The Seventh (April) All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P.(B.)
APRIL 24–29, 1917
14
Rejoinder to N. S. Angarsky
During the Debate on the Agrarian Question
April 28 (May 11)
Comrades, it seems to me that Comrade Angarsky is indulging in
several contradictions. I speak about the material foundation of
the urge towards nationalisation. The peasants have no idea of
nationalisation. I say that the conditions of an all-Russia and
international market exist, and this is expressed in the high
prices of grain. Every peasant sees, knows, and feels the
fluctuations of these prices, and farming has to conform to
these conditions, to these prices. I say that the old
landownership and the new farming system have absolutely
diverged and this divergence explains why the peasants are
pressing onward. The peasant is a proprietor, Comrade Angarsky
says. Quite right. Stolypin wanted to use this as a basis for
changing agrarian relations, he tried his hardest, but he
failed, because such changes cannot be brought about without a
revolutionary break-up. This, then, is the material foundation
of the peasants’ urge towards the nationalisation of the land,
although they are completely ignorant as to the real meaning of
nationalisation. The peasant proprietor is instinctively
inclined to maintain that the land is God’s, because it has
become impossible to live under the old conditions of
landownership. What Comrade Angarsky is proposing is a sheer
misunderstanding.
The second paragraph says that peasant landownership is fettered
all round, from top to bottom, by old semi-feudal ties and
relationships. But does it say anything about the landed
estates? It does not. Comrade Angarsky’s amendment is based on a
misapprehension. He has ascribed to me things I never said,
things the peasants have no idea about. The peasants know the
world situation by the prices of grain and consumer goods, and
if a railway runs through his village, the peasant feels its
effect through his own farm. To live the old way is
impossible—that’s what the peasant feels, and he expresses
this feeling in a radical demand for the abolition of the old
system of landownership. The peasant wants to be a proprietor,
but he wants to be one on reallocated land; he wants to farm
land the ownership of which is conditioned by his present
requirements, and not by those which were prescribed for him by
officials. The peasant knows this perfectly well, but expresses
it differently, of course, and it is this that forms the
material foundation of his urge towards the nationalisation of
the land.
| First published in 1921 in N. Lenin (V. Ulyanov), Works, Volume XIV, Part 2 |
Published according to the typewritten copy of the Minutes |
Notes