As already pointed out, it is considerations of this kind that occupy a disproportionately large place in our Party discussion on the agrarian programme. Our task is to examine these considerations as systematically and briefly as possible and to show the relation between the various political measures (and points of view) and the economic basis of the agrarian revolution.

    In my Report on the Stockholm Congress I dealt with this argument, citing the debate from memory. Now, we have before us the authentic text of the Minutes.

    "The key to my position," exclaimed Plekhanov at the Stockholm Congress, "is that I draw attention to the possi-

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bility of restoration" (p. 115). Let us examine this key a little more closely. Here is the first reference to it in Plekhanov's first speech:

    "Lenin says, 'we shall make nationalisation harmless', but to make nationalisation harmless we must find a guarantee against restoration; and there is not, nor can there be, any such guarantee. Recall the history of France; recall the history of England; in each of these countries, the wide sweep of the revolution was followed by restoration. The same may happen in our country; and our programme must be such that in the event of its application, the harm that may be caused by restoration may be reduced to a minimum. Our programme must eliminate the economic basis of tsarism; but nationalisation of the land effected during the revolutionary period does not eliminate that basis. Therefore, I consider that the demand for nationalisation is an anti-revolutionary demand" (p. 44). What the "economic basis of tsarism" is, Plekhanov tells in the same speech: "The situation in our country was such that the land, together with its cultivators, was held in servitude by the state, and on the basis of that servitude Russian despotism developed. To overthrow despotism, it is necessary to do away with its economic basis. Therefore, I am opposed to nationalisation at present" (p. 44).

    First of all, let us examine the logic of this argument about restoration. First: "there is not, nor can there be, any guarantee against restoration!" Second: "the harm that may be caused by restoration must be reduced to a minimum". That is to say, we must invent a guarantee against restoration, although there cannot be any such guarantee! And on the very next page, 45 (in the same speech), Plekhanov finally invents a guarantee: "In the event of restoration," he plainly says, "it [municipalisation] will not surrender the land [listen!] to the political representatives of the old order." Thus, although "there cannot be" any such guarantee, a guarantee against restoration has been found. A very clever conjuring trick, and the Menshevik press is filled with rapture over the conjurer's skill.

    When Plekhanov speaks he is brilliant and witty, he crackles, twirls, and sparkles like a Catherine-wheel. The

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trouble starts when the speech is taken down verbatim and later subjected to a logical examination.

    What is restoration? It is the reversion of state power to the political representatives of the old order. Can there be any guarantee against such a restoration? No, there cannot. Therefore, we invent such a guarantee: municipalisation, which "will not surrender the land". . . . But we ask: what obstacles does municipalisation raise to the "surrender of the land"? The only obstacle is the law passed by the revolutionary parliament declaring such and such lands (former landlord estates, etc.) to be the property of the Regional Diets. But what is a law? The expression of the will of the classes which have emerged victorious and hold the power of the state.

    Can you see now why such a law "will not surrender the land" to "the representatives of the old order" when the latter will have recaptured state power?

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the political sphere, a democratic republic represents a more profound chahge than democratic local self-government; the former presupposes (and calls forth) greater revolutionary energy, intelligence, and organisation on the part of the large masses of the people; it creates traditions which it will be far more difficult to eradicate. That is why, for instance, present-day Social-Democrats attach so much value to the great fruits of the French Revolution in spite of all the restorations that have taken place, and in this they differ from the Cadets (and from Cadet-minded Social-Democrats?) who prefer democratic Zemstvos under a monarchy as a "guarantee against restoration".

    In the economic sphere, nationalisation in a bourgeois agrarian revolution is more far-reaching than anything else, because it breaks up all the medieval forms of landownership. At the present time the peasant farms his own strip of allotment land, a strip of rented allotment land, a strip of rented landlord's land, and so on. Nationalisation makes it possible to tear down all the fences of landownership to the utmost degree, and to "clear" all the land for the new system of economy suitable to the requirements of capitalism. Of course, even such a clearing affords no guarantee against a return to the old order; to promise the people such a "guarantee against restoration" would be a swindle. But such a clearing of the old system of landownership will enable the new system of economy to become so firmly rooted that a return to the old forms of landownership would be extremely difficult, because no power on earth can arrest the development of capitalism. Under municipalisation, however, a return to the old form of landownership is easier, because municipalisation perpetuates the "pale of settlement", the boundary that separates medieval landownership from the new, municipalised form. After nationalisation, restoration will have to break up millions of new, capitalist farms in order to restore the old system of landownership. After municipalisation, restoration will not have to break up any farms or to set up any new land boundaries; all it will have to do will be literally to sign a paper transferring the lands owned by the municipality X to the noble landlords Y, Z, etc., or to hand over to the landlords the rent from the "municipalised" lands.

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    We must now pass from Plekhanov's logical error on the question of restoration, from the confusion of political concepts, to the economic essence of restoration. The Minutes of the Stockholm Congress fully confirm the statement made in my Report that Plekhanov impermissibly confuses the restoration which took place in France on the basis of capitalism with the restoration of "our old, semi-Asiatic order". (Minutes of the Stockhholm Congress, p. 116.) Therefore, there is no need for me to add anything to what I have already said on this question in the Report. I shall only deal with the "elimination of the economic basis of despotism". The following is the most important passage in Plekhanov's speech pertaining to this:

    "It is true that the restoration [in France] did not restore the survivals of feudalism; but the equivalent of these survivals in our own country is our old system of feudal attachment of both land and cultivator to the state, our old peculiar nationalisation of the land. It will be all the more easy for our restoration to return to that [sic! ] nationalisation because you yourselves demand the nationalisation of the land, because you leave that legacy of our old semi-Asiatic order intact" (p. 116).

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tionalisation" and skipped the two forms of that system of landownership: allotments and landlordism. As a result of this juggling with words the real historical question as to what forms of medieval landownership are abolished by one or another agrarian measure is distorted. Plekhanov's fireworks display was very crude after all.

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bourgeois evolution of the Prussian, Junker type, or a rapid, free evolution of the American type is possible in Russia now. Anything else is an illusion.

    The second reason for the "restoration muddle" in the heads of some of our comrades was the uncertain situation in the spring of 1906. The peasantry, as a mass, had not yet definitely shown itself. It was still possible to assume that the peasant movement and the Peasant Union were not the final expressions of the real aspirations of the overwhelming majority of the peasantry. The autocratic bureaucracy and Witte had not yet finally given up hope that "the muzhik will help us out" (a classic phrase used by Witte's organ Russkoye Gosudarstvo in the spring of 1906), i.e., that the peasants would go to the Right. Hence the strong representation allowed to the peasantry under the Law of December 11, 1905. Even at that time many Social-Democrats still thought the autocracy capable of playing some trick with the peasants' idea: "Better all the land be the tsar's than the gentry's". But the two Dumas, the Law of June 3, 1907, and Stolypin's agrarian legislation were enough to open everybody's eyes. To save what it could, the autocracy had to introduce the policy of forcibly breaking up the village communes in favour of private ownership of land, i.e., to base the counter-revolution, not on the peasants' vague talk about nationalisation (the land belongs to the "commune", and so on), but on the only possible economic basis upon which the power of the landlords could be retained, i.e., capitalist evolution on the Prussian model.

