[79]
Lenine himself had always adopted this attitude. He never trusted the
peasants and was opposed to any program which would give the land to them
as they desired. Mr. Walling, who spent nearly three years in Russia,
including the whole period of the Revolution of 1905-06, writes of Lenine's
position at that time:
Like Alexinsky, Lenine awaits the agrarian movement ... and hopes
that a railway strike with the destruction of the lines of
communication and _the support of the peasantry_ may some day put
the government of Russia into the people's hands. However, I was
shocked to find that this important leader also, though he expects
a full co-operation with the peasants on equal terms, _during the
Revolution_, feels toward them a very _deep distrust_, thinking
them to a large extent bigoted and blindly patriotic, and fearing
that they may some day shoot down the working-men as the French
peasants did during the Paris Commune.
The chief basis for this distrust is, of course, the prejudiced
feeling that the peasants are not likely to become good
Socialists. _It is on this account that Lenine and all the Social
Democratic leaders place their hopes on a future development of
large agricultural estates in Russia and the increase of the
landless agricultural working class, which alone they believe
would prove truly Socialist_.
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