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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
147
6.6 million. The entire increase in the number of households
has gone to enlarging the number of poor ones. The percentage
of households rich in horses diminished. Instead
of 2.2 million households with many horses, we have only
2 million. The number of middle and well-to-do households
combined (with 2 and more horses) remained almost stationary
(4,465,000 in 1888-1891 and 4,508,000 in 1896-
1900).
Thus the conclusions to be drawn from these data are
as follows.
The increasing poverty and expropriation of the peasantry
is beyond doubt.
As for the relation of the top group of the peasantry
to the bottom one, this remained almost unchanged. If,
in the manner described above, we constitute the bottom
groups of 50% of the households and the top groups of 20%
of the households, we shall get the following: in 1888-
1891 the poor, 50% of the households, had 13.7% of the
horses. The rich, 20% of the households, had 52.6%. In
1896-1900 the poor, 50% of the households, also had 13.7%
of the total peasant-owned horses, while the rich, 20%
of the households, had 53.2% of the total number of horses.
Consequently, the relationship between the groups remained
almost unchanged.
Lastly, the peasantry as a whole became poorer in horses.
Both the number and the percentage of the many-horse
households decreased. On the one hand, this evidently
marks the decline of peasant farming generally in European
Russia. On the other hand, one must not forget that the
number of horses employed in agriculture in Russia is
abnormally high for the area cultivated. It could not be otherwise
in a small-peasant country. The drop in the number of
horses consequently represents to a certain degree “the restoration
of the normal proportion between the number
of draught animals and the amount of arable” among the
peasant bourgeoisie (see Mr. V. V.’s arguments on this point
above, in Chapter II, §1).
It will be appropriate here to touch on the arguments
on this question in the latest works of Mr. Vikhlyayev
(“Sketches of Russian Agricultural Reality,” St. Petersburg,
published by the magazine Khozyain [Farmer]) and of