We believe that the revolution has proven and demonstrated how important it is that the question of land be posed clearly. The emergence of armed insurrection, the second, October Revolution, clearly proves that the land must be transferred into the hands of the peasants. Crime was committed by that government which has been overthrown, and by the conciliationist parties of Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries,{12} who under various pretexts delayed the resolution of the land question and thereby brought the country to ruin and to peasant insurrection. False and cowardly deceit sound in their words about pogroms and anarchy in the villages. Where and when have pogroms and anarchy been provoked by rational measures? If the government had acted rationally and if its measures had met the needs of the peasant poor, would the peasant masses have begun to stir? But all measures of the government, approved by the Avksentiev and Danov Soviets, went against the peasants and forced them into insurrection.

Having provoked an insurrection, it began to cry out about pogroms and anarchy, which it itself had provoked. It wanted to crush it with iron and blood, but it was itself swept away by armed insurrection of revolutionary soldiers, sailors, and workers. The government of the workers' and peasants' revolution must first and foremost resolve the question of land—a question which can calm and satisfy the enormous masses of peasant poor. I shall read to you those articles of the decree which your Soviet government must issue. In one of the articles of this decree is placed an instruction to the land committees, compiled on the basis of 242 instructions from local Soviets of peasant deputies.

Decree on Land

1) The property of landowners in land is abolished immediately without any compensation.

2) The estates of landowners, as well as all lands belonging to the crown, monastic, and church lands, together with all their live and dead inventory, homestead buildings, and all appurtenances, pass into the disposition of volost land committees and district Soviets of peasant deputies, until the convening of the Constituent Assembly.

3) Any damage whatsoever to confiscated property, henceforth belonging to the entire people, is declared a serious crime, punishable by revolutionary court. The district Soviets of peasant deputies take all necessary measures to maintain the strictest order in the confiscation of landowners' estates, to determine the size of plots and which ones precisely are subject to confiscation, to compile an exact inventory of all confiscated property, and to maintain the strictest revolutionary guard over all the economy on land passing to the people, together with all buildings, implements, livestock, supplies of products, and so forth.

4) To serve as guidance for the implementation of great land transformations, until their final decision by the Constituent Assembly, the following peasant instruction should everywhere be applied, compiled on the basis of 242 local peasant instructions by the editorial board of the "News of the All-Russian Soviet of Peasant Deputies"{13} and published in issue 88 of these "News" (Petrograd, No. 88, August 19, 1917).

PEASANT INSTRUCTION ON LAND

"The question of land, in all its scope, can be resolved only by an all-people's Constituent Assembly.

The most just resolution of the land question should be as follows:

1) The right of private property in land is abolished forever; land cannot be sold, bought, leased, mortgaged, or alienated in any other way whatsoever.

All land: state, crown, cabinet, monastic, church, possessional, entailed, privately-owned, communal, and peasant, and so forth, is alienated without compensation, converted into universal national property, and passes into the use of all those laboring upon it.

Those suffering from the property upheaval are recognized only the right to public support for such time as is necessary to adapt to new conditions of existence.

2) All subterranean resources: ore, oil, coal, salt, and so forth, as well as forests and waters of general state significance, pass into the exclusive use of the state. All small rivers, lakes, forests, and so forth, pass into the use of communes, provided that they are administered by local organs of self-government.

3) Land plots with highly cultivated farms: gardens, plantations, nurseries, breeding grounds, greenhouses, and so forth, are not subject to division, but are converted into demonstration farms and transferred into the exclusive use of the state or communes, depending on their size and significance.

Homestead, urban, and rural land, with domestic gardens and vegetable patches, remains in the use of present owners, whereby the size of the plots themselves and the height of the tax for their use are determined by legislative procedure.

4) Horse-breeding establishments, state and private stud farms for livestock and poultry, and so forth, are confiscated, converted into universal national property, and pass either into the exclusive use of the state or communes, depending on their size and significance.

