Lenin again takes
the stand at the Congress of Soviets, bringing another proclamation, this one for
resolving the long-festering agrarian question. The Social Revolutionaries had
dominated the peasants soviets since the February Revolution. When they were
drawn into the coalition governments with the bourgeois parties representing,
among others, large landowners, they found it impossible to implement the
policies their peasant constituency wanted. So they, and in particular Kerensky
and his Ministers of Agriculture, had no answer to the agrarian question.
The Bolsheviks
now gave the answer – essentially the same one given in Lenin’s April
Theses. Lenin held the only draft; it had not been possible to reproduce it
for distribution. It was also apparently written in another hand. He stumbled
as he read it, and had to stop for a moment. Someone on the dais, maybe the
person who wrote it, offered to help and read the proclamation through.
The proclamation,
Trotsky says, “smashes the Gordian knot with a hammer”:
·
Landlord property, including that of the crown,
the churches, and the monasteries, annulled without compensation
·
Confiscated lands, including livestock and
implements, to be held as national property
·
This property to be administered, and the use of
it distributed, by the local peasants soviets and land committees
·
The lands of the small peasants and Cossacks
serving in the army not subject to confiscation
The Social
Revolutionaries had managed to draft and publish, in the peasants’ Izvestia on August 19 (September 1, new
style), a set of guidelines for the redistribution of land. It remained a dead
letter until now, when the Bolsheviks appended it to the proclamation as
instructions for carrying the latter out. Find the text of the Decree on Land here.
Note that the
proclamation recognizes private property in the lands of small holders, and
permits the soviets and land committees to redistribute confiscated land roughly
equally into private parcels. Rosa Luxemburg had remarked that this is not
socialism. But Lenin in the war on capital, like Lincoln in the war against slavery,
knew when to take a step and how far the step ought to go. The peasants were
already in revolt. The Decree on Land bound them to the workers just as the
Decree on Peace had bound the soldiers.
Lenin then made a
few points in support of the proclamation. Before the applause died down, a
right Social Revolutionary representing the Executive Committee of the Peasants
Soviets pushed forward and angrily renewed the demand for the release of the
socialist ministers – including, a little ironically, the Minister of
Agriculture.
Trotsky answered
that the compomisist Central Executive Committee had already furnished a
precedent for house arrest: when Kollontai was released from prison under
doctor’s orders, her house was guarded by police formerly employed under the
tsar. A peasant delegate from Tver, “with long hair and a big sheepskin coat,” says
Trotsky, got up from his seat, made his bows, and invited the praesidium to
arrest the Executive Committee of the Peasants Soviets instead. “’Those are not
peasants’ deputies, but Cadets…. Their place is in prison.’” This met with vocal
approval from the Congress, and the first speaker beat his retreat.
Some of the left
Social Revolutionaries wanted to caucus before giving their votes. One of the
furthest left of them called for an immediate vote instead. Lenin, wanting the
proclamation to make the morning papers, nevertheless permitted a short
intermission: “’No filibustering!” he said.
After this
interim, which lasted two and half hours, until 1:00 a.m. October 26 (November
8, new style) instead of the allotted thirty minutes, the Congress received
reports of the adherence to the Military Revolutionary Committee of units from
Macedonia to the outskirts of Petrograd – another bicycle battalion sent there
by the government. They heard, Reed says, announcements asking for agitators to
go to the front. They passed, “unanimously and without debate,” a resolution
advising the local soviets, on their honor, to prevent pogroms against the Jews
or any other national or ethnic group.
Now, at about
2:00 a.m., Kamenev called the vote: the whole Congress, less one vote and eight
abstentions, supported the decree, and, says Trotsky, ”…therewith the
revolution of the proletariat acquires a mighty basis.”
Reed says a
soldier-delegate rose to make a special plea: land for deserters? This was
ruled out by the Social Revolutionaries’ guidelines. But was it fair? Over
shouted objections, the speaker won the ears of the Congress. Some deserters were
shirkers or cowards, others were brutalized, starved, and in despair. Kamenev,
having one final item on his agenda, proposed to reserve the matter to the
government for decision.
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