Published:
Pravda No. 38, May 5 (April 22), 1917.
Published according to the text in Pravda.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1964,
Moscow,
Volume 24,
page 209.
Translated: Isaacs Bernard
Transcription\Markup:
B. Baggins and D. Walters
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
1999
(2005).
You may freely copy, distribute,
display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
Archive” as your source.
• README
The Petrograd Gazeta-Kopeika[1] in its issue of April 14 published the following report:
Kishlnev, April 13. In view of the fact that there are great tracts of uncultivated land in the uyezd that are not leased on account of the high rent, the Akkerman Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies has recommended all village and volost committees to requisition all unused privately owned lands for crop cultivation through the Commissar in cases where voluntary agreements are impossible.
If this report is true, it is extremely important. Obviously, the Akkerman Soviet is guided by practical considerations, and is no doubt closely and intimately acquainted with local conditions. It considers correctly that the crops must be increased at all costs to the fullest possible extent. But how can this be done when the landowners have raised the rents scandalously?
By voluntary agreements with the landowners?
This is what Minister Shingaryov emphatically advises from Petrograd; he threatens the peasants, and protests vehemently against arbitrary action. It is all very well for Shingaryov to argue from Petrograd. It is all very well for him to defend the landowners in the name of the government of the capitalists.
But how about the situation of the peasants locally? Does not the Akkerman Soviet appraise the situation more correctly when it speaks of “voluntary agreements” being “impossible”?
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