As early as 1905, the "young" narodniki came forward with a new program. This program for the "nationalisation" of the land was nothing more than a scheme for an authoritarian state socialism, which aimed, by the systematic restriction of capitalism, at creating for the first time an ideal mir, the mir that was to save Russia. It is not difficult to understand how the young narodniki yielded to the lure of state socialism when we remember that many of the old narodniki (Nikolai-on, for instance) had placed their hopes on state socialism and its agrarian bureaucracy. When we speak of the state, however, we must think of the extant Russian state of Peter the Great, an institution which the narodniki were often no less ready to ban than the slavophils had been.
This state now received the approval of the "folk-socialists," an offshoot of the narodničestvo formed after 1905. Pěšehonov, who was their spokesman, reasoned soundly when he displayed to the young narodniki the defects of the arbitrary repressive measures which would degrade the commune to an agrarian ghetto; yet he, for his part, distinguishing between "possibilities" and simple "desires," compounded with the historically extant monarchy, hallowed as it was by centuries, and assigned to it a decisive and leading role in agrarian reform. In regard to details, the "nationalisation" of the land was to be carried out in accordance with the teachings of Henry George, for Pěšehonov forgot that Henry George had based his ideas of reform upon the institutions of a state utterly different from the Russian. Or are we perchance to believe that Pěšehonov was prepared to approve the revolution and the constitutionalism it had inaugurated?
However this may be, Pěšehonov lays great stress on the consideration that the revolution must be social and not political, and he continually relapses into the apolitical socialism of the narodničestvo. He maintains, for example, that the demand for the eight-hour day will not be effectively realised until every worker has his own portion of land, for then the workers will not be dependent upon the factory. It is plain that Pěšehonov is here endeavouring to put a narodnikist gloss upon the social democratic demand which the folk-socialists have adopted. He refers to the unsuccessful strike of the St. Petersburg operatives, which the employers converted into a lock-out, simply letting the strikers starve. The operatives failed because they had no "land." Pěšehonov
