Vladimir Lenin wrote the book while confined to the village of Shushenskoye during 1897. He was sent to this remote Siberian settlement by authorities after his arrest for involvement with the Union of Struggle for the Working Class Liberation.
The book appeared in March 1899 under the name Vladimir Ilyin. This pseudonym protected Lenin from immediate government censorship and allowed publishers to print two thousand four hundred copies for the first edition.
Lenin argued that rural communes served no basis for communism because capitalism had already destroyed them. Statistics showed feudalism dying rapidly throughout the countryside as farmers grew cash crops instead of relying on subsistence agriculture alone.
More than five hundred distinct works informed his arguments about the Russian economy over three years. He examined hundreds of sources including monographs and statistical reference books while writing the text.
Paul Le Blanc noted this text solidified Lenin's standing in 2008 as a key thinker. Christopher Read described its impact on understanding Russian history in 2005.