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

442V. I. LENINfor capitalism in agriculture at all costs. The Russian liberals,the most learned, the most educated, and the most “humane”of them—like the professors of Russkiye Vedomosti—prove to be incomparably more stupid in this respect thanthe Stolypins. “It would not be surprising,” says the editorialin the February 1st issue of this newspaper, “if in deciding,for instance, the fate of the November provisionalregulations, the formerly Slavophile advocates of the villagecommune support the attempt of the Ministry to destroythe village communes by assigning land to individualhouseholders as their private property.... It may even beassumed that the defensive aims common to the conservativemajority in the Duma and to the Ministry will suggest toboth measures even more aggressive than the famous ukasesof 1906.... We get an amazing picture: the conservative government,with the support of representatives of the conservativeparties, are preparing to carry out a radical reform ofagrarian relations—which are the least amenable to drasticchanges—and are deciding upon so radical a measure fromabstract considerations about the preferability of one formof ownership to another.”Wake up, mister professor! Shake off the archive dust ofold-fashioned Narodism; look at what two years of revolutionhave done. Stolypin defeated you not only by physicalforce, but also because he correctly understood the mostpractical need of economic development, namely, the forciblebreak-up of the old form of landownership. The great“advance” which has already been irrevocably effected bythe revolution consists in the fact that formerly the Black-Hundred autocracy could base itself on medieval forms oflandownership, whereas now it is compelled, wholly and irrevocablycompelled, to work for their destruction withfeverish speed. For it has understood that without thebreak-up of the old agrarian order there can be no escape fromthe contradiction which most profoundly of all explainsthe Russian revolution, namely, the most backward systemof landownership and the most ignorant peasantry on theone hand, and the most advanced industrial and finance capitalismon the other!So you are for the Stolypin agrarian legislation? the Narodnikswill ask us in horror.