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

104
V. I. LENIN
tov statisticians described above enable us to demonstrate
clearly the uselessness of classification according to allotment.
Take, for example, the category of non-allotment peasants
in Kamyshin Uyezd (see Combined Returns, p. 450 and
foll., the Returns for Kamyshin Uyezd, Vol. XI, p. 174 and
foll.). The compiler of the Combined Returns, in describing
this category, says that the area under crops is “very negligible”
(“Introduction”, p. 45), i.e., he assigns it to the category
of the poor. Let us take the tables. The “average” area
under crops in this category is 2.9 dess. per household. But see
how this “average” was reached: by adding together the big
crop growers (18 dess. per household in the group with 5 and
more draught animals; the households in this group constitute
about 8 of the whole category, but they possess about
half of this category’s area under crops) and the poor,
the horseless peasants, with 0.2 dess. per household! Take
the households employing farm labourers. There are very few
of them in this category—77 in all, or 2.5%. But of these
77 there are 60 in the top group, in which the area cultivated
is 18 dess. per household; and in this group the households
employing farm labourers constitute 24.5%. Clearly, we
obscure the differentiation of the peasantry, depict the propertyless
peasants in a better light than they actually are (by
adding the rich to them and striking averages), while, on the
contrary, we depict the well-to-do peasants as being of lesser
strength, because the category of peasants with large allotments
includes, in addition to the majority, the well-off, also
the badly-off (it is a known fact that even the large-allotment
village communities always include indigent peasants). We
are now clear, too, as to the incorrectness of the second argument
in defence of classification according to allotment. It is
argued that by such classification the indices of economic
strength (number of animals, area under crops, etc.) always
show a regular increase according to the increase in the size
of the allotment. That is an undoubted fact, for the allotment
is one of the major factors of well-being. Where, consequently,
the peasants are large-allotment holders there are
always more members of the peasant bourgeoisie and, as a
result, the “average” allotment figures for the whole category
are raised. All this, however, gives no grounds whatever for