V. I.

Lenin

The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution, 1905-1907

4. The Agrarian Programme of the Peasantry

We shall try to analyse the question (as to why all the political groups which
reflect the interests and hopes of the small proprietors should have spoken in
favour of nationalisation) in regard to which P. Maslov flounders so helplessly.

First of all, let us see to what extent the Land Bill of the 104, i. e., of the
Trudoviks in the First and Second Dumas, really expresses the demands of the
peasantry of the whole of Russia. That it does is borne out by the nature of the
representation in both Dumas, as well as by the nature of the political,
struggle on the agrarian question which developed in the
“parliamentary” arena among the spokes men of the different
classes. The idea of landownership in general, and of peasant ownership in
particular, far from being pushed into the background in the Duma, was, on the
contrary, constantly brought to the fore by certain parties. The idea was
supported by the government, in the shape of Stishinsky. Gurko, and all the
ministers, as well as all the official press, addressing especially the peasant
deputies. The political parties of the Right, too, beginning with the
“famous” Svyatopolk-Mirsky in the Second Duma, kept dinning into the peasants’ ears about the blessings of peasant
proprietorship. The actual alignment of forces on this question has been
depicted by such a wealth of data that there can be no doubt as to its
correctness (from the standpoint of class interests). The Cadet Party in
the First Duma, when the liberals regarded the revolutionary people as a
force and tried to woo them, was also swept along by the general current
in the direction of land nationalisation. As is known, the Cadet Land Bill
introduced in the First Duma contained a clause about a “state land
reserve” to include all alienated land and from which land would be
granted on long-term leases. Of course, the Cadets in the First Duma did
not put that demand forward on any grounds of principle—it would be
ridiculous to speak of the Cadet Party having principles. No. That demand
of the liberals sprang up as a feeble echo of the demands of the peasant
masses. Already in the First Duma the peasant deputies at once began to
form a separate political group, and the Land Bill of the “104”
served as the chief and basic platform of the whole of the Russian
peasantry, which came forward as a conscious social force. The speeches of
the peasant deputies in the First and Second Dumas and the articles in the
Trudovik papers ( Izvestia Krestyanskikh Deputatov , Trudovaya Rossiya ) showed that the Bill of the 104 faithfully expressed the
interests arid hopes of the peas ants. That Bill must, therefore, be dealt
with in somewhat greater detail.

It is interesting, by the way, to look at the composition of the group of
deputies who signed the Bill. In the First Duma it was. signed by 70 Trudoviks,
17 non-party deputies, 8 peasants who supplied no information as to their party
affiliation, 5 Cadets, [1]

3 Social-Democrats, [2] and 1 Lithuanian Autonomist. In the Second Duma the Bill of the
“104” had 99 signatures, and after deducting duplicates, 91
signatures, namely, 79 Trudoviks, 4 Popular Socialists, 2
Socialist-Revolutionaries, 2 deputies from the Cossack group, 2 non-party deputies, 1 deputy more to the left than the Cadets
(Peterson), and 1 Cadet (Odnokozov, a Peasant). There was a preponderance of
peasants among the signatories (no fewer than 54 out of 91 in the Second Duma,
and no fewer than 52 out of 104 in the First). It is interesting that
P. Maslov’s special expectations regarding the home stead
peasants (referred to above [3]

)

who; he said, could not agree to nationalisation, were also completely defeated by the attitude of the peasant deputies in both
Dumas. For instance, in Podolsk Gubernia nearly all the. peasants are
homestead peasants (in 1905 there were 457,134 homestead peasants and
only 1,630 members of village communes); nevertheless, 13 Podolsk
deputies (mainly peasant farmers) signed the Land Bill of the
“104” in the First Duma, and 10 in the Second Duma! Among other
gubernias with homestead landownership we will mention Vilna, Kovno, Kiev,
Poltava, Bessarabia, and Volhynia, deputies from which signed the Land Bill of
the “104”. The distinction between village commune members and homestead
peas ants as regards land nationalisation may appear important and material
only to those who share Narodnik prejudices and those prejudices, by the way,
were dealt a hard blow when the peasant deputies of the whole of Russia first
came forward with a land programme. As a matter of fact, the demand for the
nationalisation of the land is called forth not by any specific form of
landownership, not by the “communal habits and instincts” of the
peasants, but by the general conditions of the whole system of small peasant
landownership (both communal and homestead) which is crushed by the feudal
latifundia.

Among the deputies in the First and Second Dumas who sponsored the
nationalisation Bill of the 104 we see representatives from all parts of
Russia, not only from the central agricultural and the industrial
non-black-earth gubernias, not only from the northern (Arkhangelsk and
Vologda— in the Second Duma), eastern and southern borderlands (Astrakhan,
Bessarabia, Don, Ekaterinoslav, Kuban, Taurida, and Stavropol gubernias
and regions), but also from the gubernias of Little Russia, the South-west,
North-west, Poland (Suvalki) and Siberia (Tobolsk). Obviously, the plight of the small
peasant under the oppression of feudal landlordism, which is most
forcefully and clearly demonstrated in the purely Russian agricultural
centre, is felt throughout Russia, and causes the small farmers everywhere
to support the struggle for the nationalisation of the land.

The nature of that struggle bears all the earmarks of petty-bourgeois
individualism. In this respect special stress must be laid on the fact, all too
frequently ignored in our socialist press, that the greatest blow to the
“socialism” of the Socialist-Revolutionaries was struck by the very
first entry of the peasants into the open, all-Russian political arena with an
independent land programme. The Socialist-Revolutionary Land Socialisation Bill
(the Bill of the “33” in the First Duma) was supported by a
minority of progressive peasant deputies. The great majority
were found on the side of the Land Bill of the 104 , drafted by the
Popular Socialists , whose programme the Socialist-Revolutionaries
themselves describe as individualistic .

