Page:Pavel Ivanovich Biryukov - The New Russia - tr. Emile Burns (1920).djvu/27

 from the moderately well-to-do element, which, beyond doubt, is the largest. The Poverty Committees have been dissolved, and new Soviets have been formed.

The richer elements among the peasants are opposed to the Government, but they are in exactly the same measure enemies of the people, oppressors of the people; they and the small bourgeoisie of the towns were the strongest supporters of the Czarism, and it is from these elements that the Party of the "Black Hundreds" was recruited.

They are the people who are now engineering discontent with the authorities and who are the breeding ground for plots. They are also the people who suffer most when repressive measures are taken, and who have to pay extraordinary taxes and other imposts.

There are two other serious points of disagreement between the peasant and the Government. The first is the requisition of wheat. There is no country in the world where the peasant is willing to give up freely the product of his labour. Everywhere only constraint can force him to do that. Where laws are recognised by the population, this is done under the pretext of a voluntary contribution, but in Russia the revolutionary system is in a chaotic state, and compulsion appears in a more visible form.

The requisition of wheat commenced long ago during the war, under the regime of the Czar, and it has never ceased since. The State has fixed prices. It was impossible and imprudent to requisition the whole of the wheat crop. The balance, what was left over, could be sold at higher prices than those given by the State, and this was the source of increasing discontent and continual