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

390V. I. LENIN3, 1905, the government paid out to the landlords 52,000,000rubles on account of land purchased by peasants, and242,000,000 rubles on its own account; in all, “295,000,000rubles of the people’s money were paid to the landed nobility”(1080. All italics ours). This, of course, is only a fractionof what Junker-bourgeois agrarian evolution is costingRussia; such is the tribute imposed on the growing productiveforces for the benefit of the feudal landlords and thebureaucracy! The Cadets too want to preserve this tributeto the landlords for the liberation of Russia’s development(redemption payments). The bourgeois farmers’ republic,on the other hand, would be compelled to use those sumsfor developing the productive forces of agriculture underthe new system.*Lastly, we must certainly place to the credit of the Narodnikintellectuals the fact that, unlike the Bobrinskysand Kutlers, they are aware of the fraud that was perpetratedon the people in 1861 and call that notorious reform notthe great reform, but one “carried out in the interests ofthe landlords” (Karavayev, 1193). Reality, justly observedMr. Karavayev concerning the post-Reform period, “hasexceeded the gloomiest forecasts” of those who championedthe interests of the peasantry in 1861.On the question of peasant ownership of the land, Mr.Karavayev openly challenged the government’s concernfor it by putting the question to the peasants: “Gentlemen,peasant deputies, you are the representatives of the people.Your life is the peasants’ life, your mind is their mind. Whenyou were leaving, did your constituents complain that they* See Kautsky’s The Agrarian Question in Russia on the necessityof spending enormous amounts of capital for the promotion ofpeasant agriculture. Here the “municipalisers” may protest that thebourgeois republic will spend money on the republic’s armed forces,whereas the democratic Zemstvo ... will have the money taken awayfrom it by the undemocratic central government, most highly esteemedmunicipalisers! Besides, the very rise of such a Zemstvo is impossibleunder an undemocratic central government; this is but the pious wishof a petty bourgeois. The only true comparison is that between a bourgeoisrepublic (which spends more than other states on the developmentof productive forces: North America, for example), and a bourgeoismonarchy (which for decades pays tribute to the Junkers: Germany,for example).