5. The Peasant Problem

This problem will be considered under four sub-heads: a. general statement of the problem; b. the peasantry at the time of the bourgeois-democratic revolution; c. the peasantry at the time of the proletarian revolution; d. the peasantry after the establishment of the Soviet power.

Some think that the essential foundation of Leninism, its starting-point, is the peasant problem, the role of the peasantry, the importance of the peasantry. This is absolutely wrong. The essential foundation of Leninism, its starting-point, is the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the question how that dictatorship is to be established and strengthened. The peasant problem, the question how the workers in their struggle for power are to secure the support of the peasantry, is a subsidiary one.

Even so, though subsidiary, the peasant problem is of vital importance to the proletarian revolution. It was on the eve of the revolution of 1905 that Russian Marxists began to pay serious heed to the peasant problem. At this time, the Party was faced with the immense tasks of the overthrow of tsarism and the establishment of proletarian supremacy, and the question of finding an ally in the imminent bourgeois revolution became a pressing one for the proletariat. Later, in 1917, the peasant problem in Russia became a matter of still more urgent importance, for in the days of the proletarian revolution the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat—how it was to be established and maintained, what allies the proletariat could find—had become actual. Obviously, those who are getting ready to seize and hold power, cannot afford to be indifferent about the possibility of finding powerful allies.

In this sense, the peasant problem is part of the general question of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and as such it constitutes one of the most vital elements of Leninism.

The parties affiliated to the Second International have, as a rule, been indifferent to the peasant problem, and have even been antagonistic to its discussion. This attitude has deeper reasons than the peculiarities of agrarian conditions in western Europe. The main reason is that these parties do not believe in the dictatorship of the proletariat. They are afraid of revolution, and have no wish to lead the proletariat to the conquest of power. Now, one who dreads revolution, one who does not wish to lead the proletariat to the conquest of power, is not likely to be interested in finding allies for the proletarians. To such persons, the question of revolutionary allies will seem to be subsidiary, to be up in the air. The sarcastic attitude displayed towards the peasant question by the leaders of the Second International is regarded by them as a praiseworthy one, as a sign of the genuineness of their Marxism. Really, there is no trace of Marxism in such an attitude, for, on the eve of the proletarian revolution, indifference to so important a problem as the peasant problem is tantamount to the repudiation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and is an open betrayal of Marxism.

In virtue of the special conditions of its existence, the peasantry has certain revolutionary possibilities. Are these already exhausted? If not, is there any justification for the hope that they can be turned to account on behalf of the proletarian revolution? Is there any hope of transforming the peasantry, or, rather, its exploited majority, from a reserve of forces for the bourgeoisie (which the rural masses were in the days of the bourgeois revolutions in the West, and still are in that part of the world) into a reserve of forces for the proletariat? Can the rural masses become the allies of the urban workers?

The Leninist answer to this question is in the affirmative. The Leninist answer is that as regards the exploited majority of the peasants there exist revolutionary possibilities which can be turned to account in support of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The history of the three Russian revolutions confirms this deduction abundantly.

From these considerations we draw the practical conclusion that the labouring masses of the peasantry must be unhesitatingly supported in their fight against servitude and exploitation, against oppression and impoverishment. Of course this does not mean that the proletariat should support every peasant movement without exception. But they should support those peasant movements, those peasant struggles, which tend directly or indirectly to promote the emancipation of the proletariat, to supply motive power to the proletarian mill, to make the peasants a proletarian reserve, to transform them into allies of the urban workers.

For Russia, the period of the bourgeois-democratic revolution extends from the time of the first revolution (1905) up to the time of the second revolution (the February revolution—March 1917, new style). During this period the peasants were freed from the influence of the liberal bourgeoisie, were detached from the cadets (constitutional democrats), and were moving towards the proletariat, towards the bolsheviks. The history of this period is the history of a struggle to secure the allegiance of the peasantry, a struggle between the cadets, the liberal bourgeoisie, on the one hand, and the bolsheviks, the proletariat, on the other. The parliamentary period decided the upshot of this struggle. The four dumas were an object lesson for the peasants, who learned from this experience that it was no use looking to the cadets for the gifts of land and liberty. They came to realise that the tsar sided unconditionally with the great landowners, that the cadets supported the tsar, and that there was only one force upon whose aid they could count—that of the urban workers, the proletariat. The imperialist war merely confirmed the lesson of the parliamentary period, completing the severance of the peasantry from the bourgeoisie, completing the isolation of the liberal bourgeoisie. As the war went on, it became plain that it was futile to expect the tsar and his bourgeois allies to make peace. The rule of the proletariat could not have been established but for the object lesson of the parliamentary period.

