V. I. Lenin - Collected works, volume 1 (1893–1894)

NEW ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS
IN PEASANT LIFE

V. Y. Postnikovs Peasant Farming in South Russia (Moscow, 1891, pp. XXXII+391), which appeared two years ago, is an extremely detailed and thorough description of peasant farming in the Taurida, Kherson and Yekaterinoslav gubernias, and partly for the special purpose of studying peasant farming in 1887-1890.

An attempt to combine into one whole the Zemstvo statistical investigations for an entire region and to set forth the results in systematic form is in itself of tremendous interest, since the Zemstvo statistics provide a mass of detailed material on the economic conditions of the peasantry, but they do so in a form that renders these investigations practically useless to the public: the Zemstvo statistical abstracts comprise whole volumes of tables (a separate volume is usually devoted to each uyezd), the mere summarising of which under sufficiently definite and comprehensive headings is a labour in itself. The need to summarise and analyse Zemstvo statistical data has long been felt. It is for this purpose that the publication of the Results of Zemstvo Statistical Investigations was recently undertaken. The plan of this publication is as follows: a particular question related to peasant farming is taken, and a special investigation is carried out, bringing together all the data on this question contained in the Zemstvo statistics; data are brought together relating to the black-earth South of Russia and to the non-black-earth North, to the exclusively agricultural gubernias and to the gubernias where there are handicraft industries. The two published volumes of Results have been compiled according to this plan; the first is devoted to the peasant community (V. V.), the second to peasant rentings of non-allotment land (N. Karyshev). It is quite reasonable to doubt the correctness of this method of summarising: firstly, data relating to different economic regions with different economic conditions have to be placed under one heading (the separate characterisation of each region involves tremendous difficulties due to the incompleteness of the Zemstvo investigations and the omission of many uyezds. These difficulties were already evident in the second volume of Results; Karyshevs attempt to assign the data contained in the Zemstvo statistics to definite regions was unsuccessful); secondly, it is quite impossible to give a separate description of one aspect of peasant farming without touching on others; the particular question has to be artificially abstracted, and the completeness of the picture is lost. Peasant rentings of non-allotment land are divorced from the renting of allotment land, from general data on the economic classification of the peasants and the size of the crop area; they are regarded only as part of peasant farming, whereas actually they are often a special method of private-landowner farming. That is why a summary of Zemstvo statistical data for a given region where the economic conditions are uniform would, I think, be preferable.

While expressing, in passing, my views on a more correct way of summarising Zemstvo statistical investigations, views to which I am led by comparing the