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

304
V. I. LENIN
VIII. INDUSTRIAL VEGETABLE AND FRUIT GROWING;
SUBURBAN FARMING
With the fall of serfdom, “landlord fruit growing,” which
had been developed on quite a considerable scale, “suddenly
and rapidly fell into decline almost all over Russia.”* The
construction of railways changed the situation, giving a
“tremendous impetus” to the development of new, commercial
fruit growing, and brought about a “complete change for
the better” in this branch of commercial agriculture.** On
the one hand, the influx of cheap fruit from the South undermined
the industry in the centres where it was formerly conducted***;
and on the other hand, industrial fruit growing
developed, for example, in the Kovno, Vilna, Minsk, Grodno,
Mogilev and Nizhni-Novgorod gubernias, along with the
expansion of the fruit market.**** Mr. V. Pashkevich points
out that an investigation into the condition of fruit farming
in 1893-94 revealed a considerable development of it as an
industrial branch of agriculture in the previous ten years,
an increase in the demand for gardeners, undergardeners,
etc.(*) Statistics confirm such views: the amount of fruit
carried by the Russian railways is increasing,(**) fruit
imports, which increased in the first decade after the Reform,
are declining.(***)
It stands to reason that commercial vegetable growing,
which provides articles of consumption for incomparably
larger masses of the population than fruit growing does,
has developed still more rapidly and still more extensively.
Industrial vegetable growing becomes widespread, firstly,
near the towns(****); secondly, near factory and commercial
* Historico-Statistical Survey, I, p. 2.
** Ibid.
*** For example, in Moscow Gubernia. See S. Korolenko, Hired
Labour, etc., p. 262.
**** Ibid., pp. 335, 344, etc.
(*) Productive Forces, IV, 13.
(**) Ibid., p. 31, also Historico-Statistical Survey, p. 31 and foll.
(***) In the 60s imports amounted to nearly 1 million poods;
in 1878-1880 to 3.8 million poods; in 1886-1890 to 2.6 million poods;
in 1889-1893 to 2 million poods.
(****) Anticipating somewhat, let us note here that in 1863 there
were in European Russia 13 towns with populations of 50,000 and
over and in 1897 there were 44 (See Chapter VIII, §II).