VI The Bolsheviki and the Peasants
In the fierce fratricidal conflict between the Bolsheviki and the democratic anti-Bolshevist elements so much bitterness has been engendered that anything approaching calm, dispassionate discussion and judgment has been impossible for Russians, whether as residents in Russia, engaged in the struggle, or as émigrés, impotent to do more than indulge in the expression of their emotions, practically all Russians everywhere have been—and still are—too intensely partizan to be just or fair-minded. And non-Russians have been subject to the same distorting passions, only to a lesser degree. Even here in the United States, while an incredibly large part of the population has remained utterly indifferent, wholly uninterested in the struggle or the issues at stake, it has been practically impossible to find anywhere intelligent interest dissociated from fierce partizanship.
The detachment and impartiality essential to the formation of sound and unbiased judgment have been almost non-existent. The issues at stake have been too vast and too fundamental, too vitally concerned with the primal things of civilization, the sources of some of our profoundest emotions, to permit cool deliberation. Moreover, little groups of men and women with strident cries have hurled the challenge of Bolshevism into the arena of our national life, and that at a time of abnormal excitation, at the very moment when our lives were pulsing with a fiercely emotional patriotism. As a result of these conditions there has been little discriminating discernment in the tremendous riot of discussion of Russian Bolshevism which has raged in all parts of the land. It has been a frenzied battle of epithet and insult, calumny and accusation.
It is not at all strange or remarkable that their opponents, in Russia and outside of it, have been ready to charge against the Bolsheviki every evil condition in Russia, including those which have long existed under czarism and those which developed during and as a result of the war. The transportation system had been reduced to something nearly approaching chaos before the Revolution of March, 1917, as all reasonably well-informed people know. Yet, notwithstanding these things, it is a common practice to charge the Bolsheviki with the destruction of the transportation system and all the evil results following from it. Industrial production declined greatly in the latter part of 1916 and the early weeks of 1917. The March Revolution, by lessening discipline in the factories, had the effect of lessening production still further. The demoralization of industry was one of the gravest problems with which Kerensky had to deal. Yet it is rare to find any allowance made for these important facts in anti-Bolshevist polemics. The Bolsheviki are charged with having wrought all the havoc and harm; there is no discrimination, no intellectual balance.
Similarly, many of their opponents have charged against the Russian Bolsheviki much brutality and crime which in fairness should be attributed rather to inherent defects of the peasant character, themselves the product of centuries of oppression and misrule. There is much that is admirable in the character of the Russian peasant, and many western writers have found the temptation to idealize it irresistible. Yet it is well to remember that it is not yet sixty years since serfdom was abolished; that under a very thin veneer there remain ignorant selfishness, superstition, and the capacity for savage brutality which all primitive peoples have. Nothing is gained, nobody is helped to an understanding of the Russian problem, if emphasis is laid upon the riotous seizures of land by the peasants in the early stages of the Bolshevist régime and no attention paid to the fact that similar riotings and land seizures were numerous and common in 1906, and that as soon as the Revolution broke out in March, 1917, the peasant uprisings began. Undoubtedly the Bolsheviki must be held responsible for the fact that they deliberately destroyed the discipline and restraint which the Land Commissions exercised over the peasants; that they instigated them to riot and anarchy at the very time when a peaceful and orderly solution of the land problem was made certain. It is not necessary to minimize their crime against Russian civilization: only it is neither true nor wise to attribute the brutal character of the peasant to Bolshevism.
The abolition of the courts of justice and the forms of judicial procedure threw upon the so-called “People’s Tribunals” the task of administering justice—a task which the peasants of whom the village tribunals were composed, many of them wholly illiterate and wholly unfit to exercise authority, could not be expected to discharge other than as they did, with savage brutality. Here is a list of cases taken from a single issue (April 26, 1918) of the Dyelo Naroda (People’s Affair), organ of the Socialists-Revolutionists:
In Kirensk County the People’s Tribunal ordered a woman, found guilty of extracting brandy, to be inclosed in a bag and repeatedly knocked against the ground until dead.
In the Province of Tver the People’s Tribunal has sentenced a young fellow “to freeze to death” for theft. In a rigid frost he was led out, clad only in a shirt, and water was poured on him until he turned into a piece of ice. Out of pity somebody cut his tortures short by shooting him.
In Sarapulsk County a peasant woman, helped by her lover, killed her husband. For this crime the People’s Tribunal sentenced the woman to be buried alive and her lover to die. A grave was dug, into which first the body of the killed lover was lowered, and then the woman, hands and feet bound, put on top. She had been covered by almost fifteen feet of earth when she still kept on yelling “Help!” and “Have pity, dear people!” The peasants, who witnessed the scene, later said, “But the life of a woman is as lasting as that of a cat.”
In the village of Bolshaya Sosnovka a shoemaker killed a soldier who tried to break in during the night. The victim’s comrades, also soldiers, created a “Revolutionary Tribunal,” which convicted the shoemaker to “be beheaded at the hands of one of his comrades to whose lot it should fall to perform the task.” The shoemaker was put to death in the presence of a crowd of thousands of people.
In the village of Bootsenki five men and three women were accused of misconduct. The local peasant committee undertook to try them. After a long trial the committee reached the verdict to punish them by flogging, giving each one publicly thirty-five strokes with the rod. One of the women was pregnant and it was decided to postpone the execution in her case until she had been delivered. The rest were severely flogged. In connection with this affair an interesting episode occurred. One of the convicted received only sixteen strokes instead of thirty-five. At first no attention was paid to it. The next day, however, rumors spread that the president of the committee had been bribed, and had thus mitigated the punishment.
Then the committee decreed to flog the president himself, administering to him fifty strokes with the rod.
In the village of Riepyrky, in Korotoyansk County, the peasants caught a soldier robbing and decided to drown him. The verdict was carried out by the members of the Revolutionary Tribunal in the presence of all the people of the village.
In the village of Vradievka, in Ananyensky County, eleven thieves, sentenced by the people, were shot.
In the district of Kubanetz, in the Province of Petrograd, carrying out the verdict of the people, peasants shot twelve men of the fighting militia who had been caught accepting bribes.
These sentences speak for themselves. They were not expressions of Bolshevist savagery, for in the village tribunals there were very few Bolsheviki. As a matter of fact, the same people who meted out these barbarous sentences treated the agents of the Soviet Government with equally savage brutality. The Bolsheviki had unleashed the furious passion of these primitive folk, destroyed their faith in liberty within the law, and replaced it by license and tyranny. Thus had they recklessly sown dragons’ teeth.
As early as December, 1917, the Bolshevist press was discussing the serious conditions which obtained among the peasants in the villages. It was recognized that no good had resulted from the distribution of the land by the anarchical methods which had been adopted. The evils which the leaders of the Mensheviki and the Socialists-Revolutionists had warned against were seen to be very stern realities. As was inevitable, the land went, in many cases, not to the most needy, but to the most powerful and least scrupulous. In these cases there was no order, no wisdom, no justice, no law save might. It was the old, old story of
Let him take who has the power;
And let him keep who can.
All that there was of justice and order came from the organizations set up by the Provisional Government, the organizations the Bolsheviki sought to destroy. Before they had been in power very long the new rulers were compelled to recognize the seriousness of the situation. On December 26, 1917, Pravda said:
Thus far not everybody realizes to what an extent the war has affected the economic condition of the villages. The increase in the cost of bread has been a gain only for those selling it. The demolition of the estates of the landowners has enriched only those who arrived at the place of plunder in carriages driven by five horses. By the distribution of the landowners’ cattle and the rest of their property, those gained most who were in charge of the distribution. In charge of the distribution were committees, which, as everybody was complaining, consisted mainly of wealthy peasants.
