The DEVELOPMENT of CAPITALISM in RUSSIA

Chapter IV. The Growth of Commercial Agriculture

V. Continuation. The Differentiation of the Peasantry
in the Dairy-Farming Area

In the literature dealing with the effect of dairy farming on the
conditions of the peasantry, we constantly come up against contradictions:
on the one hand reference is made to progress in farming, the enlargement
of incomes, the improvement of agricultural technique and the acquisition
of improved implements; on the other hand, we have statements about the
deterioration of food, the creation of new types of bondage and the ruin
of the peasants. After what was stated in Chapter II, we should not be
surprised at these contradictions: we know that these opposite opinions
relate to opposite groups of the peasantry. For a more precise judgement
of the subject, let us take the data showing the classification of peasant
households according to the number of cows per household. [1]

Thus, the distribution of cows among the peasants in the non-black-earth
belt is found to be very similar to the distribution of draught animals
among the peasants in the black-earth gubernias (see Chapter
II). Moreover, the concentration of dairy cattle in the area described
proves to be greater than the concentration of draught animals. This
clearly points to the fact that it is with the local form of commercial
farming that the differentiation of the peasantry is closely
connected. The same connection is evidently indicated by the following
data (unfortunately, not sufficiently complete). If we take the aggregate
Zemstvo statistics (given by Mr. Blagoveshchensky; for 122 uyezds of 21
gubernias), we get an average of 1.2 cows per household. Hence, in the
non-black-earth belt the peasantry evidently own more cows than in the
black-earth belt, and in Petersburg Gubernia they are better off than in
the non-black earth belt in general. On the other hand, in 123 uyezds of
22 gubernias the cattleless households constitute 13 %, while in the 18
uyezds we have taken, they amount to 17%, and in the 6 uyezds of
Petersburg Gubernia 18.8%. Hence, the differentiation of the peasantry (in
the respect we are now examining) is most marked in Petersburg Gubernia,
followed by the non-black-earth belt in general. By this indication,
commercial farming is the principal factor in the differentiation of the
peasantry.

The data show that about half the peasant households (those having no
cows, or one cow) can take only a negative part in the benefits of dairy farming. The peasant with one cow
will sell milk only out of need, to the detriment of his children’s
nourishment. On the other hand, about one-fifth of the households (those
with 3 cows and more) concentrate in their hands probably more than half
the total dairy farming since the quality of their cattle and the
profitableness of their farms should be higher than in the case of the
“average” peasant. [2]

An interesting illustration of this conclusion is provided by the data on a locality where dairy farming and capitalism in
general are highly developed. We refer to Petersburg

Uyezd. [3]

Dairy farming is particularly widely developed in the summer residential part of the uyezd,
inhabited mainly by Russians; here the most widely cultivated crops are:
grasses (23.5% of the allotment arable, as against 13.7% for the uyezd),
oats (52.3% of the arable) and potatoes (10.1%). Agriculture is directly
influenced by the St. Petersburg market, which needs oats, potatoes, hay,
milk and horse traction ( loc . cit ., 168). The families
of the registered population are 46.3% engaged “in the milk
industry.” Of the total number of cows 91% provide milk for the
market. The income from this industry amounts to 713,470 rubles (203
rubles per family, 77 rubles per cow). The nearer the locality is to
St. Petersburg, the higher is the quality of the cattle and the better the
attention they receive. The milk is sold in two ways: 1) to buyers-up on
the spot and 2) in St. Petersburg to “dairy farms,” etc. The
latter type of marketing is much more profitable, but “the majority of the farms having one or two
cows, and sometimes more, are not . . . able to deliver their milk to
St. Petersburg direct”—they have no horses, it does not pay to
cart small quantities, etc. The buyers-up of the milk include not only
specialist merchants, but individuals with dairies of their own. The
following data are for two volosts in the uyezd:

One can judge from this how the benefits of dairy farming are distributed
among all the peasants in the non-black earth belt, among whom, as we have
seen, the concentration of dairy cattle is even greater than among these
560 families. It remains for us to add that 23.1% of the peasant families
in St. Petersburg Uyezd hire workers (most of whom, here, as everywhere in
agriculture, are day labourers). “Bearing in mind that agricultural
workers are hired almost exclusively by families having fully-operating
farms” (constituting only 40.4% of the total number of families in
the uyezd) “the conclusion must be that more than half of such farms
do not manage without hired labour” (158).

Thus, at opposite ends of Russia, in the most varying localities, in
St. Petersburg and, say, Taurida gubernias, the social and economic
relations within the “village community,” prove to be absolutely identical. The “muzhik-cultivators”
(Mr. N.–on’s term) in both places differentiate into a minority of
rural entrepreneurs and a mass of rural proletarians. The specific feature
of agriculture is that capitalism subjugates one aspect of rural economy in one district, and another aspect in another, which is why identical
economic relations are manifested in the most varied forms of agronomy and
everyday life.

