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

306
V. I. LENIN
The peasant vegetable growers near Moscow are the same
sort of typical members of the rural bourgeoisie. “According
to an approximate estimate, over 4 million poods of vegetables
and greens reach Moscow’s markets every year. Some of
the villages do a big trade in pickled vegetables: Nogatino
Volost sells nearly a million vedros of pickled cabbage to
factories and barracks, and even sends consignments to
Kronstadt. . . . Commercial vegetable growing is widespread
in all the Moscow uyezds, chiefly in the vicinity of towns
and factories.”* “The cabbage is chopped by hired labourers
who come from Volokolamsk Uyezd” (Historico-Statistical
Survey, I, p. 19).
Exactly similar relations exist in the well-known vegetable-growing
district in Rostov Uyezd, Yaroslavl Gubernia,
embracing 55 vegetable-growing villages—Porechye, Ugodichi
and others. All the land, except pastures and meadows,
has long been turned into vegetable fields. The technical
processing of vegetables—preserving—is highly developed.**
Together with the product of the land, the land itself
and labour-power are converted into commodities. Despite
the “village community,” the inequality of land tenure, for
example, in the village of Porechye, is very great: in one
case a family of 4 has 7 “vegetable plots,” in another a
family of 3 has 17; this is explained by the fact that no periodical
land redistribution takes place here; only private
redivisions take place, and the peasants “freely exchange”
their “vegetable plots” or “patches” (Survey of Yaroslavl
Gubernia, 97-98).*** “A large part of the field-work . . . is
done by male and female day labourers, many of whom come
* Productive Forces, IV, 49 and foll. It is interesting to note
that different villages specialise in producing particular kinds of
vegetables.
** Historico-Statistical Survey, I—Mr. Orlov’s Directory of
Factories.—Transactions of the Commission of Inquiry into Handicraft
Industry, Vol XIV, article by Mr. Stolpyansky.—Productive
Forces, IV, 46 and foll.—Survey of Yaroslavl Gubernia, Vol. 2,
Yaroslavl, 1896. A comparison of the data given by Mr. Stolpyansky
(1885) and by the Directory (1890) shows a considerable increase
in the factory production of canned goods in this area.
*** Thus the publication mentioned has fully confirmed
Mr. Volgin’s “doubt” as to whether “the land occupied by vegetable
plots is often redivided” (op. cit., 172, footnote).