The S.R. party solemnly and publicly declared in its main newspaper, *Delo Naroda*, of October 18 and 19, that the new land bill of the Minister of Agriculture constitutes “a major step towards the realisation of the agrarian programme of the party,” and that “the Central Committee of the party urgently proposes that all party organisations develop vigorous agitation in favour of the bill and popularise it among the masses.”

Meanwhile, this bill of Minister S. L. Maslov, a member of the S.R. party, the main parts of which are reprinted in *Delo Naroda*, is a deception of the peasants. The S.R. party has deceived the peasants: it has crawled over from its own land project to the landlord, Cadet, plan of “fair valuation” and preservation of landlord ownership of the land. The S.R. party solemnly and publicly pledged at its congresses of the first (1905) and second (1917) Russian revolutions to support the peasant demand for the confiscation of the landed estates, that is, their transfer to the peasants without compensation. But in the present draft of Mr. S. L. Maslov, not only is landlord ownership of land preserved, but even the payment made by the peasants for the “leased” lands, at a “fair” valuation, goes to the landlords.

This bill of Mr. S. L. Maslov is a complete betrayal of the peasants by the S.R. party, a complete transition of that party to the side of the landlords. All efforts must be strained, every endeavour made, to spread among the peasants as widely as possible an awareness of this truth.

*Delo Naroda* of October 18 printed §§ 25–40 of S. L. Maslov’s draft. Here is the basic and most important part of this draft:

1) Not all the landlords’ lands go into the “temporary rental fund” to be formed.
2) The inclusion of the landlords’ lands into this fund is carried out by the land committees set up under the law of the landlord government of Prince Lvov of April 21, 1917.
3) The rent paid by the peasants for these landlords’ lands is fixed by the land committees “in accordance with net yield” and, after deducting payments, is remitted to the “owner concerned,” i.e., the landlord.

This is a threefold deception of the peasants by the S.R.s, and therefore we must dwell in more detail on each of these three points.

The *Izvestia of the All-Russia Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies*, No. 88, of August 19, printed a “model mandate, compiled on the basis of 242 mandates delivered from localities by delegates to the First All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies in Petrograd in 1917.”

This summary of 242 mandates, compiled by the elected representatives of the local peasants, is the best material for judging what the peasants want. And this consolidated mandate very graphically proves the deception of the peasants by S. L. Maslov’s draft and by the S.R. party.

The peasants demand the abolition of private property in land; the conversion of all privately-owned land, etc., into the property of the whole people without compensation; the conversion of plots of land with highly cultivated farms (orchards, plantations, etc.) into “model plots” and their transfer “to the exclusive use of the state and communes”; the confiscation of “all live and dead agricultural inventory,” etc.

Such are the demands of the peasants, expressed precisely and clearly, on the basis of 242 local mandates given by the peasants themselves.

But the S.R. party, instead of this, having entered into a “coalition” (i.e., an alliance or agreement) with the bourgeoisie (the capitalists) and the landlords, participating in the government of capitalists and landlords, has now drawn up a draft that does not abolish landlord ownership but merely transfers a part of the landlords’ lands to a temporary rental fund!!

Under this draft, orchards, plantations, sugar-beet sowings, and the like cannot be included in the rental fund! Lands necessary “for the satisfaction of the needs of the owner himself, his family, employees and workers, and also for the maintenance of the existing livestock” cannot be included in the rental fund!!

That means that a rich landlord, possessing a sugar-beet or potato factory, oil mills or flour mills, orchards and plantations, hundreds of head of livestock and dozens of employees and workers, retains a large-scale farm, and what is more, a capitalist farm. With what insolence, with what shamelessness the S.R. party has deceived the peasants!

The inclusion of landlords’, or “privately-owned,” land, as the draft calls it, into the rental fund is carried out by the land committees set up under the law of April 21, 1917, of the landlord government of Prince Lvov and Co., that government of Milyukov and Guchkov, imperialists and robbers of the masses of the people, which the workers and soldiers of Petrograd crushed by the movement of April 20–21, i.e., a whole half-year ago.

It is understandable that this law of the landlord government on land committees is by no means a democratic (popular) law. On the contrary, this law contains a whole series of the most outrageous departures from democracy. For example, § XI of this law grants “gubernia land committees the right to suspend decisions of volost and uyezd committees pending final decision by the main land committee.” And the committees, under this landlord law, a fraudulently drawn-up law, are constituted in such a way that the uyezd committee is less democratic than the volost committee, the gubernia committee less democratic than the uyezd committee, and the main committee less democratic than the gubernia committee!

The volost land committee is entirely elected by the population of the volost. The uyezd committee, according to the law, includes, for instance, a justice of the peace and five members from the “provisional executive committees” (pending the organisation of new self-government). The gubernia committee includes not only a member of the circuit court and a justice of the peace, but also a representative of the ministry, appointed by the minister, and so on. And the main land committee includes 27 members “by invitation of the Provisional Government”! It includes, one each, representatives of eleven political parties, the majority (6 out of 11) being given to the Cadets and those standing to the right of them. Well, is this not a piece of trickery on the part of Lvov, Shingaryov (they signed the law) and their cronies? Is this not a mockery of democracy to please the landlords?

