V. I.

Lenin

First All-Russian Congress of Peasants’ Deputies

MAY 4–28 (MAY 17–JUNE 10), 1917

1

Draft Resolution on the Agrarian Question

1) All landed estates and privately-owned lands, as well as
crown and church lands, etc., are to be turned over immediately to the people without any compensation.

2) The peasantry must in an organised manner, through their
Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies, immediately take over all the
land in their localities for the purpose of its economic
exploitation, without however in any way prejudicing thereby
the final establishment of land regulations by the
Constituent Assembly or by the All-Russia Council of Soviets,
should the people decide to vest the central power of the
state in such a Council of Soviets.

3) Private property in land must be abolished altogether, i.e.,
all the land shall belong only to the nation as a whole, and
its disposal shall be placed in the hands of the local democratic institutions.

4) The peasants must reject the advice of the capitalists and
landowners and their Provisional Government to come to “an
agreement” with the local landowners on the immediate disposal of the land; the disposal of all the land must be
governed by the organised decision of the majority of the
local peasants, and not by an agreement between the majority,
i.e., the peasants, and the minority, and an insignificant
minority at that, i.e., the landowners.

5) Not only the landowners are fighting and will continue to
fight as hard as they can against the transfer of all landed
estates to the peasants without compensation, but also the
capitalists, who wield great power both because of their
money and because of their influence on the as yet unenlightened masses through the newspapers and the numerous
officials, employees, etc., who are accustomed to the domination of capital. Hence, the transfer of all the landed
estates to the peasantry without compensation cannot be
carried through on a complete and secure basis unless the
confidence of the peasant masses in the capitalists Is destroyed, unless a close alliance is established between the
peasantry and the urban workers, and unless state power is
taken over completely by the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’,
Peasants’, and other Deputies. Only state power wielded by
such Soviets and administering the state not through a police, or a bureaucracy, or a standing army isolated from
the people, but through a nation-wide, universal and armed
militia of the workers and peasants, can guarantee the realisation of the above-mentioned agrarian reforms, which
are being demanded by the entire peasantry.

6) Agricultural labourers and poor peasants, i.e., those who,
because of the lack of sufficient land, cattle, and implements, earn a living partly by working for hire, must
strive their hardest to organise themselves independently
into separate Soviets, or into separate groups within the
general peasants’ Soviets, in order to protect their interests against the rich peasants, who inevitably strive
towards an alliance with the capitalists and landowners.

7) As a result of the war, Russia, like all other belligerent
and many neutral (non-belligerent) countries, is facing an
economic debacle, disaster and famine owing to the shortage
of workers, coal, iron, etc. The only way to save the country
is by the workers’ and peasants’ deputies assuming control
and management of the entire production and distribution of
goods. It is therefore necessary to proceed immediately to
arrange agreements between Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies and
Soviets of Workers’ Deputies on the exchange of grain and
other rural products for implements, footwear, clothing,
etc., without the medium of the capitalists, who must be
removed from the management of the factories. With the same
purpose in view, the peasant committees must be encouraged to
take over the livestock and implements of the landowners,
such livestock and implements to be used in common. Similarly, the conversion of all large landed estates
into model farms must be encouraged, the land to be cultivated collectively with the aid of the best implements
under the ’direction of agricultural experts and in accordance with the decision of the local Soviets of
Agricultural Labourers’ Deputies.

| Written before May 17 (30), 1917 | Published according to the manuscript |
| --- | --- |
| First published in 1917 in the pamphlet Material on the Agrarian Question , Priboi Publishers | |