At the same time active preparations for holding the election of members to
the Constituent Assembly were actually under way. The Socialist parties
were making special efforts to educate the illiterate voters how to use
their ballots correctly. The Provisional Government, on its part, was
pushing the preparations for the elections as rapidly as possible. All over
the country special courts were established, in central places, to train
the necessary workers so that the elections might be properly conducted.
Above all, the great problem of the socialization of the land which had
been agitated for so many years had now reached the stage at which its
solution might almost have been said to be complete. The National Soviet of
Peasants, together with the Socialist Revolutionary party, had formulated a
law on the subject which represented the aspiration and the best thought of
the leaders of the peasants' movement. That law had been approved in the
Council of Ministers and was ready for immediate promulgation. Peasant
leaders like Chernov, Rakitnikov, Vikhiliaev, and Maslov had put an immense
amount of work into the formulation of this law, which aimed to avoid
anarchy, to see to it that instead of an individualistic scramble by the
peasants for the land, in small and unorganized holdings, the problem
should be scientifically dealt with, lands being justly distributed among
the peasant communes, and among the peasants who had been despoiled, and
large estates co-operatively organized and managed.
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