    The situation has now become quite clear, and it is high time to put away forever the vague fear of "Asiatic" restoration roused by the peasant movement against the private ownership of land.*

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    . . . "In the shape of local self-government bodies which will possess the land," said Plekhanov at Stockholm, "it [municipalisation] will create a bulwark against reaction. And a very powerful bulwark it will be. Take our Cossacks for example" (p. 45). Well, we shall "take our Cossacks" and see what the reference to them is worth. But first of all, let us examine the general grounds for this opinion that local self-government is capable of being a bulwark against reaction. That view has been propounded by our municipalisers on innumerab]e occasions, and it will be sufficient to quote a passage from John's speech to supplement Plekhanov's formula. "What is the difference between nationalisation and municipalisation of the land if we admit that both are feasible and equally bound up with the democratisation of the political system? The difference is that municipalisation is better able to consolidate the gains of the revolution, the democratic system, and will serve as the basis for its further development, whereas nationalisation will merely consolidate the power of the state" (p. 112).

    The Mensheviks actually deny the possibility of guarantees against restoration, and in the very same breath produce "guarantees" and "bulwarks" like conjurers doing a trick in front of an audience. Just think a little, gentlemen! How can local self-government be a bulwark against reaction, or consolidate the gains of the revolution? There can be only one bulwark against reaction and one means of consolidating the gains of the revolution, namely, the class-consciousness and organisation of the masses of the proletariat and the peasantry. And in a capitalist state which is centralised, not by the arbitrary will of the bureaucracy, but by the inexorable demands of economic development, that organisation must find expression in a single force welded together throughout the state. Without a centralised peasant movement, without a centralised nation-wide political struggle of the peasantry led by a centralised proletariat, there can be no serious "revolutionary gains" worthy of "consolidation"; there can be no "bulwark against reaction".

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    Local self-government that is at all really democratic is impossible unless landlord rule is completely overthrown and landlordism is abolished. While admitting this in words, the Mensheviks, with amazing light-mindedness, refuse to consider what it implies in deeds. In deeds, it cannot be attained unless the revolutionary classes conquer political power throughout the state; and one would have thought that two years of revolution would have taught even the most obdurate "man in the muffler" that these classes in Russia can only be the proletariat and the peasantry. To be victorious, the "peasant agrarian revolution" of which you gentlemen speak must, as such, as a peasant revolution, become the central authority throughout the state.

    The democratic self-governing bodies can be only particles of such a central authority of the democratic peasantry. Only by combating the local and regional disunity of the peasantry, only by advocating, preparing, and organising a nation-wide, all-Russian, centralised movement, can real service be rendered to the cause of "peasant agrarian revolution", and not to the encouragement of parochial backwardness and local provincial stupefaction of the peasantry. It is precisely this stupefaction that you, Mr. Plekhanov and Mr. John, are serving when you advocate the preposterous and arch-reactionary idea that local self-government can become a "bulwark against reaction", or that it can "consolidate the gains of the revolution". For the experience of the two years of the Russian revolution has plainly demonstrated that it was precisely this local and regional disunity of the peasant movement (the soldiers! movement is part of the peasant movement) that was most of all responsible for the defeat.

    To present a programme of a "peasant agrarian revolution and associate it only with the democratisation of local self-government and not of the central government, to hold the former up as a genuine "bulwark" and "consolidation", is in reality nothing but a Cadet deal with reaction.* The

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Cadets lay stress on local "democratic" self-government because they do not want, or dare, to touch upon more important questions. The Mensheviks did not realise what a big word they uttered when they admitted that the "peasant agrarian revolution" is the task of the day, and in their polltical commentary to this agrarian programme they displayed the acme of provincial narrow-mindedness.

    Here is a sample of John's reasoning, if you please:

    "Comrade Lenin is afraid that the reaction will wrest the confiscated lands from the local self-government bodies; if that can be said of the lands which may pass into the hands of the state, it cannot possibly be said of municipalised lands. Even the autocratic Russian Government could not take away the land from the local government bodies of Armenia, as that called forth strong resistance on the part of the population" (p. 113).

    Superb, is it not? The whole history of the autocracy is one of wholesale grabbing of local, regional, and national lands; and our wiseacres try to reassure the people who are becoming stupefied in their provincial isolation by arguing that "even the autocracy" did not take away the land from the Armenian churches, although it had begun to do so, and was in fact prevented from doing so only by the all-Russian revolution. . . . In the centre autocracy, and in the provinces "Armenian lands" which "it dares not take away. . . . How has so much philistine stupidity penetrated our Social-Democratic movement?

    And here are Plekhanov's Cossacks:

    "Take our Cossacks. They behave like downright reactionaries; yet if the [autocratic] government dared to lay hands on their land, they would rise against it to a man. Consequently, the merit of municipaiisation lies precisely in that it will prove of use even in the event of restoration (p. 45).

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    "Consequently", indeed! If the autocracy rose against the defenders of the autocracy, then the defenders af the autocracy would rise against the autocracy. What profundity! Cossack landownership, however, is of use not only in the event of restoration, but also as a means of upholding what must be overthrown before it can be restored. Speaking in opposition to Plekhanov, Schmidt called attention to this interesting aspect of municipalisation. He said:

    "Let me remind you that the autocracy had granted certain privileges to the Cossacks a month ago. Consequently, it is not afraid of municipalisation, for the Cossacks' lands even now are managed in a manner which greatly resembles municipalisation. . . . It [municipalisation] is going to play a counter-revolutiollary role" (pp. 123-24).

    Plekhanov became so excited over that speech that he interrupted the speaker (on quite an unimportant point, to ask him whether he was speaking about the Oreuburg Cossacks) and tried to upset the standing orders by demanding the floor out of his turn to make a statement. Subsequently he submitted the following written statement:

    "Comrade Schmidt misquoted my reference to the Cossacks. I made no reference to the Orenburg Cossacks at all. I said: look at the Cossacks they are behaving like arch-reactionaries: nevertheless, if the government tried to lay hands on their land, they would rise against it to a man. And so would, more or less, all the regional bodies to whom the confiscated landlords' land would be transferred by the revolution, if any such attempt were made. And such behaviour on their part would be one of the guarantees against reaction in the event of restoration" (p. 127).

    It is a brilliant plan, of course, to overthrow the autocracy without touching the autocracy: to take certain regions away from it and leave it to regain them if it can! It is almost as brilliant as the idea of expropriating capitalism through the savings-banks. But that is not the point just now. The point is that regional municipalisation, which "should" play a wonderful role after the victorious revolution, is now playing a counter-revolutionary role. And that is the point that Plekhanov evaded!

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    It is the central state authority that the municipalisers dislike above all else. Before we proceed to examine their arguments, we must first ascertain what nationalisation means from the political and legal standpoint (its economic content we have ascertained above).

    Nationalisation is the transfer of all the land to the ownership of the state. State ownership means that the state is entitled to draw the rent from the land and to lay down general rules governing the possession and use of the land for the whole country. Under nationalisation such general rules certainly include prohibition of any sort of intermediary, i.e., the prohibition of sub-letting, or the transfer of land to anyone except the direct tiller, and so on. Furthermore, if the state in question is really democratic (not in the Menshevik sense à la Novosedsky), its ownership of the land does not at all preclude, but, on the contrary, requires that the land be placed at the disposal of the local and regional self-governing bodies within the limits of the laws of the country. As I have already pointed out in my pamphlet Revision, etc.,* our minimum programme directly demands this when it calls for the self-determination of nationalities, for wide regionaI self-government, and so on. Hence the detailed regulations, corresponding to local differences, the practical allotment, or distribution of land among individuals, associations, etc. -- all this inevitably passes into the hands of the local organs of the state, i.e., to the local self-governing bodies.

    Any misunderstandings on this score, if they could arise, would be due either to a failure to understand the difference between the concepts of ownership, possession, disposal and use, or to demagogical flirting with provincialism and federalism.** The basis of the difference between

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municipalisation and nationalisation is not in the apportionment of rights as between the central and provincial authorities, and still less in the "bureaucracy" of the central authority -- only utter ignoramuses can think and talk like that -- the essential difference is that under municipalisation, private ownership is retained for one category of land, whereas under nationalisation it is completely abolished. The essential difference lies in the "agrarian bimetallism", which is implied in the first programme, and eliminated in the second.

    If, however, you approach the present programme from the standpoint of possible arbitrary action by the central authority, etc. (a standpoint which the vulgar advocates of municipalisation often fall back upon), you will see that the present programme is confused and vague in the extreme. It suffices to point out that the present programme transfers "to the possession of the democratic state" both the "lands required for colonisation", and "forest and water areas of national importance". Obviously, these terms are very indefinite and provide an abundant source for conflicts. Take, for instance, Mr. Kaufman's latest contribution in Volume II of The Agrarian Question, published by the Cadets ("On Norms of Supplementary Allotments"), in which a computation is made of the land reserves available in 44 gubernias for the purpose of additional allotments for the peasants at the highest norms of 1861. The "non-allotment distributable land" is first estimated with out forest land and then with forest land (over 25 per cent of forest). Who is to determine which of these forests are of "national importance"? Only the central state authority, of course. Hence, it is in the hands of this central state authority that the Menshevik programme places a gigantic

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area of 57,000,000 dessiatins in 44 gubernias (according to Kaufman). Who is to determine what the lands available for "colonisation" are? Only the bourgeois central authority, of course. It alone will determine, for instance, whether the 1,500,000 dessiatins of "army lands" of the Orenburg Cossacks, or the 2,000,000 dessiatins of the Don Cossack lands can or cannot serve as "colonisation lands" for the whole country (because the Cossacks have 52.7 dessiatins per household). Clearly, the question is not as it is put by Maslov, Plekhanov, and Co. It is not a question of protecting the local regional self-governing bodies from the encroachments of the central government by means of paper resolutions; that cannot be done either with paper, or even with guns; for the trend of capitalist development is towards centralisation, towards the concentration of such a force in the hands of the central bourgeois government as the "regions" will never be able to stand up against. The point is that one and the same class should have political power both centrally and locally, that democracy should be quite consistently applied in both cases to an absolutely equal degree, a degree sufficient to ensure the complete supremacy of, let us say, the majority of the population, i.e., the peasantry. That alone can serve as a real guarantee against "excessive" encroachments of the centre, against infringements of the "lawful" rights of the regions. All other guarantees invented by the Mensheviks are downright foolishness; they are foolscaps donned by provincial philistines to protect themselves from the power of the central authority which has been concentrated by capitalism. That is exactly the kind of philistine foolishness that Novosedsky is guilty of, as also the whole of the present programme, which conceives the possibility of complete democracy in local self-government and a "lower" degree of democracy at the centre. Incomplete democracy means that power at the centre is not in the hands of the majority of the population, not in the hands of those elements which predominate in the local self-governing bodies; and that means not only the possibility but the inevitability of conflicts, out of which, by virtue of the laws of economic development, the non-democratic central authority must emerge victorious!

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    "Municipalisation" from this angle, regarded as a means of "securing" something for the regions against the central authority, is sheer philistine nonsense. If that can be called a "fight" against the centralised bourgeois authority, it is the sort of "fight" that the anti-Semites are waging against capitalism, that is, the same extravagant promises, which attract the dull and ignorant masses and the same economic and political impossibility of fulfilling these promises.

    Take the stock argument of the advocates of municipalisation against nationalisation, namely, nationalisation will strengthen the bourgeois state (or as John so admirably put it: "will strengthen only the state power"), and will increase the revenues of the anti-proletarian, bourgeois government; whereas -- this is exactly what they say -- where as municipalisation will yield revenues for the needs of the population, for the needs of the proletariat. This kind of argument makes one blush for Social-Democracy, for it is sheer anti-Semitic stupidity and anti-Semitic demagogy. We shall not quote the "small fry" who have been led astray by Plekhanov and Maslov; we shall quote Maslov "himself":

    "Social-Demoeraey," he instruets the readers of Obrazovaniye "always makes its calculations in such a way that its plans and aims will be vindicated even under the worst cireumstanees. . . . We must assume that the bourgeois system with all its negative features will predominate in all spheres of social life. Self-government will have the same bourgoois character as the whole state system; the same acute class struggle will go on in it as in the municipalities of Western Europe.

    "What is the difference, then, between local self-government and the state authority? Why does Soeial-Democracy seek to transfer the land not to the state, but to the local self-governing bodies?

    "To define the functions of the state and of local self-government, let us compare their budgets." (Obrazovaniye, 1907, No. 3, p. 102.)

    Then follows a comparison: in one of the most democratic republics -- the United States of America -- 42 per cent of the budget is spent on the army and navy. The same applics to France, England, etc. The "landlord Zemstvos" in Russia spend 27.5 per cent of their budgets on public health, 17.4 per cent on education, 11.9 per cent on roads .

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    "This comparison of the respective budgets of the most democratic states with the least democratic local self-governing bodies shows that the former, by their functions, serve the interests of the ruling classes, that the state funds are spent on means of oppression, on means of suppressing democracy, on the other hand, we find that the most undemocratic, the very worst type of local self-government is compelled however badly, to serve democracy, to satisfy local requirements" (p. 103).

    "Social-Democrats must not be so naïve as to accept nationalisation of the land on the grounds, for instance, that the revenues from nationalised lands would go towards the maintenance of republican troops. . . . It will be a very naïve reader who believes Olenov when he says that Marx's theory 'permits' the inclusion in the programme only of the demand for the nationalisation of the land, i.e., the expenditure of ground rent [irrespective of whether it is called absolute or differential rent?] on the army and navy, and that this theory does not permit the inclusion of municipalisation of the land, i.e., the expeuditure of rent on the needs of the population" (p. 103).

    Clear enough, one would think. Nationalisation -- for the army and navy; municipalisation -- for the needs of the people! A Jew is a capitalist; down with the Jews means down with the capitalists!

