Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/126

100 found in the struggle between the masses of the population and aristocracies of every kind, whether based on wealth or birth." For this reason Pestel ardently advocated the liberation of the peasantry, desiring to destroy the aristocracy, the barrier between the tsar and people. He was a sympathiser with socialist doctrine, and Herzen speaks of him as "a socialist before socialism."

It is noteworthy that Pestel desired that the entranchised land of the peasants should become communal property, even where communal property had not previously existed; but half of the land was to be privately held by the peasants.

There is a socialistic ring about Pestel's idea that the poor man's work is his capital. The rich man can live upon capital, can live without labour, and can wait for better times; the poor man cannot wait, but must accept whatever conditions are offered him. The fewer persons there are who live solely by work, that is to say the fewer wage earners there are, the fewer will be unhappy. "But since, however good laws and institutions may be, wage earners will continue to exist, the government must protect them against the arbitrary exactions of the wealthy, and must not forget that the unhappy poor fall sick, grow old, and become unfitted for work, being then unable to earn even their pitiful maintenance."

In Pestel's view the epoch in which he lived was characterised by the opening of the struggle waged by the people against the feudal aristocracy. During this struggle an "aristocracy of wealth" came into existence, and from the social outlook the new aristocracy was worse than the old, for the feudal aristocracy, after all, was dependent upon public opinion, whereas the wealthy were enabled by their wealth, in defiance of public opinion, to enslave the entire population.

Pestel's opinions underwent gradual development towards a more logically libertarian and democratic outlook. At the outset, for example, he advocated a mitigation of the censorship and a reduced property qualification; but in his later writings he was opposed to any property qualification, or to any unequal property qualification, seeing that every Russian should, if the worst carne to the worst, be at least able to find a piece of land to till. At first favouring monarchy, Pestel later became a declared republican. In certain respects he was unable to overcome the influence of aristocratic and absolutist education. For example, he proposed to retain corporal punishment in