Thus the alliance between the workers and the peasants was formed during the bourgeois-democratic revolution; and the rule, or rather the leadership, of the proletariat was established in the common struggle of the workers and peasants for the overthrow of tsarism, a leadership which resulted in the February revolution.

As every one knows, the bourgeois revolutions of the West, those of Britain, France, Germany, and Austria, followed a different course. When the bourgeois revolutions occurred in the West, the proletariat was too weak to constitute an independent political factor, and leadership in the revolution devolved upon the liberal bourgeoisie. Deliverance from serfdom came to the peasants from the bourgeoisie, and not from the proletariat, for the proletarians were then few in number and imperfectly organised. When the peasants marched to the attack on the old regime, they marched shoulder to shoulder with the bourgeoisie. The peasantry was a reserve force for the bourgeoisie. Consequently, the revolution greatly enhanced the political importance of the bourgeoisie.

In Russia, however, the effects of the bourgeois revolution were the precise opposite. Here the revolution did not strengthen the bourgeoisie as a political force, but weakened it; the revolution did not amplify the political reserves of the bourgeoisie, but deprived it of its main reserve, the peasantry. In Russia the bourgeois revolution brought to the front not the liberal bourgeoisie but the revolutionary proletariat, rallying the millions upon millions of the peasants to the support of the latter.

That is one of the reasons why the bourgeois revolution in Russia was so speedily followed by the proletarian revolution. The leadership of the proletariat blossomed into the dictatorship of the proletariat.

How are we to account for the peculiar course of the Russian revolution, which has no precedent in the history of the West?

The answer to this question is that when the bourgeois revolution occurred in Russia, the class struggle there was in a much more advanced phase of development than it was in the various western countries when the bourgeois revolution took place in these. The Russian proletariat had already become an independent political force. On the other hand the liberal bourgeoisie, greatly alarmed by the revolutionary trend of the proletariat, had itself lost all its revolutionary fire (especially after the lessons of the year 1905), and had joined forces with the tsar and the great landowners, against the revolution, against the workers and the peasants.

If we wish to understand the peculiarities of the Russian bourgeois revolution, we must take the following circumstances into account:

1. On the eve of the revolution, Russian industry was concentrated to an unprecedented extent. For instance, in Russia fifty-four per cent. of all the industrial workers were employed in enterprises where the number of workers engaged was five hundred and upwards, whereas even in so highly developed a country as the United States the proportion of workers employed in such large-scale enterprises was only thirty-three per cent. It is hardly necessary to say that this fact, in conjunction with the existence of so revolutionary a party as that of the bolsheviks, sufficed to make the Russian working class the dominant political factor in the country.

2. Industrial exploitation in Russia took peculiarly horrible forms, and the tsarist police system was of an intolerably odious character. Hence every considerable strike became a political act of far-reaching importance, tending to steel the working class and to direct its activities into revolutionary channels.

3. After the revolution of 1905, the Russian bourgeoisie was in a state of decay, politically speaking. Scared by the revolutionary trend of the proletariat, and dependent upon the government in business matters (for the government was one of its chief customers), it had become a servile tool of tsarism and a directly counter-revolutionary force.

4. The vestiges of serfdom in the rural districts, where the territorial magnates were all-powerful, stimulated the revolutionary sentiments of the peasants.

5. Under the tsarist regime, all stirrings of activity among the people were crushed and the oppression of the capitalists and the landowners was intensified. This promoted the coalescence of the struggle of the workers and the struggle of the peasants into a single torrent of revolution.

6. The imperialist war gave a unified direction to these conflicting trends in Russian political life, and supplied a tremendous impetus to the revolution.

