The much-praised land policy of the Bolsheviki is, in fact, not a Bolshevik policy at all, but one which they have accepted as a compromise for temporary political advantage.  “Claim everything in sight,” said a noted American politician on one occasion to his followers.  Our followers of the Bolsheviki, taught by a very clever propaganda, seem to be acting upon that maxim.  They claim for the Bolsheviki everything which can in the slightest manner win favor with the American public, notwithstanding that it involves claiming for the Bolsheviki credit to which they are not entitled.  As early as May 18, 1917, it was announced by the Provisional Government that the “question of the transfer of the land to the toilers” was to be left to the Constituent Assembly, and there was never a doubt in the mind of any Russian Socialist how that body would settle it; never a moment when it was doubted that the Constituent Assembly would be controlled by the Socialist-Revolutionary party.  When Kerensky became Prime Minister one of the first acts of his Cabinet was to create a special committee for the purpose of preparing the law for the socialization of the land and the necessary machinery for carrying the law into effect.  The All-Russian Peasants’ Congress had, as early as May, five months before the Bolshevik counter-revolution, adopted the land policy for which the Bolsheviki now are being praised by their admirers in this country.  That policy had been crystallized into a carefully prepared law which had been approved by the Council of Ministers.  The Bolsheviki did no more than to issue a crudely conceived “decree” which they have never at any time had the power to enforce in more than about a fourth of Russia—­in place of a law which would have embraced all Russia and have been secure and permanent.

On July 16, 1918, Marie Spiridonova, in an address delivered in Petrograd, protested vehemently against the manner in which the Bolshevik government was departing from the policy it had agreed to maintain with regard to the land, and going back to the old Social Democratic ideas.  She declared that she had been responsible for the decree of February, which provided for the socialization of the land.  That measure provided for the abolition of private property in land, and placed all land in the hands of and under the direction of the peasant communes.  It was the old Socialist-Revolutionist program.  But the Bolshevik government had not carried out the law of February.  Instead, it had resorted to the Social Democratic method of nationalization.