The DEVELOPMENT of CAPITALISM in RUSSIA

Chapter IV. The Growth of Commercial Agriculture

III. The Commercial Stock-Farming Area.
General Data on the Development of Dairy Farming

We now pass to another very important area of agricultural capitalism in
Russia, namely, the region in which not cereal, but livestock produce is
of predominant significance. This region embraces, apart from the Baltic
and the western gubernias, the northern, the industrial and parts of some
of the central gubernias (Ryazan, Orel, Tula, and Nizhni Novgorod). Here
animals are kept for dairy produce, and the whole character of agriculture
is adapted to obtaining as large a quantity as possible of the more
valuable market produce of this sort. [1] “Before our very eyes a marked transition is
taking place from stock farming for manure to stock farming for dairy
produce; it has been particularly notice able during the past ten
years” (work quoted in previous footnote, ibid .). It is
very difficult by the use of statistics to describe the various regions of
Russia in this respect, because it is not the total number of horned
cattle that is here important, but the number of dairy cattle and their
quality. If we take the total number of animals per hundred inhabitants,
we shall find that it is biggest in the outer steppe regions of Russia and
smallest in the non-black-earth belt ( Agriculture and Forestry ,
274); we shall find that as time goes on the number diminishes
( Productive Forces , III, 6. Cf. Historico-Statistical Survey , I). Hence, we observe here what Roscher noted in his day,
namely, that the number of animals per unit of the population is largest
in districts of “extensive livestock farming” (W. Roscher,
Nationaloekonomik des Ackerbaues . 7-te Aufl., Stuttg., 1873, S.

563–564 [2] ).

We, however, are interested in intensive livestock farming, and in dairy
farming in particular. We are compelled, therefore, to confine ourselves
to the approximate computation made by the authors of the
above-mentioned, Sketch , without claiming to make an exact
estimate of the phenomenon; such a computation clearly illustrates the
relative positions of the various regions of Russia as to degree of
dairy-farm development. We quote this computation in extenso ,
supplementing it with some averages arrived at and data on the
cheese-making industry in 1890 according to “factory” statistics.

This table clearly illustrates (though the data are very obsolete) the
emergence of special dairy-farming areas, the development there of
commercial farming (the sale of milk and milk-processing) and the increase
in the productivity of dairy cattle.

To judge the development of dairy farming, we can only make use of data on
butter production and cheese making. This industry arose in Russia at the
very end of the 18th century (1795); cheese making on landlords’
estates began to develop in the 19th century, but suffered a severe crisis
in the 1860s, which opened the period of cheese making by peasants and
merchants.

The number of cheese-making establishments in the 50 gubernias of European
Russia was as follows: [3]

Thus, in 25 years production increased more than ten-fold; only the
dynamics of the phenomenon may be judged from these data, which are
extremely incomplete. Let us quote some more detailed material. In Vologda
Gubernia an improvement in dairy farming began, properly speaking, in
1872, when the Yaroslavl-Vologda railway was opened; since then
“farmers have begun to see to the improvement of their herds, to
introduce grass cultivation, to acquire improved implements . . . and have
tried to place dairy farming on a purely commercial basis”
( Statistical Sketch , 20). In Yaroslavl Gubernia “the ground was prepared” by the
so-called “cheese-making artels” of the 70s, and “cheese
making continues to develop on the basis of private enterprise, merely
retaining the title of ‘artel’” (25); cheese making “artels” figure—may we add—in the Directory of Factories and Works as establishments employing wage-workers. Instead
of 295,000 rubles, the authors of the Sketch estimate the output
of cheese and butter, according to official returns, at 412,000
rubles (computed from figures scattered throughout the book); correction
of the figure brings the value of the output of fresh butter and cheese to
1,600,000 rubles, and if we add clarified butter and soft cheese, to
4,701,400 rubles, not counting either the Baltic or the western gubernias.

For the later period let us quote the following opinions from the
above-cited publication of the Department of Agriculture Hired Labour , etc . Concerning the industrial gubernias in general
we read: “A complete revolution in the position of the farms in this
area has been brought about by the development of dairy farming”; it
“indirectly has also helped to bring about an improvement in
agriculture”; “dairy farming in the area is developing with
every year” (258). In Tver Gubernia “there is to be observed
the tendency both among private landowners and peasants to improve the
methods of maintaining cattle”; the income from stock farming is
estimated at 10 million rubles (274). In Yaroslavl Gubernia “dairy
farming . . . is developing with every year. . . . Cheese and butter
making have even begun to assume something of an industrial character
. . . milk . . . is bought up from neighbours and even from peasants. One
comes across cheese factories run by a whole company of owners”
(285). “The general trend of private-landowner farming here,”
writes a correspondent from Danilov Uyezd, Yaroslavl Gubernia, “is
marked at the present time by the following: 1) the transition from
three-field to five- and seven-field crop rotation, with the sowing of
herbage in the fields; 2) the ploughing up of disused lands; 3) the
introduction of dairy farming, and as a consequence, the stricter
selection of cattle and an improvement in their maintenance”
(292). The same thing is said of Smolensk Gubernia, where the value of the
output of cheese and butter amounted to

