2 . t . , ; ; - INTBOPUCIORY REMARKS 



The present is indeed the time for action, for I cannot 

 help viewing the future in the rural districts of India with 

 grave concern. In almost every ancient country there 

 came with the growth of population a stage when the land 

 came under the proprietorship of feudal landlords whose 

 function was to protect their villeins and tenants, for which 

 they were paid a rent in kind or in labor, and later in cash. 

 Everywhere with the growth of power of the central 

 Government these great landed chiefs degenerated and 

 became commercialized ; they lived luxuriously in the 

 capital cities and handed over their estates to agents for 

 management. It was so in England in the 15th and 16th 

 centuries, in France in the 18th century, in Russia in the ,.., 

 19th and 20th centuries. In every one of these countries, 

 and others, there has followed an uprising of the peasants. 

 In England there were the widespread disorders of 1536, 

 repressed in the West with much bloodshed. We know that 

 the French Revolution was largely agrarian in origin. In 

 Ireland the pressure was relieved by emigration. In Russia 

 the unrest of the cultivating classes, which prevailed before, 

 was deeply stirred by the recent Great War and its social 

 reactions. The first, or political revolution, did not affect s 

 its causes, for the Constitutional Democrats could only 

 propose gradual reforms, and the Russian peasants were tired 

 of promises. Then the theorist followers of Karl Marx and 

 Tolstoy gathered strength and associated with themselves 

 the peasant party to whom they implicitly, if not explicitly, 

 gave license for the destruction of the land-owning class. 

 Throughout the vast area of Russia the peasants seized the 

 palaces of the nobles and houses of the smaller landlords, 

 and divided up their home farms amongst them. The 

 aristocracy of Russia is either dead, or in exile, or starving 

 in the streets of Russian cities. 



Doctrines having a close resemblance to those of Tolstoy 



