V. I.

Lenin

Ithas long been known that the reactionaries are bold and that the liberals are
cowards.

Newconfirmation of this ancient truth is provided by the Cadets’ draft of the
State Duma’s appeal to the people on the question of the land. Unfortunately,
the Trudoviks’ draft is no better than that of the Cadets. This time the
Trudoviks are quite helplessly trailing behind the liberal bourgeoisie. But
there are the Social-Democrats in the Duma; will they not come to the rescue?

Recallhow this question of the State Duma appealing to the people arose. In its
reply to the address from the throne the State Duma expressed itself in favour
of the compulsory alienation of the private estates for the benefit of the
peasantry. The Goremykin Cabinet concisely, clearly and with magnificent firmness
and determination answered: “ Impermissible .”

Butthe Cabinet did not confine itself to this gruff, police-official
refusal. No, the Cabinet Ministers have learned something from the
revolution. The Cabinet Ministers do not intend to confine their duties to
making formal replies to formal questions of the Duma. The reactionaries are not
formalists, they are practical men. They know that the real power is not the
Duma, but the people. They want to carry their propaganda to the people . Without wasting precious time, they forthwith drew up an appeal to the people . It was this government communication (of June 20) that
suggested the idea of the Duma appealing to the people. The government showed
the way, the Duma trailed behind the government, as it was incapable of being
the first to take a course worthy of a genuine representative assembly of the
people.

Howwas the government’s communication framed? Like a real fighting manifesto of
the reactionary monarchist party. Oh, the reactionaries are not bashful in the
least! They know how to write in militant terms. In their
“communication” they plainly speak in the name of the government . Indeed,
why should they stand on ceremony? The liberal professors claim that we are
living under a constitutional system and that the Duma is also a part of the
government. Let the professors chatter! Let them amuse the people with their
constitutional antics! We reactionaries are practical men. We know that, in fact , we are the government. We say so plainly. As for the quibbles and
formalism of these liberal pedants, we don’t care a fig for them. We say
plainly and openly: peasants, you don’t know what is good for you. Compulsory
alienation is no good to you; and we, the government, will not allow
it. All the peasant talk about the land is lies and deception. It is the
government that takes most care of the peasants. Even now it is ready to offer
them sops. But the peasants have got to understand that they can not expect
improvements to come from “sedition and violence”; they can be
obtained only by “peaceful labour” (they should have added: for the
landlords) and as a result of the constant care our autocratic government takes
of the peas ants.

Suchwas the gist of the government’s communication. It is an actual declaration
of war on the revolution. It is an actual manifesto of the reactionary autocracy
saying to the people: We shall tolerate no nonsense! We shall crush you!

Andnow the Cadets, and the Trudoviks who this time are in complete captivity to
them, have set about answering the government’s challenge. The draft replies of
the Cadets and the Trudoviks have been published today. What a miser able, truly
pitiful impression these two drafts create!

Thereactionary camarilla does not hesitate to break the law and to declare that
what is formally only a small part of the government is the real and
entire government. The Cadets and Trudoviks like Shchedrin’s
sapient gudgeons, [1] take shelter in the reeds of the law. They are hitting us with
lawlessness, say these snivelling “people’s”, if you please, representatives, but we are defending ourselves with the law!
The Duma, acting in accordance with the law, expresses itself in favour of compulsory alienation. According to the law
“no proposal of the government can come into force” without
the consent of the Duma. We, in accordance with the law, have appointed a
committee, a big one, of 99 members [2] ....

This committee is drafting “a carefully considered and properly framed
law”.... Let the people “peace fully and quietly await the
conclusion of the work of promulgating this law” (the Trudoviks
deleted this utterly, indecently abject concluding sentence! Their
consciences pricked them. But they inserted instead a statement about
organising “local land institutions”, treacherously remaining silent about the fact that the Duma, in other words, its
Cadet majority, avowedly wants these institutions to be landlord and bureaucratic organisations).

Forshame, gentlemen, representatives of the people! It is disgraceful for you
to pretend that you do not under stand what every Russian muzhik even in the
remotest village now understands, namely, that in Russia today there is a wide
gulf between laws on paper and the facts of life; that it is impossible
for the transfer of all the land to the peasants and complete freedom for all
the people to be achieved by the peaceful means of allegedly-constitutional and
strictly legal efforts. If you lack the courage to write as firmly as the
camarilla, and to utter your revolutionary truth as candidly, in answer to its
reactionary truth , you should not have undertaken to reply to the
Cabinet. The laws governing the Duma do not provide for an appeal to the
people. That being so, oh wise men of the law, keep to your
“interpellations” and do not meddle in a field where you have
neither the courage, nor the straightforwardness, nor the ability to compete
with the reactionaries, who are practical men and know how to fight!

