31
IN MEMORY OF HERZEN
victory of the people over tsarism, not for a deal between the
liberal bourgeoisie and the landlords’ tsar. He raised aloft
the banner of revolution.
In commemorating Herzen, we clearly see the three gen-
erations, the three classes, that were active in the Russian
revolution. At first it was nobles and landlords, the Decem-
brists and Herzen. These revolutionaries formed but a nar-
row group. They were very far removed from the people.
But their effort was not in vain. The Decembrists awakened
Herzen. Herzen began the work of revolutionary agitation.
This work was taken up, extended, strengthened, and
tempered by the revolutionary raznochintsi—from Cherny-
shevsky to the heroes of Narodnaya Volya.
36
The range of
fighters widened; their contact with the people became closer.
“The young helmsmen of the gathering storm” is what Herz-
en called them. But it was not yet the storm itself.
The storm is the movement of the masses themselves. The
proletariat, the only class that is thoroughly revolutionary,
rose at the head of the masses and for the first time aroused
millions of peasants to open revolutionary struggle. The
first onslaught in this storm took place in 1905. The next
is beginning to develop under our very eyes.
In commemorating Herzen, the proletariat is learning
from his example to appreciate the great importance of rev-
olutionary theory. It is learning that selfless devotion to the
revolution and revolutionary propaganda among the people
are not wasted even if long decades divide the sowing from
the harvest. It is learning to ascertain the role of the various
classes in the Russian and in the international revolution.
Enriched by these lessons, the proletariat will fight its way
to a free alliance with the socialist workers of all lands,
having crushed that loathsome monster, the tsarist mon-
archy, against which Herzen was the first to raise the great
banner of struggle by addressing his free Russian word to the
masses.
Sotsial-Demokrat No. 2 6 ,
Published according
May 8 (April 2 5 ), 1 9 1 2
to the text in Sotsial-Demokrat
32
LANDOWNERSHIP IN EUROPEAN RUSSIA
The famine that has affected thirty million peasants has
again revived the question of the condition of the peasantry
in Russia. In discussing this question people usually over-
look the main point, namely, the interrelation between the
existence of large landed estates, primarily in the hands
of the nobility, and the condition of the peasantry. It is
to this main point that we wish to draw the attention of the
reader.
In 1907, the Ministry of the Interior published a volume of
Statistics of Landownership in 1905. From these official
data, which can under no circumstances be suspected of par-
tiality for the peasants, we can obtain a fairly accurate idea
of one of the main causes of the famines.
The government statistics put the amount of land in the
fifty gubernias of European Russia at 395 million dessia-
tines. But this figure does not represent the real state of af-
fairs, since it includes more than 100 million dessiatines of
state land in the far north, in the Archangel, Olonets and
Vologda gubernias. Most of this land is unsuitable for farm-
ing, being the tundra and forests of the far north. Reference
to this land is usually made for the sole purpose of obscuring
the actual distribution of the cultivable land.
If we deduct this land, we obtain a total of 280 million
dessiatines (in round figures) of usable land. Out of this total
101 million dessiatines are listed as privately owned, and
139 million dessiatines as allotment land. It is necessary to
distinguish between the land in the possession of the big
landlords and that owned by small peasants.
As regards the large estates, government statistics provide
the following data:
33
LANDOWNERSHIP IN EUROPEAN RUSSIA
Privately-Owned Land in European Russia
Number
Average
Size of estates
of
Total land
per estate
estates
(dessiatines)
(dessia-
tines)
Over 500 to 2,000 dessiatines
21,748
20,590,708
947
Over 2,000 to 10,000 dessia-
tines
. . . . . . . .
5,386
20,602,109
3,825
Over 10,000 dessiatines
. . .
699
20,798,504
29,754
Total
. . . . . . .
27,833
61,991,321
2,227
These figures are incomplete, because they do not include
the lands belonging to the crown, to big commercial com-
panies, etc. Nevertheless, these figures give us an idea of the
main feature of Russian landlordism.
Seven hundred land-
lords own 21 million dessiatines, i.e., nearly thirty thousand
dessiatines each.
Less than 28 thousand landlords own
62
million dessia-
tines of land, i.e., an average of 2,200 dessiatines per estate.
To this should be added the crown lands—their total is
estimated to exceed five million dessiatines—and more than
three and a half million dessiatines belonging to 272 “com-
mercial, industrial, factory and other” companies. The lat-
ter are undoubtedly big estates, most of them in Perm Gu-
bernia, where nine such companies own nearly one and a
half million dessiatines of land (the exact figure is 1,448,902).
Consequently, the total land area in the hands of the big-
gest owners is certainly not less, and most likely more, than
70 million dessiatines. The number of such big landlords is
less than 30 thousand.
Now take the land owned by the peasants. According
to government statistics, the peasants with the smallest
allotments had the following amounts of land:
Allotment Land
Average per
Size of allotments
Number of
Total land
household
(dessiatines)
households
(dessiatines)
Less than 5 dessiatines
2,857,650
9,030,333
3.1
5 to 8 dessiatines
. .
3,317,601
21,706,550
6.5
8 to 15 ”
. .
3,932,485
42,182,923
10.7
Total
. . . .
10,107,736
72,919,806
7.0