Leon Trotsky: Something about Zemstvos

[My own translation of the Russian text, published in Vostochnoe Obozrenie [Eastern Outlook] No. 285, 23 December 1900/5 January 1901, reprinted in Sochineniya Vol 4, Moscow-Leningrad 1926. Corrections by English native speakers would be extremely welcome]

We, Siberian readers and writers, due to a completely natural reason - the absence of Zemstvo institutions in our country – usually look at Zemstvo affairs through the eyes of outside observers, and although we have our own opinion on this, our opinion is absolutely platonic. We believe, however, that soon, willy-nilly, we will have to wean ourselves from such an attitude to the matter: the introduction of zemstvo institutions in Siberia is only a question of time and, I think, a short time; it is just as inevitable as, for example, the accomplished introduction of the public court: it is caused by the complication, specification of social necessities, needs and demands that require new forms of local administration that are more appropriate to contemporary relations.

The complicated life requires new organs, which - due to this very complexity - may be organs not of a central, but of a local character, and, moreover, within certain empirically determined limits, self-sufficient ... That is why the zemstvo self-government is not a concoction of publicists of inglorious memory, but the "categorical imperative" of life; that is why the crafty inquiries and interrogations of a certain sort of publicists must be answered approximately in the following way: we find it difficult to determine, dear sirs, whether the zemstvo is a well-intentioned or ill-intentioned organ; but on the other hand, we have no doubt that at a certain stage of development, which we have already achieved, it is a necessary organ and will take its proper place in the turnover of all-Russian life.

And our confidence is not in the least disturbed by the fact that the zemstvo activity has been chronically "at a loss" for a considerable number of years, so that the interest of society and the press in zemstvo affairs and institutions not only here, in Siberia, but even in "Russia" is usually excited by some emergency. Having reached at such a moment the highest amplitude of fluctuations, interest in the zemstvo then begins to wane until it fits into a peaceful framework, on the one hand, writing, on the other, receiving correspondences, grey, like an autumn day, about the expansion of the school network by one zemstvo, founding of hospitals by an other.

If we are not mistaken, only once, after the introduction of zemstvo institutions, a large interest in zemstvos was caused not by a simplification of activities, but by a phenomenon of a completely opposite nature. We are talking about the fact that, at the end of 1880, the zemstvo assemblies were invited by the Ministry of Internal Affairs to express their opinion on the "questions and the assumptions that arose in different provinces about changing some resolutions of the 'Regulations on 27 June, 1874'" ... Many zemstvo assemblies, despite the haste of work and the limited framework within which their judgment was asked, they expressed in response to the ministerial request many correct and fairly broad ideas about zemstvo institutions – thoughts that now, at the very turn of the 20th century, at first glance, are much further from being transformed into living reality than it was then, at the end of 1880. Take at least the main feature of the Zemstvo – its "non-estates" character ... whose being non-estate is more than problematic: peasant and even non-noble representation in zemstvo assemblies is so insignificant and in many localities complicated by such conditions and circumstances that representatives of the peasants are very often present at zemstvo meetings rather as silent symbols of the all-estates zemstvo principle than as "privileged people" authorized to knit and solve local affairs. Here is a small illustration of what was said. In Yaroslavl Gubernia, for example, one representative from the nobility accounts for 3,000 desiatines of land and for 7,000 rubles. the value of other property with a zemstvo tax of 700 rubles; one representative from non-noble voters already represents 11,000 desiatines, 457,000 rubles in value of other property and an annual fee of 8.000 rubles; per representative from the peasants account for 25,000 desiatines, other property for 25,000 rubles and payments for 6.000 rubles. In the Novgorod Gubernia. the representative from the noblemen represents (according to the zemstvo estimate) the yield of 3,000 rubles, the representative from the non-nobility - 19,000 rubles, the representative from the peasants - 43,000 rubles^*. The figures speak for themselves, notwithstanding the unsuitability of the property criterion in the given case which contrasts the noble estate principle with the bourgeois principle of property census. Figures expressing the ratio of the number of representatives to the number of represented for each group would be much more eloquent, but, unfortunately, we do not have such figures at hand.

