V. I.

Lenin

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

8. Summary of the Economic Deductions of Chapter I

Let us sum up the economic deductions which are to serve as
an introduction to the re-examination of the question of the
Social-Democratic agrarian programme.

We have seen that the “pivot” of the agrarian struggle in our
revolution is the feudal latifundia. The peasants’ struggle for the land is,
first and foremost, a Struggle for the abolition of these latifundia. Their
abolition and their complete transfer to the peasantry undoubtedly coincide with
the line of the capitalist evolution of Russian agriculture. Such a path of
this evolution would mean the most rapid development of productive forces, the
best conditions of labour for the mass of the population, and the most rapid
development of capitalism, with the conversion of the free peasants into farmers. But another path of bourgeois evolution of
agriculture is possible, viz., the preservation of the landlord farms and
latifundia and their slow conversion from farms based on serfdom and
bondage into Junker farms. It is these two types of possible bourgeois
evolution that form the basis of the two types of agrarian programmes
proposed by different classes in the Russian revolution. Moreover, a
special feature of Russia, a feature that is one of the economic
foundations for the possibility of the “American” evolution, is
the existence of vast lands available for colonisation. While entirely
unsuitable for emancipating the Russian peasantry from the yoke of serfdom
in European Russia, these lands will become more extensive and more
accessible in proportion to the freedom enjoyed by the peasantry in Russia
proper, and to the scope of development of the productive forces.

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