Page:Pavel Ivanovich Biryukov - The New Russia - tr. Emile Burns (1920).djvu/16



The agrarian question had been raised during the Kerensky regime, but no solution had been found. That was the period of the greatest chaos and disorder, when the peasants, excited by Social Revolutionary agitators, pillaged the property of the landowners. Lenin's Government sanctioned the expropriation of land for the benefit of the people, and by this measure took upon itself the responsibility for pillages of which it had in no way been guilty. It is true that agrarian reform has not yet been finally settled. Land is divided out amongst the peasants, but the forms of possession, the conditions of use and development have not yet been determined.

The requisition by the people of the landed estates took place in many different ways. I knew well a great landowner, Prince Koudacheff, who was a revolutionary, and had been exiled in the time of the Czar. Set free by the Revolution, he returned to his estate, and calling together a meeting of the peasants who leased his land, he told them that, being a socialist, he could no longer recognise private property in land. He therefore gave the land to the peasants and suggested to them that they should organise themselves into a co-operative society to develop the land and the farm. The society was formed, and the former owner was elected president. He thus remains upon his estate, not as possessor-oppressor, but as a friend of the people. And I know of many similar cases in Russia. If, however, the landowner was not willing to give up his property he was warned that he must abandon it. If he was a landlord living on good terms with the people his private fortune was spared, he was allowed time to sell off his movable property, cattle and so forth, on good terms; he was given grain and other provisions, and then he was asked to go away. Those, however, who were known as exploiters of the