One of the most terrible consequences of the lawless anarchy that had been induced by the Bolsheviki was the internecine strife between villages, which speedily assumed the dimensions of civil war. It was common for the peasants in one village to arm themselves and fight the armed peasants of a neighboring village for the possession of the lands of an estate. At the instigation of the Bolsheviki and of German agents, many thousands of peasants had deserted from the army, taking with them their weapons and as much ammunition as they could. “Go back to your homes and take your guns with you. Seize the land for yourselves and defend it!” was the substance of this propaganda. The peasant soldiers deserted in masses, frequently terrorizing the people of the villages and towns through which they passed. Several times the Kerensky Government attempted to disarm these masses of deserters, but their number was so great that this was not possible, every attempt to disarm a body of them resolving itself into a pitched battle. In this way the villages became filled with armed men who were ready to use their weapons in the war for booty, a sort of savage tribal war, the village populations being the tribes. In his paper, Novaya Zhizn, Gorky wrote, in June, 1918:
All those who have studied the Russian villages of our day clearly perceive that the process of demoralization and decay is going on there with remarkable speed. The peasants have taken the land away from its owners, divided it among themselves, and destroyed the agricultural implements. And they are getting ready to engage in a bloody internecine struggle for the division of the booty. In certain districts the population has consumed the entire grain-supply, including the seed. In other districts the peasants are hiding their grain underground, for fear of being forced to share it with starving neighbors. This situation cannot fail to lead to chaos, destruction, and murder.7
As a matter of fact the “bloody internecine struggle” had been going on for some time. Even before the overthrow of Kerensky there had been many of these village wars. The Bolshevist Government did not make any very serious attempt to interfere with the peasant movements for the distribution of land for some time after the coup d’état. It was too busy trying to consolidate its position in the cities, and especially to organize production in the factories. There was not much to be done with the farms at that season of the year. Early in the spring of 1918 agents of the Soviet Government began to appear in the villages. Their purpose was to supervise and regulate the distribution of the land. Since a great deal of the land had already been seized and distributed by the peasants, this involved some interference on the part of the central Soviet power in matters which the peasants regarded themselves as rightfully entitled to settle in their own way.
This gave rise to a bitter conflict between the peasants and the central Soviet authorities. If the peasants had confiscated and partitioned the land, however inequitably, they regarded their deed as conclusive and final. The attempt of the Soviet agents to “revise” their actions they regarded as robbery. The central Soviet authorities had against them all the village population with the exception of the disgruntled few. If the peasants had not yet partitioned the land they were suspicious of outsiders coming to do it. The land was their own; the city men had nothing to do with it. In hundreds of villages the commissions sent by the Bolsheviki to carry out the provisions of the land program were mobbed and brutally beaten, and in many cases were murdered. The issue of Vlast Naroda (Power of the People) for May, 1918, contained the following:
In Bielo all members of the Soviets have been murdered.
In Soligalich two of the most prominent members of the Soviets have literally been torn to pieces. Two others have been beaten half dead.
In Atkarsk several members of the Soviets have been killed. In an encounter between the Red Guards and the masses, many were killed and wounded. The Red Guards fled.
In Kleen a crowd entered by force the building occupied by the Soviets, with the intention of bringing the deputies before their own court of justice. The latter fled. The Financial Commissary committed suicide by shooting himself, in order to escape the infuriated crowd.
In Oriekhovo-Zooyevo the deputies work in their offices guarded by a most vigilant military force. Even on the streets they are accompanied by guards armed with rifles and bayonets.
In Penza an attempt has been made on the lives of the Soviet members. One of the presiding officers has been wounded. The Soviet building is now surrounded with cannon and machine-guns.
In Svicherka, where the Bolsheviki had ordered a St. Bartholomew night, the deputies are hunted like wild animals.
In the district of Kaliasinsk the peasantry has decidedly refused to obey orders of the Soviets to organize an army by compulsion. Some of the recruiting officers and agitators have been killed.
Similar acts become more numerous as time goes on. The movement against the Soviets spreads far and wide, affecting wider and wider circles of the people.
The warfare between villages over confiscated land was a very serious matter. Not only did the peasants confiscate and divide among themselves the great estates, but they took the “excess” lands of the moderately well-to-do peasants in many instances—that is, all over and above the average allotment for the village. Those residing in a village immediately adjoining an estate thus confiscated had, all other things being equal, a better chance to get the lands than villagers a little farther distant, though the latter might be in greater need of the land, owing to the fact that their holdings were smaller. Again, the village containing many armed men stood a better chance than the village containing few. Village made war against village, raising armed forces for the purpose. We get a vivid picture of this terrible anarchy from the following account in the Vlast Naroda:
The village has taken away the land from the landlords, farmers, wealthy peasants, and monasteries. It cannot, however, divide it peacefully, as was to be expected.
The more land there is the greater the appetite for it; hence more quarrels, misunderstandings, and fights.
In Oboyansk County many villages refused to supply soldiers when the Soviet authorities were mobilizing an army. In their refusal they stated that “in the spring soldiers will be needed at home in the villages,” not to cultivate the land, but to protect it with arms against neighboring peasants.
In the Provinces of Kaluga, Kursk, and Voronezh peasant meetings adopted the following resolutions:
“All grown members of the peasant community have to be home in the spring. Whoever will then not return to the village or voluntarily stay away will be forever expelled from the community.
“These provisions are made for the purpose of having as great a force as possible in the spring when it comes to dividing the land.”
The peasantry is rapidly preparing to arm and is partly armed already. The villages have a number of rifles, cartridges, hand-grenades, and bombs.
Some villages in the Nieshnov district in the Province of Mohilev have supplied themselves with machine-guns. The village of Little Nieshnov, for instance, has decided to order fifteen machine-guns and has organized a Red Army in order to be able better to defend a piece of land taken away from the landlords, and, as they say, that “the neighboring peasants should not come to cut our hay right in front of our windows, like last year.” When the neighboring peasants “heard of the decision” they also procured machine-guns. They have formed an army and intend to go to Little Nieshnov to cut the hay on the meadows “under the windows” of the disputed owners.
In the Counties of Schigrovsk, Oboyansk, and Ruilsk, in the Province of Kursk, almost every small and large village has organized a Red Guard and is making preparations for the coming spring war. In these places the peasants have taken rich booty. They took and devastated 160 estates, 14 breweries, and 26 sugar refineries. Some villages have even marked the spot where the machine-guns will have to be placed in the spring. In Volsk County in the Province of Saratov five large villages—Kluchi, Pletnevka, Ruibni, Shakhan, and Chernavka—expect to have war when the time comes to divide the 148,500 acres of Count Orlov-Denisov’s estate. Stubborn fights for meadows and forests are already going on. They often result in skirmishes and murder. There are similar happenings in other counties of the province; for instance, in Petrov, Balashov, and Arkhar.
In the Province of Simbirsk there is war between the community peasants and shopkeepers. The former have decided to do away with “Stolypin heirs,” as they call the shopkeepers. The latter, however, have organized and are ready for a stubborn resistance. Combats have already taken place. The peasants demolish farms, and the farmers set fire to towns, villages, threshing-floors, etc.
We have received from the village of Khanino, in the Province of Kaluga, the following letter:
“The division of the land leads to war. One village fights against the other. The wealthy and strong peasants have decided not to let the poor share the land taken away from the landlords. In their turn, the poor peasants say, ‘We will take away from you bourgeois peasants not only the lands of the landlords, but also your own. We, the toilers, are now the government.’ This leads to constant quarrels and fights. The population of the neighboring village consists of so-called natives and of peasants brought by landlords from the Province of Orlov. The natives now say to those from Orlov: ‘Get away from our land and return to your Province of Orlov. Anyhow, we shall drive you away from here.’ The peasants from Orlov, however, threaten ‘to kill all the natives.’ Thus there are daily encounters.”
In another village the peasants have about 5,400 acres of land, which they bought. For some reason or other they failed to cultivate it last year. Therefore the peasants of a neighboring village decided to take it away from them as “superfluous property which is against the labor status.” The owners, however, declared:
“First kill us and then you will be able to take away our land.”
In some places the first battles for land have already taken place.
