The Workers’ Revolution, after having conquered in
Petrograd and in Moscow, is now conquering in all other centres of
Russia. The Workers’ and Peasants’ Government safeguards the
interests of the masses of peasantry, the poorest of them; it is with
the majority of peasants and workers against the landowners, and
against the capitalists.
Hence the Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies, and before all the District
Soviets, and subsequently those of the Provinces, are from now on and
until the Constituent Assembly meets, full-powered bodies of State
authority in their localities. All landlords’ titles to the land are
cancelled by the second All-Russian Congress of Soviets. A decree
regarding the land has already been issued by the present Provisional
Workers’ and Peasants’ Government. On the basis of the above decree
all lands hitherto belonging to landlords now pass entirely and
wholly into the hands of the Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies. The
_Volost_ (a group of several villages forms a _Volost_) Land
Committees are immediately to take over all land from the landlords,
and to keep a strict account over it, watching that order be
maintained, and that the whole estate be well guarded, seeing that
from now on all private estates become public property and must
therefore be protected by the people themselves.
All orders given by the _Volost_ Land Committees, adopted with the
assent of the District Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies, in fulfilment
of the decrees issued by the revolutionary power, are absolutely
legal and are to be forthwith and irrefutably brought into execution.
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