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THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
29
an ideal which always stood before the eyes of the
Slavophils, and has, of course, been hailed by them as the
realisation of their popular faith.
A very important question standing before the
revolutionary Government was the necessary agrarian reform.
The peasant population, increasing at a considerable rate,
require new land, and their demand seems to be reasonable
enough. There were different ways of satisfying this want.
One was by fostering emigration to Siberia by offering
advantages in acquiring new land there. This measure
has been already resorted to in the past and was of great
economic value, as it developed at the same time the
productivity of Siberia. Another form of relief was found
in the growing industrialism of Russia, which will give
employment to a great number of peasants by attracting
them to the towns and to the workshops. But still a third
way of dealing with the problem was open, namely, by
legislative measures to compel the big landowners to give
up large parts of their property to the peasantry, in a way
analogous to that which has already been done in Great
Britain by the Smallholding Acts, viz. forcing the big
landowners to sell or lease part of their property for the use of the
peasantry. Enormous tracts of fertile land which belonged
to the Crown, or are the property of big landowners, were
allowed to lie waste. Their proper cultivation would mean
a great increase in the agricultural productivity of Russia
and should be advocated from that point of view also. All
this could have been done without resorting to the Socialistic
measure of the nationalisation of the land, and without
endangering the principle of personal proprietorship.
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