V. I. Lenin

Novoye Vremya , a newspaper of the Black-Hundred landowners, reports some interesting discussions among landowners in Poland
and in the frontier areas of Russia in general over the migration of
agricultural workers to Germany and other European countries in search of
employment.

This migration has been rapidly growing. In 1901, some 218,000 persons
a year were estimated to have migrated. In 1911, the figure was set at
740,000, more than three times the 1901 figure. In 1912, as many as 800,000
must have left.

Let us note that apart from Polish peasants and workers, Russian
workers from the centre of Russia have been also leaving for Germany. “Now
one very often meets men from Tula, Orel and Ryazan on the border and
beyond.” The issue of free ten-month foreign passports for
workers going to do agricultural work has intensified this movement.

What is the cause? It is that the Russian peasants are being
increasingly ruined and it is ever harder to earn a living in Russia,
because of the general stagnation of economic life, which is depressed by
the serf-owners and lawlessness. Wages in Russia are being kept down at the
low serf level.

In Russia, the annual agricultural wage averages 62 rubles; add to this
46 rubles’ worth of food a year and you get wages totalling 108 rubles a
year. In Germany, however, wages average 180 rubles a year, i.e.,
just under twice as much!! (In Britain, let us note in parenthesis, agricultural labourer’s wages come to 300 rubles a year, and
in America, to 500 rubles.)

It is natural, therefore, that hundreds of thousands of
workers are fleeing from lawless, starving and impoverished Russia to find
employment in Germany, and even beyond it—in Denmark, Switzerland and
France. There the workers find out about a higher level of culture, much
better cultivation of the soil, incomparably higher crop yields and, what
is most important, political freedom, freedom for the labour press and
labour organisations.

And so, we find the landowning gentlemen debating between themselves:
some say that the landowner will benefit from this massive training of our
workers in better methods of agriculture. Others wax indignant over the
fact that the migration of workers tends to raise wages in the places which
they leave.

In Russia, generally speaking—and in Russian legislation in
particular—the opinion of the latter prevails, and they would
like to see the peasants “settled” (i.e., tied to the land), submissive
(without any prospect of moving), downtrodden and barbaric (to prevent them from seeing how to improve their living
conditions and how much better off workers in other countries are).

Fortunately, these landowning serf-masters, however hard they may try
to break and distort Russian life, no longer have the power to stem the
tide of world-wide capitalism, which is uprooting the Russian muzhik as
well from his godforsaken hole.

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