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

292V. I. LENINture on the peasant allotments and on the landlords’ estatesseemed to be quite mature and well-established.The revolution has exposed that mistake; it hasconfirmed the trend of development as we had defined it.The Marxist analysis of the classes in Russian society hasbeen so brilliantly confirmed by the whole course of eventsin general, and by the first two Dumas in particular, thatnon-Marxist socialism has been shattered completely. Butthe survivals of serfdom in the countryside have proved tobe much stronger than we thought: they have given rise toa nation-wide peasant movement and they have made thatmovement the touchstone of the bourgeois revolution as aFROM MARXTO MAOwhole. Hegemony in the bourgeois liberation movement,which revolutionary Social-Democracy always assigned to⋆the proletariat, had to be defined more precisely as leadershipwhich rallied the peasantry behind it. But leading towhat? To the bourgeois revolution in its most consistentand decisive form. We rectified the mistake by substitutingfor the partial aim of combating the survivals of theold agrarian system, the aim of combating the old agrariansystem as a whole. Instead of purging landlord economy,we set the aim of abolishing it.But this correction, made under the impact of the imposingcourse of events, NOT did not FOR make many of us think outto its logical conclusion our new evaluation of the degreeof capitalist development in Russian agriculture. If thedemand for theCOMMERCIALconfiscation of all the landlord estates provedto be historically correct—and that undoubtedly wasthe case—it meant DISTRIBUTIONthat the wide development of capitalismcalls for new agrarian relationships, that the beginningsof capitalism in landlord economy can and must besacrificed to the wide and free development of capitalismon the basis of renovated small farming. To accept the demandfor the confiscation of the landlord estates meansadmitting the possibility and the necessity of the renovationof small farming under capitalism.Is that admissible? Is it not a gamble to support smallfarming under capitalism? Is not the renovation of smallfarming a vain dream? Is it not a demagogic “trap for thepeasants”, a Bauernfang? That, undoubtedly, was whatmany comrades thought. But they were wrong. The re-