Written: Written in the spring of 1893
Published:
First published in 1923.
Published according to the manuscript.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
...,
Moscow,
Volume 1,
pages 11-74.
Translated: ... ...
Transcription\Markup:
D. Walters
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
(2001).
You may freely copy, distribute,
display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
Archive” as your source.
[1] 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 naä#228;iumlve 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.
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