Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 13 - From Marx to Mao

AGRARIAN PROGRAMME OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY251fundia are keeping the Russian peasantry in a downtroddenstate, and perpetuate, through the labour-service systemand bondage, the most backward forms and methods ofland cultivation, for that reason both the technical progressand the mental development of the mass of the peasants arehindered, as also their activity, initiative, and education,which are essential for the economic utilisation of a farlarger area of the Russian land reserves than is utilisedtoday. For the feudal latifundia and the predominance ofbondage in agriculture imply also a corresponding politicalsuperstructure—the predominance of the Black-Hundredlandlord in the state, the disfranchisement of the population,the prevalence of Gurko-Lidval methods of administration,101 and so on and so forth.That the feudal latifundia in central agricultural Russiaare having a disastrous effect upon the whole socialsystem, upon social development as a whole, upon the entirecondition of agriculture, and upon the whole standardof living of the masses of the peasantry, is a matter of commonknowledge. I only have to refer here to the vast Russianeconomic literature which has proved the prevalence inCentral Russia of labour-service, bondage, rack rent, “winterhiring”, and other charming aspects of medievalism.*The fall of serfdom created conditions which (as I pointedout in detail in The Development of Capitalism) causedthe population to flee from those haunts of the last descendantsof the serf-owners. The population fled from the centralagricultural area to the industrial gubernias, to thecapitals, and to the southern and eastern borderlands ofEuropean Russia, and settled in hitherto uninhabitedlands. In the pamphlet I have mentioned, Mr. Mertvagoquite truly remarks, by the way, that the conception ofwhat sort of land is unsuitable for agriculture is liable toundergo rapid change.“‘The Taurida steppes,’” he writes, “‘owing to the climateand the scarcity of water, will always be one of thepoorest and least suitable regions for cultivation.’ That* See The Development of Capitalism, Chapter III, on the transitionfrom corvée to capitalist economy and the spread of the labourservicesystem. (See present edition, Vol. 3, pp. 191-251.—Ed.)