New Economic Developments in Peasant Life

by Vladimir Lenin

The article New Economic Developments in Peasant Life. (On V. Y. Postnikov’s Peasant Farming In South Russia) is the earliest of V. I. Lenin’s works that has been preserved. It was written in Samara in the spring of 1893, and the manuscript was read in circles attended by young Marxists of that town. Lenin intended to have it printed in the liberal magazine Russkaya Mysl (Russian Thought), published in Moscow, but it was rejected by the editorial board “as unsuited to the policy of the magazine.” In a letter dated May 30, 1894, Lenin said the following: “I was even naïve enough to send it to Russkaya Mysl, but of course they turned it down. The thing became quite clear to me when I read in No. 2 of that magazine an article about Postnikov by ‘our well-known’ liberal vulgarian, Mr. V. V. One must surely be an artist to be able to completely distort magnificent material and to obscure all the facts with phrase-mongering!”

The Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the C.C. C.P.S.U. possesses two manuscript copies of the article New Economic Developments in Peasant Life. The first (rough) copy was found among Lenin’s personal papers; the second, which contains some additions made by Lenin when it was finally copied, was handed by him to S. I. Mickiewicz, from whom it was confiscated during a search on December 3, 1894. The manuscript was discovered in 1923 in the records of the Moscow Law Court, and was then published for the first time in the miscellany The Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the First Party Congress (1898-1923). In the present edition the article New Economic Developments in Peasant Life is printed according to the text of the second manuscript, as corrected by V. I. Lenin.

The Institute of Marxism-Leninism also possesses a copy of V. Y. Postnikov’s book Peasant Farming in South Russia bearing Lenin’s comments.

Lenin used the most important material of this article in the second chapter of his The Development of Capitalism in Russia written in 1896-1899 and published in March 1899.

70 pages

First published January 1, 1923

About the author

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, leader of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks), statesman and political theorist. After the October Revolution he served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until his death in 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1924.

Reviews

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Idk anything about farming but lenin made points. Postnikov shouldve realized that fr

[Jonathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know it's a controversial view even amongst the far left but I think Lenin was pretty great and contributed a lot to Marxism theoretically. Whilst the bureaucracy under the his leadership did grow and this would be exacerbated enormously under Stalin's rule to try and link Lenin to the counter-revolutionary Stalin can only be done in a very superficial manner which ignores the material conditions Lenin dealt with under his rule, which while not excusing some of his more questionable decisions, does give them context.

Having said that this essay opening volume one of his collected works is pretty rubbish. While I'm sure it was of interest of the time it has little interest to the modern world, being about the Russian peasantry of the late 19th century and being bogged down in statistical data. What I did enjoy about it is that it showed even this early Lenin had a pretty good grasp of dialectics, although full of statistics like I said he doesn't confine himself to those statistics and doesn't treat the peasantry statically, he places them in the context of the times in which he's writing and makes his observations based on that. Unfortunately his observations aren't very interesting.

Well obviously for me they're not interesting, I'm sure for someone more interested in the history of that period in Russia they'd have a very different view of it than me, but I'm primarily interested in Lenin for his revolutionary theory and as I hope I've made clear this really is more of a historical artefact than anything else. If theory is a weapon then this essay is a butter knife.

I would recommend it to people with an interest in Russian history and people who think reading everything Lenin ever wrote down to drawings he done as a child is necessary to understand the man and his theory.

[Matvey xd · Rating 5 out of 5]

:thumbsup:

[ben.wmv · Rating 4 out of 5]

What's going on in the late nineteenth-century obshchina? Read on to find out.

[Claire Binkley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I noted while reading this why V.I. Lenin is so scary.

I like this book since it smells so nice, which is somewhat shallow, but the best I can say about the dreadful Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

I thought while reflecting on the economic development of peasant life that peasants don't have money, so they automatically don't have capital. The economy of peasants is different, in terms of labour and energy expense.