The attitude of the Social Democratic party toward the peasant Socialists and their program was characterized by that same certainty that small agricultural holdings were to pass away, and by the same contemptuous attitude toward the peasant life and peasant aspirations that we find in the writings of Marx, Engels, Liebknecht, and many other Marxists.[79] Lenine himself had always adopted this attitude.  He never trusted the peasants and was opposed to any program which would give the land to them as they desired.  Mr. Walling, who spent nearly three years in Russia, including the whole period of the Revolution of 1905-06, writes of Lenine’s position at that time: 

Like Alexinsky, Lenine awaits the agrarian movement ... and hopes that a railway strike with the destruction of the lines of communication and the support of the peasantry may some day put the government of Russia into the people’s hands.  However, I was shocked to find that this important leader also, though he expects a full co-operation with the peasants on equal terms, during the Revolution, feels toward them a very deep distrust, thinking them to a large extent bigoted and blindly patriotic, and fearing that they may some day shoot down the working-men as the French peasants did during the Paris Commune.

The chief basis for this distrust is, of course, the prejudiced feeling that the peasants are not likely to become good Socialists. It is on this account that Lenine and all the Social Democratic leaders place their hopes on a future development of large agricultural estates in Russia 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