ABSTRACT
The development of capitalism in the countryside gives no basis for panic because large-scale industry in the hands of the proletariat is now [1926] growing more quickly than rural capitalism, and at the same time the dependence of all agriculture, including its capitalist part, on state large-scale industry, transport, wholesale trade and credit is growing. The development of capitalism in the countryside is taking place at the same time as the fall in the share of agricultural capital in the general production of the country. The development of rural capitalism is not a serious threat, but neither does it provide grounds for complacency. The way to avoid both complacency and panic is to study the countryside, groping around for those specific forms of approach (methods of study) which correspond to the specific peculiarities of the process of class stratification of the peasantry in the Soviet countryside - only after such work has been done will it be possible actually to study the process itself. Otherwise one would just be piling up useless data. For this reason I have concentrated in this work on the elaboration of data which does not cover the majority of regions, but is detailed. One must draw a distinction between the 'dynamics' and 'statics'1 of 'class stratification'.2 To say that a farm 'is becoming' capitalist is not to say how far that process of 'becoming' has gone. The process of class stratification in the Soviet countryside is only beginning and it is hoped that this work will help to clarify the question. In brief, then, the concentration upon detailed studies in this work is to help develop methods of research. This requires both a discussion of the historically specific context of the stratification and a critique of the 'banal' approach to these issues, to be found in much of our statistical literature.
