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

288V. I. LENINof it than private ownership. But what has that to do withthe “peasant agrarian revolution” in Russia? M. Shanin haspointed out the correct path, if you like, but it is the correctpath of a Stolypin agrarian reform, and not of a peasantagrarian revolution.* The difference between thetwo ways is entirely lost upon M. Shanin, and yet unlessthis difference is clearly realised, it is ridiculous to talkabout a Social-Democratic agrarian programme in the Russianrevolution. And when M. Shanin, prompted, of course,by the very best motives, defends confiscation againstredemption payments, he loses all sense of historical perspective.He forgets that in bourgeois society confiscation,i.e., expropriation without compensation, is as utterlyincompatible with reform as land nationalisation. To speakof confiscation while admitting the possibility of a reformistand not a revolutionary solution of the agrarian questionis like petitioning Stolypin to abolish landlordism.Another aspect of Shanin’s pamphlet is its heavy emphasison the agricultural character of our agrarian crisis,on the absolute necessity of adopting higher forms of economy,of improving agricultural technique, which is soincredibly backward in Russia, and so forth. Shanin elaboratesthese correct theses in such an incredibly one-sidedfashion, and he so completely ignores the abolition of thefeudal latifundia and the changing of agrarian relationshipsas a condition for that technical revolution, that an utterly* Shanin’s reference to the example of Ireland, showing thatprivate ownership preponderates over renting (and not over the nationalisationof the whole land), is not new either. In exactly the sameway, the “liberal” Professor A. I. Chuprov cites Ireland to prove thatpeasant ownership of land is preferable. (The Agrarian Question, Vol. II,p. 11.) The real nature of this “liberal” and even “Constitutional-Democrat”is revealed on page 33 of his article. Here Mr. Chuprov, withincredible brazenness, the brazenness of a liberal that is possibleonly in Russia, proposes that on all the land-surveying commissionsthe peasants be subordinated to a majority of landlords! Five membersrepresenting the peasants and five, representing the landlords, with achairman “appointed by the Zemstvo Assembly”, i.e., by an assemblyof landlords. An allusion to Ireland was also made in the First Dumaby the Right-wing deputy, Prince Drutsky-Lyubetsky, as proof ofthe necessity for private ownership of land and as an argument againstthe Cadet Bill. (Sitting of May 24, 1906, p 626 of Stenographic Record.)