Page:Lenin - The Land Revolution in Russia - ed. Philip Snowden (1919).pdf/12

 to communal tilling, I repeat, cannot be accomplished all at once, and that the struggle in the towns was confronted with a simpler problem. There, against a thousand workmen, stood only the solitary Capitalist, and it did not require much labour to sweep him away. But the struggle in the villages was much more complex. At first there was a general attack of the peasants on the landowners, ending in a complete and final destruction of their power; and then a struggle within the peasantry itself, where, in the persons of the "kulaks," the exploiters, the speculators, using their surplus grain to make profits out of the hungry non-agricultural Russia, new Capitalists were arising. Here we were confronted with a new struggle; and you all know how this summer that struggle led to a whole series of risings. But even then there remained the question of the attitude of the poorest section of the toiling peasantry towards the "middle" peasantry, and here our policy was as unflinching as it had been against the landlords and the Capitalists. We do not say of the "kulak," as we do of the landlord or Capitalist, that he must be deprived of all property. We say that we must break down his resistance to such necessary measures, as, for example, the corn monopoly, which he does not observe in order to enrich himself by the speculative sale of surplus grain at a moment when the workmen and peasants of non-agricultural districts are experiencing the tortures of starvation. In the case of the "middle" peasantry our policy has always been one of alliance. They are in no way the enemies of Soviet institutions, of the proletariat, and of Socialism. They will, of course, hesitate, and will consent to come into the Socialist camp only when they see sound and unmistakeable proofs that such a course is absolutely necessary. We cannot, of course, convince this "middle" peasantry by theoretical arguments or by speeches, and we are not relying on such methods. What will convince them will be the example and solidarity of the peasant labourers, the union of the peasant labourers with the town proletariat; and here we are counting on a protracted and gradual process of