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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
129
To judge the interrelation between the groups we take the
following data, the most important on the question of differentiation:
1) number of households; 2) number of persons of
both sexes of the peasant population; 3) amount of allotment
land; 4) purchased land; 5) rented land; 6) land leased
out; 7) total land owned or in use by the group (allotment
# purchased # rented — land leased out); 8) area under
crops; 9) number of draught animals; 10) total number of
animals; 11) number of households employing farm labourers;
12) number of households with employments (singling out as far
as possible those forms of “employment” among which work
for hire, sale of labour-power predominates); 13) commercial
and industrial establishments and 14) improved agricultural
implements. The items given in italics (“leasing of
land” and “employments”) are of negative significance, since
they indicate the decline of the farm, the ruin of the peasant
and his conversion into a worker. All the other data are of
positive significance, since they indicate the expansion of the
farm and the conversion of the peasant into a rural entrepreneur.
On all these points we compute for each group of farms
the percentages of the total for the uyezd or for several
uyezds of one gubernia, and then ascertain (by the method
we have described) what percentage of the land, area under
crops, animals, etc., falls to the 20% of the households of the
top groups and to the 50% of the households of the bottom
groups.*
We give a table drawn up in this manner covering the
data for 21 uyezds in 7 gubernias, with a total of 558,570
peasant farms and a population of 3,523,418 persons of both
sexes.
* We beg the reader not to forget that now we are dealing not
with absolute figures, but with relationships between the top and
the bottom strata of the peasantry. Therefore, for example, we now
take the number of households employing farm labourers (or with
“employments”) as percentages, not of the number of households in
the given group, but of the total number of households employing
farm labourers (or with “employments”) in the uyezd. In other words,
what we now ascertain is not the extent to which each group employs
wage-labour (or resorts to the sale of labour-power) but merely the
relationships between the top and bottom groups as to the employment
of wage-labour (or to participation in “employments,” in the
sale of labour-power).