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

AGRARIAN PROGRAMME OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY4058. THE “NATIONALS”Among the representatives of the non-Russian nationalitiesin the Duma who spoke on the agrarian question werePoles, Byelorussians, Letts and Ests, Lithuanians, Tatars,Armenians, Bashkirs, Kirghiz, and Ukrainians. Here ishow they expounded their points of view.The National-Democrat 140 Dmowski said in the SecondDuma “on behalf of the Poles—the representatives of theKingdom of Poland and of the adjacent western part of thecountry” (742): “Although our agrarian relations are alreadyin the stage of transition to West-European relations,nevertheless, the agrarian question exists for us too, and landhunger is the curse of our life. One of the chief points of oursocial programme is: increase in the area of peasant landownership”(743).“The big agrarian disturbances that occurred in the Kingdom ofPoland in the form of the seizure of landlord estates were confined tothe eastern areas, namely, Wlodawa Uyezd, where the peasants weretold that they, as members of the Orthodox Church, would receiveallotments of landlords’ land. Those disturbances occurred only amongthe population belonging to the Orthodox Church” (745).... “Here [in the Kingdom of Poland] agrarian affairs, like allother social reforms, ... can be settled in conformity with therequirements of life only by an assembly of representatives of theregion—only by an autonomous Sejm” (747).This speech by a Polish National-Democrat provokedviolent attacks against the Polish landlords on the part ofthe Right Byelorussian peasants (Gavrilchik, Minsk Gubernia,Szymánski, and Grudzi[ski); and Bishop Eulogius,of course, seized the opportunity to deliver a jesuiticalpolice-minded speech in the spirit of the Russian politiciansof 1863 about the Polish landlords oppressing theRussian peasants (26th session, April 12).“What a simple plan!” answered the National-DemocratGrabski (32nd session, May 3). “The peasants will receiveland; the Russian landlords will keep their estates; thepeasants, as in the good old days, will support the old regime,and the Poles will be duly punished for raising thequestion of a Polish Sejm” (62). And the speaker, vehementlyexposing the shameless demagogy of the Russian Government;demanded that “the settlement of the agrarianreform in our region be transferred to a Polish Sejm” (75).