Andif you do draw up an appeal to the people you must write the truth, the
whole truth, the bitter and unvarnished truth. You must say to the people:

Peasants! The Cabinet has issued its appeal to you. The Cabinet Ministers do not
want to give you either land or freedom. The Cabinet Ministers brazenly speak in
the name of the whole government; they speak against the Duma, although on paper
the Duma is supposed to be part of the government.

Peasants! The Cabinet Ministers are in actual fact the autocratic government of
Russia. They don’t care a fig for your people’s representatives in the Duma;
they jeer at them and delay everything by their police-lawyer quibbling. They
mock at the demands of the people and, as if nothing had happened, continue
their policy of murder, violence, plunder and pogroms.

Peasants! You must know that the Duma is powerless to give you land and
freedom. The Duma is tied hand and foot by the laws of the police
government. You must secure that the representatives of the people have full
power, all the power of the state, in their hands. Do you want land and freedom?
If you do, then secure the convocation of a national constituent assembly,
secure the complete abolition of the old regime all over the country, secure
complete freedom of elections!

Peasants! Know that you will never be free unless you free yourselves. The
workers understood this, and by their struggles compelled the government to
yield the concessions of October 17. And you, too, must understand
it. Only when you do so will you be a revolutionary people, that is, a people
that knows what it must fight for, a people that knows how to fight, a people
that knows how to vanquish its oppressors. Utilise your deputies in the Duma,
those who represent you in the Duma; unite more closely and solidly all over
Russia and prepare for a great struggle. Without a fight you will get neither
land nor freedom. Without a fight you will have ruinous redemption payments
forcibly foisted upon you; you will have foisted upon you land committees
consisting of landlords and bureaucrats who will deceive and rob you as they
did in 1861. [3]

Peasants!We are doing all we can for you in the Duma. But you must complete the
job yourselves if you really want conditions in Russia to be different from what
they are now, even though there is a Duma.

*     * *
Butit would be ridiculous to propose such an appeal in the Duma.

Butwould it? Is it not more ridiculous to write “appeals to the
people” in the stilted language of the hidebound Russian lawyers that the Cadets and (to their shame be it said) the Trudoviks use?
Do the people exist for the Duma, or does the Duma exist for the people?
Is freedom to exist for the Duma, or is the Duma to serve the cause of
freedom?

*     * *
Letthe Cadets’ appeal, the Trudoviks’ appeal and our appeal be read
at any peasant meeting! We will hear what the peasants say in answer
to the question: Who is right?

---
Notes:
[1]
Sapient gudgeon —the representation of a cowardly philistine in a story by the Russian satirist M. Y. Saltykov-Shchedrin.

[2]
This refers to the Agrarian Committee of the First State Duma set up
to draft a Bill on the land question. On June 6 (19), 1906, at the 22nd session
of the Duma, 91 members of the Committee were chosen (the Cadets predominating
among them, with 41 persons). Afterwards, in accordance with a decision that
was adopt ed, the Committee was supplemented by a further eight members (3 from
the Caucasus, 3 from Siberia and 2 from Central Asia). The chairman of the
Agrarian Committee was a Cadet, A. A. Mukhanov.

[3]
This refers to the “Peasant Reform” which abolished serfdom in Russia in 1861. The Reform was made necessary by the entire
course of Russia’s economic development and by the growth of a mass movement
among the peasantry against feudal exploitation. It was a bourgeois reform
carried out by the serf-owning land lords. Landlordism was preserved. The
peasant could receive an allotment of land only according to the quota
established by law (and with the agreement of the landlord), and had to make a
redemption payment for it. Approximate estimates show that after the Reform, the
nobility possessed 71,500,000 dessiatines of land and the peasants 33,700,000
dessiatines. The Reform enabled the landlords to cut off and appropriate
one-fifth or even two-fifths of the lands formerly cultivated by the
peasants. The landlords remained in possession of the best parts of the
peasants’ allotments (the “cut-off lands”, woods, meadows, watering
places, grazing-grounds, and so on), without which the peasants could not engage
in independent farming.

Thepeasants’ redemption payments for their allotments of land amounted in fact
to direct spoliation of the peasants by the landlords and the tsarist
government. The period during which the peasants made their redemption payments
to the tsarist government was fixed at 49 years with interest at 6 per cent. The
arrears of redemption payments due increased from year to year. Redemption
payments made to the tsarist government merely by peasants formerly under
landlords amounted to 1,900 million rubles, whereas the market price of the land
which passed into the hands of the peasants did not exceed 544 million
rubles. In actual fact the peasants were made to pay hundreds of millions of
rubles for their land, which led to the ruin of the peasant farms and
mass impoverishment of the peasants.