Worker in the Russian Empire: Truth and Fiction. The position of the working class before and after the revolution
factory committees
IN last years it has become common to portray the October Revolution as a cruel and criminal experiment forced upon the peoples of Russia by a bunch of power-hungry fanatics inspired by the false theories of Karl Marx. This has become the new "official point of view" on October, which is propagated by the newly minted "democratic" ideologists. This view has found considerable acceptance among a people disillusioned with the bitter fruits of 70 years of Communist rule, a people instinctively rejecting the revolution to which this regime claims to originate.
In fact, both the old and the new official versions of October are mirror images of each other: what was exalted in one was vilified in the other. But both agree on one thing: the Party, and especially its leadership, was everything, and ordinary workers either consciously supported it or blindly obeyed it, it all depended on which version it was.
One of the purposes of this essay was to shed light on the character October revolution, dwelling on the processes that took place at the enterprises and on the role played by the workers in them. I have tried to show on the basis of historical facts that the movement for workers' control in 1917 was first and foremost a concrete response of the workers to a severe political and economic crisis. Careful analysis of workers' actions helps explain why the workers, who overthrew the tsar in February 1917 in what they considered a bourgeois-democratic revolution, decided over the next few months that it was necessary to limit the economic power of private owners and their factory administration (the need to limit their political power was obvious from the very beginning for all workers) and, finally, to take away this power completely.
David Mandel is a professor at the University of Montreal, Quebec (Canada).
factory committees and the struggle for workers' control they waged originated and developed "from below" as a response to the threat of mass unemployment and counter-revolution. No other aspect of the revolution shows so convincingly the role played in it by the independent creativity and initiative of the rank and file workers.
Another purpose of this essay is to make available to labor activists the rich historical experience of the Russian labor movement, which has not lost its relevance to this day. The movement for workers' control in the factories was an attempt by the workers to prevent economic collapse, maintain production, keep their jobs and democratic revolution. And although three-quarters of a century separates us from those events, the similarity of the problems faced by today's workers is striking.
One of these common questions for both periods is the question of property. In 1917, the Russian economy was based on private property. Property is primarily the right to dispose of enterprises and other resources. But the workers were convinced that the owners were unwilling or unable to continue production, and therefore they wanted to bring the factory management under their workers' control. This eventually led the workers to question the whole system of private property and finally demanded the nationalization of their enterprises in order to save them.
This is, of course, the opposite of what happened in recent years in the countries of the former Soviet Union, where the official policy of the state was aimed at the speedy privatization of enterprises, as a way out of the economic crisis.
It is becoming increasingly clear that mass unemployment and economic and political catastrophe await the workers, unless a government dedicated to their interests plays an active, organizing role in the economy. It is important to note that in 1917 the most ardent supporters of the transfer of power to the soviets, i.e. states to the working masses, were activists in the movement for workers' control.
Their practical experience led them to two related conclusions. The first was that the workers' efforts to save their businesses could not be successful if they limited themselves to individual businesses. Workers in isolated factories did not have enough power to force management to submit to their control. And moreover, they did not have enough material and especially financial resources for the factories to work. In order for workers' control in enterprises to be effective, it had to be supported and combined with state regulation.
This led the workers directly to the second conclusion: the goal of keeping the factories and the wages of the workers cannot be achieved under a government hostile to the interests of the working people.
Another question that arises when examining the experience of 1917 is that of the relationship between trade unions and factory committees, organs of workers' control. As is often the case today, unions, especially their top management, tend to be hostile to the idea of workers' self-government and workers' interference in management. In 1917, they accused the factory committees of wanting to oust the trade unions, to take over functions that were not characteristic of the workers. But the workers who pushed the factory committees to intervene in management knew that they could not protect themselves in the face of an economic collapse with the traditional methods of union struggle - strikes, pressure for higher wages, etc. - methods of struggle, which nevertheless left the adoption of major decisions to the discretion of the authorities.
Trade union leaders also accused the factory committees of complicity with the administration. This was a serious matter, since the Provisional Government and the owners were really trying to shift the responsibility for the layoffs of workers and the closing of factories to the factory committees and thus direct the wrath of the workers at them. In fact, the factory committees were ready to cooperate with the administration in order to keep their enterprises, but they wanted to be sure of the goodwill of the administration. They did not want the authorities to use them as a front for their own purposes directed against the workers. Therefore, they demanded access to all information and documents, that is, workers' control. Factory committees have always understood that it is necessary to be independent of the administration, even when they cooperate with it.
In the vast majority of cases, however, the administration itself was unwilling to cooperate with the working committees. This, in the end, led to the fact that the factory committees took over the management of the factories, and the workers turned to the state with a request to nationalize their factories.
These are just a few aspects of the labor movement in 1917 that may be of interest to workers today.
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An expanded version of this essay was successfully defended by me as a doctoral dissertation at Columbia University in New York, one of America's most distinguished academic institutions. Then this work was published by Macmillan Press, the largest English-language publishing house.
Of course, it is impossible to write about important and controversial historical events without having a certain point of view on them. I have been actively involved in the Canadian labor and socialist movement for many years and I have not tried in this work to hide my sympathy for the workers of Petrograd and their struggle.
I. INTRODUCTION
One of the most characteristic features the labor movement of 1917 in Petrograd was the lack of a clear idea among the workers about the socio-economic content of the unfolding revolution.
This was typical not only for ordinary workers, but also for the leaders of the labor movement. On this occasion, at the First All-Russian Conference of Factory Committees, only a week before the uprising, the Menshevik Linkov, a delegate from Tver, complained: social or not. We always put this basic question before the Bolsheviks, but they do not give a reasonable answer.
For him, a moderate socialist, the answer was clear: "We say that our revolution is not social, but political with a social leaven, so to speak, it raises social questions of great importance." And for the anarchist Zhuk, a delegate from the Shlisselburg gunpowder factory, the question was just as clear: "We are experiencing a social revolution." On the other hand, the Bolshevik N. Skrypnik, a member of the Central Council of Factory Committees, was less unequivocal: “Workers' control is not yet socialism. This is just one of the transitional measures that bring us closer to socialism.” one
“What exactly did the Bolsheviks want to do with the state? What program to implement? I repeat that the Bolsheviks had neither such plans nor ideas… Only the materials for the program were available.” So wrote the left Menshevik, publicist and chronicler of the revolution N. Sukhanov. “Socialism is, as you know, an economic problem par excellence. But it was precisely here that neither Lenin nor Trotsky developed an economic program. And what they had, Sukhanov continued, “did not go beyond the familiar economic program of the [moderate, Menshevik-SR] Executive Committee [of the Petrograd Soviet] of May 16 ... For [textile magnate, Minister of Industry in the Provisional Government] Konovalov it was equal to socialism. But in essence it was still far from socialism. True, Sukhanov admitted, control “was the central point at all workers' meetings. But this "socialism" was very shy and modest. He went in a different direction, but still no further than the right-wing Menshevik Groman with his “regulation” and “organization of the national economy and labor.”2
An extraordinary congress of the Bolshevik Party was scheduled for October 17-18 precisely in order to finally adopt such a program. But the planned congress never took place.
But if ideas about social character the revolutions were still vague, the very actions of the workers, on the contrary, were as unambiguous as possible. At many enterprises, the factory committees have long been taking independent initiatives, invading the sphere of management in spite of the resistance of the administration. The demand for control was put forward "from below" after the February Revolution, at a time when it did not yet appear in the program of any of the socialist parties, including the Bolsheviks, although the workers-activists of this party from the very beginning played a prominent role in the factory committees. After the October uprising, the factory committees, again under strong pressure from below, insisted on the widest possible freedom of their actions in relation to the factory administration. And at the end of January 1918, at the Sixth Petrograd Conference of Factory Committees, delegates from factories already demanded that the Soviet government prepare for the nationalization of their enterprises. By June of this year, the Decree on Nationalization was issued.
Already in the first months after February, the workers began to feel the danger of an economic collapse, and after it - the defeat of the revolution. The realization of the need for strong state regulation to prevent this collapse played a decisive role in the support that the workers gave the Bolsheviks in the second, October Revolution. It was thanks to the demand for economic regulation that the revolution of 1917 left its original bourgeois-democratic framework and more and more rushed towards those “socialist experiments” that the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries (SRs) so feared.
II. FEBRUARY REVOLUTION AT THE FACTORIES.
In addition to political demands—the establishment of a democratic republic, the speedy conclusion of a general peace without annexations, the distribution of land to the peasants without redemption—in February, the workers of St. Petersburg put forward a whole series of economic demands, which, in their understanding, were an integral part of the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. These demands included the establishment of an eight-hour day, a salary "befitting a free citizen" and a "constitutional regime" in enterprises.
but. Eight hour work day.
Already during the Revolution of 1905, the eight-hour working day was the central demand of the labor movement, one of the so-called "three pillars" of social democracy. It is curious that both the workers and the entrepreneurs and the tsarist government considered this demand as a purely political one. “We, the workers, have received an eight-hour working day and other freedoms,” said a delegate at a conference of factories of the Main Artillery Department on March 24, 1917. 3
That is why the workers resolutely refused to obey the call of the Petrograd Soviet to end on March 7 the general strike that overthrew the autocracy without establishing an eight-hour working day in their factories. “When I conveyed this resolution to the workers,” explained the deputy of the Petrograd Soviet, “I felt in my heart that it was impossible for us to do this: the worker cannot obtain freedom and not use it to lighten the yoke of labor, to fight capital.”4
According to the information of the Petrograd Society of Manufacturers and Factory Owners dated March 7, out of 111 factories about which there was information, only 28 were working, and in most of them the workers "on a whim", that is, on their own initiative and without the permission of their superiors, had already introduced an eight-hour working day. .five
b. "Salary,befitting a free citizen"
Thus, the general strike that developed into the February Revolution was both a political strike against autocratic power and an economic strike against capital.
For workers, decent wages, like an eight-hour day, were an integral part of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. “The conditions of predatory exploitation that existed under the feudal system of Russia cannot exist in the new Russia,” the Narva District Council proclaimed on March 6. 6
The establishment of a minimum wage by law was an urgent demand of the delegates of the March 20 session of the Petrograd Soviet. The session discussed the material situation of the workers. The delegate from the Putilov shipyard summed up the discussion:
“Now it is the duty of the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies to enter into our position and review all our rates, rework them and create a tolerable existence for us, and not be surprised that we make such demands. And so we want the commission that will be elected here to examine the situation and enter into negotiations with the administration, which, along with the employers, under the banner of patriotism, undressed the workers, since they all thought that the worker was created only to drink from him. drop by drop blood and squeeze out all the juices, and then, like an unnecessary thing, throw it overboard. Now, comrades, it is not so: when the workers have woken up from their labor sleep, they are demanding fair pay and making fair demands, while the employers are shouting: “Sentry, we are being robbed!” Comrades, you probably do not share their horror, you enter into the position of all the workers, and you will probably say to them: “No, you bent the workers, you robbed them, and henceforth you must pay them as much as their labor costs". 7
in. "Constitutional regime" in factories.
Another requirement was the establishment of a "constitutional regime" in the factories. It was a response to the arbitrariness and despotism inherent in the pre-revolutionary factory administration, as well as to its close cooperation with the tsarist Okhrana. (The Directorate regularly denounced the activists to the police, fired them at the behest of the latter, and responded to political strikes with lockouts. In turn, the political authorities sent troops—the Cossacks were especially noted for their “valor”—to suppress the economic strike. 8). The workers viewed this factory regime not only as a severe form of economic exploitation and political oppression, but also as an insult to their human dignity.
Therefore, upon returning to the factories after the February Revolution, the workers immediately began to purge the administration of elements they hated. At first, it took the traditional form: the workers put the guilty on wheelbarrows, put bags on their heads, and took them out of the factory gates in disgrace. As the passions subsided, the process took on a more organized and peaceful character.
In explaining these layoffs, the workers put forward basically three types of excuses:
1. The boss was an instrument of autocracy. He regularly reported to the Okhrana about "violators of the order" and threatened "undesirables" with political repression.
2. The boss was a despot who trampled on the dignity of the workers and brought exploitation to unbearable proportions.
Follow us on telegram“Master Volkov,” the workers of the paint shop of the Baltic Plant said, “is the main culprit of our oppression and humiliation experienced in recent years ... Since 1909, he began his shameful program - he brought down prices to the impossible - 8-9 kopecks. - regardless of working conditions ... We all experienced this horror at all times until the last days of arbitrariness. nine
It is worth noting here that during the rise of the labor movement in 1912-1914. in Petrograd there were many strikes demanding "polite treatment" of the workers by the authorities. The Tsarist Minister of Trade and Industry at one time defined this requirement as "political". 10
3. The boss did not correspond to his position.
If the first two reasons were not new, this one pointed to an important, though not yet fully mature, shift in the minds of the workers after February Revolution. The democratic upheaval awakened among the workers a sense of concern and responsibility for the well-being of enterprises.
