Bolsheviks and the Peasants
Anton Mitrevich, The Bolsheviks and the Peasants. 1922
Popular understandings of land redistribution.
Original Source: Anton Mitrevich, "Vospominaniia o rabochem revoliutsionnom dvizhenii," in Proletarskaia Revoliutsiia, No. 4 (1922), pp. 235-36.
As volost commissar I received through the uyezd Soviet of Workers' Deputies instructions from the Kerenskii government to organize the volost committees. I called a general meeting in order to discuss the matter and make my report. The peasants shouted at me: "What are you talking about a committee for? Better tell us about the land; can we take it away from the landlords? Never mind your committees."
I then told the gathering that my own party [Bolshevik] looks at the question in this way: "Take the land and be done with it! Don't be waiting for them to let you have it. Kerenskii's flunkies are only saying they will give it to you, but actually they won't give you anything?,
And may we take the lake, too?
That lake was surrounded by the fields and belonged to the Catholic bishop; one could not even bathe in it without paying for it.
"You may," I answered.
Hear that, Uncle Mikhei? The chief says we can take everything right away.
Go on," said the old man; "you might get us into trouble.
What nonsense are you speaking, Uncle? The chief surely knows better. He is one of those Bolsheviks whose law is, take everything.
Then followed talk such as: "In out volost we have no landlord's estate, but here we do have the Bishop's lake. Well, let's chase off Theoktist Tarakanov, who has rented the lake, and then we'll all go fishing."
Hey, boys! Who wants to go fishing?
"And will those who live beyond the river, twelve versts away, get it too?" I heard some people asking.
What do we care? Let them use the river, and, if they want to, let them fish here. We don't care; it's all the people's property; let all the people use it..
And so the rumor went out to all the volosts of the Rezhitsa Uyezd that the Ruzhinskaia volost had resolved to confiscate the land, water, and forests from the landlords and monasteries, and that their chief had explained to them that there was such a law. In a mighty wave the excitement spread all over Latgalia, which consists of the three uyezds of Rezhitsa, Dvinsk, and Liutsin, two-thirds inhabited by Letts and one-third by Old Believers. In some places there were armed clashes between the peasants and the government ...
Source: James Bunyan and H.H. Fisher, ed., Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1918; Documents and Materials (Stanford: Stanford University Press; H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1934), pp. 33-34.