In the Province of Tambov, near the village of Ischeina, a serious encounter has taken place between the peasants of the village of Shleyevka and Brianchevka. Fortunately, among the peasants of Brianchevka was a wise man, “the village Solomon,” who first persuaded his neighbors to put out for the peasants of Shleyevka five buckets of brandy. The latter actually took the ransom and went away, thus leaving the land to the owners.
In some instances the Bolsheviki instigated the peasants to massacre hundreds of innocent people in adjacent villages and towns. They did not stop, or even protest against, the most savage anti-Jewish pogroms. Charles Dumas, the well-known French Socialist, a Deputy in Parliament, after spending fifteen months in Russia, published his experiences and solemnly warned the Socialists of France against Bolshevism. His book8 is a terrible chronicle of terrorism, oppression, and anarchy, all the more impressive because of its restraint and careful documentation. He cites the following cases:
On March 18, 1918, the peasants of an adjoining village organized, in collusion with the Bolsheviki, a veritable St. Bartholomew night in the city of Kuklovo. About five hundred bodies of the victims were found afterward, most of them “Intellectuals.” All residences and stores were plundered and destroyed, the Jews being among the worst sufferers. Entire families were wiped out, and for three days the Bolsheviki would not permit the burial of the dead.
In May, 1918, the city of Korocha was the scene of a horrible massacre. Thirty officers, four priests, and three hundred citizens were killed.
In May, 1918, the relations of the Soviet Government to the peasantry were described by Gorky as the war of the city against the country. They were, in fact, very similar to the relations of conquering armies to the subjugated but rebellious and resentful populations of conquered territories. On May 14th a decree was issued regarding the control of grain, the famous compulsory grain registration order. This decree occupies so important a place in the history of the struggle, and contains so many striking features, that a fairly full summary is necessary:9
While the people in the consuming districts are starving, there are large reserves of unthreshed grain in the producing districts. This grain is in the hands of the village bourgeoisie—“tight-fisted village dealers and profiteers”—who remain “deaf and indifferent to the wailings of starving workmen and peasant poverty” and hold their grain in the hope of forcing the government to raise the price of grain, selling only to the speculators at fabulous prices. “An end must be put to this obstinacy of the greedy village grain-profiteers.” To abolish the grain monopoly and the system of fixed prices, while it would lessen the profits of one group of capitalists, would also “make bread completely inaccessible to our many millions of workmen and would subject them to inevitable death from starvation.” Only food grains absolutely necessary for feeding their families, on a rationed basis, and for seed purposes should be permitted to be held by the peasants. “The answer to the violence of grain-growers toward the starving poor must be violence toward the bourgeoisie.”
Continuing its policy of price-fixing and monopolization of the grain-supply, the government decreed “a merciless struggle with grain speculators,” compulsion of “each grain-owner to declare the surplus above what is needed to sow the fields and for personal use, according to established normal quantities, until the new harvest, and to surrender the same within a week after the publication of this decision in each village.” The workmen and poor peasants were called upon “to unite at once for a merciless struggle with grain-hoarders.” All persons having a surplus of grain and failing to bring it to the collecting-points, and those wasting grain on illicit distillation of alcohol, were to be regarded as “enemies of the people.” They were to be turned over to the Revolutionary Tribunal, which would “imprison them for ten years, confiscate their entire property, and drive them out forever from the communes”; while the distillers must, in addition, “be condemned to compulsory communal work.”
To carry out this rigorous policy it was provided that any person who revealed an undeclared surplus of grains should receive one-half the value of the surplus when it was seized and confiscated, the other half going to the village commune. “For the more successful struggle with the food crisis” extraordinary powers were conferred upon the People’s Food Commissioner, appointed by the Soviet Government. This official was empowered to (1) publish at his discretion obligatory regulations regarding the food situation, “exceeding the usual limits of the People’s Food Commissioner’s competence”; (2) to abrogate the orders of local food bodies and other organizations contravening his own plans and orders; (3) to demand from all institutions and organizations the immediate carrying out of his regulations; (4) “to use armed forces in case resistance is shown to the removal of grains or other food products; (5) to dissolve or reorganize the food agencies where they might resist his orders; (6) to discharge, transfer, commit to the Revolutionary Tribunal, or subject to arrest officers and employees of all departments and public organizations in case of interference with his orders; (7) to transfer the powers of such officials, departments, and institutions,” with the approval of the Council of People’s Commissaries.
It is not necessary here to discuss the merits of these regulations, even if we possessed the complete data without which the merit of the regulations cannot be determined. For our present purpose it is sufficient to recognize the fact that the peasants regarded the regulations as oppressive and vigorously resisted their enforcement. They claimed that the amount of grain—and also of potatoes—they were permitted to keep was insufficient; that it meant semi-starvation to them. The peasant Soviets, where such still existed, jealous of their rights, refused to recognize the authority of the People’s Food Commissaries. No material increase in the supply of “surplus grain” was observed. The receiving-stations were as neglected as before. The poor wretches who, inspired by the rich reward of half the value of the illegal reserves reported, acted as informers were beaten and tortured, and the Food Commissaries, who were frequently arrogant and brutal in their ways, were attacked and in some cases killed.
The Soviet Government had resort to armed force against the peasants. On May 30, 1918, the Council of People’s Commissaries met and decided that the workmen of Petrograd and Moscow must form “food-requisitioning detachments” and “advance in a crusade against the village bourgeoisie, calling to their assistance the village poor.” From a manifesto issued by the Council of People’s Commissaries this passage is quoted:
The Central Executive Committee has ordered the Soviets of Moscow and Petrograd to mobilize 10,000 workers, to arm them and to equip them for a campaign for the conquest of wheat from the rapacious and the monopolists. This order must be put into operation within a week. Every worker called upon to take up arms must perform his duty without a murmur.
This was, of course, a mobilization for war of the city proletariat against the peasantry. In an article entitled, “The Policy of Despair,” published in his paper, the Novaya Zhizn, Gorky vigorously denounced this policy:
The war is declared, the city against the country, a war that allows an infamous propaganda to say that the worker is to snatch his last morsel of bread from the half-starved peasant and to give him in return nothing but Communist bullets and monetary emblems without value. Cruel war is declared, and what is the more terrible, a war without an aim. The granaries of Russia are outside of the Communistic Paradise, but rural Russia suffers as much from famine as urban Russia.
We are profoundly persuaded—and Lenin and many of the intelligent Bolsheviks know this very well—that to collect wheat through these methods that recall in a manner so striking those employed by General Eichhorn (a Prussian general of enduring memory for cruelty) in Ukrainia, will never solve the food crisis. They know that the return to democracy and the work of the local autonomies will give the best results, and meantime they have taken this decisive step on the road to folly.