The workers of the First Power Plant decided to dismiss the entire administration of the enterprise, explaining that it all consisted of followers of the old regime, people "harmful from an economic point of view and useless from a technical point of view." At the Baltiysky Zavod, the foreman was dismissed by the workers as "a person with little knowledge of the technical understanding of his business", and who, in addition, spent no more than 2-3 hours a day at the plant. He answered any request of the workers with threats to send them to prison or to the front”, “introduced spies among the workers and vigilantly watched among his middlemen so that there was no organization other than the monarchist”. eleven
The emergence of factory committees
Another key aspect of the "constitutional regime" was the factory committees. One of their main tasks was to represent the working collective in negotiations with the administration and in relations with external organizations. As early as 1903, the tsarist state granted the workers a formal right to collective representation through elected councils of elders. But in practice, the law severely limited this right. In addition, due to the resistance of the owners to any form of independent working organization and thanks to the state support of the owners, the workers were rarely able to use this law. Councils of elders in some places at enterprises existed only during periods when the balance of political forces allowed it, i.e. during the revolution of 1905 and during the period of a new upsurge in the labor movement of 1912-14.
Another long-standing aspiration, which the workers wanted to realize with the help of factory committees, was the establishment of "factory self-government" or "the right to be in charge of the internal order of the factory."
It is important, however, to note that during this period the workers did not yet question the basic right of the administration of private enterprises to manage production. The demand for workers' control has not yet been voiced in private enterprises.
The situation in state factories.
At state factories, however, the situation was different. Here, immediately after the revolution, the workers partly or completely assumed full responsibility for the management of production or decided to participate in management along with those old managerial cadres who had not run away or were not expelled during the revolution. (The administration of state factories in most cases consisted of officers, i.e. employees of the old regime in the truest sense of the word.)
At state-owned enterprises after the February Revolution, the workers believed that since the democratic revolution had taken place, the state-owned factories, as part of the state, belonged to the people. It seemed quite natural to them that the workers of these factories should at least participate in the management. This opinion was shared by the railroad, and workers of the post and telegraph.
However, less than a month later, the workers of the state factories had already refused to participate in management and rejected any responsibility for production, insisting only on the right of "control", i.e. administration oversight. Thus, the instruction on factory committees, adopted at the Conference of Workers of State Enterprises in Petrograd on April 15, gave the committees extensive control rights, including full access to information and documents, as well as the right to dismiss "administrators who cannot guarantee normal relations with the workers." But the conclusion of the document said:
“Unwilling to take responsibility for the technical and administrative-economic organization of production in these conditions until the moment of complete socialization of the public economy, representatives of the general factory committee enter the plant management only with an advisory vote.” 12
Why did the workers of state factories change their position? At a general meeting of the workers of the Admiralty Plant in March, the chairman of the factory committee spoke of “difficulties associated with managing the affairs of the factory committee due to the complexity and uncertainty, as well as the fact that this business is completely new. Under those confused conditions that arose with the formation of the committee, and with the difficulties of adapting the institution to manage and control, the committee was placed in an ambivalent position, because by giving orders to the relevant plant management bodies, it would thereby limit itself in wide control and hamper the initiative of the head of the plant, and it would also violate the harmony and regularity of execution. Practice and common sense suggested that it was necessary to transfer management functions to the head of the plant, and thus unite all personnel into one integral organization. The committee reserves the full right to control all actions, both of the chief and of individuals and institutions of the plant management, up to and including their removal through the conciliation chamber, as well as the initiative of reorganization and reduction of staff. 13
The social tasks of the revolution in the understanding of the workers
The different attitudes toward the Revolution in state and private enterprises largely reveal the workers' initial understanding of the task of the revolution in the field of economics. In state-owned enterprises, workers first assumed responsibility for management, reasoning that since the state is democratized, the management of state-owned enterprises must also be democratized. But they soon abandoned this position in view of the complexity of the task, for which they did not feel sufficiently prepared, especially in the conditions of the economic devastation caused by the war. At the same time, they came to the conclusion that the workers' management at state-owned enterprises should wait for the socialization of the economy as a whole, and before that, in March 1917, it seemed that it was still very far away.
For the same reason, workers in private enterprises did not even put forward demands for workers' control. They did not consider such an intrusion into the sphere of activity of private administration as one of the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution.
At first glance, the February Revolution changed little in the minds of the workers: almost all the measures they introduced after February were demands of the pre-revolutionary labor movement. Many of these demands arose for the first time during the Revolution of 1905 and even earlier. But something did change, although at first it was little noticeable. A hint of these changes can be seen in the reference to "technical incompetence" as an excuse for workers to fire their boss after the February Revolution. Another hint was the inclusion of the protection of the plant in the sphere of competence of the factory committees. In a word, after February the workers began to show an active concern for the well-being of their factory, and the source of this concern was their desire to protect the revolution, which they considered their own.
This concern was also manifested in the increase in labor productivity. 14 A major industrialist and leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party, N.N. Kutler, noted a certain "enthusiasm for work" among the workers at that time. 15 The director of the Shlisselburg gunpowder factory informed the Minister of Trade and Industry in mid-April that:
"The workers, in all conscience, take into account the existing situation and, as far as possible, protect the plant from any incidents that may in any way damage it, and cooperate vigorously to increase the production of gunpowder and explosive materials." 16
Russia was at the time at war, and although the workers demanded a speedy end to the war, whose official aims they considered criminal, they were preoccupied with the threat posed to the revolution by the German troops. But they were equally concerned about potential internal enemies of the revolution. In March, the Minister of Industry and Trade noted that the capital's workers "suspect the administration of delaying the production of defense products." 17
These suspicions must be seen against the backdrop of a campaign launched by the bourgeois press since mid-March, in which the workers were accused of laziness and greed because they achieved the introduction of an eight-hour day and higher wages while poorly equipped soldiers were sitting in the trenches. Obviously, the purpose of the campaign was to set the soldiers against the workers and to split the unity of the ranks of the working classes, thanks to which the Feral Revolution won.
It should be remembered that before the revolution, the lockout was a favorite technique of the industrialists against both economic and political strikes. Before the February Revolution, in response to a lockout, the workers could only either continue the strike or declare a new one. It seemed impossible to them, probably it did not even occur to them to establish control over the administration in order to prevent a lockout or to open an already closed plant on their own. The balance of forces did not allow this, since the plant management enjoyed the support of the repressive apparatus of the Tsarist state.
But the February Revolution dramatically changed the balance of power in favor of the workers - the tsarist police was disbanded, the new militia was no longer at the disposal of the propertied classes, and the soldiers obeyed exclusively the councils of workers' and soldiers' deputies. In addition, the workers had a sense of responsibility for the fate of the revolution, and they did not forget the past cooperation of industrialists with the tsarist authorities in the fight against the labor movement, so they were no longer going to sit idly by if they saw a threat to the enterprise from the factory management.
“We are receiving statements that although there is work in some workshops, it is not known for what reasons this work is not being used. They say: their turn did not come - and the workshops are standing. We had a meeting of elders, and we came to the conclusion that a commission of three people had been chosen to investigate whether there were any abuses on the part of the administration in favor of the old regime or the Germans, and if it turned out that the work could be set in motion, then immediately demand from the administration that it be launched. Maybe the administration will not obey, it is desirable that this come from the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, so that such a commission for the factories of all Petrograd is immediately assembled, as was previously from the Central Military-Industrial Committee. It is true that this commission was bourgeois and only a small group of workers entered it, but it is desirable that such a commission should now be set up in the form of control and conduct an audit of all factories to make sure that there is no abuse on the part of the administration in delaying work. Are the administration's claims that they have no metal, no coal, no oil correct? eighteen
However, in the first weeks of the revolution, cases of the introduction of workers' control in private enterprises were quite rare and had only one purpose: to prevent the suspicious export of goods and materials from the territory of the enterprise. Since production as a whole was expanding, and the national economy seemed to be gradually emerging from the crisis inherited from the old regime. Nevertheless, the new active attitude of the workers to the problems of production contained the germ of a future broad movement for workers' control and, ultimately, new revolution. But this embryo could develop only in the presence of necessary conditions: threats to the existence of factories and the belief of workers that the owners are actually trying to curtail production, organize a hidden lockout, enlisting for this inactivity, negligence, or even active sabotage of the factory administration. By the end of April, these conditions were already in place.
III.MAY-JUNE: THE BIRTH OF THE MOVEMENT FOR WORKERS' CONTROL
The question of state regulation of the economy
By the end of April, the deterioration of the economic situation in the country had become one of the central issues of the revolution.
“Recently,” the Menshevik newspaper Novaya Zhizn wrote on May 10, “a decrease in production has been observed at a number of enterprises. This phenomenon has so far become apparent in small and medium-sized enterprises, but nevertheless it is beginning to fundamentally disturb the working masses. The Kadet newspaper Rech (May 13), reflecting the mood of the propertied classes, predicted even more pessimistically: "Two or three weeks will pass, and factories will begin to close one after another."
For the leaders of the labor movement, the conclusion was obvious: in order to prevent a catastrophe, it is necessary to immediately introduce state regulation of the national economy. Accordingly, on May 16, the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet adopted the plan worked out by its Economic Department under the leadership of the Menshevik leader Groman. The plan provided for the introduction of broad state regulation of production, distribution and finance.
In essence, this was not much different from what was already carried out by other participants in the world war. But on March 18, the industrialist A. Konovalov, Minister of Trade and Industry (he was considered a liberal among this generally reactionary class), resigned in protest against the plan of the Petrograd Soviet. He explained this by saying that the economic crisis could be prevented only if "the Provisional Government would at least take the path of restoring broken discipline and show energy in the fight against the exorbitant demands of the extreme left." 19
Russian industrialists categorically rejected any state intervention in the economy. Instead, they insisted on curbing the economic demands of the workers and removing the influence of their organizations, especially the soviets. The Moscow banker and industrialist P. Ryabushinsky explained why state intervention in the economy, although successfully applied in other countries, is not suitable for Russia:
“In Europe, the state, intervening in the area of state [economic] life, receives full control, to which we do not object. But we are afraid that such control is impossible in our country in terms of its usefulness and expediency for the state as a whole, as long as our government itself continues to be in a position under control.” twenty
But in the opinion of Ryabushinsky and his colleagues, the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies and other workers' organizations exerted too much influence on the government.
In councils, i.e. among the representatives of the workers and soldiers (the vast majority of the soldiers were from the peasantry), the opinion was just the opposite. There was complete unanimity (from the right-wing Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries to the Bolsheviks and anarchists) about the urgent need to limit the freedom of action of capital in order to prevent economic collapse and the coming counter-revolution. The Menshevik Rabochaya Gazeta, which consistently defended the government coalition of representatives of the soviets and the propertied classes, published an editorial on May 20 under the heading "Offensive?"
“There is a revival in the camp of industrialists. The short stupor that seized them in the first days of the revolution passed. Not a trace remained of the recent confusion and panicked compliance. If in the first month of freedom the united industrialists met the demands of the workers almost without resistance, now they have resolutely gone over to the defensive and hastily prepare for an offensive along the whole front...
In other cases, they reduce production, count workers under the pretext of a lack of metal, coal, lack of orders, competition from imports. Here we have another method of struggle - a hidden lockout ...
In the Labor Department of the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies one has to face daily facts confirming the presence of a definite plan among the industrialists.
Therefore, when at the congress of the Military-Industrial Committees the same Konovalov attacked the "excessive demands of the workers" and warned that "if there is no sobering of minds in the near future, we will witness the closure of tens and hundreds of enterprises," the workers did not perceive this as a forecast, but as a real threat. For them, this was the official announcement of an offensive against the revolution. This kind of statement was far from the only one. Similar opinions were then publicly expressed by many prominent bourgeois figures.
Workers' control at enterprises and state regulation in the national economy
Thanks to the resistance of the representatives of the propertied classes, the Provisional Government was still unable to make a decision on the issue of economic regulation. Moderate socialists, Mensheviks and SRs, the so-called "compromisers", continued to insist on the need for state regulation. But since the Provisional Government did nothing serious against the deepening economic crisis, the workers were forced to act on their own.
