Russia under the Old regime

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This ugly mood, exacerbating the peasants' instinctive hostility to the outside world, created at the beginning of the twentieth century a situation ripe for violence. It needed only some outward sign of weakening of state authority for the village to explode. This signal was given in the winter of 1904-5 by the liberal intelligentsia which through the Union of Liberation launched an open campaign of meetings and assemblies to demand a constitution. The government whose forces were tied down on the Far Eastern front against the Japanese had to temporize, and by so doing created the impression it was not averse to some kind of constitutional arrangement. In the confusion which ensued, the bureaucracy alternated concessions with brutal shows of strength. In January 1905, after troops had fired on the peaceful procession of workers marching to the Winter Palace, the cities were thrown into turmoil. The village, held in the grip of winter, had to await the coming of the thaw. As soon as the snow had melted and the ice on the rivers had broken, the peasantry went on the rampage, looting and burning estates and appropriating what they had so long coveted, namely the landlord's land. Once the situation was brought under control (1906-7) the government undertook a belated agrarian reform. Redemption Payments were abolished. Disappointed in the commune's failure to act as a stabilizing force, the government issued an edict on 9 November 1906 which allowed peasants to consolidate their holdings and leave the commune without its permission to set up individual farmsteads; the commune's authority over peasant movement through passport control was abolished. The government now appropriated large sums to finance the resettlement eastward of peasants from the overpopulated black earth provinces. Money was also set aside to help them purchase land from landlords. The consequences of these measures were indeed gratifying. In 1916, self-employed peasants (i.e. those who did not use hired labour) owned in European Russia outright about two-thirds of the cultivated land in private possession; with the leased land included, they had at their disposal nearly 90 per cent of such land. They also owned nine-tenths of the livestock.25

The events of 1905 gave the peasants a sense of power such as they had never possessed before. When in March igi7 Nicholas 11 suddenly abdicated, there was no force left to restrain them. In the spring of 1917 the muzhiks once again went on the rampage, this time to complete what the first revolution had left undone. The object now was no longer arable land; this time they concentrated on cutting down state and private forests, harvesting crops sown by others, appropriating produce stored for sale, and, of course, once again looting and burning country manors. Peasant violence in 1917 was directed primarily against the large, productive estates. It was on the crest of this rural revolution (of