The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-06-12
LENIN


running wild all over the country The head
of the government, Premier Witte, had gotten
big loan from foreign capital and could
abandon his time-gaining tactics. But the
movements of the people also becomes
broader. The workers feel strongly the neces-
sity of unity and under this pressure the Boil
sheviks and Mensheviks decide to hold COM
mon convention. 1t was held in April, 1906 in
Stockholm, and the factions prepared them
selves for it in conferences held in Finland
The Naturalization of the Land.
The main question of the convention was
the agrarian question. The report was made
by Maslov, the Menshevik His program was
the appropriation of the landlords estates and
the giving of the land to the Zemstvos County
adminiStratiOnS) This "municipalization" was
recommended by Plechanov with the motive
that it will be an effective method against the
restoration: The nationalZed land, he claimed,
can be taken back by the counter-revolution,
but not the municipalized land. The national
ization proposal Of Lenin he compared with the
naturalization realized in China years ago, and
criticized it as "UtOpian." He said that Lenin
had raised the slogan of the Socialist Revolu-
tionists.
Lenin showed that the municipalization pro-
posal is itself a UtOpian program. First, the
question of guarantees against restoration"
The only guarantee is, he says, that the revolu-
The main fault with the Menshevik program
is that the peasants do not approve of it. 1t
means kind OF characterization of agricul-
ture thru the state and county Offices And
when Mensheviks consented to the national
ization of part of the land, they meant that it
should be administered by the bureaucracy.
quite another thing was naturalization which
the Bolsheviks advocated. Their program, was
that the peasants should take over the land
and divide it up thru their own committees
That was the idea of the peasants themselves
and they were ready to fight for it. 1t was also
an economic necessity. The peasants lands
and the parcels rented by them were so scat:
tered that modern agriculture was impos-
sible. 1t was necessary to wipe out all of the
boundaries and divide the land into whole
farms. That was progressive program de-
manded by the peasants and advocated by the
Bolsheviks Some advocates of naturalization
claimed that it would be Socialist" which of
course was Utopian thought. But Lenin said
that in spite of this Utopian theology these peo-;
pie backed the peasants own demands. Ma
tionalization, altho not socialist would be
severe blow to big ownership in general and
thus weaken the power of the big land own
ers. But the immediate result would be that
the Russian peasants would become free mod
ern farmers.
.o. The land program of Lenin was: (1) The
lands OF the church. the monaStaries the
~ The peasant committees will destroy the
remnants of the landlords privileges and ad-
minister the land problems until constituent
assembly settles matters (3) The special
taxes upon peasants must be abolished (4)
Also the old laws preventing the free utilization
OF the land by the peasants. (5) Elected popu-
lar judges shah decide upon land rents and
pass Judgment upon the validity of land con-
tracts. If the revolution is to be complete
success, then the land must be nationalized ac-
cording to the demands of the peasants The
agricultural workers will organize separately.
We must not create the illusion that small
scale agriculture will abolish poverty not as
long as there is commodity economy Only the
socialist revolution can abolish poverty.
The Mensheviks had a slight majority in
the congress. But they were compelled to
make concessions to the revolutionary stand
point. In long letter to the Petersburg nrn-