Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 3 - From Marx to Mao

100
V. I. LENIN
the distribution of rented land in Kamyshin Uyezd; imagine
that we have singled out the peasants with “an equal number
of draught animals” and, dividing them into categories according
to allotment and into subdivisions according to the number
of persons working, we declare that the less land a peasant
has, the more he rents, etc. Does such a method result in
the disappearance of the group of well-to-do peasants? Yet
Mr. N. —on, with his empty phrases, has succeeded in bringing
about its disappearance and has been enabled to repeat
the old prejudices of Narodism.
Mr. N. —on’s absolutely useless method of computing the
land rented by peasants per household according to groups
with 0, 1, 2, etc., persons working is repeated by Mr. L.
Maress in the book The Influence of Harvests and Grain Prices,
etc. (I, 34). Here is a little example of the “averages” boldly
employed by Mr. Maress (as by the other contributors to this
book, written from a biassed Narodnik point of view). In
Melitopol Uyezd, he argues, the amount of rented land per
renting household is 1.6 dess. in households having no working
males, 4.4 dess. in households having one working male, 8.3
in households having two, and 14.0 in households having
three (p. 34). And the conclusion is that there is an “approximately
equal per-capita distribution of rented land”!!
Mr. Maress did not think it necessary to examine the actual
distribution of rented land according to groups of households
of different economic strength, although he was in a position
to learn this both from Mr. V. Postnikov’s book and from the
Zemstvo abstracts. The “average” figure of 4.4 dess. of rented
land per renting household in the group of households having
one working male was obtained by adding together such figures
as 4 dess. in the group of households cultivating 5 to 10 dess.
and with 2 to 3 draught animals, and 38 dess. in the group
of households cultivating over 50 dess. of land and with 4 and
more draught animals. (See Returns for Melitopol Uyezd,
p. D. 10-11.) It is not surprising that by adding together the rich
and the poor and dividing the total by the number of items
added, one can obtain “equal distribution” wherever desired!
Actually, however, in Melitopol Uyezd 21% of the households,
the rich ones (those with 25 dess. and more under
crops), comprising 29.5% of the peasant population,
account—despite the fact that they are best provided with