Date: 1905-05-03
Source: ru:PSS/v47

The draft below largely coincides with the text of the resolution on the peasant movement adopted by the Congress. (Congress Minutes, 44th Session, May 3, pp. 270–274.) The amendments introduced are indicated in the footnotes. The preliminary material for formulating this draft was provided by paragraph 42 of the document on p. 499.
9.

* DRAFT RESOLUTION ON THE RELATIONSHIP TO THE PEASANT MOVEMENT.
[May 3, 1905]
Taking into consideration:
1) that the burgeoning peasant movement is at present spontaneous and politically unconscious, yet inevitably turns—*) against the existing political order and the privileged classes; 2)
3) that it is the task of social democracy to support every revolutionary movement directed against the existing social and political order;
4) that, on the basis of the foregoing, social democrats must strive to identify the revolutionary‑democratic features (characteristics) of the peasant movement, to develop these features, and to carry them through to their ultimate conclusion; 8)
5) that social democracy, as the party of the proletariat,
must, in all cases and under all circumstances, unswervingly seek the independent organization of the rural proletariat and the clear elucidation of the antagonistic, hostile relationship between its own interests and those of the bourgeois peasantry—7)
III
The Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party [resolves:] to entrust all party organizations with the following tasks:
a)
to propagate among the broadest layers of the proletariat that the social‑democratic workers’ party—8)
sets itself the task of providing the most energetic support to the contemporary peasant movement in all its revolutionary manifestations, without in any way halting such revolutionary measures—9) up to and including the confiscation of landed estates; 10)
b) as a practical slogan for agitation among the peasantry—and as a means of fostering the highest degree of conscious self‑awareness—to advance the plan for the immediate formation of revolutionary peasant committees, with the aim of carrying out all revolutionary‑democratic transformations in the interests of the peasantry and of liberating it—13) from police‑official and landlord oppression; c) to recommend that peasants refuse to participate in military service, fully abstain from paying taxes, and refuse to recognize the authorities—in order to force the disorganization of the autocratic government and to sustain the revolutionary pressure exerted upon it—14); d) within the peasant committees—13)—the party
strives for the independent organization of the rural proletariat and, where possible, for closer rapprochement between it and the urban proletariat, so as to unite them within a single social‑democratic workers’ party—16).
A comparison of the draft with the resolution adopted by the Congress reveals the following:
In Lenin’s draft:
*) however
2) political
8) and the privileged classes
4) the task
5) 3) that social democrats must, on the basis of the foregoing, strive to identify the revolutionary‑democratic features
(peculiarities)
of the peasant movement, to develop these features, and to carry them through to their final conclusion; 6 7
6) the antagonistic opposition
7) and the interests
s) among the broadest layers of the proletariat, that the social‑democratic workers’ party
In the adopted resolution:
nevertheless, this word is absent—and in opposition to all remaining vestiges of serfdom in general
the task
3) that, as a result, social democracy must strive to purify the revolutionary‑democratic content of the peasant movement from all reactionary impurities, while cultivating the peasants’ revolutionary self‑consciousness and bringing their democratic demands to their ultimate fulfillment; the irreconcilable antagonism between the interests of the broad masses of the people—that social
democracy