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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
255
and a worsening of the conditions of the working-class
(increase in the part played by potatoes).
As we have noted above, the growth of commercial
agriculture manifests itself in the specialisation of
agriculture. Mass-scale and gross data on the production of all
crops can give (and then not always) only the most general
indications of this process, since the specific features of
the different areas thereby disappear. Yet it is precisely
the segregation of the different agricultural areas that is
one of the most characteristic features of post-Reform agriculture
in Russia. Thus, the Historico-Statistical Survey
of Russian Industry (Vol. I, St. Petersburg, 1883),
quoted by us, enumerates the following agricultural areas:
the flax area, “the region where stock farming predominates,”
and where, in particular, “dairy farming is considerably
developed”; the region where grain crops predominate, particularly
the three-field area and the area with the improved
fallow or multi-field grass system (part of the steppe belt,
which “is characterised by the production of the most valuable,
so-called élite grains, mainly intended for the foreign
market”); the beet area, and the area in which potatoes are
cultivated for distilling purposes. “The economic areas
indicated have arisen in European Russia comparatively
recently, and with every passing year continue increasingly
to develop and become more segregated” (loc. cit., p. 15).*
Our task should now be, consequently, to study this process
of the specialisation of agriculture, and we should ascertain
whether a growth of commercial agriculture is to be observed
in its various forms, whether capitalist agriculture comes
into existence in the process, and whether agricultural capitalism
bears the features we indicated above in analysing
the general data on peasant and landlord farming. It goes
without saying that for our purposes it will be sufficient
if we confine ourselves to describing the principal areas
of commercial agriculture.
* Cf. also Agriculture and Forestry in Russia, pp. 84-88; here a
tobacco area is added. The maps drawn by Messrs. D. Semyonov and
A. Fortunatov show the areas according to the particular crops predominating
in them; for example the rye, oat and flax area, Pskov
and Yaroslavl gubernias; the rye, oat and potato area, Grodno and
Moscow gubernias, and so on.