V. I.

Lenin

The Duma elections are compelling all the parties to intensify their agitation and rally their forces, so that they may return
the greatest possible number of deputies of “their own” party.

In Russia, as in all other countries, the election campaign is attended
by the most brazen self-advertisement. All the bourgeois parties, that is,
those which uphold the economic privileges of the capitalists, are
advertising themselves in the same way as individual capitalists advertise
their goods. Look at the commercial advertisements in any news paper—you
will see that the capitalists think up the most “striking”, bombastic and
fashionable names for their merchandise, which they praise in the most
unrestrained manner, stopping at no lie or invention whatever.

The general public—at any rate in the big cities and trade
centres—has long since become used to commercial advertisement and knows
its worth. Unfortunately, political advertisement misleads an incomparably
greater number of people; it is much harder to expose and its deception
much more lasting. The names of some parties, both in Europe and in Russia,
are chosen with a direct eye to advertisement, and their “programmes” are
quite often written for the sole purpose of hoodwinking the public. The
greater the degree of political liberty in a capitalist country and the
more democracy there is, i.e., the greater the power of the people and of
their representatives, the more shameless, in many cases, is the
self-advertisement of parties.

That being so, how is one to see what is what in the fight between the
various parties? Does not this fight, with its fraud and advertising,
indicate that representative institutions, parliaments, assemblies of
people’s representatives, are in general useless and even harmful, as rabid reactionaries, the
enemies of parliamentarism make out? No. In the absence of representative
institutions there is much more deception, political lying and
fraudulent trickery of all kinds, and the people have much fewer means of
exposing the deception and finding out the truth.

To see what is what in the fight between the parties, one must not take
words at their face value but must study the actual history of the parties,
must study not so much what they say about themselves as their
deeds , the way in which they go about solving various political
problems, and their behaviour in matters affecting the vital
interests of the various classes of society—landlords, capitalists,
peasants, workers, etc.

The greater the degree of political liberty in a country and the more
stable and democratic its representative institutions, the easier it is for
the mass of the people to find its bearings in the fight between the
parties and to learn politics , i.e., to expose the deception and
find out the truth.

The division of any society into different political parties is
revealed most clearly of all in times of profound crises shaking the whole
country. For at such times governments are compelled to seek support among
the various classes of society; all phrase-mongering, all that is petty and
extraneous, is brushed aside by the gravity of the struggle; the parties
strain every nerve and appeal to the masses , and the masses,
guided by their unerring instinct and enlightened by the experience of an
open struggle, follow the parties that represent the interests of a
particular class.

The epochs of such crises always determine the party alignment of the
social forces of the country concerned for many years or even decades
ahead. In Germany, for instance, such crises were the wars of 1866 and

1870 [1] ; in Russia, the events of 1905. We cannot understand the essence
of our political parties, nor gain a clear idea as to which
classes a particular party in Russia represents, unless we go back
to the events of that year.

Let us begin our brief survey of the political parties in Russia with
the parties of the extreme Right.

On the extreme right flank, we find the Union of the Russian People.

The programme of this party is set forth as follows in Russkoye Znamya , the Union’s newspaper published by A. I. Dubrovin:

“ The Union of the Russian People, which on June 3, 19O7,
was accorded the honour of being called upon from the height of the Tsar’s
throne to be its reliable bulwark, and to serve as an example of law and
order to all and in everything, proclaims that the will of the Tsar can
only be exercised:

(1) if the Tsar’s autocratic power, which is indissolubly and vitally bound
up with the Russian Orthodox Church, canonically established, manifests
itself in full measure; (5) if the Russian nationality is dominant not
only in the inner gubernias, but also in the border regions; (3) if there is a Duma, composed exclusively of Russians, as the main
assistant of the monarch in his work for building up the state; (4) if the principles of the Union of the Russian People with regard to the
Jews are fully observed; and (5) if all officials who are opposed to the Tsar’s autocratic power are
removed from government service.”

