Thus it is evident that the division of the land is only the beginning of the solution of the Russian 290 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION agrarian crisis, which can be solved more or less completely only when Russian industries are largely developed. The specific measures, however, of most pressing immediate importance are those that have to do with the methods of improved tillage, the increase in the productivity of the soil, the profitable disposal of produce and the introduction of new lines and methods of transportation. To the devel- opment of these measures Russia must now direct her earnest attention. CHAPTER XVI THE CO-OPERATIVE MOVEMENT AND THE PEASANT On the fifth of November, 1865, in an obscure corner of the province of Kostroma, was laid the foundation of the Russian cooperative movement, when a credit associations was formally opened. Though the idea of cooperative enterprise had been advocated before that time by various Russian publicists, notably by Dobrolubov and Cherny- shevsky, no attempt had been made to launch the movement, principally because obshtchestvo — society, that is the intellectual classes, seemed to manifest no keen interest in the project, and also because the government had looked askance at any ventures of the people into independent social activities. On the sixth of November, 1865, the first consumer's cooperative organization was chartered. During the following forty years, owing to government repression and the difficulty of communicating with the peasantry, the cooperative movement enjoyed but a slow growth. In 1904 there were in all 2000 societies counting 700,000 members. Only after the Revolution of 1905, when the so-called "perelom" came, that is, the break in the attitude 292 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION toward the old order and the old ways of thinking and living, when new energies were unleashed and new social forces swam to the surface of Russian hfe, only then did the cooperative movement receive a mighty impetus, and thousands of new societies leapt into existence all over Russia, both European and Asiatic. On the eve of the world- war in 1914, the number of cooperative organizations had in- creased to 33,000 and their membership to twelve millions. During the last five years, despite war and revolution, or rather, because of it, the cooperative movement continued its phenomenal gi'owth. In 1918 no less than twenty million householders were affihated with it, that means about eighty million people were affected in one way or another by its various activities. The following table shows the comparative spread of the cooperative societies in various countries: 1865 1874 1917 Russia 2 353 39,753 England 800 1,500 12,000 Germany- 200 980 10,000 France 1 10,000 Japan 1 10,000 Italy 2 1,913 9,000 Denmark 1,574 849 500 Belgium Norway 596 United States 1,000 CO-OPERATION AND THE PEASANT 293 That the cooperative movement should meet with such marvelous success in Russia, seems surprising. And yet there is nothing strange in the phenomenon. It is a thoroughly natural outcome of conditions which were particularly favorable to the development of cooperative practice. For one thing the Russians since days immemorial have been given to one form or another of communal enterprise. In the mir the peasant learned to cooperate with his neighbors in various undertakings, and in those sections where the mir had not struck root, as in Ukraine, he also had occasion to participate in numerous communal projects. In nearly all Russian villages even in those where individual ownership of land prevailed, there were conamunal pastures, forests, used and cared for by all members collectively; certain com- munal buildings had to be erected, such as churches, school-houses, communal fences had to be put up, bridges laid, roads mended. In some villages there was the communal granary, to which each member had to donate a certain portion of grain after he had thrashed it, so that there would be a grain fund, from which the destitute villager might borrow rye or oats or wheat for house-use or for seed. In cer- tain other villages there was the flax-house, built also and kept up by the community. There the flax was thrashed and cleaned by all members of the village. Certain other villages operated wind-mills 2!)4 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION . lid blacksmith shops upon a communal basis. Then in building houses or barns or digging wells, the peasants always help each other. In towns, cities and industrial places, were the artels — the voluntary workers' organizations, which undertook to do various jobs, to load or unload boats, clear swamps and forests, dig tunnels, put up buildings or to man- ufacture certain goods. These artels were for the most part temporary organizations only, though in some places where there was steady employment, they became permanent institutions. In the absence of trade unions it was the artels who prior to the emancipation of the serfs and for several decades afterwards had defended the interests of the factory workers. All these and other similar activities accustomed the peasant and the city worker to the idea of collective effort, and have thus prepared them psychologically for the reception of the prin- ciples upon which the cooperative movement is founded. The chief reason, however, for the success of the movement in Russia is because the economic condi- tions of the country favored its growth. The peasant was a prey to the kulack and the middleman. When he needed a loan, he applied to them, and in a pre- ceding chapter it has already been pointed what exorbitant rates of interest they charged — fifty and an hundred per cent were by no means uncommon — CO-OPERATION AND THE PEASANT 295 and how in general they sought to squeeze out of their debtors under one pretext or another various fees and fines. Moreover, if the peasant had to buy something he went to the village shopkeeper, who charged extortionate prices and often did not hesi- tate to sell goods that were unfit for use. In the cities and towns, likewise, the petty shopkeepers took advantage of the worker and the professional man. Perhaps there was no country in the world where the merchants were given so much to profiteering as in Russia. Consequently, it was natural that a movement should be inaugurated to eliminate this profiteering, a task which the cooperatives had undertaken. Now if Russia had been a highly devel- oped country commercially, with middlemen com- peting against each other, and numerous and power- ful enough to oppose enterprises antagonistic to their interests, the cooperatives would have doubt- less encountered stiff opposition in one form or another. But with commerce only inadequately developed, the middleman was helpless in his fight against the cooperatives. When the peasant was in- formed that he could obtain better goods at a much lower price from a cooperative store, or that he could get cheaper credit at a cooperative bank, he readily responded to the invitation to form such an organ- ization in his village or district. Another reason w^hich greatly aided the spread of 296 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION the cooperatives is their non-partisan attitude toward questions, upon which humanity is divided. Mat- ters of poUtics, rehgion, class differences, they have sought to eschew. Anyone with the proper quahfications is admitted to membership. Ortho- dox or Protestant or Roman CathoUc, Cadet, Sociahst, Octobrist, they are all welcome. Of course most of the members and most of the societies are in villages, because Russia is essentially a village na- tion, and the peasant more than any other element has suffered from the backward and abnormal economic state of the country. But there are co- operatives of other classes, too, of officers in the army, and of various civil officials. Broadly speaking, the cooperatives may be divided upon the basis of their functions into four groups, credit, consumers', agricultural and industrial. Not that each group is entirely distinct from the other. In many ways their activities overlap. Thus the consumers', credit, and agricultural societies often sell and buy the same things. Upon the whole, however, each group seeks to confine itself to the tasks that lie within its own sphere. The consumers' cooperatives buy and sell mainly foods, also wearing apparel, various house furnishings, agricultural implements, books, school-supplies and other com- modities that are in constant demand. They always select goods of fine quality and sell at extremely low CO-OPERATION AND THE PEASANT 297 prices. Members and non-members may purchase from their stores. The various credit societies operate loan and savings departments. As a rule they charge between eight and twelve per cent interest on advances they make, not an exorbitant rate in Russia, and not much more than sufficient to cover operating expenses. On saving deposits they pay between six and seven per cent, about twice as much as the old government banks had offered. The credit societies also accept orders from members for agricultural machinery and sell this to their customers upon an installment basis. During 1914, all the credit societies in Russia loaned out close to a billion roubles at a tremendous saving to their customers. The agricultural societies engage in a variety of activities calculated to promote the productive power of both farm and farmer. They operate experiment stations, institute courses of lectures and demonstrations in various phases of farming, and encourage their patrons to introduce new methods of tillage and new crops. They buy and rent agricul- tural machinery, conduct repair shops, cement, tile and brick factories. These societies are still in their infancy, and on that account have not yet wrought a marked change in Russian agriculture. In view of the fact, however, that Russian farming is destined to undergo a thorough transformation, the agricul- 298 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION tural cooperatives have an unprecedented oppor- tunity to make themselves serviceable to the Rus- sian peasant. The industrial artels, associations of artisans and factory hands, are especially numerous in the north, where, owing to the poor fertility of the soil, the peasant has always been dependent, more or less, upon income from home industries. These societies buy at wholesale their raw materials, and dispose of their finished products insomuch as is possible di- rectly to the consumer. Their aim is the same as that of the other cooperatives, to eliminate the mid- dleman in all their transactions. The zemstvos and the other cooperatives by making loans to them and aiding them in the finding of the proper market, have been laj-gely responsible for then- flourishing state at the present time. Prior to the war they were in a rather languishing condition, because they could not compete upon equal terms with factory-made prod- ucts. But when many of peace-time industries had been diverted into the manufacture of war-supplies, with a resultant shortage of the very commodities the industrial artels were putting out, the market was open for an unUmited amount of their wares. And as the war continued and the industrial machine of the country was breaking down, the demand for their products continued to increase. Later when the Revolution came, and the productive machinery of CO-OPERATION AND THE PEASANT 299 the nation was further shattered, they remained practically the only producing agencies, whose working capacity instead of slumping, had actually risen. In fact the coming of the war, the industrial dis- integration of the country and the Revolution, opened wide the road of opportunity to all coopera- tives. Working hand in hand with zemstvos they took contracts from the government for grain, clothes, shoes, hospital supphes. They had the ma- chinery through which they could reach the millions of peasants and gather from them upon terms that satisfied them and in a manner that stirred their confidence, whatever supplies they could prepare for war purposes. They and the zemstvos and the Municipal Council were in fact the only organiza- tions whose war-time transactions had not provoked any adverse criticism either as to competency or square dealing. During the war they continued their fight against profiteers with increased vigor. They formed new societies all over the country, and the people readily responded to their appeal, for only through cooperation could relief be obtained from extortionate middlemen, who strove to comer the market in necessary supplies. They also sought to sustain the morale in the villages by provid- ing proper facifities