    Good Maslov fails to see that the high percentage of expenditure on cultural needs in the budgets of local self-governing bodies is a high percentage of secondary items of expenditure. Why is that? Because the jurisdiction and financial powers of local self-governing bodies are determined by the central authority and determined in such a manner that it takes vast sums for the army, etc., and gives only farthings for "culture". Is such a division unavoidable in bourgeois society? Yes, it is; for in bourgeois society the bourgeoisie could not rule if it did not spend vast sums on making its class rule secure and thus leave only farthings for cultural purposes. One must be a Maslov to conceive this brilliant idea: if I declare this new source of vast sums to be the property of the Zemstvos, I get round the rule of the bourgeoisie! How easy the task of the proletarians would be if they reasoned like Maslov: all we have to do is to demand that the revenues from the railways, post, telegraph, and the liquor monopoly should not be "nationalised", but "municipalised", and all those revenues will be spent not on the army and navy, but for cultural purposes. There is no need whatever to

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overthrow the central authority, or to change it radically; all we have to do is simply to secure the "municipalisation" of all the big items of revenue, and the trick is done. Oh, wiseacres!

    In Europe, and in every bourgeois country, municipal revenues are those revenues -- and let the good Maslov remember this! -- which the bourgeois central authority is willing to sacrifice for cultural purposes, because they are secondary items of revenue, because it is inconvenient for the central authority to collect them, and because the principal, cardinal, fundamental needs of the bourgeoisie and of its rule have already been met by the vast sums of revenue. Therefore, to advise the people to secure new vast sums, hundreds of millions from the municipalised lands, and to make sure the money is spent for cultural purposes by handing it over to the Zemstvos and not to the central authority, is the advice of a charlatan. The bourgeoisie in a bourgeois state can give nothing but farthings for real cultural purposes, for it requires the large sums to secure its rule as a class. Why does the central authority appropriate nine-tenths of the revenues from taxes on land, commercial bodies, etc., and allow the Zemstvos to keep only one-tenth? Why does it make it a law that any additional taxes imposed by the Zemstvos shall not exceed a certain low percentage? Because the large sums are needed to ensure the class rule of the bourgeoisie, which by its very bourgeois nature cannot allow more than farthings to be spent for cultural purposes.*

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    The European socialists take this distribution of thr large sums agd the farthings for granted; they know quite well that it cannot be otherwise in bourgeois society. Taking this distribution for granted, they say: we cannot participate in the central government because it is an instrument of oppression; but we may participate in municipal governments because there the farthings are spent for cultural purposes. But what would these socialists think of a man who advised the workers' party to agitate in favour of the European municipalities being given property rights in the really large revenues, the total rent from local land, the whole revenue from the local post offices, local railways, and so on? They would certainly think that such a man was either crazy or a "Christian Socialist" who had found his way into the ranks of Social-Democracy by mistake.

    Those who, in discussing the tasks of the present (i.e., bourgeois) revolution in Russia, argue that, we must not strengthen the central authority of the bourgeois state, reveal a complete inability to think. The Germans may and should argue in that way because they have before them only a Junker-bourgeois Germany; there can be no other Germany until socialism is established. In our country, on tho other hand, the whole content of the revolutionary mass struggle at the present stage is whether Russia is to be a Junker-bourgeois state (as Stolypin and the Cadets desire), or a peasant-bourgeois state (as the peasants and the workers desire). One cannot take part in such a revolution without supporting one section of the bourgeoisie, one type of bourgeois evolution, against the other. Owing to objective economic causes, there is not and cannot be any other "choice" for us in this revolution than that between a bourgeois centralised republic of peasant-farmers and a bourgeois centralised monarchy of Junker-landlords. To

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avoid that difficult "choice" by fixing the attention of the masses on the plea: "if only we could make the Zemstvos a little more democratic", is the most vulgar philistinism.

    A difficult "choice", we said, meaning of course not the subjective choice (which is the more desirable), but the objective outcome of the struggle of the social forces that are deciding the historical issue. Those who say that my agrarian programme, which links the republic with nationalisation, is optimistic, have never thought out what the "difficulty" involved in a favourable outcome for the peasantry really is. Here is Plekhanov's argument on the subject:

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    I have quoted this argument in full because it clearly indicates Plekhanov's mistake. He has complete1y failed to understand the optimism which scares him. The "optimism" is not in assuming the election of officials by the people, etc., but in assuming the victory of the peasant agrarian revolution. The real "difficulty" lies in securing the victory of the peasant agrarian revolution in a country which, at least siuce 1861, has been developing along Junker-bourgeois lines; and since you admit the possibility of this fundamental economic difficulty, it is ridiculous to regard the difficulties of political democracy as all but anarchism. It is ridiculous to forget that the scope of the agrarian and of the political changes cannot fail to correspond, that the economic revolution presupposes a corresponding political superstructure. Plekhanov's cardinal mistake on this question lies in this very failure to understand the root of the "optimism" of our common, Menshevik and Bolshevik, agrarian programme.

    Indeed, picture to yourselves concretely that a "peasant agrarian revolution ", involving confiscation of the landlords' estates, means in contemporary Russia. There can be no doubt that during the past half-century capitalism has paved the way for itself through landlord farming, which now, on the whole, is unquestionably superior to peasant farming, not only as regards yields (which can be partly ascribed to the better quality of the land owned by the landlords), but also as regards the wide use of improved implements and crop rotation (fodder grass cultivation).* There is no doubt that landlord farming is bound by a thousand ties not only to the bureaucracy, but also to the bourgeoisie. Confiscation undermines a great many of the interests of the big bourgeoisie, while the peasant revolution, as Kautsky has rightly pointed out, leads also to the bankruptcy of the state, i.e., it damnges the interests not only of the Russian, but of the whole international bourgeoisie. It stands to reason that under such conditions the victory of the peasant revolution, the victory of the petty

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the toiling masses. On the other hand, we must also explain the petty-bourgeois nature of the peasant revolution, and the fallacy of placing any "socialist" hopes in it.

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division) with political "pessimism" (Novosedsky's democratisation "of a comparative degree" at the centre).

    The Mensheviks, as if in spite of themselves, accept the peasant revolution, but do not want to give the people a clear and definite picture of it. One can detect in what they say the opinion expressed with such inimitable naïveté by the Menshevik Ptitsyn at Stockholm: "The revolutionary turmoil will pass away, bourgeois life will resume its usual course, and unless a workers' revolution takes place in the West, the bourgeoisie will inevitably come to power in our country. Comrade Lenin will not and cannot deny that" (Minutes, p. 91). Thus, a superficial, abstract conception of the bourgeois revolution has obscured the question of one of its varieties, namely, the peasant revolution! All of this last is mere "turmoil", and the only thing that is real is the "usual course". The philistine point of view and failure to understand what the struggle is about in our bourgeois revolution could hardly be expressed in clearer terms.

    The peasantry cannot carry out an agrarian revolution without abolishing the old regime, the standing army and the bureaucracy, because all these are the most reliable mainstays of landlordism, bound to it by thousands of ties. That is why the idea of achieving a peasant revolution by democratising only the local institutions without completely breaking up the central institutions is scientifically unsound. In practice it is reactionary because it plays into the hands of petty-bourgeois obtuseness and petty-bourgeois opportunism, which sees the thing in a very "simple" way: we want the land; as to politics, God will take care of that! The peasant agrees that all the land must be taken; but whether all political power has to be taken as well, whether all political power can be taken, and how it should be taken, are things he does not bother about (or did not bother until the dissolution of two Dumas made him wiser). Hence, the extremely reactionary standpoint of the "peasant Cadet" Mr. Peshekhonov, who already in his Agrarian Problem wrote: "Just now it is far more necessary to give a definite answer on the agrarian question than, for instance, of the question of a republic" (p. 114).

