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

AGRARIAN PROGRAMME OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY247and the Cadets, as is frequently and mistakenly assumedby the Mensheviks (who allow themselves to be taken inby the sound of “constitutional-democratic” words andsubstitute analysis of the respective titles of the parties fora class analysis). The dividing line runs between the Cadetsand the Trudoviks. That line is determined by the interestsof the two principal classes in Russian society which arefighting for the land, viz., the landlords and the peasantry.The Cadets stand for the preservation of landlordism andfor a civilised, European, but landlord bourgeois evolutionof agriculture. The Trudoviks (and the Social-Democraticworkers’ deputies), i.e., the representatives of the peasantryand the representatives of the proletariat, advocate apeasant bourgeois evolution of agriculture.A strict distinction must be drawn between the ideologicalcloak of the agrarian programmes, their differentpolitical details, etc., and the economic basis of those programmes.The present difficulty does not lie in understandingthe bourgeois character of the agrarian demands andprogrammes of both the landlords and the peasants: thatwas already explained by the Marxists before the revolution,and the revolution has confirmed the correctness oftheir explanation. The difficulty lies in understandingfully the basis of the struggle between the two classes withinthe framework of bourgeois society and bourgeois evolution.The fact that this struggle is a normal social phenomenonwill not be understood unless it is seen as partand parcel of the objective tendencies of the economic developmentof capitalist Russia.Now, having shown the connection between the two typesof agrarian programmes in the Russian revolution and thetwo types of bourgeois agrarian evolution, we must passon to the examination of a new, extremely important aspectof the question.7. RUSSIA’S LAND AREA.THE QUESTION OF THE COLONISATIONWe have pointed out above that on the question of capitalismin Russia the economic analysis compels us to distinguishbetween the central agricultural provinces with