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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
533
building workers. In 3 uyezds of Poltava Gubernia (out of
15), there are 1,440. In Nikolayevsk Uyezd, Samara Gubernia,
there are 1,339.* Judging by these figures, the number
of building workers in European Russia must be not less
than one million.** This figure must rather be considered a
minimum, for all the sources show that the number of building
workers has grown rapidly in the post-Reform period.***
The building workers are industrial proletarians in the
making, whose connection with the land—already very
slight today****—is becoming slighter every year. The conditions
of building workers are very different from those of
lumber workers and are more like those of factory workers.
They work in large urban and industrial centres, which, as
we have seen, considerably raise their cultural standards.
While the declining lumber industry typifies weakly developed
forms of a capitalism that still tolerates the patriarchal
way of life, the developing building industry typifies
a higher stage of capitalism, leads to the formation of a
new class of industrial workers, and marks a deep-going
differentiation of the old peasantry.
* Sources, apart from those mentioned in the preceding footnote,
are Zemstvo returns. Mr. V. V. (Essays on Handicraft Industry,
61) cites data for 13 uyezds in Poltava, Kursk and Tambov gubernias.
The total number of building workers (Mr. V. V. classifies them all,
and wrongly so, as “small industrialists”) is 28,644, ranging from
2.7% to 22.1% of the total adult male population of the uyezds. If
we take the average percentage (8.8%) as the standard, the number
of building workers in European Russia would be 13 million (counting
15 million adult male workers). The gubernias mentioned occupy a
position midway between those where the building industries are most
developed and those where they are least developed.
** The census of January 28, 1897 (General Summary, 1905),
gives the number of the independent population (those earning their
own livelihood) engaged in the building industry throughout the
Empire as 717,000, plus 469,000 cultivators occupied in this industry
as a side line. (Note to 2nd edition.)
*** Fire insurance figures may, to some extent, help us to gauge
the dimensions of the building industry. The value of buildings
covered by fire insurance amounted to 5,968 million rubles in 1884,
and to 7,854 million rubles in 1893. (Productive Forces, XII, 65.)
This shows an annual increase of 188 million rubles.
**** In Yaroslavl Gubernia, for example, 11 to 20% of the total
population, or 30 to 56%, of the male workers, leave their homes in
search of work; 68.7% of those who leave are away all the year round
(Survey of Yaroslavl Gubernia). Obviously, all these are “peasants
only by official designation” (p. 117).