V. I.

Lenin

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

8. The “Nationals”

Among the representatives of the non-Russian nationalities in the Duma who
spoke on the agrarian question were Poles, Byelorussians, Letts and Ests,
Lithuanians, Tatars, Armenians, Bashkirs, Kirghiz, and Ukrainians. Here is how
they expounded their points of view.

The

National-Democrat [4] Dmowski said in the Second Duma “on behalf of
the Poles—the representatives of the Kingdom of Poland and of the adjacent
western part of the country” (742): “Although our agrarian relations
are already in the stage of transition to West-European relations, nevertheless,
the agrarian question exists for us too, and land hunger is the curse of our
life. One of the chief points of our social programme is:

increase in the area of peasant landownership” (743).

“ The big agrarian disturbances that occurred in the Kingdom of
Poland in the form of the seizure of landlord estates were confined to the
eastern areas, namely, Wlodawa Uyezd, where the peasants were told that
they, as members of the Orthodox Church, would receive allotments of
landlords’ land. Those disturbances occurred only among the population
belonging to the Orthodox Church” (745).

“ Here [in the Kingdom of Poland] agrarian affairs, like all other
social reforms, ... can be settled in conformity with the requirements of
life only by an assembly of representatives of the region—only by an
autonomous Sejm” (747).

This speech by a Polish National-Democrat provoked violent attacks
against the Polish landlords on the part of the Right Byelorussian peasants
(Gavrilchik, Minsk Gubernia, Szymánski, and Grudzinski); and Bishop
Eulogius, of course, seized the opportunity to deliver a jesuitical
police-minded speech in the spirit of the Russian politicians of 1863 about
the Polish landlords oppressing the Russian peasants (26th session, April
12).

“ What a simple plan!” answered the National-Democrat Grabski
(32nd session, May 3). “The peasants will receive land; the Russian
landlords will keep their estates; the peasants, as in the good old days,
will support the, old regime, and the Poles will be duly punished for
raising the question of a Polish Sejm” (62). And the speaker,
vehemently exposing the shameless demagogy of the Russian Government,
demanded that “the settlement of the agrarian reform in our region be
transferred to a Polish Sejm” (75).

To this we will add that the above-mentioned peasants demanded
additional allotments with right of ownership (see, for example,
p. 1811). In the First Duma, too, the Polish and Western peasants, in
demanding land, spoke in favour of private ownership. “I am a peasant
with little land from Lublin Gubernia,” said Nakonieczny on June
1,1906. “Compulsory alienation is needed in Poland as well. One
dessiatin forever is better than five dessiatins for an indefinite
period” (881-82). The same was said by Poniatowski (Volhynia
Gubernia) in the name of the Western Region (May 19, p. 501), and by Trasun
from Vitebsk Gubernia (418, May 16, 1906). Girnius (Suvalki Gubernia)
opposed the idea of an imperial stock of distributable land and demanded
local distributable lands (June 1, 1906, p. 879). During the same debate,
Count Tysczkiewiez stated that he regarded the idea of forming a national
stock of distributable land as “impracticable and risky”
(874). Stecki also spoke (May 24, 1906, pp. 613-14) in favour of private
ownership as against renting.

A speaker from the Baltic Region in the Second Duma was Juraszewski (Courland
Gubernia), who demanded the abolition of the feudal privileges of the big
landowners (May 16, 1907, p. 670) and the alienation of all landlords’ land over
and above a definite norm. “While admitting that present-day agriculture
in the Baltic Region developed on the principle of private ownership, or
hereditary lease, that was practised there, one must come to the conclusion,
however, that for the future regulation of agricultural relations it is
necessary immediately to introduce in the Baltic Region local self-government on
broad democratic lines which could correctly solve this problem”
(672).