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And that standpoint of political imbecility (the legacy of the arch-reactionary Mr. V. V.) has, as we know, left its mark on the whole programme and tactics of the "Popular-Socialist" Party. Instead of combating the short-sightedness of the peasant who fails to see the connection between agrarian radicalism and political radicalism, the P.S.'s ("Popular Socialisits") adapt themselves to that short-sightedness. They believe it is "more practical that way", but in reality it is the very thing which dooms the agrarian programme of the peasantry to utter failure. Needless to say, a radical political revolution is difficult, but so is an agrarian revolution; the latter is impossible apart from the former, and it is the duty of socialists not to conceal this from the peasants, not to throw a veil over it (by using rather vague, semi-Cadet phrases about the "democratic state", as is done in our agrarian programme), but to speak out, to teach the peasants that unless they go the whole way in politics it is no use thinking seriously of confiscating the landlords' land.

    It is not the "ifs" that are important here in the programme. The important thing is to point out in it that the agrarian and the political changes must correspond. Instead of using the word "if", the same idea can be put differently: "The Party explains that the best method of taking possession of the land in bourgeois society is by abolishing private ownership of land, nationalising the land, and transferring it to the state, and that such a measure can neither be carried out nor bear real fruit without complete democratisation not only of the local institutions, but of the whole structure of the state, including the establishment of a republic, the abolition of the standing army, election of officials by the people, etc."

    By failing to include that explanation in our agrarian programme we have given the people the false idea that confiscation of the landlords' estates is possible without the complete democratisation of the central government. We have sunk to the level of the opportunist petty bourgeoisie, i.e., the "Popular Socialists"; for in both Dumas it so happened that their programme (the Bill of the 104) as well as ours linked agrarian changes with democratisation only of the local institutions. Such a view is philistine

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obtuseness, of which the events of June 3, 1907, and the Third Duma should have cured many people, the Social-Democrats above all.

    The agrarian programme of Russian Social-Democracy is a proletarian programme in a peasant revolution that is directed against the survivals of serfdom, against all that is medieval in our agrarian system. Theoretically, as we have seen, this thesis is accepted by the Mensheviks as well (Plekhanov's speech at Stockholm). But the Mensheviks have failed to think out that proposition and to perceive its indissoluble connection with the general principles of Social-Democratic tactics in the Russian bourgeois revolution. And it is in Plekhanov's writings that this shallow thinking is most clearly revealed.

    Every peasant revolution directed against medievalism, when the whole of the social economy is of a capitalist nature, is a bourgeois revolution. But not every bourgeois revolution is a peasant revolution. If, in a country where agriculture is organised on fully capitalist lines, the capitalist farmers, with the aid of the hired labourers, were to carry out an agrarian revolution by abolishing the private ownership of land, for instance, that would be a bourgeois revolution, but by no means a peasant revolution. Or if a revolution took p]ace in a country where the agrarian system had become so integrated with the capitalist economy in general that that system could not be abolished without abolishing capitalism, and if, say, that revolution put the industrial bourgeoisie in power in place of the autocratic bureaucracy -- that would be a bourgeois revolution, but by no means a peasant revolution. In other words, there can be a bourgeois country without a peasantry, and there can be a bourgeois revolution in such a country without a peasantry. A bourgeois revolution may take place in a country with a considerable peasant population and yet not be a peasant revolution; that is to say, it is a revolution which does not revolutionise the agrarian relations that especially affect the peasantry, and does not bring the peasantry to the fore as a social force that is at all

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active in creating the revolution. Consequently, the general Marxist concept of "bourgeois revolution" contains certain propositions that are definitely applicable to any peasant revolution that takes place in a country of rising capitalism, but that general concept says nothing at all about whether or not a bourgeois revolution in a given country must (in the sense of obiective necessity) become a peasant revolution in order to be completely victorious.

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    The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, ever since the beginning of the revolution in the spring and summer of 1905, when the confusion of Bolshevism with boycottism, boyevism, etc., that is now so prevalent among the ignorant or stupid, was still out of the question, clearly pointed to the source of our tactical differences by singling out the concept of peasant revolution as one of the varieties of bourgeois revolution, and by defining the victory of the peasant revolution as "the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry". Since then Bolshevism won its greatest ideological victory in international Social-Democracy with the publication of Kautsky's article on the driving forces of the Russian revolution ("The Driving Forces and Prospects of the Russian Revolution", Russian translation edited and with a preface by N. Lenin, published by Novaya Epokha Publishers, Moscow, 1907). As is known, at the beginning of the split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks in 1903, Kautsky sided with the latter. In 1907, having watched the course of the Russian revolution, on the subject of which he wrote repeatedly, he at once saw the mistake made by Plekhanov, who had sent him his famous questionnaire. In that questionnaire, Plekhanov inquired only about the bourgeois nature of the Russian revolution, without specifying the concept of peasant bourgeois revolution, without going beyond general formulas such as "bourgeois democracy", "bourgeois opposition parties". In answering Plekhanov Kautsky rectified that mistake by pointing out that the bourgeoisie was not the driving force of the Russian revolution, that in that sense the days of bourgeois revolutions had passed, that "a lasting community of interests during the whole period of the revolutionary struggle exists only between the proletariat and the peasantry" (op. cit., pp. 30-31), and that "it [this lasting community of interests] should be made the hasis of the whole of the revolutionary tactics of Russian Social-Democracy" (ibid., p. 31). The underlying principles of Bolshevik tactics as against those of the Mensheviks are here clearly expressed. Plekhanov is terribly angry about this in his New Letters, etc. But his annoyance only makes the impotence of his argument more obvious. The crisis through which we are passing is "a bourgeois crisis for all

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that", Plekhanov keeps on repeating and he calls the Bolsheviks "ignoramuses" (p. 127). That abuse is an expression of his impotent rage. Plekhanov has failed to grasp the difference between a peasant bourgeois revolution and a non-peasant bourgeois revolutiom By saying that Kautsky "exaggerates the speed of development of our peasant" (p. 131), and that "the difference of opinion between us [between Plekhanov and Kautsky] can only be one of nuances" (p. 131), etc., Plekhanov resorts to the most miserable and cowardly shuffling, for anyone at all capable of thinking can see that the very opposite is the case. It is not a question of "nuances" or of the speed of development, or of the "seizure" of power that Plekhanov shouts about, but of the basic view as to which classes are capable of being the driving force of the Russian revolution. Voluntarily or involuntarily, Plekhanov and the Mensheviks areinevitably falling into a position of opportunist support to the bourgeoisie, for they fail to grasp the counter-revolutionary nature of the bourgeoisie in a peasant bourgeois revolution. The Bolsheviks from the outset defined the general and the basic class conditions for the victory of this revolution as the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. Kautsky arrived at substantially the same view in his article, "The Driving Forces", etc., and he repeated it in the second edition of his Social Revolution, in which he says: "It [the victory of Russian Social-Democracy in the near future] can only come as the result of a coalition [einer Koalition ] between the proletariat and the peasantry." (Die soziale Revolution, von K. Kautsky, Zweite Auflage. Berlin, 1907, S. 62.) (Space does not permit us to deal with another addition Kautsky made to the second edition, in which he sums up the lessons of December 1905, a summing up which differs radically from Menshevism.)