240,000 rubles in 1889—according to a report of the Governor
(according to statistical returns, 136,000 rubles in 1890). The
development of dairy farming is noted in the Kaluga, Kovno,
Nizhni-Novgorod, Pskov, Esthland and Vologda gubernias. The value of the
output of butter and cheese in the last-mentioned gubernia was estimated
at 35,000 rubles according to statistics for 1890, to 108,000 rubles
according to the Governor’s report, and to 500 , 000 rubles according to local returns for 1894, which gave a total of
389 factories . “That is what the statistics say. Actually,
however, there are far more factories, since, according to investigations
by the Vologda Zemstvo Board, there are 224 factories in Vologda Uyezd
alone.” Production is developed in three uyezds, and has partly
penetrated a fourth. [4]

One can judge from this how many times the above quoted figures need to be multiplied in order to approach the real
situation. The plain view of an expert that at the present time the number
of butter and cheese-making establishments “amounts to several
thousand” ( Agriculture and Forestry in Russia , 299), gives
a truer picture of the facts than the allegedly exact figure of 265.

Thus the data leave not the slightest doubt about the enormous development
of this special type of commercial farming. The growth of capitalism was
accompanied here too by the transformation of routine technique. “In
the sphere of cheese making,” we read, for example, in
Agriculture and Forestry , “more has been done in Russia
during the last 25 years than perhaps in any other country”
(301). Mr. Blazhin says the same thing in his article “Technical
Progress in Dairy Farming” ( Productive Forces , III, 38-45). The principal change is that the “age-old” method of
leaving cream to settle has been replaced by the system of separating cream in centrifugal machines (separators). [5]

The machine has enabled the work to be carried on irrespective of atmospheric temperature,
increased the butter yield from milk by 10%, improved the quality of the
product, reduced the cost of butter production (the machine requires less
labour, space, and ice, as well as fewer utensils), and has led to the
concentration of production. Large peasant butteries have grown up,
handling “as much as 500 poods of milk a day, which was physically
impossible . . . when the milk was left to settle” ( ibid .). Improvements are being made in the instruments of
production (permanent boilers, screw presses, improved cellars), and
production is being assisted by bacteriology, which is providing pure
cultures of the type of lactic-acid bacilli needed for fermenting cream.

Thus, in the two areas of commercial farming we have described, the
technical improvements called into being by the requirements of the market
were effected primarily in those operations that were easiest to change
and are particularly important for the market: reaping, threshing and
winnowing in commercial grain farming, and the technical processing of
animal produce in the area of commercial stock farming. As to the keeping
of cattle, capital finds it more profitable for the time being to leave
that to the small producer: let him “diligently” and “industriously” tend “his” cattle (and charm
Mr. V. V. with his diligence—see Progressive Trends ,
p. 73), let him bear the brunt of the hardest and roughest work of tending
the milk-yielding machine. Capital possesses the latest improvements and
methods not only of separating the cream from the milk, but also of
separating the “cream” from this “diligence”, of separating the milk from the children of the peasant poor.

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Notes:
[1]
In other parts of Russia stock farming is of a different kind. For
example, in the extreme South and South-East, the most extensive form of
stock farming has become established, namely, cattle-fattening for
beef. Further north, horned cattle are used as draught animals. Lastly, in
the central black-earth belt cattle are used as “manure-making
machines.” V. Kovalevsky and I. Levitsky, Statistical Sketch of Dairy Farming in the Northern and Central Belts of European Russia
(St. Petersburg, 1879). The authors of this work, like the majority of
agricultural experts, display very little interest in the social-economic
aspect of the matter or understanding of this aspect It is quite wrong,
for example, to draw from the fact of farms becoming more profitable the
direct conclusion that they ensure “the people’s well-being
and nutriment” (p. 2).— Lenin

[2]
W. Roscher, Economics of Agriculture , 7th edition, Stuttgart
1873, pp. 563-564.— Lenin

[3]
Data from Military Statistical Abstract and Mr. Orlov’s
Directory (1st and 3rd eds.). Concerning these sources, see
Chapter VII. Let us merely observe that the figures quoted minimise the
actual rapidity of development, since the term “factory” or
“works” was employed in a narrower sense in 1879 than in 1866;
and in 1890 in a still narrower sense than in 1879. The 3rd ed of the
Directory contains information on the date of establishment of
230 factories; it appears that only 26 were established before 1870, 68 in
the 70s, 122 in the 80s and 14 in 1890. This speaks of a rapid increase in
production. As for the latest List of Factories and Works
(St. Petersburg, 1897), utter chaos reigns there: cheese making is
registered for two or three gubernias and for the rest omitted altogether.— Lenin

[4]
Nedelya [ Week ], 1896, No. 13. Dairy farming is so profitable that urban traders have rushed into the business and,
incidentally, have introduced such methods as the settlement of accounts
in goods. One local landowner, who has a large factory, organised an artel
“with prompt cash payment for milk” in order to release the
peasants from bondage to buyers-up and to “capture new markets.” A characteristic example, showing the real significance of
artels and of the celebrated “organisation of sales,” namely,
“emancipation” from merchant’s capital through the development of industrial capital.— Lenin

[5]
Until 1882 there were hardly any separators in Russia. From 1886 onward
they spread so rapidly as to displace the old method utterly. In the 1890s
even butter-extractor separators appeared.— Lenin