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The Management of Labor Protest in Tsarist Russia: 1870–19051

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

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An autocratic regime undergoing industrialization either develops effective techniques to “manage” inevitable labor protest or sows the seeds of its own destruction. Its highly concentrated authority is incompatible with the accumulation of power within the mass movements which industrialization engenders or stirs into action. It must destroy or control them. This problem faced Tsarist Russia as it later faced Soviet Russia. In neither case were the rulers inclined to treat industrial disputes as a private affair between employers and workers and leave the solution in their hands. Yet, the two cases are radically different in methods and consequences. The modern totalitarian state directs and controls labor through worker mass organizations, by channelling the energy of the leaders and the enthusiasm of the followers into predetermined patterns. This method of control, which is essentially indirect and “from within”, contrasts sharply with the old-fashioned method of direct control “from the top down”, which aimed mainly at repressing rather than using labor organizations and at resolving industrial unrest partly through punishment and partly through more positive preventive measures.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1960

References

page 226 note 2 For a general statement of the problem of management of labor protest see Kerr, C., Harbison, F. H., Dunlop, J. T., and Myers, C. A., The Labor Problem in Economic Development, in: International Labour Review, LXXI, No. 3, (03 1955), 315.Google Scholar

page 226 note 3 On Russia see for instance Walkin, J., The Attitude of the Tsarist Government Toward the Labor Problem, in: American Slavic and East European Review, XIII (04 1954), 163184.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a comparison between Britain and Germany see Gaston, V. Rimlinger, The Legitimation of Protest: A Comparative Study in Labor History, in: Comparative Studies in Society and History I, II, No. 3, (04 1960), 329343.Google Scholar

page 227 note 1 The remaining workers were mainly in handicrafts and small shops not included in these categories. Data are computed from Pervaja Vseobščaja Perepis' Naselenija Rossijskoj Imperii, 1897Google Scholar (St., Petersburg: Ministry of the Interior, 1905), General Summary II, Table XXI, p. 296.Google Scholar

page 227 note 2 A., Rašsin, Formirovanie Rabočcego klassa Rossii (Moskva: Izdatel'stvo Sotsial'no-Ekonomičeskoj Literatury, 1958), pp. 3031.Google ScholarThe total number of hired “workers and servants” according to the 1897 census was 9, 153, 600.Google Scholaribid., p. 175.

page 227 note 3 See Walkin, loc. cit., p. 165.

page 227 note 4 Raˇsin, op.cit., Table 34, p. 98.

page 228 note 1 O., Goebel, Entwicklungsgang der russischen Industriearbeiter bis zur ersten Revolution (Leipzig: Teubner, 1920), p. 13.Google Scholar

page 228 note 2 On the character of dualistic economies see Boeke, J. H., Economics and Economic Policy of Dual Societies as Exemplified by Indonesia (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1953).Google Scholar

page 228 note 3 Seasonal factory workers in nine industrial areas for 1886–1893 were approximately 30 per cent of all workers, but the range was from about 11 per cent for the St. Petersburg area to 76 per cent for the Voronezh district. Rašin, op.cit. Table 136, p. 565.

page 228 note 4 Tugan-Baranowsky, M., Geschichte der russischen Fabrik (tr. by Minzes, B.; Berlin: E. Felber, 1900), pp. 519520.Google Scholar

page 228 note 5 Goebel reports that in two St. Petersburg factories 70 and 84 per cent of the workers had come from the village. Op.cit., p. 12.

page 228 note 6 Rašin, op.cit. Table 150, p. 593.

page 229 note 1 ibid., Table 145, p. 582.

page 229 note 2 ibid., p. 587.