How completely the Bolshevist methods failed is shown by the official Soviet journal, Finances and National Economy (No. 38), November, 1918. The following figures refer to a period of three months in the first half of 1918, and show the number of wagon-loads demanded and the number actually secured:
| 1918 | Wagon-loads Demanded | Wagon-loads Secured | Percentage of Demand Realized |
|---|---|---|---|
| April | 20,967 | 1,462 | 6.97 |
| May | 19,780 | 1,684 | 7.02 |
| June | 17,370 | 786 | 4.52 |
In explanation of these figures the apologists of Bolshevist rule have said that the failure was due in large part to the control of important grain-growing provinces by anti-Bolshevist forces. This is typical of the half-truths which make up so much of the Bolshevist propaganda. Of course, important grain districts were in the control of the anti-Bolshevist forces, but the fact was known to the Bolsheviki and was taken into account in making their demands. Otherwise, their demands would certainly have been much greater. Let us, however, look at the matter from a slightly different angle and consider how the scheme worked in those provinces which were wholly controlled by the Bolsheviki, and where there were no “enemy forces.” The following figures, taken from the same Soviet journal, refer to the month of June, 1918:
| Province | Wagon-loads Demanded | Wagon-loads Secured | Percentage of Demand Realized |
|---|---|---|---|
| Voronezh | 1,000 | 2 | 0.20 |
| Viatka | 1,300 | 14 | 1.07 |
| Kazan | 400 | 2 | 0.50 |
| Kursk | 500 | 7 | 1.40 |
| Orel | 300 | 8 | 2.67 |
| Tambo | 675 | 98 | 14.51 |
On June 11, 1918, a decree was issued establishing the so-called Pauper Committees, or Committees of the Poor. The decree makes it quite clear that the object was to replace the village Soviets by these committees, which were composed in part of militant Bolsheviki from the cities and in part of the poorest peasants in the villages, including among these the most thriftless, idle, and dissolute. Clause 2 of the decree of June 11th provided that “both local residents and chance visitors” might be elected. Those not admitted were those known to be exploiters and “tight-fists,” those owning commercial or industrial concerns, and those hiring labor. An explanatory note was added which stated that those using hired labor for cultivating land up to a certain area might be considered eligible. An official description of these Committees of the Poor was published in Pravda, in February, 1919. Of course, the committees had been established and working for something over six months when Pravda published this account:
A Committee of the Poor is a close organization formed in all villages of the very poorest peasants to fight against the usurers, rich peasants, and clergy, who have been exploiting the poorest peasants and squeezing out their life-blood for centuries under the protection of emperors. Only such of the very poorest peasants as support the Soviet authority are elected members of these committees. These latter register all grain and available foodstuffs in their villages, as well as all cattle, agricultural implements, carts, etc. It is likewise their duty to introduce the new land laws issued by order of the Soviets of the Workers’, Soldiers’, Peasants’, and Cossacks’ Deputies.
The fields are cultivated with the implements thus registered, and the harvest is divided among those who have worked in accordance with the law. The surplus is supplied to the starving cities in return for goods of all kinds that the villagers need. The motto of the Communist-Bolshevist Party is impressed upon all members of these committees—namely, “Help the poor; do not injure the peasant of average means, but treat usurers, clergy, and all members of the White Army without mercy.”
Even this account of these committees of the poor indicates a terrible condition of strife in the villages. These committees were formed to take the place of the Soviets, which the Food Commissars, in accordance with the wide powers conferred upon them, could order suppressed whenever they chose. Where the solidarity of the local peasantry could not be broken up “chance visitors,” poor wretches imported for the purpose, constituted the entire membership of such committees. In other cases, a majority of the members of the committees were chosen from among the local residents. There was no appeal from the decision of these committees. Any member of such a committee having a grudge against a neighbor could satisfy it by declaring him to be a hoarder, could arrest him, seize his property and have him flogged or, as sometimes happened, shot. The military detachments formed to secure grain and other foodstuffs had to work with these committees where they already existed, and to form them where none yet existed.
The Severnaya Oblast, July 4, 1918, published detailed instructions of how the food-requisitioning detachments were to proceed in villages where committees of the poor had not yet been formed. They were to first call a meeting, not of all the peasants in a village, but only of the very poorest peasants and such other residents as were well known to be loyal supporters of the Soviet Government. From the number thus assembled five or seven must be selected as a committee. When formed this committee must demand, as a first step, the surrendering of all arms by the rest of the population. This disarming of the people must be very vigorously and thoroughly carried out; refusal to surrender arms to the committee, or concealing arms from the committee, involved severe punishment. Persons guilty of either offense might be ordered shot by the Committee of the Poor, the Food Commissar or the Revolutionary Tribunal. After the disarmament had been proclaimed, three days’ notice was to be served upon the peasants to deliver their “surplus” grain—that is, all over and above the amount designated by the committee—at the receiving station. Failure to do this entailed severe penalties; destroying or concealing grain was treason and punishable by death at the hands of a firing-squad.
The war between the peasantry, on the one hand, and the Bolshevist officials, the food-requisitioning detachments and the pauper committees, on the other, went on throughout the summer of 1918. The first armed detachments reached the villages toward the end of June. From that time to the end of December the sanguinary struggle was maintained. According to Izvestia of the Food Commissariat, December, 1918, the Food Army consisted of 3,000 men in June and 36,500 in December. In the course of the struggle this force had lost 7,309 men, killed, wounded, and sick. In other words, the casualties amounted to 30 per cent. of the highest number ever engaged. These figures of themselves bear eloquent witness to the fierce resistance of the peasantry. It was a common occurrence for a food-requisitioning detachment to enter a village and begin to search for concealed weapons and grain and to be at once met with machine-gun and rifle-fire, the peasants treating them as robbers and enemies. Sometimes the villagers were victorious and the Bolshevist forces were driven away. In almost every such case strong reinforcements were sent, principally Lettish or Chinese troops, to subdue the rebel village and wipe out the “counter-revolutionaries” and “bourgeoisie”—that is to say, nine-tenths of the peasants in the village.
Under these conditions things went from bad to worse. Naturally, there was some increase in the amount of grain turned in at the receiving stations, but the increase was not commensurate with the effort and cost of obtaining it. In particular, it did not sustain the host of officials, committees, inspectors, and armed forces employed in intimidating the peasants. One of the most serious results was the alarming decline of cultivation. The incentive to labor had been taken away from the hard-working, thrifty peasants. Their toil was penalized, in fact. A large part of the land ordinarily tilled was not planted that autumn and for spring sowing there was even less cultivation. The peasants saw that the industrious and careful producers had most of the fruits of their labors taken from them and were left with meager rations, which meant semi-starvation, while the idle, thriftless, and shiftless “poorest peasants” fared much better, taking from the industrious and competent. Through the peasantry ran the fatal cry: “Why should we toil and starve? Let us all be idle and live well as ‘poor peasants’!”
Thus far, we have followed the development of the agrarian policy of the Bolsheviki through two stages: First of all, peasant Soviets were recognized and regarded as the basis of the whole system of agricultural production. It was found that these did not give satisfactory results; that each Soviet cared only for its own village prosperity; that the peasants held their grain for high prices while famine raged in the cities. Then, secondly, all the village Soviets were shorn of their power and all those which were intractable—a majority of them—suppressed, their functions being taken over by state-appointed officials, the Food Commissars and the Committees of the Poor acting under the direction of these. As we shall see in subsequent chapters, these stages corresponded in a very striking way to the first two stages of industrial organization under Bolshevist rule.
The chairman of the Perm Committee of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists, M. C. Eroshkin, visited the United States in the winter of 1918-19. It was the good fortune of the present writer to become acquainted with this brilliant Russian Socialist leader and to obtain much information from him. Few men possess a more thorough understanding of the Russian agrarian problem than Mr. Eroshkin, who during the régime of the Provisional Government was the representative for the Perm District of the Ministry of Agriculture and later became a member of the Provisional Government of Ural. In March, 1919, he said:
The Russian peasant could, in all fairness, scarcely be suspected of being a capitalist, and even according to the Soviet constitution, no matter how twisted, he could not be denied a vote. But fully aware that the peasants constitute a majority and are, as a whole, opposed to the Bolsheviki, the latter have destroyed the Soviets in the villages and instead of these they have created so-called “Committees of the Poor”—i.e., aggregations of inebriates, propertyless, worthless, and work-hating peasants. For, whoever wishes to work can find work in the Russian village which is always short of agricultural help. These “Committees of the Poor” have been delegated to represent the peasantry of Russia.
Small wonder that the peasants are opposed to this scheme which has robbed them of self-government. Small wonder that their hatred for these “organizations” reaches such a stage that entire settlements are rising against these Soviets and their pretorians, the Red Guardsmen, and in their fury are not only murdering these Soviet officials, but are practising fearful cruelties upon them, as happened in December, 1918, in the Governments of Pskov, Kaluga, and Tver.
By removing and arresting all those delegates who are undesirable to them, the Bolsheviki have converted these Soviets into organizations loyal to themselves, and, of course, fear to think of a true general election, for that will seal their doom at once.
