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

AGRARIAN PROGRAMME OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY253This aspect of the matter is overlooked by many studentsof the agrarian problem in Russia. The prerequisite for thewide utilisation of the vast Russian lands available forcolonisation is the creation in European Russia of a reallyfree peasantry, completely liberated from the oppressionof feudal relations. A considerable portion of these landsis unsuitable at the present time, not so much because ofthe natural properties of this or that borderland, but becauseof the social conditions of agriculture in Russia proper,which doom technical methods to stagnation and thepopulation to a rightless status, downtroddenness, ignorance,and helplessness.It is this exceedingly important aspect of the matterthat Mr. Kaufman overlooks when he declares: “I say inadvance: I do not know whether it will be possible to settleone, three, or ten million on those lands” (ibid., p. 128).He goes on to point out that the term unsuitable land isonly relative: “The alkali soils, far from being absolutelyhopeless, can, with the application of certain technicalmethods, be made very fertile” (ibid., p. 129). In Turkestan,with a population density of 3.6 to the square verst,“vast areas are still uninhabited” (ibid., p. 137). “The soilof many of the ‘hungry deserts’ of Turkestan consists of thefamous Central Asiatic loess which becomes highly fertileif sufficiently irrigated.... The existence of irrigable landsis a question that is not even worth while discussing: it issufficient to cross the country in any direction to see theruins of numerous villages and towns, abandoned centuriesago, frequently surrounded for scores of square verstsby networks of ancient irrigation canals and ditches. Thetotal area of loess desert awaiting irrigation undoubtedlyamounts to many millions of dessiatins” (ibid., p. 137).All these millions of dessiatins in Turkestan, as wellas in many other parts of Russia, are “awaiting” not onlyirrigation and reclamation of every kind. They are also“awaiting” the emancipation of the Russian agriculturalpopulation from the survivals of serfdom, from the yokeof the nobility’s latifundia, and from the Black-Hundreddictatorship in the state.It is idle to speculate on the actual amount of land inRussia that could be converted from “unsuitable” into suit-