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

580
V. I. LENIN
very disadvantageous.”* For whom, dear Mr. Zhbankov?
“Life in the capitals cultivates many civilised habits of the
lower order and an inclination to luxury and showiness, and
this results in a useless (sic!!) waste of money”**, the expenditure
on this showiness, etc., is largely “unproductive” (!!)***
Mr. Hertzenstein positively howls about the “sham culture,”
“the riotous living,” “wild carousing,” “orgies of drunkenness
and filthy debauchery,” etc.**** From the fact of wholesale
migration the Moscow statisticians draw the outright
conclusion that it is necessary to take “measures that would
diminish the need for migratory labour.”(*) Mr. Karyshev
argues about migratory labour as follows: “Only an increase
in the peasants’ holdings to a size sufficient to provide the
main (!) requirements of their families can solve this most
serious problem of our national economy.(**)
And it does not occur to any of these serene-spirited
gentlemen that before talking about “solving most serious
problems,” one must see to it that the peasants obtain complete
freedom of movement, freedom to give up their land
and leave the community, freedom to settle (without having
* Women’s Country, 39 and 8. “Will not these genuine peasants
(newly-entered) exert a sobering influence, by the prosperous life
they lead, upon the native population, who regard not the land but
employment away from home as their main source of livelihood?”
(p. 40). “Incidentally,” remarks the author sadly, “we have already
cited an example of the opposite influence.” Here is the example.
Vologda folk bought land and lived “very prosperously.” “In reply
to the question I put to one of them as to why, though well-off, he let
his son go to St. Petersburg, he said: ‘It’s true we are not poor, but
life is very dull here, and my son, seeing others go, wanted to get
educated himself; at home too he was the one with knowledge’”
(p. 25). Poor Narodniks! How can they help deploring the fact that
even the example of well-to-do, land-purchasing muzhik farmer
cannot “sober” the youth, who, in their desire to “get educated,” flee
from the “allotment that secures them their livelihood”!
** The Influence of Industries Employing Migratory Workers,
etc., 33, author’s italics.
*** Yuridichesky Vestnik, 1890, No. 9, 138.
**** Russkaya Mysl (not Russky Vestnik, but Russkaya Mysl), 162
1887, No. 9, p. 163.
(*) Residential Permits, etc., p. 7.
(**) Russkoye Bogatstvo, 1896, No. 7, p. 18. So then, the “main”
requirements are to be met by the allotment, and the rest apparently
by “local employments” secured in the “countryside,” which “suffers
from a shortage of capable and healthy labourers”!