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

AGRARIAN PROGRAMME OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY385mination by torture, imprisonment, and exile of all peasantswho think and try to act freely. Stolypin is aware of thisand is acting accordingly. The Cadets, with the obtusenesscharacteristic of liberal bureaucrats and professors, areeither unaware of it or else hypocritically conceal it, “shamefacedlyremain silent” about it, just as they do aboutthe punitive expeditions of 1861 and of subsequent years.If this systematic and unchecked violence is shattered bysome internal or external obstacle, the honest non-partypeasant who “does not engage in politics” will convert Russiainto a peasant republic.The peasant Moroz, in a short speech, simply said: “Theland must be taken away from the clergy and the landlords”(1955), and then quoted the Gospel (this is not the firsttime in history that bourgeois revolutionaries have takentheir slogans from the Gospel).... “Unless you bring the priestsome bread and a half bottle of vodka he won’t baptise achild for you.... And yet they talk about Holy Gospel andread: ‘Ask and it shall be given you; knock and it will beopened unto you.’ We ask and ask, but it is not given us;and we knock, but still it is not given us. Must we breakdown the door and take it? Gentlemen, don’t wait untilthe door is broken down; give voluntarily, and then therewill be freedom, liberty, and it will be good for you andfor us” (1955).Take the non-party peasant Afanasyev, who appraisesCossack “municipalisation” not from the Cossack point ofview, but from that of “almost a newcomer”. “In the firstplace, gentlemen, I must say that I represent the peasantsof the Don region, numbering over a million, and yet Iwas the only one elected. That alone shows that we arealmost newcomers there.... I am infinitely surprised: doesSt. Petersburg feed the countryside? No, on the contrary.In the past I worked in St. Petersburg for twenty odd years,and I noticed even then that it was not St. Petersburg thatfed the countryside, but the countryside that fed St. Petersburg.And I notice the same thing now. All this beautifularchitecture, all these edifices and buildings, all thesefine houses, they are all built by peasants, as they weretwenty-five years ago.... Purishkevich gave the exampleof a Cossack who has over twenty dessiatins of land, and he