Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 16 - From Marx to Mao

LETTER TO I. I. SKVORTSOV-STEPANOV121If we agree that the recent history of Russia, the history of1905-09, has proved the fundamental, prime, national significance(national in the above sense) of the agrarian questionin establishing a definite type of bourgeois evolution inRussia, then we can proceed further; otherwise we cannot.By 1905 the bourgeois development of Russia had alreadymatured sufficiently to require the immediate break-up ofthe antiquated superstructure—the antiquated medievalsystem of land tenure (you understand, of course, why, ofthe entire superstructure, I take here land tenure alone). Weare now living in the period of this break-up, which variousclasses of bourgeois Russia are trying to complete, to consummatein their own way: the peasants ($the workers) bymeans of nationalisation (I am very glad you agree with meon the absolute absurdity of municipalisation: I have alreadyquoted passages from Theorien über den Mehrwert* in favourof nationalisation in one of my works printed in part in Polish)**;the landlords ($the old bourgeoisie, the Girondistbourgeoisie) by the method of November 9, 1906, etc. Landnationalisation = the break-up of the old system of landtenure by the peasants is the economic basis of the Americanpath. The law of November 9, 1906= the break-up of the oldsystem of land tenure in the interests of the landlords, is theeconomic basis of the Prussian path. Our epoch, 1905-??,is the epoch of the revolutionary and counter-revolutionarystruggle between these paths, just as 1848-71 in Germany wasa period of the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary strugglebetween two paths of unification (= of the solution of thenational problem of bourgeois development in Germany), thepath through the Great-German Republic and the paththrough the Prussian monarchy. It was only in 1871 thatthe second path was finally (that is where my “completely”comes in) victorious. It was then that Liebknecht gave up theboycott of parliament. It was then that the dispute betweenthe Lassalleans and the Eisenachers died down. It was thentoo that the question of a general democratic revolutionin Germany died down—and Naumann, David and Co. startedin the nineties (twenty years later!) to revive the corpse.* Theories of Surplus Value.—Ed.** See present edition, Vol. 15, pp. 158-81.—Ed.