The Land Commissions were not created merely for the purpose of collating data upon the subject of landownership and cultivation. That was, indeed, their avowed and ostensible object; but behind that there was another and much more urgent purpose. In the first place, as soon as the revolutionary disturbances began, peasants in many villages took matters into their own hands and appropriated whatever lands they could seize. Agitators had gone among the peasantry--agitators of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionists not less than of the Bolsheviki--and preached the doctrine of “the expropriation of the expropriators.” They told the peasants to seize the land and so execute the will of the people. So long as czarism remained the peasants held back; once it was destroyed, they threw off their restraint and began to seize the land for themselves. The Revolution was here. Was it not always understood that when the Revolution came they were to take the land? Numerous estates were seized and in some cases the landowners were brutally murdered by the frenzied peasants. On some of the large estates the mansions of the owners, the laborers’ cottages, stables, cattle-sheds, and corn-stacks were burned and the valuable agricultural machinery destroyed. Whenever this happened it was a great calamity, for on the large estates were the model farms, the agricultural experiment stations of Russia. And while this wanton and foolish destruction was going on there was a great dearth of food for the army at the front. Millions of men had to be fed and it was necessary to make proper provision for the conservation of existing food crops and for increased production. Nor was it only the big estates which were thus attacked and despoiled; in numerous instances the farms of the “middle peasants”--corresponding to our moderately well-to-do farmers--were seized and their rightful owners driven away. In some cases very small farms were likewise seized. Something had to be done to save Russia from this anarchy, which threatened the very life of the nation. The Land Commissions were made administrative organs to deal with the land problems as they arose, to act until the new Zemstvos could be elected and begin to function, when the administrative work of the commissions would be assumed by the Land Offices of the Zemstvos.