Having established the fact that in the area described, too, the peasantry
splits up into opposite classes, we shall easily achieve clarity about the
contradictory opinions usually expressed as to the role of dairy
farming. Quite naturally, the well-to-do peasantry receive an incentive to
develop and improve their farming methods and as a result grass
cultivation is widespread and becomes an essential part of commercial
stock-farming. The development of grass cultivation is observed, for
example, in Tver Gubernia; in Kashin Uyezd, the most progressive in that
gubernia, as many as one-sixth of all peasant households plant clover
( Returns , XIII, 2, p. 171). It is interesting, moreover, to note
that on the purchased lands a larger proportion of arable is occupied by
herbage than on the allotments: the peasant bourgeoisie naturally prefer
private ownership of land to communal tenure. [4]

In the Survey of Yaroslavl Gubernia (Vol. II, 1896) we also find numerous references to the
increase in grass cultivation, and again mainly on purchased and rented lands. [5]

In the same publication we find references to the spread of improved implements: iron
ploughs, threshing machines, rollers, etc. Butter and cheese making, etc.,
are developing very considerably. In Novgorod Gubernia it was noted as far
back as the beginning of the 80s that along with a general deterioration
and diminution of peasant stock breeding, there was an improvement in
certain individual localities where there was a profitable market for milk
and where the milk-feeding of calves was an old-established industry
(Bychkov: An Essay in the House-to-House Investigation of the Economic Position and Farming of the Peasants in Three Volosts of Novgorod Uyezd , Novgorod, 1882). The
milk-feeding of calves, which is also a type of commercial livestock
farming, is, generally speaking, a fairly widespread industry in the
Novgorod and Tver gubernias and in other places not far from the big
cities (see Hired Labour , etc ., published by the
Department of Agriculture). “This industry,” says Mr. Bychkov,
“by its very nature, brings an income to the already well-provided
peasants possessing considerable numbers of cows, since with one cow, and
sometimes even with two of poor yield, the milk-feeding of calves is
unthinkable” ( loc . cit ., 101). [6]

But the most outstanding index of the economic successes of the peasant
bourgeoisie in the area described is the hiring of labourers by
peasants. The local landowners feel that they are being confronted by
competitors, and in their communications to the Department of Agriculture
they sometimes even attribute the shortage of workers to the fact that
these are snatched up by the well-to-do peasants ( Hired Labour ,
490). The hiring of labourers by peasants is noted in the Yaroslavl,
Vladimir, St. Petersburg and Novgorod gubernias ( loc . cit ., passim ). A mass of such references
is also scattered throughout the Survey of Yaroslavl Gubernia .

This progress of the well-to-do minority, however, is a heavy burden upon
the mass of the poor peasants. In Koprin Volost, Rybinsk Uyezd, Yaroslavl
Gubernia, for example, one finds the spread of cheese making—on the
initiative of “V. I. Blandov, the well-known founder of
cheese-making artels.” [7] “When the poorer peasants, with only one cow each, deliver . . .
their milk (to the cheese factory) they do so, of course, to the detriment of their own
nourishment”; whereas the well-to-do peasants improve their cattle
(pp. 32-33). Among the types of wage-labour undertaken, one finds
employment away from home, at cheese-making establishments; from among the
young peasants a body of skilled cheese makers is arising. In the
Poshekhonye Uyezd “the number . . . of cheese and butter
establishments is increasing from year to year,” but “the
benefits accruing to peasant farming from cheese and butter making hardly
compensate for the disadvantages to peasant life resulting from our cheese
and butter establishments.” On the peasants’ own admission
they are often compelled to starve, for with the opening of a cheese or
butter factory in some locality, the milk is sent there and the peasants
usually drink diluted milk. The system of payment in kind is coming into
vogue (pp.43, 54, 59 and others), so that it is to be regretted that our
“people’s” petty production is not covered by the law prohibiting payment in kind in “capitalist” factories. [8]

Thus, the opinions of people directly acquainted with the matter confirm
our conclusion that the majority of the peasants play a purely negative
part in the progress of local agriculture. The progress of commercial
farming worsens the position of the bottom groups of peasants and forces
them out of the ranks of the cultivators altogether. Be it noted that
reference has been made in Narodnik literature to this contradiction
between the progress of dairy farming and the deterioration of the peasants’ nourishment (for the
first time, I think, by Engelhardt). But it is precisely this example that
enables one to see the narrowness of the Narodnik appraisal of the
phenomena occurring among the peasantry and in agriculture. They note a
contradiction in one form, in one locality, and do not realise that it is
typical of the entire social and economic system, manifesting itself
everywhere in different forms. They note the contradictory significance of
one “profitable industry,” and strongly urge the “implanting” among the peasantry of all sorts of other
“local industries.” They note the contradictory significance
of one form of agricultural progress and do not understand that machines,
for example, have exactly the same political and economic significance in
agriculture as in industry.

