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

386V. I. LENINis also starving.... Why didn’t he tell us where that land is?There is land, there is land in Russia, too, but who owns it?If he knew there is so much land there, but did not saywhere, it shows that he is an unjust man; but if he didn’tknow, he should not have started talking about it. And ifhe really didn’t know, then permit me, gentlemen, to tellhim where that land is, how much there is of it, and whoowns it. If you reckon it up you will find that in the DonCossack Region there are 753,546 dessiatins used as privatestud-farms. I will also mention the Kalmyk stud-farms,what are called nomad camps; they take up in all 165,708dessiatins. Then there are 1,055,919 dessiatins temporarilyleased by rich people. All that land belongs not tothe people Purishkevich mentioned, but to kulaks, to therich, who oppress us; when they get cattle—they skin usof half, we have to pay a ruble per dessiatin, another rublefor the animal we plough with, but we have to feed our children,and the Cossack wives and children as well. That iswhy we are starving.” He went on to say that leaseholdersget 2,700 dessiatins each for supplying eight horses “forthe cavalry”; the peasants could supply more. “I will tellyou that I wanted to convince the government that it wasmaking a great mistake in not doing this. I wrote a letterto Selsky Vestnik and asked them to publish it, but theyanswered that it was not our business to teach the government.”Thus, on “municipalised” land transferred to theownership of a region, the “central undemocratic government”is de facto creating new landlords: municipalisationis, as Plekhanov revealed, a guarantee against restoration....“The government opened the doors wide for us to acquire landthrough the Peasant Bank—that is the yoke that was put on us in1861. It wants to make us settle in Siberia ... but would it not be betterto send there the man who owns thousands of dessiatins? Lookhow many people could live off the land he would leave behind!”(Applause on the Left; voices from the Right: “That’s stale, that’sstale.”) ...“During the Japanese war I led my recruits through those[landlord’s] lands that I have mentioned here. It took us over fortyeighthours to get to the assembly place. The men asked me: ‘Whereare you taking us?’ I answered: ‘Against Japan.’ ‘What for?’‘To defend our country.’ Being a soldier myself, I felt it was our dutyto defend our country, but the men said: ‘This is not our country—the land belongs to the Lisetskys, Bezulovs, and Podkopailovs. Thereis nothing here that is ours!’ They said things to me that I have been