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

AGRARIAN PROGRAMME OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY245lot. We cannot here go into details* which concern anotherpart of our argument. All we need do here is to define theline of the Cadet agrarian programme. And in this connectionwe must say that the question of the composition ofthe local land committees is of cardinal importance. Onlypolitical infants could be taken in by the sound of the Cadetslogan of “compulsory alienation”. The question is, whowill compel whom? Will the landlords compel the peasants(to pay an exorbitant price for inferior land), or will thepeasants compel the landlords? The Cadet talk “aboutequal representation of the conflicting interests” and aboutthe undesirability of “one-sided violence” reveals as clearas clear can be the essence of the matter, namely, that theCadet idea of compulsory alienation means that the landlordswill compel the peasants!The Cadet agrarian programme follows the line of Stolypinprogress, i.e., landlord bourgeois progress. That isa fact. Failure to appreciate this fact is the fundamentalmistake made by those Social-Democrats who, like some of* See the records of the First Duma, 14th sitting, May 24, 1906,which show that the Cadets Kokoshkin and Kotlyarevsky, hand inhand with the (then) Octobrist Heyden, resorted to the basest sophistryto repudiate the idea of local land committees. In the Second Duma:the evasions by the Cadet Savelyev (16th sitting, March 26, 1907)and the open opposition to the idea of local committees by the CadetTatarinov (24th sitting, April 9, 1907, p. 1783 of Stenographic Record).The newspaper Rech, No. 82, for May 25, 1906, contained anoteworthy leading article which is reprinted in Milyukov’s A Yearof Struggle, No. 117, pp. 457-59. Here is the decisive passage fromthis Octobrist in disguise: “We believe that setting up these committeeson the basis of universal suffrage would mean preparing themnot for the peaceful solution of the land problem in the local areas,but for something entirely different. Control of the general directionof the reform ought to be left in the hands of the state.... The localcommissions should consist as equally as possible [sic!] of representativesof the conflicting interests which can be reconciled withoutimpairing the state importance of the proposed reform, and withoutturning it into an act of one-sided violence”... (p. 459). In the CadetAgrarian Question, Vol. II, Mr. Kutler published the text of his Billwhich ensures to the landlords, plus the officials, preponderance overthe peasants in all the principal, Gubernia and uyezd land commissionsand committees (pp. 640-41), while Mr. A. Chuprov—a “liberal”—defends on principle the same despicable plan of the landlords toswindle the peasants (p. 33).