for the peasantry to keep in touch with the progress of the war and world events 300 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION in general. To some extent they aided in the dis- tribution of labor, both industrial and agricultural, by providing means for migration to the places where it was needed most. They Ukewise adminis- tered relief to families whose bread-winners had gone to the army. They favored the enactment of the prohibition law, and when it went into effect they sought to provide healthful recreation in the villages to take the place of the vodka-drinking pastimes. Through all these and other similar activities they continued to grow and intrench them- selves in Russian hfe. Now not the least remarkable thing about these cooperatives is that the local administrators in the villages are very largely peasants. The movement was started by intellectuals, and the main leadership is still very largely in the hands of highly cultured men. But in the local branches the trustees and the managers are mouzhiks, elected by the members of the organization. Not a few of these local leaders are iUiterate. But they are men of understanding, of keen business sense, high executive abiUty, thor- oughly trustworthy and industrious. Of course they are aided by trained clerks, bookkeepers, salesmen. In fact, some of the Cooperative Unions have been conducting special schools to train efficient workers for their various enterprises. In Shenyavsky's people's college in Moscow a number of courses have COOPERATION AND THE PEASANT 301 been offered in the theory and practice of coopera- tion. The cooperatives have also a press of their own. In 1914, they pubhshed thirty journals. During the past twenty years the various types of cooperatives have been consohdating into central organizations or Unions. Thus there are the Credit Unions, Consumers' Unions, Agricultural Unions, Industrial Unions. The aim of these central organs is to establish mutual control of all the activities of the various separate branches, and thereby ehminate waste of time, work and expense. Though the old government was loathe to sanction the formation of these Unions, for fear they might turn into revolu- tionary organs, it could not resist the advance of the cooperatives, and finally granted charters for the establishment of the Unions. The Moscow Union of Consumers' Societies is the central nerve of the entire cooperative movement. Founded in 1898, practically a pioneer in the field, with meager re- sources at its command, under constant suspicion of the government, it struggled along for five years until it began to pubhsh its own journal, ''The Union of Consumers," and in 1911, it moved into its own premises — a large building — and extended its operations on such a wide scale, that it began to be considered as the leading cooperative organ of Russia. In 1908 it summoned the first Cooperative Congress, at which 800 delegates were present, and 302 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION laid plans for further expansion and centralization. In 1915 its volume of business amounted to 22 million roubles, whereas during the first eight months of the following year the sum was more than doubled. The Moscow Union also began to organ- ize producing agencies, which, aside from the artels, the Russian cooperatives, unlike those in England, had practically ignored. It opened an olive oil establishment, organized a weighing and sorting house for tea and coffee. In 1915 it acquired a con- fectionery, later it came into possession of a match and tobacco factories, soap works, and founded an extensive plant in Bessarabia for the drying of fruit and vegetables. In 1916 it purchased another con- fectionery, and organized a system of large-scale flour-milHng and a salting herring business in Arch- angel. All of these enterprises have met with success. Another institution which tended to cement the cooperatives was the People's Bank in Moscow, the financial center of the cooperative movement. It entered upon its career in a modest apartment. Outsiders, especially financial experts, prophesied its speedy collapse. Instead, it met with instan- taneous success. It started with a capitalization of one million roubles, which were obtained through the sale of four thousand shares of stock, eighty-five per cent of which was subscribed for by various credit CO-OPERATION AND THE PEASANT 303 societies. In the second year of its existence it put out another issue of shares for a similar amount. At the end of 1916 it had disposed of another block of stock of two milUon roubles and soon afterwards a fourth issue of six million roubles was prepared. It has thirty-three branches all over Russia, and has estabhshed agencies in London and New York. Its aim is to provide credit for various cooperatives at low rates and in convenient form. It carries on all forms of ordinary banking business, but buys no stocks nor shares, and confines its loan activities entirely to cooperatives. Private individuals or firms cannot obtain credit, excepting in instances when they act as intermediaries between cooperative societies. In addition to extending credit the Mos- cow Bank has also undertaken to make purchases for the various branches of the cooperative bodies. Being close to the financial market of the world, knowing thoroughly the conditions of the market, it is in a m\ich better position to make purchases than are the isolated societies, who now and then fell into the clutches of the monopolists and their agents. To make the purchasing department of the bank self-supporting, a charge of anyw^here between one and three per cent is levied upon the branch organ- izations. The growth of the Moscow Bank can be gauged from the fact, that while the turnover for the year of 1915 was over twenty-four million roubles, 804 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION during the first eight months of the following year it leapt to forty-nine millions, and while the deposits on the first of January, 1915, were about four mil- lion roubles, on the same date the following year they were ten millions, and on the first of September, 1916, they mounted to twenty-two millions! Particularly successful have been the Siberian cooperatives, essentially because the Siberian peasant is, comparatively speaking, in a rather comfortable position. He has more