Page:John Reed - Ten Days that Shook the World - 1919, Boni and Liveright.djvu/361

 "These Land Committees are not attempting the legislative solution of the Land question, which belongs to the Constituent Assembly alone.... But will the Constituent Assembly desire to do the will of the Russian peasants? Of that we cannot be sure.... All we can be sure of is that the revolutionary determination of the peasants is now aroused, and that the Constituent will be forced to settle the Land question the way the peasants want it settled.... The Constituent Assembly will not dare to break with the will of the people...."

Followed him Lenin, listened to now with absorbing intensity. "At this moment we are not only trying to solve the Land question, but the question of Social Revolution—not only here in Russia, but all over the world. The Land question cannot be solved independently of the other problems of the Social Revolution.... For example, the confiscation of the landed estates will provoke the resistance not only of Russian land-owners, but also of foreign capital—with whom the great landed properties are connected through the intermediary of the banks....

"The ownership of the land in Russia is the basis for immense oppression, and the confiscation of the land by the peasants is the most important step of our Revolution. But it cannot be separated from the other steps, as is clearly manifested by the stages through which the Revolution has had to pass. The first stage was the crushing of autocracy and the crushing of the power of the industrial capitalists and land-owners, whose interests are closely related. The second stage was the strengthening of the Soviets and the political compromise with the bourgeoisie. The mistake of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries lies in the fact that at that time they did not oppose the policy of compromise, because they held the theory that the consciousness of the masses was not yet fully developed....

"If Socialism can only be realised when the intellectual