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

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA
FROM MARX
TO MAO
571
Kostroma people “it is a rare thing for peasants to get for
it [the land] some small part of the taxes to be paid; usually
they lease it on the sole condition that the tenants put it to
use, the owner himself paying all the taxes” (D. Zhbankov,
Women’s Country, Kostroma, 1891, p. 21). In the Survey
of Yaroslavl Gubernia (Vol. II, Yaroslavl, 1896), we also
find repeated references to migratory industrial workers
having to purchase their release from their villages and
allotments (pp. 28, 48, 149, 150, 166 and others).*
How many migratory non-agricultural workers are there?
The number of people engaged in all kinds of industries
employing migratory workers is not less than from 5 to
6 millions. In fact, in 1884, about 4.67 million passports and
* “Industries employing migratory workers ... are a form that
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obscures the uninterrupted growth of the towns.... Communal land
tenure and various peculiarities of the financial and administrative
life of Russia do not allow the peasant to become a town-dweller as
easily as in the West.... Legal threads sustain his (the migratory
worker’s) tie with the village, but actually by occupation, habits
and tastes he has become completely assimilated with the town and
often regards this tie with his village as irksome” (Russkaya Mysl,
1896, No. 11, p. 227). That is very true, but for a publicist is not
enough. Why did not the author declare definitely for complete freedom
of movement, for the freedom of the peasant to leave the village
NOT FOR
COMMERCIAL
DISTRIBUTION
community? Our liberals are still afraid of our Narodniks. But they
have no reason to be.
And here, for purposes of comparison, are the views of a sympa-
thiser with Narodism, Mr. Zhbankov: “Migration to the towns is, as it
were, a lightning conductor (sic!) against the rapid growth of the
capitals and big cities and the increase of the urban and landless prole-
tariat. Both from the sanitary and from the social and economic
points of view, this influence of industries employing migratory
workers should be regarded as beneficial: so long as the masses of the
people are not completely divorced from the land, which provides the
migratory workers with some security” (a “security” they pay money
to break with!), “these workers cannot become the blind instruments
of capitalist production, and the hope remains of organising
agricultural-industrial communes” (Yuridichesky Vestnik, 1890, No. 9,
p. 145). Is not the retention of petty-bourgeois hopes really beneficial?
As for “blind instruments,” the experience of Europe and all the facts
observed in Russia show that this description is far more applicable
to the worker who retains his ties with the land and with patriarchal
relationships than to the one who has broken these ties. The figures
and facts given by Mr. Zhbankov himself show that the migratory
“Petersburger” is more literate, cultured and developed than the settled
Kostromer in some “backwoods” uyezd.