depends entirely on the future development of industry and trade in Russia.
For the present they are nowhere. Unable to find a new basis for their
activity in place of class interest, they lack unity of purpose and are
deserted by their own former supporters among their employees. Trade and
industry are disorganized and the party may never be resurrected.

The Constitutional Democrats are in this respect better off. They find
their support chiefly among more or less educated people of various
pursuits: lawyers, bankers, brokers, journalists, teachers, artists,
scientists, etc. Their program embraces the interests of all classes and
demands political, judicial, economic, industrial and agrarian legislation
of a very radical and extensive kind. Their horizon of vision includes the
sufferings and aspirations of the often incongruous elements of the vast
whole, but their ideology is still based on the long outworn idealistic
capitalism and for this reason alone does not and cannot appeal to
not-owning classes. Their agrarian program is in this respect the most
striking example. It is worked out in great detail and is aimed at a
betterment of the condition of peasants without deep injury to the present
landowners. It recognizes the right of the peasant to more land, it
provides for future state ownership of land to prevent it from falling into
wrong hands, but does not condemn the principle of landownership, nor the
injustice of present ownership, and for that reason elaborates a method of
compensation for compulsorily alienated land through universal taxation.

To avoid excessive burden to the impoverished peasant the compensation is
to be in the shape of bonds representing the average value of the land in
each particular case, only the interest on these bonds to be paid yearly
from universal taxes--a topsy-turvy mortgage system, as it were, in which
the state becomes the proprietor and mortgagor of the land, while its
present owners are turned into forced mortgagees. Under this system the