Stolypin’s objective was to do away with the peasant communes, which were essentially too backward and liable to stir unrest, and to encourage the peasantry to set up as independent farmers, loyal to the regime. In November 1906, Stolypin abolished the redemption dues that had so hindered the Russian peasant since the Emancipation Edict of 1861. It was, to use Stolypin’s phrase, a ‘wager on the strong and sober’; an attempt to end political unrest among the peasants. But agrarian reform went hand-in-hand with repression – many leading revolutionaries were executed on the orders of Stolypin,
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