Zhivotov's statement shows that the workers reacted to the crisis on two parallel levels. On the practical level closest to them, they demanded the introduction of workers' control over the factory administration. This demand came entirely "from below", from ordinary workers in enterprises. As already mentioned, it was not in the program of any of the socialist parties. It first became the central demand of the labor movement at the end of April 1917. Only a month later it was officially put forward by the First Petrograd Conference of Factory Committees.
But the workers never considered that control at the level of the enterprise could replace the nationwide regulation of the national economy. Both were rather considered necessary, complementary measures. As the left-wing SR Levin stated, one of the organizers of the First Conference of Factory Committees:
“Everything that is in the power of the factory committees is done by them. But it will be an idealization if we imagine that the work of these committees at all factories proceeds very smoothly, fruitfully and in an organized manner. The fact is that the control exercised by the factory workers' organizations is for the most part extremely simple and primitive... Until the workers' organizations create a control apparatus which, together with the state power, takes control of the production and distribution of products, until then the factory committees will limit themselves to the protection of the given enterprise, protecting the tools of production from being sold in parts, malicious damage, etc. phenomena that are currently taking place. After all, it is no secret that the elimination of economic ruin is not only not in the interests of our domestic capitalists, but is even contrary to them ... new form Russian labor movement - factory committees ... but without the assistance of a truly revolutionary state power in organizing production, the committees will not be able to cope with such a large and complex situation. 21
Economic Crisis and Soviet Power
Thus, at the political level, the workers reacted to the economic crisis by demanding the transfer of state power to the soviets. Experience told them that state regulation of the economy would be put into practice only when the state was freed from the influence of the propertied classes, that is, only under a government consisting exclusively of representatives of the working classes, workers, peasants and soldiers. The concrete embodiment of this power was the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies.
It is no coincidence that for the first time the Workers' Section of the Petrograd Soviet adopted a resolution demanding the transfer of power from the coalition Provisional Government to the soviets on May 31 precisely in connection with the discussion about state regulation and the government plan for "unloading" Petrograd from industrial enterprises. Although the Provisional Government was never able to adopt any program to regulate the economy, it considered it possible to propose a plan for the transfer of the Petrograd factories to the provinces under the pretext that in times of crisis it would be more expedient to locate the factories closer to sources of fuel and raw materials. The workers, on the other hand, saw in the project the striving of the bourgeoisie to liberate the capital from its very militant elements and disperse them throughout the provinces. Due to strong opposition from the labor movement, the government was forced to abandon its plan.
At the end of May, the Workers' Section of the Petrograd Soviet met to discuss a plan for "unloading" the capital. The deputies listened to the explanations of the acting. Minister of Trade and Industry Palchinsky and representatives of the Executive Committee of the Soviet, headed by the Mensheviks and the Sr., and rejected the plan to "unload" the capital by 173 votes to 144 (despite the approval of it by the Executive Committee). Instead, they called for a fight against economic ruin and an end to war, the main cause of the economic crisis. (The Provisional Government, under pressure from members of the propertied classes, continued in practice to support the annexationist aims of the war along with the Allies, and refused to offer immediate democratic peace, as demanded by the Soviets.)
As a result of the discussion, the Working Section of the Council adopted a resolution stating that
"A real struggle against it [economic ruin] is possible only through the regulation and control of all production by state power in the hands of the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies." 22
A few days later, the First Petrograd Conference of Factory Committees adopted a similar resolution on "Economic Means of Combating Destruction", which spoke both of the need to take urgent measures to introduce economic regulation at the national level, and of the need to expand workers' control at enterprises. In conclusion, the resolution affirmed:
“The systematic and successful implementation of the above measures is possible only with the transfer state power into the hands of the Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. 23
This resolution, proposed by the Bolsheviks, received 297 votes, or more than two-thirds of the delegates. The Menshevik proposal received only 85 votes. It argued that workers' control was an anarchist demand because it rejected the central role of the state in regulating the economy. But the Mensheviks did not seem to notice that the resolution of the conference clearly connected the effective exercise of workers' control in the enterprises with the nationwide regulation of the national economy. For their part, the Mensheviks proposed only "state control", meaning by the state the Provisional Government. This proposal was unacceptable to the majority of the delegates, since the Provisional Government had been refusing for four months to take any significant measures to regulate the economy.
And the anarchists, on the contrary, proposed a resolution that dealt exclusively with control in enterprises without any mention of the state. But their resolution received only 45 votes.
Worker control is a measure to protect jobs and the revolution itself.
As a direct response to the economic crisis, workers' control had a purely defensive character. This was precisely its defining feature throughout 1917: it was aimed primarily at preventing the reduction of production and jobs and the complete shutdown of enterprises. Therefore, in private enterprises, the movement for workers' control did not begin immediately after the February Revolution, but only towards the end of April, when the threat of stopping factories became really tangible.
It is also worth noting that although workers' control soon became one of the central points of the Bolshevik program, it was only on May 10 that the Petrograd Committee of the Party formally called on the workers to establish control in the enterprises. In its appeal, the PC made no secret of the fact that it was reacting to the independent initiatives of the factory committees:
“In response to a number of statements from the factory committees about the need for control and its establishment, it was decided to recommend to the worker comrades to create control commissions at the enterprises from representatives of the workers.” 24
The history of the conflict at the Langezipen machine-building plant well illuminates the essence of workers' control and the circumstances that pushed the workers to introduce it during this period. At the end of April, the Senior Factory Inspector of the Petrograd province reported that "the workers of this plant suspect the administration of delaying the production of defense products." On April 27, the workers posted a guard at the door of the administration office and forbade the director to leave work until the end of the working day. Following this, a joint commission was created from representatives of the Petrograd Soviet, the Society of Manufacturers and Breeders, the Union of Engineers and the Central Military Industrial Committee to investigate the conflict.
But on June 2, the plant manager announced its impending closure, citing rising production costs and a two-thirds reduction in output. The reason for this, he argued, was the introduction of an eight-hour day, a 50% decline in labor productivity, and, finally, a shortage of raw materials and fuel. As a result, he concluded, the company suffered losses of ten million rubles on defense orders and was forced to close the plant due to lack of funds.
The factory workers appealed to the Central Council of Factory Committees, created at the end of May by the First Petrograd Conference of factory committees. The CA appointed an inspector to investigate, who discovered a long and highly suspicious chain of fraud with the shares of the plant. When the CA made public the results of the investigation, the director suddenly announced that he "accidentally found" 450,000 rubles borrowed from one of his acquaintances, which makes it possible to continue production full swing. 25
The newspaper of the Petrograd Soviet, Izvestia, still headed by the Mensheviks and the SRs, described the conflict on Langezipen as characteristic of "a whole series of statements about the closure of enterprises by the owners" that came in an avalanche to the Central Council of Factory Committees. The newspaper noted that in most cases, all the administration's explanations boil down to lack of funds and losses. “However, at the first attempts of workers’ organizations to consider the arguments of the employers, very often the most complex and cunning machinations of the capitalist lockout are revealed.” 26
Only after learning about the intentions of the owner to close the plant, the workers of Langezipen decided to introduce workers' control.
Of course, not all conflicts that led to the introduction of control were so unambiguous. After February, at the Triangle rubber factory, the dispute over the payment of compensation to victims of the mass poisoning of 1914 was referred to a conciliation commission. But in early May, a group of anarchist workers, without waiting for the results of the arbitration, decided to force a solution to the conflict. A crowd of about 70 workers went to the director and began to threaten to throw him into the canal if he did not agree to pay the required compensation with an addition of 15 kopecks per hour retroactively from May 1915. They also threatened the factory committee and workers' representatives on the conciliation commission, who condemned this unorganized action. In the end, they managed to persuade the rebels to wait until the next morning, when government representatives arrived at the plant.
However, at night, the senior managers of the plant tried to escape, taking with them cash from the factory cash desk. They were accidentally discovered by clerks, who arrested them and sent them under escort to Kerensky "until clarification at the factory." The next day, at a meeting with representatives from the staff, Minister of Labor Skobelev warned that rash actions by the workers could provoke the departure of the administration, and the workers would not be able to manage the plant on their own. He advised them to delay meeting the demands until the end of the war.
At a joint meeting of representatives of workers, employees, shop foremen and the union of engineers, it was decided to form a commission of representatives of workers and employees to control the actions of the administration. At the suggestion of the workers' organizations, the members of the administration were released after spending only one day in Kerensky's apartment. 27
Although the cause of the conflict on the Triangulum was different from that on the Langezipen, the establishment of workers' control in either case was a direct response to the management's threat to the plant. Where the workers did not see a threat, they did not try to introduce control at all during this period. Therefore, in private factories, the establishment of workers' control was still quite rare, despite the fact that it had already become general requirement the entire labor movement.
Much more common compared to control was the activity of factory committees, aimed at supplying enterprises with raw materials, fuel and orders. Even before the First Conference of Factory Committees, Petrograd workers organized a special conference devoted to the crisis state of production due to the shortage of raw materials and fuel. The workers of a number of enterprises have already sent their delegates to the Donbass in search of fuel and to clarify the situation at the mines on the spot. 28
Behind this activity, as well as workers' control, was the desire of the workers to preserve production, jobs and, ultimately, save the revolution. The difference between these two activities of the factory committees was that the administration was more resistant to establishing control than to having workers look for raw materials and orders.
Lenin criticized the factory committees at the First Conference of Factory Committees at the end of April for behaving like "errand boys" towards capital. Lenin tried to convince the activist delegates that only the power of the soviets and the creation of state regulatory bodies in which workers' representatives constituted the majority could ensure that the efforts of the factory committees at the enterprises would benefit the workers, and not just their employers.
But many speakers expressed disagreement with the criticism of Lenin. “The factory committees must get raw materials,” a worker delegate from the Novy Arsenal machine-building plant objected to Lenin. “These are not errands. If we don't support the factories in this way, no one knows what might happen." 29
The workers were ready to cooperate with the administration if the latter was really interested in supporting production. But that was precisely what was in question. And therein lay the main problem of the workers' control movement in 1917: control would not have worked without an administration interested in doing business. Without this interest, the desire of the workers to support production took them further and further away from control and closer to a direct struggle for complete power in the enterprises, and, ultimately, to the expropriation of private owners and the nationalization of enterprises. Circumstances led the workers in this direction. But, as we have seen, this was not what the workers were striving for when they carried out the February Revolution, precisely because they did not feel themselves prepared to take responsibility for the operation of enterprises. The objective situation forced the workers to take more and more radical measures, but at the level of consciousness they continued to consider the revolution as bourgeois.
In cases where cooperation with the administration gave real hope of saving the enterprise, the workers were ready to go even further in cooperation with the administration to search for fuel and orders. So, in mid-July, the director of the Baltic Carriage Works announced that he was closing the automobile department, which had become unprofitable after the revolution. When the factory committee proved that the claim of unprofitability was based on inaccurate data, the director agreed to continue production on the condition that the workers ensure the profitability of the department. They agreed, but with the condition of workers' control over production and all cash accounts. The administration refused to accept this condition. thirty
In practice, therefore, the willingness of the workers to cooperate with the administration rarely justified itself. This was noted in his speech at the Second (August) Conference of Petrograd Factory Committees by the worker-delegate Antipov from the Vyborg side:
“Can our comrades do anything by entering into conferences with industrialists? It would be possible to eliminate the ruin in this way if the owners really could not properly conduct production, but the point here is the unwillingness of the owners, and we cannot force them through these meetings. They do not make any concessions, and therefore we have nothing to go to them.” 31
Bourgeois or socialist revolution?
There was a striking similarity between workers' control in enterprises and dual power (the division of power between the Provisional Government and the Soviets) in the state. The dual power established after the February Revolution left the executive power in the hands of the representatives of the propertied classes in the form of the Provisional Government, and the Soviets retained the right to control the government so that it does not deviate from the revolutionary program of the insurgent people: the speedy conclusion of peace, the distribution of land to the peasants and the establishment of a democratic republic . By July, however, the majority of the Petrograd workers had already come to the conclusion that the propertied classes and their representatives in the Provisional Government not only did not want to carry out this program, but in general wanted to put an end to the revolution. Even the direct participation of representatives of the councils in the coalition government, formed for the first time in May 1917, could not change the anti-people orientation of the government. Therefore, the workers began to demand that the soviets themselves take all power into their own hands, preventing the influence of the propertied classes on state policy.
But it was easier for the workers to demand the exclusion of representatives of the bourgeoisie from the government than the dismissal of the bourgeois administration from the enterprises. The transfer of state power to the soviets in itself did not mean a change in property relations and the transfer of managerial functions in enterprises to the workers, that is, a socialist revolution. For the workers, the task of Soviet power was to establish workers' control over the economy, which for the time being was to remain capitalist.
