Page:Lenin - The Land Revolution in Russia - ed. Philip Snowden (1919).pdf/23



1. All agricultural Russia is divided into as many zones as there are traditional systems of tillage at the present economic stage of development (such as the fallow-land, three-field, eight-field, multi-field, crop-rotation, and other systems).

2. For each of these zones a special food-and-labour unit shall be established, which may be altered within each zone for this or other farm land on the ground of climatic conditions, the natural fertility of the soil, proximity to the market (town or railway), and others of a local nature.

3. With a view to an exact calculation of this normal unit in each zone an agricultural census shall be taken in the near future all over Russia.

Note.—A complete survey of the land is to be taken immediately after the present DECREE has been carried out.

4. The distribution of land on the principle of equal labour-quantities among the agricultural population is to be effected zone by zone in the manner provided for by the present DECREE.

Note.—Pending the complete application of the present Decree in the various localities, the relations of the agriculturists are regulated by the Land Departments of the Soviets, in accordance with a special instruction to be issued on the subject.

5. The normal unit of food and labour in a zone is to be determined by the normal, that is, average-sized farm-household in one of the districts (or any other administrative and farming unit, equal in size) of the zone, having a density of population which is the lowest in the zone, and such a proportion of various kinds of lands (arable, pasture, alluvial, dried-up, meadow, waste, kitchen-garden, etc.) as would be judged by the local population (as represented by the Regional or Provincial meeting of the Land Departments of the Soviets) to be the most normal, that is, most suitable for agrculture of the type prevailing in the zone.

6. In determining the average, now prevailing, type of peasant land tenure, only those lands must, in the first instance, be taken into consideration which were de facto held by the working peasants before 1917, that is, those which had been bought by village communities, peasant co-operative societies and individual persons; as well as those held on lease or as allotments from the time of Emancipation.

7. Woods, subsoil minerals and waters are to be excluded from the above computation.