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

70
C H A P T E R II
THE DIFFERENTIATION OF THE PEASANTRY
We have seen that in capitalist production the basis for
the formation of a home market is the process of the disintegration
of the small cultivators into agricultural entrepreneurs
and workers. Almost every work on the economic
position of the Russian peasantry in the post-Reform period
refers to the so-called “differentiation” of the peasantry. It
must consequently be our task to study the principal
features of this phenomenon and to determine its significance.
In the following exposition we employ the statistical data
of Zemstvo house-to-house censuses. 40
I. ZEMSTVO STATISTICS FOR NOVOROSSIA 41
Mr. V. Postnikov, in his book Peasant Farming in South
Russia (Moscow, 1891), 42 has collected and processed the
Zemstvo statistics for the Taurida and partly the Kherson
and the Ekaterinoslav gubernias. This book should be given
first place in the literature on the differentiation of the
peasantry, and we consider it necessary to arrange according
to the system we have adopted the data gathered
by Mr. Postnikov, supplementing them occasionally with
data from Zemstvo publications. The Zemstvo statisticians
of Taurida have grouped the peasant households
according to area under crops—a very sound method, one
that renders it possible to form a precise judgement of the
economy of each group due to the predominance in that
locality of grain cultivation with extensive farming. Here