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

DEBATE ON EXTENSION OF DUMA’S BUDGETARY POWERS443Oh, no. Calm yourselves! We are unreservedly opposedto all the forms of the old landownership in Russia—bothlandlordism and peasant allotment ownership. We are unreservedlyin favour of a forcible break-up of this rotten anddecaying antiquity which is poisoning everything new. Weare in favour of bourgeois nationalisation of the land, as theonly consistent slogan of the bourgeois revolution, and asthe only practical measure that will direct the spearhead ofthe historically necessary break-up against the landlords bycontributing towards the emergence of free farmers fromamong the mass of the peasantry.A feature of the Russian bourgeois revolution is that arevolutionary policy on the key issue of the revolution—theagrarian question—is being pursued by the Black Hundredsand by the peasants together with the workers. The liberallawyers and professors, on the other hand, are advocatingsomething that is absolutely lifeless, absurd, and utopian—namely,a reconciliation of the two antithetical andmutually exclusive methods of breaking up what is obsolescent;a reconciliation, moreover, which will mean no breakupat all. Either a victory for the peasant revolt and the completebreak-up of the old landowning system in favour of apeasantry that has been remoulded by the revolution—inother words, confiscation of the landed estates and a republic;or a Stolypin break-up which also remoulds—in fact,remoulds and adapts the old landowning system to capitalistrelationships—but wholly in the interests of the landlordsand at the price of the utter ruin of the peasant masses,their forcible ejection from the countryside, the eviction,starvation, and the extermination of the flower of the peasantyouth with the help of jails, exile, shooting, and torture.For a minority to enforce such a policy against the majoritywould not be easy, but economically it is not impossible.We must help the people to realise this. But the attemptby means of a neat reform, peacefully and withoutviolence, to escape from that utterly tangled skein of medievalcontradictions, which has been created by centuries ofRussian history, is the stupidest dream of hidebound “menin mufflers”. Economic necessity will certainly call for, andwill certainly bring about a most “drastic change” in Russia’sagrarian system. The historical question is whether