Whither, under such conditions, was the peasantry to turn? Where could they seek help against the omnipotence of the landed proprietors, against the despotism of the tsar, against the devastating war? From the bourgeois liberals? The experience of the four dumas had convinced the peasants that the bourgeois liberals were their enemies. From the essers (the social revolutionaries)? The essers were, indeed, somewhat better than the cadets (the constitutional democrats), and their program was acceptable to the peasants—was almost a peasant program. But what could be hoped from the essers, since they themselves relied almost exclusively on the peasants for support; and were weak in the towns, the very places where the strength of the enemy was concentrated? Where was the new force which would fear no adversaries, whether in the countryside or in the towns; which would courageously man the front ranks for the struggle against the tsar and the great landowners; which would help the peasants to break their chains, to satisfy their land hunger, to rid themselves of the war? Was there any such force in Russia? Yes, there was the Russian proletariat, which in 1905 had already shown its strength, its willingness to fight to the bitter end, its undaunted courage, its revolutionary impetus.

That was why the peasants, who, after turning away from the cadets, had clung to the essers for a while, at length became convinced that they must follow the virile leadership of the Russian proletariat.

Such were the factors which determined the special characteristics of the Russian bourgeois revolution.

This period extended from the February revolution (March 8, 1917, new style) to the October revolution (November 7, 1917, new style). It was thus comparatively short, but in the matter of the political enlightenment and the revolutionary education of the masses the eight months it comprises outweighed whole decades of ordinary constitutional development, for they were eight months of revolution. The main characteristic of this period was that the peasants became more and more revolutionary. They lost confidence in the essers, drew away from these, and were increasingly disposed to enter into an alliance with the proletariat, which seemed to them the one and only steadfastly revolutionary force, the only force able to bring peace to the country. The history of this period is the history of the struggle between the essers (the petty-bourgeois democracy) and the bolsheviks (the proletarian democracy) to gain a dominating influence among the peasantry. The upshot of the struggle was determined by the events of the coalition period, by the events of the Kerensky regime: the refusal of the essers and the mensheviks to confiscate the estates of the great landed proprietors; the attempt of the same groups to continue the war; the June offensive; the re-establishment of capital punishment in the army; the Korniloff rising.

Before March 1917, the fundamental question of the revolution had been the overthrow of tsarism and the breaking of the power of the great landowners. After the February revolution, when the tsar had been dethroned, and when the interminable war was ruining the economic life of the country and leading to the hopeless impoverishment of the peasants, the fundamental question of the revolution was a new one—how to end the war. The centre of gravity had shifted. “Stop the war!” This was the universal cry throughout the exhausted country, and was voiced with especial vehemence by the rural masses.

But it was impossible to stop the war without overthrowing the provisional government; without breaking the power of the bourgeoisie; without defeating the essers and the mensheviks, for it was they, and they only, who wanted to “fight to a finish”. Coming down to bed rock, there was no other way of stopping the war than by getting the bourgeoisie out of the saddle.

This meant another revolution, a proletarian revolution this time. It meant a revolution that would sweep from power the extreme left wing of the imperialist bourgeoisie, would deprive the essers and the mensheviks of their authority, and would set up a new power, a proletarian power, the power of the soviets. This revolution must establish the authority of the party of the revolutionary proletariat, the party of the bolsheviks, the party pledged to resist the continuance of the imperialist war and to make a democratic peace. The majority of the peasants supported the workers’ struggle for peace, and rallied to the workers’ slogan “All power to the soviets!”

There was not and could not be any other way out for the peasantry.

Thus the Kerensky regime was an admirable object lesson for the labouring masses of the peasantry, giving as it did a plain demonstration that under the rule of the essers and the mensheviks the war would continue indefinitely, and the peasants longing for land and liberty would remain unsatisfied; that the essers and the mensheviks only differed from the cadets in that the former were readier with fine speeches and delusive promises, while in reality they pursued the same imperialist policy as the cadets; that the soviets were the only power able to guide the country along the right path. The continuance of the war confirmed these deductions, hastened the coming of the proletarian revolution, led the millions upon millions of soldiers and peasants to line up behind the workers. The essers and the mensheviks were now hopelessly isolated. But for the lessons of the coalition period, it would not have been possible to set up the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Such were the factors which facilitated the transformation of the bourgeois revolution into a proletarian revolution.

That was how the proletarian dictatorship was established in Russia.

