And among no class is this disillusionment more bitter than among the peasants who form 85 per cent. of the total population. They very naturally keenly resented the Bolshevik agrarian decrees by which they tried to take the land back from the peasants in order "to nationalise" it and turn it into communal property.
So the Bolsheviks countered their resistance by organizing committees of "poorest peasants," which included the waster and criminal dregs of the villages. And these were given power over their more industrious and thrifty neighbours.
Lenin himself, of course, knew well enough that the period of disillusionment, which would inevitably follow the initial breaking up period, must be reckoned for. He wrote a tract in 1905 (N. Lénine, Deux Tactiques de la Démocratie Socialiste dans la Révolution Démocratique. Published at Geneva), in which he wrote: "The time will come when the struggle against the Autocratic Government will be over. When that time comes it will be ridiculous to talk of the voluntary unity of the proletariat and the peasants, or of a 'democratic' dictatorship, etc. When that comes we shall have to think about: a socialistic dictatorship of the proletariat." Which latter—the dictatorship of the proletariat—means we see "of Lenin" tout seul and his alien friends. In spite of his prognostication Lenin was only accurate with reference to his own motives and intentions, for the peasants and the great majority of the workmen are heartily in accord in loathing the commissaries of the People appointed by the self-styled "Government of Workmen and Peasants."
