Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution, 1905-1907[1]

Written: Written in November-December 1907
Published: First published in 1908 (confiscated); published in 1917 in book form by Zhizn i Znaniye. Published according to the manuscript. Checked with the text of the 1917 edition.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1972, Moscow, Volume 13, pages 217-429.
Translated: Bernard Isaacs
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2004). 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.

Contents

Chapter I. The Economic Basis and Nature of the Agrarian Revolution in Russia 220
1. Landownership in European Russia 220
2. What is the Struggle About? 225
3. The Cadet Writers Obscure the Nature of the Struggle 231
4. The Economic Nature of the Agrarian Revolution and its Ideological Cloaks 234
5. Two Types of Bourgeois Agrarian Evolution 238
6. Two lines Of Agrarian Programmes in the Revolution 243
7. Russia’s Land Area. The Question of the Colonisation 247
8. Summary of the Economic Deductions of Chapter I 254
Chapter II. The Agrarian Programmes of the R.S.D.L.P. and Their Test in the First Revolution 255
1. What Was the Mistake in the Previous Agrarian Programmes of Russian Social-Democracy? 255
2. The Present Agrarian Programme of the R.S.D.L.P. 258
3. The Chief Argument of the Municipalisers Tested by Events 261
4. The Agrarian Programme of the Peasantry 267
5. Medieval Landownership and the Bourgeois Revolution 272
6. Why Had the Small Proprietors in Russia to Declare in Favour of Nationalisation? 276
7. The Peasants and the Narodniks on the Nationalisation of Allotment Land 284
8. The Mistake Made by M. Shanin and Other Advocates of Division 287
Chapter III. The Theoretical Basis of Nationalisation and of Municipalisation 294
1. What is Nationalisation of the Land? 295
2. Pyotr Maslov Corrects Karl Marx’s Rough Notes 300
3. Is it Necessary to Refute Marx in Order to Refute the Narodniks? 307
4. Is the Repudiation of Absolute Rent Connected with the Programme of Municipalisation? 311
5. Criticism of Private Landownership from the Standpoint of the Development of Capitalism 313
6. The Nationalisation of the Land and Money Rent 316
7. Under What Conditions Can Nationalisation Be Brought About? 318
8. Does Nationalisation Mean Transition to Division? 323
Chapter IV. Political and Tactical Considerations in Questions of the Agrarian Programme 325
1. “A Guarantee Against Restoration” 325
2. Local Self-Government as a “Bulwark Against Reaction” 332
3. The Central Authority and the Consolidation of the Bourgeois State 337
4. The Scope of the Political and of the Agrarian Revolutions 344
5. A Peasant Revolution Without the Conquest of Power by the Peasantry? 351
6. Is Land Nationalisation a Sufficiently Flexible Method? 355
7. Municipalisation of the Land and Municipal Socialism 358
8. Some Examples of the Muddle Caused by Municipalisation 363
Chapter V. Classes and Parties in the Debate on the Agrarian Question in the Second Duma 366
1. The Rights and the Octobrists 368
2. The Cadets 374
3. The Right Peasants 380
4. The Non-Party Peasants 383
5. The Narodnik Intellectuals 388
6. The Trudovik Peasants (Narodniks) 394
7. The Socialist-Revolutionaries 400
8. The “Nationals” 405
9. The Social-Democrats 414
Conclusion 421

Notes

[1] Lenin’s book The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution, 1905-1907 was written in November-December 1907. It was included in Part 2, Volume II of the collection of Lenin’s works entitled Twelve Years, which was to have been published in 1908, but the book was seized at the printers by the police and destroyed. Only one copy was saved with several pages at the end of it missing. The book was first published in 1917 under the title, VI. Ilyin (N. Lenin), The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution, 1905-1907 (Petrograd, Zhizn i Znaniye Publishers).

The 1917 edition of this book was printed from the mutilated copy, which broke off at the following unfinished sentence: “The reformative path of creating a Junker-bourgeois Russia presupposes the preservation of the foundations of the old system of landownership and their slow”... (See present volume, p. 425.) To this Lenin added the words: “systematic, and most painful coercion of the mass of the peasantry. The revolutionary path of creating a peasant-bourgeois Russia necessarily presupposes the break-up of the old system of landownership, the abolition of the private ownership of the land.”

The present edition is reproduced from the manuscript corrected by Lenin several years after the 1908 edition.

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