During the first phase of the revolution, the main problem was the overthrow of tsarism; during the second phase, after the February revolution, the main problem was the overthrow of the bourgeoisie in order to stop the imperialist war; during the third phase, when the civil war had been brought to a successful conclusion, and when the Soviet power had been firmly established, the main problem was economic reconstruction. To foster the growth of the nationalised industries and to increase their output; to establish close ties between industry and agriculture by means of State-regulated commerce; to substitute taxation in kind for compulsory levies, with subsequent gradual reduction of taxation in kind, in order to replace it by a system of the exchange of industrial products for agricultural; to liven up commerce and encourage cooperation, inducing the peasants to participate in the latter—such were the measures of economic reorganisation recommended by Lenin as urgently necessary for the laying of the foundations of a socialist economy.

We are told that a peasant country like Russia is unequal to these tasks. Some sceptics go as far as to declare that such schemes are utopian. The peasants, they say, are nothing but peasants. A peasant is only a small-scale producer, and petty producers cannot be used as bricks wherewith to build the foundations of a socialist system of production.

These sceptics are wrong. They have failed to take certain vital factors into account. Let us consider some of these factors.

1. The peasantry of the Soviet Union cannot be compared with the peasantry of western Europe. A peasantry which has been schooled by three revolutions; which, shoulder to shoulder with the proletariat and under the leadership of the proletariat, fought the tsar and the bourgeoisie; which, thanks to the proletarian revolution, had its land-hunger satisfied and its longing for peace fulfilled; and which, in this way, has become a reserve force for the proletariat—such a peasantry is radically different from a peasantry which fought under the leadership of the liberal bourgeoisie in the days of the bourgeois revolution; which received the land from the hands of the bourgeoisie; and which, in this way, has become a reserve force for the bourgeoisie. It is evident that the peasants of the U.S.S.R., who have learned to value their political friendship with the proletariat, and have realised the importance of political collaboration with the workers, will not be slow to realise that it is equally important for them to collaborate in the economic field.

Writing about the peasantry of the West in the nineties of the last century, Engels said:

The conquest of power by the Socialist Party is imminent. In order to achieve the conquest of power, this Party will have to extend its activities from the town into the countryside, will have to become a power in the rural districts. (Die Bauernfrage in Frankreich und Deutschland.)

The Russian communists have, during three revolutions, done an immense amount of work in this direction, and have thereby secured such an influence in rural life as our western comrades can hardly dream of. How can this fail to make very much easier the economic collaboration between the Russian peasants and the Russian workers?

The before-mentioned sceptics insist that rural petty proprietorship is incompatible with the establishment of a socialist economy. Well, hear what Engels has to say about the petty peasants of the West:

We are very definitely on the side of the petty peasant. We shall do everything we can to make his lot more tolerable, and to make it easier for him to join with his fellows in cooperative farming, should he so desire. If he is not yet ripe for such a decision, then we shall do our utmost to secure for him plenty of time for thinking the matter over on his little plot of land. We shall do this, not only because we regard the smallholder who farms his own land as substantially one of ourselves, but also in the direct interest of our Party. The more numerous the peasants whom we can save from slipping down into the proletariat, whom we can win over to our cause while they are still peasants, the quicker and easier will be the social transformation. It will not be to our advantage that we should have to wait for this social transformation until capitalist production has worked itself out to its fullest and final consequences; until the last independent artizan and the last smallholder have become the prey of large-scale capitalism. From the outlook of capitalist economics, the material sacrifices which must be made from the common funds of society to promote the interests of the peasants in this direction may seem to be so much money thrown away. Really, such expenditure is an excellent investment, for it will save our having to spend perhaps ten times as much, as part of the general cost of social reorganisation. In this sense, therefore, we can afford to be very generous to the peasants. (Die Bauernfrage in Frankreich und Deutschland.)

Now, where can Engels’ theories regarding the peasantry be realised more easily or more thoroughly than in the country where the dictatorship of the proletariat has been established? It is surely obvious that only in Soviet Russia to-day are we fully entitled to “regard the smallholder who farms his own land as substantially one of ourselves’. Only there is it possible unhesitatingly to make the necessary “material sacrifices . . . from the common funds of society”, and “to be very generous to the peasants”. In Soviet Russia, these and similar measures for the benefit of the peasantry have, indeed, already been carried out. Surely no one will venture to deny that all this will react by facilitating and advancing the economic reorganisation of our country?