In the labor movement of that period, the control of the administration was quite distinctly different from the seizure of enterprises and the introduction of workers' management. In August, at the Second Petrograd Conference of Factory Committees, Levin declared:
“We demanded control over production from the ministers, but here we met indecision and slowness on their part, and on the part of the industrialists anger and fear for property. Many deliberately confuse the concept of "control" with the concept of "seizure of factories and plants", although the workers do not carry out the tactics of seizure at all, and if any have occurred, then these are isolated exceptional cases. 32
But although workers' control did not mean the expropriation of private owners, it was nevertheless a new, unforeseen requirement, which in practice was supposed to limit the right of ownership and the power of the owners of enterprises. Therefore, it forced the workers to reconsider, at least in part, their views on the revolution as purely bourgeois-democratic. Levin, as a member of the Central Council of Factory Committees, understood better than anyone the objective dynamics of the situation (although even after October he constantly warned the workers against seizing enterprises unless there was a threat of stopping production). He gave the following assessment of the nature of the revolution in August:
“It's no secret that the elimination of economic ruin is not only not in the interests of our domestic capitalists, but is even contrary to them. To abolish economic ruin means to strengthen the young, growing organism of the revolution, which may end up in no one knows how for the capitalists. At best, the developing revolution will deprive them of only part of the benefits. And at worst? Who can guarantee that it will not become world, international from Russian? 33
In other words, in Russia the revolution went beyond its original bourgeois-democratic tasks. But it could not reach the complete destruction of capitalist relations only on its own. The further successful development of the Russian revolution in this direction depended on the political and material support socialist revolutions in more developed countries.
Approximately the same was the position of the Bolshevik activists of the factory committees. Naumov, a worker at the Novy Parviainen plant, said at this conference:
“We, as Marxists, must regard life as eternally moving forward. The revolution continues. We say that this revolution is the prologue to the world revolution. Control is not yet socialism, and not even the taking of production into one's own hands, but this is already going beyond the bounds of the bourgeois system. We are not proposing to introduce socialism, no, but, having taken power into our own hands, we must lead capitalism along the channel along which it would outlive itself. Factory committees should work in this direction. This will lead to socialism. This must be achieved from below... Having strengthened ourselves in production, taking control into our own hands, we will practically learn how to work actively in this production and in an organized way lead it to the future socialist production. 34
Even with Naumov's confidence in the coming world revolution, he admitted that the Russian working class still lacked the knowledge and skills to manage the economy directly. Control, in his opinion, should have become just such a school of workers' management, socialism. But even to the Bolshevik Naumov it seemed obvious that socialism in Russia would not be built tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.
But in the end, the course of events was determined not by the subjective ideas of the workers about the nature of the revolution, but by the unfolding class struggle. “Not a single party foresaw the intervention of the working class in the bourgeois economy under a bourgeois government,” Levin noted. Now everyone recognizes its necessity. True, they were forced to do this in order not to end up on the street. 35
“When a factory committee arose,” it was noted in the report of the factory committee of the Putilov factory at the end of 1917, “it was given neither a program of activity, nor any charter by which it could be guided in its work. The charter and the program were compiled and written by myself real life. Thus, the factory committee had the best teacher- a life." 36
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(end of article in next issue)
NOTES
2. N. Sukhanov "Notes on the Revolution", Moscow-Berlin-Petrograd, 1923, volume 7, pp. 24-26, 57-59.
3. Leningradsky state archive October Revolution and Socialist Construction (LGAORSS), fund 4591, inventory 1, file 1, page 26.
5. The revolutionary movement in Russia after the overthrow of the autocracy, Moscow, 1957, pp. 569-77.
6. History of the workers of Leningrad, issue 5, p. 17.
7. LGAORSS, fund 1000, inventory 73, case 16, sheet 11.
8. M. G. Fleer, Revolutionary movement during the war years, Moscow, 1925, pp. 298-304.
9. State Historical Archive of the Leningrad Region (GIALO), fund 416, inventory 5, file 24, sheet 64.
10. L. M. Kleinbord, Essays on the working intelligentsia, Petrograd, 1923, p. 77.
11. GIALO, fund 416, inventory 5, file 24, sheet 155.
12. The revolutionary movement in Russia in April 1917, Moscow, 1957, pp. 383-85.
13. LGAORSS, fund 9391, inventory 1, file 11, sheet 4.
14. LGAORSS, fund 4601, inventory 1, delo 10, pp. 33 and 44, P. V. Volobuev, Proletariat and bourgeoisie in 1917, Moscow, 1964, p. 157, Rabochaya gazeta, April 7 and 16, 1917.
15. P. V. Volobuev, The Proletariat and the Bourgeoisie, p. 157.
16. The revolutionary movement in Russia in April 1917, p. 468.
17. G. L. Sobolev, Revolutionary Consciousness of the Workers and Soldiers of Petrograd, Leningrad, 1973, p. 182.
18. LGAORSS, fund 1000, inventory 73, case 16, sheet 6.
20. News of the Moscow military-industrial committee, no.13, 1917, p.15.
25. October Revolution and factory committees, volume 1, p. 148, Izvestia, June 19, 1917, Novaya Zhizn, June 19, 1917.
27. B. Shabalin "From February to October" in "Bastions of the Revolution", volume 1, Leningrad, 1967, pp. 289-90.
28. Workers' control and nationalization ..., pp. 70, 75 and 80, Leningrad, 1933, p. 337.
32. Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 171.
33. Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 114.
34. Ibid., Volume 1, p. 126.
35. Ibid., p. 112.
36. Putilovites in three revolutions, Leningrad, 1933, p. 431.
Statistics, as you know, knows everything. Including about the socio-economic situation in Russia on the eve of the 1917 revolution. But not every researcher is able, having deeply delved into the countless columns of dead figures, to see behind them the living, dramatic realities of a turning point era.
Professor of St. Petersburg University Boris Nikolaevich Mironov - one of the best Russian historians who can see and analyze. The author of the recently published three-volume monograph "The Russian Empire: From Tradition to Modernity" offered the most interesting statistical calculations especially for this issue of Motherland.
The numbers speak for themselves to the thoughtful reader...
Salaries
During any war there is a decrease in the standard of living. However, during the First World War, up to the February revolutionary events of 1917, the decline in well-being can be considered moderate. The decrease in the real wages of workers was not as significant as is commonly thought. In 1914-1916, according to the calculations of an outstanding Russian economist and public figure S.N. Prokopovich, it grew by 9% and only from 1917 began to decline. From the point of view of S.G. Strumilin, real wages began to decline from 1914, but in this case in 1916 it was only 9% lower than in 1913, but in one revolutionary year of 1917 it fell by 10%.
A catastrophic drop in wages occurred after the Bolsheviks came to power, in 1918 (Tables 1, 2).
The reason for the discrepancies in the estimates of Prokopovich and Strumilin is as follows: the former more fully took into account, in addition to rations, the expenses of entrepreneurs for housing, insurance and medical care, which amounted to a rather significant amount - 8.3% of the monetary payment.
Economy
The decline in industrial production was insignificant - according to the most pessimistic estimates in 1915-1916. - only 4% (in 1917 - by 20%). The CSO recorded for 1915-1916. even an increase in production by 16% (in 1917, a decline of 39.6%).
Labor productivity for 1914-1916 increased by a third (31.6%). According to the most pessimistic estimates, the decline in real wages by the beginning of 1917 amounted to only 9%, and according to optimistic estimates, it increased by 9%.
The financial situation of the village was stable thanks to good harvests and government assistance to families who sent their workers to the war. main reason This consisted in the record grain harvest in 1914-1917, which, on a nationwide scale, fully satisfied the demand of the population.
The increased consumption of the army was compensated by the prohibition of exports, which in peacetime absorbed more than 20% of the grain harvest.
Food
During the war, the financial situation of the Russian population was much better than in all the warring countries, especially in Germany. There, the rationing system for bread was introduced in January 1915, gradually extended to the whole country and to all the most important foodstuffs. The city norm of issuing bread on cards per person per day was 200–225 g in 1916, and 170 g in 1917. German norms of bread resemble the Leningrad blockade, when 125–250 g were issued per person per day.
In Russia, the rationing system arose only in the summer of 1916. In provincial cities, only sugar and bread were subject to rationing, and at rates several times higher than in Germany. In Moscow, the rationing system for bread was introduced only on March 6, 1917. In Petrograd, on the eve of the February events, one and a half pounds (615 g) of bread was issued per person per day, workers - 2 pounds (820) - in 3.6-4, 8 times more than in Germany.
Moreover, in 1916 the number of strikers per 1,000 people of the working population in Germany was 69 times less than in Russia.
Contributions
People's deposits in savings banks - the country's main bank for the general population - during the war also say a lot about the standard of living of the population. By January 1, 1917, the number of depositors increased by 1.5 times, and the amount of deposits, taking into account inflation, by a third.
The number of depositors is 12.7 million. And this is not the bourgeoisie and landowners - there were only about 120 thousand merchants and entrepreneurs throughout the empire, and about 100 thousand landowners.
The depositors consisted of 30% peasants, 12% philistines, 13% workers, i.e. 55% of the workers. (Table 3).
Crime
The crime rate during the war years decreased by 26% (Table 4).
In 1914-1916, judging by the number of investigations per 100,000 population in eight judicial districts, crime was about 26 percentage points lower than in 1911-1913, including 29 percentage points in the countryside, and in the city - by 6. In general, the frequency of committing all types of crimes has decreased throughout the country, and in the city only the number of thefts (per 100 thousand population) has increased slightly (by 5 points). It is unlikely that such a significant decrease in crime can be explained only by the departure of millions of healthy men to the army, because the crime of women and children who were not subject to mobilization has fallen.
Significantly significant (by 34 points) reduction in the number of state crimes. In 1916, a slight increase in crime compared with 1915 was revealed (in general - by 12 points, in the countryside - by 11, and in the city - by 19 points) due mainly to thefts, robberies and robberies. But the level of 1913 was still not surpassed: in 1916, in the country as a whole, crime was 24 points lower, in the countryside - by 28, and in the city - by 3 points lower than in 1913. And this despite the fact that that during the war, by the summer of 1916, under the influence of mass migrations of peasants drafted into the army to the cities, the share of the urban population increased from 15.3% to 17.4%, or 2.1%.
Suicide
The suicide rate fell by 3 times.
In terms of suicide rates in the post-reform period, Russia occupied the penultimate place in Europe. From 1870 to 1910, the suicide rate changed cyclically with an overall upward trend; the peak was in 1891-1895, then there was a decrease. It is important to note that suicidality grew only among the townspeople, while in the countryside, after a slight rise in the 1880s - the first half of the 1890s. it declined at the beginning of the 20th century. returned to the level of 1819-1825. During the First Russian Revolution of 1905-1906. the suicide rate decreased and began to grow only from 1907, after its completion, reaching a maximum by 1913 (Table 5).
During the First World War, judging by Petrograd, Moscow and Odessa, the suicide rate decreased by 2.8-3 times, and from 1918 it began to grow in the whole country in 1923-1926. surpassed the pre-war level by 1.5 times (5.6 versus 3.7 per 100 thousand).
For comparison, in 1989 the suicide rate in the Russian Federation was 5.9 times higher than in 1912 (25.8 per 100 thousand), in 1994 - 9.5 times (41.8 per 100 thousand). 100 thousand), in 2008-2009 - 6.6 times (29 per 100 thousand).
Review of Boris Mironov's recently published three-volume monograph "The Russian Empire: From Tradition to Modernity" - p. 88.
There are two opposing points of view: adherents of the first believe that the Russian worker eked out a miserable existence, while supporters of the second argue that the Russian worker lived much better than the Russian one. Which of these versions is correct, this post will help you figure it out.
Earnings of a Russian worker before the revolution
The first systematic data refer to the end of the 1870s. So, in 1879, a special commission, which was attached to the Moscow Governor-General, collected information about 648 establishments of 11 production groups, which employed 53.4 thousand workers. According to Bogdanov's publication in Proceedings of the Moscow City Statistical Department, the annual earnings of the workers of the Mother See in 1879 amounted to 189 rubles. In a month, therefore, an average of 15.75 rubles came out.
In subsequent years, due to the influx of former peasants into the cities and, accordingly, an increase in supply on the labor market, earnings began to decline, and only from 1897 did their steady growth begin. In the St. Petersburg province in 1900, the average annual salary of a worker was 252 rubles. (21 rubles per month), and in European Russia - 204 rubles. 74 kop. (17,061 rubles per month).
On average, in the Empire, the monthly earnings of a worker in 1900 amounted to 16 rubles. 17 and a half kopecks. At the same time, the upper limit of earnings rose to 606 rubles (50.5 rubles per month), and the lower one fell to 88 rubles. 54 kop. (7.38 rubles per month). However, after the revolution of 1905 and the subsequent stagnation from 1909, wages began to rise sharply.
