V. I. Lenin

Thatis not our expression. It was used by the newspaper
Dyelo Naroda {2} No. 170 of October 3, quoting the words of “a
provincial worker” who described what had happened in Russia in the summer
and autumn of 1917. Dyelo Naroda is known to be the chief official
organ of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. Former Minister Chernov is on
its Editorial Board.

Theadmission of such a paper is especially valuable. Here it is:

“Thelandowners have hit it off with the Cadets, according to a provincial worker. In plainer language, this means that the
landowners have found sympathy and support among some elements of the
government in the centre and in the localities, that they have recovered
from the first shock and have started to organise.... Attacks on the land
committees have started and have been growing from day to day, first in the
form of a cornucopia of complaints and wails about ‘robberies’, ‘arbitrary
acts’, and ‘pogroms’.... The complaints were followed by restrictive
circulars from above and judicial prosecution of the land committees, and
in the localities close to the front, also by interference from the
military authorities in the form of orders issued by General Kornilov. Even
here, in Petrograd, the Ministry of Justice has also threatened to
institute criminal proceedings against the Chief Land Committee.

“Thecancellation of pre-revolutionary leasehold contracts is the most frequent pretext for the commission for trial and the
filing of civil suits. The landowners and all those who are with them have
been saying in one voice: the law on contracts has not been rescinded,
which means that all the contracts are still valid, and ‘no committees or
private persons’ have the right to cancel them.... So the ‘unwary’
committees are being massively struck down by the old justice for
cancelling the contracts and reducing the leasehold prices. The fact is,
however, that such reductions are absolutely inevitable and hardly any
contract has remained intact anywhere.”

(Thepaper goes on to give the evidence of a “most moderate Professor
Kablukov” who says that the short-term peasant tenant is sometimes
“ worse off than the serf ...”)

“Inthese circumstances, cancellation of the shackling leasehold contracts, concluded before the revolution, far from being a
crime, was a direct duty of the organs of power.... The effort to keep a
section of the peasant tenants ‘worse off than the serfs’ at any price was
a downright provocation to riot, a provocation which was the more criminal
in that it was carried out exclusively in the interests of the class of
feudal-minded landowners, and at a time when the republic and the whole
people are suffering the greatest calamities.... It is no accident, after
all, that pogroms have broken out and the ‘nests’ of the gentry are in
flames precisely in Tambov Gubernia, where the number of committees put on
trial is great

Thatis what is said in the newspaper Dyelo Naroda , the
official organ of the ministerial party of S.R.s.

Theselines should be reprinted everywhere, issued as leaflets, and
circulated in millions of copies among the peasants, because they contain
proof, given by the S.R.s (Socialist-Revolutionaries) themselves and quoted
by V. Chernov’s own paper, proof that the S.R.s have betrayed the
peasants to the landowners, that the S.R. Party has betrayed the
peasantry, and that if it has not also “hit it off” with the
landowners, it has at any rate surrendered to them.

Thepeople must be given the chance to read and reread these
lines. Every class-conscious peasant, soldier and worker must give thought
to the meaning of these admissions.

Sevenmonths of the revolution have passed. Countless times the people
have expressed their confidence in the S.R.s, have given them majorities at
elections, and said to the S.R. Party: lead on, we entrust you with the
leadership! Since March 1917, the S.R. Party in the Soviets of Workers’,
Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies has been operating in a bloc (alliance)
with the Mensheviks , and has had a majority for months
and months! Since May 6, members of the Party of S.R.s and Mensheviks have
been and still are ministers and deputy ministers together with the “despicable Cadets”, alongside the
“despicable Cadets”, in alliance with the “despicable
Cadets”!!

Dyelo Naroda has itself admitted the results of this coalition
(alliance, agreement) with the despicable Cadets and the landowners .

Sevenmonths of the revolution, seven months of the democratic
republic, seven months of S.R. and Menshevik domination in the Soviets have
resulted in a “vast” number of members of the land committees put on trial—trial under the old justice , by the old courts, by
the tsarist-landowner courts; they have resulted in peasant
revolts in Tambov and other gubernias!

Thatis the result of the peasants’ trusting the S.R. Party. Meanwhile,
the new draft land bill of the S.R. Minister S. L. Maslov shows again and
again how the S.R.s have betrayed the peasants (see article by this author:
“Socialist-Revolutionary Party Cheats the Peasants Once
Again” {1}

).

---
Notes:
{1}
See present edition, Vol. 26, pp. 228–33.— Ed .

{2}
Dyelo Naroda (The People’s Cause)—a daily, the organ of the
S.R. Party, published in Petrograd from March 1917 to July 1918, repeatedly
under different names. It took a defencist and conciliatory stand, and
supported the bourgeois Provisional Government. Its publication was resumed
in Samara in October 1918 (four issues) and in Moscow in March 1919 (ten
issues). The paper was closed down for its counter-revolutionary activity.

p. 448