ABSTRACT

Money was not the only "capitalist institution" which was to be gradually abolished in the Soviet State. The decision to nationalize all estates, farms and all land in general was contained in the very first "Manifesto" of the Soviet power. The Soviet Government is despatching special emissaries to all parts of Latvia with the task of supporting and strengthening the power of the local Workers' and Peasants' Soviets. The emissary is the intermediary between the local Soviet and the central Soviet Government. Most of the Baltic land-owners and larger Lettish farmers had already fled before the Red invasion. The smaller farmers who had remained behind, however, felt no particular sympathy for their new masters. The Soviet emissaries, indeed, regarded those peasants who possessed two or three cows and employed one or two farm servants as "exploiters", and treated them accordingly. They only courted the favours of the "village poor", and "landless".