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

246V. I. LENINthe Mensheviks, regard the Cadet agrarian policy as beingmore progressive than the Narodnik policy.As for the spokesmen of the peasantry, i.e., the Trudoviks,the Social-Narodniks, and partly the Socialist-Revolutionaries,we find that, in spite of considerable vacillationand wavering, they, in both Dumas, adopted a veryclear line of defending the interests of the peasantry againstthe landlords. For instance, vacillation is observed in theprogramme of the Trudoviks on the question of redemptionpayments, but, in the first place, they frequently interpretthat as something in the nature of public relief for disabledlandlords*; secondly, in the records of the Second Dumaone can find a number of exceedingly characteristic speechesby peasants repudiating redemption payments and proclaimingthe slogan: all the land to all the people.** On thequestion of the local land committees—this all-importantquestion as to who will compel whom—the peasant deputiesare the originators and supporters of the idea of havingthem elected by universal suffrage.We are not, for the time being, dealing with the contentof the agrarian programmes of the Trudoviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries,on the one hand, and the Social-Democrats,on the other. We must first of all note the incontrovertiblefact that the agrarian programmes of all theparties and classes which came out openly in the Russianrevolution can be clearly divided into two basic types, correspondingto the two types of bourgeois agrarian evolution.The dividing line between the “Right” and “Left”agrarian programmes does not run between the Octobrists* See Sbornik “Izvestii Krestyanskikh Deputatov” i “ TrudovoiRossii” (The Symposium of “Peasant Deputies’ News” and “ToilingRussia”), St. Petersburg, 1906, a collection of newspaper articles bythe Trudoviks in the First Duma; for instance, the article entitled“Grants, Not Redemption Payments” (pp. 44-49), et al.** See the speech made by the Right-wing peasant deputy Petrochenkoin the Second Duma (22nd sitting, April 5, 1907): Kutler,he said, proposed good conditions.... “Of course, being a wealthy manhe has named a high figure, and we, poor peasants, cannot pay such aprice” (p. 1616). Thus, the Right-wing peasant is more to the leftthan the bourgeois politician who is playing at being a liberal. Seealso the speech of the non-party peasant deputy Semyonov (April 12,1907), which breathes the spirit of the spontaneous revolutionarystruggle of the peasants, and many other speeches.