The Bolshevik Government.
[Reprinted from the "Labour Leader."]
The Bolsheviks came into power largely because the other candidates, perhaps through no fault of their own, did not appear to be giving the people what they wanted, because the Constituent Assembly seemed likely to repeat the faults of the previous Governments and to embarrass the movement towards freedom by compromises with a class which had always held power. Having gained power the Bolsheviks more slowly gained popularity.
The Social Revolutionary right party had on its programme the nationalising of the land, but it held the idea that the Socialist programme must come slowly; it was in favour of disposing of the estates only when the peasants were ready for them. Lenin incorporated the land question into the revolutionary movement by his order: "Peasants, seize the land." This did not, however, make Bolshevism popular, the peasants remarking, "Lenin did not give us the land; we took it." The movement of the workmen to take possession of the factories was more properly attributed to the Bolsheviks, but it did not in my opinion make that party popular.
The General Social Programme: Ten Years' Trial.
It was, I think, the general social programme of the Moscow Revolutionaries which commended itself to the people, which slowly took shape and may be judged in the Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, adopted July 10, 1918. The Bolsheviks have attempted to deal with the
fundamental problem, the abolition of exploitation of men by men, the entire abolition of the division of the people into classes, the suppression of exploiters, the establishment of a "Socialist Society." (Constitution, Article 1, chapter 2, paragraph 3.)
Great masses of the people, of course, remained in ignorance of the real meaning of "the establishment of a Socialist society." It was interpreted to them as being the organisation of a State on principles very similar to their village communes, and the peasants
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