The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement — John Shaqi
The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav MovementPetrunkevitch, Alexander
History
The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement
Petrunkevitch, Alexander
Soviet Union -- History -- Revolution, 1917-1921; Soviet Union -- Politics and government -- 1917-1936; Yugoslavs
The Constitutional Democrats are in this respect better off. They find
their support chiefly among more or less educated people of various
pursuits: lawyers, bankers, brokers, journalists, teachers, artists,
scientists, etc. Their program embraces the interests of all classes
and demands political, judicial, economic, industrial and agrarian
legislation of a very radical and extensive kind. Their horizon of
vision includes the sufferings and aspirations of the often incongruous
elements of the vast whole, but their ideology is still based on the
long outworn idealistic capitalism and for this reason alone does not
and cannot appeal to not-owning classes. Their agrarian program is in
this respect the most striking example. It is worked out in great detail
and is aimed at a betterment of the condition of peasants without deep
injury to the present landowners. It recognizes the right of the peasant
to more land, it provides for future state ownership of land to prevent
it from falling into wrong hands, but does not condemn the principle
of landownership, nor the injustice of present ownership, and for that
reason elaborates a method of compensation for compulsorily alienated
land through universal taxation.
To avoid excessive burden to the impoverished peasant the compensation
is to be in the shape of bonds representing the average value of the
land in each particular case, only the interest on these bonds to be
paid yearly from universal taxes--a topsy-turvy mortgage system, as it
were, in which the state becomes the proprietor and mortgagor of the
land, while its present owners are turned into forced mortgagees. Under
this system the peasants will get all land available, but 90 per cent
will have to pay for what is owned by a small fraction of even the
remaining 10 per cent of the entire population. The proposed scheme
proved to be too radical for the tsar's government in 1906 and caused
the downfall of the first Duma. It provoked at the time bitter comment
in Germany also, where the conservative and national-liberal press
accused the Russian Constitutional Democratic party of putting forward
impossible demands and of attacking the very principle of property
ownership. Yet the principle underlying the proposed reform is
unquestionably capitalistic and is the chief cause of the hatred and
contempt which the party enjoys on the part of Social-Democrats.
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