For weavers, for example, wages increased by 74%, and for dyers by 133%, but what was hidden behind these percentages? The salary of a weaver in 1880 was only 15 rubles per month. 91 kopecks, and in 1913 - 27 rubles. 70 kop. For dyers, it increased from 11 rubles. 95 kop. - up to 27 rubles. 90 kop.
Things were much better for workers in scarce professions and metalworkers. Machinists and electricians began to earn 97 rubles a month. 40 kopecks, higher artisans - 63 rubles. 50 kopecks, blacksmiths - 61 rubles. 60 kopecks, locksmiths - 56 rubles. 80 kopecks, turners - 49 rubles. 40 kop.
Working hours
On June 14, 1897, a decree was issued limiting the working day of the industrial proletariat throughout the country to a legal norm of 11.5 hours a day. By 1900, the average working day in the manufacturing industry averaged 11.2 hours, and by 1904 it did not exceed 63 hours per week (excluding overtime), or 10.5 hours per day. Thus, for 7 years, starting from 1897, the 11.5-hour norm of the decree actually turned into a 10.5-hour norm, and from 1900 to 1904 this norm fell annually by about 1.5%.
But what happened at that time in other countries? Yes, about the same. In the same 1900, the working day in Australia was 8 hours, Great Britain - 9, USA and Denmark - 9.75, Norway - 10, Sweden, France, Switzerland - 10.5, Germany - 10.75, Belgium, Italy and Austria - 11 hours.
In January 1917, the average working day in the Petrograd province was 10.1 hours, and in March it dropped to 8.4, that is, by as much as 17% in just two months.
However, the use of working time is determined not only by the length of the working day, but also by the number of working days in a year. In pre-revolutionary times, there were significantly more holidays - the number of holidays per year was 91, and in 2011 the number of non-working holidays, including the New Year holidays, will be only 13 days. Even the presence of 52 Saturdays, which became non-working from March 7, 1967, does not compensate for this difference.
Nutrition
The average Russian laborer ate one and a half pounds of black bread, half a pound of white bread, one and a half pounds of potatoes, a quarter of a pound of cereals, half a pound of beef, an eighth of lard and an eighth of sugar a day. The energy value of such a ration was 3580 calories. The average inhabitant of the Empire ate 3370 calories of food per day. Since then, Russian people have almost never received such a number of calories. This figure was only exceeded in 1982. The maximum was in 1987, when the daily amount of food consumed was 3397 calories. In the Russian Federation, the peak of calorie consumption occurred in 2007, when consumption amounted to 2564 calories.
In 1914, a worker spent 11 rubles 75 kopecks per month on food for himself and his family (12,290 in today's money). This was 44% of earnings. However, in Europe at that time, the percentage of wages spent on food was much higher - 60-70%. Moreover, during the World War, this indicator in Russia improved even more, and the cost of food in 1916, despite rising prices, amounted to 25% of earnings.
Housing
The cost of an apartment without heating and lighting, according to the same Prokopovich, was per earner: in Petrograd - 3 rubles. 51 k., in Baku - 2 rubles. 24 k., and in the provincial town of Sereda, Kostroma province - 1 p. 80 k., so that the average cost of paid apartments for the whole of Russia was estimated at 2 rubles per month. Translated into modern Russian money, this amounts to 2092 rubles. Here it must be said that these, of course, are not master's apartments, the rent of which in St. Petersburg cost an average of 27.75 rubles, in Moscow - 22.5 rubles, and on average in Russia 18.9 rubles. In these master's apartments lived mainly officials with the rank of collegiate assessor and officers. If in the master's apartments, there were 111 square arshins per tenant, that is, 56.44 square meters, then in the workers, 16 square meters. arshin - 8,093 sq.m. However, the cost of renting a square arshin was the same as in the master's apartments - 20-25 kopecks per square arshin per month.
However, since the end of the 19th century, the general trend has been the construction by the owners of enterprises of working dwellings with an improved layout. So, in Borovichi, the owners of a ceramic plant for acid-resistant products, the engineers Kolyankovsky brothers, built wooden one-story houses with separate exits and personal plots for their workers in the village of Velgia. The worker could purchase this housing on credit. The initial amount of the contribution was only 10 rubles.
Thus, by 1913, only 30.4% of our workers lived in rented apartments. The remaining 69.6% had free housing.
The theme of the revolution of 1917 and the proletariat seems to be fully studied and even pretty boring due to the increased attention in the Soviet period. The Soviet power that was established after October was officially a worker-peasant power; the proletariat was the advanced and dominant class under the Bolshevik regime. During the years of the existence of the USSR, there was no doubt that the bulk of the workers stood on the Bolshevik positions, it seemed logical and natural.
In reality, the situation was not so unambiguous and much more complex. Indeed, the proletariat became the main driving force behind the revolutionary events and constituted the vast majority among the supporters of radical change. However, their views were very different, they supported completely different forces, which will be shown in the article.
Workers before the revolution. Illustration from Pioneer magazine. 1955
In this article, we will try to trace the attitude of the workers of the Russian Empire to the revolution and pay attention to the life of workers before 1917.
In view of the serious differences between the workers of different regions of Russia, Petrograd will be considered further as examples - as a city with the largest concentration of the proletariat and its largest political activity- and the Volga region as a region where the proletariat was dispersed among numerous industries and began to be interested in politics rather late.
The working class in its modern sense began to take shape in Russia quite late - in the second half of the 19th century, only after the abolition of serfdom. It was after peasant reform the population of the village, who received the right to free movement, began to leave for the city to work. This was mainly due to the lack of land and landlessness of the peasantry (allotments after the reform were reduced everywhere), infertile soils and overpopulation. As a result of this process, major cities and in the industrial areas there were concentrations of settlers, which made it possible to move on to more extensive and efficient production.
At the end of the 19th century, the proletariat emerges as a separate class, however, many of its characteristics are seriously different from those of the German or English workers. Due to the fact that the working class in Russia arose rather late, as well as geographical and economic features, it was a small social stratum concentrated in the largest cities and industrial regions. Mass workers lived only in Moscow, Petrograd, the Donbass and the Urals. The joint life and work of such a large number of the proletariat determined its further participation in public life, its special role in Russian history. The concentration of the working class in large enterprises was so strong that at the time of the revolution there were 14 giant factories in Petrograd alone, while there were 12 in all of warring Germany.
Workers at the beginning of the 20th century
The workers were an extremely heterogeneous and motley structure. It is completely wrong to imagine that they were all people who left the village and broke off ties with it. Most of the workers not only brought the features of rural life into their urban life, but also constantly traveled to their native lands. Many of them perceived their factory life as a temporary circumstance, the village remained the dominant feature in their lives. It is enough to mention their appearance to understand how rural people they were.
Contemporaries of those events write that workers rarely appeared in the center of the city, the only exception was those workers whose factories were located in the very center, like the Yakovlev carriage factory on Nevsky in Petrograd. It was quite easy to notice the appearance of a worker - his clothes usually stood out sharply against the background of other people.
“He often wore: a kosovorotka shirt (black or colored, sometimes with embroidery), tied with a colored cord, a black jacket, trousers tucked into Russian boots, and a cap on his head. The workers wore simple cotton dresses with a long skirt, with a scarf on their heads, and simple shoes without fasteners on their feet. It was the worker's and female worker's day off."
Factory owners often allowed or even encouraged workers to set up plots and livestock near their place of work - this reduced discontent among them and deterred them from leaving. The most famous example is the Obukhov factory in Petrograd, whose workers were called "cowmen" by their colleagues from other regions. The fact is that the management of the plant in every possible way contributed to the construction of housing and the breeding of livestock by workers in order to tie them more to this place. But at the same time, there were far fewer peasants among the workers in Petrograd than in other regions of the country.
Painting by Nikolai Kasatkin - In the family of a worker
There was an active stratification among the workers; there was no single "friendly proletarian family" in existence. The decisive role was played by the specialty or branch of production where this or that worker worked. There were several factors that very clearly demarcated the groups of workers and influenced their political and worldly views. The workers of the largest industries had few common interests with those employed in small companies or private handicraftsmen, the proletariat from state enterprises assessed the situation in the country differently from their counterparts from private factories.
The choice of one or another working specialty could already give some information about a person, and further labor activity in the corresponding industry finally shaped his behavior and way of thinking.
Using the example of the workers of Petrograd, one can easily find out how the groups of workers differed from each other.
Yard on the Vyborg side. 1900
By the time of the first Russian revolution, several workers in the district of St. Petersburg, who were seriously different from each other, had finally taken shape. The mentality and preferences of the workers were influenced not only by the specialty or size of the enterprise, but even by the geographical location of production, its proximity or remoteness from other proletarian regions.
Undoubtedly, the most revolutionary and "progressive" area was the Vyborg side, where huge metalworking factories were located. Metalworkers were considered the most revolutionary workers in the city, a large number of people employed in production and remoteness from the immediate superiors were favorable factors for the spread of anti-monarchist agitation and propaganda. A significant role was played by the fact that the mentioned factories were private for the most part - hostility towards the owners was added to the negative attitude towards the authorities. Serious solidarity and rather high literacy were observed among them. Many authors praised their position and prospects among the working class. Thus, one liberal-minded author wrote in 1911:
“The workers of mechanical production are always ahead of any movement. They are the aristocrats of the working class, the progressives. Foundry workers, mechanics, machinists - all these are a developed people, with great individuality, with fairly good earnings ... In any case, this group of workers can still partly live without any special burning need, with tireless work, of course. They can rent a cheap, but still apartment, since they are family people. The wife can take care of the house. There is a hearth that many other working groups are deprived of.”
Small and state-owned enterprises differed in that owners and employees saw each other more often and communicated more. This made opposition propaganda difficult for the following reasons: in small factories, manufacturers often took more care of the workers, gave them bonuses, days off, gave gifts on major holidays, and even provided plots of land for construction and grazing.
Workers of the Putilov factory, 1913
Loyalist and patriotic feelings were more strongly developed at state enterprises, and Bolshevik ideas, especially about defeat in the war, found little response here. The revolutionary-minded workers in such factories were more likely to be influenced by the Socialist-Revolutionary Mensheviks. The Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks had great support throughout Petersburg, and in some areas they had dominant positions, for example, at the Gunpowder Factories behind Okhta.
Vasilyevsky Island was considered a less hectic place than Vyborgskaya Storona—there were fewer businesses—but the proximity of the university and radical students put it on a par with other opposition areas.
Printing workers were a separate group. Politically, they occupied an intermediate position between revolutionary metal workers and apolitical or loyal workers in small workshops and state enterprises. Printing activity had its own characteristics and requirements. Literacy among workers in this area was almost total, stable income and communication with representatives of newspapers and magazines, educated citizens influenced the appearance of printers, they aspired to the lifestyle of educated citizens, which was often associated with the support of the Cadets. Revolutionary ideas were alien to this stratum of the proletariat.
Printing workers dressed more urbanly at work than workers in other professions. They worked without hats, wore shirts with turn-down collars and even ties along with blouses. The trousers they wore for the most part out. Printers rarely wore boots, more often boots or boots. They worked not only in vests, but also in jackets; often over their clothes they wore long blouses of black and dark blue satin or devil's leather and armlets of the same materials.
Workers rarely appeared in the center of the city, the only exception was those workers whose factories were located in the very center, like the Yakovlev carriage factory on Nevsky in Petrograd. It was quite easy to notice the appearance of a worker - his clothes usually stood out sharply against the background of other people. He often wore: a kosovorotka shirt (black or colored, sometimes with embroidery), tied with a colored cord, a black jacket, trousers tucked into Russian boots, and a cap on his head. The workers wore simple cotton dresses with a long skirt, with a scarf on their heads, and simple shoes without fasteners on their feet. It was the output toilet of the worker and the worker.
Forge at the factory of Ludwig Nobel in St. Petersburg.
Older cadre workers of the metalworking industry (especially in St. Petersburg and Moscow) and printing workers dressed better than others. The worst dressed were miners and construction workers, among whom there were many seasonal workers who came from the village to work in the city and kept their peasant costume, including bast shoes and chuni (bast shoes woven from ropes).
In other regions of the country, the situation differed significantly from that in Petrograd. Such a concentration of the proletariat was not observed practically anywhere else, large plants and factories were a rarity in such areas as the Volga region, Siberia, and the Caucasus. Relatively large centers were the Donetsk district and the Urals, where many minerals were mined.
