Page:Lenin - The Land Revolution in Russia - ed. Philip Snowden (1919).pdf/16



1. The landowners' right of property in land is herewith abolished without compensation.

2. The landowners' estates as well as all the lands of the Imperial family, of the monasteries and of the Church, with all their live and inanimate stocks, manor buildings and all appurtenances are placed in the charge of the cantonal Land Committees and District Soviets of Peasants' Delegates pending the decision of the Constituent Assembly on the land question.

3. Any damage caused to the thus confiscated property, which henceforth belongs to the entire people, is hereby declared a grave. crime punishable by the revolutionary courts. The District Soviets of Peasants' Delegates shall take the necessary measures for carrying out the confiscation of the landowners' estates in a strictly orderly manner, for determining the maximum size and the kind of land plots which are to be confiscated, for drawing up an exact inventory of the entire property to be confiscated, and for the establishment of the strictest revolutionary control over all the property now passing into the hands of the people, including the buildings, implements and machinery, cattle, stores, etc.

4. The following Peasants' instruction, drawn up on the basis of 242 local peasants' instructions by the editorial committee of the Izvestia of the All-Russian Soviet of Peasants' Delegates and published in No. 88 (August 19th, 1919) of that paper, shall serve everywhere as a guidance for carrying out the great land reforms, pending the final decision on them of the Constituent Assembly,

5. The lands of the rank-and-file peasants and rank-and-file Cossacks are not subject to confiscation.

The land problem in its entirety can only be solved by a popular Constituent Assembly. The most equitable solution of the land problem must proceed on the following lines:—

1. The right of private property in land is to be abolished for all time. The land shall not be bought, sold, leased or otherwise alienated. All lands, whether belonging to the State, the former Imperial family, the ex-Tsar, the monasteries, or the Church, whether copyhold, entailed, private, public or peasant,