We have faithfully copied this solemn declaration of the
Rights , on the one hand, so that the reader may be directly
acquainted with the original and, on the other, because the fundamental
motives stated in it are valid for all the parties of the majority in the
Third Duma, i.e., for the nationalists and the Octobrists as well. This
will be seen from what we say further on.

The programme of the Union of the Russian People in effect repeats the
old slogan of the days of serfdom, that is, Orthodoxy, Autocracy,
Nationhood. In regard to the question on which the Union is generally set
apart from other kindred parties—namely, recognition or rejection of
“constitutional” principles in the Russian political system—it is
particularly important to note that the Union is by no means
opposed to representative institutions in general. It is evident from the
programme quoted above that the Union favours a Duma that will play the
part of “assistant

Moreover, the specific feature of the Russian Constitution—if we may
call it that—is expressed by the Dubrovinite correctly, i.e., in keeping
with the actual state of affairs. It is this stand that is taken by both
the nationalists and the Octobrists in their practical policies. The
controversy between these parties over the “Constitution” is largely a
fight over words. The Rights are not opposed to a Duma; they only stress
with particular zeal that it must be an “assistant”, without specifying its powers in any way. The nationalists
and the Octobrists, for their part, do not insist on any clearly specified
powers of the Duma, let alone on real guarantees of its powers. The
Octobrist “constitutionalists” fully agree with the “opponents of
Constitution” on the basis of the June Third Constitution.

The programme of the Black Hundreds is straightforward, clear and
outspoken on the point of persecuting non-Russians in general and the Jews
in particular. As always, they bring out more rudely, brazenly and
incitingly what the other government parties more or less “bashfully” or
diplomatically keep to themselves.

In reality, both the nationalists and the Octobrists have a hand in the
persecution of non-Russians, as is well known to anyone who is at all
familiar with the activity of the Third Duma or with such press organs as
Novoye Vremya , Svet , Golos Moskvy [2] and the like.

The question is: What is the social basis of the party of the Rights?
What class does it represent? What class does it serve?

That party’s reversion to the slogans of serfdom, its up holding of all
that is outdated, of all that is medieval in Russian life, its complete
satisfaction with the June Third Constitution—the landlords ’
Constitution—and its defence of the privileges of the nobility and
officialdom all provide a clear answer to our question. The Rights are the
party of the semi-feudal landlords, of the Council of the United

Nobility. [3] Not for nothing did that Council play such a prominent,
indeed a leading, role in the dispersal of the Second Duma, the change of
the electoral law and the coup d’état of June 3. [4]

To give an idea of the economic strength of this class in Russia, it is
sufficient to cite the following basic fact, proved by the data of the
government statistics of landownership in 1905, published by the
Ministry of the Interior.

Less than 30,000 landlords in European Russia own 70,000,000
dessiatines of land; the same amount of land is owned by
10,000,000 peasant households with the smallest allotments. This makes an
average of about 2,300 dessiatines per big landlord, and, in the case of
the poor peasants, an average of 7 dessiatines per family, per household.

It is quite natural and inevitable that the peasant cannot live on such
an “allotment” but can only die a slow death. The recurrent famines which
affect millions, such as this year’s famine, continue to dislocate peasant
farming in Russia following each crop failure. The peasants are compelled
to rent land from the landlords, paying for it by various forms of
labour service . To pay for the use of the land, the peasant works
for the landlord with his horse and his implements. This is nothing short
of corvée, except that it is not officially called serfdom. With
2,300 dessiatines of land at their disposal, most of the landlords can run
their estates only by keeping the peasants in bondage, by resorting to
labour service, that is, the corvée system. They cultivate only part
of these huge estates with the help of wage-labourers.

