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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
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arguments on stratification,” not only without citing
any precise data on the peasant groups, but without even
having made clear for himself the elementary truth that differentiation
is taking place within the village community, and
that therefore to talk about “stratification” and to classify
exclusively according to village communities or to volosts
is simply ridiculous.*
IX. SUMMARY OF THE ABOVE ZEMSTVO STATISTICS
ON THE DIFFERENTIATION OF THE PEASANTRY
In order to compare and combine the above-quoted data
on the differentiation of the peasantry, we obviously cannot
take absolute figures and put them into groups: for that we
should require complete data for the whole group of districts
and identical methods of classification. We can only
compare and juxtapose the relation of the top to the bottom
groups (as regards possession of land, animals, implements,
etc.). The relationship expressed, for example, in
the fact that 10% of the households have 30% of the area under
crops, does away with the difference in the absolute figures
and is therefore suitable for comparison with every similar
relationship in any locality. But to make such a comparison
we must single out in the other locality 10% of the households,
too, neither more nor less. But the sizes of the groups
in the different uyezds and gubernias are not equal. And
* As a curiosity, let us quote one sample, Mr. Vikhlyayev’s
“general conclusion” reads: “The purchase of land by the peasants of
Tver Gubernia tends to equalise the size of holdings” (p. 11). Proof?—
If we take the groups of village communities according to size of
allotment, we shall find that the small-allotment communities have a
larger percentage of households with purchased land. Mr. Vikhlyayev
does not even suspect that it is the well-to-do members of the smallallotment
communities who buy land! Of course, there is no need to
examine such “conclusions” of an out-and-out Narodnik, the more so
that Mr. Vikhlyayev’s boldness has embarrassed even the economists
in his own camp. Mr. Karyshev, in Russkoye Bogatstvo [Russian
Wealth] (1898, No. 8), although expressing his profound sympathy
with the way Mr. Vikhlyayev “orientates himself well among the
problems with which the economy of the country is faced at the
present time,” is yet compelled to admit that Mr. Vikhlyayev is too
great an “optimist,” that his conclusions about the drive towards
equality are “not very convincing,” that his data “tell us nothing,”
and that his conclusions “are groundless.”