Page:John Reed - Ten Days that Shook the World - 1919, Boni and Liveright.djvu/360

 exact meaning of the Revolution—they tried to turn words into action....

"The recent events," said the orator, "do not indicate a simple riot, or a 'Bolshevik adventure,' but on the contrary, a real popular rising, which has been greeted with sympathy by the whole country....

"The Bolsheviki in general took the correct attitude toward the Land question; but in recommending that the peasants seize the land by force, they committed a profound error.... From the first days, the Bolsheviki declared that the peasants should take over the land 'by revolutionary mass-action.' This is nothing but anarchy; the land can be taken over in an organised manner.... For the Bolsheviki it was important that the problems of the Revolution should be solved in the quickest possible manner—but the Bolsheviki were not interested in how these problems were to be solved....

"The Land decree of the Congress of Soviets is identical in its fundamentals with the decisions of the first Peasants' Congress. Why then did not the new Government follow the tactics outlined by that Congress? Because the Council of People's Commissars wanted to hasten the settlement of the Land question, so that the Constituent Assembly would have nothing to do....

"But also the Government saw that it was necessary to adopt practical measures, so without further reflection, it adopted the Regulations for Land Committees, thus creating a strange situation; for the Council of People's Commissars abolished private property in land, but the Regulations drawn up by the Land Committees are based on private property.... However, no harm has been done by that; for the Land Committees are paying no attention to the Soviet decrees, but are putting into operation their own practical decisions—decisions based on the will of the vast majority of the peasants....