Page:Tolstoy - A Great Iniquity.djvu/27

Rh same representative government which has long existed in European and American States, but whose existence has not in the slightest contributed, nor does now contribute, not only to the solution but even to the raising of that one land problem which solves all difficulties. If Russian political workers do speak about land abuse, which they for some reason call the agrarian question—possibly thinking that this silly word will conceal the substance of the matter—they speak of it, not in the sense that private landed property is an evil which should be abolished, but in the sense that it is necessary in some way or other, by various patchings and palliatives to plaster up, hush up, and pass over this essential, ancient, and cruel, this obvious and crying injustice, which is awaiting its turn for abolition not only in Russia, but in the whole world.

In Russia, where a hundred million of the masses unceasingly suffer from the seizure of the land by private owners, and unceasingly cry out about it, the position of those people who are vainly searching everywhere but where it really is, for the means of improving the condition of the people, reminds one exactly of that which takes place on the stage, when all the spectators see perfectly well the man who has hidden himself, and the actors themselves ought to see him, but pretend they do not, intentionally distracting each other’s attention and seeing everything except that which it is necessary for them to see, but which they do not wish to see.

People have driven a herd of cows, on the milk products of which they are fed, into an enclosure. The cows have eaten up and trampled the forage in the enclosure, they are hungry, they have