Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 13 - From Marx to Mao

228V. I. LENIN(according to certain principles) to the peasants. This objectivetendency inevitably arises from the predominanceof small-scale cultivation, which is held in bondage by thefeudal latifundia. To depict this tendency in the samegraphic way in which we depicted the starting-point of thestruggle, i.e., the present state of affairs, we must take thebest conceivable eventuality, i.e., we must assume that allthe feudalist latifundia, as well as all land not classifiedaccording to holdings, have passed into the hands of theruined peasantry. It is this best eventuality which all theparticipants in the present agrarian struggle envisage moreor less distinctly: the government talks about “allotting”land to the “needy”, the liberal official (or Cadet) talksabout supplementary allotments to those who have littleland, the peasant Trudovik talks about increasing holdingsto the “subsistence” or “labour” “norm”, and the Social-Democrat, differing on the question of the form of landtenure, generally accepts the proposal of the Narodniksabout allotting land to the poorest peasants. (In the SecondDuma, 47th sitting, May 26, 1907, Tsereteli accepted thefigure of the value of the 57,000,000 dessiatins of land to bealienated as given by the Narodnik Karavayev, namely,6,500,000,000 rubles, of which the poorest peasants havingup to 5 dessiatins account for 2,500,000,000 rubles. SeeStenographic Record, p. 1221.) In short, however muchthe landlords, the officials, the bourgeoisie, the peasantry,and the proletariat may differ in their view of the aimsand terms of the reform, they all outline the same tendency,namely, the transfer of the large landed estates to the mostneedy peasants. With the fundamental differences of opinionamong the classes concerning the extent and terms ofsuch a transfer we shall deal separately elsewhere. At presentwe shall supplement our outline of the starting-pointof the struggle with a similar outline of its possible ultimatepoint. We have already shown what the situation is now.We shall show what it may be then. Let us assume that30,000 landlords will retain 100 dessiatins each, i.e., atotal of 3,000,000 dessiatins, while the remaining 67,000,000dessiatins and 50,000,000 dessiatins of unclassified landwill be transferred to 10,500,000 poor households. We shallthen get the following: