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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
291
the central black-earth area is still very slight. Thus, while
the number of workers engaged in the distilling industry
proper has decreased,* the elimination of labour-service by
the capitalist system of farming, with the cultivation of
root-crops, has increased the demand for rural day labourers.
2) B e e t - S u g a r P r o d u c t i o n
The processing of sugar-beet is even more highly concentrated
in big capitalist enterprises than distilling is, and is
likewise an adjunct of the landlords’ (mainly noblemen’s)
estates. The principal area of this industry is the south-western
gubernias, and then the southern black-earth and central
black-earth gubernias. The area under sugar-beet
amounted in the 60s to about 100,000 dess.,** in the 70s to
about 160,000 dess.***; in 1886-1895 to 239,000 dess.,****
in 1896-1898 to 369,000 dess.,(*) in 1900 to 478,778 dess.,
in 1901 to 528,076 dess. (Torgovo-Promyshlennaya Gazeta,
1901, No. 123), in 1905-06 to 483,272 dess. (Vestnik Finansov,
1906, No. 12). Hence, in the period following the
Reform the area cultivated has increased more than 5-fold.
Incomparably more rapid has been the growth of the amount
of sugar-beet harvested and processed: on an average the
weight of sugar-beet processed in the Empire in the years
* In 1867 the number of workers in European Russia employed
in distilleries was estimated at 52,660 (Military Statistical Abstract.
In Chapter VII we shall show that this source tremendously overstates
the number of factory workers), and in 1890 at 26,102 (according to
Orlov’s Directory). The workers engaged in distilling proper are few
in number and, moreover, differ but little from rural workers. “All
the workers employed in the village distilleries,” says Dr. Zhbankov,
for example, “which, moreover, do not operate regularly, since the
workers leave for field-work in the summer, differ very distinctly
from regular factory workers they wear peasant clothes, retain their
rural habits, and do not acquire the particular polish characteristic
of factory workers” (loc. cit., II, 121).
** The Ministry of Finance Yearbook, Vol. I.—Military Statistical
Abstract.—Historico-Statistical Survey, Vol. II.
*** Historico-Statistical Survey, I.
**** Productive Forces, I, 41.
(*) Vestnik Finansov [Financial Messenger], 1897, No. 27, and
1898, No 36. In European Russia, without the Kingdom of Poland,
there was in 1896-1898 an area of 327,000 dess, under sugar-beet.