V. I.

Lenin

On June 8, 1901, a law was adopted governing the grants of state lands
in Siberia to private persons. How this new law will be applied, the
future will show; but its character is so instructive, it so strikingly
demonstrates the undisguised nature and the real strivings of the
tsarist government, that it should be analysed thoroughly and made known
as widely as possible among the working class and the peasantry.

Ourgovernment has long been granting doles to the noble, aristocratic
landlords. It established for them the Nobles’ Bank, it granted them all
sorts of privileges in obtaining loans and relief in the payment of
arrears, it helped them to arrange a strike of the millionaire
sugar-refiners in order to raise prices and increase their profits; it
took care to provide the ruined sons of the aristocracy with soft jobs
as rural superintendents, and it is now arranging for the government
purchase of vodka on very favourable terms for the noble
distillers. However, in making grants of state lands, it not only makes
gifts to the richest and most aristocratic exploiters, but creates a
new class of exploiters and dooms millions of peasants and
workers to permanent bondage to new landlords.

Letus examine the principal features of the new law. It must be
observed, first of all, that before its introduction in the Council of
State by the Minister of Agriculture and State Property, the law was
discussed at a special conference on the affairs of the nobility . It is generally known that in Russia today it is not the
workers and peasants, but the noble landlords who suffer most from
poverty, and so this “special conference” hastened to devise
measures by which their poverty might be relieved. State lands in Siberia will be sold and
leased to “private persons” for the purpose of “private
enterprise”; but foreigners and non-Russian subjects of the tsar
(the Jews included among the latter) are prohibited for ever from
acquiring these lands in any way. The lands may be leased (and we shall
see that this is the most advantageous transaction for the future
landlords) only to nobles, “who”, as the law states, “owing to their economic reliability, are the most desirable
landowners to have in Siberia from. the standpoint of the
government”. Thus, the standpoint of the government is that the
labouring population must be enslaved to the big landed aristocracy. How
big can be seen from the fact that salable allotments may not exceed
three thousand dessiatines , while no limit at all is placed on
the amount of land leased, and the term of the leases may be for a period
up to ninety-nine years! According to the government’s calculations, a poor landlord needs two hundred times as much
land as a peasant, who is given fifteen dessiatines of land in Siberia for
himself and his family.

Theeasy terms and the exceptions to the rule which the law provides for
the landlords are truly astounding. The lessee pays nothing for the first
five years. If he purchases the land he has leased (which right
the new law gives him), payment is spread over a period of thirty-seven
years. With special permission, an area of land exceeding 3,000
dessiatines may be set aside for sale, land may be sold at agreed prices
arid not by auction, while arrears may be postponed for one or even three
years. It must not be forgotten that generally only the higher dignitaries
and persons with court connections, etc., will take advantage of the new
law—and such people will obtain these easy terms and the
exemptions quite casually, in the course of a drawing-room conversation
with a governor or a minister.

Butthere’s the rub! Of what use are these bits of land, three thousand
dessiatines in area, to the landowning generals if there is no
“muzhik” forced to work for these generals? However rapidly poverty
is increasing among the people in Siberia, the local peasant is nevertheless
much more in dependent than the “Russian” peasant and he has not
been trained to work under the bludgeon. The new law is intended to train him. “The lands appointed for private enterprises
shall, as far as possible, be divided into lots alternating with areas held by the peasant allotment holders”, says Article 4
of the new law. The tsarist government displays its solicitude for the
poor peasants and tries to provide “means of livelihood” for
them. Ten years ago, the same Mr. Yermolov who now, as Minister of
Agriculture and State Property, has introduced into the Council of State
the new Siberian land law providing for the disposal of state lands to
private persons, wrote a book (anonymously) entitled The Crop Failure and the Distress of the People. In that work he openly
declared that there was no reason for permitting peasants who could
obtain “a livelihood” from their local landlords to migrate
to Siberia. Russian statesmen do not hesitate to express purely feudal
views; peasants were created to work for the landlords, and peasants,
therefore, must not be “permitted” to migrate to a place of
their choice, if thereby the landlords will be deprived of cheap
labour. And when, despite all the difficulties, the red tape, and even
the downright prohibition, the peasants still continued to migrate to
Siberia in hundreds of thousands, the tsarist government, acting like
the steward of an old-time manorial lord, hastened after them to work
them to exhaustion in their new habitations. If, however,
“alternating” with the puny peasant allotments [1] and peasant lands (the best of which are already occupied), there will be
lots of three thousand dessiatines belonging to the noble landlords, then
all temptation to migrate to Siberia will disappear very soon. The more
cramped the conditions of the surrounding peasants become, the more the
new landlords’ land will increase in value; the peasants will be obliged
to hire themselves out cheaply, or lease land from the landlords at
exorbitant rates—just as in “Russia”. The new law sets out precisely to create as quickly as possible a new paradise for the
landlords and a new hell for the peasants; there is a special clause on
the leasing of land for a single season. While special permission
is required to sublease state lands, it is permitted quite freely for one season. All that the landlord need trouble about is to
engage a steward, who will sublease land by the dessiatine to the peasants
living on the allotments “alternating” with the landlord’s
land, and send his master the net profit.

