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

455THE NEW AGRARIAN POLICYOn Wednesday, February 13, Nicholas II received 307deputies of the Third Duma. The tsar’s amiable conversationwith the Black-Hundred reactionaries Bobrinsky andChelyshev was a comic aspect of the new ceremonial kiss ofthe autocracy and its gang of allies. Far more serious was thestatement by Nicholas that the Duma was shortly to passnew agrarian laws, and that all thought of compulsory alienationmust be dismissed, since he, Nicholas II, would neversanction such a law. “The tsar’s speech,” reports the correspondentof Frankfurter Zeitung, “had a depressing effecton the peasants.”To be sure, the agitational value of this “agrarian statement”made by the tsar himself is very important, andwe can but congratulate the talented agitator. But, apartfrom its agitational significance, this ominous thrust atcompulsory alienation is highly important as conclusiveproof that the landlord monarchy has embarked on a newagrarian policy.The famous extra-Duma ukases under Article 87 of November9, 1906, and successive dates, ushered in the era ofthis new agrarian policy of the tsarist government. Stolypinconfirmed it in the Second Duma; the Right and theOctobrist deputies approved it; the Cadets (frightened byrumours picked up in lobbies of the camarilla that the Dumawas going to be dissolved) refrained from denouncing itopenly. Now, in the Third Duma, the Land Committee hasrecently accepted the basic thesis of the law of November 9,1906, and has gone a step further by recognising the proprie-