Mr. Eroshkin, like practically every other leader of the Russian peasants’ movement, is an anti-Bolshevik and his testimony may be regarded as biased. Let us, therefore, consider what Bolshevist writers have said in their own press.
Izvestia of the Provincial Soviets, January 18, 1919, published the following:
The Commissaries were going through the Tzaritzin County in sumptuous carriages, driven by three, and often by six, horses. A great array of adjutants and a large suite accompanied these Commissaries and an imposing number of trunks followed along. They made exorbitant demands upon the toiling population, coupled with assaults and brutality. Their way of squandering money right and left is particularly characteristic. In some houses the Commissaries gambled away and spent on intoxicants large sums. The hard-working population looked upon these orgies as upon complete demoralization and failure of duty to the world revolution.
In the same official journal, four days later, January 22, 1919, Kerzhentzev, the well-known Bolshevik, wrote:
The facts describing the village Soviet of the Uren borough present a shocking picture which is no doubt typical of all other corners of our provincial Soviet life. The chairman of this village Soviet, Rekhalev, and his nearest co-workers have done all in their power to antagonize the population against the Soviet rule. Rekhalev himself has often been found in an intoxicated condition and he has frequently assaulted the local inhabitants. The beating-up of visitors to the Soviet office was an ordinary occurrence. In the village of Bierezovka the peasants have been thrashed not only with fists, but have often been assaulted with sticks, robbed of their footwear, and cast into damp cellars on bare earthen floors. The members of the Varnavinsk Ispolkom (Executive Committee), Glakhov, Morev, Makhov, and others, have gone even farther. They have organized “requisition parties” which were nothing else but organized pillagings, in the course of which they have used wire-wrapped sticks on the recalcitrants. The abundant testimony, verified by the Soviet Commission, portrays a very striking picture of violence. When these members of the Executive Committee arrived at the township of Sadomovo they commenced to assault the population and to rob them of their household belongings, such as quilts, clothing, harness, etc. No receipts for the requisitioned goods were given and no money paid. They even resold to others on the spot some of the breadstuffs which they had requisitioned.
In the same paper (No. 98), March 9, 1919, another Bolshevist writer, Sosnovsky, reported on conditions in the villages of Tver Province as follows:
The local Communist Soviet workers behave themselves, with rare exception, in a disgusting manner. Misuse of power is going on constantly.
Izvestia published, January 5, 1919, the signed report of a Bolshevist official, Latzis, complaining that “in the Velizsh county of the Province of Vitebsk they are flogging the peasants by the authority of the local Soviet Committee.” On May 14, 1919, the same journal published the following article concerning conditions in this province:
Of late there has been going on in the village a really scandalous orgy. It is necessary to call attention to the destructive work of the scoundrels who worked themselves into responsible positions. Evidently all the good and unselfish beginnings of the workmen’s and peasants’ authority were either purposely or unintentionally perverted by these adventurers in order to undermine the confidence of the peasants in the existing government in order to provoke dissatisfaction and rebellion. It is no exaggeration to say that no open counter-revolutionary or enemy of the proletariat has done as much harm to the Socialist republic as the charlatans of this sort. Take, as an instance, the third district of the government of Vitebsk, the county of Veliashkov. Here the taxes imposed upon the peasants were as follows: “P. Stoukov, owning 17 dessiatines, was compelled to pay a tax of 5,000 rubles, while U. Voprit, owning 24 dessiatines, paid only 500 rubles. S. Grigoriev paid 2,000 on 29 dessiatines, while Ivan Tselov paid 8,000 on 23 dessiatines.” (Quoting some more instances, the writer adds that the soil was alike in all cases. He then brings some examples of the wrongs committed by the requisitioning squads.)
The same issue of this Soviet organ contained the report of an official Bolshevist investigation of the numerous peasant uprisings. This report stated that “The local communists behave, with rare exceptions, abominably, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that we were able to explain to the peasants that we were also communists.”
Izvestia also published an appeal from one Vopatin against the intolerable conditions prevailing in his village in the Province of Tambov:
Help! we are perishing! At the time when we are starving do you know what is going on in the villages? Take, for instance, our village, Olkhi. Speculation is rife there, especially with salt, which sells at 40 rubles a pound. What does the militia do? What do the Soviets do? When it is reported to them they wave their hands and say, “This is a normal phenomenon.” Not only this, but the militiamen, beginning with the chief and including some communists, are all engaged in brewing their own alcohol, which sells for 70 rubles a bottle. Nobody who is in close touch with the militia is afraid to engage in this work. Hunger is ahead of us, but neither the citizens nor the “authorities” recognize it. The people’s judge also drinks, and if one wishes to win a case one only needs to treat him to a drink. We live in a terrible filth. There is no soap. People and horses all suffer from skin diseases. Epidemics are inevitable in the summer. If Moscow will pay no attention to us, then we shall perish. We had elections for the village and county Soviets, but the voting occurred in violation of the Constitution of the Soviet Government.
As a result of this a number of village capitalists, who, under the guise of communists, entered the party in order to avoid the requisitions and contributions, were elected. The laboring peasantry is thus being turned against the government, and this at a time when the hosts of Kolchak are advancing from the east.
Lenin, in his report to the Eighth Congress of the Communist Party last April, published in Pravda, April 9, 1919, faced the seriousness of the situation indicated by these reports. He said:
All class-conscious workmen, of Petrograd, Ivano-Voznesensk, and Moscow, who have been in the villages, tell us of instances of many misunderstandings, of misunderstandings that could not be solved, it seemed, and of conflicts of the most serious nature, all of which were, however, solved by sensible workmen who did not speak according to the book, but in language which the people could understand, and not like an officer allowing himself to issue orders, though unacquainted with village life, but like a comrade explaining the situation and appealing to their feelings as toilers. And by such explanation one attained what could not be attained by thousands who conducted themselves like commanders or superiors.
In the Severnaya Communa, May 10, 1919, another Bolshevist official, Krivoshayev, reported:
The Soviet workers are taking from the peasants chicken, geese, bread, and butter without paying for it. In some households of these poverty-stricken folk they are confiscating even the pillows and the samovars and everything they can lay their hands on. The peasants naturally feel very bitterly toward the Soviet rule.
Here, then, is a mass of Bolshevist testimony, published in the official press of the Soviet Government and the Communist Party. It cannot be set aside as “capitalist misrepresentation,” or as “lying propaganda of the Socialists-Revolutionists.” These and other like phrases which have been so much on the lips of our pro-Bolshevist Liberals and Socialists are outworn; they cannot avail against the evidence supplied by the Bolsheviki themselves. If we wanted to draw upon the mass of similar evidence published by the Socialists-Revolutionists and other Socialist groups opposed to the Bolsheviki, it would be easy to fill hundreds of pages. The apologists of Bolshevism have repeatedly assured us that the one great achievement of the Bolsheviki, concerning which there can be no dispute, is the permanent solution of the land problem, and that as a result the Bolsheviki are supported by the great mass of the peasantry. Against that silly fable let one single fact stand as a sufficient refutation: According to the Severnaya Communa, September 4, 1919, the Military Supply Bureau of Petrograd alone had sent, up to April 1, 1919, 225 armed military requisitioning detachments to various villages. Does not that fact alone indicate the true attitude of the peasants?
Armed force did not bring much food, however. The peasants concealed and hoarded their supplies. They resisted the soldiers, in many instances. When they were overcome they became sullen and refused to plant more than they needed for their own use. Extensive curtailment of production was their principal means of self-defense against what they felt to be a great injustice. According to Economicheskaya Zhizn (No. 54), 1919, this was the principal reason for the enormous decline of acreage under cultivation—a decline of 13,500,000 acres in twenty-eight provinces—and the main cause of the serious shortage of food grains. Instead of exporting a large surplus of grain, Tambov Province was stricken with famine, and the plight of other provinces was almost as bad.
