Pozemkové zákony Říjnové revoluce

The fundamental contradiction which constituted the essence of the agrarian problem in Russia, continued to exist even after February 1917, when the bourgeois democratic revolution became victorious in Russia. The landlord possesses more than 2000 “tenths” of land, meanwhile the farmer possesses 7 and half a “tenth” pro farm (Lenin). The bourgeois Provisional Government has in fact in March transfered to State ownership the estates in fee simple and the crown estates, but it did not distribute the land in question among the peasants. The land owned by the landlords remained entirely untouched by the measures in question. The solution of the agrarian problem in Russia was all the time postponed, even when members of the ESER party (the so called “peasant” party) became members of the government. The peasants lost more and more any hope to get any land from the Provisional Government. Tn their practical policy the leaders of the ESER party betrayed the demands of the peasants, which served heretofore to put up the programme of the so called socialization of land and which they formulated once more in the so called Peasant Mandate. According to the programme of the socialization of land, socialism had to be secured by the abolition of private ownership of land. All land would be redistributed within certain periods in an equalizing way, so that everyone should have the same quantity of it (while land would continue to be used individually, in the small producers’ mode). It was obviously a conception of socialism corresponding to the views of the small proprietor, of the small producer. This conception was very clearly expressed by Spiridonova – one of the leaders of the ESER party – in this way: “The basic task of socialism is to achieve the equalization of property”. The bolsheviks always criticized such a “socialization”, they explained to the peasants that there was in fact nothing really socialists about it and to the programme of socializa- tion of land they opposed their own agrarian programme which aimed at the nationali- zation of all land and at the confiscation of all the landlords’ land; according to their programme, the land in question should however not be distributed among individual users, but should be exploited in a collective way, in the mode of a large scale production. In the middle of 1917 the attitude of the bolsheviks as far as the so called socialization of land was concerned, underwent a substantial change. In view of the changed political situation (end of the period of the double government) the bolsheviks decided to sustain it. In his article “The peasants and the workers” Lenin drew the attention to the fact that at the time being it was not possible to limit oneself to a theoretical disclosure of the naive peasant illusions about the programme of the socialization of land, but that it was necessary to show to the peasants how the ESER party itself betrayes actually its own programme. At the same time the bolsheviks (in spite of their reserves) took the decision to carry out during the imminent revolution the peasant socialization of land, principally because of the fact that the corresponding demands were extremely spread among the peasants and that it would not be correct to avoid them, the demands in question being of such a kind that they could have in a certain period of the revolution even a certain democratic influence. In that period the bolsheviks, headed by Lenin, were the unique ones who defendend consequently the demands of the peasants. Their attitude, determined by the leninist idea of the union between workers and peasants, resulted during September and October 1917 in the bolshevization of the Russian village. Gradually the peasants abandoned their ESER leaders and began to get aware of the fact that they could not obtain land without an overthrow of the power of the bourgeoisie and the transfer of all the power to the soviets. The struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie was combined at that time firmly with a powerful peasant insurrection against the landlords and their protectors. This fact contributed also to the decision as to the choice of the moment for the armed intervention of the proletariat against the Provisional Government. The leninist agrarian programme, based upon the union of the workers and the peasants and its creative apllication just during the period of the immediate preparation of the October Revolution, when Lenin noticed that “it is necessary to change the principal line of the language the worker speaks to the peasant”, contributed in a very large extent to the union in question. On the second Russia – wide congress of the soviets of the worker and peasant deputies (7–8 November 1917), during which congress was proclamed the government of the soviets, the leninist conception of the solution of the agrarian problem convincingly prevailed. The fact, that the accomplishment of the peasants’ demands was secured only by the worker and peasant deputies, contributed in a large way to the strengthening of the union between workers and peasants, that means to the union on the basis of which the October Revolution became victorious in whole Russia. The way in which the agrarian question was solved in the October Revolution became at the same time an exquisite example of the bolshevik revolutionary tactics. The Decree on land, adopted by the II. Congress, was promulgated as a provisional law (the definitive law on land had to be adopted during the session of the Constituent Assembly). The Peasant Mandate on land became a part of it. Still close before the adoption of the Decree on land V. I. Lenin had to persuade some members of the bolshevik party (Miljutin, Larin), who were opposed to the fact that the Peasant Mandate, with its queer formulations and provisions on the equalizing utilization of land, should be inserted without any change in the Decree. Lenin, who was not a dogmatist, was not rebuked by the external, verbal form of the Mandate, influenced by the naive peasant ideas and by formulations inspired by the conception of a socialization as understood by the ESER party. In fact, even if the formulations of the Peasant Mandate were based on the programme of the socialization of land, the ancient formulations acquired under the conditions of the October Revolution quite another content than the original one. This is the main reason why it is incorrect to pretend that, by adopting the Peasant Mandate, the bolsheviks carried out, instead of their own agrarian programme, the agrarian programme of the ESER party. As far as the law on the equalizing utilization of land is concerned – it represented in fact a certain compromise, an agreement with the peasantry, which could still not imagine at that moment the revolution in the villages otherwise than inspired by the principles of the equalizing utilization of land. According to the Peasant Mandate private ownership of land is forever abolished. Land must not in future be neither sold, nor bought, rented, hypothecated or alienated in any other way. It becomes property of the whole people and those who work on it acquire the right to use it. By that means and in fact the nationalization of all land became a reality, even if this fact was denied by the left wing of the ESER party. “The bolsheviks helped first of all the most radical, the most revolutionary and the most close to the proletariat standing democratic bourgeois ideologists of the peasantry, that means the left wing of the ESER, to carry out what in fact was the nationalization of land” (Lenin). The way in which the nationalization of land was thus enacted corresponded to ancient demands of the peasantry and was therefore more acceptable for the large masses of the peasantry than the direct proclamation of the nationalization of land in the form as intended before, that means of a State ownership of land. The nationalization of land was thus enacted in a form to which, as to a possible form, Lenin drew the attention already in the years 1905–1907, by supporting the demands of the peasantry for the abolition of the right of private ownership of land (the so called variant A’). The special form in which the nationalization of land was enacted was thus used not accidently, but on purpose and contained a profound sense. It is definitly not possible to underestimate the utilization of the form in question, as does f. i. G. A. Aksenenok. The nationalization of land, enacted by the Decree on land, represented a consequent completion of the democratic bourgeois revolution, but it constituted at the same time as well “a first step towards socialism”. It made possible to liquidate once for ever all the survivals of feudalism in land relations and it represented an important element also during the gradual socialist transformation of agriculture. When evaluating it, it is necessary to take into account both of these components and not consider either of them as being of absolute value. A fundamental condition of the nationalization of land in Russia was the fact that the peasants themselves demanded already before the revolution the abolition of private ownership of land (– that means the nationalization of land). On the contrary, in the other socialist countries (with the exception of the USSR and Mongolia), where, because of different historical conditions, such a movement does not exist, the evolution makes us believe that in the overwhelming majority of these countries the problem of the nationalization of land will be solved probably not by a single non recurring measure, but gradually – by a continuous falling of of the different attributes of private ownership of land (limitation of the sale and of the purchase of land a. s. o.). It would be eventually possible to reach gradually a factual nationalization of land, regardless of the fact whether or not nationalization would be formally proclamed or not (the Decree on land also di