The Development of Capitalism in Russia

The Development of Capitalism in Russia was an early economic work by Lenin written whilst he was in exile in Siberia. It was published in 1899 under the pseudonym of "Vladimir Ilyin It established his reputation as a major Marxist theorist. In it Lenin attacked the Populist claim that Russia could avoid the stage of capitalism, and that the rural commune could serve as the basis for communism. Instead Lenin argued that the rural communes had already been wiped out by capitalism and statistics showed the degree to which feudalism was already dying in Russia. Lenin noted the growth of a national market for goods in Russia replacing local markets, the tendency to grow cash crops rather than rely on subsistence agriculture and a growth of individual rather than communal property ownership. Lenin also noted the growth of class division amongst the peasants with a growing division between a landholding rural bourgeoise and a mostly landless rural proletariat recruited from a diminishing middle peasantry. Lenin saw a community of interest between rural and urban proletariat and the possibility of a worker peasant alliance against the representatives of capital.