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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
405
and is, unfortunately (?), disappearing increasingly every year ...
testifies to the handicraft character of the industries (?). It is only
recently that the factory character both of the industries and of the
population has begun to be observed, under the influence, in particular,
of the town, intercourse with which has been facilitated by the
inauguration of the steamboat service. Today the village looks like
a regular industrial township: there is no sign of agriculture whatever,
the houses are built close together as in the towns; the fine
brick houses of the rich, and alongside of them the miserable hovels
of the poor; the long wooden and brick buildings of the factories
crowded in the middle of the village—all this sharply distinguishes
Katunki from the neighbouring villages and clearly points to the
industrial character of the local population. The inhabitants themselves
possess features of character that also call to mind the type of
“factory hand” who has already taken shape in Russia: a certain
showiness in house furniture, in clothes and manners, spendthrift
habits of life in most cases, and little care for the morrow, a forwardness
and often affectation in speech, a certain superciliousness
towards the country yokel—all these features are possessed by them in
common with all Russian factory people.”*
In the town of Arzamas, Nizhni-Novgorod Gubernia,
the “factory” statistics listed in 1890 a total of 6 tanneries,
employing 64 workers (Directory); this is only a small fraction
of the capitalist manufacture which embraces the fur,
boot-making and other industries. The same factories
employ workers in the home, both in the town of Arzamas
(in 1878, estimated at 400) and in 5 suburban villages, where
out of the 360 furrier households, 330 work for Arzamas
merchants, using their materials and working 14 hours
a day for 6 to 9 rubles per month**; that is why the furriers
are pallid, feeble and degenerating folk. In the suburb
households are engaged in industries, 70.1% of working people being
occupied in industries alone (i.e., not engaging in agriculture). As
regards literacy, this volost stands far above the average for the
uyezd, yielding in this respect only to the Chernoretsk Volost, which
is also non-agricultural and has highly developed boat-building
industries. The village of Bolshoye Murashkino had in 1887 a total of
856 households (of which 853 cultivated no land) with 3,473 persons
of both sexes. According to the 1897 census, the population of
Gorodets was 6,330, of Bolshoye Murashkino 5,341, of Yurino 2,189, of
Spasskoye 4,494 and of Vatras 3,012.
* Transactions of the Handicraft Commission, IX, p. 2567.
Information for 1880.
** The conditions of the workers in the Arzamas factories are
better than those of the rural workers (Transactions of the Handicraft
Commission, III, p. 133).