The representative of Estland Gubernia, the Progressist Jurine, introduced a
separate Bill for this gubernia (47th session, May 26, 1907, p. 1210). He spoke
in favour of a “compromise” (1213), in favour of “hereditary
or perpetual leasing” (1214). “The one who cultivates the land, who
makes the best use of it, shall have possession of the land”
(ibid.). While demanding compulsory alienation for this purpose, he rejects
confiscation of the land (1215). In the First Duma, Cakste (Courland Gubernia)
demanded the transfer to the peasants of church (parish) land as well as landlords’ land
(4th session, May 4,1906, p. 195). Tenison (Livland Gubernia) agreed to
vote for the address, i.e., for compulsory alienation, and expressed the
opinion that “all the supporters of the individualisation of the
land” (ibid., p. 209) could do this. Kreuzberg (Courland Gubernia),
on behalf of the Courland peasants, demanded the “expropriation of
the latifundia” and the allotment of land to peasants with little or
no land, and, of course, “with right of ownership” (12th
session, May 19, 1906, p. 500). Ruth (Livland Gubernia) demanded compulsory
alienation, etc. “As regards converting the land into a state stock
of distributable land,” be said, “our peasants are fully aware
that this is a new form of serfdom. Therefore, we must de fend small
peasant farming and productivity of labour, and protect them from the
encroachments of capitalism. Thus, if we convert the land into a state
stock of distributable land we shall create capitalism on the largest
scale” (497, ibid.). Ozolins (Livland Gubernia), on behalf of the
Lettish peasants, spoke in favour of compulsory alienation and private
ownership; he was emphatically opposed to the creation of a reserve of
state distributable land and was in favour only of local, regional
distributable lands (13th session, May 23, 1906, p. 564).

Leonas, “representative of Suvalki Gubernia, namely, of the
Lithuanian nationality” (39th session, May 16, 1907, p. 654), spoke
in favour of the plan proposed by the Constitutional-Democratic Party, to
which he belongs. Bulat, another Lithuanian autonomist from the same
gubernia, associated himself with the Trudoviks, but proposed that a
decision on the question of redemption payments and so forth, be postponed
until the matter was discussed by the local land committees (p. 651,
ibid.). Povilius (Kovno Gubernia), in the name of the “Duma group of
Lithuanian Social-Democrats” (ibid., p. 681, supplement) put forward
this group’s precisely-formulated agrarian programme, which coincides
with our R.S.D.L.P. programme, with this difference , however, that
“the local distributable land within the borders of Lithuania ” is to be placed at the disposal of “the
Lithuanian organ of autonomous self-government” (ibid., Point 2).

On behalf of the Moslem group in the Second Duma Khan Khoisky
(Elisavetpol Gubernia) said: “We Moslems, who number over 20,000,000
in the total population of the Russian state, are following the debate on
the agrarian question with the same keen interest and are looking for ward
to its satisfactory settlement with the impatience” (20th session,
April 2, 1907, p. 1499). In the name of the Moslem group the speaker agreed
with Kutler and sup ported compulsory alienation based on a fair valuation
(1502). “But to whom are these alienated lands to go? On this matter
the Moslem group is of the opinion that the alienated lands should form not
a state stock,, but regional stocks of distributable land, each within the
borders of the given region” (1503). Deputy Mediev (Taurida
Gubernia), the “representative of the Crimean Tatars”, in an
ardent revolutionary speech, demanded “land and liberty”. “The longer the debate goes on the clearer we hear
the demand of the people that the land must go to those who till it”
(24th session, April 9,1907, p. 1789). The speaker snowed “how sacred
landed property was established in our border regions” (1792), how
the land of the Bashkirs was plundered, how ministers, councillors of
state, and chiefs of the gendarmerie received tracts ranging from two to
six thousand dessiatins. He cued the mandate of his “Tatar
brethren”, complaining of the way the wakf lands [5] were plundered. He also quoted the answer, dated December
15, 1906, which the Governor-General of Turkestan gave a certain Tatar to
the effect that only persons of the Christian faith could settle on state
land. “Do not those documents smell of decay, of the Arakcheyev regime [6] of the last century?” (1794.)

The spokesman for the Caucasian peasants—besides our Party
Social-Democrats, whom we shall speak of later on— was the
above-mentioned Sagatelyan (Erivan Gubernia) who shares the
Socialist-Revolutionary standpoint.

Ter-Avetikyants (Elisavetpol Gubernia), another representative
of the “Dashnaktsutyun” Party, spoke in the same strain:
“The land must belong to the toilers, i.e., the working people, and
to nobody else, on the basis of village commune ownership”
(39th session, May 16, 1907, p. 644). “On behalf of all the Caucasian
peasants I declare ... at the decisive moment, all the Caucasian peasants will go hand in hand with their elder
brothers—the Russian peasants— and win for themselves land and
liberty” (646). Eldarkhanov “on behalf of his constituents—the natives of the Terek Region—requests that
plunder of the natural wealth be stopped pending the settlement of the
agrarian question” (32nd session, May 3, 1907, p. 78). It was the
government that was stealing the land, taking the best part of the high
land zone, robbing the land of the Kumyk people and laying claim to its
minerals (this must have been before the Stockholm lectures of Plekhanov
and John on municipalised land being out of the reach of the undemocratic
state power).

Speaking on behalf of the Bashkirs, Deputy Khasanov (Ufa Gubernia)
mentioned the stealing by the government of two million dessiatins of land,
and demanded that this land “be taken back” (39th session, May
16, 1907, p. 641). Deputy Syrtlanov from Ufa made the same demand in the
First Duma (20th session, June 2, 1906, p. 923). The spokesman for the
Kirghiz-Kaisak people in the Second Duma was Deputy Karatayev. (Urals
Region) who said: “We Kirghiz-Kaisaks... deeply understand and
sympathise with the land hunger of our brother-peasants, we are ready and
willing to make room for them” (39th session, p. 673), but
“there is very little surplus land”, and “re-settlement
at the present time entails the eviction of the Kirghiz Kaisak
people”.... “The Kirghiz are evicted not from the land, but
from their dwellings” (675). “The Kirghiz Kaisaks always
sympathise with all the opposition groups” (675).

The spokesman for the Ukrainian group in the Second Duma was the
Cossack Saiko, from Poltava Gubernia. Speaking on March 29, 1907, he quoted
the Cossack song: “Hey, Tsarina Catherina, look what you have done!
Boundless steppe and happy land to the landlords you have flung. Hey,
Tsarina Catherina, pity us and give us land, happy land and shady
woods...", and supported the Trudoviks, demanding only that the
words “national stock of distributable land” in § 2 of the Bill of the 104 be amended to “regional national [sic!] stock
of distributable land to serve as the beginning of socialist
organisation”, “The Ukrainian group is of the opinion that the greatest injustice in the world is the
private ownership of the land” (1318).

In the First Duma, Deputy Chizhevsky from Poltava said: “As an
ardent advocate of the autonomy idea, as an ardent advocate of Ukrainian
autonomy in particular, I should very much like the agrarian question to be
settled by my people, by individual autonomous bodies, in that autonomous
system of our state that I regard as the ideal” (14th session, May
24, 1906, p. 618). At the same time, this Ukrainian autonomist deems state
distributable lands to be absolutely essential, and he clarifies an issue
which our “municipalisers” have muddled up. “We must firmly and positively establish the principle,” said Chizhevsky,
“that the state distributable lands must be managed exclusively by
local self-governing Zemstvo or autonomous bodies when these are set up. It
may be asked: What sense is there in the term

‘state distributable lands’ if in every particular case they will be
managed by local government bodies? I think there is very much
sense.... First of all ... part of the state lands should be at the
disposal of the central government... our state colonisation
lands.... Secondly, the sense of establishing a state stock of
distributable land, and the sense of calling it such, is this: although the
local bodies will be free to dispose of that land in their respective
areas, they will be able to do so only within certain limits”
(620). This petty-bourgeois autonomist understands the significance of
state power in a society centralised by economic development far better
than our Menshevik Social-Democrats.

By the way, in dealing with Chizhevsky’s speech, we cannot leave
unmentioned his criticism of “norms”. “Labour norm is an empty
sound,” he says bluntly, pointing out the diversity of agricultural
conditions,. and on the same grounds he also rejects the
“subsistence” norm. “I think land should be allotted to the
peasants not according to a norm, but according to the amount of land
available.... The peasants should be given all that can be given in the
particular locality,” —for example, in Poltava Gubernia “land
should be taken away from all the landowners, who should be left with an average
of 50 dessiatins each at the most” (621). Is it surprising that the Cadets
chatter about norms in order to conceal their plans regarding the actual amount of land to be alienated? Although criticising the Cadets, Chizhevsky does
not yet realise this. [1]

The conclusion to be drawn from our review of the Duma speeches on the
agrarian question delivered by the “nationals” is obvious. Those speeches fully confirm what I said in opposition to Maslov
in the pamphlet Revision , etc ., on p. 18 (first edition) [2] on the question of the relation between municipalisation arid the rights of
the nationalities, namely, that it is a political question, which
is fully dealt with in the political section of our programme, and
is dragged into the agrarian programme merely because of philistine
provincialism.

