V. I.

Lenin

Material for the Preparation of the Programme of the R.S.D.L.P.

An Amendment to the Agrarian Section of the
Programme [2]

Ipropose the following amendment to Clause 4 of our agrarian programme:
instead of “Establishment of peasant committees (a) for the
restitution to the village communes (by expropriation, or, when the land has changed hands, by redemption, etc. ) of the land," etc., to
state: “Establishment of peasant committees (a) for the restitution
to the village communes (by expropriation) of the land which..." etc., i.e.,to

_
scrap _ the _ italicised _ words .

Itseems to me that this amendment should be made for the following
considerations:

1.In the agrarian programme we present our “maximum,” our
“socio-revolutionary demands” (see my commentary [3] ).

Allowing land redemption, however, runs counter to the socio-revolutionary
nature of the entire demand.

2. Both the historical tradition of “redemption” (that of

1861) [4]

and its very content (cf. the well-known phrase: “redemption is
nothing but purchase”) [5] give it the specific flavour of a mawkishly well-intentioned and bourgeois
measure. Our allowing land redemption makes it not impossible for the
entire essence of our demand to be discredited (and there will be more
than enough vilifiers prepared to do this.) [1]

3. The fear that an “injustice” would be committed by taking
away the cut-off lands from people who have paid money for them is
groundless. We have in any case set two restrictive conditions for this
measure of restituting the cut-off lands: [(1)—“the lands cut off in 1861,” and <2)—
“now used as a means of keeping the peasants in bondage.”]
It is absolutely right to confiscate property serving the purposes of
feudal exploitation, and to do so without compensation. (Let the
purchaser of the cut-off lands then sue the seller—that is no affair
of ours.)

4.By allowing “redemption,” we are placing the onus of monetary payment on the peasants, who by reason of labour rent
were most deeply involved in natural economy:

the abruptness of the transition to monetary payments may ruin
the peasants in an _ especially _ rapid way , and this would run counter to the entire spirit of our
programme.

5. Even if a purchaser of cut-off lands is to be “compensated”
by way of exception , this should by no means be done at the
expense of the peasants, who have the moral and historical right to these
cut-off lands. “Compensation” can be made by giving a corresponding plot somewhere in the border regions, etc.; but that does
not concern us.

Iask everyone to vote:

For =discarding the words about redemption, deleting the words I have indicated.

Ag ainst =endorsing of the old text.

1)G. V.—

2) P. B.—

3) V. I.—

4) Berg—

5) A. N.—

6) Frey—for.

| Written April 1902 | |

---
Notes:
[1]
By allowing land redemption, we are degrading the restitution of
the cut-off lands from an extraordinary, revolutionary measure to the most
petty “reform.”
— Lenin

[2]
“An Amendment to the Agrarian Section of the Programme” was presented by Lenin for discussion by the other
members of the Iskra Editorial Board.

Toconduct a vote on this amendment, Lenin wrote at the end of the
manuscript the pseudonyms or initials of the members of the Iskra
Editorial Board: G. V..—Plekhanov; P. B.—Axelrod;
V. I.—Zasulich; Berg—pseudonym of Y. 0. Martov; A. N.—
Potresov.

[3]
Lenin calls his work entitled The Agrarian Programme of Russian Social-Democracy a commentary on the agrarian section of the Party
programme (see pp. 107-50 of this volume).

[4]
According to the “Regulation Governing Redemption by Peas ants Who
Have Emerged from Serf Dependence..." adopted on February 19, 1861,
the peasants were obliged to pay compensation to the landlords for land
allotted to them. In concluding the land redemption deal, the tsarist
government paid over to the landlords the compensation money, which was
regarded as a debt of the peasants payable over a period of 49 years. The
instalments of this debt, which the peasants paid annually, were called
land redemption payments, whose heavy and intolerable burden result ed in
mass ruination and impoverishment of the peasants. The landlords’ former
peasants alone paid the tsarist government about 2,000 million rubles at a
time when the market price of the land which had passed to the peasants
did not exceed 544 million rubles. As all the peasants did not come under
the land redemption scheme at once, but at various times until 1883, the
land redemption payments were to be completed only by 1932. However, the
peasant movement during the first Russian revolution of 1905-07 compelled
the tsarist government to abolish land redemption payments as from January
1907.

[5]
“Redemption is nothing but purchase” was said by
Volgin, one of the characters in N. G. Chernyshevsky’s Prologue ,
which expressed N. G. Chernyshevsky’s own attitude to the
“emancipation” of the peasants in 1861.