land, averages four cows per household, and has abundant pasture for other stock. The chief cooperatives in Siberia are the butter-mak- ing creameries. Originally the Siberian farmers entered into the cooperative manufactm'e of cheese. In this they failed, mainly because they had no specialist in cheese making and the quahty of their goods suffered in consequence. When they turned to making butter, they at once struck the key to suc- cess. Agents from many European countries as well as Russia swamped them with orders. At first the private butter-making shops got a lion's share of the business. But by the rapid organization of artels, and central unions, private enterprise was slowly eliminated, until the entire butter-making industry in Siberia has passed practically into the hands of the cooperatives. First organized in 1866 there were in 1900 in Western Siberia, 32 butter-making coopera- tives, in 1905 the number increased to 347, in 1910 CO-OPERATION AND THE PEASANT 305 to 1337 and at present there are over 2000! In 1908 the volume of then* business amounted to two and a quarter milUon roubles and in 1916 to seventy-three million roubles. Says Tugan-Baranovsky : ''It may truly be said that our butter making cooperatives constitute the most brilUant page in the history of our cooperative movement." When the Bolsheviki came into power they at- tempted to nationalize the cooperatives, to turn their machinery into government agencies, and operate them upon the principle of communism. To the Bolsheviki it appeared that the existence of the cooperatives in Russia in the form in which they carried on their transactions, was favoring the growth of bourgeois tendencies. Though the cooperatives seek to eliminate the middleman, they are based essentially upon the recognition of the principle of private property. In fact their efforts to improve the economic condition of the individual peasant, by enabling him to derive a larger revenue for his prod- uce, and thereby to reap greater profits from his land, only tends to deepen his instinct of private property, and thereby stiffens his resistance to com- munism. But the efforts at nationalization of the cooperatives failed. Those organizations that had been dissolved have been restored to hfe, and the leaders that had been under arrest, have been liber- ated. The Moscow Bank has, indeed, been national- 306 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION ized, but though supervised by a Bolshevist Com- missary its control has remained virtually with the former leaders of the institution. In fact many new cooperatives have actually sprung into existence during the period of Bolshevist rule. Thus after the regularly established insurance companies had been abolished, the cooperatives founded an In- surance Union, which has not only encountered no opposition from the Bolshevist government but has actually received its encouragement. Likewise Central unions of fruit growers, gardeners and potato planters, have come into existence during the last two years. Thus we observe that the cooperative movement, because it is rooted essentially in the reahties of Russian hfe and performs a function that is highly useful to its millions of members, has safely weathered the storm of social and economic disintegration. Whatever the future may have in store for Russia, even should a new gust of civil strife sweep through the country and effect a still fiu'ther shattering of the industrial and political institutions, the cooperatives will continue to function. Abstaining as a body from partisanship in the internal social conflict and holding itself together mainly because of its ministra- tions to the vital needs of its members, no govern- ment and no faction will dare to molest it. Like a rock in the midst of a raging sea it can defy the CO-OPERATION AND THE PEASANT 307 destructive forces hovering about, for its rests upon the foundation of sohd and unshakable reaUty. More than any other social organization will the coopera- tives contribute toward the rebuilding of the eco- nomic institutions of Russia. Especially will the peasant benefit from their aid. They will guide him in the proper pursuance of his daily tasks and will seek to protect him against the tricks and machina- tions of the middleman, both foreign and domestic. Incidentally the success of the cooperatives dem- onstrates how quickly and whole-heartedly the peasant rallies round an organization that seeks di- rectly to improve his economic condition.^ CHAPTER XVII BOLSHEVISM, THE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY AND THE PEASANT That the American Democracy — the broad masses of the people — have a vital interest in the Russian Revolution, need not be questioned. Even were Russia not so intimately bound up with America's new ventures into international diplomacy and international trade, the sheer human aspects of the Revolution, its suddenness, its stupendousness, its rapid shift from one stage to another, its dramatic climaxes, its effect upon the thought of the world, make an irresistible human appeal. There is fmiher- more a genuine desire on the part of the American Democracy to help in the happy solution of the momentous problems, which the Russian Revolution has unleashed. There is also, to judge from the written and spoken utterances of representatives of this Democracy, a liu-king fondness of the peasant and a profound sympathy for his struggles toward a better hfe. Only the American Democracy has labored under a maze of misconceptions with regard to the peasant and on that account has been at a loss to appreciate his position in the Revolution and to mold a pohcy fitting this position. BOLSHEVISM, DEMOCRACY, AND THE PEASANT 309 One thing is absolutely certain, we shall not be prepared to help eradicate those features of the Revolution, which may seem to us imdesirable, un- less we first gain a correct comprehensive and sym- pathetic understanding of the forces at play. Now as far as the peasant is concerned, from all that has been said in the preceding pages, certain deductions inevitably force themselves upon our mind — deduc- tions which must constitute the raw material out of which to build a definite steadying and sympathetic poUcy toward the Russian Revolution. For one thing the peasant knows what he wants. We should make no mistake about that. He is not a mere juggling