Pozemkové zákony Říjnové revoluce

The fundamental contradiction which constituted the essence of the agrarian problem in Russia, continued to exist even after February 1917, when the bourgeois democratic revolution became victorious in Russia. The landlord possesses more than 2000 “tenths” of land, meanwhile the farmer possesses 7 and half a “tenth” pro farm (Lenin). The bourgeois Provisional Government has in fact in March transfered to State ownership the estates in fee simple and the crown estates, but it did not distribute the land in question among the peasants. The land owned by the landlords remained entirely untouched by the measures in question. The solution of the agrarian problem in Russia was all the time postponed, even when members of the ESER party (the so called “peasant” party) became members of the government. The peasants lost more and more any hope to get any land from the Provisional Government. Tn their practical policy the leaders of the ESER party betrayed the demands of the peasants, which served heretofore to put up the programme of the so called socialization of land and which they formulated once more in the so called Peasant Mandate. According to the programme of the socialization of land, socialism had to be secured by the abolition of private ownership of land. All land would be redistributed within certain periods in an equalizing way, so that everyone should have the same quantity of it (while land would continue to be used individually, in the small producers’ mode). It was obviously a conception of socialism corresponding to the views of the small proprietor, of the small producer. This conception was very clearly expressed by Spiridonova – one of the leaders of the ESER party – in this way: “The basic task of socialism is to achieve the equalization of property”. The bolsheviks always criticized such a “socialization”, they explained to the peasants that there was in fact nothing really socialists about it and to the programme of socializa- tion of land they opposed their own agrarian programme which aimed at the nationali- zation of all land and at the confiscation of all the landlords’ land; according to their programme, the land in question should however not be distributed among individual users, but should be exploited in a collective way, in the mode of a large scale production. In the middle of 1917 the attitude of the bolsheviks as far as the so called socialization of land was concerned, underwent a substantial change. In view of the changed political situation (end of the period of the double government) the bolsheviks decided to sustain it. In his article “The peasants and the workers” Lenin drew the attention to the fact that at the time being it was not possible to limit oneself to a theoretical disclosure of the naive peasant illusions about the programme of the socialization of land, but that it was necessary to show to the peasants how the ESER party itself betrayes actually its own programme. At the same time the bolsheviks (in spite of their reserves) took the decision to carry out during the imminent revolution the peasant socialization of land, principally because of the fact that the corresponding demands were extremely spread among the peasants and that it would not be correct to avoid them, the demands in question being of such a kind that they could have in a certain period of the revolution even a certain democratic influence. In that period the bolsheviks, headed by Lenin, were the unique ones who defendend consequently the demands of the peasants. Their attitude, determined by the leninist idea of the union between workers and peasants, resulted during September and October 1917 in the bolshevization of the Russian village. Gradually the peasants abandoned their ESER leaders and began to get aware of the fact that they could not obtain land without an overthrow of the power of the bourgeoisie and the transfer of all the power to the soviets. The struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie was combined at that time firmly with a powerful peasant insurrection against the landlords and their protectors. This fact contributed also to the decision as to the choice of the moment for the armed intervention of the proletariat against the Provisional Government. The leninist agrarian programme, based upon the union of the workers and the peasants and its creative apllication just during the period of the immediate preparation of the October Revolution, when Lenin noticed that “it is necessary to change the principal line of the language the worker speaks to the peasant”, contributed in a very large extent to the union in question. On the second Russia – wide congress of the soviets of the worker and peasant deputies (7–8 November 1917), during which congress was proclamed the government of the soviets, the leninist conception of the solution of the agrarian problem convincingly prevailed. The fact, that the accomplishment of the peasants’ demands was secured only by the worker and peasant deputies, contributed in a large way to the strengthening of the union between workers and peasants, that means to the union on the basis of which the October Revolution became victorious in whole Russia. The way in which the agrarian question was solved in the October Revolution became at the same time an exquisite example of the bolshevik revolutionary tactics. The Decree on land, adopted by the II. Congress, was promulgated as a provisional law (the definitive law on land had to be adopted during the session of the Constituent Assembly). The Peasant Mandate on land became a part of it. Still close before the adoption of the Decree on land V. I. Lenin had to persuade some members of the bolshevik party (Miljutin, Larin), who were opposed to the fact that the Peasant Mandate, with its queer formulations and provisions on the equalizing utilization of land, should be inserted without any change in the Decree. Lenin, who was not a dogmatist, was not rebuked by the external, verbal form of the Mandate, influenced