26 October 1918

The equalization distribution of land proclaimed in the fundamental law on the socialization of land according to consumer-labor norms (Article 12 of the law on socialist land) has not been implemented in the majority of localities of the Soviet Republic. More well-to-do and wealthy peasants continue to possess, as before, larger and more fertile plots of land, from which they obtain not only means sufficient for comfortable existence, but also large surpluses.* Under such conditions, the retention of the former method of taxing rural cultivators in favor of the state through monetary tax on an equal basis for all peasants would mean the further preservation for the wealthy of the possibility to oppress the poor. Therefore, striving toward the complete liberation of the poor from bearing the tax burden, by transferring the entire tax load onto the propertied classes, such that in the countryside middle peasants would be taxed only moderately, while upon the kulaks and wealthy peasants would be placed the main part of state collections, the Council of People's Commissars has decreed:

To levy rural cultivators possessing a surplus of consumption products with a natural tax in favor of the state, in the form of a contribution of a portion of their products of production, on the following bases:

1) The natural tax to be paid by taxpayers from agricultural products is calculated from their surplus as compared with the needs of the cultivator himself, and is determined according to the size* of sown area and according to the quantity of head of livestock.

2) Exempt from tax are cultivators possessing on 1 October such a quantity of desyatinas of already harvested sown area in the current year and such a number of head of livestock as give reserves of products necessary only for their own consumption.

3) The size of sown area and quantity** of livestock exempting the cultivator from taxation, in dependence on the number of members of his family, as well as the taxes from each individual taxpayer are determined according to the quantity of desyatinas of sown area or according to the number of head of livestock possessed by the cultivator, in excess of the norm exempt from taxation, according to the rates indicated in the table appended to the present decree.

4) Upon local Soviet organs carrying out the tax in practice is laid the obligation to attract to taxation also those residing in rural localities citizens who according to the size of land use or livestock ownership, though they might be exempt from tax, but by reason of their well-to-do status or belonging

*In the published text there follows: "Moreover, the state, after four years of the most terrible war, feels an acute shortage of agricultural products, which compels taxation with natural obligations the most propertied section of the laboring peasantry." This amendment was introduced by Left Socialist Revolutionary A. A. Kolegaev at a session of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. —Ed.

**In the published text here and further, where reference is made to "size of sown area," it is added: "area of sown area." —Ed.