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

AGRARIAN PROGRAMME OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY387unable to wipe out from my heart for more than two years.... Consequently,gentlemen ... to sum up, I must say that as regards all thoserights that exist in our Russia, from the princes to the nobles, Cossacks,burghers, not mentioning the word peasant, all must be Russiancitizens and have the use of land, all those who till the land,who put their labour into it, who cherish and love it. Work, sweatand benefit from it. But if you do not want to live on the land, if youdo not want to till it, if you do not want to put your labour into it,you have no right to benefit from it” (1974) (26th session, 12.IV.1907).“Not mentioning the word peasant!” That splendid utterance“from the depths of the heart” burst from a peasantwho wants to do away with the social estate character oflandownership (“all those rights that exist in our Russia”),who wants to abolish the very name of the lowest estate,the peasantry. “Let all be citizens.” Equal right to landfor the toilers is nothing else than the farmer’s point of viewapplied with the utmost consistency to the land. Theremust be no other basis for the ownership of land (like that“for service” among the Cossacks, etc.), no other reasons,no other relations, except the right of the farmer to the land,except the reason that he “cherishes” it, except the relationthat he “puts his labour” into it. That must be the pointof view of the farmer who stands for free farming on freeland, for the removal of everything that is extraneous,obstructive, and obsolete, the removal of all the old formsof landownership. Would it not be the stupid applicationof a thoughtless doctrine if Marxists were to dissuade sucha farmer from nationalisation and teach him the benefitsof private ownership of allotment land?In the First Duma, the peasant Merkulov (Kursk Gubernia)expressed the same idea about the nationalisation ofpeasant allotment land as that which we quoted abovefrom the reports of the congresses of the Peasant Union.“They try to scare us;” said Merkulov, “by saying that thepeasants themselves will refuse to part with the patch ofland they now possess. To that I say: Who is going to takeit from them? Even with complete nationalisation, onlythat part of the land will be taken which the owner does notcultivate by himself, but with hired labour” (18th session,May 30, 1906, p. 822).That was said by a peasant who, as he himself admitted,owns 60 dessiatins of land. Of course, the idea of abolish-