Further, that same class of the landed nobility supplies the state with
the overwhelming majority of all higher and middle-ranking civil
servants. The privileges of officialdom in Russia represent another side of
the privileges and agrarian power of the landed nobility. It is therefore
natural that the Council of the United Nobility and the “Right” parties
should uphold the policy of adhering to the old feudal traditions not by
accident, but because it is inevitable, and not because of the “ill will”
of individuals, but under the pressure of the interests of a
tremendously powerful class . The old ruling class, the survivals
of landlordism, who remain the ruling class as in the past, has created for
itself an appropriate party—the Union of the Russian People or the
“Rights” in the Duma and in the Council of

State. [5]

But, since there exist representative institutions, and since the
masses have already come out openly in the political arena, as
they did in our country in 1905, each party must necessarily appeal to the
people, within certain limits. Now what can the Right parties appeal to the
people about?

Of course, they cannot speak plainly in defence of the interests of the
landlords. What they do speak of is preserving the old traditions in
general, and they spare no efforts to foment distrust towards non-Russians,
particularly towards the Jews, to incite the utterly ignorant, the utterly
benighted, to pogroms, to “Yid”-baiting. They seek to conceal the
privileges of the nobility, the bureaucrats and the landlords with talk
about the “oppression” of Russians by non-Russians.

Such is the party of the “Rights”. One of its members, Purishkevich,
the most prominent spokesman of the Rights in the Third Duma, has worked a
good deal, and successfully, to show the people what the
Rights want, how they act, and whom they serve. Purishkevich is a gifted agitator.

Next to the “Rights”, who have forty-six seats in the Third Duma, are
the “ nationalists ” with ninety-one seats. There is hardly a
shade of difference between them and the Rights. In fact, these are not two
parties, but one party which has effected a division of “labour” in
persecuting non-Russians, “Cadets” (liberals), democrats, etc. One lot
acts more crudely, the other more subtly, but both are doing the
same thing. Indeed, it is to the government’s advantage to have
the “extreme” Rights—who are capable of any sort of scandal, riot, the
murder of people like Herzenstein, Yollos, Karavayev—standing somewhat
apart, as if they were “criticising” the government from the
right.... The distinction between the Rights and the nationalists cannot be
of any serious importance.

The Octobrists in the Third Duma are 131 strong, including, of
course, the “Right Octobrists”. Essentially there is nothing in the
present policy of the Octobrists to distinguish them from the Rights,
except that the Octobrist Party serves not only the landlords, but also the
big capitalists, the conservative merchants, and the bourgeoisie, which was
so terrified by the awakening of the workers, and then also of the
peasants, to independent political life, that it made a volte-face
towards defence of the old order. There are capitalists in Russia—quite a
few, indeed—who treat the workers not a bit better than the landlords
treated the serfs of old; they look on workers and clerks as their menials,
as servants. Nobody is better fitted to defend this old order than the
Right parties, the nationalists and the Octobrists. There are also
capitalists who at the

Zemstvo [6] and municipal congresses in 1904 and 1905 demanded a
“constitution”, but are quite willing to make peace on the basis of the
June Third Constitution to oppose the workers.

The Octobrist Party is the chief counter-revolutionary party of the
landlords and the capitalists. It is the leading party in the Third Duma:
the 131 Octobrists with the 137 Rights and nationalists constitute a solid
majority in the Third Duma.

The electoral law of June 3, 1907, guaranteed the landlords
and the big capitalists a majority: the landlords and electors of the first
urban curia (i.e., the big capitalist curia) have a majority in
all the gubernia assemblies electing deputies to the Duma. In
twenty-eight gubernias the land owners even by themselves have a majority
in the election assemblies. The entire policy of the June Third Government
has been carried out with the aid of the Octobrist Party, and this party
bears the responsibility for all the sins and crimes committed by the Third
Duma.

In words, in their programme, the Octobrists uphold a “constitution”,
and even liberties! In reality, this party supported all the measures taken
against the workers (the Insurance Bill, for example—recall the conduct
of the Chairman of the Duma Committee on Labour, Baron
Tiesenhausen!), against the peasants, and against any mitigation of tyranny
and lack of rights. The Octobrists are just as much a government party as
the nationalists. This situation is not in the least altered by the fact
that from time to time—particularly on the eve of elections!—the
Octobrists deliver “opposition” speeches. In all countries that have
parliaments, the bourgeois parties have long been known to indulge in this
playing at opposition —a harmless game as far as they are
concerned, because no government takes it seriously, and a game which
occasionally proves useful as a means of “soothing” the voter by a show
of opposition.