ball in the hands of clever leaders, as so many wTiters would have us beheve. A study of the evolution of political parties in Russia bears eloquent testimony to this assertion. Since the earliest days of their existence they have all per- ceived the importance of the peasant following, and they have all striven to capture it. But it was not so much they who influenced the peasant to change his conception of his needs and problems, as he forc- ing them to alter their attitude toward him, and only the parties that have come closest to speaking to him in terms of his ideas and demands, have made themselves more or less popular in the village. Mis- led he has been, pitifully, woefully, again and again, by friend and foe, but whenever he discovered the 310 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION divergence between himself and his leaders and patrons, he has striven to the best of his abihty and simple understanding, to withdraw his support from them, and whenever possible and feasible even to attack them violently. The bitter disappointment of the older generation of Russian intellectuals, who have always dreamed and yearned for the day when they would lead the peasant to what they regarded as the land of promise for him, and who are now either in exile again in foreign lands, or else buried in seclusion in the libraries and museums and minor offices of their native land, because the peasant despite their multitude of fervent appeals, has re- jected their leadership — this in itself is proof that the peasant has a will of his own and is determined to insist upon its fulfillment. Another conclusion that is evident is that the peasant is actuated solely by self-interest, which, under the present circumstances, means a desire for the enjoyment not of luxuries, but of the commonest and most elementary necessities. He strives after the chance to build up a comfortable home, and to place himself in a position to rear his family in peace and plenty. It is for this reason that the land prob- lem has always been of most momentous importance to him. He could not conceive of a solution of his material crisis without the confiscation and the free distribution of all the big estates. BOLSHEVISM, DEMOCRACY, AND THE PEASANT 311 Still another conclusion that follows from the information presented in the preceding pages, is that the peasant has since the earhest days of serfdom, evinced a marked disposition now and then to battle vehemently in his own way for the attainment of his most cherished aim. The peasant is and has been an actual and potential revolutionary, though on the whole he has not been directly allied with the revolu- tionary movement of the country, and has on occa- sions even fought against the movement. True, in the past he seems to have manifested an outward acquiescence in the repressions of the old regime. That was because of external compulsion, which he in his isolation was powerless to resist. He had no mystic affinities for suffering and its amenities, as the rhapsodic Stephen Grahams have so voluminously sought to convince us. One would imagine from the utterances of the apostles of holy Russia and the other apologists of the old regime, that the peasant actually gloried in the experiences of pain, that this was indispensable to his spiritual self-satisfaction. Were this true he should have with all his might defended the former autocracy, for whatever else Czarism may or may not be accused of, its bit- terest enemies will gladly concede that it never begrudged affliction to the peasant. And yet some- how there does not seem to be the shghtest de- sire on the part of the mouzhik to resurrect the 312 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION power of the Czar, the Grand Dukes and the land- lords. The economic self-interest of the peasant and the masses in general, and all that the term imphes, is the real and only key to the Russian Revolution. As already explained at considerable length the peas- ant is not a pohtical theorist. He is not a Bolshevik nor an anti-Bolshevik, not a Menshevik nor an anti- Menshevik, not a Social-Revolutionary, nor an anti-Social-Revolutionary, not a Cadet nor an anti- Cadet. He has no political bias to satisfy and no pohtical traditions to uphold. He cares not which is the party in power, excepting that it is certain that he would never again support a Czaristic or any other form of government, which he might deem inimical to his welfare. It may appear a truism, but it must be emphasized again, that the peasant is first and foremost absorbed in his immediate welfare and the quickest means of insuring it regardless of the nature of this means. Lacking a crystallized political consciousness, lacking pohtical experience, distrustful of authority from above, for centuries in the grind of ruthless poverty, it would be strange, indeed, if he had thought and acted otherwise. The outside world, however, has exhibited a lamentable and persistent incapacity to appreciate this fundamental fact of the Russian Revolution. The Allied governments especially have approached BOLSHEVISM, DEMOCRACY, AND THE PEASANT 313 the Revolution from the poHtical and not from the economic angle, that is, not from the angle of the immediate cause and province of the Revolution. They have either not attempted or because of their legaHstic approach to world problems have not been able to view this epochal event through the eyes of those who have effected it and whom it concerns most vitally. Directly and indirectly they have fostered movements which have promised to erect in Russia a political organism satisfactory and acceptable to them. They have been seeking a political solution of the Russian problem, whereas the Russian masses, particularly the peasant, think and feel and act fundamentally in terms of economic promise and economic gain. A mere glance at the outstanding events of Russian history during the last five years should convince the impartial observer that the Russian problem is essentially economic in na- ture. It was the breakdown of the economic ma- chinery that brought defeat to the Russian armies, that precipitated the Revolution, that dragged Kerensky to his doom, and that enabled the Bol- sheviki by promising to the masses land, bread, peace and control of factories, to gain ascendancy to power. Consequently it would seem that the greatest