months to hoodwink the peasants and deceive them with promises and excuses. The capitalists for months do not permit the Chernov ministry to issue laws prohibiting the transfer of land by sale.[1] And no sooner is this law finally promulgated than the capitalists begin a vile and baseless legal hounding of Chernov, and continue it up to the present time. In its defense of the landholders, the government was even bold enough to bring peasants to court for their "irresponsible" seizure of land.
The peasants are hoodwinked and persuaded to wait for the Constituent Assembly. But the capitalists continue to postpone the opening of this Assembly. Now, when at last the Assembly is summoned for the 30th of September, the capitalists raise a howl and declare that it is "impossible" to convene the Constituent Assembly in so short a time and demand another postponement of its convocation. The most influential members of the capitalist and landholding party, the "Cadet" Party, for example, openly advocate postponing the Constituent Assembly until after the war.
Land? Wait for the Constituent Assembly. . . . Constituent Assembly? Wait until after the war. . . . End of the war? Wait until we have reached a victorious conclusion.
That is the satisfaction we get. The capitalists and landholders, who have their majority in the government, thus make sport of the peasants.
But how is it possible for such things to go on in a free country, a country that has overthrown its Czar?
After the downfall of the Czarist power, state power passed into the hands of the first Provisional Government. The party of the revolutionary workers, the Bolsheviki, demanded a transfer of all state power to the Soviets. The greater number of delegates in the Soviets were on the side of the Mensheviki or with the Social-Revolutionists, who were against a transfer of power to the Soviets. Instead of brushing aside the bourgeois government and substituting a Soviet government in its place, the Mensheviki and Social-Revolutionists advocated support of the bourgeois government and a coalition with it, in other words, the formation of a new government composed of representatives of the bourgeoisie, Mensheviki
- ↑ Chernov was the Social-Revolutionist Minister of Agriculture in the Coalition Cabinet of the Provisional Government He resigned in June, becoming again a member in August in the Cabinet of Premier Kerensky. The prohibition of the transfer of land by sale was a very important measure, as through these sales the bourgeois and feudal agrarians schemed to draw the teeth out of the proposed distribution of land by the Constituent Assembly—when the Constituent Assembly finally did meet!—L. C. F.
