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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
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factory).* We have shown above the considerable concentration
of all Russian factory workers in the largest
enterprises, mostly mechanised, which have an average of
488 and more workers per establishment. Mr. Dementyev has
studied in detail the influence of the workers’ place of
birth on their separation from the land, differences between
local-born and migrant workers, differences in social
estate (burgher or peasant), etc., and it turned out that
all these differences are eclipsed by the influence of the
main factor: the transition from hand to machine production.**
“Whatever causes may have helped to turn the
former cultivator into a factory worker, these special workers
already exist. They are merely counted as peasants, but
their only connection with the village is by way of the
taxes they pay when renewing their passports, for actually
they have no farm in the village, and very often not even a
house, which has usually been sold. Even their right to
land they retain only juridically, so to speak, and the disorders
that took place in 1885-1886 at many factories showed
that these workers themselves feel totally alien to the
village, just as the peasants in their turn regard them,
offspring of their fellow-villagers, as strangers. We are
consequently faced with an already crystallised class of
workers, possessing no homes of their own and virtually no
property, a class bound by no ties and living from hand
to mouth. And its origin does not date from yesterday. It has
its factory genealogy, and a fairly large section of it is
already in its third generation.”*** Lastly, interesting
material on the separation of the factory from agriculture
* Returns, Vol. IV, Sec. I, pp. 167, 170, 177.
** Mr. Zhbankov, in his Sanitary Investigation of Factories
and Works of Smolensk Gubernia (Smolensk, 1894-1896), estimates
the number of workers who leave for field-work at approximately a
mere 10 to 15% at the Yartsevo Textile Mill only (Vol II, pp. 307,
445; in 1893-1894 the Yartsevo Mill employed 3,106 out of the 8,810
factory workers in Smolensk Gubernia). Of the men 28% (average
for all factories, 29%) and of the women 18.6% (average for all
factories, 21%) employed in this factory were casual workers, (See
Vol. II, p. 469.) It should be noted that the casual workers include
1) those employed at the factory for less than a year; 2) those who
leave for summer work in the fields; 3) those “who for various reasons
ceased work at the factory for several years” (II, 445).
*** Returns, p. 296. The Factory, pp. 44-46.