a and the increase of the
landless agricultural working class, which alone they believe
would prove truly Socialist_.[80]

The Russian Social Democratic Labor party, to which Lenine belonged, and of
which he was an influential leader, adopted in 1906 the following program
with regard to land ownership:

1. Confiscation of Church, Monastery, Appanage, Cabinet,[81] and
private estate lands, _except small holdings_, and turning them
over, together with the state lands, to the great organs of local
administration, which have been democratically elected. Land,
however, which is necessary as a basis for future colonization,
together with the forests and bodies of water, which are of
national importance, are to pass into the control of the
democratic state.

2. Wherever conditions are unfavorable for this transformation,
the party declares itself in favor of a division among the
peasants of such of the private estates as already have the petty
farming conditions, or which may be necessary to round out a
reasonable holding.

This program was at the time regarded as a compromise. It did not wholly
suit anybody. The peasant leaders feared the amount of state ownership and
management involved. On the other hand, the extreme left wing of the Social
Democrats--Lenine and his friends--wanted the party to proclaim itself in
favor of _the complete nationalization of all privately owned land, even
that of the small peasant owners_, but were willing, provided the principle
were this stated, to accept, as a temporary expedient, division of the land
in certain exceptional instances. On the other hand, the
Socialist-Revolutionists wanted, not the distribution of lands among a
multitude of private owners, as is very generally supposed, but its
socialization. Their program provided for "the socialization of all
privately owned lands--that is, the taking of them out of the private
ownership of persons into the public ownership and _their management by
democratically organized leagues of communities with the purpose of an
equitable utilization_." They wanted to avoid the creation of a great army
of what they described as "wage-slaves of the state" and, on the other
hand, they wanted to build upon the basis of Russian communism and, as far
as possible, prevent the extension of capitalist methods--and therefore of
the class struggle--into the agrarian life of Russia.

When the Bols