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

AGRARIAN PROGRAMME OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY2951. WHAT IS NATIONALISATION OF THE LAND?Above we quoted the current formulation of the nowgenerally recognised proposition. “All the Narodnik groupsare advocating nationalisation of the land.” As a matterof fact, this current formulation is very inexact and thereis very little in it that is “generally recognised”, if by thiswe mean a really identical conception of this “nationalisation”among the representatives of the various politicaltrends. The mass of the peasantry demand the land spontaneously,for they are oppressed by the feudal latifundiaand do not associate the transfer of the land to the peoplewith any at all definite economic ideas. Among the peasantrythere is only a very urgent demand, born, so tospeak, from suffering and hardened by long years of oppression—ademand for the revival, strengthening, consolidation,and expansion of small farming; a demand that thelatter be made predominant, and nothing more. All thatthe peasant visualises is the passing of the landlord latifundiainto his own hands; in this struggle the peasantclothes his hazy idea of the unity of all peasants, as a mass,in the phrase: ownership of the land by the people. Thepeasant is guided by the instinct of the property owner,who is hindered by the endless fragmentation of the presentforms of medieval landownership and by the impossibilityof organising the cultivation of the soil in a manner thatfully corresponds to “property owning” requirements ifall this motley medieval system of landownership continues.The economic necessity of abolishing landlordism, of abolishingalso the “fetters” of allotment landownership—suchare the negative concepts which exhaust thepeasant idea of nationalisation. What forms of landownershipmay eventually be necessary for renovated small farming,which will have digested, so to speak, the landlordlatifundia, the peasant does not think about.The negative aspects of the concept (or hazy ideas ofnationalisation undoubtedly also predominate in Narodnikideology, which expresses the demands and the hopesof the peasantry. The removal of the old obstacles, theclearing out of the landlord, the “unfencing” of the land,the removal of the fetters of allotment ownership, the