Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/93

 ment and for the moderates in the Councils; but, should the peasantry break away from its alliance with the bourgeoisie, a dictatorship of the Soviets could prevail. The problem was whether the peasantry should accept the guidance of the reactionary bourgeoisie or of the revolutionary proletariat.

The moderates in the Councils argued that the proletariat was not strong enough of itself to direct the Revolution; that Russia with its mass of peasantry and primitive industrial development "was not yet ripe" for Socialism, and that, accordingly, a proletarian dictatorship was impossible. The Bolsheviki maintained as against this that Socialism was a problem of immediate revolutionary issues, that the proletarian revolution was a process which might consist of a series of revolutionary struggles, in which the decisive factor was the class power of the proletariat. The peasantry, argued the Bolsheviki, is a mass which must depend either upon the bourgeoisie or the proletariat: it is not itself capable of directing the Revolution; but it is not inevitable that the peasantry should depend upon the bourgeoisie; organize a campaign to split the mass of the peasantry by intensifying the agrarian class struggle of pauperized peasant against propertied peasant, align the proletarian peasantry with the revolutionary industrial proletariat by convincing it of the reactionary and perfidious character of the bourgeoisie, and the revolutionary proletariat will dominate the situation.

The Bolsheviki succeeded in securing the co-operation of the impoverished peasantry with the proletariat; and this is the greatest single achievement of the Revolution. The Russian proletariat succeeded in doing what the Paris Commune had attempted—the unity of proletariat and peasantry against the bourgeoisie.

The peasantry was not by any means a homogenous mass. One part consisted of prosperous owners of land, petty proprietors, an agricultural bourgeoisie created by the agrarian reform program of Stolypin which dissolved the old peasant community—a group obviously realizing its interests in a conservative, bourgeois agrarian policy introduced on the basis of the bourgeois system and capitalistic accumulation. With the abolition of serfdom in 186I, the peasants were apportioned certain lands, which remained fixed as the years passed, and diminished proportionately as the peasant population increased. The peasants were compelled to increase their holdings by purchase, and in 1882 the Czar's government organized for the purpose the State Agricultural Bank. But only the richer peasants could afford to purchase, and the mass of the peasants became more and more impoverished. These peasants were in debt, compelled to work on the great estates at ruinous wages. These conditions transformed the bulk of the peasants into an agricultural proletariat; and an industrial proletarian psychology filtered into the peasantry by means of the fact that during the winter months masses of peasants went to the cities to work in the factories. This great mass of the peasantry, designated by Lenin as "semi-proletarians," was determined in a struggle against the bourgeois peasants; and only through their awakening to consciousness and action could the agrarian revolution be assured.

The Bolsheviki in their agrarian policy emphasized means, while the other Socialist groups neglected the immediate means necessary to estab-