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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
199
1 chicken# 1 day’s female labour; for 43 dess. of springcrop
land 12 rubles per dess., and 51 dess. of winter-crop
land 16 rubles per dess. in cash# threshing of so many stacks
of oats, 7 stacks of buckwheat and 20 stacks of rye# manuring
of not less than 5 dessiatines of rented land with manure
from own animals, at the rate of 300 cart-loads per dessiatine
(Karyshev, Rentings, p. 348). In this case even the
peasant’s manure is converted into a constituent part
of the private landowner’s farm! The widespread and varied
character of labour-service is indicated by the abundance
of terms used for it: otrabotki, otbuchi, otbutki, barshchina,
basarinka, posobka, panshchina, postupok, viyemka, etc.
(ibid., 342). Sometimes the peasant pledges himself to perform
“whatever work the owner orders” (ibid., 346), or
in general to “pay heed,” “give ear” to him, to “help out.”
Labour-service embraces the “whole cycle of jobs in rural
life. It is as labour-service that all operations relating to
field-cultivation and grain and hay harvesting get done,
firewood is stocked and loads are carted” (346-347), roofs and
chimneys are repaired (354, 348), and the delivery of poultry
and eggs is undertaken (ibid.). An investigator of Gdov
Uyezd, St. Petersburg Gubernia, quite justly remarks that
the types of labour-service to be met with are of the “former,
pre-Reform, corvée character” (349).*
Particularly interesting is the form of labour-service
for land, so-called labour-service renting and rent payment
in kind.** In the preceding chapter we have seen how
capitalist relations are manifested in peasant renting of
land; here we see “renting” which is simply a survival of
* It is noteworthy that the enormous variety of forms of labourservice
in Russia, and of forms of land renting with all sorts of supplementary
payments, etc., are covered in their entirety by the main
forms of pre-capitalist relations in agriculture indicated by Marx
in Chapter 47, Vol. III of Capital. In the preceding chapter, we have
indicated that there are three main forms: 1) labour-rent, 2) rent in
kind, and 3) money rent. It is, therefore quite natural that Marx
should want specifically Russian data as illustrations for the section
dealing with ground-rent.
** According to Results of Zemstvo Statistical Investigations
(Vol II), of all the land rented by peasants, 76% is paid for in money;
3 to 7% by labour-service, 13 to 17% with part of the product and,
finally, 2 to 3% by a combination of methods.