page 229 note 3 S. and Webb, B., The History of Trade Unionism (new ed., London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1920), p. 44.Google Scholar

page 230 note 1 Mikulin, A. A., Očerki iz istorii primenenija zakona 3-go ijunja 1886 o najma rabočich (Vladimir: V. A. Larkov, 1893), Appendix No. 1, p. 9.Google Scholar

page 231 note 1 “In general it can be said that although a substantial group of St. Petersburg employers who are always prepared to do something for ‘their’ workers, on the other hand, will not tolerate even the least opposition. ‘Whoever disobeys is thrown out', that is their Leitmotiv.’ R. von, Ungern-Sternberg, Ueber die wirtschaftliche und rechtliche Lage der St. Petersburger Arbeiterschaft (Berlin: Puttkammer und Muehlbrecht, 1904), p. 73.Google Scholar

page 231 note 2 Quoted in Prokopovich, S. N., Krabočemu voprosu v Rossii (St. Petersburg: E. D. Kuskova, 1905), p. 49.Google Scholar

page 232 note 1 See for instance Portal, R., L'Oural au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Institut d'Etudes Slaves, 1950), pp. 283 ff.Google Scholar

page 232 note 2 Šelymagin, I. I., Fabrično-trudovoe zakonodatel'stvo v Rossii (Moscow: Juridičeskoe Izdatel'stvo, 1947), pp. 3031.Google Scholar Another amendment made collective resistance to the employer equivalent to an uprising against the state, punishable with 15 to 20 years' of hard laboi. But it does not seem that this statute was ever applied. In any case it was no longer part of the Penal Code in 1870, although there were occasional uninformed threats by officials to invoke it.

page 232 note 3 ibid., p. 49.

page 232 note 4 ibid., p. 113.

page 233 note 1 Pankratova, A.M. (ed.), Rabočee dvizenie v Rossii v XIX veke (Moskva: Gospolitizdat, 1952), III: i, No. 191.Google Scholar The six volumes under this title contain several thousand pages of documentary materials on Russian labor in the 19th century, collected by a team of researchers from the ministerial archives of the central government.

page 234 note 1 Šelymagin, op.cit., p. 113.

page 234 note 2 Professor Ozerov, I. Ch., a leading authority on labor problems, denounced Tsarist labor policy as “Tsirkuljarnaja Politika” (secret circulars policy) in his well-documented study entitled Politika po rabočemu voprosu v Rossii za poslednye gody (Moskva, 1906).Google Scholar

page 234 note 3 Pankratova, op.cit., II: i, No. 86, 242–243.

page 235 note 1 ibid., p. 619.

page 235 note 2 ibid.

page 235 note 3 ibid., Ill: i, No. 235, 649.

page 236 note 1 ibid., II: i, No. 10, 231.

page 236 note 2 ibid., III: i, No. 235,650.

page 236 note 3 Ozerov, op.cit., pp. 157ff.

page 237 note 1 N., KolossowDie Organisational der russischen Arbeiter, in: Die Neue Zeit, XVI: ii (18971898), 579.Google Scholar

page 238 note 1 Cf. Rimlinger, op.cit.

page 238 note 2 Turin, op.cit., pp. 188–189.

page 239 note 1 Arbeiterschutzgesetzgebung (Russland) in: Handwòrterbuch der Staatswissenschaften (4th ed., Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1923), I, 525.Google Scholar

page 240 note 1 Pankratova, op.cit., Ill: i, No. 15, 717–719.

page 240 note 2 A replica of the model pay-record book issued by the Vladimir provincial authorities is contained in Mikulin, op.cit., Appendix No. 1. The use of this kind of record did not originate with the law of 1886. Pay-books of various kinds were in use at least since the 1840's and in some areas were required by little observed laws before 1886.

page 240 note 3 For a description of strikes against the acceptance of the pay-books see Pankratova, op.cit., III: i, No. 200, 571–577.

page 241 note 1 Mikulin, op.cit., pp. 73–76.

page 241 note 2 Pankratova, op.cit., Ill: i, No. 21, 748–750.

page 241 note 3 ibid., No. 27, 754–755.

page 242 note 1 A steam-driven cotton spinning and weaving establishment in the Vladimir province employing between four and five thousand workers.

page 242 note 2 Pankratova, op.cit., III: ii, No. 27, 610–614

page 243 note 1 A directive of the Ministry of Finance of December 4, 1890 required that fines be distributed among workers in need instead of being left to the employer. This was in part an attempt to reduce excessive fines, but employers often managed to disguise fines by recording lower wages.

page 244 note 1 Pankratova, op.cit., III: ii, No. 215, 481.

page 245 note 1 ibid., II: i, No. 187, 547–550.

page 246 note 1 ibid., 548.

page 248 note 1 ibid., III: ii, No. 205, 473.