contribution the outside world can make to the ultimate social and pohtical redemption of Russia, is 314 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION to allow her unhampered opportunity to heal her economic wounds, and to offer all the aid possible to this process of healing. Now the American Demo- cracy^ which has professed a desire to help rehabili- tate Russia, is in a particularly fortunate position to extend the much needed aid to that country. Owing to the marvelous productive powers of Ameri- can industry, America can supply Russia with necessary equipment for her struggle toward eco- nomic rejuvenation more amply than can any other industrial nation. Raiboad rolling stock, agricul- tural machinery, all forms of steam, gas and electri- cal apparatus, printing presses, school supplies, and many forms of machinery, which are so sadly wanted in Russia, of all these America can ship immense quan- tities. Furthermore, America has the trained men to help direct the development of Russia's incalculable natural resources, both agricultural and industrial. But, it is argued, can the American Democracy afford to extend aid to Russia as long as the Bolshe- viki remain in power? Is not Bolshevism a direct challenge and menace to American institutions? And if so would not the extension of economic help to Russia infuse new blood and new vitality into the Bolshevist movement, and thereby enhance its menace to existing American institutions? It is chiefly these considerations that have deterred America from proffering the much wanted succor to BOLSHEVISM, DEMOCRACY, AND THE PEASANT 315 Russia, and that may continue to disturb the minds of many patriotic Americans if trade relations are opened with a Bolshevist government. That Bolshevism is a challenge to American as well as all other existing political and social institu- tions, the most diplomatic Bolshevik will not have the temerity to deny. The institution of private property the Bolsheviki would annihilate. The right of the franchise they would withhold from those employing hired help and from ministers of the gospel, who are not engaged in some other form of what they regard as socially useful work. The accumulation of wealth through personal effort, ability and thrift they would prevent. In other words, the system of society which they would rear is fundamentally at variance with the one the average American deems most suitable for human existence. However, a challenge is one thing, a menace is quite another. A challenge becomes a menace only when it cannot be countered. To suspect, therefore, that Bolshevism is a menace to existing American institutions, is to imply that it is either possessed of some occult power to fascinate us into a blind aban- donment of oiu" institutions, to our own detriment, or else, that it can actually solve our social problem and bring the greatest amount of good to the largest number of people, more felicitously than can our established order. 316 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION Now to imagine that Bolshevism has any of the above occult power is, of course, absurd, and if Bolshevism possesses the virtue to promote human progress more abundantly than American institu- tions, or than any other institutions any^-here in the world, then it is by no means a menace but a bless- ing. And if Bolshevism cannot compete with our institutions in ministering to human welfare, if it has in it the power merely to degrade and debase, then none but those afflicted with a grave mental aberra- tion would ever think of championing it, and surely no Anglo-Saxon, or one reared in Anglo-Saxon civil- ization, and accustomed to appraise ideas in terms of practical values, would ever allow it to supplant the order of society in which he reposes his faith. Furthermore even in Russia, where the soil has been particularly fertile for its rise, Bolshevism has by no means become definitely and permanently entrenched. Far from it. It is face to face with difficulties which the most sanguine Bolshevik will not declare that it can surmount. There is the individualism of the peasant, who has no patience with the Bolshevist principle of communism, and who stubbornly insists upon individual ownership of land. Then there is the problem of production. Can communism in such an industrially backward country as Russia by denying the reward of personal gain to the talented and energetic, turn out the necessary BOLSHEVISM, DEMOCRACY, AND THE PEASANT 317 amount of supplies for the people? And if so, will it be able to withstand the fierce competition of the highly developed industrial nations, that is, will it be able to produce as cheaply and efficiently as these nations? It may be urged that to compete success- fully with foreign producers, the Bolshevist govern- ment will initiate a high protective tariff. But would the Russian masses, especially the peasantry, assent to a scheme that would make it necessary for them to pay higher prices for commodities to their own government, than to the foreign seller, which would be the case imder a high protective tariff? Of course, if the peasantry were to remain unorganized as imder the old regime, they might not be in a position to exert pressure upon their government to abandon a policy injurious to them economically. But the peasantry have organized themselves in local, regional and central bodies, which are bound to gain in influence as time passes, and they will surely oppose innovations inimical to their material advance. Besides, there are the other political parties — the Mensheviki, the Social-Revolution- aries, and even the Cadets, all of whom are opposed rather strenuously to the internal policies of the Bolshevist regime. When Russia is freed from the menace of foreign intervention and counter-revolu- tion, a menace that has tended to paralyze the oppo- sition to the Bolshevist government of all elements 318 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION who believe in the Revolution, these parties, partic- ularly the Mensheviki and the Social-Revolution- aries, will resume their active antagonism, which can be neutralized only by compromising with their demands, that is, by sacrificing a serious part of the Bolshevist program. Can Bolshevism ultimately triumph over these obstacles, or will it wreck itself in the effort to over- come them? It is not within