Alliance of the Working Class and the Peasantry [antikvár]

The Workers' Party and the Peasantry1Forty years have passed since the peasants were emanci-pated. It is quite natural that the public should cele-brate with particular enthusiasm February 19,2 the anni-versary of the fall of old feudal Russia and the beginningof an epoch which promised the people liberty and pros-perity. But we must not forget that besides genuine loath-ing of serfdom and all its manifestations, there is alsomuch unctuousness in the laudatory orations deliveredon the occasion. The now fashionable estimation of the"great" Reform as "the emancipation of the peasantryaccompanied by a grant of land with the aid of statecompensation" is utterly hypocritical and false. Actually,the peasants were emancipated from the land, inasmuchas the plots they had tilled for centuries were ruthlesslycut down3 and hundreds of thousands of peasants weredeprived of all their land and settled on a quarter or beg-gar's allotment.4 In point of fact, the peasants were doublyrobbed: not only were their plots of land cut down, butthey had to pay "redemption money" for the land leftto them, and which had always been in their possession;the redemption price, moreover, was far above the actualvalue of the land. Ten years after the emancipation ofthe peasantry the landowners themselves admitted togovernment officials investigating the state of agriculturethat the peasants had been made to pay not only fortheir land, but for their personal liberty. Yet, although