by the naive peasant ideas and by formulations inspired by the conception of a socialization as understood by the ESER party. In fact, even if the formulations of the Peasant Mandate were based on the programme of the socialization of land, the ancient formulations acquired under the conditions of the October Revolution quite another content than the original one. This is the main reason why it is incorrect to pretend that, by adopting the Peasant Mandate, the bolsheviks carried out, instead of their own agrarian programme, the agrarian programme of the ESER party. As far as the law on the equalizing utilization of land is concerned – it represented in fact a certain compromise, an agreement with the peasantry, which could still not imagine at that moment the revolution in the villages otherwise than inspired by the principles of the equalizing utilization of land. According to the Peasant Mandate private ownership of land is forever abolished. Land must not in future be neither sold, nor bought, rented, hypothecated or alienated in any other way. It becomes property of the whole people and those who work on it acquire the right to use it. By that means and in fact the nationalization of all land became a reality, even if this fact was denied by the left wing of the ESER party. “The bolsheviks helped first of all the most radical, the most revolutionary and the most close to the proletariat standing democratic bourgeois ideologists of the peasantry, that means the left wing of the ESER, to carry out what in fact was the nationalization of land” (Lenin). The way in which the nationalization of land was thus enacted corresponded to ancient demands of the peasantry and was therefore more acceptable for the large masses of the peasantry than the direct proclamation of the nationalization of land in the form as intended before, that means of a State ownership of land. The nationalization of land was thus enacted in a form to which, as to a possible form, Lenin drew the attention already in the years 1905–1907, by supporting the demands of the peasantry for the abolition of the right of private ownership of land (the so called variant A’). The special form in which the nationalization of land was enacted was thus used not accidently, but on purpose and contained a profound sense. It is definitly not possible to underestimate the utilization of the form in question, as does f. i. G. A. Aksenenok. The nationalization of land, enacted by the Decree on land, represented a consequent completion of the democratic bourgeois revolution, but it constituted at the same time as well “a first step towards socialism”. It made possible to liquidate once for ever all the survivals of feudalism in land relations and it represented an important element also during the gradual socialist transformation of agriculture. When evaluating it, it is necessary to take into account both of these components and not consider either of them as being of absolute value. A fundamental condition of the nationalization of land in Russia was the fact that the peasants themselves demanded already before the revolution the abolition of private ownership of land (– that means the nationalization of land). On the contrary, in the other socialist countries (with the exception of the USSR and Mongolia), where, because of different historical conditions, such a movement does not exist, the evolution makes us believe that in the overwhelming majority of these countries the problem of the nationalization of land will be solved probably not by a single non recurring measure, but gradually – by a continuous falling of of the different attributes of private ownership of land (limitation of the sale and of the purchase of land a. s. o.). It would be eventually possible to reach gradually a factual nationalization of land, regardless of the fact whether or not nationalization would be formally proclamed or not (the Decree on land also did not contain a direct proclamation of the nationalization of land). As far as the State ownership of land is concerned, a basic importance incombs to the fact that the Decree on land excluded land from the circulation of goods. The content of this ownership in question cannot therefore be any longer f. i. the right to dispose of the land (in the former sense of the word) – that means the right to dispose of the land as of goods. The other components of the content of the right of the State ownership of land (utilization, possession) underwent as well substantial changes. The Soviet land legislation has not fixed however precisely and unequivocally during the first years of the Soviet regime the content of the State ownership as far as land is concerned (the discussion about the content of the right in question is going on in the Soviet legal science up to our days). The content of the State ownership of land in socialism is strongly influenced from the economical standpoint of view by the fact that land (as well as the other kinds of natural wealth) is not a product of human labour and therefore has no value, but represents a product of nature. From the economic standpoint of view it is therefore possible to distinguish State ownership of land and of the other kinds of natural wealth from the State ownership of products of human labour. It is however not possible to agree with the affirmation of M. V. Kolganov, according to which this difference would have been the reason why already in the Decree on land land is mentioned as being the property of the whole people and not as State property. Because of their special character, land and the other natural ressources are in socialism far more rapidly emancipated from the sphere of the goods’ relations than the products of human labour. As a consequence of it there exists a special domain of specific land relations which differ from other ownership relations. This leads to the constitution of land law as an independant legal branch. The fact itself of the nationalization of land (that means of the transfer of the ownership of all