V. I. Lenin

Reply To Questions From Peasants [1]

In reply to numerous questions from peasants, be it known that
all power in the country henceforth belongs wholly to the
Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’
Deputies. The workers’ revolution has won in Petrograd and
Moscow and is winning everywhere else in Russia. The
Workers’ and Peasants’ Government ensures the alliance of the mass of the peasants, the poor peasants, the majority of
the peasants, with the workers against the landowners, against
the capitalists.

Hence the Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies, primarily the uyezd and then the gubernia Soviets, are from now on, pending
the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, vested with full
governmental authority in their localities. Landed proprietorship has been abolished by the Second All-Russia
Congress of Soviets. A decree on land has already been issued by
the present Provisional Workers’ and Peasants’
Government. In conformity with this decree aU landed estates
pass over wholly to the Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies.

The volost land committees must at once take over the administration of all landed estates, instituting the strictest
accounting, maintaining perfect order and safeguarding with
utmost strictness the former property of the landowners, which
henceforth is the property of the whole people and which the
people themselves must therefore protect.

All rulings of the volost land committees issued with the approval of the uyezd Soviets of peasants’
Deputies have the force of law and must be carried out unconditionally and without delay.

The Workers’ and Peasants’ Government appointed by the
Second All-Russia. Congress of Soviets has been named the
Council of People’s Commissars.

The Council of People’s Commissars calls upon the peasants
to take all power into their own hands in their respective
localities. The workers give their full, undivided, all-round
support to the peasants, are getting the production of machines
and implements started, and ask the peasants to help by
delivering grain.

V. Ulyanov (Lenin),
Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars

Petrograd.
November 5, 1917.

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Notes:
[1]
Written in connection with numerous questions submitted by
peasant messengers to the Council of People's Commissars. Each
messenger got a typewritten answer bearing Lenin's personal
signature. It was published in the newspapers Derevenskaya Bednota, Izvestia and others, and was issued as a leaflet
under the title, 'Instruction to Peasants". The answer was an
important document regulating the revolutionary abolition of
landed estates.