Probablymany nobles will not care to carry on even such an
“enterprise”. In that case, they can make a nice little pile
at one stroke by reselling the state land to real farmers. It is no
accident that the new law has been timed with the construction of
a railroad in Siberia, when banishment to Siberia has been abolished, and
when migration to Siberia has increased to an enormous extent; all this
will inevitably lead (and is already leading) to a rise in land
values. Hence, the granting of state lands to private persons at the
present time is nothing more nor less than plunder of the Treasury by the
nobles. The state lands are rising in value, but they are being leased or
sold on highly advantageous terms to generals and people of that stripe,
who will benefit by the rising prices. In Ufa Gubernia, for instance, in
one uyezd alone, the nobles and officials made the following transaction
in land sold to them (on the basis of a similar law): they paid the
government 60,000 rubles for the land and within two years sold it for
580,000 rubles, obtaining for the mere resale more than half a million rubles! From this instance we can imagine the millions of rubles that
will pass into the pockets of the poverty-stricken landlords thanks to the
land grants throughout Siberia.

Withall sorts of lofty arguments the government and its adherents seek to
cover up this naked robbery. They talk about the development of culture in
Siberia, and of the enormous importance of model farms. As a matter of
fact, the large estates, which place the neighbouring peas ants in a
hopeless position, can at the present time serve only to develop the most
uncultured methods of exploitation. Model farms are not established by
robbing the Treasury, and the grant of lands will lead simply to land
speculation among the nobles and officials, or to farming methods in which
bondage and usury will flourish. The noble aristocrats, in alliance with
the government, have prohibited Jews and other non-Russians (whom they try
to present to the ignorant people as particularly outrageous exploiters)
from acquiring state lands in Siberia, in order that they may themselves engage in the worst type of exploitation
without hindrance.

Thereis talk also of the political significance of having the
social-estate of landed nobility in Siberia; among the intelligentsia, it
is said, there is a very large number of former exiles, of unreliable
people there, who need to be counterbalanced by the establishment of a
reliable support of the state, a reliable “local” element. This talk contains a greater and profounder truth than

Grazhdanin [2] and Moskovskiye Vedomosti imagine. The police state is arousing so much hostility against itself
among the masses that it finds it necessary artificially to create groups
that can serve as pillars of the fatherland. It is essential for the
government to create a class of big exploiters, who would be under
obligation to it for everything and dependent upon its grace, who would
make enormous profits by the most despicable methods (speculation and
kulak exploitation), and, consequently, could always be relied upon to
support every tyranny and oppression. The Asiatic government must find
support in Asiatic large landownership, in a feudal system of
“granting lands”. And if it is not possible at present to
grant “populated estates”, it is possible at all events to
grant estates alternating with the lands of peasants who are
becoming more and more destitute. If it is not convenient simply to grant
thousands of dessiatines of land gratis to the Court lickspittles, it is
possible to cover up this wholesale bestowal of lands by their sale or
“leasing” (for 99 years) that is attended by thousands of privileges. When we compare this land policy with that of
modern progressive countries like America, for example, can we call it
anything else but feudal? In America, no one would dare talk
about permitting or not permitting migration; for in that country, every
citizen has the right to go where he pleases. In that country every one
who desires to engage in farming has the right by law to occupy
vacant land in the outlying parts of the country. In America, they are not
creating a class of Asiatic satraps, but a class of energetic farmers who
have developed the productive forces of the country. Thanks to the
abundant free land there, the working class in America enjoys the highest
standard of living in the world.

Andwhat a period our government has chosen for passing this serf-owners’
law! It is a period of the most acute industrial crisis, when tens and
hundreds of thousands are unemployed, when millions of peasants are again
suffering from famine. The government has exerted all its efforts to
prevent the disaster from being given “publicity”. That is why
it has sent the unemployed workers back to their village homes; that is
why it has transferred food distribution from the Zemstvos to the police
officials; that is why it has prohibited private persons from organising
food-kitchens for the famine-stricken; and that is why it has gagged the
press. But when the famine “publicity”, so unpleasant to the
ears of the well-fed, died down, Our Father the Tsar set to work. to
assist the poverty-stricken landlords and poor unfortunate courtier
generals. We repeat, our task at the present time is simply to bring the
contents of this new law to the knowledge of all. As they become
acquainted with it, the most undeveloped sections of the workers, and the
most backward and downtrodden peasants, will understand whom the present
government serves and what kind of government the people must have.

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Notes:
[1]
By the terms of the 1861 Reform, peasant allotments, unlike
peasant lands, could not be sold.— Tr .

[2]
Grazhdanin ( The Citizen )—a reactionary newspaper published in St. Petersburg from 1872 to 1914. From the 1880s on, it
spoke for the extreme monarchists. The newspaper existed mainly on subsidies
from the tsarist government.