Petersburg, March 21, 1907

The situation has fundamentally changed since three weeks ago, when the leading article of issue No. 14 of *Proletarii* was written[23]. The government and the Kadets, the Black-Hundred autocracy and the liberal-monarchist bourgeoisie have taken a step toward one another and are preparing to join hands in order, through their combined efforts, to strangle the revolution and, instead of land and liberty, to throw the people a miserable pittance that condemns them to a state of semi-starvation and semi-slavery. Let us look more closely at the situation that has emerged.

Two questions weigh heavily upon the heart of the Black-Hundred autocracy – the budget and the agrarian question. Without the Duma's approval of the budget – there is no credit. Without somehow, even if only for a time, covering over the gaping wound of the land question, there is no hope of even brief tranquility. The government dare not dissolve the Duma without a budget and agrarian law approved by it. It fears the dissolution of the Duma and at the same time cries out for it, setting in motion the entire Black-Hundred apparatus of the Union of the Russian People, in order to intimidate the timid and incline the wavering toward concessions. It wishes to attempt to wring concessions from the Duma by threatening it with dissolution and gagging it. Well, and afterwards we shall see what is to be done with this disgraced, spat-upon and dragged-through-the-mud "august" assembly. Hence the requests to approve the budget, the assurances that the finance minister has no intention of proposing to the State Duma the question of permitting a loan. Hence also the correct remarks of Mr. Vasilchikov to the effect that the government will "protect the inviolability of those boundaries at which the interests of individual persons, individual groups and individual estates come into contact," but at the same time "recognizes its obligation to extend this protection insofar as the marked boundaries coincide with the general interests of the state. Where these boundaries do not coincide with those interests, they must be shifted." In these words, especially in the passage we have underlined, there is undoubtedly contained a barely perceptible nod toward the Kadets, a faint hint of the conceivable possibility of the Kadets' "compulsory expropriation."

What is the response of the Kadets to all these advances, which are scarcely discernible? Oh! they strain every effort to make the imperceptible perceptible, to make open and fully agreed upon what is veiled in mysterious hints and ambiguities. And therefore, in turn, they give the government incomparably greater advances, they unburden their souls, though, in keeping with their characteristic caution, only halfway for now, and timidly extend their hand in order to receive the condescendingly extended index finger of Mr. Stolypin. In the issue of March 18, the Kadets' official organ *Rech'* announces to the whole world that the Party of People's Freedom has completed the drafting of a new agrarian bill, which makes this party "best armed for practical discussion of the land question," and moreover, "in the new formulation of the question, much greater account has been taken of what is accepted as being called the real balance of forces." On the following day, in a Duma session, deputy Kutler delivered a truly "businesslike" speech and with it somewhat (though far from fully) lifted the veil with which the "realism" and "businesslike character" of the new fruit of the legislative creativity of the Kadet party has so far been bashfully covered. Insofar as one could understand, the businesslike realism in this case reduces itself, in the first place, to the fact that instead of a "consumer norm," in many localities peasants will be given far less land – "whatever turns out," as Mr. Kutler expresses it most unclearly. Apparently, it turns out that many millions of desyatinas of landlord land may, even with "compulsory expropriation," freely remain unexpropriated. This means merely to somewhat "shift the boundaries," as Mr. Vasilchikov puts it. The second feature characterizing the "realism" of the new bill is depicted by Mr. Kutler in the following expressions: the lands "to be allocated to peasants" ought to be "given into perpetual peasant possession," so that "these lands under no circumstances in the future will be taken from them," they will be "transferred to the peasants not in temporary use, but in permanent," and moreover it will be necessary to "limit only the right of alienation and mortgage." All this again comes very close to the "intention" announced through the lips of Mr. Vasilchikov of the government to "extend the benefits flowing from the principles of property to that vast territory of peasant landowning which has so far been deprived of these benefits." And, finally, the third "businesslike" feature of the new Kadet agrarian bill deserves special attention: previously they assumed the redemption of land at the expense of the treasury, but now "a certain portion of the expenditures involved in the land reform ought to be covered by the peasants themselves, approximately in a fifty-fifty manner." Well, how does this differ from the payment by peasants of redemption dues in a fifty-fifty manner that was established by the government for 1906? The principled agreement of the Kadet agrarian project with the government's "designs" thus emerges quite clearly. It is all the less subject to doubt since the Kadets' compulsory expropriation of land is also fictitious: who will "compel" in the Kadet land committees, when they will consist half of peasants, half of landlords, and "reconcile" their interests will be officials? A deal struck with a bribe. Not in vain does the Duma correspondent of *Rech'* in the issue of March 20 remark regarding Mr. Vasilchikov's speech: "with such a formulation of the question, it is transferred to practical ground." And this, surely, is the highest praise in the mouths of the present-day Kadets!

As for the budget, the conciliatory position of the Kadets toward the Black-Hundred autocracy is depicted with sufficient clarity in the leading article of the same issue of *Rech'* of March 20. Here the rumor "that the Party of People's Freedom proposes to reject the budget in its entirety" is called an "obvious lie," here confidence is expressed that "the people's representatives will approve, probably with certain amendments, the budget for 1907," and, finally – listen, gentlemen! – here it is asserted that "if the Duma receives proof of the readiness of the finance minister to go toward an expansion of its rights (within the limits of the 'fundamental laws,' of course – see the same article above), – in its midst there may be born greater trust in the government," and indeed, "if the Duma had reason to trust the finance minister, it could agree to a formula reducing itself to permission to borrow, as much as may be needed" (emphasis ours). This is a pearl, most worthily concluding this entire long chain of shameful concessions, this entire retail sale of people's freedom – a retail sale necessary so that in the end people's freedom is sold wholesale.

Whoever has the patience to trace all the sordid details of the shameful bargaining between the Black-Hundreds and the liberal bourgeois, insofar as these details are taking shape at the present moment – for such a person there is no doubt: the counter-revolutionary forces are organizing in order to deliver the final, mortal blow to the great emancipatory movement, in order to break the strong and courageous fighters and deceive and eliminate the naive, timid and irresolute. The Right, the Polish circle{69}, the Kadets are joining together into one whole to deliver this blow. The government intimidates the Kadets and the Toilers with the howling of the Black Hundred that it has itself let loose, demanding the dissolution of the Duma and the destruction of the "vile constitution." The Kadets intimidate these same Toilers with references to this very same howling and to the supposed intentions of Stolypin to dissolve the Duma immediately. All these threats and fears are needed by the Black-Hundred autocracy and the liberal bourgeoisie so that they can better come to an agreement behind the people's back, so that, having amicably divided things up, they can rob this people. Toilers of all shades, do not be deceived! Stand guard over the interests of the people! Prevent the dirty deal of the Kadets with the government! Comrade social-democrats! we are confident that you will understand the situation, that you will march at the head of all the revolutionary elements of the Duma, that you will open the eyes of the Toilers to the shameful betrayal being perpetrated by the liberal-monarchist bourgeoisie. We are confident that you will loudly and threateningly from the Duma tribune expose this betrayal before the entire people.

*Proletarii*, No. 15, March 25, 1907

Printed according to the text of the newspaper *Proletarii*

First page of the manuscript of V. I. Lenin "Draft Speech on the Agrarian Question in the Second State Duma." – 1907. (Reduced)