In the Province of Tambov the peasants rose and drove away the Red Guards. In the Bejetsh district, Tver Province, 17,000 peasants rose in revolt against the Soviet authorities, according to Gregor Alexinsky. A punitive detachment sent there by Trotsky suppressed this rising with great brutality, robbing the peasants, flogging many of them, and killing many others. In Briansk, Province of Orel, the peasants and workmen rose against the Soviet authorities in November, 1919, being led by a former officer of the Fourth Soviet Army named Sapozhnikov. Lettish troops suppressed this uprising in a sanguinary manner. In the villages of Kharkov Province no less than forty-nine armed detachments appeared, seeking to wrest grain from the peasants, who met the soldiers with rifles and machine-guns. This caused Trotsky to send large punitive expeditions, consisting principally of Lettish troops, and many lives were sacrificed. Yet, despite the bloodshed, only a small percentage of the grain expected was ever obtained. There were serious peasant revolts against Soviet rule in many other places.
The District Extraordinary Commissions and the revolutionary tribunals were kept busy dealing with cases of food-hoarding and speculation. A typical report is the following taken from the Bolshevist Derevenskaia Communa (No. 222), October 2, 1919. This paper complained that the peasants were concealing and hoarding grain for the purpose of selling it to speculators at fabulous prices:
Every day the post brings information concerning concealment of grain and other foodstuffs, and the difficulties encountered by the registration commissions in their work in the villages. All this shows the want of consciousness among the masses, who do not realize what chaos such tactics introduce into the general life of the country.
No one can eat more than the human organism can absorb; the ration—and that not at all a “famine” one—is fixed. Every one is provided for, and yet—concealment, concealment everywhere, in the hope of selling grain to town speculators at fabulous prices.
How much is being concealed, and what fortunes are made by profiteering, may be seen from the following example: The Goretsky Extraordinary Commission has fined Irina Ivashkevich, a citizeness of Lapinsky village, for burying 25,000 rubles’ worth of grain in a hole in her back yard.
Citizeness Irina Ivashkevich has much money, but little understanding of what she is doing.
Neither force nor threats could overcome the resistance of the peasants. In the latter part of November, 1919, sixteen food-requisitioning detachments of twenty-five men each were sent from Petrograd to the Simbirsk Province, according to the Izvestia of Petrograd. They were able to secure only 215 tons of grain at a very extraordinary price. Speculation had raised the price of grain to 600 rubles per pood of 36 pounds. The paper Trud reported at the same time that the delegates of forty-five labor organizations in Petrograd and Moscow, who left for the food-producing provinces to seek for non-rationed products, returned after two months wholly unsuccessful, having spent an enormous amount of money in their search. Their failure was due in part to a genuine shortage, but it was due in part also to systematic concealment and hoarding for speculation on the part of the peasants. Much of this illicit speculation and trading was carried on with the very Soviet officials who were charged with its suppression!10
How utterly the attempt to wrest the food from the peasants by armed force failed is evidenced by figures published in the Soviet journal, Finances and National Economy (No. 310). The figures show the amounts of food-supplies received in Petrograd in the first nine months of 1918 as compared with the corresponding period of the previous year. The totals include flour, rye, wheat, barley, oats, and peas:
| Jan.-Mar. Tons | Apr.-June Tons | July-Sept. Tons | Total for Nine Mos. Tons | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| In 1913 | 24,626 | 24,165 | 20,438 | 69,229 |
| In 1918 | 12,001 | 5,388 | 2,241 | 19,639 |
If we take barley and oats, which were drawn mainly from the northern and central provinces and from the middle Volga—territories occupied by the Bolsheviki and free from “enemy forces”—we find that the same story is told: in the three months July-September, 1918, 105 tons of barley were received, as against 1,245 tons in the corresponding period of the previous year. Of oats the amount received in the three months of July-September, 1918, was 175 tons as against 3,105 tons in the corresponding period of 1917.
Armed force failed as completely as Gorky had predicted it would. References to the French Revolution are often upon the lips of the leaders of Bolshevism, and they have slavishly copied its form and even its terminology. It might have been expected, therefore, that they would have remembered the French experience with the Law of Maximum and its utter and tragic failure, and that they would have learned something therefrom, at least enough to avoid a repetition of the same mistakes as were made in 1793. There is no evidence of such learning, however. For that matter, is there any evidence that they have learned anything from history?
Not only was armed force used in a vain attempt to wrest the grain from the peasants, but similar methods were relied upon to force the peasants into the Red Army. On May 1, 1919, Pravda, official organ of the Communist Party, published the following announcement:
From the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party.
The Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party announces the following—
To all provincial committees of the Communist Party, to Provincial Military Commissaries.
The All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets, at the session of April 23d, unanimously adopted the decree to bring the middle and poor peasants into the struggle against the counter-revolution. According to this decree, every canton must send 10 to 20 strong, capable soldiers, who can act as nuclei for Red Army units in those places to which they will be sent.
Just as they had resisted all efforts to wrest away their grain and other foodstuffs by force, so the peasants resisted the attempts at forcible mobilization. Conscripted peasants who had been mobilized refused to go to the front and attempted mass desertions in many places, notably, however, in Astrakhan. These struggles went on throughout the early summer of 1919, but in the end force triumphed. On August 12, 1919, Trotsky wrote in Pravda:
The mobilization of the 19-year-old and part of the 18-year-old men, the inrush of the peasants who before refused to appear in answer to the mobilization decree, all of this is creating a powerful, almost inexhaustible, source from which to build up our army.... From now on any resistance to local authorities, any attempt to retain and protect any valuable and experienced military worker is deliberate sabotage.... No one should dare to forget that all Soviet Russia is an armed camp.... All Soviet institutions are obliged, immediately, within the next months, not only to furnish officers’ schools with the best quarters, but, in general, they must furnish these schools with such material and special aids as will make it possible for the students to work in the most intensive manner....
Bitter as the conflict was during this period and throughout 1919, it was, nevertheless, considerably less violent than during the previous year. This was due to the fact that the Bolsheviki had modified their policy in dealing with the peasants in some very important respects. Precisely as they had manifested particular hatred toward the bourgeoisie in the cities, and made their appeal to the proletariat, so they had, from the very first, manifested a special hatred toward the great body of peasants of the “middle class”—that is to say, the fairly well-to-do and successful peasant—and made their appeal to the very poorest and least successful. The peasants who owned their own farms, possessed decent stock, and perhaps employed some assistance, were regarded as the “rural bourgeoisie” whom it was necessary to expropriate. The whole appeal of the Bolsheviki, so far as the peasant was concerned, was to the element corresponding to the proletariat, owning nothing. The leaders of the Bolsheviki believed that only the poorest section of the peasantry could make common cause with the proletariat; that the greater part of the peasantry belonged with the bourgeoisie. They relied upon the union of the urban proletariat and the poorest part of the peasantry, led by the former, to furnish the sinews of the Revolution. Over and over again Lenin’s speeches and writings prior to April, 1919, refer to “the proletariat and the poorest peasants”; over and over again he emphasizes this union, always with the more or less definite statement that “the proletariat” must lead and “the poorest peasants” follow.
In April, 1919, at the Congress of the Russian Communist Party, Lenin read a report on the attitude of the proletariat and the Soviet power to the peasantry which marked a complete change of attitude, despite the fact that Lenin intimated that neither he nor the party had ever believed anything else. “No sensible Socialist ever thought that we might apply violence to the middle peasantry,” he said. He even disclaimed any intention to expropriate the rich peasants, if they would refrain from counter-revolutionary tendencies! Of course, in thus affirming his orthodoxy while throwing over an important article of his creed, Lenin was simply conforming to an old and familiar practice. When we remember how he berated the Menshevist Social Democrats and declared them not to be Socialists because their party represented “fairly prosperous peasants,”11 and the fact that the Soviet Constitution itself sets forth that the dictatorship to be set up is “of the urban and rural proletariat and the poorest peasantry,12” Lenin’s attempt to make it appear that he had always regarded the middle and rich peasantry with such benign toleration can only move us to laughter.
