With the help of some intelligent elements among them the peasants regulate their larger common affairs. They called in the larger congresses, formed co-operatives, etc. It is true that they have not the right understanding in all things, nor a strong initiative. They still partly believe in the ability of the intelligentzia. Thus they believed that Machno, who was such a good leader for them in battle, should also be able to tell them what they should do in other matters. For that reason they would ask Machno what to do in most any matter of business. Machno is said to have answered them to do what they themselves considered best to do. But the peasants were not helped with that. They wanted advice. And he who can give them disinterested counsel, is naturally welcome among them.
Communism, with the Ukrainian peasant, is not a theory but their practical life. The large estate owners, the pomeschtschiks proved to them the disadvantages of private ownership in land, and the injustice that springs from it. And this injustice nourished their envy. Marxism may eternally proclaim that socialism is not a matter of privilege, but the peasants feel the injustice which has come into their life with unequal distribution of the land and want to abolish it. The others shall not have any more than we. By the enemies of socialism this has always been branded as the envy of the property-less. But this envy of the property-less is for the peasants a regulative principle. It ca/rries within itself equality in the ownership of land, and this leads the peasants to communism.
The Economic Situation in the Ukraine
If the land of the estate owners had come into the hands of the peasants before the war, it would without question have meant an improvement of the lot of the peasants and therewith an uplift of their economic position. Even as it was, the change brought with it an improvement in the position of the poor peasants, that is, an improvement in the position of the peasants who had become empoverished through the war. By this we wish to say that without these measures of the revolution the peasants would have been in a worse position than they now are, but not in a better position than before the war. It is with the peasants as it was with the population in Germany. They complain and wish pre-war times back. Before the war the peasants had boots, clothes and petroleum — things that they lack to-day. They have few agricultural implements and fewer agricultural machines. Industry is very poorly developed, and during the -war there was practically only war industry. They obtain very few industrial products and had to give up their agricultural products for the war.
When the bolsheviks had taken possession of the Ukraine, they prohibited free trade, so that the inhabitants of the cities found themselves in great straits for the necessities of life. The purpose of the bolsheviks was a double one.
First, they wanted to prevent the provisions and use-objects from becoming objects of trade and speculation. Theoretically,
from the standpoint of socialism, the matter presents itself this way: that through free trading the goods produced are not directly distributed, but serve for profit mongering, personal enrichment or to maintain the life of those who occupy themselves therewith. Instead of turning to productive work, they ' 'trade." But in practice this is often not the case. Especially is the Russian market the place where the peasants sell their home products, which they have in no manner acquired by purchase or speculation. But as it was very difficult under the given circumstances to define who was a peasant and who> was a trader, this measure has quite often hit the wrong person, and particularly in the small cities. The so-called speculators are often the poorest.