However, the greatest expert, the virtuoso, at the game of opposition
is the chief opposition party in the Third Duma—the Cadets,
Constitutional -“ Democrats ”, the party of “people’s freedom”.

The very name of this party is part of the game, for in fact it is
not at all a democratic party, and by no means a people’s
party; it is a party, not of freedom, but of half-freedom, if not of
quarter-freedom.

In fact, it is the party of the liberal-monarchist bourgeoisie, which
dreads the popular movement far more than reaction.

The democrat has faith in the people, in the movement of the masses,
and he helps this movement in every way, although he fairly often has (as
have the bourgeois democrats, the Trudoviks) a wrong notion about the
significance of this movement within the framework of the capitalist system. The
democrat sincerely strives to put an end to all medievalism.

The liberal is afraid of the movement of the masses; he tries to check
it, and deliberately defends certain institutions of medievalism—in fact, the most important of them—as a bulwark against
the masses, particularly the workers. What the liberals want is by no means
to destroy all the foundations of the power of the Purishkeviches, but to
share power with them. The democratic petty bourgeois (hence also the
peasant and the Trudovik) says: everything for the people and through the
people. He sincerely strives to uproot all the foundations of
Purishkevichism, though he does not understand the significance of the
wage-workers’ struggle against capital. The real aim of the
liberal-monarchist bourgeoisie, on the other hand, is to share power with
Purishkevich and rule with him over the workers and over
the small proprietors.

In the First and the Second Dumas, the Cadets had a majority or
occupied a leading position. They used it for a sense less and inglorious
game : when facing the Right, they played at loyalty and ability to
serve as ministers (as if to say that they could solve all the
contradictions by peaceful means, without spoiling the muzhik or offending
Purishkevich); when facing the Left, they played at democracy. The result
of this game was that in the end the Cadets got a kick from the right. And
on the left they earned the just title of betrayers of people’s freedom. In
both the First and the Second Dumas, they fought all the time not only
against the working-class democrats, but against the Trudoviks as well. We
need only recall the fact that the Cadets defeated the plan for
local land committees proposed by the Trudoviks (in the First Duma), a plan
based on the elementary requirements of democracy, on the ABC of
democracy. The Cadets thus upheld the supremacy of the landlords
and the bureaucrats over the peasants in the land committees!

In the Third Duma the Cadets have been playing at a “responsible
opposition”, an opposition in the possessive case. [7] As such, they voted time and again for the government budgets
(“democrats”!), explained to the Octobrists that there was nothing
dangerous or harmful in their plan of “compulsory” redemption payments (compulsory for the peasants)—remember
Berezovsky the First; they sent Karaulov to deliver “pious” speeches from
the rostrum, renounced the movement of the masses, appealed to the “upper
strata”, and silenced the lower strata (the Cadets’ fight
against the workers’ deputies over workers’ insurance), and so on
and so forth.

The Cadets are the party of counter-revolutionary liberalism. By their
claim to the role of a “responsible opposition”, i.e., a recognised,
lawful opposition permitted to compete with the Octobrists, an
opposition not to, but of the June Third regime—the Cadets have committed
suicide as “democrats”. The shameless Vekhi propaganda of the
Cadet ideologists—Struve, Izgoyev and Co., smothered with kisses by
Rozanov and Anthony of Volhynia—and the role of a “responsible
opposition” in the Third Duma, are two sides of the same medal. The
liberal-monarchist bourgeoisie, tolerated by the Purishkeviches, wants to
seat itself by the side of Purishkevich.

The bloc of the Cadets and the “Progressists” at the present time,
for the elections to the Fourth Duma, has provided additional proof of the
profoundly counter-revolutionary nature of the Cadets. The Progressists do
not at all claim to be democrats, they do not say a word about fighting the
entire June Third regime, and are far from so much as dreaming of
“universal suffrage”. They are moderate liberals who do not make a secret
of their kinship with the Octobrists. The alliance of the Cadets and the
Progressists should open the eyes of even the blindest “yes-men of the
Cadets” to the true nature of that party.

The democratic bourgeoisie of Russia is represented by the
Narodniks of all shades, from the most Left Socialist-Revolutionaries to
the Popular Socialists and Trudoviks. They all readily mouth “socialist”
phrases, but it would be impermissible for a class-conscious worker to be
deceived as to the real meaning of those phrases. Actually there is not a grain of socialism in the “right to land”, “equalised division”
of the land, or “socialisation of the land”. This should be clear to
anyone who knows that the abolition of private landownership, and a new,
even the “fairest” possible, division of the land, far from affecting
commodity production and the power of the market, of money and capital, leads to their expansion.

However, the phrases about “the labour principle” and “Narodnik
socialism” express the democrat’s deep faith in the possibility and
indispensability of destroying all medievalism in landownership
and, at the same time, in the political system as well (just as they
express his sincere desire to achieve this). Whereas the liberals (the
Cadets) seek to share political power and political privileges with the
Purishkeviches, the Narodniks are democrats precisely because they are
striving, and are bound to strive at present, to abolish all the
privileges of landed property and all privileges in politics.

The position of the great bulk of the Russian peasants is such that
they cannot even dream, of any compromise with the Purishkeviches
(something quite possible, attainable and near and dear to the
liberal). That is why the democracy of the petty bourgeoisie will have
roots among the masses in Russia for a fairly long time to come, whereas
Stolypin’s agrarian reform, [8] an expression of the Purishkeviches’ bourgeois policy against
the muzhik, has so far produced nothing durable but—the starvation of
thirty million peasants!

The millions of starving small proprietors cannot help striving for a
different kind of agrarian reform, a democratic one, which cannot
break out of the bounds of capitalism or abolish wage slavery, but
can sweep medievalism from the face of the Russian land.

The Trudoviks are an extremely weak group in the Third Duma, but they
represent the masses . The vacillation of the Trudoviks between the
Cadets and the worker democrats is an inevitable result of the class
position of the small proprietors, and the fact that it is particularly
difficult to rally, organise and enlighten them accounts for the extremely
indeterminate and amorphous character of the Trudoviks as a party. That is
why the Trudoviks, with the aid of the stupid “otzovism” of the Left
Narodniks, present the sad picture of a liquidated party.

The difference between the Trudoviks and our own near Marxist
liquidators is that the former are liquidators out of weakness, while the
latter are liquidators out of malice.

The task of the working-class democracy is to help the weak petty-bourgeois
democrats, wrest them from the liberals, and rally the democratic camp
against the counter-revolutionary Cadets and not merely against the Rights.

Concerning the working-class democracy, which had its group in the
Third Duma, we can say but little here.

Everywhere in Europe, the parties of the working class took shape by
casting off the influence of general democratic ideology and learning to
distinguish between the struggle of the wage-workers against capital and
the struggle against feudalism, which they did, incidentally, in order to
strength en the latter struggle, to rid it of all wavering and timidity. In
Russia, the working-class democracy completely dissociated itself both from
liberalism and from bourgeois democracy (Trudovikism), to the great
advantage of the democratic cause in general.

The liquidationist trend among the working-class democrats ( Nasha Zarya and Zhivoye Dyelo ) shares the weakness of Trudoviks,
glorifies amorphousness, longs for the status of a “tolerated”
opposition, rejects the hegemony of the workers, confines itself to
words about an “open” organisation (while inveighing against the
organisation that is not open), and advocates a liberal labour policy. The
connection between this trend and the disintegration and decadence of the
period of counter-revolution is evident, and its falling-away from the
working-class democracy is becoming obvious.

The class-conscious workers, who are not liquidating any thing and are
rallying their ranks in opposition to liberal influences, organising as a
class and developing all forms of trade union and other unity, are coming
forward both as representatives of wage-labour against capital and
as representatives of consistent democracy against the entire old regime in
Russia and against any concessions to it.

By way of illustration, we give below the figures relating to the
strength of the various parties in the Third Duma, which we borrow from the
official Duma Handbook for 1912.

| Landlords |
| --- |
| Rights . . . | 46 |
| Nationalists . . . | 74 |
| Independent nationalists . . . | 17 |
| Right Octobrists . . . | 11 |
| Octobrists . . . | 120 |
| Total government parties . . . | 268 |
| The Bourgeoisie |
| Progressists . . . | 36 |
| Cadets . . . | 52 |
| Polish Kolo [9] . . . | 11 |
| Polish-Lithuanian-Byelorussian group . . . | 7 |
| Moslem group . . . | 9 |
| Total liberals . . . | 115 |
| Bourgeois Democrats |
| Trudovik group . . . | 14 |
| Working-Class Democrats |
| Social-Democrats . . . | 13 |
| Total democrats . . . | 27 |
| [unaffiliated] |
| Unaffiliated . . . | 27 |
| Grand total . . . | 437 |

Thus there have been two possible majorities in the Third Duma:

(1) the Rights and the Octobrists=268 out of 437; (2) the Octobrists and the liberals=120+115=235 out of 437. Both majorities
are counter-revolutionary.

---
Notes:
[1]
This refers to the unification of Germany which the German ruling
classes undertook “from above” by means of the policy of “blood and
iron”, and through diplomatic intrigue and wars. The Prusso-Austrian war
of 1866 resulted in the formation of the North-German Union, and the
Franco-Prussian war of 1870–71 led to the formation of the German Reich.

[2]
Svet ( Light )—a bourgeois nationalist daily published in St. Petersburg from 1882 to 1917.

Golos Moskvy ( Voice of Moscow )—a daily newspaper published by the Octobrist Party, a counter-revolutionary party of the big
industrial bourgeoisie and big landlords. It was published in Moscow from
1906 to 1915.

[3]
Council of the United Nobility —a counter-revolutionary
organisation of the feudal landlords founded in May 1906 at the first
congress of the delegates of the gubernia societies of the nobility. It
functioned till October 1917. Its main objective was to defend the
autocratic system, the big landed estates and the privileges of the
nobility. The Council was headed by Count A. A. Bobrinsky. Prince
N. F. Kasatkin-Rostovsky, Count D. A. Olsufyev, V. M. Purishkevich and
others. Lenin called it the “council of united serf-owners”.

The Council virtually became a semi-governmental agency which dictated
to the government legislation designed to uphold the interests of the
feudal landlords. A considerable number of its members were also members of
the Council of State and the leading centres of Black-Hundred
organisations.

[4]
This refers to the tsar’s Manifesto of June 3 (16), 1907, dissolving
the Second Duma and amending the electoral law. The new law greatly
increased the proportion of members of the Duma representing the landlords
and the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie, while reducing several times
over the proportion of peasant and workers’ deputies, already small. It was
a gross violation of the Manifesto of October 17 (30), 1905, and the
Fundamental Law of 1906, under which all legislation introduced by the
government was subject to approval by the Duma.

The new Regulations entitled the landowner curia to elect one elector
for every 230 persons, the first urban curia one for every 1,000 and the
second urban curia for 15,000, the peasant curia for every 60,000 and the
worker curia for 125,000. The landlords and the bourgeoisie elected 65
per cent of the electors, the peasants 22 per cent (instead of the former
42) and the workers 2 per cent (as against 4 per cent in the past). The law
disfranchised the indigenous population of Asian Russia and the Turkic
peoples of the Astrakhan and Stavropol gubernias, and cut by half the
proportion of representatives of the population of Poland and the
Caucasus. All those who did not speak Russian were disfranchised throughout
Russia. The Third Duma elected under this law was convened on November 1 (14), 1907. It was Black-Hundred and Octobrist in
composition.

The June Third coup d’état ushered in the period of Stolypin
reaction.

[5]
The Council of State —one of the supreme organs of state
government in pre-revolutionary Russia, established in 1810—according to
a draft submitted by M. M. Speransky—as an advisory legislative body
whose members were appointed by the tsar. Under the law of February 20
(March 5), 1906, it was reorganised and authorised to approve or reject
Bills after they had been discussed in the Duma. Nevertheless, the tsar
retained the right to amend fundamental legislation and issue certain laws
of special importance.

From 1906, one half of the Council members were elected representatives
of the nobility, clergy and big bourgeoisie and the other half were
dignitaries appointed by the tsar. Hence it was an extremely reactionary
assembly which rejected even moderate Bills passed by the Duma.

[6]
Zemstvos —so-called local self-government bodies dominated by
the nobility. They were set up in the central gubernias of tsarist Russia
in 1864. Their jurisdiction was restricted to purely local economic and
welfare matters—hospital and road building, statistics, insurance,
etc. They functioned under the control of the provincial governors and the
Minister of the Interior, who could suspend decisions that did not suit the
government.

[7]
Lenin is referring to the speech which P. N. Milyukov made at the
luncheon given by the Lord Mayor of the City of London in June 1909, during
the visit of a delegation from the Third Duma and the Council of
State. Milyukov reaffirmed the Cadets’ allegiance to the tsarist autocracy
and stressed that as long as Russia had a Duma “the Russian opposition
would remain an opposition of, not to, His Majesty”.

[8]
Lenin is referring to the decree of November 9 (22), 1906, on
“Additions to Certain Regulations of the Existing Law on Peasant Land
Ownership and Land Tenure”, drafted by Stolypin and named the law of
June 14, 1910, upon its enactment by the Duma and the Council of State. On
November 15 (28), 1906, another decree was issued—“On the Granting of
Loans by the Peasant Land Bank on the Security of Allotment Lands”. The
two decrees granted the peasants the right to take over their allotments as
personal property and the right to withdraw from the village commune and
settle on otrubs or khutors . Khutor and otrub peasants could obtain subsidies through the Peasant Bank to
buy land. The Stolypin agrarian legislation aimed at making the kulaks the
new social mainstay of the autocracy in the countryside while preserving
the landed estates and forcibly destroying the village communes.

The Stolypin agrarian policy speeded up the capitalist evolution of
agriculture in the extremely painful “Prussian” way, with the feudal
landlords retaining their power, property and privileges.

It intensified the forcible expropriation of the bulk of the peasantry and
accelerated the development of the peasant bourgeoisie, whom it enabled to
buy up the allotments of the peasant poor at a nominal price.

Lenin described the Stolypin agrarian legislation of 1906 (and the law
enacted on June 14 [27], 1910) as the second step, after the 1861 Reform,
towards transforming the feudal autocracy into a bourgeois monarchy.

Although the government vigorously advocated the withdrawal of peasants
from the village communes, only some 2,500,000 peas ant households withdrew
from them in European Russia over nine years (1907–15). The right to
secede from the village commune was used above all by the rural
bourgeoisie, which was thus enabled to strengthen its farms. Some of the
poor peasants who wanted to sell their allotments and end their connection
with the countryside seceded too. The small peasants, crushed by want,
remained poverty-stricken and backward.

The Stolypin agrarian policy did not remove the main contradiction
between the peasantry as a whole and the landlord class. Moreover, it
brought further ruin to the mass of the peasantry and aggravated the class
antagonisms between the kulaks and the peasant poor.

a

[9]
The Polish Kolo (Circle) was an association of Polish deputies
to the Duma. In the First and Second Dumas, its leading core was composed
of National-Democrats, members of the reactionary, nationalist party of the
Polish landlords and bourgeoisie. The Kolo backed the Octobrists
on all major tactical issues.