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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Russia in 1919 by Arthur Ransome: and in the reasons he gave for its comparative failure.
The tax had a fiscal purpose, partly to cover deficit,
partly by drawing in paper money to raise the value of the
rouble. It had also a political purpose. It was intended to
affect the propertied classes only, and thus to weaken the
Kulaks (hard-fists, rich peasants) in the villages and to teach the
poorer peasants the meaning of the revolution.
Unfortunately some Soviets, where the minority of the
Kulaks had retained the unfair domination given it by its
economic strength, had distributed the tax-paying equally
over the whole population, thus very naturally raising the
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