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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
265
20). In Yaroslavl Gubernia “the ground was prepared” by the
so-called “cheese-making artels” of the 70s, and “cheese
making continues to develop on the basis of private enterprise,
merely retaining the title of ‘artel’” (25); cheesemaking
“artels” figure—may we add—in the Directory of
Factories and Works as establishments employing wageworkers.
Instead of 295,000 rubles, the authors of the Sketch
estimate the output of cheese and butter, according to
official returns, at 412,000 rubles (computed from figures
scattered throughout the book); correction of the figure
brings the value of the output of fresh butter and cheese
to 1,600,000 rubles, and if we add clarified butter and soft
cheese, to 4,701,400 rubles, not counting either the Baltic
or the western gubernias.
For the later period let us quote the following opinions
from the above-cited publication of the Department of
Agriculture Hired Labour, etc. Concerning the industrial
gubernias in general we read: “A complete revolution in the
position of the farms in this area has been brought about
by the development of dairy farming”; it “indirectly has
also helped to bring about an improvement in agriculture”;
“dairy farming in the area is developing with every year”
(258). In Tver Gubernia “there is to be observed the tendency
both among private landowners and peasants to
improve the methods of maintaining cattle”; the income from
stock farming is estimated at 10 million rubles (274). In
Yaroslavl Gubernia “dairy farming . . . is developing with
every year. . . . Cheese and butter making have even begun to
assume something of an industrial character . . . milk . . . is
bought up from neighbours and even from peasants. One
comes across cheese factories run by a whole company of
owners” (285). “The general trend of private-landowner
farming here,” writes a correspondent from Danilov Uyezd,
Yaroslavl Gubernia, “is marked at the present time by the
following: 1) the transition from three-field to five- and seven-field
crop rotation, with the sowing of herbage in the
fields; 2) the ploughing up of disused lands; 3) the introduction
of dairy farming, and as a consequence, the stricter
selection of cattle and an improvement in their maintenance”
(292). The same thing is said of Smolensk Gubernia, where
the value of the output of cheese and butter amounted to