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

498 NOTESpresent edition, Vol. 9, p. 310). The tactics of individual terrorismwhich the S.R.’s advocated as the principal method of struggleagainst the autocracy caused great harm to the revolutionarymovement, since it made it difficult to organise the masses for therevolutionary struggle.The agrarian programme of the S.R.’s envisaged the abolitionof private ownership of the land and its transfer to the village communeson the basis of the “labour principle” and “equalised” landtenure, as well as the development of co-operatives of all kinds.The S.R.’s called this programme “socialisation of the land”, butthere was nothing socialist about it. Lenin’s analysis of it showedthat the preservation of commodity production and private farmingon the common land does not eliminate the domination of capital,does not save the toiling peasants from exploitation and ruin norcan co-operation be a saving remedy for the small peasants underFROM MARXTO MAOcapitalism, since it serves to enrich the rural bourgeoisie. At thesame time Lenin pointed out that the demand for equalised landtenure while not socialist, was of a historically progressive⋆revolutionary-democratic nature, since it was aimed againstreactionary landlordism.The Bolshevik Party exposed the S.R.’s attempts to masqueradeas socialists, waged an unremitting struggle against the S.R.’s forinfluence on the peasantry, and revealed the harm their tactics ofindividual terrorism were causing the labour movement. At thesame time the Bolsheviks were prepared, on definite terms, to cometo temporary agreements with the S.R.’s in the struggle againsttsarism.NOT FORCOMMERCIALDISTRIBUTIONThe heterogeneous class character of the peasantry determinedthe political and ideological instability and organisational disunityof the S.R. Party, and its members’ continual vacillation betweenthe liberal bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Already during the firstRussian revolution of 1905-07 its Right wing split away from theparty and formed the legal “Trudovik Popular Socialist Party”(Popular Socialists), whose views were close to those of the Constitutional-Democrats;the Left wing organised itself into the semianarchistLeague of “Maximalists”. During the Stolypin reactionthe S.R. Party was in a state of complete collapse ideologicallyand organisationally. The First World War found most of the S.R.’staking a social-chauvinist stand.After the victory of the bourgeois-democratic revolution of February1917, the S.R.’s, together with the Mensheviks and Cadets,were the mainstay of the counter-revolutionary Provisional Governmentof the bourgeoisie and landlords, and the leaders of the party(Kerensky, Avksentyev, Chernov) were members of that government.The S.R. Party refused to support the peasants’ demands forthe abolition of landlordism and stood for private ownership of theland; the S.R. ministers in the Provisional Government sent punitiveexpeditions against the peasants who had seized the landlords’estates.At the end of November 1917 the Left wing of the party foundeda separate Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party. In an endeavour to