    Thus we see that Plekhanov completely evaded the question of the underlying principles of the general Social-Democratic tactics in a bourgeois revolution that can be victorious only as a peasant revolution. What I said at Stockholm (April 1906)* about Plekhanov having reduced Menshevism to absurdity by repudiating the conquest of power

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by the peasantry in a peasant revolution has been completely borne out in subsequent literature. And that fundamental error in the tactical line was bound to affect the Mensheviks' agrarian programme. As I have repeatedly pointed out above, municipalisation does not in either the economic or the political sphere fully express the conditions of a real victory of the peasant revolution, for the real conquest of power by the proletariat and the peasantry. In the economic sphere, such a victory is incompatible with the perpetuation of the old system of allotment landownership; in the political sphere, it is incompatible with mere regianal democracy and incomplete democracy in the central government.

    Comrade John said at Stockholm (p. 111 of the Minutes) that the "draft providing for land municipalisation is more acceptable, because it is more flexible: it takes into account the diversity of economic conditions, and it can be carried out in the process of the revolution itself". I have already pointed out the cardinal defect of municipalisation in this respcct: it rivets allotment ownership to the property form. Nationalisation is incomparably more flexible in this respect, because it makes it much easier to organise new farms on the "unfenced" land. Here it is also necessary to refer briefly to other, minor arguments that John raised.

    "The division of the land," says John, "would in some places revive the old agrarian relations. In some regions the distribution would be as much as 200 dessiatins per household, so that in the Urals, for instance, we would create a class of new landlords." That is a sample of an argument which denounces its own system! And it was that kind of argument that decided the issue at the Menshevik Congress! It is municipalisation, and it alone, that is guilty of the sin referred to here, for it alone rivets the land to individual regions. It is not the division of land that is to blame, as John thinks, thus falling into a ridiculous logical error, but the provincialism of the municipalisers. In any case, according to the Menshevik programme, the mu-

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nicipalised lands in the Urals would remain the "property" of the people of the Urals. That would mean the creation of a new, reactionary, Cossack stratum -- reactionary because privileged small farmers having ten times more land than all the rest of the farmers could not but resist the peasant revolution, and could not but defend the privileges of private landownership. It only remains for us to assume that on the basis of that same programme, the "democratic state" might declare the tens of millions of dessiatins of Ural forests to be "forests of national importance", or "colonisation lands" (does not the Cadet Kaufman apply that term to the forest land in the Urals, within the 25 per cent limit, which means 21,000,000 dessiatins in the Vyatka, Ufa, and Perm gubernias?), and on that ground become their "owner". Not flexibility, but confusion, pure an simple, is the distinguishing feature of municipalisation.

    Now let us see what carrying out municipalisation in the very process of the revolution means. Here we meet with attacks on my "revolutionary peasant committees" as a class institution. "We are for non-class institutions," the Mensheviks argued at Stockholm, playing at liberalism. Cheap liberalism! It did not occur to our Mensheviks that in order to introduce local self-government of a non-class character it is necessary to defeat the privileged class against which the struggle is being waged and to wrest the power from it. It is just "in the very process of the revolution", as John puts it, i.e., in the course of the struggle to drive out the landlords, in the course of those "revolutionary actions of the peasantry " that are mentioned also in the Mensheviks' resolution on-tactics, that peasant committees can be set up. The introduction of local self-government of a non-class character is provided for in our political programme; it is bound to be established as the organisation of administration after the victory, when the whole of the population will have been compelled to accept the new order. If the words of our programme about "supporting the revolutionary actions of the peasantry, including the confiscation of the landlords' lands" is not mere phrase-mongering, then we must think about organising the masses for those "actions"! Yet that is entirely overlooked in the Menshevik programme. That programme is so

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drawn up as to be easily and wholly converted into a parliamentary Bill, like the Bills proposed by the bourgeois parties, which either (like the Cadets) hate all "actions", or opportunistically shirk the task of systematically assisting and organising such actions (like the Popular Socialists). But a programme built on such lines is unworthy of a workers' party which speaks of a peasant agrarian revolution, a party which pursues the aim not of reassuring the big bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy (like the Cadets), not of reassuring the petty bourgeoisie (like the Popular Socialists), but exclusively of developing the consciousness and initiative of the broad masses in the course of their struggle against feudal Russia.

    Recall, if only in general outline, the innumerable "revolutionary actions" of the peasantry which took place in Russia in the spring of 1905, in the autumn of 1905, and in the spring of 1906. Do we pledge our support to such actions or not? If not, then our programme would not be telling the truth. If we do, then obviously our programme fails to give directives about the organisation of such actions. Such actions can be organised only on the spot where the struggle is going on; the organisation can be created only by the masses who are directly taking part in the struggle, i.e., the organisation must definitely be of the peasant committee type. To wait for big, regional self-governing bodies to be set up during such actions would be ridiculous. The extension of the power and influence of the victorious local committees to adjacent villages, uyezds, gubernias, towns, areas, and to the entire country is, of course, desirable and essential. There can be no objection to the need for such an extension being indicated in the programme, but that should certainly not be confined to regions, it should embrace the central government as well. That in the first place. Secondly, in that case we must not speak about local self-governing bodies, since that term points to the dependence of the local governing organisations upon the structure of the state. "Local self-government" operates according to the rules laid down by the central authority, and within the limits set by the latter. The organisations of the fighting people of which we are speaking must be quite independent of all the institutions of the old regime, they

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must fight for a new state structure, they must serve as the instrument of the full power of the people (or the sovereignty of the people), and as the means for securing it.

    In short, from the standpoint of the "very process of the revolution", the Menshevik programme is unsatisfactory in all respects. It reflects the confusion of Menshevik ideas on the question of the provisional government, etc.

    These two terms were made equivalent by the Mensheviks themselves, who secured the adoption of the agrarian programme at Stockholm. We need only mention the names of two prominent Mensheviks, Kostrov and Larin. "Some comrades," said Kostrov at Stockholm, "seem to be hearing about municipal ownership for the first time. Let me remind them that in Western Europe there is a whole political trend [!precisely!l called 'municipal socialism' [England], which advocates the extension of ownership by urban and rural municipalities, and which is also supported by our comrades. Many municipalities own real estate, and that does not contradict our programme. We now have the possibility of acquiring [!] real estate for the municipalities gratis [!!] and we should take advantage of it. Of course the confiscated land should be municipalised" (p. 88).

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forth about "social peace", about the harmfulness of the class struggle, and so on. What class struggle can there be if the bourgeoisie itself is spending money on the "needs of the population", on public health, on education? What need is there for a social revolution if it is possible through the local self-governing bodies, gradually, step by step, to extend "collective ownership", and "socialise" production: the horse tramways, the slaughter-houses referred to so relevantly by the worthy Y. Larin?

    The philistine opportunism of that "trend" lies in the fact that people forget the narrow limits of so-called "municipal socialism" (in reality, municipal capitalism, as the English Social-Democrats properly point out in their controversies with the Fabians). They forget that so long as the bourgeoisie rules as a class it cannot allow any encroachment, even from the "municipal" point of view, upon the real foundations of its rule; that if the bourgeoisie allows, tolerates, "municipal socialism", it is because the latter does not touch the foundations of its rule, does not interfere with the important sources of its wealth, but extends only to the narrow sphere of local-expenditure, which the bourgeoisie itself allows the "population" to manage. It does not need more than a slight acquaintance with "municipal socialism" in the West to know that any attempt on the part of socialist municipalities to go a little beyond the boundaries of their normal, i.e., minor, petty activities, which give no substantial relief to the workers, any attempt to meddle with capital, is invariably vetoed in the most emphatic manner by the central authorities of the bourgeois state.