The question of compensation is subject to examination by the Constituent Assembly.

5) All economic inventory of confiscated lands, live and dead, passes into the exclusive use of the state or communes, depending on their size and significance, without compensation.

Confiscation of inventory does not affect landless peasants.

6) The right to use land is obtained by all citizens (without distinction of sex) of the Russian state desiring to work it by their own labor, with the help of their family, or in association, and only so long as they are capable of working it. Hired labor is not permitted.

In case of temporary incapacity of any member of the rural commune for a period of 2 years, the rural commune is obligated, until the restoration of his ability to work during this period, to render him assistance through public cultivation of the land.

Agriculturalists, owing to old age or invalidity, who have forever lost the possibility of personally tilling the land, lose the right to its use, but in exchange receive from the state a pension allowance.

7) Land use should be equalizing, that is, land is distributed among the laborers according to local conditions, by labor or consumer norm.

The forms of land use should be completely free—individual homestead, separate household, communal, cooperative, as decided in individual villages and settlements.

8) All land, upon its alienation, enters into a general national land fund. The distribution of it among the laborers is managed by local and central organs of self-government, beginning with democratically organized classless rural and urban communes and extending to central regional institutions.

The land fund is subject to periodic redistributions depending on the increase of population and the raising of productivity and culture of agriculture.

Upon change of boundaries of allotments, the original nucleus of the allotment should remain inviolable.

Land vacated by members withdrawing passes back into the land fund, whereby preferential right to obtain the plots of withdrawing members passes to their nearest relatives and persons indicated by the withdrawing members.

The value invested in land of fertilization and land improvement (fundamental improvements), insofar as they are not utilized upon the return of the allotment to the land fund, should be compensated.

If in individual localities the available land fund proves insufficient to satisfy all the local population, then the excess population is subject to resettlement.

The organization of resettlement, as well as expenses for resettlement and provision of inventory and so forth, should be undertaken by the state.

Resettlement is carried out in the following order: landless peasants desiring it, then dissolute members of the commune, deserters, and so forth, and finally, by lot or by agreement."

Everything contained in this instruction, as an expression of the unconditional will of the overwhelming majority of conscious peasants throughout all Russia, is declared temporary law, which until the convening of the Constituent Assembly is implemented in practice as speedily as possible, and in certain respects with such necessary gradualism as should be determined by district Soviets of peasant deputies.

5) The lands of ordinary peasants and ordinary Cossacks are not confiscated.

Here voices are raised that the decree and instruction itself was compiled by Socialist-Revolutionaries. So be it. Does it matter at all who compiled it? But as a democratic government, we cannot ignore the decisions of the people's masses below, even if we disagreed with them. In the fire of life, applying it in practice, implementing it locally, the peasants themselves will understand where the truth lies. And even if the peasants should go further and follow the Socialist-Revolutionaries, and even if they give that party a majority in the Constituent Assembly, then even there we shall say: so be it. Life is the best teacher, and it will show who is right, and let the peasants from one end and we from the other end resolve this question. Life will force us to draw closer in the common current of revolutionary creation, in the working out of new state forms. We must follow life, we must grant complete freedom of creation to the popular masses. The old government, overthrown by armed insurrection, wished to resolve the land question with the help of the unchanged old tsarist bureaucracy. But instead of resolving the question, the bureaucracy only fought against the peasants. The peasants have learned something during our eight-month revolution; they themselves want to decide all questions of land. Therefore we speak out against any amendments to this draft law, we do not want detailed specifications, because we are writing a decree, not a program of action. Russia is vast, and local conditions in it are various; we believe that the peasantry itself will be able better than we to resolve the question correctly, as it should be resolved. Whether it is in our spirit or in the spirit of the Socialist-Revolutionary program—this is not the point. The point is that the peasantry should receive firm assurance that there are no more landowners in the villages, that the peasants themselves should decide all questions, that they themselves should organize their lives. (Thunderous applause.)