To present Lenin’s change of front fairly it is necessary to quote at considerable length from his two speeches at the Congress as reported in Pravda, April 5 and 9, 1919:
During the long period of the bourgeois rule the peasant has always supported the bourgeois authority and was on the side of the bourgeoisie. This is understandable if one takes into account the economic strength of the bourgeoisie and the political methods of its rule. We cannot expect the middle peasant to come over to our side immediately. But if we direct our policy correctly, then after a certain period hesitation will cease and the peasant may come over to our side. Engels, who, together with Marx, laid the foundations of scientific Marxism—that is, of the doctrine which our party follows constantly and particularly in time of revolution—Engels already established the fact that the peasantry is differentiated with respect to their land holdings into small, middle, and large; and this differentiation for the overwhelming majority of the European countries exists to-day. Engels said, “Perhaps it will not be necessary to suppress by force even the large peasantry in all places.” And no sensible Socialist ever thought that we might ever apply violence to the middle peasantry (the smaller peasantry is our friend). This is what Engels said in 1894, a year before his death, when the agrarian question was the burning question of the day. This point of view shows us that truth which is sometimes forgotten, though with which we have always theoretically been in accord. With respect to landlords and capitalists our task is complete expropriation. But we do not permit any violence with respect to the middle peasant. Even with respect to the rich peasant, we do not speak with the same determination as with regard to the bourgeoisie, “Absolute expropriation of the rich peasantry.” In our program this difference is emphasized. We say, “The suppression of the resistance of the peasantry, the suppression of its counter-revolutionary tendencies.” This is not complete expropriation.
The fundamental difference in our attitude toward the bourgeoisie and toward the middle peasantry is complete expropriation of the bourgeoisie, but union with the middle peasantry that does not exploit others. This fundamental line in theory is recognized by all. In practice this line is not always observed strictly, and local workers have not learned to observe it at all. When the proletariat overthrew the bourgeois authority and established its own and set about to create a new society, the question of the middle peasantry came into the foreground. Not a single Socialist in the world has denied the fact that the establishment of communism will proceed differently in those countries where there is large land tenure. This is the most elementary of truths and from this truth it follows that as we approach the tasks of construction our main attention should be concentrated to a certain extent precisely on the middle peasantry. Much will depend on how we have defined our attitude toward the middle peasantry. Theoretically, this question has been decided, but we know from our own experience the difference between the theoretical decision of a question and the practical carrying out of the decision.
... All remember with what difficulty, and after how many months, we passed from workmen’s control to workmen’s administration of industry, and that was development within our class, within the proletarian class, with which we had always had relations. But now we must define our attitude toward a new class, toward a class which the city workmen do not know. We must define our attitude toward a class which does not have a definite steadfast position. The proletariat as a mass is for Socialism; the bourgeoisie is against Socialism; it is easy to define the relations between two such classes. But when we come to such a group as the middle peasantry, then it appears that this is such a kind of class that it hesitates. The middle peasant is part property-owner and part toiler. He does not exploit other representatives of the toilers. For decades he has had to struggle hard to maintain his position and he has felt the exploitation of the landlord-capitalists. But at the same time he is a property-owner.
Therefore our attitude toward this class presents enormous difficulties. On the basis of our experience of more than a year, and of proletariat work in the village for more than a year, and in view of the fact that there has already taken place a class differentiation in the village, we must be most careful not to be hasty, not to theorize without understanding, not to consider ready what has not been worked out. In the resolution which the committee proposes to you, prepared by the agrarian section, which one of the next speakers will read to you, you will find many warnings on this point. From the economic point of view it is clear that we must go to the assistance of the middle peasant. On this point theoretically there is no doubt. But with our level of culture, with our lack of cultural and technical forces which we could offer to the village, and with that helplessness with which we often go to the villages, comrades often apply compulsion, which spoils the whole cause. Only yesterday one comrade gave me a small pamphlet entitled, Instructions for Party Activity in the Province of Nizhninovgorod, a publication of the Nizhninovgorod Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviki), and in this pamphlet I read, for example, on page 41, “The decree on the extraordinary revolutionary tax should fall with its whole weight on the shoulders of the village rich peasant speculators, and in general on the middle elements of the peasantry.” Now here one may see that people have indeed “understood,” or is this a misprint? But it is not admissible for such misprints to appear. Or is this the result of hurried, hasty work, which shows how dangerous haste is in a matter like this? Or have we here simply a failure to understand, though this is the very worst supposition which I really do not wish to make with reference to our comrades at Nizhninovgorod? It is quite possible that this is simply an oversight. Such instances occur in practice, as one of the comrades in the commission has related. The peasants surrounded him and each peasant asked: “Please define, am I a middle peasant or not? I have two horses and one cow. I have two cows and one horse,” etc. And so this agitator who was traveling over entire districts had to use a kind of thermometer in order to take each peasant and tell him whether he was a middle peasant or not. But to do this he had to know the whole history and economic life of this particular peasant and his relations to lower and higher groups, and of course we cannot know this with exactness.
Here one must have practical experience and knowledge of local conditions, and we have not these things as yet. We are not at all ashamed to admit this; we must admit this openly. We have never been Utopists and have never imagined that we could build up the communistic society with the pure hands of pure communists who would be born and educated in a pure communistic society. Such would be children’s fables. We must build communism on the ruins of capitalism, and only that class which has been tempered in the struggle against capitalism can do this. You know very well that the proletariat is not without the faults and weaknesses of the capitalistic society. It struggles for Socialism, and at the same time against its own defects. The best and most progressive portion of the proletariat which has been carrying on a desperate struggle in the cities for decades was able to imitate in the course of this struggle all the culture of city life, and to a certain extent did acquire it. You know that the village even in the most progressive countries was condemned to ignorance. Of course, the cultural level of the village will be raised by us, but that is a matter of years and years. This is what our comrades everywhere forget, and this is what every word that comes to us from the village portrays with particular clearness, when the word comes not from local intellectuals and local officials, but from people who are watching the work in the village from a practical point of view.
When we speak of the tasks in connection with work in the villages, in spite of all difficulties, in spite of the fact that our knowledge has been directed to the immediate suppression of exploiters, we must nevertheless remember and not forget that in the villages with relation to the middle peasantry the task is of a different nature. All conscious workmen, of Petrograd, Ivanovo-Vosnesensk, and Moscow, who have been in the villages, tell us of instances of many misunderstandings, of misunderstandings that could not be solved, it seemed, and of conflicts of the most serious nature, all of which were, however, solved by sensible workmen who did not speak according to the book, but in language which the people could understand, and not like an officer allowing himself to issue orders though unacquainted with village life, but like a comrade explaining the situation and appealing to their feelings as toilers. And by such explanation one attained what could not be attained by thousands who conducted themselves like commanders or superiors.
The resolution which we now present for your attention is drawn up in this spirit. I have tried in this report to emphasize the main principles behind this resolution, and its general political significance. I have tried to show, and I trust I have succeeded, that from the point of view of the interests of the revolution as a whole we have not made any changes. We have not altered our line of action. The White-Guardists and their assistants shout and will continue to shout that we have changed. Let them shout. That does not disturb us. We are developing our aims in an absolutely logical manner. From the task of suppressing the bourgeoisie we must now transfer our attention to the task of building up the life of the middle peasantry. We must live with the middle peasantry in peace. The middle peasantry in a communistic society will be on our side only if we lighten and improve its economic conditions. If we to-morrow could furnish a hundred thousand first-class tractors supplied with gasolene and machinists (you know, of course, that for the moment this is dreaming), then the middle peasant would say, “I am for the Commune.” But in order to do this we must first defeat the international bourgeoisie; we must force them to give us these tractors, or we must increase our own production so that we can ourselves produce them. Only thus is the question stated correctly.
The peasant needs the industries of the cities and cannot live without them and the industries are in our hands. If we approach the situation correctly, then the peasant will thank us because we will bring him the products from the cities—implements and culture. It will not be exploiters who will bring him these things, not landlords, but his own comrades, workers whom he values very deeply. The middle peasant is very practical and values only actual assistance, quite carelessly thrusting aside all commands and instructions from above.
