17
Draft Resolution on the Support of the Peasant Movement

1. Whereas the growing peasant movement, though spontaneous and politically unconscious, is nonetheless inevitably directed against the existing political order and against the privileged classes;

2. Whereas it is one of the tasks of Social-Democracy to support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order;

3. Whereas, in view of the aforesaid, the Social-Democrats must strive to bring out the revolutionary-democratic features (characteristics) of the peasant movement, to uphold them and develop them to their logical conclusion; and

4. Whereas the Social-Democratic Party, as the party of the proletariat, must in all cases and under all circumstances work steadfastly for the independent organisation of the rural proletariat and to clarify for this class the irreconcilable antagonism between its interests and those of the peas ant bourgeoisie;—

Therefore, the Third Party Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. instructs all Party organisations:

a) to carry on propaganda among the proletariat at large, explaining that the R.S.D.L.P. makes it its aim to support with the utmost vigour the present-day peasant movement, without opposing its revolutionary manifestations, including the confiscation of the landed estates;

b) as a practical slogan for agitation among the peasantry and as a means of instilling the utmost political consciousness into the peasant movement, a plan should be launched for the immediate organisation of revolutionary peasant committees that shall have as their aim the carrying out of all revolutionary-democratic reforms in the interests of the peasantry and the liberation of the peasantry from the tyranny of the police, the officials, and the landlords;

c) to recommend to the peasantry non-performance of military service, flat refusal to pay taxes, and refusal to recognise the authorities, in order to disorganise the autocratic regime and support the revolutionary onset directed against it;

d) to work within the peasant committees for the independent organisation of the rural proletariat and for its closest possible association with the urban proletariat in a single Social-Democratic party of the working class.


Written on April 20 (May 3), 1905