V. I.

Lenin

Deafened by liberal catch-phrases, people in our country
are apt to overlook the actual class stand of the liberal party’s real
bosses. In Russkaya Mysl No. 12, Prince Yevgeny Trubetskoi has
splendidly revealed this stand and strikingly shown to what extent liberal
landlords like the Trubetskois, and reactionary landlords like the
Purishkeviches have drawn closer together on all important issues.

Stolypin’s agrarian policy [1] is one such momentous issue. The highborn liberal landlord has
this to say of it:

“ Ever since Stolypin became Premier, the government’s entire concern for the countryside has been prompted largely by two
motives: fear of
Pugachovism, [2] which caused so much trouble in 1905, and the desire to
offset it with a new type of peasant—one who is well-to-do and therefore
cherishes private property, one who will not be susceptible to
revolutionary propaganda....”

By the very use of the word “Pugachovism” our liberal reveals that he
is at one with the Purishkeviches. The only difference is that the
Purishkeviches utter this word ferociously and menacingly, whereas the
Trubetskois pronounce it in the dulcet and sugary Manilov
manner, [3] to the accompaniment of phrases about culture, disgustingly
hypocritical exclamations about the “new peasant communities” and the
“democratisation of the countryside”, and pathetic speeches on things
divine.

Owing to the new agrarian policy, the peasant bourgeoisie is growing
much faster than before. There is no question about that. The peasant
bourgeoisie in Russia cannot help growing whatever the political and
agrarian system may be, because Russia is a capitalist country which has
been completely drawn into the orbit of world capitalism. His

Liberal Highness would have known this had he possessed at least an
elementary knowledge of the “fundamental principles of Marxism”, of which
he speaks with such boundless aplomb and with equally boundless
ignorance. But His Highness exerts every effort to obscure the fundamental
question of what the development of capitalism is like without any
Purishkeviches, and what it is like with their class in complete
power. His Highness goes into ecstasies over the progress of co-operation,
fodder grass cultivation, and “growing prosperity”; but he does not say a
word about the high cost of living, the mass pauperisation of the peasants,
their desperate poverty and starvation, about labour rent, and so
forth. His Highness sees that the “peasants are turning bourgeois”, and
goes into raptures over it, but our liberal landlord turns a blind eye to
the fact that they are becoming wage-labourers under conditions in which
the relations of feudal bondage are preserved.

“ The intelligentsia’s first contact with the broad masses of the peasantry,” he writes, “took place as far back as 1905, but
at that time it bore an altogether different character; it was destructive
rather than constructive. At that time the affiliation was established
solely for the purpose of destroying the old forms of life, and was
therefore superficial. The demagogue intellectual did not imbue the
peasants’ minds and peasant life with his own independent ideas; if
anything, he himself was guided by the instincts of the masses of the
people. He flattered them and adapted his party programme and tactics to
them.”

Familiar Purishkevich-style talk! A little example: if eighty peasant
homesteads of twenty-five dessiatines each are set up on 2,000 dessiatines
of the Trubetskois’ land, that will be “destructive”; but if a score or
so of such homesteads are set up on the land of the pauperised
village-commune peasants, that will be “constructive”. Is that not so,
Your Highness? Don’t you realise that in the first in stance, Russia would
really be “bourgeois-democratic”, and in the second she would remain
Purishkevichian for decades to come?

However, shying away from unpleasant questions, the highborn liberal
assures his readers that the big landowners, who are selling their land,
will “soon, very soon” disappear entirely.

“ If, by its measures, the government does not accelerate
the future revolution excessively, ‘compulsory alienation’ will no longer
be a problem when that revolution does come, as there will be almost
nothing left to alienate.”

According to the latest statistics of the Ministry of the
Interior, [4] 30,000 landlords owned 70,000,000 dessiatines of land in
1905, while a similar area was owned by 10,000,000 peasants. But that does
not concern the highborn liberal in the least! He assures his readers that
the Purishkeviches will disappear very “soon”, because he wishes to
defend the Purishkeviches. The only thing that really interests him is
that:

“ there will be in the countryside enough people interested in private property to counter, not only Pugachov propaganda,
but socialist propaganda in all its forms”.

Thanks for being so candid!

“ What will the result be?” the liberal prince asks. “Will the government, with the aid of the intelligentsia [who are
joining co-operative societies, etc.], re-educate the peasants to become
loyal petty landed proprietors, or , on the contrary, will the
intelligentsia educate them wit h the aid of government loans?”

The prince anticipates neither of these alternatives. But that is
merely a hypocritical turn of speech. Actually, as we have seen, he stands
heart and soul for peasants being re-educated to become “loyal petty
landed proprietors”, and assures us that “the intelligentsia is coming
down to earth”, and that there will be no room for the “demagogic
agrarian programme” of the socialists (which, in the opinion of His
Highness, runs counter to the “fundamental principles of Marxism”. Don’t
laugh, reader!).

That a landlord should entertain such views is not surprising, Neither
is his indignation at the growth of atheism surprising, or his pious
speeches. What is surprising is that there are still foolish people in
Russia who do not understand that while such landlords and such politicians
set the tone in the liberal party, including the Cadet Party, it is
ridiculous to hope that the people’s interests can be really defended
“with the co-operation” of the liberals and the Cadets.