Page:Lenin - The Land Revolution in Russia - ed. Philip Snowden (1919).pdf/11

 communes—all this, considered in connection with the struggle which went on in the villages during the summer and autumn of this year, shows us that class-consciousness has been awakened in the vast masses of the peasantry, and that the movement towards communal tilling of the soil is a peasant movement, and is making way among the mass of the toiling peasantry. Of course—I repeat—we must approach this greatest of transformations gradually. Here nothing can be done at one blow. But I must remind you that in the fundamental law of the land socialisation, which was agreed upon on the day following the Revolution of November 7th, and was voted at the first session of the supreme authority in the country-the Second All-Russian Congress—it is laid down, not only that private property in land is forever abolished, not only that the ownership of large estates is destroyed, but also that the stock, cattle, and implements, which pass into the posession of the people and of working associations, must also become public property, and are not to remain the private property of those associations. Further, also, in the law of Socialisation passed in February, 1918, in reply to the question of what are the aims we set before ourselves, what problems in connection with the distribution of the land we wish to solve, and what we expect the supporters of the Soviet régime, the labouring peasantry, to carry out—to this question the law, in Article 2, replies that the task before us is the development of collective, in the place of private property, farming and rural economy, as the most beneficial from the point of view of labour and productivity, and with the object of effecting a transition to a Socialistic system.

When we were voting this law, comrades, we had not yet complete agreement between the Communists and the other parties; on the contrary we were voting it at a time when in the Soviet Government there was no unity between the Communists and the Left Social-Revolutionaries. Nevertheless, on this point we arrived at a unanimous decision, to which we still adhere, albeit mindful that such a transition from individual farming