To the peasant, revolution means land, freedom means land. He knows land. He wants land. He thinks in terms of land. Land means food for his children, warmer _shubas_ for himself, and education for the next generation. Land means life. No revolutionary party that did not make land to the peasants the first plank in its platform could hope to survive in Russia. Ever since Alexander freed the serfs, the peasant has believed himself the rightful owner of the land. Under serfdom the land-owners dictated the entire terms of living of the peasants. They were flogged, sent to military service, and even forced into unwelcome marriages, as punishment for trivial offenses. Even when they were exemplary in the eyes of their owners, their right to marry as they chose was subject to the whim or the economic advantage of their owner. In return for their services upon the estate of the land-owner, the serfs were allowed a certain amount of land from which to take their own living. It was to the advantage of the land-lords to feed his serfs sufficient to keep them in good condition for their service to him. After the serfs were freed, the situation changed. The peasants, instead of receiving the land from which they were used to making their living, frequently received inferior land and a smaller quantity. Their bodies were free, but they found themselves economically more completely enslaved than they had been before. Their bitterness grew. In the early seventies there were agrarian uprisings in which bands of peasants burned the estates of the landlords. The landlord became the hereditary enemy, and the burning of his estate, which they regarded as their own, their habitual form of protest. As soon as the peasants were convinced that a real revolution had taken place in Petrograd, they began demanding their land; and, since its distribution was delayed, they began to take it. Many involved schemes of distribution were advocated by various groups. A minority believed in compensating the landlords, but the majority asked: “What is the use to pay for that which belongs to us? Why should we reward them for keeping us all these years from our own?” The land program of the social revolutionists was the one that best met the demand of the mass of peasants, and they flocked to support it. After the success of the Bolshevist Revolution the right Social Revolutionists accused the Bolsheviki of having stolen their land program. Lenin and Trotzky replied that the plan of the Bolsheviki was to apply everything that was good, regardless of its origin.