tion, and by their being forced out of agricultural
production to a great degree.
IT
The contradictions between the desolate condition of
the mass of the peasantry, the capitalist development
of agriculture, and the domination exercised by the big
landlords over the land, the basic means of agricultural
production, was the fundamental cause of the 1905
revolution, and was also one of the basic underlying
factors in the revolutionary outbreak of 1917. Hav-
ing crushed the 1905 revolution by means of the puni-
tive expeditions of the czarist troops, by executions
and death sentences, the czarist government was at the
same time compelled, by means of the so-called “Stoly-
pin laws,” to stimulate the development of agriculture
along commercial and capitalistic lines at a heightened
tempo. But these attempts could not create sufficiently
favorable conditions for the liquidation of the conflict
of interests between the landlords and the peasantry,
inasmuch as the power and the profits remained in the
hands of the ruling, land-owning class. As a matter of
fact, the contradictions were actually aggravated by
the Stolypin reforms, despite the fact that the czarist
government attempted to base itself on certain groups
in the villages by affording these groups the possibil-
ity of expanding their holdings through the plundering
of the common land. In spite of the decisive measures
taken in this direction, the outbreak of the revolution,
hastened by the war, led to the overthrow of the czarist
regime and to the overthrow of the capitalist class,
which had attempted to seize the power after the March
revolution.