.

IN MARCH 1917, the czar was deposed by a combination of leftists, centralists and rightists, not just by the Bolsheviks, who actually played a minor part in the Russian revolution.

The largest party in the Duma was the Social Revolutionaries, previously known as the Peasants Union of Social Revolutionaries. Its membership included a wide spectrum of political and economic beliefs, but its leaders supported enterprise without special privilege. It differentiated between land and natural resources, on the one hand, and labour and capital, on the other hand.

On May 20,1917, the Chief Land Committee of the government, led by Prince Lvov, proposed to the General Assembly: "The land reform should be based on the idea mat all agricultural land must be transferred to the use of the toiling agrarian population".

To carry out this goal, the land taken from the nobility and unoccupied land was divided up according to its value. As for existing peasant units, there was to be a land tax, with the higher tax yield from the more valuable lots to go into a special fund for settling unallotted land. There was to be no tax on improvements or on crops showing more diligent cultivation or greater intensity of labour. Victor Chemov, Secretary of Agriculture in the Provisional Government, described the purpose of this plan, which resembled that of Henry George, as follows:

"Personal interest, the irreplaceable motive power of agricultural progress under modern conditions, was thus left in full force. The final result would have been a flexible system of peasant economic balance, with extensive freedom of personal enterprise. The enlargement of the peasants' land supply by wiping out large-scale landowning was not the heart of the reform. It was merely the original fillip to promote the reconstruction of that economy, based on the free union of toil and land."

Sabotaged by the nobility and big landowners, disrupted by the right-wing counter-revolution of General Kornilov, and destroyed by the left-wing counter-revolution of the Bolsheviks, which overthrew the war-torn Democratic Provincial Government, Chernov never had an opportunity to put this plan into effect.

The Second Congress of Soviets, under Lenin, took an entirely different tack. On November 8, 1917, it declared: "The right to private property in the land is annulled forever."

As a result of the Bolshevik's land policy, the production of food was disrupted by the peasants. Lenin denounced the "Kulaks", or more prosperous peasants. Under his definition, there were two million of these scapegoats. Lenin proclaimed "Merciless war against these Kulaks! Death to them" -- possibly the first instance in the 20th century of a government official demanding genocide against a whole class of people.

Russia: Tolstoy's Nest of Wax…

HERMAN BERNSTEIN, in a story filed from St. Petersburg to the New York Times of July 20,1908, reported an interview with Leo Tolstoy:

"He asked me about my impressions of Russia, and particularly about the popularity of Henry George's works in America. "Nearly 50 years ago, he went on slowly," the great question that occupied all minds in Russia was the emancipation of the serfs. The burning question now is the ownership of land. The peasants never recognized the private ownership of land. They say that the land belongs to God. I am afraid that people will regard what I say as stupid, but I must say if: The leaders of the revolutionary movement, as well as the Government officials, are not doing the only thing that would pacify the people at once. And the only thing that would pacify the people now is the introduction of the system of Henry George.

"As I have pointed out in my introductory note to the Russian version of Social Problems, Henry George's great idea, outlined so clearly and so thoroughly more than 30 years ago, remains to this day entirely unknown to the great majority of the people. This is quite natural. Henry George's idea, which changes the entire system in the life of nations in favor of the oppressed, voiceless majority, and to the detriment of the ruling minority, is so undeniably convincing, and, above all, so simple, that it is impossible not to understand it, and understanding it, it is impossible not to make an effort to introduce it into practice, and therefore the only means against this idea is to pervert it and to pass it in silence. And this has been true of the Henry George theory for more than 30 years. It has been both perverted and passed in silence, so that it has become difficult to induce people to read his work attentively and to think about it. Society does with ideas that disturb its peace -- and Henry George is one of these -- exactly what the bee does with the worms which it considers dangerous but which it is powerless to destroy. It covers their nests with wax, so that the worms, even though not destroyed, cannot multiply and do more harm. Just so the European nations act with regard to ideas that are dangerous to their order of things, or, rather, to the disorder to which they have grown accustomed. Among these are also the ideas of Henry George. But light shines even in the darkness, and the darkness cannot cover it. A truthful, fruitful idea cannot be destroyed. However you may try to smother it, it will still live: it will be more alive than all the vague, empty, pedantic ideas and words with which people are trying to smother it, and sooner or later the truth will burn through the veil that is covering it and it will shine forth before the whole world. Thus it will be also with Henry George's idea.

"And it seems to me that just now is the proper time to introduce this idea -- now, and in Russia. This is just the proper time for it, because in Russia a revolution is going on, the serious basis of which is the rejection by the whole people, by the real people, of the ownership of land. In Russia, where nine-tenths of the population are tillers of the soil and where this theory is merely a conscious expression of that which has always been regarded as right by the entire Russian people -- in Russia, I say, especially during this period of reconstruction of social conditions, this idea should now find its application, and thus the revolution, so wrongly and criminally directed, would be crowned by a great act of righteousness. This is my answer to your question about the future of Russia. Unless this idea is introduced into the life of our people, Russia's future can never be bright."

*David Redfearn's Tolstoy: Principles for a New World Order (Shepheard-Walwyn,1992,£9.95), is available through UK bookshops, or from Land & Liberty Press, 177 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 1EU.