November Revolution in the Villages
I. A. Naumchenkov, The Year 1917 in the Village. November 1917
Extracts from a Peasant's Recollection of Events in a Village of Kaluga Gubernia.
Original Source: I. V. Igritsky, 1917 god v derevne. Vospominaniia krest'ian (Moscow, 1929), pp. 206-208, 227-28.
With the coming of October more than half of the peasants joined the soldiers, who already called themselves Bolsheviks. Those who joined the Bolsheviks belonged chiefly to the poor and middle peasantry. However, they did not dare as yet to annihilate the rights of pomeshchiks and only eagerly awaited the news of another revolution of which 'Soldiers said that "soon Bolsheviks will rise and will give everything to the workers and peasants, sending all soldiers home and ending war forever."
These days came. The number of Bolsheviks in the village grew from day to day. The peasants became tired of the terrible war, every village had many wounded and killed workers. This was one of the reasons that made the peasantry join the Bolsheviks, i.e., for the sake of quick cessation of war ...
No force could stop the peasants headed by the soldiers from the seizure of land and estates from pomeshchiks. The population of the entire villages and sometimes several villages set off for the pomeshchiks' estates in carts and on horseback armed with whatever they had ...
Some pomeshchiks only begged to have their lives spared.
Having looted the pomeshchiks' property, the peasants proceeded immediately to divide the land, to fell the trees, and to repair their own houses.
The kulak peasants, watching this, began to hide under the ground all their property, such as food supplies, clothing, valuable furniture, china, as well as money, fearing that this property would be confiscated. All this hidden treasure perished: 75 per cent was destroyed completely and 25 per cent came to be unfit for use. That is what was taking place in our village until December 1917.
IA. NAUMCHENKOV
The news of the November Revolution soon spread over Russia and on the third day our volost knew that the authority passed to the Soviets headed by the Soviet of People's Commissars with Lenin at the head.
Local Socialist-Revolutionists and other critics of the Bolsheviks declared at the meetings that "the Bolsheviks seized power because they deceived the soldiers, the poor, and the peasants ... This, however, will not last long because the soldiers at the front are for the Provisional Government and, therefore, the usurpers' power will soon vanish."
However, the soldiers who spoke at these meetings definitely stated that the soldiers at the front were against the government and for the Soviets. They also described the plans of the Soviet government. These men were very active in carrying out into life the new government's program. The village began to be divided into two hostile camps the poor for the Soviets, and the rich against them.
The work in the volost zemstvo proceeded slowly. The population paid less and less attention and followed less and less the orders of land committees. Seizures of land took place in different volosts ... In the beginning of November during the session of uyezd zemstvo, information was received regarding the passing of Kerenskii's troops near Petrograd to the Bolsheviks ... In spite of the fact that in a number of neighboring uyezds the authority passed to the Soviets in November, in our Vesegonskii uyezd this change took place only in January with the help of a detachment of revolutionary soldiers, specially sent, while in our volost the transfer of the authority actually took place only in March 1918 with the help of the sailors from Kronstadt who happened to be on leave ...
A. VOROBIEV
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. 182-183.