Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 26 - From Marx to Mao

232V. I. LENINThat is how the “Socialist-Revolutionaries”, having cheatedthe peasants with fine promises, now present them with alandowner-Cadet land bill!This is a swindle, pure and simple.Nothing at all remains of the peasant demand for confiscation.This is not confiscation of landed estates, but consolidationof landed property by a “republican” governmentwhich assures the landowners retention of both implementsand land for the maintenance of their “employees and workers”,the retention of land “designated by the landowner [it’sas easy as that!] for the planting of sugar-beet and otherindustrial crops”, and of payment for the rest of the landwhich goes into the lease pool. The land committees areturned into rent collectors for the landed gentry!The Socialist-Revolutionaries do not abolish but consolidatelanded property. It is now abundantly clear that theyhave betrayed the peasants and have defected to the landowners.The sly Cadets, these loyal friends of the capitalistsand landowners, must not be allowed to bring off their fraud.The Cadets make believe that the S.R. bill is terribly“revolutionary”, and there is a great outcry in all the bourgeoispapers against it; they all report “opposition” on thepart of the bourgeois ministers (and, of course, of theiravowed hangers-on like Kerensky) to this “terrible” bill.The whole thing is a farce, a game; it is the bartering of atrader who expects to drive a harder bargain with the spinelessSocialist-Revolutionaries. Actually, Maslov’s is alandowners’ bill drawn up for the express purpose of securingan agreement with them and saving them.It is pure humbug for Dyelo Naroda to declare, as it doesin these issues, that it is “an outstanding land bill inaugurating[!] a great [!!] reform in socialising [!!!] land”. Thereis no trace of “socialisation” in the bill (save perhaps for the“social” help given the landlord in assuring him of his rent);there is not the least trace of anything “revolutionary ordemocratic”; there is in fact nothing at all in it with theexception of the Irish-type “reforms” 94 which are a commonfeature of European bourgeois reformism.Let me say this again: it is a bill to save the landowners,and to “pacify” the incipient peasant uprising by making