On The Draft Of The Eleventh Party Congress

Resolution On Work In The Countryside [1]

Letter To Comrade Osinsky

April 1, 1922

Comrade Osinsky, Alter thinking over the conversation I had with you about the work of the
Agricultural Section of the Party Congress, I have arrived at the conclusion
that the most urgent thing at the present time is:

not to tie our (neither the Party's nor the Soviet Government's) hands by
any orders, directives or rules until we have collected sufficient facts
about economic life in the localities and until we have sufficiently studied
the actual conditions and require-ments of present-day peasant farming; under no circumstances to permit what would be most dangerous and harmful
at the present time, and what the local authorities may easily slip
into-superfluous, clumsy and hasty regulation that has not been tested by
experience.

The recent Congress of Soviets laid down the line. The task of the Party
Congress, in my opinion, is to discuss in the Agricultural Section the
application of this line in the light of practical experience in the localities; to instruct the Central Committee of the R.C.P. and the
People's Commissariat of Agriculture (the Soviet government bodies in
general) more thoroughly to collect detailed facts that can be used as
verification material; to order, or rather, to give directions to the
Communist group at the next session of the All-Russia Central Executive
Committee to the effect that in working out the details of the decision
of the Congress of Soviets, i.e., in converting this decision into new and
more detailed laws, to be as cautious as pos-sible so as not to hinder the
successful development of agricultural production by clumsy
interference.

What we must fear most of all, I think, is clumsy inter-ference; for we
have not yet made a thorough study of the actual requirements of
local agricultural life and the actual abilities of the machinery
of local administration (the abil-ity not to do evil in the name of doing
good).

Hence, it seems to me that it is desirable that something
approximating the following be included in the resolution of the
Party Congress based on the proceedings of the Agri-cultural Section:

1) The Party Congress, having heard the report of the proceedings of the
Agricultural Section, accepts it as information; it finds that the material
so far collected on the experience of the localities is inade-quate and that
the primary task of the Party and of Communist groups in all Soviet bodies
is to collect carefully and make a close study of local practical
experience.

2) The Congress regards the dissolution (or hasty reorganisation?) of the
agricultural co-operative organ-isations as a mistake, and recommends the
greatest caution in this matter.

3) On the question of the conditions on which hired labour may be
employed on the farms, and of the terms on which land may be rented, the
Party Congress recommends all officials engaged in this field of work not to
restrict either of these transactions by unnec-essary formalities, but to
confine themselves to putting into effect the decisions of the recent
Congress of Soviets and to studying the practical measures it would be
expedient to adopt to curb all tendencies to go to extremes and harmful
excesses in these matters.

4) The Congress considers that the primary and main object of all Party
activities among the peasantry is to render practical assistance in
immediately extending the area planted to crops, bringing fresh lands under
the plough, increasing the output of farm produce and in alleviating the
hardships of the peasantry. All efforts and resources must be devoted to
assisting and encouraging the poor section of the peasantry, and every
effort must be made to devise measures that in practice will prove suitable
for this purpose oven under the present difficult conditions.

With communist greetings, Lenin

Endnotes

[1]

The suggestions made in Lenin's letter were used as the basis for
the Eleventh Party Congress resolution “On Work in the Countryside”. The Congress instructed the Central Committee to set up
a permanent commission at the C.C. to direct work in the country-side.