June 10 – May 28, 1917: Conference of Peasants’ Deputies Adjourns

The Conference, caught between opposition to the Provisional Government’s land policy (or lack of one) and its distaste for the Bolshevik solution (i.e., nationalization), selects a Social Revolutionary executive committee and president.

In the meantime, the district land committees passed increasingly under the control of the peasantry, and were increasingly able to exercise control over the use of the land. This happened mostly peacefully, accompanied by a shift in the countryside to alignment with the Bolsheviks.

June 4 – May 22, 1917: The Agrarian Question

Lenin addresses the All-Russian Conference of Peasants’ Deputies on agrarian policy. He made it clear that nationalization of the lands was the Bolshevik policy, as opposed to transfer of ownership to individual peasants as private property.

Under nationalization, the state would own the land, and rent it back to farmers, “free labor on free soil,” on terms “equal for all.” The party considered this the best way to protect the livelihood of poor peasants as against the richer, petit bourgeois class of peasants. Model farms were to be established on larger tracts confiscated from the nobility, church, and crown.

You can read Lenin’s address to the conference by following the link.

At the front, the Chief of Staff reported disaffection among the troops and continuing fraternization with enemy troops. On the Rumanian front, he said, “…the infantry does not want to advance.” Trotsky provides plenty of specific examples of disaffection.