In Stockholm, the Mensheviks worked with comical zeal to “purge
municipalisation of nationalisation” (the words of the Menshevik
Novosedsky, Minutes of the Stockholm Congress, p. 146). “Some
historical regions, such as Poland and Lithuania,” said Novosedsky,
“coincide with national territories, and the transfer of land to
these regions may serve as the basis for the successful development of
nationalist-federalist tendencies, which will again, in effect, transform
municipalisation into nationalisation piecemeal.” And so Novosedsky
and Dan proposed and secured the adoption of an amendment: for the words,
“self-governing large regional organisations” in
Maslov’s draft substitute the words: “large local self-governing bodies that will unite urban and rural districts”.

An ingenious way of “purging municipalisation of nationalisation”,
I must say. To substitute one word for another—is it not obvious that this will automatically lead to the reshuffling of the
“historical regions”?.

No, gentlemen, no substitution of words will help you to rid
municipalisation of its inherent, “nationalist-federalist”
nonsense. The Second Duma showed that what the “municipalisation” idea did in fact was only to promote the nationalist tendencies of various groups of the
bourgeoisie. It was these groups alone , not counting the Right
Cossack Karaulov, that “took upon themselves” the protection of
various “territorial” and “regional” distributable lands. In so doing these nationals threw out the agrarian content
of provincialisation (for actually Maslov “gives” the land to
provinces and not to “municipalities”, so the word provincialisation is more exact): nothing is to be decided beforehand,
everything —the question of redemption payment, the question
of ownership, and so forth—is to be left to the autonomous Sejms, or
to regional, etc., self-governing bodies. The result is the fullest
confirmation of my statement that “just the same, the law
transferring the Trans Caucasian lands to the Zemstvo will have to be
passed by a constituent assembly in St. Petersburg, because, surely, Maslov
does not want to give any region freedom to retain landlordism”
( Revision, etc. ,

p. 18). [3]

Thus, events have confirmed that to argue the case for municipalisation on the
basis of the nationalities’ agreement or disagreement is a poor argument. The
municipalisation in our programme turns out to be in conflict with the
definitely expressed opinion of very diverse nationalities.

Events have confirmed, in fact, that municipalisation serves not as a guide for
the mass, nation-wide peasant movement, but as a means of breaking this movement
up into provincial and national streams. The only thing that
life absorbed from Maslov’s idea of regional stocks of distributable land is national-autonomist “regionalism”.

The “nationals” stand somewhat aloof from our agrarian question. Many non-Russian nationalities have no independent peasant
movement at the heart of the revolution, such as we have. It is quite
natural, therefore, that in their programmes the “nationals” often keep somewhat aloof from the
Russian agrarian question, as much as to say:

it has nothing to do with us, we have our own problem. For the nationalist
bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie such a standpoint is inevitable.

For the proletariat, however, such a standpoint is impermissible; but
it is precisely into this impermissible bourgeois nationalism that our
programme actually falls. Just as the “nationals”, at best, only associate themselves with the all-Russian movement, without the
intention of strengthening it tenfold by uniting and concentrating the
movement, so the Mensheviks draft a programme which associates itself with the peasant revolution instead of presenting a programme
to guide the revolution, to unite it, and advance it. Municipalisation is
not a slogan of the peasant revolution, but an artificial plan of
petty-bourgeois reformism added on from outside in a backwater of the
revolution.

