One would think that we Russians might understand that if we really are concerned about, and desire to improve, the position of the people and to free them from the aggravating and demoralising fetters with which they are bound, the means to do this are indicated both by common sense and by the voice of the people, and are simply—the abolition of private property in land, that is to say, the abolition of land-slavery.
But, strange to relate, in Russian society, occupied with questions of the improvement of the condition or the working classes, there is no suggestion of this one, natural, simple and self-evident means of improving their condition. We Russians, though our peasants’ outlook on the land question is probably centuries ahead of the rest of Europe, can devise nothing better for the improvement of our people’s condition than to establish among ourselves, on the European model, doumas, councils, ministries, courts, zemstvos, universities, extension lectures, academies, elementary schools, fleets, submarines, airships, and many other of the queerest things quite foreign to and unnecessary for the people, and we do not do the one thing that is demanded by religion, morality, and common sense, as well as by the whole of the peasantry.
Nor is this all. While arranging the fate of our people, who do not and never did acknowledge landownership, we, imitating Europe, try in all sorts of cunning ways, and by deception, bribery, and even force, to accustom them to the idea of property in land—that is to say, we try to deprave them and to destroy their consciousness of the truth they have held for ages, and which sooner or later will certainly be acknowledged by the whole human race: the truth that all who live on the earth cannot but have an equal right to its use.