    And it is this fundamental mistake, this philistine opportunism of the West-European Fabians, Possibilists, and Bernsteinians that is taken over by our advocates of municipalisation.

    "Municipal socialism" means socialism in matters of local government. Anything that goes beyond the limits of local interests, beyond the limits of state administralion, i.e., anything that affects the main sources of revenue of the ruling classes and the principal means of securing their rule, anything that aflects not the administration of the state, but the structure of the state, thereby goes beyond

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the sphere of "municipal socialism". But our wiseacres evade this acute national issue, this question of the land, which affects the vital interests of the ruling classes in the most direct way, by relegating it to the sphere of "local government questions". In the West they municipalise horse trams and slaughter-houses, so why should we not municipalise the best half of all the lands -- argues the Russian petty intellectual. That would serve both in the event of restoration and in the event of incomplete democratisation of the central government!

    And so we get agrarian socialism in a bourgeois revolution, a socialism of the most petty-bourgeois kind, one that counts on blunting the class struggle on vital issues by relegating the latter to the domain of petty questions affecting only local governmcnt. In fact, the question of the disposal of one half of the best land in the country is neither a local question nor a question of administration. It is a question that affects the whole state, a question of the structure, not only of the landlord, but of the bourgeois state. And to try to entice the people with the idea that "municipal socialism" can be developed in agriculture before the socialist revolution is accomplished is to practise the most inadmissible kind of demagogy. Marxism permits nationalisation to be included in the programme of a bourgeois revolution because nationalisation is a bourgeois measure, because absolute rent hinders the development of capitalism; private ownership of the land is a hindrance to capitalism. But to include the municipalisation of the big estates in the programme of the bourgeois revolution, Marxism must be remodelled into Fabian intellectualist opportunism.

    It is here that we see the difference between petty-bourgeois and proletarian methods in the bourgeois revolution. The petty bourgeoisie, even the most radical -- our Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries included -- anticipates that after the bourgeois revolution there will be no class struggle, but universal prosperity and peace. Therefore, it "builds its nest" in advance, it introduces plans for petty-bourgeois reforms in the bourgeois revolution, talks about various "norms" and "regulations" with regard to landownership, about strengthening the labour principle and small farming,

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etc. The petty-bourgeois method is the method of building up relations making for the greatest possible degree of social peace. The proletarian method is exclusively that of clearing the path of all that is medieval, clearing it for the class struggle. Therefore, the proletarian can leave it to the small proprietors to discuss "norms" of landownership; the proletarian is interested only in the abolition of the landlord latifundia, the abolition of private ownership of land, that last barrier to the class struggle in agricuture. In the bourgeois revolution we are interested not in petty-bourgeois reformism, not in a future "nest" of tranquillised small farmers, but in the conditions for the proletarian struggle against all petty-bourgeois tranquillity on a bourgeois basis.

    It is this anti-proletarian spirit that municipalisation introduces into the programme of the bourgeois agrarian revolution; for, despite the deeply fallacious opinion of the Mensheviks, municipalisation does not extend and sharpen the class struggle, but, on the contrary, blunts it. It blunts it, too, by assuming that local democracy is possible without the complete democratisation of the centre. It also blunts it with the idea of "municipal socialism", because the latter is conceivable in bourgeois society only away from the high road of the struggle, only in minor, local, unimportant questions on which even the bourgeoisie may yield, may reconcile itself to without losing the possibility of preserving its class rule.

    The working class must give bourgeois society the purest, most consistent and most thorough-going programme of bourgeois revolution, including the bourgeois nationalisation of the land. The proletariat scornfully rejects petty-bourgeois reformism in the bourgeois revolution; we are interested in freedom for the struggle, not in freedom for philistine bliss.

    Naturally, the opportunism of the intelligentsia in the workers' party takes a different line. Instead of the broad revolutionary programme of bourgeois revolution, attention is focused on a petty-bourgeois utopia: to secure local democracy with incomplete democratisation at the centre, to secure for petty reformism a little corner of municipal activity away from great "turmoil", and to evade the extra-

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ordinarily acute conflict over the land by following the recipe of the anti-Semites, i.e., by relegating an important national issue to the domain of petty, local questions.

    What confusion the "municipalisation" programme has created in the minds of Social-Democrats and to what a helpless position it has reduced our propagandists and agitators can be seen from the following curious cases.

    Y. Larin is undoubtedly a prominent and well-known figure in Menshevik literature. In Stockholm, as can be seen from the Minutes, he took a most active part in securing the adoption of the programme. His pamphlet, The Peasant Question and Social-Democracy, which was included in the series of pamphlets published by Novy Mir, is almost an official commentary on the Menshevik programme. And here is what this commentator writes. In the concluding pages of his pamphlet he sums up the question of agrarian reform. He foresees three kinds of outcome of these reforms: (1) additional allotments to the peasants as their private property, subject to compensation -- "the most unfavourable outcome for the working class, for the lower strata of the peasantry and for the whole development of the national economy" (p. 103). The second outcome is the best, and the third, although unlikely, is "a paper declaration of compulsory equalised land tenure". One would have thought that we had the right to expect that an advocate of the municipalisation programme would have made municipalisation the second outcome. But no! Listen to this:

    "Perhaps all the confiscated land, or even all the land in general, will be declared the property of the state as a whole and will be turned over to the local self-governing bodies to be distributed gratis [??] for the use of all who are actually cultivating it, without, of course, the compulsory introduction throughout the whole of Russia of equalised land tenure, and without prohibiting the employment of hired lahour. Such a solution of the problem, as we have seen, best secures the immediate interests of the proletariat as well as the general interests of the socialist movement, and will help to increase the productivity of labour, which ie the fundamental, vital question for Russia. Therefore, the Social-Democrats should advocate and carry out an

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agrarian reform [?] precisely of that character. It will be achieved when, at the highest point of development of the revolution, the conscious elements of social development are strong" (p. 103. Our italics).

    If Y. Larin or other Mensheviks believe this to be an exposition of the municipalisation programme, they are labouring under a tragicomical illusion. The transfer of all the land to state ownership is nationalisation of the land, and we cannot conceive of the land being disposed of otherwise than through local self-governing bodies acting within the limits of a general state law. To such a programme -- not of "reform", of course, but of revolution -- I wholeheartedly subscribe, except for the point about distributing the land "gratis" even to those farmers who- employ hired labour. To promise such a thing on behalf of bourgeois society is more fitting for an anti-Semite than for a Social-Democrat. No Marxist can assume the possibility of such an outcome within the framework of capitalist development; nor is there any reason for considering it desirable to transfer rent to capitalist farmers. Nevertheless, except for this point, which was probably a slip of the pen, it remains an indubitable fact that in a popular Menshevik pamphlet the nationalisation of the land is advocated as the best outcome at the highest point of development of the revolution.