the province of this book to answer this question. It would require a book of itself to make a searching study of it. For the purpose of the present discussion be it sufficient to state, that with Bolshevism existing mainly in an experimental stage, with numerous weighty obstacles barring its path to triumph, with its fundamental philosphy at extreme variance with that of the Ameri- can Democracy, and with the latter determined to up- hold its own institutions and to effect its social ad- vance by means of these institutions in their present or in a desirably modified form — under these circum- stances it is hard to conceive how Bolshevism con- stitutes a menace to American institutions. Then, too, extending economic aid to Russia does not necessarily mean bolstering the Bolshevist government. It simply means invigorating Russia's economic life, without which there can be no prog- ress or peace in that stricken country. On the contrary, such aid will only put Bolshevism on its BOLSHEVISM, DEMOCRACY, AND THE PEASANT 319 mettle, will subject its theories to the most crucial test, the test of practicability, and if they fail be- cause of intrinsic defectiveness, it will mean an end to Bolshevism forever, and it is far more desirable that Bolshevism should collapse through its own im- potence than through outside pressure. To repeat, the Russian problem is essentially an economic problem. The political crisis can be solved only through the solution of the economic crisis. Outside influences, of course, through per- sistent pressure and concerted effort, may succeed in imposing upon Russia a certain type of political edifice. But such an edifice can have no long lease of existence, unless those in control of it immediately dispose of the economic crisis to the satisfaction of the masses. Let us not overlook the fact that the masses, the proletariat as well as the peasant, have during the period of the Revolution grown conscious of their power, and have learned to exercise it effec- tively. Nearly every village and town has been turned to a smaller or larger extent into an armed camp, and the peasant and proletariat will sooner or later surely use their power against an imposed government, if it should not in their judgment comply with their demands for economic reconstruc- tion. If it is argued that what the Allied policy has been seeking is to settle the economic problem of Russia, then obviously it is a waste of wealth and 320 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION energy and human life to strive to impose a certain type of state organization as a condition prerequisite to the proper disposition of the economic difficulties. The mere effort at such an imposition not only aggravates the economic crisis, making it more difficult of ultimate solution, but also provokes dangerous irritation within and without Russia. The decision of the Supreme Council to Uft the blockade on Russia is a token of the defeat of the original Allied policy toward the Revolution. "But," it may be argued, "Russia is essentially a peasant country. The peasant is ignorant. He has had scarcely any political experience. Is he capable of self-government? Is it not advisable for outside forces to help guide him poUtically, imtil he has learned to govern himself?" In reply it must be stated that outside poUtical guidance is not in itself objectionable and the peasant is not averse to accepting it, provided it leads him to his chosen goal — economic self-sufficiency. Sugges- tions, plans, programs, when presented to him in a manner that elicits confidence and in proper form, that is, in terms that he can understand, he follows, provided they coincide with his aspirations. But he manifestly will resist compulsory guidance to the utmost of his ability, whether it comes from within or without Russia. We shall only delay the ultimate political adjustments of Russia, if we should seek to BOLSHEVISM, DEMOCRACY, AND THE PEASANT 321 effect it forcibly under some pretext or other. It cannot be too vigorously emphasized that the Rus- sian state must evolve out of Russian realities, as the Russians themselves understand and interpret them. It must draw its sustenance and strength from its own native soil, if it is at all to endure. As to the ignorance of the peasant, that is a serious problem. More than anything else ddes Russia need schools to wipe out her immense iUiteracy, and thus to help elevate the peasant to a higher cultural plane. But in his own way the peasant is quite in- telligent. Of practical things especially has he dis- played a marvelous understanding. And what better proof is needed to substantiate this assertion than the existence of a nation-wide chain of cooperatives of various forms, managed to an appreciable extent by peasants and with such unprecedented success? And were further proof needed one could point to the division of millions of acres of land throughout the length and breadth of Russia during the last two years, in the midst of a mighty Revolution, and with comparatively little bloodshed and disorder. And if the peasant has been capable of building up a won- drous network of cooperatives and to run them suc- cessfully, and of carrying out in comparative peace, though still inadequately, the distribution of millions of acres of land, why will he not be able to help erect a stable state organization? It will take time, of 322 THE RUSSIAN PEASANT AND THE REVOLUTION course, and he will commit innumerable errors, but he has had enough experience in social effort to warrant the assumption that he can without the compulsory guidance of insiders or outsiders, grope his way intelligently toward his own political re- demption. Moreover, it should be remembered that the peasant is essentially democratic. It is hardly necessary to expatiate on a subject which has been written about so much in Russian and foreign literature. Be it sufficient to point to the fact that only a people at heart democratic could initiate universal suffrage for men and women, as was done in Russia, when the Czar was overthrown. Those, however, who are skeptical of the capacities of the Russian peasant, and who for some reason or other are disappointed with the Russian Revolution, and nurture dark misgivings as to its future course and ultimate outcome, would do well to ponder over the following words, uttered almost a century ago