The moderate Social Democrats, the Mensheviki, and the Socialists-Revolutionists stood for substantially the same solution of the land problem prior to the Revolution. They wanted to confiscate the lands of great estates, the Church and the Crown, and to turn them over to democratically elected and governed local bodies. The Bolsheviki, on the other hand, wanted all land to be nationalized and in place of millions of small owners they wanted state ownership and control. Large scale agriculture on government-owned lands by government employees and more or less rapid extinction of private ownership and operation was their ideal. The Socialists-Revolutionists denounced this program of nationalization, saying that it would make the peasants “mere wage-slaves of the state.” They wanted “socialization” of all land, including that of the small peasant owners. By socialization they meant taking all lands “out of private ownership of persons into the public ownership, _and their management by democratically organized leagues of communities with the purpose of an equitable utilization_.” The Russian peasant looked upon the Revolution as, above everything else, the certain fulfilment of his desire for redistribution of the land. There were, in fact, two issues which far outweighed all others--the land problem and peace. All classes in Russia, even a majority of the great landowners themselves, realized that the distribution of land among the peasants was now inevitable. Thus, interrogated by peasants, Rodzianko, President of the Fourth Duma, a large landowner, said: “Yes, we admit that the fundamental problem of the Constituent Assembly is not merely to construct a political system for Russia, but likewise _to give back to the peasantry the land which is at present in our hands_.”