That is why it is necessary to admit that the position taken by some (and not the worst) part of the Russian periodicals in relation to the issue of fixing the zemstvo taxation, which has become law of the current year, suffers from significant one-sidedness, which is fully explained – it is true – by the acute nature of the situation.

One cannot, of course, disagree that the accusation of zemstvos of unabashed profligacy, even of waste of money, emanating from the shameless pens of the smart fellows from Strastnoy Boulevard¹ in Moscow, is fake and is not the result of a conscientious survey of zemstvo finances with figures and facts in hands, but is the natural fruit of organic hatred for the principle of social self-government, which is the basis of the zemstvo institutions. ... “You have to take an active part” – says an old zemstvo man – “in zemstvo meetings yourself in order to understand how the persistent demands of life frustrate the most decisive aspirations for austerity and force the most stingy zemstvo members to increase the planned allocations. In the course of our fourteen years of practical activity in the zemstvo every year when we came to the meeting, we heard, first of all, speeches about the need for the strictest austerity, and at the end of the meeting there was almost always a slight increase in the financial plan for expenditure. It is so difficult to deal with the demands of real life and the logic of necessity. In fact, it is very hard, not to retreat from austerity when you see with your own eyes that the population is dying from lack of medical care, that most children are illiterate, that there is no passage on the roads, etc. " ("Russkaya Mysl", 1891, No. 9, p. 17.)

On the whole, one can only agree with all this. But when the same zemstvo man says that "the zemstvo, adhering to the principle of legal equality of all estates, is not able to make substantial reliefs for the peasants in paying zemstvo duties" (ibid., P. 18), then one can only raise one's arms helplessly: is it possible that "the principle of legal equality of all estates" is in any way hostile, for example, to the principle of a progressive income tax? In addition, we must not forget that peasant land, contrary to the "principle of legal equality of all estates," bears, in addition to the zemstvo tax, incomparably more taxes than land in private ownership. And in general, it is hardly reasonable to sacrifice the real interests of the peasant poor to an too absolutely and abstractly understood "principle of legal equality" (is it not a fig leaf?). However, we have no doubt that in the question under consideration the dominant role belongs not to the bare legal principle, and even to a somewhat "metaphysical" interpretation, but to the real interests of large landownership, which are represented in the zemstvo institutions completely out of proportion. It would indeed be an unforgivable naivety on the part of a publicist to demand that the large landowners prevailing in the zemstvo institutions adopt once and for all the selfless practice of a progressive income tax or some other tax system, which is based on the literally understood rule: From everyone who has been given more, more will be demanded. ...

In order for the zemstvo to be in favour of such a system of self-taxation (which, let us repeat, does in no way undermine the "principle of legal equality of all estates", which has a juridical but not an economic content), it is necessary that the interests of the poor and the propertyless masses are quite proportionally represented in it. ...

To the reproaches that the zemstvo has to listen to concerning excessive taxation, the defenders of the zemstvo cite considerations that can be summarized in the following words of the zemstvo figure quoted above: "zemstvo representatives, as representatives of local self-government, are, at the same time, payers of the zemstvo tax and, as a result, directly interested in the zemstvo taxes being not burdensome, since each payment order is distributed, among others, to the property belonging to them "(ibid., p. 18). These considerations, however, are only half true: after all, the trouble lies in the fact that those strata on which the zemstvo taxation (not alone, but as an addition to state, volost and rural taxes) presses especially heavily, are represented in the zemstvo only symbolically.

But what is the conclusion from this? It seems to us that after what has been said, it suggests itself: to open wide the door of the zemstvo assembly hall to the representatives of the popular masses – this is what a healthy adjustment to the current state of zemstvo self-government should consist of. Only in this case the zemstvo taxation will become self-taxation, after which reproaches to the zemstvo for extravagance and wastefulness will be tantamount to reproaches for self-selection, for malicious squandering of one's own property, that is, reproaches of that kind, which, when applied to the population of an entire state, would mean such a height of journalistic delirium to which, it seems, even the publicists of Moskovskiye Vedomosti, who are capable of many things, are incapable of rising.