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

488
V. I. LENIN
with the aid of wood fuel, in old-fashioned furnaces
with cold or slightly heated blast. In 1893, the number
of cold-blast furnaces in the Urals was 37 out of 110, while
in the South, there were 3 out of 18. A mineral-fuel furnace
had an average output of 1.4 million poods per year, while
a wood-fuel furnace had one of 217,000 poods. In 1890
Mr. Keppen wrote: “The refining process of smelting pig-iron is
still firmly established in the ironworks of the Urals,
whereas in other parts of Russia it has been almost entirely
displaced by the puddling process.” 152 Steam-engines are used
to a far less extent in the Urals than in the South. Lastly,
we cannot but note the seclusion of the Urals, its isolation
from the centre of Russia owing to the vast distance and the
absence of railways. Until quite recently the products of
the Urals were transported to Moscow mainly by the primitive
method of “floating” by river once a year.*
Thus the most direct survivals of the pre-Reform system,
extensive practice of labour-service, bonded condition of the
workers, low productivity of labour, backwardness of technique,
low wages, prevalence of hand production, primitive
and rapaciously antediluvian exploitation of the region’s
natural wealth, monopolies, hindrances to competition,
seclusion and isolation from the general commercial and
industrial march of the times—such is the general picture
of the Urals.
The mining area in the South** is in many respects the
very opposite of the Urals. The South is in the period of
* For a description of this floating see Crags by Mr. Mamin-
Sibiryak. In his writings this author vividly portrays the specific
life of the Urals, which differs very little from that of the pre-Reform
period, with the lack of rights, ignorance and degradation of a population
tied down to the factories, with the “earnest, childish dissipations”
of the “gentry,” and the absence of that middle stratum of society
(middle class and other intellectuals) which is so characteristic
of capitalist development in all countries, not excluding Russia.
** In mining statistics the term “South and South-West Russia”
means the Volhynia, Don, Ekaterinoslav, Kiev, Astrakhan, Bessarabia,
Podolsk, Taurida, Kharkov, Kherson and Chernigov gubernias.
It is to these that the quoted figures apply. All that is said further
on about the South could also be said (with slight modifications)
of Poland, which forms another mining area of outstanding significance
in the post-Reform period.