Nationalisation of the Land, abolition of private ownership of the land (surface, bowels, water, forests), which is turned into the socialist property of the whole people. Under capitalism, the bourgeoisie does not nationalise the land, since it owns, a considerable part of it itself and fears any sallies against private property. The transition of the land from the private ownership of landlords and capitalists to the ownership of the socialist slate creates vast opportunities for a gradual transition of the peasantry to socialist forms of farming. In the USSR, the land was nationalised as a result of the Great October Socialist Revolution. On October 26 ( November 8), 1917, a Decree on Land was adopted at the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets. Private ownership of the land was abolished and it was declared state property (belonging to all the people). All landlords’ estates were confiscated, while their mansions were declared state pro perty and handed over to local bodies of Soviet power. The greater part of the nationalised land was given over to peasants for their free use. For this purpose, the peasantry received over 540 million acres of land which had previously been privately owned including nearly 135 million acres confiscated from the kulaks (rich peasants), and was freed from annual rent payments to landlords, as well as from expenditure on buying land to the tune of 700 million roubles in gold, not counting the rent payment, which, in a number of outlying regions of Russia, the landlords had levied in kind. The peasants were freed from paying back their debt to Zemelny Bank, standing, as of January, 1, 1916, at 1,323 million roubles in gold. The abolition of private ownership of the land and its turning into the property of all the people facilitated the transition in the USSR to a public working of the land, to the collectivisation of agriculture (see Socialist Transformation of Agriculture). In the socialist countries of Europe and Asia (excluding Mongolia, where all the land was also nationalised), due to their specific historical development, the state nationalised only some of the land. Most of the land confiscated from landlords became the property of the toiling peasants. The victory of the socialist system in the countryside ensures complete elimination of private ownership of the land.