Let's take the Volga region as an example. The region was distinguished by the fact that light and food industries prevailed here, which means that the factories themselves were small, child labor was widely used, and working conditions were very difficult. Naturally, the strikes and strikes of local workers were mainly of an economic nature. Strikes and demonstrations before the First World War were rarely political in nature, especially in the period after the defeat of the revolution of 1905. A certain turning point came in 1912. For example, in Saratov that year there were 10 strikes, of which 3.5 thousand people participated in 2 political ones. people, and in 8 economic ones - only 800. In large cities, the positions of the Socialist-Revolutionaries were very strong - in Simbirsk, by the end of the first Russian revolution, there were about 600 members of the local party organization, including 50 workers.
The living and working conditions of the workers left much to be desired, at the beginning of the 20th century the bulk of the proletariat had very few rights, the authorities allowed themselves various arbitrariness. In 1902, during a search of a worker at the shipbuilding plant of the Sevastopol Admiralty, a poem composed by him was found, which described the order at the plant:
... This Admiral Leshchinsky
Turns like a pig
Drives out in the neck
Who will remind about the law.
Through Leshchinsky donkey
There is no number for the pay
Expect three weeks
We go hungry very often.
It became bitter for all the workers,
There is no freedom for us, as for others.
We don't have the right to shout
With us a short reprisal.
This situation was overwhelming until 1905. It was especially characteristic of the provinces. The bulk of the workers lived in an extremely limited way, they rented the so-called "corners", that is, not even rooms, but parts of them. In the capitals, however, there was a different state of affairs, as already mentioned above. The top workers did not lead the worst and most miserable life. Using the example of M. Gorky's novel "Mother", one can observe how the workers of Sormovo (then a suburb of Nizhny Novgorod) dress well enough and get paid. The wife of the protagonist has the opportunity not to work and lives at the expense of her husband.
Worker's costumes before the revolution from the book "The History of Costume" by Kamenskaya
First World War made significant changes in all spheres of life of the proletariat. The proletariat has undergone the same metamorphoses as other strata of Russian society. First of all, it is worth touching on the question of the size of the working class. The war, on the one hand, caused a massive exodus of men to the front, which led to the fading of production in many areas and their replacement by women where possible. On the other hand, the multifold increase in the needs of the heavy and defense industries led to an even greater concentration of workers in the largest metallurgical, military, and other industries, which had far-reaching consequences.
If on January 1, 1914, 242,580 workers were employed in the qualified industry of Petrograd, then on January 1, 1917, there were already 384,638 of them, that is, 58.6% more. The beginning of the war gave rise to mass patriotic sentiments, which sharply reduced the intensity of the social struggle. At state enterprises, defencist sentiments dominated, that is, the Socialist-Revolutionary-Menshevik line was overwhelming. On the other hand, the strike and revolutionary traditions of the metalworkers were passed on to newcomers, thus the Russian government, by mobilizing industry, paradoxically expanded the base of revolutionary propaganda.
The predominant type of strikes and rallies was a speech against harsh working conditions, or for raising wages, that is, primarily economic demands were put forward. Political demonstrations were rare - as already mentioned, the prevailing belief was that the struggle against the autocracy should continue after the end of the war. The Social Revolutionaries, for example, believed that in Russia there were unique opportunities to build peasant socialism, therefore, the defense of the country from the German invasion is vital for the future revolution and a radical change in the political system. In fact, the only force that stood on the positions of defeatism and the overthrow of the tsarist government were the Bolsheviks, however, their influence was very small.
During the war years, many workers finally lost their monarchical and religious illusions, and yet 10 years before that, before the first revolution, the majority of workers revered the emperor very much, all the blame for disasters and troubles was placed solely on the owners, the police, the bureaucracy. The process of losing false and naive ideas began with the execution on January 9, 1905, and finally ended before the February Revolution.
1905 The workers throw stones at the gendarme.
In the summer of 1915 there was a revival of opposition sentiment, which was due to the defeat of the Russian army and the beginning of the food crisis.
The February revolution would not have been possible without the mass support of the proletariat - this is an indisputable fact. Without large-scale rallies, strikes, strikes that preceded the revolution, opposition speeches would have remained within the framework of another outbreak of anger, which would not have been able to radically influence the authorities in Russia. On January 1, 1917, about 60% of the workers in the capital were metalworkers - their traditional revolutionary attitude predetermined the quick victory of the revolution. A similar situation was observed in other regions of the country, for example, on March 3, soldiers of the 3rd machine gun regiment took to the streets of Saratov, among whom there were many former metalworkers.
There is no need to recall the course of revolutionary events - the large-scale actions of the workers in those days are well known. Already in last days February workers actively involved in the process of elections to the Petrograd Soviet. The proletariat throughout the country also began to form these bodies of direct democracy, in some regions this was quite active, for example, in Saratov, where 34% of the city's population were industrial workers.
The mood of the vast majority of workers in large factories was unequivocal: the monarchy had outlived its usefulness, it was impossible to allow the accession of brother Nicholas II. Numerous documents of that period testify to this, for example, the order of the workers of the Baltic Plant to the Petrograd Soviet of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies contained a call to immediately arrest royal family and prevent her deportation to England, they believed that this must be done "to prevent any attempts at counter-revolution."
The issue of establishing a republic was also topical, and a rather small percentage associated this moment with the convening of the Constituent Assembly, many workers wrote to the Petrograd Soviet that the proclamation of a republic was necessary in the near future.
A.F. Kerensky at the Baltic Shipyard in the summer of 1917
The overwhelming majority of workers supported the Petrograd Soviet and were suspicious of the Provisional Government, for example, here is what was said in the decision of the general meeting of the Voronin, Lyutsch and Chesher cotton print factory:
"The full power must belong to the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, and the Provisional Government must carry out the will of the Soviet." These sentiments were particularly sharpened during the April crisis of the government, when many workers took to demonstrations and processions throughout the city against Milyukov's note and the continuation of the war. The demonstrators who took part in the rallies in support of the Provisional Government were clearly hostile to the proletariat, and there were clashes and fights between these demonstrations.
The self-organization of workers is striking in its scope. The proletariat seemed to have been ready for a long time to declare itself as a full-fledged cohesive class of society and create its own representation, and the revolution simply untied its hands. “Already in March-April 1917 in Petrograd, at factory youth meetings, the “Executive Committees of Factory Apprentices” were created. The main goal of these associations was the need to protect their economic interests, legal status and conduct cultural and educational work among young people. The organizers were mostly young workers from different factories. So, P. Mikhailov - the Petrograd gun factory, at the Aivaz and Russian Renault factories - I. Chugurin, at the Putilov factory - V. Alekseev, N. Andreev, at the medical manufacturing plant - S. Prokhorov and P. Smorodin, etc. etc."
The first factory youth organizations, recalled P. Smorodin, arose in the Vyborg region. Here again we meet with the revolutionary spirit and discipline of the metalworkers from the Vyborg side.
The extent of the workers' influence on the revolutionary events is clearly seen in the number of such factory committees and trade unions. Only in Saratov there were 85 and 16, respectively.
Nikolai Kasatkin - Wounded Worker
The influence of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and Cadets among the workers of the country in the spring of 1917 was overwhelming. This phenomenon was especially observed in large cities. Massively opened such educational societies as "Labor and Light" in Petrograd. Their task was the cultural enlightenment of working youth, their distance from politics. Such a policy was actively opposed by the Bolsheviks, who accused the other parties of evading the struggle for socialism and workers' rights. The largest factories, such as the Metallic, Baltiysky, Trubochny, Obukhovsky, elected as early as March almost exclusively Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks to the Soviet. In general, more than 200 deputies were elected to the Soviet in Petrograd.
Workers from all over the country sent thousands of letters to the Petrograd Soviet with a request to send agitators and representatives in order to organize a new government in the localities. Messages came from Riga, Dzhankoy, Berdyansk, Samara, active army. The decisive actions of the workers of the capital contributed to the decree of March 10 on the introduction of an 8-hour working day in the country.
The rapid shift to the left of workers began as early as the spring of that year, fueled by such factors as strong dissatisfaction with the government during the April crisis and insufficient changes in the economic sphere. The contradictions between the workers and the propertied strata of society were clearly manifested during the April demonstrations, when brawls and skirmishes broke out between supporters and opponents of the continuation of the war in Petrograd. At the factories, the owners tried to delay the increase in wages, many industries were simply closed - they no longer gave such a profit. But the minds of the workers were still dominated by the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries - this was both at large enterprises and at smaller facilities. The Bolsheviks met with quite a bit of understanding in many factories, the printers, traditionally more literate and wealthy workers, were especially hostile to them. It must be said that the workers of the printing industry were consistent in their hostility and rejection of the Bolsheviks, as evidenced already after the October Revolution by the list of those enterprises that adopted resolutions against the events that had taken place. David Mandel writes about this in his book Petrograd Workers in the Revolutions of 1917 (February 1917-June 1918):
“Resolutions refusing to recognize the “Bolshevik government” were adopted by the workers of the Expedition for the Procurement of State Papers, the printing houses of the Ministry of the Interior, the Bulletin of the Provisional Government, the newspaper Delo Naroda, the Yekateringof Printing House, as well as the executive committee of the trade union of cardboard workers and the workers of the City Electric Station on the Fontanka. This exhausts the list of resolutions hostile to the new government that have been discovered.”
The July crisis of the Provisional Government contributed to the mass withdrawal of workers from the support of the authorities and the gradual Bolshevization of the proletariat. The next blow to the loyalty of the proletariat was, of course, the Kornilov rebellion. In this situation, the workers of the capital showed surprising unanimity, because the plans of General Kornilov did not exactly correlate with the interests of any proletarian group.
The active agitation of the Bolsheviks, which took place since the spring, and a number of erroneous actions of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks in the government and the Petrograd Soviet contributed to the growth of support for the party of Lenin and Trotsky - by the time of October, most workers were quite loyal to the RCP (b). The reason for the support of the Bolsheviks by the proletariat was quite transparent - they called on the workers to fight to the end for their rights, not to seek concessions from the bourgeoisie, but to completely overthrow it. At the same time, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks took a more insecure, compliant position, showing too strong, in the opinion of the workers, loyalty to the Provisional Government. Thus, the indecision of the SR-Menshevik majority and the harsh slogans of the Bolsheviks played their part.
Alexey Mishin
Shackles are also a parabola
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This is an outline for an article that I will not write. When I collected the facts, I realized that this is only half: the second half is the history of the capitalists in 1917. Why were they greedy then? Did they want Soviet power? But let others write about it.
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Until February
By 1917, there were 15 million workers in Russia - a tenth of the population. They were employed in industry, construction, agriculture and transport.
Under tsarism, workers had few rights. The authorities made only small concessions: the law of 1897 reduced the working day to 11.5 hours, the laws of 1901 and 1903 gave workers pensions for injuries at work and the right to choose elders, and manufacturers were forbidden to lower wages, pay in goods and introduce fines of more than a third salaries...
After the revolution of 1905, the authorities reduced the working day to 10 hours and gave the right to trade unions ("Zubatov's"). But the concessions also humiliated the workers. In 1905, the landowners elected one deputy to the Duma from 2,000 people, capitalists - from 4,000, peasants - from 30,000, workers - from 90,000. , assault.
In 1912, the Convention of the Petrograd Society of Manufacturers and Breeders banned the permanent bodies of workers - only "councils of elders" were allowed. The Convention curtailed the rights of workers: “interference is not allowed in the hiring and dismissal of workers, in the establishment of wages and conditions of employment and the development of internal rules.”
Before 1914, workers were outraged by working conditions: long working hours; low salary; wage gap between men and women; lack of safety precautions (frequent accidents); many fines (up to 40% of salary); cramped housing...
On July 24, 1914, a tsarist decree banned trade unions, meetings, strikes, the workers' press, and the singing of revolutionary songs. On July 26, 1914, 15 trade unions were closed in St. Petersburg. By 1917 there were only 10,000 trade union members in Petrograd.
The economics of war
The Russian economy was not ready for war. There was a shortage of fuel, ore, metal, and other raw materials. By the winter of 1916, the average Donbass worker was extracting a quarter less coal than before the war. At the end of 1916, due to a shortage of coal, the factories worked intermittently. By 1917, iron and steel were being smelted a quarter less than in 1913.
The factories were not strong enough. The equipment was worn out. In 1914-1917, a Russian soldier received 20 times (by weight) fewer shells than a German one. Before the war, 44 thousand rifles were produced per month, in 1917 - 130 thousand, but the front at the beginning of the war demanded 60 thousand, and in 1916-1917 - 200 thousand. Often two or three soldiers had one rifle.
Production fell in the light and food industries, where before the war raw materials were imported: half of the equipment was idle, and the shortage of goods was growing at the front and in the rear.
The transport fell apart. In the first half of 1916, untransported cargo was one and a half times more than in the second half of 1914.
In 1915-1916, state expenditures exceeded revenues by 75%. By 1917, the state's debt had grown to 33 billion rubles. Debt growth (data as of January 1): 1914 - 8.8 billion rubles, 1915 - 10.5, 1916 - 18.9, 1917 - 33.6.
By 1917, the real wages of workers fell to a quarter of what they were before the war. In the first year of the war, "popular consumption" decreased by 25%, in the second by 43, in the third - by 52. In 1915-1916, with a doubling of wages, the prices of necessary goods grew 5-6 times. By 1916, food, shoes, and clothing were 3-4 times more expensive than in 1914.
Meanwhile, industrialists and merchants received superprofits from the war. Thus, the profit of the owners of 142 textile factories increased from 63 million rubles in 1913 to 174 million in 1915. According to the Minister of War in 1916, D.S. Shuvaeva, "300-400% profit from military orders is common, and sometimes this profit reaches 1000-1200%."
Strikes and protests before the revolution
Before the war, the number of strikes increased: 1910 - 222, 1911 - 466, 1912 - 2032, 1913 - 2404.
From 1915 to February 1917, over 300 workers protested because of shortages of food and goods. Police and troops suppressed the protests with weapons, there were killed and wounded.
In the winter of 1914-1915, speculators hid food in travel depots, and the lack of food multiplied the protests. At first there was a lack of meat, sugar, flour, later shoes, fabrics, kerosene.
On April 8, 1915, in Moscow, behind Presnenskaya Zastava, a crowd of up to 5 thousand people, mostly workers, protested against food prices and shouted “Friendly, comrades!” attacked shops and shops. In the bakery and bakery, the goods were taken out into the street and dismantled.
On May 1, 1915, 62 political strikes of workers took place in both capitals and 9 more in other cities. In Moscow, the May Day strike was carried out by 15 enterprises.
On June 5-6, 1915, in Kostroma, the protest of workers against working conditions ended in execution: 12 people were killed, 45 were injured. August 10, 1915 in Ivanovo-Voznesensk, after a strike against low wages, a peaceful demonstration was shot: 30 workers were killed, 53 were injured. In response to the shootings in Kostroma and Ivanovo-Voznesensk, 69 local businesses went on strike calling "Down with!" They were supported by strikes in Petrograd, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Sormovo, Tula, Kharkov, Yekaterinoslav.
In September 1915, political strikes were held at 60 enterprises in Petrograd. In Moscow, 58,000 workers from 162 enterprises took part in the strike over the dissolution of the Duma. On Strastnaya Square, 4 people were killed and 40 wounded in a clash with the police.
From the autumn of 1915 until February 1917, protests erupted every month over shortages of food and other goods. On October 1, 1915, in Pavlovsky Posad, Moscow province, two thousand women and teenagers smashed grocery stores. On October 3, the protest merged with a strike of 12,000 workers from the Glukhiv manufactory due to low wages, and the crowd was dispersed at the market square with weapons, two workers were killed.
In February 1916, a strike at the Putilov factory demanded a 70% increase in wages, and the factory was closed. On February 7, 1916, the government decided to punish the strike by arrest, and send the workers to the front. From February 29 to March 3, 49 enterprises supported the Putilovites with strikes.
From spring to August 1916 against high prices and lack of food were thousands of workers (Moscow, Kostroma, Tver, Nizhny Novgorod, Voronezh provinces).
In October 1916 there were 119 political strikes in Petrograd.
On November 5, 1916, in Samara, in the bazaar, the police forcefully quelled the revolt of women. On November 12, the workers of Samara sent a letter to the Duma against the "execution of the hungry wives of the Samara poor." In 1916, the "woman riots of soldiers" were growing throughout the country.
In 1916 there were 252 political strikes in Russia (in 1915 - 355) and 273,000 strikers (in 1915 - 165). In 1916, the geography of the protest also expanded.
On January 9-13, 1917, 214 strikes marked Bloody Sunday. In Petrograd, 145,000 workers were on strike; in Moscow, 36,000. There were strikes in 12 other cities.
From September 1916 to February, three-quarters of the strikes in Petrograd were political.
From July 19, 1914 to February 22, 1917, 52 political demonstrations took place in Russia in the "classical form" (red flags, banners, slogans, singing revolutionary songs): in 1914 - 3; in 1915 - 11; in 1916 - 20; at the beginning of 1917 - 18.
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February
On February 14, the Duma resumed its work, and at the demonstrations they carried the slogans “Down with the war!”, “Down with the government!”, “Long live the second revolution!”, “Long live the republic!” In Moscow, 12,500 workers from 16 enterprises went on strike that day.
On February 17, the workers of one of the workshops of the Putilov factory went on strike. They demanded higher wages and the reinstatement of those laid off. Other departments have joined them.
On February 22, the Putilov factory declared a lockout, and all of its 36,000 workers stopped work and called on other workers for solidarity.
On February 23, on International Women's Day, Petrograd workers protested against high prices, queues, and the lack of bread in bakeries. Anti-war speeches were heard in the textile factories in the morning, then the workers quit their jobs and went to call the workers of neighboring factories to join. Then together they gathered other workers. Revolutionary songs were sung along the way, trams were disabled, police officers were attacked, bakeries and food stores were smashed. According to the police, on February 23, 87,534 people were on strike at 50 enterprises. More often they demanded: “Bread!”
On the morning of February 24, the workers came to the workshops, but after the meetings they again went out into the street. 200 thousand people were on strike. Clashes with the police increased. Calls against the war and the government multiplied. The students joined the workers.
On February 25, 300,000 people went on strike. Craftsmen, employees, and the intelligentsia joined the protest. The police walked the streets only in groups. Slogans against the war and the government, for the eight-hour working day, for the republic and the Constituent Assembly prevailed. The people seized Nevsky Prospekt. They began to say that a revolution was underway.
February 26, Sunday, the number of strikers remained. The police fired into the crowd, especially on Nevsky Prospekt. But the crowd dispersed to gather when the shooting died down. The destruction of police stations began. Unrest broke out in the garrison.
On February 27, all workers in Petrograd took to the streets. In the morning the soldiers were called to join, and in the afternoon the soldiers left the barracks. There were armed clashes with the police, police stations were set on fire, and political prisoners were released from prison. One policeman reported that he had heard from a cab driver: “Tomorrow the cab drivers will not constantly carry the public, but will only carry the leaders of the riots.”
On the night of February 28, at the Sestroretsk Arms Plant, workers seized 15,000 rifles and 190,000 cartridges from the warehouse. During the days of the February Revolution, the workers of Petrograd took up to 40,000 rifles and 30,000 revolvers from military arsenals.
Economy after February
In 1917, industrial production in Russia fell by a third. The equipment was worn out. The shortage of fuel and metal aggravated. The smelting of iron and steel, coal mining, and the production of machinery were declining. In March, 150 million poods of coal were mined in the Donbass, 119 in July, and 110 in September. Oil production in the Baku region fell from 24.8 million poods in January to 18.9 million poods in November. In the ferrous metallurgy, 42 blast furnaces were operating in the spring, and 33 by the end of October. The production of non-military goods dropped even more. The production of fabrics in 1913 decreased by 4 times compared to 1913. Fuel starvation hit transport: average daily loading per railway in January-September fell to 19,500 wagons - this is 22% less than in 1916. Wagons and steam locomotives were out of order, and there was nothing to replace them. Conscription to the army reduced the quality of work: the output of women, adolescents and prisoners of war (a third of the workers of the Donbass and the Urals) was half the average. Finances were upset: the bankers of England and France reduced loans, the Freedom Loan did not sell, and the government printed money that was not backed by goods: in April - 476 million rubles, in September - almost 2 billion rubles.
The state debt of Russia (as of January 1): 1914 - 8.8 billion rubles, 1915 - 10.5, 1916 - 18.9, 1917 - 33.6. By July 1, 1917, the state debt reached 43.9 billion rubles.
The collapse of the economy reduced the number of workers. Without supplies and loans, enterprises closed. From March to October, 799 plants, factories, mines, mines were closed. Often the owners stopped the enterprises in order to dismiss demanding workers.
Food delivery has deteriorated. The provisional government introduced a grain monopoly, but did not provide a surplus appropriation. More than half of the surplus grain was hidden by speculators. By October, grain procurements had fallen even further, and the workers were malnourished. The rise in prices outpaced the rise in wages. According to the Moscow Labor Exchange, from February to October, the average salary increased by 53%, prices for essential goods - by 112 (for rye bread - by 150, for potatoes - by 175, for clothes and shoes - by 170).
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1917, end of February. Petrograd. Workers, soldiers and sailors
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March
After February, the workers believed that the revolution should raise their standard of living, that they should "live as it is worthy of a working and free citizen."
First of all, the workers destroyed the “black lists” of those inclined to protest. At the Thornton factory, they burned the personnel department file - the director assured that there was no political sense there, but the workers saw marks on English language and did not believe.
On March 3, a meeting of workers in the Vyborg District called on the Soviet to overthrow the Provisional Government and declare itself the "Provisional Revolutionary Government".
On March 4, many Petrograd workers went on strike in order to return to the machines only if they fulfill their demands: an eight-hour working day, removal of the administration, elective management of the plant, higher wages, etc.
On March 10, the Soviet and the Petrograd Society of Manufacturers and Breeders agreed to allow an eight-hour working day and factory committees. It was said that the owners recognized the factory committees in order to mitigate extreme requests with their help.
The workers elected enterprise committees (factory committees, factory committees, factory committees, factory committees) at a general meeting. The main tasks of the FZK were: an eight-hour working day, higher wages, security of the enterprise, supply, cleaning of administration personnel (meetings of workers decided who to fire, and kicked out those who were rude, denounced, interfered with gathering, did not cope with the case). The factory committees created detachments of workers' militia to guard the factory and meetings. Later, the FZK gathered councils: district, city, etc.
On March 16, after a meeting of entrepreneurs with the Minister of Trade and Industry, the government postponed the introduction of an eight-hour working day until the Constituent Assembly. The employers said that this was not a question of agreement with the workers, but a matter of state. But from March to October, an eight-hour working day was introduced at most of the country's enterprises, more often on an “immediate order”: work was interrupted after eight hours.
In March, 74 enterprises were closed in the country. 50,000 workers were laid off in the Moscow industrial region. Therefore, the workers began to fear a lockout and interfere in management: they guarded the property of the plant, monitored production, supply, and export of products. At state-owned enterprises, workers tried to manage production.
At the Izhora Plant, a Council of Workers of 50 people was elected, including 6 engineers, and they removed the head of the plant, Admiral Voskresensky, and ruled for several days, until they realized that they could not cope, and returned the former power to the plant.
Cases of arrest and removal by workers of the administration of the enterprise (data of the Provisional Government for the country, 1917): in March - 59, in April - 5, in May - 0, in June - 4, in July - 5, in August - 17, in September - 21, in October - 16.
In the revolution, the workers had three main demands: 1) "bread" (increase in wages), 2) rights (improvement of working conditions) and 3) power (participation in enterprise management) -
1) In March, the workers achieved an increase in wages (up to 50%) and labor rates. They were also paid for “the days of the revolution until March 7” (when they were not at work). At the same time, they demanded: to issue a salary every two weeks; increase overtime pay; abolish piecework; set a minimum wage; sell defective products to workers at cost; supply the enterprise with food; impose taxes on capital and war profits, so that these funds go to the needs of the workers.
2) The first requirements for working conditions: an eight-hour working day, the destruction of "black books", the abolition of fines, the abolition of searches, the courtesy of the administration, the appeal to workers "on you", labor insurance, mutual funds, medical assistance, the right to assemble without permission and participation administration, the right to strike, rallies, issue of leaflets and newspapers, education and recreation, the right to dismiss the chief for cruelty, insults, abuse and arbitrary punishment, the dismissal of unwanted employees, the arming of workers for self-defense, the creation of a workers' militia and the Red Guard.
3) Governance requirements: election of governors; protection of the enterprise and its property; participation in the adoption of norms and prices; participation in the supply of raw materials and fuel; control of workers over production, distribution, order, finance, hiring and firing; the right to remove the administration; the right to create factory committees; the right of the factory committee to represent the workers before the administration, the employers and the government.
In March, workers secured pay increases and better conditions labor, but their attempts to manage the owners regarded as an attack on property, and the workers, in turn, saw the rebuff of employers as a threat - and so the struggle for an agreement on the rights and property of workers and entrepreneurs unfolded. Both sides often did not concede, and much depended on the other parties: the authorities (government) and society (parties) ...