Does this not fully confirm the repeated statement of the Bolsheviks that only the Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies, elected by the mass of the working people and removable by them at any time, are capable of correctly expressing the will of the peasantry and putting it into practice?

The S.R.s, who thanks to the unconscious trustfulness of the peasants obtained a majority in the All-Russia Executive Committee of the Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies, have betrayed the peasants, betrayed the peasant Soviets, gone over to the side of the landlords, and reconciled themselves to the law of the landlord Prince Lvov on land committees. This is the second main deception of the peasants by the S.R.s.

And with all the greater urgency must we, the workers’ party, repeat the Bolshevik demand: all power in the countryside to the Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies and the deputies of agricultural workers!

The peasant mandates demand confiscation, the uncompensated expropriation, of the landlords’ lands, confiscation of stud farms, private pedigree stock farms and poultry farms, transfer to state use of highly cultivated plots, confiscation of all live and dead inventory of the landed estates.

Instead of this, the S.R. ministerial draft regales the peasants with the retention of rent, which goes as before into the landlord’s pocket!

“Rent,” says § 33 of the S.R. draft, “shall be paid into the committees, which” (after covering payments to the treasury, etc.) “remit the remainder to the owner concerned.”

That is how the “Socialist-Revolutionaries,” having deceived the peasants with fine promises, have presented the peasantry with a landlord-Cadet land bill!!

This is a complete deception of the peasants.

Absolutely nothing remains here of the peasant demands for confiscation. This is not confiscation of landlord landownership but its consolidation by a “republican” government that guarantees the landlords the retention of both inventory and land for the maintenance of “employees and workers,” and of land “intended” (merely “intended” is enough!!) “by the owner for the sowing of sugar beet and other industrial crops,” and payment for all the rest of the land transferred to the rental fund. The land committees are converted into collectors of rent for the noble gentlemen landowners!!

Landlord property is not abolished, but consolidated by the S.R.s. Their shift to the side of the landlords, their betrayal of the peasants, is now emerging with the utmost clarity.

Do not allow yourselves to be deceived by the cunning Cadets, those faithful friends of the capitalists and the landlords. The Cadets pretend that the S.R. draft is exceptionally “revolutionary,” and all the bourgeois newspapers have raised a clamour against the draft, everywhere articles are placed about the “resistance” of the bourgeois ministers (and, of course, of their direct flunkeys like Kerensky) to such a “terrible” bill. All this is a comedy, a game, the asking price of a haggling merchant who sees the spinelessness of the S.R.s and hopes to strike an even better bargain. In reality S. L. Maslov’s draft is a “landlord” draft, written for agreement with the landlords, to save them.

If *Delo Naroda* in the abovementioned issues calls this draft “an outstanding land bill, beginning (!) the great (!!) reform of the socialisation (!!!) of the land,” that is the sheerest charlatanism. There is not the slightest “socialisation” in the draft (except perhaps “social” assistance to the landlord to receive his rent for certain), there is absolutely nothing “revolutionary-democratic,” there is nothing at all, except the “reforms” of the Irish type{127} common in European bourgeois reformism.

We repeat, this is a draft for saving the landlords, for “pacifying” the incipient peasant uprising by means of trivial concessions that preserve the main thing for the landlords.

The introduction by the S.R.s into the government of such a shameful draft graphically illustrates the unheard-of hypocrisy with which the Bolsheviks are accused of “wrecking” the Constituent Assembly by plans for the transfer of power to the Soviets. “Only 40 days remain until the Constituent Assembly, hypocritically shout the Cadets, capitalists, landlords, Mensheviks and S.R.s! Meanwhile, under cover of the noise, a huge land bill is introduced into the government, cheating the peasants, enslaving them to the landlords, consolidating landlord ownership of the land.”

When it is necessary to support the landlords against the growing peasant uprising, then, even 40 days before the Constituent Assembly, even 30 days before it, it is “possible” to rush through a huge bill.

But when it comes to transferring all power to the Soviets in order to transfer all land to the peasants, for the immediate abolition of landlord ownership of land, for the immediate proposal of a just peace—oh, then the Cadets, capitalists, landlords, Mensheviks and S.R.s raise a concerted howl against the Bolsheviks.

Let the peasants know, therefore, how the S.R. party has deceived them, how it has betrayed them to the landlords.

Let the peasants know that only the workers’ party, only the Bolsheviks, stand firmly and to the end against the capitalists, against the landlords, for the interests of the poorest peasantry and all the working people.

October 20, 1917.

Printed on November 6 (October 24), 1917 in the newspaper *Rabochy Put* No. 44. Signed: N. Lenin

Printed from the newspaper text.