The Social-Democratic proletariat cannot alter its programme in order
to win the “agreement” of this or that nationality. Our task is
to unite and concentrate the movement by advocating the best path, the best
agrarian system possible in bourgeois society, by combating the force of
tradition, prejudice, and conservative provincialism. “Disagreement” with the socialisation of the
land on the part of the small peasants cannot alter our programme of the
socialist revolution; it can only cause us to prefer action by example . The same applies to the nationalisation of the land in a
bourgeois revolution. No “disagreement” with it on the part of
a nationality or several nationalities can make us alter the doctrine that
it is in the interest of the entire people that they should be freed to the
utmost extent from medieval landownership and that private ownership of the
land should be abolished. The “disagreement” of considerable
sections of the toiling masses of this or that nationality will make us
prefer influence by example to every other form of influence. The
nationalisation of the land avail able for colonisation, the
nationalisation of forest land, the nationalisation of all the land in
central Russia, cannot exist for long side by side with private ownership
of the land in some other part of the country (once the unification of this country is due to the really main current of economic
evolution). One or the other system must gain the upper hand. Experience
will decide that. Our task is to explain to the people what conditions are
most favourable for the proletariat and for the toiling masses in a
capitalistically developing country.

---
Notes:
[1]
Chizhevsky also brings out very strikingly the thesis of the
unconsciously-bourgeois Trudoviks, with which we are already familiar,
namely, growth of industry and a decrease in the movement to the
land in the event of a consistent peasant revolution. “The peas ants
in our district, the very electors who sent us here, have made, for
example, the following calculation:

‘If we were a little richer and if each of our families could spend five or
six rubles on sugar every year, several sugar refineries would arise in
each of the uyezds where it is possible to grow sugar beet, in addition to
those that are already there’.

Naturally, if those refineries were to arise, what a mass of bands would be
required for intensified farming! The output of the sugar refineries would
increase,” etc. (622). That is precisely the programme of “American”
farming and of the “American” development of capitalism in Russia. — Lenin

[2]
See present edition, Vol. 10, p. 182.—Ed.

[3]
See present edition, Vol. 10, pp. 182-83.— Ed .

[4]
National-Democrat —member of the National-Democratic
Party, the chief, reactionary, nationalist party of the Polish landlords
and bourgeoisie, closely associated with the Catholic Church. The party was
founded in 1897, its leaders being R. Dmowski, Z. Balicki, W. Grabski, and
others. The N.D.’s put forward the slogans of “class harmony”
and “national interests”. They tried to win influence over the
masses and draw them into the current of their reactionary policy. They
preached aggressive nationalism and chauvinism as a means of struggle
against the socialist and general democratic movement among the Polish people, which they attempted
to isolate from the Russian revolutionary movement. During the revolution
of 1905-07 they sought to make a deal with tsarism to secure Polish
autonomy, and openly supported it in its struggle against the revolution by
every means in their power, including informing, lock-outs, and
assassination”. The Fifth (London) Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. adopted
a special resolution emphasising the need “unremittingly and relentlessly
to expose the counter-revolutionary Black-Hundred physiognomy and
activities of the National-Democrats as the allies of tsarism in its fight
against the revolution” (see “ The C.P.S.U. in Resolutions and Decisions of Its Congresses, Conferences, and Plenary Meetings of the Central Committee , Part I, 1954, p. 168). During the First World War
(1914-18) the N.D.’s unreservedly supported the Entente, counting on the
victory of tsarist Russia, the uniting of Polish territories which had been
under the heel of Austria and Germany, and the granting of autonomy to
Poland within the framework of the Russian empire. The downfall of the
tsarist regime impelled the N.D.’s towards a pro-French orientation. Bitter
enemies of the October Socialist Revolution and the Soviet state though
they were, the N.D.’s, in keeping with their traditional anti-German
attitude, did not always give whole-hearted support to the adventurist
anti-Soviet foreign policy pursued by the Pilsudski clique which ruled
Poland beginning from. 1926. At the present time various groups of the
National-Democratic Party are active among reactionary Polish
émigrés.

[5]
Wakf lands —lands in areas with a Moslem population, which could not be sold or transferred. The revenue derived from such land
was disposed of cheifly by the Moslem clergy. Under the Soviet
government the wakf lands became state property.

[6]
Arakcheyev, A.A. —reactionary tsarist statesman of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He greatly influenced home
and foreign policies in the reigns of Paul I and Alexander I. His
name stands for an epoch of unlimited police despotism and a brutal
military regime.