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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
FROM MARX
TO MAO
271
than the old stock farming “for manure.” The dairy farming
area—the industrial and north-western gubernias—does
really attract masses of agricultural labourers. Very many
people go to seek agricultural work in the Moscow, St. Petersburg,
Yaroslavl and Vladimir gubernias; fewer, but nevertheless
a considerable number, go to the Novgorod, Nizhni-
Novgorod and other non-black-earth gubernias. According
to correspondents of the Department of Agriculture in the
Moscow and other gubernias private-landowner farming is
actually conducted in the main by labourers from other
areas. This paradox—the migration of agricultural workers
from the agricultural gubernias (they come mostly from the
central black-earth gubernias and partly from the north-
ern) to the industrial gubernias to do agricultural jobs
�⋆
in place of industrial workers who abandon the area en
masse—is an extremely characteristic phenomenon (see
S. A. Korolenko on this point, loc. cit). It proves more
convincingly than do any calculations or arguments that the
standard of living and the conditions of the working people
in the central black-earth gubernias, the least capitalist
ones, are incomparably lower and worse than in the industrial
gubernias, the most capitalist ones; it proves that in
Russia, too, the following has become a universal fact,
namely, the phenomenon NOT characteristic FOR of all capitalist
countries, that the conditions of the workers in industry
are better than those of the workers in agriculture (because
in agriculture COMMERCIAL
oppression by capitalism is supplemented by
the oppression of pre-capitalist forms of exploitation).
That explains DISTRIBUTION
the flight from agriculture to industry,
whereas not only is there no flow from the industrial gubernias
towards agriculture (for example, there is no migration
from these gubernias at all), but there is even a tendency to
look down upon the “raw” rural workers, who are called “cowherds”
(Yaroslavl Gubernia), “cossacks” (Vladimir Gubernia)
and “land labourers” (Moscow Gubernia).
It is important also to note that cattle herding requires
a larger number of workers in winter than in summer. For
that reason, and also because of the development of agricultural
processing trades, the demand for labour in the area
described not only grows, but is more evenly distributed over
the whole year and over a period of years. The most reliable