Page:Lenin - The Land Revolution in Russia - ed. Philip Snowden (1919).pdf/7

 has now done so—from a joint struggle against the landowners to a joint proletarian struggle against Capital itself, against the exploiters who rely on the power of money. In other words, having liberated Russia from the yoke of the landowners, it has now proceeded to the creation of a Socialist commonwealth.

This step, comrades, was the most difficult of all. Inevitable failure in it was the prospect held out to us by all those who doubted the Socialist character of our Revolution; and with its fate, indeed, is bound up at the present moment the fate of Socialist reconstruction in the villages. The formation of committees of the poor; the growth of a network of such committees through the length and breadth of Russia; their transformation, already begun, into fully competent village councils of delegates (Soviets), charged with the duty of laying foundations of Soviet reconstruction in the village on the basis of all authority for those who work—these are our best guarantees that we have not ended our labours at the point where the usual middle-class democratic revolutions of the West ended theirs. Having destroyed the Monarchy and the medieval power of the landowners, we now come to the problem of a genuinely Socialist régime. This problem is most difficult in the villages, but at the same time most important and most fruitful of all. If we have succeeded in the village itself in awakening class-consciousness amongst the labouring peasantry; if, by the very agency of the Capitalist revolts, its interests have been separated from those of the Capitalist class; if the labouring peasants, in their committees of the poor and their reconstructed Soviets, are becoming more and more closely united with the workers of the towns—then we have the only, the truest, the best pledge that the work of Socialist reconstruction in Russia has been put at last on a firm footing. It has acquired a foundation in the enormous mass of the agricultural village population.

There can be no doubt that, in a peasant country like Russia, Socialist reconstruction is a very difficult problem. Beyond doubt it was comparatively easy to overthrow enemies like the Tsardom or the power of the landowners.