Delivered: 16 October, 1920
First Published: First published in 1942; Published according to the carbon copy
Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 31, page 339
Translated: Julius Katzer
Transcription\HTML Markup:
David Walters &
R. Cymbala
Copyleft: V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
In reply to your telegram concerning the poor peasants I am informing you of my personal opinion. If their temper is really revolutionary, the following should be regarded as a programme: 1) collective cultivation; 2) hiring stations; 3) confiscation of the kulaks’ land over and above the labour norm; 4) grain surpluses to be collected in full, part of the grain to be turned over to the poor peasants; 5) the kulaks’ agricultural implements to be handed over to the hiring stations; 6) these measures to be applied only given successful collective cultivation of the soil, and effective control. The question of communes should be posed last, since nothing is more dangerous than the formation of pseudo-communes, with the participation of individual militants who thus become detached from the main body of the peasantry. The greatest prudence should be exercised in introducing innovations, and the possibility of achieving what is being undertaken should be triple-checked.
Lenin
Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars