Page:Boris Zakharovich Shumyatsky - The Aims of the Bolsheviki (1919).djvu/14

 of the working people, welded into an organ of its class power. Of course it would be better if we could introduce Socialism at once and put the management of all countries in the world into the hands of the workers; but as long as the dispossessed classes in other countries have net come into their own, we are obliged to keep out conquests within the limits of nationalisation. For this reason the Bolsheviki, when asked why they, who have declared war on private property, do not immediately introduce Socialism, say, "We have already made a beginning; we have undermined the roots of capitalism; we have already grown the young trees of the new order: but without the help and co-operation of the workers of all countries we are unable to grow the mighty oaks of Socialism, whose branches will overspread the world. But we are up and doing, and in time we will accomplish it! The time is approaching when these proletarians who have arisen, and these who even now are rising the world over, will complete our revolutionary beginning, and together with us, will lead it to a victorious end.

Thus spoke, and still speak, the Bolsheviki.

The Mensheviki, however, and especially the party of the Right Social Revolutionaries, who still, strange to say, imagine themselves to be Socialists, took up a different attitude on the land question. At first they urged the people to be patient until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly; and when it was on the point of meeting, when by means of methods of strangulation adopted against workers', soldiers' and peasants' organisations, these Right Socialists had established in the Assembly their own majority, they began to act more boldly. Shortly before the meeting of the Constituent Assembly, they had passed through their preliminary parliament a land law embodying compensation and leasehold, a law which handed over to the capitalist all land occupied by cattle-ranches, stud-farms and other works.