by Paul Cudenec

An authentic mood of revolt had been swelling up in Russia for some time before 1917, with a previous attempted revolution in 1905-06 violently repressed by the tsarist regime.

A great inspiration behind this mood was the back-to-the-land Christian anarchism of the revered Russian novelist and thinker Leo Tolstoy, [11] author of War and Peace.

Contemporary observer Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu wrote in 1910: “We know that Tolstoy’s ideas about land are those of the majority of Russian peasants”. [12]

This radical outlook regarded the earth as a common treasury for all, like air and water: the land belonged to those who dug it and not to speculators.

“Land and freedom” was the slogan that captured the imagination of peasant families, whose ideal was the mir, a village community based on traditional values and involving democratic decision-making, sharing of resources and mutual aid.

These peasants lived simply, healthily and largely beyond the reach of both central state power and, crucially, of the money-based economy. [13]

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