V. I. Lenin

Foreword to the Pamphlet, How the Socialist
Revolutionaries Cheated
The People, and What the New
Bolshevik Government
Has Given the People

The peasants of Russia are now faced with the prospect of taking
their country’s destiny into their own hands.

The victory of the workers’ revolution in the two leading
Cities and in most of the rest of Russia has given the peasants
the possibility of taking the land arrangements into their own hands. Not all peasants have as yet realised
that their Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies are the true, authentic, supreme state power, but they soon
will.

When they do realise it, their alliance with the workers, the
alliance of the bulk of the peasants—the poor, working peasants—will be consolidated. This alliance, both
in the Soviets and the Constituent Assembly, and not the
alliance of the peasants and the capitalists, is the only one
really capable of ensuring the working people’s interests.

It will surely very soon be brought home to the peasants that if
they are to be rid of the horrors of war and the oppression of
the landowners and capitalists, they must ally themselves with
the working people of the towns, above all the factory workers,
and not with the rich.

If the peasants are to see this soon, they must, among other
things, make a closer and more amply documented comparison of
the promises and draft laws of the Socialist-Revolutionaries,
and the Decree on Land issued by the new, workers’ and peasants’ government.

Such a comparison is made in this pamphlet. It gives the
documents, which is the first thing anyone needs if he is going to use his head. The main document relating to the
Socialist-Revolutionaries is their Minister Maslov’s draft
land law. I take it in full from Dyelo Naroda (Chernov’s newspaper). I am also republishing in full my own article on the subject from
Robochy Put.

The Decree on Land issued by the workers’ and peasants’ government is also given in
full.

Peasant comrades, seek the truth about the various parties, and
you shall find it! Collect and compare the draft land laws
proposed by the various parties.

You must read carefully the draft land law put forward by the
Socialist-Revolutionary minister, and the Decree on Land issued
by the present Bolshevik government, which received its powers
from the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets. We have no doubt
at all as to what the peasants’ final conclusion will be.

N. Lenin

Petrograd, November 9, 1917