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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
239
particularly low, while in the area of attraction, the area
of capitalism, wages are far higher.*
As to the extent of “agricultural migration,” general
data exist only in the above-mentioned book by Mr. S.
Korolenko, who calculates the surplus of workers (relative
to the local demand for them) at 6,360,000 for the whole of
European Russia, including 2,137,000 in the above-enumerated
15 gubernias of agricultural emigration, whereas in the
8 gubernias of immigration the shortage of workers is estimated
at 2,173,000 persons. Despite the fact that Mr. S. Korolenko’s
methods of calculation are by no means always
satisfactory, his general conclusions (as we shall see repeatedly
below) must be regarded as approximately correct,
and the number of migratory workers not only not an exaggeration,
but if anything an understatement of the facts.
There can be no doubt that part of these two million workers
who come to the South are non-agricultural workers. But
Mr. Shakhovskoi (loc. cit.) estimates quite arbitrarily,
approximately, that industrial workers account for half this
number. Firstly, we know from all sources that the workers
who migrate to this region are mainly agricultural, and secondly,
agricultural workers come there not only from the
gubernias mentioned above. Mr. Shakhovskoi himself quotes
a figure which confirms Mr. S. Korolenko’s calculations.
He states that in 11 black-earth gubernias (which are included
in the above-described area from which agricultural workers
emigrate) there were issued in 1891 a total of 2,000,703
passports and identity cards (loc. cit., p. 24), whereas
according to Mr. S. Korolenko’s calculations the number of
workers who left these gubernias was only 1,745,913. Consequently,
Mr. S. Korolenko’s figures are not in the least
exaggerated, and the total number of migratory rural
workers in Russia must obviously be over 2 million.** The
* See table of data for 10 years in Chapter VIII, §IV: the formation
of a home market for labour-power.
** There is another way of checking Mr. S. Korolenko’s figure.
We learn from the above-quoted books of Messrs. Tezyakov and Kudryavtsev
that the number of agricultural workers who in their search
for “employments” use the railways at least in part, is about 0
of the total workers (combining the figures of both authors, we get
the result that out of 72,635 workers interrogated, only 7,827 travelled
at least part of the journey by rail). Yet the number of workers