2. The Russian rural economy cannot be compared with the rural economy of western Europe. The latter has developed along the familiar capitalist lines, so that there is a broad distinction between the well-to-do agriculturists with large estates and big farms, on the one hand, and smallholders and the impoverished wage-slaves of agriculture, on the other. There is a profound cleavage between these two sections of the rural population. Things are very different in Russia. In that country, thanks to the existence of the Soviet authority and thanks to the nationalisation of the principal means of production, evolution is necessarily taking a different path. In Russia, rural economy progresses by the formation of cooperatives among the millions upon millions of the poor peasants and the middle peasants, by the formation of agricultural cooperatives which are assisted by the provision of State credit upon favourable terms. In his articles on cooperation, Lenin has rightly pointed out that our rural economy must enter upon a new form of development, by involving the majority of the peasants in the work of upbuilding socialism by means of cooperatives; and by gradually permeating agriculture with the principles of collectivism—at first for the sale of agricultural produce, and in due course for agricultural production.

There have, in this connexion, been some extraordinarily interesting developments in the Russian countryside, as the outcome of the activities of the agricultural cooperatives. Under the aegis of the Selskosoyus (the central cooperative for agriculture), extensive new organisations have been formed for carrying on various branches of agriculture and dairy farming, such as the production of flax, potatoes, butter, etc. The future of these organisations is full of promise. Take, for instance, the “Flax Centre’ (L’no-tsentr). This is an amalgamation of a large number of local productive cooperatives formed by peasant flax growers. The Flax Centre supplies the flax growers with seed and farming implements, buys from them all their crop, sells it wholesale in the market, guarantees to the peasants a share in the profits, and thus (through the Selskosoyus) links up peasant farming with State industry. What is the proper name for such an organisation of production? In my opinion we must speak of it as a domestic system of State-socialist production in the domain of agriculture. I use the term by analogy with the domestic system of capitalist production (home industry) in the domain of textile production, for instance, where the home workers get their raw materials and their tools from the capitalist, to whom they hand over all their product, thus becoming in actual fact semi-wage-workers (on piece-work), in their own houses. The achievements of the Selskosoyus are but some among many indications of the direction in which rural economy will develop in Russia, but the example I have given will suffice.

It is evident that the immense majority of the peasants will gladly enter upon this new path of development, in order to avoid the road leading to the formation of large capitalistic private farms; the road leading to wage slavery, poverty, and ruin.

Here are Lenin’s views regarding the course of our agricultural development:

All the means of large-scale production are in the hands of the State, and the powers of State are in the hands of the proletariat; there is the alliance of this same proletariat with the many millions of middle and poor peasants; there is the assured leadership of these peasants by the proletariat; and so on, and so forth. Have we not already, here and now, all the means for making out of the cooperatives (which, in the past, we treated as trading concerns, and which, even to-day, we have a certain justification for treating similarly under the new economic policy), out of the cooperatives alone—have we not all the means requisite for the establishment of a fully socialised society? Of course we have not yet established a socialist society, but we have all the means requisite for its establishment. (Works, Russian edition, vol. xviii., part II., p. 140.)

Speaking farther on about the need for giving financial and other support to cooperation, as “the new principle in the organisation of the population”, and as a “new social system “under the dictatorship of the proletariat, Lenin writes:

Every social system comes into being only in consequence of the financial support of a particular class. What need is there to speak of the hundreds upon hundreds of millions of roubles that were spent upon the inauguration of “free” capitalism? Our business now is to realise that the social system it especially behoves us to support is the cooperative system. But here I mean that we must support cooperation in the true sense of the term. It is not enough to support this or that enterprise simply because it calls itself cooperative. We have to support the cooperative enterprises in which the mass of the people effectively participate. (Works, Russian edition, vol. xviii., part II., p. 141.)

What do all these facts show? They show that the sceptics are wrong.

They show that Leninists are right in regarding the labouring masses of the peasantry as a reserve force for the proletariat. They show that the proletariat, having secured power, can and should make use of this reserve force in order to link up industry with agriculture, to hasten socialist reconstruction, and to provide the dictatorship of the proletariat with the foundation upon which alone a Socialist economic order can be built up.