Sociology and Space, No. 19-20, 1968.
Review article
THE PEASANTS AND THE AGRARIAN QUESTION IN THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION
Stipe Šuvar
Abstract
Parts of the same study were published in an earlier issue (No. 18) of this
periodical, JLhe present issue contains those sections of tne study which deal in
detail witn the development ot tne agrarian question in Russia and the political
struggle ror its solution during the lsib/l9U7 revolution, tne Feoruary Revolution
ot lüi/, and finally the October Revolution.
in the opinion of the author the main importance of the 1905/1907 revolution
lays in the fact that it led to the political alliance ot the working class and the
peasants. Rousing ail social classes of tsarist Russia, the Revolution gave them
their proper place, revealed their respective class interests and opposeu them in
an open class struggle. Its aim was to overthrow social structures which hampered
the oourgeois-democratic development ot society. The central question of the lyua
revolution was the agrarian question: a total of only 28,000 landlords owned
almost as much land as over ten million peasant families. It was the rule of feudal
forces and relations in tne rural districts that led to the peasants' struggle for
land and their demand for free agricultural production. Two possible courses for
change were open in Russia at me time: one was the transformation of large
feudal estates into capitalist enterprises, including expropriation and the proletarization
of the peasantry, and the other was the formation of free peasant
smallholdings and the realization of other demands of the peasant revolution.
The author discusses the causes for the failure of the revolution and the feudal-
capitalist course of development taken by Russia under Stolipin's reforms.
During the 1905 revolution the peasants spontaneously demanded the nationalization
of land which was not to oe put into effect until the Socialist October
Revolution. Lenin was the first to grasp the class meaning of the peasants'
demand for land nationalization and he introduced it into the Bolshevik agrarian
programme, opposing at the same time the municipalization of land which was
demanded by the Mensheviks, and the purchase of land proposed by the Constitutional
Democrats.
The experiences of 1905 showed that in a feudal bourgeois country a peasant
revolution can be effective only under the leadership of the proletariat.
Reffering to Stolipin's reforms and Russia’s involvement in the first world
war, the autnor goes on to analyse the role of the peasants and the agrarian
question from February till October 1917.
Incontrast to 1905, this period saw the emergence of village soviets as organs
expressing directly the organizational revolutionary abilities of the mass of population.
While the actual state authority was in the hands of the Temporary
Government, these soviets presented the rule of soldiers, workers and peasants
as resulting from the revolutionary action and the power of the masses. The
Bolsheviks' demand that the soviets be given full authority was finally accepted
in October 1917 when the population became exasperated at the continuation of
the war and the false promises of the bourgeois government. The October Revolution
resolved the agrarian question on the principles on which the first Russian
revolution of 1905 had failed to solve it. In the course of the revolution the
peasants' struggle for land became directly linked with the workers’ action for
the overthrow of the exploiting classes. However, the Land Decree, adopted by
the congress of the soviets on the night of 26 October (8 November), did not
contain all the clauses of the Bolshevik agrarian programme. The peasants’ land
programme, which formed the main content of the Land Decree, was in fact the
populist programme put into effect by the October Revolution. The October Revolution
solved the land problem according to the wishes of the peasants. At that
time Lenin insisted that in revolutionary practice the position of the peasants and
that of the Bolshevik Party would necessarily meet. Starting from the realization
of class and property differences among the peasants, the Bolsheviks knew that
the peasants’ general struggle for land and their final reckoning with feudalism
which the success of the October Revolution made possible, was only a necessary
prerequisite for advancing through socialist revolution towards the socialist socialization
of agriculture and the elimination of capitalist element from the peasant
class itself.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
121355
URI
Publication date:
9.1.1968.
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