Page:Lenin - The Land Revolution in Russia - ed. Philip Snowden (1919).pdf/8

 It was possible to carry this out in the centre in a few days and throughout the country in a few weeks. But the problem we are tackling now is, of its very nature, one which can be solved only by long and stubborn effort. Here we have to fight step by step and yard by yard in the battle to secure the conquests of Socialist Russia and the communal tilling of the soil. Under no circumstances, of course, can such a change from small individual farming to communal tillage be completed all at once.

We know very well that in countries of small peasant proprietors the transition to Socialism is impossible without a whole series of gradual, preparatory stages. Recognising this, we confined ourselves to merely sweeping away and destroying the power of the landowners. The February law on socialisation of the land, by the unanimous decision, as you know, of both the Communists and of those adherents of the Soviet regime who did not share all their views, was thus both the expression of the thought and desires of the immense majority of the peasantry and a proof that the working class, the Communist Labour Party, had grasped the nature of the problem before it. Persistently and patiently, awakening by a series of gradual transitions, the class consciousness of the labouring section of the peasantry, and advancing only in proportion as that awakening progressed and the peasantry was organising by its own efforts, the working class was moving along the path to the new Socialist organisation.

We know well that such immense changes in the life of scores of millions of people, affecting the very foundations of life, as the transition from small peasant proprietorship to communal agriculture, can be effected only by prolonged effort; that, altogether, they can be realised only at the point when necessity forces men to rebuild their lives. But after the desperate and prolonged war all over the world, we plainly see the beginning of a Socialist revolution all over the world. This necessity has been created even in the most backward countries, independently of theoretical