by Thomas Babington Macaulay: ''The final and permanent fruits of hberty are wisdom, moderation and mercy. Its immediate effects are often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, skepticism on points the 'most clear, dogmatism on points the most mysterious. It is just at this crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. They pull down the scaffolding from the half-finished edifice; they point to the flying dust, the falling bricks, the com- BOLSHEVISM, DEMOCRACY, AND THE PEASANT 323 fortless rooms, the frightful irregularity of the whole appearance, and then ask in scorn where the prom- ised splendor and comfort are to be found. If such miserable sophisms were to prevail, there would never be a good house or a good government in the world. There is only one cm-e for the evils which newly- acquired freedom produces; and the ciure is freedom. When a prisoner first leaves his cell, he cannot bear the light of day; he is unable to discriminate colors or recognize faces. But the remedy is not to remand him into the dungeon, but to accustom him to the rays of the sun. The blaze of truth and Uberty may at first dazzle and bewilder nations which have become half-blind in the house of bondage. But let them gaze on and they will soon be able to bear it. In a few years men learn to reason. The extreme violence of opinions subsides. Hostile theories correct each other. The scattered elements of truth cease to contend and begin to coalesce, and at last a system of justice and order is educed of the chaos. "Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free, till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into water until he learned to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery they may, indeed, wait forever." BIBLIOGRAPHY Avilov, B., Nastoyashtcheye i Bvdushtcheye Narodnavo Khosi- aystva v Rossii. Bernatzky, M. V., K Agramomu Voprosu. Blank, Simon, Landarbeitersverhaltnisse in Russland. Boshko, V. I., K Agramomu Voprosu v Rossii. Brutzkus, B. D., Obobshtchest v lenie Zemli i Agrarnaya Reforma. Bublikov, A. A., Russkaya Revolutsia. Bubnov, J. v., The Cooperative Movement in Russia. Bykhovsky, N. Y., Russkaya Obshtchina. Charkolussky, V. S., Yezhegodnick Narodnoy Shkoly, 1908. Chekhov, N. V., Narodnoye Obrazovaniye v Rossii. Chernov, Victor, K Teorii o Klassovoy Borbe. Tipy Kapitalisticheskoy i Agrarnoy Evolutzii. Marx i Engels o Krestyanstve. Chernyshevsky, N., Statyi po Krestyanskomu Voprosu. Derevensky, S., ChtoGovoriat pro Zemlu Sotsialisty Revolutsion- ery? Dillon, E. J., The Eclipse of Russia. Pinn-Yenotayevsky, Sovremennoye Khodaystvo v Rossii. Goremykin, M. I., Agramy Vopros v Rossii. Haxthausen, A. A., Die Ldndliche Verfassung Russlands. Studien uber die inneren Zustande, das Volksleben und insbe- sondere die landlishen Einrichtungen Russlands, 3 vols. Hourwich, I. A., The Economics of the Russian Village. Irisov, Kooperatzia v Tekusthtchii Moment. Ivanov-Rasumnik, Istoria Russkoy Obshtchestvennoy Mysli. Kabardin, N., Russkikh Nuzhdakh. Kautsky, Karl, Agramy Vopros. Agramy Vopros v Rossii. Kachorovsky, K. R., Narodnoye Pram, Russkaya Obshtchina. Editor of Borba za Zemlu. 326 BIBLIOGRAPHY Katzenellenbaum, Z. C, Finansovaya Storona Agrarnoy Re- formy. Kluchevsky, V. D., Istoria Soslovy v Rossii. Kurs Ru^skoy Istorii, 4 vols. Kulchitsky, L., Istoria Russkavo Revolutsionnavo Dvizheniya. Kornilov, Alexander, Modern Russian History. Partiya Narodnoy Svobody. Kostomarov, N., Bunt Stenki Razina. Kovalevsky, Maxim, Russian Political Institutions. Lenine, N., Agrarnaya Programma Sotsiat-Demokratii v Pervoy Russkoy Revolvisii. Chto Dyelat? Gosudarstvo i Revolutzia. K Derevenskoy Bednosti. Leontyev, A., Krestyanksoye Pravo, evo sodei'zhaniye i ohyem. Lipping, Karl J., DieEpochen der russischen Agrargeshichte und Agrarpolitick von der dltesten Zeit bis zur Gegen- wart. Lossitzky, A., Krestyanksoye Pravo i Obshlchina pred Gosvdar- stvennoy Dumoy. Lurye, N., Krestyansky Vopros i Sotsial Demokratia. Martov, L., Obstchestvennoye Dvizhenyie v Rossii, 4 vols. Masaryk, T. G., Zur russischen Geschichts und Religionsphilos- ophic, 2 vols. Maslov, Pyotr, Agrarny Vopros v Rossii, 2 vols. Teoriya Razvitiya Nardonavo Khosiaystva. Usioviya Razvitiya Selskavo Khosiaystva v Rossii. Razvitiye Narodnavo Khosiaystva i Agrarnaya Programma. Mavor, Jams, An Economic History of Russia, 2 vols. Melnick, Josef, Russen iiber Ru^sland. Migulin, P. P., Agrarny Vopros. Milyukov Pavel, N., Ocherki po Istorii Russkoy Kultury, vols. 1 and 2. Russia and its Social Crisis. God Borby. Milyutin, V. P. , Rahotchi Vopros v Selskom Khosiaystve Rossii. Selsko- Khosiaystvennyie Rabotchiye i Voyna. Orlov, A. S., Kooperatziya v Rossii Nakanunye i vo Vremya Voyny. BIBLIOGRAPHY 327 Oganovsky, N. P., Individiializatzia Zemlyedeliya v Rossii i eya Poslyedstviya. Revoluitsia Naooborot. S Nebes na Zemlu. 'On, N., Odm'ki nashevo poreformennavo obshtshestvennavo Khosi- aystva. Preyer, W. D., Die Russische Agrarreform. Prokopovitch, Kooperatn>noye Dvizehnye. Plekhanov, G. V., Nashi Raznoglasiya. Kritika Nashikh Kritikov. Shanin, M., Munitsipalizatsia Hi Rasdelye v Sobstvennostf Struve, P. B., Kriticheskiya Zametki k Voprosu ob Ekonomit- cheskom Razvitii Rossii. Sukhanov, N. , Zemelnaya Renla i Osnovy Semelnavo Oblozheniya. Stepniack, TJie Russian Peasantry. Totomyanetz, V. F., Formy Agrarnavo Dvizehniya. Tugan-Baranovsky, Natzionalizatsia Zemli. Russkaya Fabrika v Proshlom i Nastoyshtchem. Thun, A., Geshichte der Revolutzioner-Bewegung in Russland. Valentinov, N. V., Revolutzia i Agrarnaya Programma Sotsialis- tov-Revolutzionerov. Vozzhmukhin, I., Agrarny Vopros v Tsifrakh iFaktakh. Yzgoyev, Russkoye Obshtcnedvo i Revolutsia. Nashi Politcheskiya Partii. Yezhegodnick Qazety Rech 1914-1915. In addition to the above list of references the writer has made use of the numerous articles on the peasantry of Russia, which have appeared in the leading Russian magazines, such as Russ- kaya Mysl, Russkaya Starina, Russkoye Bogatstvo, Vestnik Yev- ropy, Soiremenny Mir, Letopis, and also of the various reports of the Department of Agi-iculture, Zemstvo commissions, League of Agrarian Reforms, and of the stenographic accounts of the discussions of the agrarian problems in the first and second Dumas. bCl^ 3ff»Jl THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW. 2/92 Senes 9482 \ AKvijan 3Hi e 3 1205 01431 2894 \ X /