V. I.

Lenin

Casual Notes

III. Objective Statistics

Ourgovernment is in the habit of accusing its opponents, not only
revolutionaries, but also liberals, of being tendentious. Have you ever
read the comments of the official press on the liberal (legal, of course)
publications? Vestnik

Finansov , [2] the organ of the Ministry of Finance, would at times publish reviews of
the press, and each time the official in charge of this column referred to
the comments of the (big) liberal magazines on the budget, on the famine,
or on some government measure, he always spoke with indignation of their
“tendentiousness” and, by way of contrast, pointed, “objectively,” not only to “the seamy side,” but to the
“gratifying features.” This, of course, is only a minor example, but
it illustrates the habitual attitude of the government, its habitual
tendency to brag of its “objectivity.”

Weshall endeavour to bring some satisfaction to these strict and
impartial judges. We shall endeavour to do this in dealing with
statistics. Naturally, we shall not take statistics on this or that set of
facts of public life: it is well known that the facts are recorded by
biased people and generalised by institutions which are sometimes
decidedly “tendentious,” like the Zemstvos. No, we shall deal with
statistics on ... laws. The most ardent supporter of the government, we
imagine, would hardly dare to assert that there is anything more objective
and impartial than statistics on laws—a simple calculation of the
decisions made by the government, quite apart from any consideration of
the divergence between word and deed, between promulgation and execution,
etc.

Andnow, to the matter.

The State Senate publishes, as is known, a Compendium of the Laws and Edicts of the Government , a periodical that announces the measures
adopted by the government. We shall examine these facts, and note
what the laws and edicts are about. Precisely: what they are about. We dare not criticise the official edicts; we shall
merely compute the number issued in this or that sphere. The January
newspapers reprinted from this government publication the content of
Nos. 2905 to 2929 of last year and Nos. 1 to 66 of the current
year. Thus, in the period from December 29, 1900, to January 12, 1901,
the very threshold of the new century, ninety-one laws and edicts were
promulgated. The character of these ninety-one laws renders them very
convenient for “statistical” analysis. None of them is out
standing; there is nothing that puts everything else in the shade and lays a special impress upon the present period of domestic
administration. All of them are relatively petty and answer to current
requirements continuously and regularly arising. We thus see the
government in its everyday garb, and this serves as a further guarantee
of the objectivity of the “statistics.”

Ofthe ninety-one laws, thirty-four, i.e., more than a third, deal with
one and the same subject: extension of the call dates for payment of
capital on shares or of payment of purchases of stock in various
commercial and industrial joint-stock companies. These laws can be
recommended to newspaper readers as a means of refreshing their memory in
regard to the list of our industrial enterprises and the names of various
firms. The second group of laws is entirely analogous to the first in
content. It deals with changes in the articles of association of
commercial and industrial companies. These include fifteen acts revising
the articles of association of K. and S. Popov Bros., tea dealers;

A. Nauman & Co., cardboard and tar-paper manufacturers; I. A. Osipov
& Co., tanners, and leather, canvas and linen merchants; etc., etc. To
these must be added eleven more acts, of which six were passed to meet
certain requirements of trade and industry (the establishment of a public
bank and a mutual credit society; the fixing of prices of securities to be
taken as deposit for state contracts; rules for the movement of
privately-owned cars on the railways; regulations governing brokers on the
Borisoglebsk Corn Exchange), while five deal with the appointment of six
additional policemen and two mounted police sergeants to four factories
and one mine.

Thus,sixty out of ninety-one of the laws, i.e., two- thirds, directly
serve the various practical needs of our capitalists and (partly) protect
them from the discontent of the workers. The impartial language of figures
tells us that our government, judging by the very nature of most of its
everyday laws and edicts, is a loyal servant of the capitalists and that,
in relation to the capitalist class as a whole, it functions in exactly
the same way as, say, the head office of an iron trust, or as does the
office of a sugar-refining syndicate in relation to the capitalists in the
individual branches of industry. Of course, the fact that special laws have to be passed in order to introduce some trifling
alteration in the articles of association of a company or to extend the
call dates for payments on shares simply shows the unwieldiness of our
state machinery; only a slight “improvement in the machinery”
is necessary for all this to come under the jurisdiction of the local
authorities. On the other hand, the unwieldiness of the machine, the
excessive centralisation, the necessity for the government itself to poke
its nose into everything—this is a feature of the whole of our
public life, not merely of the sphere of commerce and industry. Hence, the
examination of the number of enacted laws of this or that kind gives us a
pretty fair insight into what the government interests itself in, into
what it thinks and does.

