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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
523
be found outside of towns. This conclusion is very important,
for it shows that the industrial population in Russia greatly
exceeds the urban population.*
If we now turn to the pace at which factory industry
develops in urban and in rural centres, we see that it is
undoubtedly faster in the latter. The number of urban
centres with 1,000 workers and over in the period taken
grew very slightly (from 32 to 33), while the number of
rural centres in this category grew very considerably
(from 38 to 53). The number of workers in the 40 urban
centres grew by only 16.1 % (from 257,000 to 299,000),
while in the 63 rural centres it grew by 54.7% (from 98,500
to 152,500). The average number of workers per urban centre
rose only from 6,400 to 7,500, whereas the average number
per rural centre rose from 1,500 to 2,400. Thus, factory
industry evidently tends to spread with particular rapidity
outside the towns, to create new factory centres and to
push them forward faster than the urban centres, and
to penetrate deep into remote rural areas that would seem
to be isolated from the world of big capitalist enterprises.
This supremely important circumstance shows us, firstly,
the rapidity with which large-scale machine industry transforms
social and economic relationships. What formerly
took ages to take shape now springs up in a decade or so.
We have only to compare, for instance, the formation of
such non-agricultural centres as the “handicraft villages”
indicated in the previous chapter—Bogorodskoye, Pavlovo,
Kimry, Khoteichi, Velikoye and others—with the process
of the establishment of new centres by the modern factory,
which at once draws the rural population by the thousands
into industrial settlements.** Social division of labour
* The population census of January 28, 1897, fully confirmed
this conclusion. The urban population throughout the Empire was
given as 16,828,395 persons of both sexes. The commercial and
industrial population, as we showed above, is 21.7 millions. (Note
to 2nd edition.)
** “In the township of Krivoi Rog the population grew between
1887 and 1896 from 6,000 to 17,000, at the Kamenka Works of the
Dnieper Company—from 2,000 to 18,000; near Druzhkovka station,
where as late as 1892 there was nothing but station buildings, there
is now a settlement of 6,000 people; at the Gdantsevka Works there