The Russian Revolution; the Jugo-Slav Movement by Golder, Frank Alfred, 1877-1929, Harper, Samuel N. (Samuel Northrup), 1882-1943, Kerner, Robert Joseph, 1887-1956, Petrunkevitch, Alexander Ivanovitch, 1875-1964

The Octoberists find no support in the masses and do not make any serious attempt to gain it. They frankly acknowledged themselves as the party of industry and trade, having no wider interests at heart than the maintenance of order and law throughout the country. Their leaders were forced into a revolutionary attitude only at the time when there was danger of a universal collapse of Russia if the tsar's government persisted, and they may be forced to join in a counter-revolution, if their interests are again endangered. Their ideology is that of a capitalistic class and their power depends entirely on the future development of industry and trade in Russia. For the present they are nowhere. Unable to find a new basis for their activity in place of class interest, they lack unity of purpose and are deserted by their own former supporters among their employees. Trade and industry are disorganized and the party may never be resurrected.

The Constitutional Democrats are in this respect better off. They find their support chiefly among more or less educated people of various pursuits: lawyers, bankers, brokers, journalists, teachers, artists, scientists, etc. Their program embraces the interests of all classes and demands political, judicial, economic, industrial and agrarian legislation of a very radical and extensive kind. Their horizon of vision includes the sufferings and aspirations of the often incongruous elements of the vast whole, but their ideology is still based on the long outworn idealistic capitalism and for this reason alone does not and cannot appeal to not-owning classes. Their agrarian program is in this respect the most striking example. It is worked out in great detail and is aimed at a betterment of the condition of peasants without deep injury to the present landowners. It recognizes the right of the peasant to more land, it provides for future state ownership of land to prevent it from falling into wrong hands, but does not condemn the principle of landownership, nor the injustice of present ownership, and for that reason elaborates a method of compensation for compulsorily alienated land through universal taxation.

To avoid excessive burden to the impoverished peasant the compensation is to be in the shape of bonds representing the average value of the land in each particular case, only the interest on these bonds to be paid yearly from universal taxes--a topsy-turvy mortgage system, as it were, in which the state becomes the proprietor and mortgagor of the land, while its present owners are turned into forced mortgagees. Under this system the peasants will get all land available, but 90 per cent will have to pay for what is owned by a small fraction of even the remaining 10 per cent of the entire population. The proposed scheme proved to be too radical for the tsar's government in 1906 and caused the downfall of the first Duma. It provoked at the time bitter comment in Germany also, where the conservative and national-liberal press accused the Russian Constitutional Democratic party of putting forward impossible demands and of attacking the very principle of property ownership. Yet the principle underlying the proposed reform is unquestionably capitalistic and is the chief cause of the hatred and contempt which the party enjoys on the part of Social-Democrats.