isaac-deutscher-the-prophet-armed-trotsky-1879-1921

'PERMANENT REVOLUTION' 155
the industrial proletariat would be master. 'Many layers of the
toiling mass, especially in the country, will be dr2wn into the
revolution and for the first time obtain political organization
only after . . . the urban proletariat has taken the helm of
government.' 1 But even though the overthrow of the old order
and the seizure of power would be the work ofa minority, the
revolution could not survive and consolidate itself unless it
received the genuine support of the majority, i.e. of the peasants.
'The proletariat in power will a/1pear before the peasantry as its
liberator." It would, among other things, sanction the seizure
of the large estates by the peasants. The French peasant had
followed N apolcon, because the latter guaranteed his smallholding
against the emigre landlord. For the same reason the
Russian peasant would back a proletarian government. That
government, therefore, would and would not represent the rule
ofa minority. The proletarian minority would form its core and
in all important matters hold the initiative. But it would rule
in the interest, and enjoy the willing support, of an overwhelming
majority.
His conception of the peasantry's place in the revolutionin
a sense the crux of 'Trot~kyism'-was to be the centre of
many controversies. The stock accusation levelled against
Trotsky is that he 'underrated' the revolutionary potentiality
of the Russian peasantry, and denied the possibility of an
'alliance' between it and the proletariat. For this charge no
support can be found in his own words. We have seen how
emphatically he stated that 'the proletariat in power will
appear before the peasantry as its liberator'. In insisting that the
Socialists would not merely expropriate the landlords but
sanction the seizure of their land by the peasants, he went
farther than most Russian Socialists had so far gone. The
Mensheviks held that the municipalities should take over the
gentry's land. Most Bolsheviks, especially Lenin, advocated, in
general terms, nationalization, but not partition of the land. 3
If the 'alliance" with the peasantry is to be understood as the
I Ibid., p. 41.
' Ibid., p. 4'·
' Of the now known Bolshevik leaders only Stalin pleaded in 1906 that the party
should pronounce itself in favour of the sharing out of the large estates among the
peasants. J. Stalin, Soc/1inenya, vol. i, pp. 21.1-35, 236-8. Sec also I. Deutscher,
Stalin, a Political Biography, pp. 82-83.