For instance, in the Socialist-Revolutionary Collection of Articles (published by Nasha Mysl , St. Petersburg, 1907,
No. 1) we find an article by P. Vikhlyaev entitled “The Popular
Socialist Party and the Agrarian Question”. The writer criticises the
Popular Socialist Peshekhonov, and quotes the latter’s statement that
“the Bill of the 104 reflected our [the P.S.1 standpoint on the way
in which the land may be taken” (p. 81 of the Collection ).
The Social ist-Revolutionaries declare bluntly that the Bill of the 104
“leads to the negation of the root principle of communal land
tenure”—“ in the same way ” ( sic !) as
Stolypin’s agrarian legislation, the law of November 9, 1906,
does. (Ibid., p. 86; we shall show presently how the
Socialist-Revolutionaries were prevented by their own prejudices from
appraising the real economic difference between the two ways, i. e., the
Stolypin way and the Trudovik way.) The Socialist-Revolutionaries regard
Peshekhonov’s programmatic views as “the manifestation of selfish
individualism” (p. 89), “the pollution of the wide ideological
stream with the mud of individualism” (p. 91), and “the
encouragement of individualistic and selfish tendencies among the masses of
the people” (ibid., p. 93).

All this is true. But the Socialist-Revolutionaries are wrong in believing that
“strong” words can obscure the fact that the crux of the matter is
not the opportunism of Peshekhonov and Co., but the individualism of the
small farmer . The point is not that the Peshekhonovs are polluting the
ideological stream of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, but that the majority of the progressive peasant deputies have revealed the real economic content
of Narodism, the real aspirations of the small farmers. What the Land Bills of
the 104 in the First and Second

Dumas [4] revealed was the bankruptcy of the Socialist-Revolutionaries in face of.the
representatives of the broad, really all-Russian, peasant masses.

While declaring in favour of nationalisation of the land, the Trudoviks very
clearly reveal in their Bill the “selfish and individualistic”
aspirations of the small farmers. They propose to leave the allotments and the
small private hold ings in the possession of their present owners (Clause 3 of
the Land Bill of the 104), provided legislative measures are taken to ensure
that they “gradually become the property of the whole nation”. Translated into the language of real economic relations, it means
just this: we take as our starting-point the interests of the real
owners , of the real, not the nominal, tillers of the soil, but we
want their economic activity to develop quite, freely on nationalised [5] land. Clause 9 of the Bill, which states that “priority is to be
given to the local population before outsiders, and to the agricultural
population before the non-agricultural”, shows once more that the
interests of the small proprietors come first with the Trudoviks. An
“equal right to the land” is a mere phrase; state loans and
grants “to persons without sufficient means to acquire the necessary
agricultural equipment” (Clause 15 of the Land Bill of the 104) are
pious wishes; these who will really and inevitably gain will be the ones
who can become strong proprietors now, who can be transformed from
enslaved tillers of the soil into free and well-to-do farmers. Of course,
it is in the interests of the proletariat to support such measures as will
most of all help agriculture in Russia to pass from the hands of feudal
landlords and enslaved tillers of the soil, who are crushed by ignorance,
poverty, and routine, into the hands of free farmers. And the Bill of the
“104” is nothing but a platform of the struggle to turn the
well-to-do section of the enslaved peasantry into free farmers.

---
Notes:
[1]
G. Zubchenko, T. Volkov, M. Gerasimov, all peasants; S. Lozhkin, a
physician, and Afanasyev, a priest. — Lenin

[2]
Antonov, a worker from Perm Gubernia, Yershov, a worker from Kazan
Gubernia, and V. Churyukov, a worker from Moscow Gubernia. — Lenin

[3]
See pp. 261-62 of this volume.— Ed .

[4]
From the Stenographic Records of the Second Duma it appears that the
Socialist-Revolutionary Mushenko introduced a Land Bill signed by 105
deputies. Unfortunately, I have not been able to obtain a copy of that
Bill. Among the Duma materials I had at my disposal there was only the
Trudovik Bill of the 104 that was introduced in the Second Duma too. The
existence. of the Socialist-Revolutionary Bill of the 105 in addition to
the two Trudovik Bills of the 104 (introduced in the First and Second
Dumas) merely indicates, at best, that certain peasants wavered between the
Popular Socialists and the Socialist-Revolutionaries, but it does not
disprove what I have said above. — Lenin

[5]
Incidentally, A. Finn-Yenotayevsky, in disputing the earnestness and
consciousness of the nationalisation aspirations of the Peas ant Union and
of the peasantry in general, quoted the statement of V. Groman that the
delegates to the peasant’s congresses “do not anticipate having to
make any payment for the land”, and that they have no idea that
differential rent must revert to society as a whole. (A. Finn, The Agrarian Question and Social-Democracy , p. 69.). Clauses 7 and 14 of
the Bill of the 104 prove that this view is erroneous . In those clauses provision is made by the Trudoviks both for payment for the
land (a land tax rising in accordance with the size of the allotment) and
for the reversion of differential rent to the state (“limiting the
right to appropriate the increase in the value” of the land, “insofar as
it is not due to their, the owners’, labour and capital —[N. B.! the Trudoviks are not opposed to capital!]—but
to social conditions”). It is true that in regard to urban and other
lands, Clause 7 provides that: “until such property passes to the whole
nation” the rights of occupiers, etc., shall be limited. But that is
probably a slip of the pen, for otherwise it would mean that the Trudoviks
take the rent from the proprietors and return it to the occupiers, the
tenants of nationalised land! — Lenin