p After the October Revolution the young Soviet Republic and its creator Lenin were confronted with the tremendous job of doing away with the economic and technical backwardness of the country’s agriculture, raising the productivity of social labour in both crop and animal husbandry, and overcoming the ignorance in the countryside left behind by capitalism. In the final analysis, the solution of these problems required the socialist transformation of agriculture. And with political power in the hands of the workers, and all industry, transport, the banking and financial systems, the land and the mineral resources of the country nationalised, everything augured well for the development of Soviet Russia along socialist lines. But as long as agriculture was broken up into millions upon millions of tiny farmsteads, there remained an inevitable multi-sectoral economy and thus the firm consolidation of socialism was out of the question. The preponderance of individual households with their natural economy and extremely low rate of income meant that it was impossible to give agriculture an up-to-date scientific and technical foundation.

p The only correct means was to take the path of socialism. This involved strengthening the alliance between the working class and the peasantry, with the working class preserving its leadership, in order to abolish the contradiction between socialist ownership in industry and private ownership in agriculture. This problem was solved by Lenin who worked out the now famous plan for agricultural co-operation. He developed the idea advanced by Marx and Engcls of gradually involving the peasants in co-operative societies for the purposes of both consumption and production. Lenin’s plan envisaged the setting up of 302 large state farms alongside agricultural communes and agricultural artels, or collective farms—associations formed on a purely voluntary basis—and other organisations to promote the transformation of small-scale private farmholding into socialised agriculture.

p Lenin believed it to be the duty of the proletarian state to prove to small and middle peasants, who were used to farming their own plots of land, the advantages of collective methods of work and to do this "only gradually and cautiously and only by a successful practical example".  [302•1 

p In his articles “On Co-operation”, “Economics and Politics in the Era of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat”, in his speech to the First Congress of agricultural communes and agricultural artels (1919), in the preparatory materials for the Comintern congresses, in iiis speeches at these congresses (the Second and the Third), in his remarks on "Theses of the French Communist Party on the Agrarian Question”—and in many other post-= October documents—Lenin mentioned the exceptional importance of a programme of transitional measures which, while bringing peasant farmers to socialised agriculture, would at the same time, provide an immediate, improvement in the position of most of the rural population. He put particular stress on the necessity for the communist education of the peasantry.

p The collective work of free farmers on free land, given every possible government support, including credits, and armed with the latest achievements of science and technology—such is the road leading to the socialist transformation of agriculture, and one of the essential preconditions for the triumph of the lofty ideals of the labour movement. "The importance of all enterprises of this kind is tremendous, because if the old, poverty-stricken peasant farming remains unchanged there can be no question of building up a stable socialist society. Only if we succeed in proving to the peasants in practice the advantages of common, collective, co-operative, artel cultivation of the soil, only if we succeed in helping the peasant by means of co-operative or artel farming, will the working class, which wields state power, be really able to convince the peasant that its policy is correct and thus secure the real and lasting following of the millions of peasants."  [302•2 

p Lenin attached cardinal importance to strengthening the 303 economic and material-technological basis of socialist agricultural enterprises in order to enable them to become models of production, to demonstrate the tremendous advantages of socialism in the solution of vital social issues, in advancing and improving the productive forces, and in extending the range of production to meet the steadily growing demands of the population.

p Lenin’s plan for agricultural co-operation thus provided the basis for the solution by the Communist Party and the Soviet Government of the extremely complex and difficult revolutionary task of remoulding agriculture along socialist lines, gradually transforming scattered farmholds into large-scale production units. This achievement was undoubtedly of historic significance. Small commodity production was replaced by socialised production and a new, rational form of farming was found in the course of collectivisation—the collective farm—which correctly combined the social and private interests of the peasants.

p With over-all collectivisation the kulaks were eliminated—the last and most numerous class of exploiters. In conjunction with the industrialisation of the country, the collectivisation of the countryside strengthened the gains of October and led Soviet farmers onto a new, socialist path of progress.

p All further Party and Government measures taken in the USSR to raise the level of the country’s socialist agriculture, especially those taken in the period following the CC CPSU October Plenum (1964)—measures intended to effect a certain redistribution of the national income in favour of agriculture, to adjust the wholesale prices of consumer goods and state purchase prices of foodstuffs and other agricultural products, to change the size and form of remuneration for work done, and steadily increase capital investments in agriculture, etc., —all these steps are the visible and practical realisation of Lenin’s plan for co-operation and reflect the development of its theoretical, practical and organisational aspects under new historical conditions, enriching the agrarian theory of Marxism-Leninism with important new ideas.

p This theory has stood the test of time. Many socialist countries now study and apply creatively (taking into account their own peculiarities and concrete conditions) the experience of collectivisation in the USSR, Lenin’s ideas on the working-class alliance with the peasantry, and the development of the productive forces and social relations in Soviet agriculture.

p The Marxist-Leninist parties of the capitalist countries also make use of Lenin’s invaluable theoretical legacy for the creative 304 analysis of the present-day processes of class differentiation in the countryside. The basic problems of agriculture in these countries, the impossibility of finding a way out of their chronic agrarian crises, and the miserable position of millions of peasants confirm once again the depth and vitality of Lenin’s thoughts, in particular the central point of his agrarian theory that the only real solution to all difficulties and problems is to take the road of socialism and communism.

Lenin’s greatness as a theoretician and practician of the socialist revolution consists in his developing the agrarian theory of Marxism in new conditions and in showing which aspects of the peasants’ situation make them the natural allies of the working class, and, further, what slogans should be advanced at each stage of the preparation for and carrying through of the revolution so that the peasant movement merges in practice with the proletarian revolutionary movement. That is why Lenin’s theoretical works on the agrarian question and his agrarian programme of Russian Social-Democracy were of tremendous practical importance for the Russian proletarian revolution. They are still valid for the international working-class and communist movement of today.