First help him and then you will secure his confidence. If this matter is handled correctly, if each step taken by our group in the village, in the canton, in the food-supply detachment, or in any organization, is carefully made, is carefully verified from this point of view, then we shall win the confidence of the peasant, and only then shall we be able to move forward. Now we must give him assistance. We must give him advice, and this must not be the order of a commanding officer, but the advice of a comrade. The peasant then will be absolutely for us.
... We learned how to overthrow the bourgeoisie and suppress it and we are very proud of what we have done. We have not yet learned how to regulate our relations with the millions of middle peasants and how to win their confidence. We must say this frankly; but we have understood the task and we have undertaken it and we say to ourselves with full hope, complete knowledge, and entire decision: We shall solve this task, and then Socialism will be absolute, invincible.
At the same time, at a meeting of the Moscow Soviet, Kalinin, a peasant and a Bolshevik, was elected president of the Central Executive Committee. His speech, reported in Severnaya Communa, April 10, 1919, sounded the same note as the speeches of Lenin—conciliation of the middle peasantry:
My election is the symbol of the union of the proletariat and the peasantry. At the present moment when all counter-revolutionary forces are pressing in on us, such a union is particularly valuable. The peasantry was always our natural ally, but in recent times one has heard notes of doubt among the peasants; parties hostile to us are trying to drive a wedge between us and the peasantry. We must convince the middle peasants that the working-class, having in its hands the factories, has not attacked, and will not attack, the small, individual farms of the peasant. This can be done all the more easily because neither the old nor the new program of communists says that we will forcibly centralize the peasant lands and drive them into communes, etc. Quite to the contrary, we say definitely that we will make every effort to readjust and raise the level of the peasant economic enterprises, helping both technically and in other ways, and I shall adhere to this policy in my new post. Here is the policy we shall follow:
We shall point out to province, district, and other executive committees that they should make every effort in the course of the collecting of the revolutionary tax, to the end that it should not be a heavy burden on the middle peasant; that they should make self-administration less costly and reduce bureaucratic routine. We shall make every effort so that the local executive committees shall not put obstacles in the way of exchange of articles of agriculture and of home consumption between cantons and peasants—that is, the purchase of farm and household utensils that are sold at fairs. We shall try to eliminate all friction and misunderstandings between provinces and cantons. We shall appeal to the local executive committees not only not to interfere with, but, on the contrary, to support, separate peasant economic enterprises which, because of their special character, have a special value. The mole of history is working well for us; the hour of world revolution is near, though we must not close our eyes to the fact that at the present moment it is all the more difficult for us to struggle with counter-revolution because of the disorganization of our economic life. Frequently they prophesied our failure, but we still hold on and we shall find new sources of strength and support. Further, each of us must answer the question as to how to adjust production, carry out our enormous tasks, and use our great natural resources. In this field the unions of Petersburg and Moscow are doing very much, because they are the organizing centers from whose examples the provinces will learn. Much has been done in preparing products, but much still has to be done. We in Petersburg fed ourselves for three months, from the end of June to the beginning of September, on products from our Petersburg gardens.
The new attitude toward the peasantry revealed in the speeches of Lenin and Kalinin was already manifesting itself in the practical policy of the Soviet power. Greatly alarmed by the spread of famine in the cities, and by the stout resistance of the peasants to the armed requisitioning detachments, which amounted to civil war upon a large scale, they had established in many county towns in the grain-producing provinces central exchanges to which the peasants were urged to bring their grain to be exchanged for the manufactured goods so sorely needed by them. The attitude toward the peasants was more tolerant and friendly; the brutal strife practically disappeared. This did not bring grain to the cities, however, in any considerable quantity. The peasants found that the price offered for their grain was too low, and the prices demanded for the manufactured goods too high. According to Izvestia of the Central Executive Committee, No. 443, the fixed price of grain was only 70 per cent. higher than in the month preceding the Bolshevist coup d’état, whereas the prices on manufactured goods needed by the peasants, including shoes, clothing, household utensils, and small tools, average more than 2,800 per cent. higher. The peasant saw himself once more as a victim of the frightful parasitism of the cities and refused to part with his grain. The same issue of Izvestia explained that the exchange stations “have functioned but feebly and have brought very little relief to the villages”; that the stations soon became storehouses for “bread taken away from the peasants by force at the fixed prices.” When cajoling failed to move the peasants the old agencies of force were resorted to. The grain was forcibly taken and the peasants were paid in paper currency so depreciated as to be almost worthless. Thus the villages were robbed of grain and, at the same time, left destitute of manufactured goods.
At the Congress of the Communist Party, following the speeches of Lenin, from which we have quoted, it was decided that the work of securing grain and other foodstuffs should be turned over to the co-operatives. A few days earlier, according to Pravda, March 15, 1919, a decree was issued permitting, in a number of provinces, “free sales of products, including foodstuffs.” This meant that the peasants were free to bring their supplies of grain out in the open and to sell them at the best prices they could get. The situation was thus somewhat improved, but not everywhere nor for long. Many of the local Soviets refused to adopt the new policy and, as pointed out by the Izvestia of the Petrograd Soviet, March 24, 1919, continued to make forced requisitions. There was, however, some limitation upon the arrogant and brutal rule of the local Soviets; some restrictions were imposed upon the dictatorship of the Committees of the Poor.
From an article in Izvestia, November 3, 1919, we get some further information concerning the attitude of the peasants toward the Soviet power, and its bearing upon the food question. Only a summary of the article is possible here: “The food conditions are hard, not because Russia, by being cut off from the principal bread-producing districts, does not have sufficient quantities of grain, but principally owing to the class war, which has become permanent and continuous. This class war hinders the work of factories and shops” and, by lessening the production of manufactured goods, “naturally renders the exchange of goods between towns and country difficult, because the peasants consider money of no value, not being able to buy anything with it.” The peasants are not yet “sufficiently far-sighted to be quite convinced of the stability of the Soviet power and the inevitability of Socialism.” The peasants of the producing provinces “do not willingly enough give the grain to the towns, and this greatly drags on the class war, which of course ruins them.” The food conditions in the towns promote “counter-revolution,” creating the hope that the famine-stricken people in the towns will cease to support the Soviet power. “Thus the peasants by concealing their bread... render conditions harder, not only for the workmen, but also for themselves.” A statistical table shows that from August, 1918, to September, 1919, in the twelve principal provinces, “99,980,000 poods of bread and fodder grains were delivered to the state, which constitutes 38.1 per cent. of the quantity which was to be received according to the state allocation by provinces. The delivery of bread grain equaled 42.5 per cent. Thus these provinces gave less than one-half of what they could and should have given to the state.”
Such is the self-confessed record of Bolshevism in rural Russia. It is a record of stupid, blundering, oppressive bureaucracy at its best, and at its worst of unspeakable brutality. In dealing with the peasantry, who make up more than 85 per cent. of the population of Russia, Lenin and Trotsky and their followers have shown no greater wisdom of statesmanship, no stronger love of justice, no greater humanity, than the old bureaucracy of czarism. They have not elevated the life of the peasants, but, on the contrary, have checked the healthy development that was already in progress and that promised so well. They have further brutalized the life of the peasants, deepened their old distrust of government, fostered anarchy, and restored the most primitive methods of living and working. All this they have done in the name of Socialism and Progress!
Notes
7 Italics mine.—J. S.
8 La Vérité sur les Bolsheviki, par Charles Dumas.
9 The entire text is given as an appendix at the end of the volume.
10 The Bulletin of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets (No. 25), February 24, 1919, reports such a case. Many other similar references might be quoted. Pravda, July 4, 1919, said that many of those sent to requisition grain from the peasants were themselves “gross speculators.”
11 The New International, April, 1918.
12 Article II, chap. v, paragraph 9.