Leon Trotsky: 1905

Leon Trotsky: 1905: CHAPTER 3 -- The Peasantry and the Agrarian Question
areas of land which under serfdom were worked by the peasants for their own needs absorbed only half
of their labor power, since for three days of every week they were obliged to work for the landlord.
Nevertheless, some 2 per cent of the best land was cut off, in favor of the landlords, from these already
inadequate land allocations (speaking very generally, with considerable variations between one part of
the country and another). Thus agricultural over population, which formed part of the fundamental
condition of serfdom, was further aggravated by the nobility's appropriation of peasant land.
The half-century which has elapsed since the reform has brought about a considerable reshuffle in land
ownership, land to the value of three-quarters of a billion roubles having passed from the hands of the
nobility into those of the merchant and peasant bourgeoisie. But the mass of the peasantry has derived no
benefit whatever from this fact.
In 1905, the distribution of the land area of the fifty provinces of European Russia was as follows:
1. Land allotments owned by:
former state serfs 66.3
fomer landlord-owned serfs 38.4
112 million
Dessyatins
2. 2. Privately owned land owned by: 101.7
companies and associations (inculding 11.4 by peasant
associations)
Private owners:
up to 20 dessyatins (inculding 2.3 by peasant owners)
Between 20 and 50 dessyatins 3.3
15.7
More than 50 dessyatins 79.4
3. Crown and independent lands 145.0
4.
Including non-foresstry and arable land (approx.) 4.6
Lands belonging to the church, to monasteries,
municipal institutions, etc.
As we have already seen, the average allotment per male peasant after the land reform was 4.83
dessyatins. Forty-five years later, in 1905, the average area including any newly acquired pieces of land
amounts to only 3.i dessyatins. In other words, the total area of peasant-owned land has been reduced by
36 per cent.
The development of commercial and industrial activities, which absorbed not more than one-third of the
annual growth of the peasant population; the emigration movement to peripheral areas which, to some
extent, reduced the peasant population in the center; and lastly, the activities of the Peasant Bank, which
enabled peasants of medium and higher levels of prosperity to acquire 7.3 million dessyatins of land
during the period from 1882 to 1905 -- these factors proved incapable even of counterbalancing the effect
of the natural population growth and preventing the exacerbation of land penury.
3.2
8.8
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