V. I.

Lenin

Here is the text of the telegram from Minister Shingaryov,
mentioned in yesterday’s editorial of our paper, and printed in
today’s
Dyen [1] :

“ On acquainting myself with the decision of the Ranenburg
Committee relating to the grain sowing, I deem it my duty to
declare that an independent solution of the land question in the
absence of a general state law is inadmissible. Arbitrary action
will lead to a national calamity and will jeopardies the cause
of freedom by provoking discord. The lawful solution of the land
question is the business of the Constituent Assembly. At the
present time agricultural conciliation chambers will beset up in
each local area under the rural supply committees for the
purpose of effecting voluntary agreements between the tillers of
the land and the landowners. The question of leaseholds on
vacant lands is also being urgently considered. For the sake of
general order I request that everybody be guided by the
decisions of the Provisional Government and refrain from
establishing self-made laws.’

Can you call it ’democracy’, ’people’s freedom’, when the
peasants, who clearly constitute the overwhelming majority of the population, have no right to adopt and
carry out their own decision, but must wait for a ’voluntary agreement’ between the tillers of the land and the
landowners?

One landowner having two thousand dessiatines of land—and three hundred peasant families
having two thousand dessiatines. That, on the average, is how
things stand in Russia. Three hundred peasants must wait for
the ’voluntary’ consent of one landowner!

Is this right, comrade soldiers?

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Notes:
[1]