Pages: 171-173

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CORRECTIONS IN THE MANUSCRIPT OF THE ARTICLE "PROLETARIAT AND PEASANTRY"*.
№ 11 "VPERED", 23 (10) MARCH 1905.
[Social Democracy and the revolutionary movement of the peasantry.]
The Proletariat and the Peasantry.
...The urban workers' movement
[receives new gigantic support] acquires a new ally in the revolutionary peasantry. ..
...Deliverance from oppression and poverty does not lie in the transformation of several strata of the peasantry into petty bourgeois, but in the replacement of the entire bourgeois system with a socialist [organization of society].
...And Kautsky continues: "The revolutionary urban movement should [(dürfte)] remain neutral in the question of relations between the peasant and the landlord. It has no grounds to stand between the peasants and the landlords, to defend the latter against the former; its [sympathy, i.e.] sympathy is entirely on the side of the peasantry. But [its task, i.e.] the task of the revolutionary urban movement is not at all to incite [(holzen)] the peasants against the landlords, who in modern Russia do not play at all the role that the French feudal nobility of the "ancien régime" played. Moreover, urban revolutionaries, even if they wanted to, [that] could have very little influence on relations between the landlords and the peasants. These relations will be determined by the landlords and the peasants themselves" (Das machen sie unter einander aus). [in these remarks of Kautsky, along with an extremely correct Social-Democratic formulation of the question, there are inaccuracies or, rather, there is a certain, capable of causing] To correctly understand these remarks of Kautsky, which, being taken out of context, could
* Works. VII. 158–162. Ed.

cause a lot of misunderstandings, [uncertainty, perhaps stemming from insufficient familiarity with the agrarian question in Russia and with the agrarian program of Russian Social Democracy. In order not to exaggerate these inaccuracies] one must
certainly keep in mind also the following remark of [Kautsky]
at the end of [his] article. "A victorious revolution," he says there, "would probably not encounter particular difficulties
[(dürfte es keine fibermässige Ueberwindung kosten)] in using the large latifundia of the worst enemies of the revolution to improve proletarian and peasant living conditions" [(Verhältnisse)].
[We have now presented to the reader all that is essential that Kautsky said on the question of interest to us. Let's see how correct his thoughts are.]
...Judging by his quoted remarks, Kautsky correctly grasped this dual aspect of our task—in contrast not
only to our "Socialist-Revolutionaries", who are entirely mired in vulgar illusions of revolutionary democracy, but
also from many Social Democrats who, like Ryazanov or
Iks, [Novoiskraite Igrek, etc., and other confused individuals, invent]
Were looking for a "simple" solution to the problem, the same for all combinations.... [they]
In their calculations they operate, [usually] in essence, with only two classes: either with landlords and
the "peasant-worker class", or with owners and proletarians. ...
„..To be distrustful of the peasantry, to organize separately from it, to be ready to fight it, insofar as this
peasantry acts as reactionary OR
[even reactionary-democratic *)] anti-proletarian............In relation to such
people—and there are already quite a few of them among us, the Socialists-Revolutionaries belong to their number, and the development of the revolution
[alongside] together with the peasant movement guarantees an increase in their ranks—in relation to such people the Social Democrats must steadfastly defend the point of view of class
struggle against all revolutionary vagueness...we in properly European Russia have an entire stratum (1 1/2–2 million households out of a total of about 10 million households) of well-to-do peasants... This stratum is undoubtedly [deeply] hostile
to serfdom, landlords, bureaucracy, it is capable of becoming
[*) This last concept] the expression strikes one, at first glance, with a strange combination of words. In Russia, at the present time, reactionary democracy is impossible.
Tomorrow it will be as inevitable for us as its appearance in the West was inevitable.]

CORRECTIONS IN THE MANUSCRIPT OF THE ARTICLE “PROLETARIAT AND PEASANTRY” a democrat, but even more certain is its hostility towards the rural proletariat. Any attempt to obscure, circumvent this class hostility in the agrarian program and
tactics is a conscious or unconscious abandonment of the socialist point of view, [this is the crux of the agrarian question in modern Russia]