After February, the number of strikes fell: from March to June, 347 strikes were counted in the country, and 153,974 workers went on strike, an average of 4 times less than in January and February.
April
In March-April, about 30 trade unions arose in Petrograd (they number 200,000 people).
The committee of the Putilov factory declared: "The workers are preparing for the time when private ownership of factories and plants will be abolished, and the instruments of production, together with the buildings erected by the hands of the workers, will pass into the hands of the working class."
A meeting of 5,000 workers and soldiers on the Vyborg side unanimously decided to impose a tax on capital and arm the workers. In many factories, workers denounced the Liberty Loan as taking money from the poor and demanded a tax on war profits.
The government began to prepare "unloading": the export of factories in Petrograd inland.
The workers said they would be fired under the pretext of a shortage of raw materials and fuel.
At a number of state-owned enterprises, the workers decided that they belonged to the people, and defended their participation in management, but by mid-April, after failed attempts govern were limited to "control" of the administration.
On the Admiralteisky shipyard the workers gave the factory committee the right to control, including concern for the composition of the administration, equipment, the progress of orders and finances. On March 15, the factory committee was instructed to purchase more tools and metal for the factory. But two weeks later, the factory committee decided to confine itself to supervision and the right to remove management employees. On April 7, at a general meeting, the workers abolished the election of administrative staff.
On April 15, the conference of state enterprises of Petrograd adopted a regulation on factory committees: “Unwilling to take responsibility for the technical and administrative organization of production in these conditions until the social economy is completely socialized, representatives of the general factory committee enter the factory management with only an advisory vote.”
From mid-April, the workers demanded that the state manage the economy, because "workers' control leads to state control." Lenin wrote about this in the April Theses: "Not the 'introduction' of socialism as our immediate task, but the transition immediately only to control by the S. R. D. over social production and distribution of products."
The April conference of the RSDLP(b) put forward its demands: the nationalization of banks and a number of enterprises (oil, metallurgy, coal, sugar, transport); workers' control over production and distribution; proper exchange between city and countryside (cooperatives plus food committees); proper distribution of labor in production; abolition of trade secrets; fight against lockouts.
Entrepreneurs complained that the demands of workers reduced labor productivity, and the Petrograd Society of Manufacturers and Breeders conducted a survey. According to the survey, on April 10-15, out of 34 owners of mechanical plants, 10 indicated that labor productivity increased or did not change; 15 noted its decline due to lack of raw materials and fuel, 9 attributed the decline in productivity to an eight-hour working day.
On April 20-21, workers were killed in clashes with the crowd, and the factory committees began to strengthen the Red Guard. On April 22, the factory committee of the Optical-Mechanical Plant decided to arm the workers, and the general meeting worked out the charter of the Red Guard (published on April 28 in Izvestia).
On April 22, the general meeting of the Skorokhod shoe factory asked the Soviet for 500 rifles and 500 revolvers for the Red Guard: "Then they won't tear up the red flags."
On April 23, the law of the Provisional Government limited the rights of working committees: these rights "are discussed at a joint meeting of the committee and representatives of the administration of the institution and are established by mutual agreement of both parties." The law caused conflicts: in many enterprises, workers created their own rules and instructions.
On April 28, in the Duma of Petrograd, a conference on the creation of the Red Guard gathered 158 delegates from 90 enterprises employing 170,000 people. We decided to suspend the creation of the urban Red Guard, but not to abandon it locally.
In March-April in Russia, workers won 64 out of 70 strikes for higher wages.
In the provinces the strikes grew more slowly than in the big centres. In the Urals, only 4 strikes were counted in March-April, and 200 in July-October.
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1917. Petrograd. Workers and employees of the Mint celebrate May 1
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May
In early May, prices rose, and workers went on strike more, especially in the provinces - Donbass stood out. An outbreak of strikes took place in the Urals: there, workers complained about downtime, working and living conditions, harassment, and during the strikes they sometimes disabled machines, beat up representatives of the administration, seized land and forests.
Owners began to sell enterprises more often or reduce production. The Novoye Vremya newspaper wrote that they were selling factories and sending capital abroad to move there, according to the proverb: "Where my treasure is, there is my heart." In Petrograd, the trade union of textile workers found out that industrialists were closing accounts and exporting goods, raw materials and parts of machine tools to Finland, and at a number of factories the working week was reduced. At one factory, the administration promised to cut production due to a shortage of cotton, but the factory's raw materials were loaded onto barges and taken away. It was also reported that the British breeder Munken went to Finland allegedly to buy coils, but ended up in England, where his partners and managers caught up with him - before that they had emptied the safe of the enterprise.
In this regard, it was said that the breeders made concessions in order to wait out the pressure of the workers, and then return everything, and were slow to fulfill their promises, fired the instigators, disrupted production, hid and removed materials, withdrew finances and stopped or closed factories. There were cases when the owners set fire to their enterprises.
The Commercial and Industrial Newspaper revealed that since April 54 out of 75 enterprises have been closed under the pretext of unnecessary requests from workers for wages, 21 due to supplies. The newspaper The Day concluded: "While in some cases these closures were motivated by a shortage of raw materials, in many others the aim was to intimidate the workers and the Provisional Government."
Rabochaya Gazeta wrote: “Factories are not being repaired, worn out parts are not being replaced with new ones, stocks of raw materials and coal are not renewed, work is carried out carelessly. Entrepreneurs ... reduce production, count on workers under the pretext of a lack of metal, coal, lack of orders, competition of imports.
Journalist John Reid said: “The secretary of the Petrograd department of the Kadet party told me that the economic ruin was part of a campaign to discredit the revolution. One Allied diplomat, whose name I gave my word not to mention, confirmed this on the basis of his own information. I know some coal mines near Kharkov, which were set on fire or flooded by the owners, Moscow textile factories, where engineers, quitting their jobs, rendered machines unusable, railway employees caught by workers at the moment when they put the locomotives out of action ... "(" Ten Days That Shook the World.
In mid-May, the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet adopted a plan for state regulation of production, distribution and finance. But two days later, Minister of Trade and Industry Konovalov resigned over the plan. At the Congress of Military-Industrial Committees, he denounced the "exorbitant demands of the workers" and warned that "we will witness the closure of tens and hundreds of enterprises." Industrialists rejected state regulation of the economy. In addition, the societies of manufacturers and factory owners of Petrograd and Moscow called on Russian entrepreneurs to rebuff "the interference of factory committees in the affairs of enterprises."
In May, the movement for workers' control grew stronger. The workers sought protection from the crisis, but still rarely demanded administrative oversight and access to documents. The Petrosoviet studied “cases of control” in May-June at 84 enterprises and found that in 24.5% of cases control affected production, in 8.7% - finances and sales, in 24.6% - working conditions, in 24.1 % - hiring and firing, 7.5% - security of the enterprise. The workers declared all these questions to be the work of factory committees, part of the "democratization of factory life."
On May 29, a conference of factory committees in Kharkov proposed instructions for factory committees, which were then used at many enterprises in the country. Factory committees took over the protection and productivity of labor, control "over all parts of production."
Petrograd - 568 delegates from 367 enterprises, where 337 thousand people worked.
Before the conference, the workers convened a meeting on fuel and raw materials, and many sent delegations to the Donbass and other regions to find raw materials and fuel and expedite their delivery - the factory committees saved the factories themselves: they sent messengers for fuel, took it on credit, checked warehouses and places its production, road junctions where supplies could be delayed, negotiated with officials about orders and finances - and found oil, coal, orders and money. But at the conference, Lenin reproached the factory committees for the fact that instead of fighting for rights, like "errand boys", they were looking for fuel and orders for the capitalists.
From speeches at the First Conference of Factory Committees:
The factory committee of the Rosenkranz copper-rolling plant: “The first steps of the committee were the struggle to improve labor rates, which was achieved ... The plant was very unsatisfactorily provided with fuel, and only a trip to the south by a representative of the factory committee managed to set things right ... On the other hand, whole deposits of finished orders were formed, which the customers refused to accept. The factory committee took over the settlement of this matter ... The lack of bricks was observed to stop the furnaces in the foundry, and only thanks to the intervention of the committee it was possible to get the necessary.
Delegate from the Benois plant: “The owner announced that there is no money and throws out 500 people ... From the digital data it is clear that production is growing, but the entrepreneur has no money.”
Worker Naumov: “Control is not yet socialism and not even taking production into one's own hands, but this is already going beyond the framework of the bourgeois system. We are not proposing to introduce socialism, no, but having taken power into our own hands, we must lead capitalism along the channel along which it would have outlived itself.”
June
In the first six months, the number of workers in the country grew by 12%, but then unemployment rose.
On June 1 and 2, the All-Russian Congress of Representatives of Trade and Industry rejected state regulation of the economy. P.P. Ryabushinsky, a banker and industrialist, explained: “In Europe, the state ... receives full control, to which we do not object. But we are afraid that such control is not possible in Russia… as long as our government itself continues to be in a position of control.” It was said at the congress that the participation of the state in production was helping the workers to the detriment of the cause.
In early June, at the First Conference of the Petrograd FLC, worker Zhivotov said that the sabotage by industrialists in the Donbass and in the textile industry indicated that the bourgeoisie was ready to cause “hunger riots and anarchy, and then declare a dictatorship and with the help of military force deal with anarchy, and at the same time with the revolution. In the same place, the delegate Zeitlin called for the management of production: "Factory committees should inspect closing factories in order to adapt them for other purposes."
In June, the rise in prices exceeded the rise in wages in March, and workers demanded a raise.
On June 8, the workshops of the Putilov factory went on strike. On April 19, the director of the plant confirmed the new labor rates, but later the board of directors canceled the bonus. The plant committee appealed to the ministries (the plant was under state control), but in vain. On June 13, Deputy Minister of Labor Gvozdev arrived at the plant and supported the workers. But the board of directors of the plant persuaded him to postpone the measures until the tariff agreement of the trade union with the society of manufacturers. Then the Putilovites decided to go on strike and arm themselves. On June 18, they demonstrated with a banner: “We were deceived! Comrades, get ready for the fight!”
In June the workers began to struggle against the plan to "unload" Petrograd. The authorities declared the need for close raw materials and food as the reason for the transfer of enterprises to the province.
From the decision of the rally of 700 workers of the Kozhevnikov textile factory: “The factory owners and factory owners intend to unload part of the revolutionary proletariat behind the Urals ...”. At another meeting, it was proposed to "unload the city not from workers, but from stock exchange dealers, officials and others idly wandering along Nevsky Prospekt."
The collapse of transport was against “unloading”: the removal of factories required 200 thousand wagons, and they said that it was cheaper to transport raw materials and fuel to enterprises, and not vice versa. The breeders did not name the date for launching production at the new location and assured that they would not be in time until January 1919. Due to the rebuff of the workers, the government delayed the unloading.
In June workers' control became an instrument in the struggle for power in the enterprise.
On June 2, the director of the Langezipen plant announced the closure of the enterprise. He said that production had fallen by a third, losses of 10 million from government orders and no money, and all this from an eight-hour working day, rising prices and a shortage of fuel and raw materials. At the request of the workers of the Central Council, the factory committees established that for short term The plant has changed owners three times. When they found out, the director said that he had borrowed 450 thousand from a friend and would start production. But on June 5, the factory committee introduced its own control: it announced that in order to send products, raw materials and materials from the factory, its consent was needed and its orders were binding on everyone, and the order of the administration needed the sanction of the factory committee.
The Izvestia newspaper said that the Central Council of the factory committees received complaints about the closure of enterprises by the owners, allegedly due to losses and lack of funds, but during the check they often revealed cunning "capitalists' machinations aimed at lockout."
Workers began to introduce their control more often in order to save jobs. But even if they seized the enterprise, they did not declare themselves owners, but asked the government for help. The factory committees did not want to replace the administration.
At the end of May, Lebedev's plant administration rejected a demand for a pay rise, and the union urged the workers to take control of the plant, but the factory committee did not agree. On June 3, at a meeting of workers, the factory committee asked where they would get money for wages and whether the technical staff would obey them, and the workers refused to seize the plant.
On June 18, in Petrograd, Moscow, Minsk and other cities, workers carried slogans against the “capitalist ministers,” but the Minister of Labor warned them: “Comrade workers, remember not only your rights, not only your desires, but also the possibilities for their realization ... ".
On June 27, negotiations on a new collective agreement began in the textile industry, but two months dragged on. The industrialists rejected the union's demands. Two days passed in tough negotiations that the employers should give the workers boiling water for tea: the employers relented, but said that "only due to exceptional circumstances."
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(to be continued)
