The government of Russia in the 1920s was not composed of peasants; it did not even consider peasants as its allies. It largely considered them to be class enemies of the proletariat and counter-revolutionary. During the 1920s, it began its efforts to collectivize them. The peasants resisted these efforts initially. Ultimately, the effort succeeded only when the Russian government expropriated the peasants' property, and it deported, it imprisoned, and/or killed millions of them. That occurred mostly in the early 1930s, but Russian rural policy in the 1920s was a persistent struggle against the resistance of the peasants to the government's policies aimed toward collectivization. Saying that Russia was not ruled by peasants is not a "no true communism" argument, it is an accurate reflection of the continued efforts of the Russian government throughout that period and beyond to coerce the behavior of the peasantry and to break down their existing social structures and communities.
> "Peasants" are not land-owning farmers. Peasants are menial labor on farms.
Even in feudal economies, peasants had individual or collective property interests in land (serfs and slaves might not, but those are different than peasants, and serfdom had been abolished in Russia generations before the Revolution.) Russian peasants at the time of the Revolution generally were individual landholders because of the recent breakup of collective ownership (other places similar reforms were implemented eventually led to most former peasants ending up as wage laborers as large capital interests bought up agrarian land, but that hadn't had time to happen yet in Russia, and the de-collectivization was still popular among peasants, which is probably a big factor in why peasants in Russia were seen as class enemies of the proletariat by the Bolsheviks; they were, if only tenuously and transitionally, essentially situated like members of the petit bourgeoisie.)
> and serfdom had been abolished in Russia generations before the Revolution.) Russian peasants at the time of the Revolution generally were individual landholders because of the recent breakup of collective ownership
While true it was too little and too late, the conditions of russian peasants at that time were still very serf-like. That and WWI defeat sparked the russian revolution, along with certain interest in the West to destabilize Russia.
