V. I.

Lenin

The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution (Draft Platform for the Proletarian Party)

THE AGRARIAN AND NATIONAL PROGRAMMES

13. At the present moment we cannot say for certain whether a
mighty agrarian revolution will develop in the Russian countryside in the near future. We cannot say exactly how
profound the class cleavage is among the peasants, which has
undoubtedly grown more profound of late as a division into
agricultural labourers, wage-workers and poor peasants (“semi-proletarians”), on the one hand, and wealthy and
middle peasants (capitalists and petty capitalists), on the
other. Such questions will be, and can be, decided only by
experience.

Being the party of the proletariat, however, we are unquestionably in duty bound not only immediately to advance an
agrarian (land) programme but also to advocate practical
measures which can be immediately realised in the interests of the peasant agrarian revolution in Russia.

We must demand the nationalisation of all the land, i.e., that all the land in the state should become the property
of the central state power. This power must fix the size, etc.,
of the resettlement land fund, pass legislation for the
conservation of forests, for land improvement, etc., and
absolutely prohibit any middlemen to interpose themselves
between the owner of the land, i.e., the state, and the tenant,
i.e., the tiller (prohibit all subletting of land). However, the
disposal of the land, the determination of the local regulations governing ownership and tenure of land, must in
no case be placed in the hands of bureaucrats and officials, but
wholly and exclusively in the hands of the regional and local
Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies.

In order to improve grain production techniques and increase
output, and in order to develop rational cultivation on a large
scale under public control, we must strive within the peasants’
committees to secure the transformation of every confiscated
landed estate into a large model farm controlled by the
Soviet of Agricultural Labourers’ Deputies.

In order to counteract the petty-bourgeois phrase-mongering and
the policy prevailing among the Socialist-Revolutionaries,
particularly the idle talk about “subsistence” standards or
“labour” standards, “socialisation of the land”, etc., the party
of the proletariat must make it clear that small-scale farming
under commodity production cannot save mankind from poverty and
oppression.

Without necessarily splitting the Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies
at once, the party of the proletariat must explain the need for
organising separate Soviets of Agricultural Labourers’ Deputies
and separate Soviets of deputies from the poor (semi-proletarian) peasants, or, at least, for holding regular
separate conferences of deputies of this class status in
the shape of separate groups or parties within the general
Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies. Otherwise all the honeyed
petty-bourgeois talk of the
Narodniks [1] regarding the peasants in general will serve as a shield for the deception of the
propertyless mass by the wealthy peasants, who are merely a
variety of capitalists.

To counteract the bourgeois-liberal or purely bureaucratic
sermons preached by many Socialist-Revolutionaries and Soviets
of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, who advise the peasants not
to seize the landed estates and not to start the agrarian reform
pending the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, the party
of the proletariat must urge the peasants to carry out the
agrarian reform at once on their own, and to confiscate the
landed estates immediately, upon the decisions of the peasants’
deputies in the localities.

At the same time, it is most important to insist on the
necessity of increasing food production for the soldiers
at the front and for the towns, and on the absolute inadmissibility of causing any damage or injury to livestock,
implements, machinery, buildings, etc.

14. As regards the national question, the proletarian party
first of all must advocate the proclamation and immediate
realisation of complete freedom of secession from Russia for
all the nations and peoples who were oppressed by tsarism,
or who were forcibly joined to, or forcibly kept within the
boundaries of, the state, i.e., annexed.

All statements, declarations and manifestos concerning renunciation of annexations that are not accompanied by the
realisation of the right of secession in practice, are nothing
but bourgeois deception of the people, or else pious petty-bourgeois wishes.

The proletarian party strives to create as large a state as
possible, for this is to the advantage of the working people; it
strives to draw nations closer together, and bring about their further fusion; but it desires to
achieve this aim not by violence, but exclusively through a free
fraternal union of the workers and the working people of all
nations.

The more democratic the Russian republic, and the more successfully it organises itself into a Republic of Soviets of
Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies, the more powerful will be the
force of voluntary attraction to such a republic on the
part of the working people of all nations.

Complete freedom of secession, the broadest local (and national)
autonomy, and elaborate guarantees of the rights of national
minorities—this is the programme of the revolutionary proletariat.

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Notes:
[1]
The term Narodniks is here used to denote the three petty-bourgeois parties of the Narodnik trend, namely, the Trudoviks ,
the Socialist-Revolutionaries, and the Popular Socialists.