---
Notes:
[1]
Zemstvo statistics taken from Mr. Blagoveshchensky’s Combined Returns . [9]
About 14,000 households in these 18 uyezds are not classified according to
the number of cows owned: the total is not 289,079 households, but
303,262. Mr. Blagoveshchensky cites similar data for two other uyezds in
the black-earth gubernias, but these uyezds are evidently not typical. In
11 uyezds of Tver Gubernia ( Statistical Returns , XIII, 2) the
percentage of allotment households owning no cows is not high (9.8), but
21.9% of the households, having 3 and more cows, concentrate in their
hands 48.4% of the total number of cows. Horseless households constitute
12.2%; households with 3 and more horses constitute only 5.1% and they own
only 13.9% of the total number of horses. Let us note, in passing, that a
smaller concentration of horses (as compared with that of cows) is also to
be observed in other non-black-earth gubernias.— Lenin

[2]
These data regarding the opposite groups of peasants should be borne in
mind when one meets sweeping statements like the following: “An
annual income from dairy stock farming ranging from 20 to 200 rubles per
household is, over the enormous area of the northern gubernias, not only a
most considerable means of extending and improving stock farming, but has
also had the effect of improving field cultivation and even of reducing
migration in search of employment, by providing the population with work
at home—both in tending cattle and in bringing hitherto neglected
land into a properly cultivated condition” ( Productive Forces , III, 18). On the whole, migration is not decreasing, but
increasing. In some localities, however, the decrease may be due either to
the increase in the percentage of well to-do peasants, or to the
development of “work at home,” i.e., work for local rural
entrepreneurs.— Lenin

[3]
Material for Statistics on the Economy in St. Petersburg Gubernia , Vol. V, Pt. II, St. Petersburg, 1887.— Lenin

[4]
A substantial improvement in the maintenance of cattle is observed only
where there has been a development in the production of milk for sale
(pp. 219, 224).— Lenin

[5]
Pp. 39, 65, 136, 150, 154, 167, 170, 177 and others. Our pre-Reform system
of taxation retards the progress of agriculture here too. “Owing to
the congestion of the farmsteads,” writes a correspondent,
“grass cultivation has been introduced all over the volost; the
clover, however, is sold to cover tax arrears” (91). The taxes in
this gubernia are sometimes to high that the peasant who leases his land
has himself to pay a sum to the new holder of the allotment.— Lenin

[6]
Let us note, by the way, that the variety of “industries” of
the local peasantry prompted Mr. Bychkov to distinguish two types of
industrialists, according to the amount of earnings. It appeared that less
than 100 rubles was earned by 3,251 persons (27.4% of the population);
their earnings totalled 102,000 rubles, or an average of 31 rubles per
person. Over 100 rubles was obtained by 454 (3.8% of the population):
their earnings totalled 107,000 rubles, or an average of 236 rubles per
person The first group consisted mainly of wage-workers of every kind, the
second of traders, hay merchants, timber dealers, etc.— Lenin

[7]
The “cheese-making artels” of Koprin Volost are mentioned in
the Directory of Factories and Works , and the Blandovs are the
largest firm in the cheese-making industry: in 1890 they owned 25
factories in six gubernias.— Lenin

[8]
Here is the characteristic view of Mr. Stary Maslodel [Old Butter
Maker]. “Whoever has seen and knows the countryside today and
remembers what it was 40 or 50 years ago will be amazed at the difference.
In the old villages all the houses were the same both outside and inside;
today, however side by side with hovels stand fine houses, side by side
with the indigent live the rich, side by side with the downtrodden and
despised live those who feast and make merry. In former times one often
came across villages in which there was not a single landless peasant; now
in every village there are no less than five and sometimes a full
dozen. And to tell the truth, butter making is much to blame for this
transformation of the villages. In 30 years butter making has enriched
many, has beautified their homes; many peasants who supplied milk during
the period of development of the butter industry have become prosperous,
acquired more cattle, and purchased land on a community or individual
basis; but many more have fallen into poverty; landless peasants and
beggars have appeared in the villages” ( Zhizn [ Life ]

1899, No. 8 quoted from Severny Krai [ Northern Region ], 1899, No 223). ( Note to 2nd edition .)— Lenin

[9]
N. A. Blagoveshchensky’s Peasant Farming . Combined Zemstvo House-to-House Census Economic Returns , Vol. 1, Moscow,
1893.