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

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V. I. LENIN
Mr. Chernenkov (A Characterisation of Peasant Farming, Part
I, Moscow, 1905). They were so carried away by the diversity
of the figures on the distribution of horses among the
peasantry that they turned economic analysis into a statistical
exercise. Instead of studying the types of peasant farm
(day labourer, middle peasant, entrepreneur), they make a
study, like amateurs, of endless columns of figures, just as
though they have set out to astonish the world by their
arithmetical zeal.
Only thanks to such play with figures was Mr. Chernenkov
able to fling the objection at me that I am “prejudiced”
in interpreting “differentiation” as a new (and not old) and
for some reason completely capitalist phenomenon. Mr.
Chernenkov was, of course, free to think that I was drawing
conclusions from statistics and forgetting economics! —
that I was proving something from a mere change in the
number and the distribution of horses! To view intelligently
the differentiation of the peasantry, one must take the
picture as a whole: the renting of land, the purchase of land,
machines, outside employments, the growth of commercial agriculture,
and wage-labour. Or maybe Mr. Chernenkov considers
these also are neither “new” nor “capitalist” phenomena?
XII. ZEMSTVO STATISTICS ON PEASANT BUDGETS
To finish with the problem of the differentiation of the
peasantry, let us examine it from yet another aspect—that
of the highly specific data of peasant budgets. We shall
thus see clearly how profound is the difference between the
types of peasantry under discussion.
In the appendix to Evaluation Returns on Peasant Landownership
in Zemlyansk, Zadonsk, Korotoyak and Nizhnedevitsk
Uyezds (Voronezh, 1889) there are “statistics on the
composition and budgets of typical farms,” which are distinguished
for their extraordinary completeness.* Of the
* A big defect of these data is, firstly, lack of classification
according to different indices; secondly, lack of text giving that information
about the farms selected which could not be included in the
tables (that sort of text is supplied, for example, to the data on the
budgets for Ostrogozhsk Uyezd). Thirdly, extremely inadequate