5. The revolution that anarchism strives for, the revolution in which the parole of no rulership and of communism determines the course of events, finds many obstacles to its development. The strength of the active resistance on the part of those who are interested in the maintenance of capitalism and power, the inertia and the ignorance of the broad masses of the workers, can create conditions under which the rising anarchist commune will be driven far from their ideal. To concretely fix the eventual social forms of the future is impossible for the moment, because we cannot foresee the quantitative and qualitative contents of the forces which determine the reality of the future. For this reason we consider it useless to elaborate a program which should be applied to something that we do not know. We do not come forward with any minimum program but step upon the ground of present events with full rights and full conviction before the working masses, in order to show them the ideals of anarchism and communism in their purity".
These anarchists are also strong opponents of the Bolsheviks and the present soviet government and not only declare that the bolsheviks have ceased to be revolutionary but stamp themopenly as counter-revolutionary and reactionary. The "Nabats" are not identical with the Machno movement; they have, on the contrary, in another resolution taken quite strong exceptions to Machno and see in him only a revolutionary but not an anarchist. They are also vigorously fought and persecuted by the bolsheviks, recommend illegal work, and many are in prison.
The Land
THE abolition of private property in land is perhaps the deepest change which the Russian revolution has brought into the social life of our private capitalist age. It was this that gave the Russian revolution the character of a social, or an economic, revolution. The German revolution has not shaken the foundation of the social order of private capitalism and for that reason did not go beyond the boundaries of a political revolution.
Now the Russian revolution has shown us that, on account of the poor knowledge of the Russian workers on the technical field, the expectations of the socialists of all shades that private property could be abolished have not been fulfilled. It has also shown that for economic equality, such as communism presupposes, is further required the elimination of the organized power of the capitalists and the taking over of all these functions through the proletariat itself. This, however, cannot happen in a revolution of one or two years but requires a period of time, the length of which depends upon the development and the ability of the proletariat of the country. But the first and principal step has been taken by the Russian revolution. The land no longer belongs to the large land owners. In an agrarian country like Russia, the land question is the most important one. We will therefore start with this question.
The taking away of the land from the owners of great estates was such an elementary peasant demand, that it did not require any socialist theories to induce them to it. On the contrary, the peasants were glued to the land. Frequently they did not wait for the law, which was to transfer to them the possessions of the large land owners; they confiscated it themselves. Already during the Kerensky regime the peasants started with this confiscation.
In Russia, before the revolution, the land tenure was different from land tenure in Germany. The peasants still had to a great extent remains of the old Mir organization. They still had common pastures and similar common economic interests. Part of them also had their own land, but had to pay such great taxes to the Czarist state, as well as rent to the estate owner, that they, in spite of it, lived in very poor circumstances.
Nevertheless, 76.3% of the total arable land belonged to the peasants and 23.7% to the estate owners. In Ukraine only 55.5% of the land belonged to the peasants and 44.5% to the estate owners. In Ukraine the power of the land owners was still greater than in the rest of Russia.