Butthe government displays considerably less interest in private
associations that do not pursue aims so honourable from the moral point of
view, and safe from the political point of view, as profit-making (except
that it displays interest in order to hamper, prohibit, suppress,
etc.). In the period “under review”—the writer of these lines
is in the civil service, and he hopes, therefore, that the reader will
forgive his employment of bureaucratic terms—the articles of
association of two societies were sanctioned (those of the Society for the
Aid to Needy Students in the Vladikavkaz Boys’ Gymnasium, and of the
Vladikavkaz Society for Educational Excursions and Tours); by imperial
grace permission to change the statutes was authorised for three others
(the Saving and Mutual Aid Societies of the office employees and workers
of the Lyudinovo and Sukreml Works and of the Maltsov Railway, the First
Hop-Cultivation Society, and the Philanthropic Society for the
Encouragement of Female Labour); fifty-five laws were passed pertaining to
commercial and industrial companies; and five, in relation to various
other societies. In the sphere of commercial and industrial interests,
“we” exert our best efforts for the task and strive to do
everything possible to facilitate association between merchants and
manufacturers (strive, but do nothing, for the unwieldiness of the machine
and the end less red tape considerably restrict the “possibilities” in the police state). In the sphere of
non-commercial associations, we stand in principle for homeopathy. Now,
hop-growing societies and societies for the encouragement of female labour are not so
bad, but educational excursions.... God knows what may be discussed on
these excursions! And will not the constant surveillance of the inspectors
be made difficult? Now, you know, one must be careful in handling fire.

Schools.As many as three new schools have been established. And what
schools! An elementary school for farm yard workers in the village of
Blagodatnoye on the estate of His Imperial Highness, the Grand Duke Pyotr
Nikolayevich. That the villages belonging to the Grand Dukes are all paradises [1]

I have long ceased to doubt. But neither do I now doubt that
even the highest personages may sincerely and whole-heartedly interest
themselves in the education of the “younger brother.” Moreover, the
rules of the Dergachi Rural Handicraft School, and of the Asanovo
Elementary Agricultural School have been confirmed. I regret that I have
not a reference book at hand to inform me whether or not some
highly-placed personage owns these village paradises, in which popular
education—and landlord farming are being cultivated with such
zeal. But I console myself with the thought that such inquiries do not
enter into the duties of a statistician.

This,then, is the sum total of the laws that express “the
government’s solicitude for the people.” As the reader will observe, I
have made the greatest possible allowances in grouping these laws. Why,
for example, is the Hop-Cultivation Society not a commercial enterprise?
Perhaps be cause commerce is not the only thing that is discussed at its
meetings. Or take the school for farmyard workers. Who can tell whether it
is a school or an improved stockyard?

Wehave still to deal with the last group of laws that shows the
government’s solicitude for itself. This group consists of three times as
many laws as we assigned to the last two categories, twenty-two laws,
dealing with administrative reforms, each one more radical than the
other—changing the name of the village Platonovskoye to
Nikolayevskoye; modifying the articles of association, staffs, rules, lists, hours for sessions (of certain uyezd conferences), etc.; increasing
the salary of midwives attached to army units in the Caucasus military
area; determining the sums for shoeing and veterinary treatment of Cossack
mounts; changing the by-laws of a private commercial school in Moscow;
defining the rules of the scholarship grants endowed by Privy Councillor
Daniil Samuilovich Polyakov at the Kozlov Commercial School. I am not sure
whether I have classified these laws correctly. Do they really express the
government’s solicitude for itself, or for commercial and industrial
interests? If I have classified them wrongly, I beg the reader’s
indulgence, since this is the first attempt that has been made to compile
statistics on laws. Hitherto no one has attempted to raise this sphere of
knowledge to the level of a strict science, not even the professors of
Russian state law.

Finally,one legislative act must be treated as a special, independent
group, both because of its content and be cause of its being the first
governmental measure in the new century. This is the law concerning the
“increase in the area of forests to be devoted to the development
and improvement of His Imperial Majesty’s hunting.” A grand
début worthy of a great power!

Now,to strike a balance. Statistics would be incomplete without it.

Fiftylaws and edicts devoted to various commercial and industrial
companies and enterprises; a score of administrative name-changes and
reforms; two creations and three reorganisations of private societies;
three schools for the training of landlords’ employees; six policemen and
two mounted sergeants appointed to factories. Can there be any doubt
whatever that such richly varied legislative and administrative activity
will guarantee our country rapid and undeviating progress in the twentieth
century?

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Notes:
[1]
A play on the name of the village Blagodatnoye which implies an earthly
paradise.— Ed .

[2]
Vestnik Finansov, Promyshlennosti i Torgooli ( Finance, Industry and Trade Messenger )—a weekly journal published by
the Ministry of Finance in St. Petersburg from November 1883 to 1917
(until January 1885 it was called Ukazatel Pravitelstvennykh Rasporyazheny po Ministerstvu Finansov — Record of Government Instructions, Ministry of Finance ). It carried
government regulations, economic articles, and reviews.