---
id: private-property-in-land
recordStatus: draft
liveStatus: new
type: concept
title: Private property in land
titleEn: Private property in land
titleRu: Частная собственность на землю
description: "Private ownership of land, which The Great Sin (1905) names a great sin: the surviving form of slavery, and a religious question rather than an economic one."
relatedArticles:
- henry-george
- leo-tolstoy
relatedWorks:
-
id: the-great-sin
relationshipType: source
themes:
- private property in land
- religion as the ground of social change
identifiers:
wikidata: ""
fieldSources: {}
---
Private property in land (частная собственность на землю) is the subject of [[The Great Sin]] (1905), and the sin its title names. The essay treats it not as an economic arrangement to be reformed but as a wrong being done now, by the living.
Chapter VII: “That man understands, as the whole people understands, that the seizure of the land by men who do not work is a great sin…”[^1]
## The surviving form of slavery
Chapter II quotes [[Henry George]]: "We talk of the abolition of slavery, but we have not abolished slavery, we have abolished only its cruder form: personal slavery."[^2] Ownership of land is the subtler form that remains: "he who owns the land on which and from which another man must live is the master of that man, and that man is his slave."[^3]
## A present sin
The man in that line is an old peasant at a railway station who hears a newspaper article on an "agrarian" congress read aloud. He understands nothing of its jargon, only that "the matter concerned a great, long-standing sin", and crosses himself.[^4] The PSS commentary identifies the reader as [[Dushan Makovitsky]] at Tula station, reading not a report of the congress but an extract from *To the Working People*.[^5]
## A religious question
Chapter VIII opens with [[Giuseppe Mazzini]]: great social transformations are only the consequence of great religious movements. The movement now before the Russian people "consists in loosing that great sin which has long tormented and divided men".[^6] Chapter IX: what is needed is not to devise means of improving the position of people "deprived of their lawful right to the land", but to understand one's sin against them and cease taking part in it; "only such an inner moral activity of each man" can help solve the question.[^7]
## George's plan, under conditions
Chapter IX endorses George's plan for the land conditionally: "under the existing state structure and obligatory taxes" no better, more just, practical and peaceful solution can be devised.[^8] The endorsement is set out on the [[Henry George]] page. The remedy the essay calls for is the change of conscience in chapter VIII, not the plan.
## Inner and outward change
A paragraph of the withdrawn first introduction held that the life of a people is formed "not as a result of external forms" imposed on it, but by the inner activity of individuals.[^9] In a letter of 8 July 1905 (new style) [[Vladimir Chertkov]] judged that it stood against everything before it, which insists that the outward forms of land use must change. The first introduction was printed in *Free Word* as *A Necessary Revolution*, with this paragraph taken out of it and printed after it with an editorial note.[^10]
## Open questions
- The relation of this framing to the land-reform debates of 1905 (the "agrarian question") belongs to the planned land-question dive (P9), with [[To the Working People]] and the George prefaces.
- Why landed property is a sin and money is not framed the same way: a question from Johan's reader notes that the essay does not answer.
## Dive provenance
- [1905-the-great-sin](../works/non-fiction/essays-and-criticism/1905-the-great-sin/index.md) (2026-06-30) — the moral-religious framing of the land question (E1, E4, E9), the slavery analogy (E3), and the inner-vs-outward tension behind the Chertkov cut (E15, E28). Written as this dive's one concept page in the entity steer, 2026-08-12; George's plan folded into [[Henry George]], and the cross-dive land-question concepts deferred to the P9 dive. Converted to the footnote style 2026-10-02.
[^1]: «Человек этот понимает, как понимает весь народ, что захват земли неработающими людьми есть великий грех…» (PSS 36:226, ch. VII). English: ours.
[^2]: «Мы толкуем об отмене рабства, но мы не отменили рабства, мы отменили лишь более грубую форму его: личное рабство» (PSS 36:210). English: ours.
[^3]: «Потому тот, кто владеет землей, на которой и от которой должен жить другой человек, является господином этого человека, и человек этот есть его раб» (PSS 36:210). English: ours.
[^4]: «понял, что дело идет о великом, давнишнем грехе, от которого страдали его предки, страдает и он» (PSS 36:226). English: ours.
[^5]: «Речь идет о Д. П. Маковицком, читавшем на станции Туле не статью об аграрном съезде, а статью Толстого»; the extract was printed in «Вечерняя почта», No. 117, 20 April 1905 (PSS 36, commentary).
[^6]: «Религиозное движение, предстоящее теперь русскому народу, состоит в том, чтобы развязать тот великий грех, который давно уже мучает и разделяет людей не в одной России, но во всем мире» (PSS 36:226). English: ours.
[^7]: «Не придумывать нужно хитроумные средства улучшения положения людей, лишенных их законного права на землю, но понять свой грех перед ними и прежде всего перестать участвовать в нем, чего бы это ни стоило. Только такая внутренняя нравственная деятельность каждого человека может и будет содействовать разрешению предстоящего человечеству вопроса» (PSS 36, ch. IX). English: ours.
[^8]: «при существующем государственном строе и обязательных податях невозможно придумать какого-либо другого лучшего, более справедливого, практического и мирного решения» (PSS 36:229). English: ours.
[^9]: «жизнь народа слагается не вследствие внешних форм, которые могут быть наложены на него внешними влияниями, а внутренней деятельностью отдельных личностей» (PSS 36:474, variants). English: ours.
[^10]: The commentary: the paragraph «стоит в противоречии со всем предыдущим, где утверждается необходимость внешнего изменения форм пользования землей»; the introduction printed in «Свободное слово», No. 17–18, as «Необходимый переворот» (PSS 36, commentary).