From these accounts it is evident that the business and the political functions of the Soviets are limited to a certain circumscribed field outside of which it cannot go. For the biggest part it is no longdr an organization working from the bottom to the top, but, on the contrary, from the top to the bottom', and it could hardly be otherwise for a state with a war-time administration of its national husbandry.
For the peasants this administration from above frequently proves oppressive and disagreeable, not to use a more powerful term. This comes plainly to expression in the soviet commune, where the administration in many cases is not in the hands of a locally elected soviet or manager, but in the hands of a person selected by a Supreme Council of National Economy, or an agricultural commissariat. The peasants thus feel anything but free. To begin with, the estate is in the hands of the state, as we have already shown. The peasants do not feel as owners of the soil they cultivate. In the second place, the appointed manager frequently carries on a regime comparable to that of the old land owner. Thus we read in the "Pravda," a well known bolshevik paper, of July 1, 1919, No. 141:
"The manager ("Sovchos") is often like the dog in the hay who does not eat it himself but won't let anybody else eat it, either. The whole establishment is in a state of collapse. (It refers to a soviet establishment in the gouvernement Tver.) The manager, an ex-land-owner, is a dirty, run-down old man of melancholy aspect, who seems already to belong to another world. The peasants feel only hatred towards such a "sovchos" or "spez" (specialist). In every gouvernement or local district one may hear angry attacks on such management. The result of such an agrarian policy is an aggravation of the strained relations between the peasants and the soviet power."
It is clear that when the "Pravda" writes this it also -has reason for so doing, as it is calling the attention of the government to these conditions. The government has, of course, no interest in aggravating such conditions, but, on the contrary, in removing them. But it appears from the numerous attempts that it is very difficult And we must not blame it on lack of good will on the part of the government or gouvernements, for the leaders of the soviet republic do not lack good will, but the cause of it is the system of nationalization, the system of indirect relations of the peasants to the soil and to the management in working the soil.
The ideal of the peasants is to feel free and to work on free soil. But that is also the ideal of all socialists. Under the conditions described, the Russian revolution has not yet come to a realization of this ideal, as the quoted lines from the "Pravda" show. It is not to be wondered at that Russian revolutionists make the question whether they would not have come nearer to these ideals if different tactics had been adopted. The social-revolutionaries of the left, the anarchists, the anarcho-syndicalists, the maximalists, as well as part of the Ukrainian communists answer "Yes" to this question. Above everything they are against the requisition policy o/ the government and, according to their agrarian program, against the nationalization of the land, for a more communal form, for a form that ivould give the peasants more1 independence, for such a form of possession and cultivation of the soil as would give the peasants the management, through Soviets elected by themselves.
Against this the bolsheviks declare that they also are for these principles, but that the realization of them is so difficult— the peasants delivered nothing to the armies of the government and the cities — that it became necessary to resort to stern measures. The decree policy of the bolsheviks is in their opinion correct. Lenin says on the question, in a speech on "the position of the bolsheviks to the middle peasantry," made in Moscow in March, 1919: