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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
Here is the way Mr. V. D. Belov describes these relationships:
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The Urals enjoy the advantage, says Mr. Belov, of having
workers who have been moulded by their “original” history. “Workers
in other factories, abroad, or even in St. Petersburg, have not the
interests of their factory at heart: they are here today and gone
tomorrow. While the factory is running they work; when losses take
the place of profits, they take up their knapsacks and go off as fast
and as readily as they came. They and their employers are permanent
enemies.... The position is entirely different in the case of the Ural
workers. They are natives of the place and in the vicinity of the
works they have their land, their farms and their families. Their own
welfare is closely, inseparably, bound up with the welfare of the works.
If it does well, they do well; if it does badly, it is bad for them; but
they cannot leave it (sic!): they have more here than a knapsack
(sic!); to leave means to wreck their whole world, to abandon the
land, farm and family.... And so they are ready to hang on for years
to work at half pay, or, what amounts to the same thing, to remain
unemployed half their working time so that other local workers like
themselves may earn a crust of bread. In short, they are ready to
accept any terms the employers offer, so long as they are allowed to
remain.... Thus, there is an inseparable bond between the Ural workers
and the works; the relationships are the same today as they were in
the past, before their emancipation from serf dependence; only the
form of these relationships has changed, nothing more. The former
principle of serfdom has been superseded by the lofty principle of
mutual benefit.”*
This lofty principle of mutual benefit manifests itself
primarily in reduction of wages to a particularly low level.
“In the South . . . a worker costs twice and even three times
as much as in the Urals”—for example, according to data
covering several thousand workers, 450 rubles (annually
per worker) as against 177 rubles. In the South “at the first
opportunity of earning a decent wage in the fields of their
native villages or anywhere else, the workers leave the ironworks,
and coal- or ore-mines” (Vestnik Finansov, 1897, No.
17, p. 265). In the Urals, however, a decent wage is not to
be dreamt of.
Naturally and inseparably connected with the low wages
and servile status of the Ural workers is the technical
backwardness of the Urals. There pig-iron is smelted mostly
*Transactions of the Commission of Inquiry into Handicraft
Industry, Vol. XVI, St. Petersburg, 1887, pp. 8-9 and foll. The same
author later goes on to talk about “healthy people’s” industry!