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

AGRARIAN PROGRAMME OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY389the peasant proletariat; I do not know which is better, a peasantproletariat, or the present land-hungry peasantry which if certainmeasures were taken, could obtain a sufficient amount of land” (722).This smacks of the reactionary Narodism of Mr. V. V.:“Better” for whom? For the state? For the landlord state,or for the bourgeois ‘state? And why is the proletariat not“better”? Because the land-hungry peasantry “could obtain”,i.e., could more easily be appeased, more easily broughtinto the camp of order than the proletariat? That is whatit amounts to, according to Mr. Karavayev: it is as if hewere offering Stolypin and Co. a more reliable “guarantee”against a social revolution!If Mr. Karavayev were right in essentials, the Marxistscould not support the confiscation of the landlords’ land inRussia. But Mr. Karavayev is wrong, because the Stolypin“way”, by slowing down the development of capitalism—in comparison with the peasant revolution—is creating morepaupers than proletarians. Karavayev himself said, andrightly, that the Stolypin policy was enriching (not thenew, bourgeois elements, not the capitalist farmers, but)the present landlords, half of whose economies were run onfeudal lines. In 1895, the price of land sold through the“Peasant” Bank was 51 rubles per dessiatin; but in 1906,the price was 126 rubles. (Karavayev at the 47th session,May 26, 1907, p. 1189.) And Mr. Karavayev’s party colleagues,Volk-Karachevsky and Delarov, brought out evenmore vividly the significance of those figures. Delarovshowed that “up to 1905, during the twenty odd years ofits existence, the Peasant Bank bought up only 7,500,000dessiatins”; but between November 3, 1905 and April 1,1907, it bought up 3,800,000 dessiatins. The price of landwas 80 rubles per dessiatin in 1900, 108 rubles in 1902,rising to 109 rubles in 1903, before the agrarian movement,and before the Russian revolution. Now it is 126 rubles.“While the whole of Russia was suffering heavy loss as aconsequence of the Russian revolution, the Russian biglandowners were amassing fortunes. During that periodthey pocketed over 60,000,000 rubles of the people’s money”(1220—counting 109 rubles as a “fair” price). But Mr. Volk-Karachevsky reckons far more correctly in refusing to regardany price as “fair”, simply noting that after November