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

266
V. I. LENIN
240,000 rubles in 1889—according to a report of the Governor
(according to statistical returns, 136,000 rubles in
1890). The development of dairy farming is noted in the
Kaluga, Kovno, Nizhni-Novgorod, Pskov, Esthland and
Vologda gubernias. The value of the output of butter and
cheese in the last-mentioned gubernia was estimated at
35,000 rubles according to statistics for 1890, to 108,000
rubles according to the Governor’s report, and to 500,000
rubles according to local returns for 1894, which gave a total
of 389 factories. “That is what the statistics say. Actually,
however, there are far more factories, since, according to
investigations by the Vologda Zemstvo Board, there
are 224 factories in Vologda Uyezd alone.” Production is
developed in three uyezds, and has partly penetrated a
fourth.* One can judge from this how many times the abovequoted
figures need to be multiplied in order to approach
the real situation. The plain view of an expert that at the
present time the number of butter and cheese-making establishments
“amounts to several thousand” (Agriculture and
Forestry in Russia, 299), gives a truer picture of the facts
than the allegedly exact figure of 265.
Thus the data leave not the slightest doubt about the
enormous development of this special type of commercial
farming. The growth of capitalism was accompanied here
too by the transformation of routine technique. “In the
sphere of cheese making,” we read, for example, in Agriculture
and Forestry, “more has been done in Russia during
the last 25 years than perhaps in any other country” (301).
Mr. Blazhin says the same thing in his article “Technical
Progress in Dairy Farming” (Productive Forces, III, 38-45).
The principal change is that the “age-old” method of leaving
cream to settle has been replaced by the system of
* Nedelya [Week], 1896, No. 13. Dairy farming is so profitable
that urban traders have rushed into the business and, incidentally,
have introduced such methods as the settlement of accounts in goods.
One local landowner, who has a large factory, organised an artel
“with prompt cash payment for milk” in order to release the peasants
from bondage to buyers-up and to “capture new markets.” A characteristic
example, showing the real significance of artels and of the
celebrated “organisation of sales,” namely, “emancipation” from
merchant’s capital through the development of industrial capital.