    On the question of what is to be done with the privately owned lands, Larin has this to say:

    "As regards the privately owned lands occupied by big, effcient capitalist farms, Social-Democrats do not propose the confiscation of such lands for the purpose of dividing them among the small farmers. While the average yield of small peasant farming, either on privately owned or rented land, does not reach 30 poods per dessiatin the average yield of capitalist agriculture in Russia is over 50 poods' (p. 64).

    In saying this, Larin in effect throws overboard the idea of a peasant agrarian revolution, for his average figures of crop yields appertain to all the landlord lands. If we do not believe in the possibility of achieving a wider and more rapid increase in the productivity of labour on small farms after they have been freed from the yoke of serfdom, then all talk about "supporting the revolutionary actions of the peasantry, including the confiscation of the land from the Iandlords", is meaningless. Besides, Larin forgets

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that on the question of "the purpose for which Social-Democrats propose the confiscation of capitalist estates", there is the decision of the Stockholm Congress.

    It was Comrade Strumilin who, at the Stockholm Congress, moved an amendment to insert after the words: economic development (in the resolution), the following: "insisting, therefore, that the confiscated big capitalist farms should continue to be exploited on capitalist lines in the interests of the whole of the people, and under conditions that best meet the needs of the agricultural proletariat" (p. 157). This amendment was rejected almost unanimously, it received only one vote (ibid.).

    Nevertheless, propaganda is being carried on among the masses that ignores the decision of the Congress! The retention of private ownership of allotment land makes municipalisation such a confusing thing, that commentaries on the programme cannot help running counter to the decision of the Congress.

    K. Kautsky, who has been so frequently and unfairly quoted in favour of one or the other programme (unfairly because he has categorically declined to express a definite view on the question and has confined himself to explaining certain general truths), Kautsky, who, curiously enough, was even cited as being in favour of municipalisation, wrote, it turns out, to M. Shanin in April 1906 as follows:

    We think it will be useful to approach the question of the workers' party's agrarian programme in the Russian bourgeois revolution from another and somewhat different angle. The analysis of the economic conditions for the revolution and of the political arguments in favour of this or that programme should be supplemented by a picture of the struggle between the different classes and parties that will as far as possible embrace all the interests and place them in direct contrast to one another. Only such a picture can give us an idea of the thing we are discussing (the struggle for the land in the Russian revolution) as a whole, excluding the one-sided and accidental character of individual opinions, and testing theoretical conclusions by the practical intuition of the persons concerned. As individuals, any representatives of parties and classes may err, but when they come out in the public arena, before the entire population, the individual errors are inevitably rectified by the corresponding groups or classes that are interested in the struggle. Classes do not err; on the whole, they decide their interests and political aims in conformity

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with the conditions of the struggle and with the conditions of social evolution.

    Excellent material for drawing such a picture is provided by the Stenographic Records of the two Dumas. We shall take the Second Duma because it undoubtedly reflects the struggle of classes in the Russian revolution more fully and with greater maturity: the Second Duma elections were not boycotted by any influential party. The political grouping of the deputies in the Second Duma was much more definite, the various Duma groups were more united and more closely connected with their respective parties. The experience of the First Duma had already provided considerable material which helped all the parties to elaborate a more thought-out policy. For all these reasons it is preferable to take the Second Duma. We shall refer to the debate in the First Duma only in order to supplement, or clarify, statements made in the Second Duma.

    To obtain a full and accurate picture of the struggle between the different classes and parties during the debate in the Second Duma we shall have to deal separately with each important and specific Duma group and characterise it with the aid of excerpts from the principal speeches delivered on the chief points of the agrarian question. As it is impossible and unnecessary to quote all the minor speakers, we shall mention only those who contributed something new, or threw noteworthy light on some aspect of the question.

    The main groups of Duma deputies that stood out clearly in the debates on the agrarian question were the following: (1) the Rights and the Octobrists -- as we shall see, no essential difference between them was shown in the Second Duma; (2) the Cadets; (3) the Right and Octobrist peasants, standing, as we shall see, to the Left of the Cadets; (4) the non-party peasants; (5) the Narodniks, or Trudovik intellectuals, standing somewhat to the Right of (6) the Trudovik peasants; then come (7) the Socialist-Revolutionaries; (8) the "nationals", representing the non-Russian nationalities, and (9) the Social-Democrats. We shall mention the government's position in connection with the Duma group with which the government is essentially in agreement.

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    Like all the parties, the Cadets came out in their true colours in the Second Duma. They "found themselves" by occupying the Centre and criticising the Rights and the Lefts from the "state point of view". They revealed their counter-revolutionary nature by an obvious turn to the Right. How did they mark that turn on the agrarian question? They marked it by finally throwing overboard the last remnants of the idea of land nationalisation, by completely abandoning the plan for a "state land reserve" and by supporting the idea of making the land the peasants' property. Yes, conditions in the Russian revolution have become such that turning to the Right means turning towards the private ownership of land!

    Ex-minister Kutler, the Cadet Party's official spokesman on the agrarian question, at once proceeded to criticise the Left (12th session, March 19, 1907). "Since nobody proposes to abolish property in general," exclaimed that worthy colleague of Witte and Durnovo, "it is necessary with all emphasis to recognise the existence of landed property" (737). This argument fully coincides with that of the Black Hundreds. The Black-Hundred spokesman, Krupensky, like the Cadet Kutler, shouted: "If you are going to divide, divide everything" (784).

    Like a true bureaucrat, Kutler dealt in particular detail with the question of different norms of "allotment" to the peasants. Not backed by any compact class, this liberal intellectual and bureaucrat playing at liberalism evades the question of how much land the landlords have and how much can be taken. He prefers to talk about "norms" in order, on the pretext of raising the question to the state level, to obscure the issue, to conceal the fact that the Cadets propose that landlord economy be retained. "Even the government," said Mr. Kutler, "has taken the path of extending peasant land tenure" (734), so there is nothing infeasible about the Cadets' proposal, which is of the same bureaucratic type! By insisting on what is practical and feasible, this Cadet, of course, throws a veil over the fact that his criterion is whether it is possible to secure the landlords' consent, in other words, to adapt his plan

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to their interests, to pander to the Black Hundreds under the guise of a lofty striving for the conciliation of classes. "I think, gentlemen," said Kutler, "that it is possible to envisage the political conditions under which a Bill for the nationalisation of the land could acquire the force of law, but I cannot envisage in the immediate future the political conditions under which that law could really be put into eflect" (733). To put it bluntly, it is possible to envisage the overthrow of the rule of the Black-Hundred landlords, but I cannot envisage that and, therefore, I adapt myself to this rule.

    Urging that peasant ownership of land is preferable to the Trudoviks' plan in general, and to "equalised tenure" in particular, Mr. Kutler argued as follows: "lf for this purpose [equalising holdings] special officials are appointed, it will mean the introduction of an incredible despotism, an interference in the lives of the people such as we have never known before. Of course, it is proposed to place this matter in the hands of local self-governing bodies, in the hands of persons elected by the people themselves; but can it be taken that the people will be fully guaranteed against the tyranny of these persons, that these persons will always act in the interests of the people, and that the latter will suffer no hardship? I think that the peasants who are present here know that very often their own elected representatives, their volost and village elders, oppress the people as much as the government offcials do" (740). Can one con