The Russian Revolution полностью

These questions can be answered with figures, and the figures, gentlemen, tell the following: If one were to transfer to the peasantry all the privately owned land, without exception, even that located in the neighborhood of cities, then in the province of Vologda the communal land as now constituted, together with that added to it, would provide 147 desiatiny per household, in Olonetsk 185 desiatiny, and in Archangel as much as 1,309 desiatiny. At the same time, in fourteen other provinces there would not be enough land to give each household 15 desiatiny, while in Poltava there would be only 9 and in Podolia less than 8. This is due to the extremely uneven distribution in the various provinces not only of State and Crown lands but also of lands held in private ownership. One-fourth of the privately held land happens to be located in those twelve provinces which have communal allotments in excess of 15 desiatiny per household, whereas only one-seventh of it lies in the ten provinces with the smallest allotments of 7 desiatiny per household. It must be noted that these figures include all the land of all the owners—that is, not only that of the 107,000 dvoriane but also that of 490,000 peasants who have purchased land on their own account, as well as that belonging to 85,000 burghers—the latter two categories accounting for up to 17 million desiatiny. From this it follows that the division of all the land on a per capita basis can hardly remedy local land shortages. It will be necessary to have recourse to the measure proposed by the government—namely, resettlement. One will have to give up the idea of ensuring land for the entire toiling population and [instead] divert from that group a certain proportion to other occupations.

This is also confirmed by other figures which indicate the population growth over a ten-year period in the fifty provinces of European Russia. Russia, gentlemen, is not dying out. Her population increase exceeds that of all the other countries in the world, attaining an annual rate of 15.1 per 1,000. Thus, in the fifty provinces of European Russia, the natural population growth adds each year 1,625,000 people: assuming five persons per family, this represents 341,000 families. If we allow 10 desiatiny per household, we will require annually 3.5 million desiatiny to provide with land only that population which is added each year.

Clearly, gentlemen, the land question cannot be solved by the device of expropriating and distributing private lands. This [method] is tantamount to putting a plaster on an infected wound.*

Stolypin next turned to his favorite subject, the need to privatize agriculture in order to improve productivity:

But apart from the aforementioned material results, what will this method do to the country, what will it accomplish from the moral point of view? The picture which we now observe in our rural communities—the need of all to subordinate themselves to a single method of pursuing agriculture, the requirement of constant repartitions, the impossibility for a farmer with initiative to apply to the land temporarily at his disposal his inclination toward a particular branch of economy—all that will spread throughout Russia. All and each will be equal, and land will become as common as water and air. But neither water nor air benefit from the application of human hands, neither is improved by labor, or else the improved air and water undoubtedly would fetch a price, they would become subject to the right of property. I suggest that the land which would be distributed among citizens, alienated from some and offered to local Social-Democratic bureaus, would soon acquire the same qualities as water and air. It would be exploited, but no one would improve it, no one would apply to it his labor in order to have someone else benefit from it.… As a result, the cultural level of the country will decline. A good farmer, an inventive farmer, will be deprived by the very force of things of the opportunity to apply his knowledge to the land. One is driven to the conclusion that such conditions would lead to a new upheaval, and that the talented, strong, forceful man would restore his right to property, to the fruit of his labor. After all, gentlemen, property has always had as its basis force, behind which stood also moral law.⁵¹