In the budget debates of the Fourth State Duma, there was, as always, an inordinate amount of rubbish. Both the attempts of Markov 2nd to trip up Kokovtsov, and Kokovtsov's attempts to "talk over" with phrases the serf-owning character of "our" politics and our budget, and the Kadets' attempts to assure the trusting public that Kokovtsov "found it necessary to reckon" in the Fourth Duma precisely with the Kadets – all this is tedious, hackneyed, hypocritical rubbish.

But in the heap of rubbish there are grains of truth. The Markovs, Kokovtsovs, Shingarevs tried to hide them as deep as possible. They are worth bringing to light.

"I dwelt so long on the question of land settlement," Kokovtsov exclaimed on May 13, "because in this matter there is indeed contained the whole key to Russia's future…"

One should speak not of the "whole" key and not of the "future" in general, but of the future of the June Third system of omnipotence of "bureaucracy" and serf-owning landlords. With the old village structure we cannot preserve power – such was the decision of these landlords, taught by bitter experience. To preserve it, one must in one's own way carry out the restructuring of the old village into a bourgeois one. Here lies the basis and essence of the "question of land settlement."

"…Whether the government will succeed in this, whether it (land settlement) will bring all that benefit which is envisioned both by the government and by the legislative institutions – continues the minister – the future will show…"

The future will indeed reveal everything and show everything, there is no dispute about that. It will show the results of the efforts of the serf-owners and the efforts of the proletariat, advancing at the head of democracy. But the figures of the "serious" (by Kadet standards) Mr. Kokovtsov show absolutely nothing. The number of applications for land settlement is growing rapidly – Kokovtsov exults, and the rightists in the Duma exult. These applications numbered 221 thousand in 1907, 385 thousand in 1908, 711 thousand in 1909, 651 thousand in 1910, 683 thousand in 1911, 1,183 thousand in 1912, for a total of 3,834 thousand.

Yet 1,592,000 homesteads have been "settled."

Such are the ministerial "proofs" and materials for judging the future.

But on that same May 13, the government newspaper "Novoye Vremya" cites data from a zemstvo house-by-house census in Samara District in 1911. The number of "consolidated proprietors" in this district reached nearly 40% – that is, above the Russian average. The district, accordingly, is the most "favorable" for the government.

And what was found? Of the total number of "consolidated proprietors," actual farmers on separate plots number fewer than three in a hundred (2.9%); only 1/16 (6.5%) separated out onto separate farms, while more than nine tenths (90.6%) own land in scattered strips!!

Nine tenths of the "consolidated proprietors" conduct their farms as before in scattered strips. Economic conditions have even worsened because scattered stripholding was previously able to be somewhat "corrected" by the commune through frequent repartitions.

In just 4 years already a third of the consolidated land has passed into other hands. Landlessness is growing, and even more rapidly the impoverishment of the peasants; the confusion of strips is growing. Incredible destitution in the village is growing. Famines are growing. The number of landless peasants, pure proletarians, is growing. The number of impoverished "would-be proprietors," entangled in the old bondage and scattered stripholding as a result of this notorious landlord land settlement, is growing.

Clearly, landlord land settlement of peasant lands will not resolve this bondage. It could be eliminated only by land settlement on broad democratic principles.

Written May 16 (29), 1913

Published May 21, 1913 in the newspaper "Pravda" No. 115

Printed according to the newspaper text