Leon Trotsky: 1905

Leon Trotsky: 1905: CHAPTER 4 -- The Driving Forces of the Russian Revolution
reconciled to it. At that time, the nobility showed correct instinct, as it does today when it resolutely
refuses to commit suicide as an estate, however "just" the "assessment." Not a square inch of our land,
not a particle of our privileges! Under this banner the nobility has finally acquired dominance over the
government apparatus so badly shaken by the revolution; and it has shown that it is determined to fight
with all the ferocity of which a governing class is capable in a matter of life or death.
The agrarian problem cannot be solved by means of parliamentary agreement with the landed estate, but
only by means of a revolutionary onslaught by the masses.
The Peasantry and the Towns
The knot of Russia's social and political barbarism was tied in the countryside; but this does not mean
that the countryside has produced a class capable, by its own forces, of cutting through that knot. The
peasantry, scattered in 500,000 villages and ham lets over the 5 million square versts of European Russia,
has not inherited from its past any tradition or habit of concerted political struggle. During the agrarian
riots of 1905 and :906, the aim of the mutinous peasants was reduced to driving the landowners outside
the boundaries of their village, their rural area and finally, their administrative area. Against the peasant
revolution the landed nobility had in its hands the ready-made weapon of the centralized apparatus of the
state. The peasantry could have overcome this obstacle only by means of a resolute uprising unified both
in time and in effort. But, owing to all the conditions of their existence, the peasants proved quite
incapable of such an uprising. Local cretinism is history's curse on all peasant riots. They liberate
themselves from this curse only to the extent that they cease to be purely peasant movements and merge
with the revolutionary movements of new social classes.
As far back as the revolution of the German peasantry during the first quarter of the sixteenth century,
the peasantry placed itself quite naturally under the direct leadership of the urban parties, despite the
economic weakness and political insignificance of German towns at that time. Socially revolutionary in
its objective interests, yet politically fragmented and power less, the peasantry was incapable of forming
a party of its own, and so gave way -- depending on local conditions -- either to the oppositional-burgher
or to the revolutionary-plebeian parties of the towns. These last, the only force which could have ensured
the victory of the peasant revolution, were however (al though based on the most radical class of the
society of that time, the embryo of the modern proletariat) entirely without links with the rest of the
nation or any clear consciousness of revolutionary aims. They were without them because of the
country's lack of economic development, the primitive means of transport, and state particularism. Hence
the problem of revolutionary cooperation between the mutinous countryside and the urban plebs was nor
solved at that time because it could not be solved; and the peasant movement was crushed.
More than three centuries later, correlations of a similar kind were seen again in the revolution of 1848.
The liberal bourgeoisie not only did not want to arouse the peasantry and unite it around itself, it actually
feared the growth of the peasant movement more than anything else, precisely because this growth would
have the primary effect of intensifying and strengthening the position of the plebeian, radical urban
elements against the liberal bourgeoisie itself. Yet these elements were still socially and politically
amorphous and fragmented and consequently were unable to displace the liberal bourgeoisie and place
them selves at the head of the peasant masses. The revolution of 1848 was defeated.
Yet, six decades previously, the problems of revolution were triumphantly resolved in France, precisely
through the cooperation of the peasantry with the urban plebs, that is, the proletariat, semi-proletariat,
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