land to the State) is not necessarily decisive in that respect – even if undoubtedly in Soviet Russia the nationalization of land has rendered more easy and more rapid the formation of land law. By the Decree on land was further confiscated the land of the landlords (as well as the estates of fee simple and the estates of the monasteries and of the Church). The land in question was put at the disposal of land committees and of the soviets of peasants. These organs distributed about 90 p. c. of the landlords’ land among the peasants (the rest was composed of farms with special cultures and advanced methods of cultivation). The Decree on land does not represent therefore a mere execution of the bolshevik agrarian programme of April 1917 (as asserted f. i. by G. V. Charapov) which did not reckon with the distribution of the landlords’ land among the peasants. The Decree on land started thus the first period of the socialist revolution in the country, in which the solution of the democratic bourgeois tasks played an important part. Therefore also it was fully supported by the entire peasantry (then five sixths of the population of Russia). Where the landlords’ land was not distributed, the peasants did not support the Soviet government in the decisive moments (f. i. Estonia, Crimea). Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg and other social democrats of Western Europe, who criticized the leninist solution of the agrarian problem, which consisted in the distribution among the peasants of the land, confiscated to the landlords, were not aware of that fact. Their negative attitude towards the agrarian measures of the October Revolution was a consequence of the Kautsky’s theory of “the forces of production”. This theory admitted the revolution of the proletariat only in the most advanced capitalist countries, on a very high level of development of the forces of production and absolutely did not count with the eventuality that a proletarian revolution might be victorious in a country of small peasantry, where the proletariat did not represent the majority of the population (as it was just the case in Russia). Besides that, Kautsky obviously did not grasp that the distribution of the landlord’s land among the peasants was accompanied in Russia by the nationalization of all land (he “remains silent” as far as nationalization of land is concerned). The possibility of a simultaneous realization of both measures seems not to be completely understood even nowadays (I. Laponogov), notwithstanding the fact that it becomes once more actual (see the evolution in some developing countries). According to the scholastic ideas of the Western Europian social democrats it was impossible to unite in the proletarian revolution the nationalization of land and the distribution of land. One seemed to exclude the other. It was because they considered nationalization not only as a transfer of ownership, but also as a transfer to the State of the land as object of economic management (that was probably also the reason why Kautsky demanded a gradual execution of the nationalization of land in the socialist revolution). And because land as the object of economic management was not transfered to the State, according to their opinion the nationalization of land did not take place. The Act on the socialization of land is the definitive law on land which originally had to be adopted by the Constituent Assembly (which was however dissolved). The main principle of that act was the principle of the equalizing utilization of land. Even if that measure had (principally during the first period of the revolution) a democratic character, it is not correct to consider it only as the instrument capable to be used in order to limit the “kulaks” (rich peasants) or even to consider it as being “the best form of the peasant utilization of land in the conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat”, as does E. A. Luckij. In fact, this measure had many harmful economic effects (there was no necessary stability in the utilization of land, there was no rational organization of the territory a. s. o.). The Act on the socialization of land contained at the same time provisions on a complete equalizing utilization of land within the so called agricultural productive zones. The provisions in question were however practically not applied. The Act on the socialization of land is based upon the same principles and reflects the same period of the revolutionary evolution as the Decree on land (notwithstanding certain differences in the formulations f. i. precisely as far as the problem of the nationalization of land is concerned). It is therefore not correct to oppose these two acts, to prove that, from the socialist standpoint of view, the Decree on land was “better” than the Act on the socialization of land or vice versa, a mistake which, I think, commits N. N. Burichin (Lenin called even sometimes the Decree on land the act on the socialization of land). A greater practical importance than to the Act on the socialization of land incombed however to the “Provisional instructions on the temporary measures taken in execution of the Act on the socialization of land”, of April 5th, 1918, which was during the last years completely omitted by the Soviet historians of law. Whereas the Act on the socialization of land reckoned with the equalization of land on a country – wide scale, the “Instructions” directed the local organs only towards the equalization within relatively small territorial units – districts. To land utilized before by the peasants a part of the confiscated land was added, in such an extent, that the global area of land should be conform to the equalization norm fixed by the local district organs. Land was alloted to the peasants in view of the so called provisional utilization. The different local organs elaborated by themselves their special rules on the distribution of land and their own equalization norms. The solution of the agrarian problem was thus in 1918 widely “decentralized”.