Written: September 28, 1917
Published:
Published in 1917 in The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution, 1905-1907.
Published according to the book text.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1972,
Moscow,
Volume 13,
pages 430-431.
Translated: Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
(2004).
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The present work was written at the end of 1907. It was printed in St. Petersburg in 1908, but was seized and destroyed by the tsarist censor. Only one copy was saved, but the end of it was missing (after page 269 of that edition). This, has now been added.
At the present time the revolution poses the agrarian question in Russia in an immeasurably broader, deeper, and sharper form than it did in 1905-07. Knowledge of the his tory of our Party programme in the first revolution will, I hope, contribute to a more correct understanding of the aims of the present revolution.
It is particularly necessary to emphasise the following. The war has caused such untold calamities to the belligerent countries and has at the same time accelerated the development of capitalism to such a tremendous degree, converting monopoly capitalism into state-monopoly capitalism, that neither the proletariat nor the revolutionary petty-bourgeois democrats can keep within the limits of capitalism.
Life has already overstepped those limits and has placed on the order of the day the regulation of production and distribution on a national scale, universal labour service, compulsory syndication (uniting in unions), etc.
Under these circumstances, the question of the nationalisation of the land must inevitably be presented in a new way in the agrarian programme, namely: nationalisation of the land is not only “the last word” of the bourgeois revolution, but also a step towards socialism. The calamities due to the war cannot be combated unless such steps are taken.
The proletariat, leading the poorest section of the peasantry, is compelled, on the one hand, to shift the weight of emphasis from the Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies to the Soviets of Agricultural Workers’ Deputies, and on the other hand, to demand the nationalisation of faint implements in the landlords’ estates and also the conversion of those estates into model farms under the control of these latter Soviets.
I cannot, of course, deal with these extremely important questions in greater detail here; I must refer the readers who are interested in them to the current Bolshevik literature and to my pamphlets: Letters on Tactics and The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution (Draft of a Platform for the Proletarian Party).
The Author
September 28, 1917
[1] Lenin wrote this Postscript for the 1917 edition of the book.
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