VLADIMIR MIKHAILOVICH ZENZINOV

The only thing the Socialist [Communist] party could do for the peasant--said the Bolsheviks--was to help organize the paid agricultural laborers.

Contrary to the ordinary conception, the real revolution at that time [1917] was not made in the cities, but in the villages. The essential content of the Russian revolution was the tremendous, elemental process which took place among the peasants and resulted in the disruption of the landed estates, the expulsion of the landed proprietors, most of them belonging to the nobility, from their villages, and the forcible appropriation of all private and state lands by the peasants.

Freedom of economic determination is inseparably linked up with civic rights and with the possibility of influencing and determining the social and political life of the commonwealth.

More than purely economic measures are required [for the Russian peasant]. He must be granted the freedom of individual and personal initiative and the opportunity to intensify his productivity by hiring labor. He must have the right of free, unhampered cooperative association, with a voluntary--not as heretofore obligatory--membership, the right of free election to the administrative machinery --not appointment from above, as has been the practice all these years.

In spite of the danger of prophesying, one can foretell even now that Russia will be reborn--indeed is already being reborn--as a great peasant democracy.

The former apostles of class hatred now begin to preach one of the commonplaces of classic political economy: the quicker capital is developed the more profitable it will be for labor, for it will be so much the easier for the labor that is for hire to find employment.

In spite of the danger of prophesying, one can foretell even now that Russia will be reborn--indeed is already being reborn--as a great peasant democracy.

Freedom of economic determination is inseparably linked up with civic rights and with the possibility of influencing and determining the social and political life of the commonwealth.

More than purely economic measures are required [for the Russian peasant]. He must be granted the freedom of individual and personal initiative and the opportunity to intensify his productivity by hiring labor. He must have the right of free, unhampered cooperative association, with a voluntary--not as heretofore obligatory--membership, the right of free election to the administrative machinery --not appointment from above, as has been the practice all these years.

The former apostles of class hatred now begin to preach one of the commonplaces of classic political economy: the quicker capital is developed the more profitable it will be for labor, for it will be so much the easier for the labor that is for hire to find employment.

Contrary to the ordinary conception, the real revolution at that time [1917] was not made in the cities, but in the villages. The essential content of the Russian revolution was the tremendous, elemental process which took place among the peasants and resulted in the disruption of the landed estates, the expulsion of the landed proprietors, most of them belonging to the nobility, from their villages, and the forcible appropriation of all private and state lands by the peasants.

The only thing the Socialist [Communist] party could do for the peasant--said the Bolsheviks--was to help organize the paid agricultural laborers.