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Representing Workers and the Liberal Narrative of Modernity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

William G. Rosenberg
William G. Rosenberg*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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Extract

Although the complex role of language in structuring experience and behavior is now widely recognized as a central element of historical understanding, the multiple problems of “representation” as they relate to late imperial and early Soviet politics remain a source of confusion and controversy. In particular, the role of nonworkers in organizing and leading “workers’ parties” has raised appropriate doubts about the very integrity of labor politics in these years, as well as the ways both Soviet and western historians have conceived them. Impressive new efforts have consequently been made, stimulated as well by advances in European labor history, to locate “authentic” worker voices and movements, and to contrast this socially grounded authenticity either directly or by implication with the abstracted idealizations of putative worker leaderships.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , Summer 1996 , pp. 245 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1996

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References

I am very grateful for the thoughtful and critical comments given this essay by Laura Engelstein, Reginald Zelnik, Ziva Galili, Nikolai Smirnov, and other participants in the International Colloquium on Workers and the Intelligentsia in Russia in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries held in St. Petersburg, Russia, 11–16 June 1995, where an earlier version was presented.

1. Among the most recent contributions, see especially Wynn, Charters, Workers, Strikes and Pogroms: The Donbass-Dnepr Bend in Late Imperial Russia, 1870–1905 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Steinberg, Mark, Moral Communities: The Culture of Class Relations in the Russian Printing Industry, 1867–1907 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Weinberg, Robert, The Revolution of 1905 in Odessa: Blood on the Steps (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Hogan, Heather, Fórging Revolution: Metalworkers, Managers, and the State in St. Petersburg, 1890–1914 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; and Zelnik, Reginald, Law and Disorder on the Narova River: The Kreenholm Strike of 1872 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995)Google Scholar. Among the more interesting recent efforts in European labor history see esp. Rancière, Jacques, The Nights of Labor: The Workers’ Dream in Nineteenth-Century France, trans. Drury, J. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Reid, Donald, Paris Sewers and Sewermen: Realities and Representations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Downs, Laura L., Manufacturing Inequality: Gender Division in the French and British Metalworking Industries, 1914–1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; and the discussions in Berlanstein, Lenard R., ed., Rethinking Labor History: Essays in Discourse and Class Analysis (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

2. See, e.g., Timberlake, Charles, “The Concept of Liberalism in Russia,” in Timberlake, C., ed., Essays on Russian Liberalism (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1972), 18–41 Google Scholar.

3. A “classic” identification of two principal tendencies in Russian liberal outlooks is Karpovich, M., “Two Types of Russian Liberalism: Maklakov and Miliukov,” in Simmons, E.J., ed., Continuity and Change in Russian and Soviet Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955), 129–43Google Scholar. Liberal treatises illustrating these differences include, among others, Astrov, N. I., Vospominaniia (Paris: Y.M.C.A. Press, 1941)Google Scholar; Dolgorukov, P. D., Velikaia razrukha (Madrid, 1964)Google Scholar; Gessen, I. V., Iskaniia obshchestvennago ideala (Berlin: Slovo, 1922)Google Scholar; Izgoev, A. S., Russkoe obshchestvo i revoliutsiia (Moscow: Mamontov, 1910)Google Scholar; Kizevetter, A. A., Na rubezhe dvukh stoletii (Prague: Orbis, 1929)Google Scholar; Kokoshkin, F. F., Ob osnovaniiakh zhelatel'noi organizatsii narodnago predstavitel'stva v Rossii (Moscow: Lissnera, 1906)Google Scholar; Maklakov, V. A., Vlast’ i obshchestvennost’ na zakate staroi Rossii (Paris: Illiustrirovannaia Rossiia, 1936)Google Scholar; Mandel'shtam, M., 1905 god v politicheskikh protsessakh (Moscow, 1931)Google Scholar; Miliukov, P. N., Rossiia na perelome (Paris: Impr. Voltaire, 1927)Google Scholar, and Vospominaniia, 1859–1917 (New York: Chekhov, 1955); Nabokov, V. D., Rechi (St. Petersburg, 1907)Google Scholar; and Vinaver, M. M., Nedavnee (Paris: Impr. Voltaire, 1926)Google Scholar.

4. See, e.g., Pipes, R., Struve, Liberal on the Left (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), 155 Google Scholar.

5. Vestnik Partii Narodnoi Svobody [henceforth, VPNS], 1906, no. 4 (March 19): 201.

6. “Iz obshchestvennoi khroniki,” Vestnik Evropy, 1906, no. 6: 864–65 (unsigned).

7. See the discussion in Hogan, Forging Revolution, esp. chap. 8.

8. In an article in October 1905 on “the Workers’ Question in Baku,” for example, the editors of Novoe vremia wondered why industrialists could meet together, organize their associations, and formulate strategies for “dealing with workers” when labor did not have the same prerogatives. If workers could elect delegates for discussions in St. Petersburg, why could they not organize locally to press their needs? See Novoe vremia, 9(22) October, 10(23) October 1905. Commonly in this period and later, descriptions of labor protests included some discussion of the material deprivation that underlay the protests, a presentation that at least implicitly encouraged a sympathetic hearing for at least labor protests over wages, working conditions, and issues concerning personal dignity.

9. A long account in 1908 about meetings held by Petersburg workers on the question of commemorating Bloody Sunday, for example, detailed threats by the Society of Factory and Mill Owners to impose double fines, two-week suspensions, and other heavy sanctions. See Novoe vremia, 9(22) January 1908.

10. “Workers,” for example, had wives who joined them in demonstrations or supported their strikes, but never husbands; they were frequently drunk on their days off, which “troubled the mothers of their children,” but if they were sexually molested or harassed by their foremen, it did not seem to trouble their children's fathers. See, e.g., Novoe vremia, 9(22) January 1907.

11. One exception was the report of a Kadet committee studying the length of the working day in different industries, in which categorical differences were drawn. See VPNS, 1907, no. 13 (March 19).

12. Rechʹ, 3(16) May 1906.

13. Thus Novoe vremia described agitators at the Putilov works who “forced those who did not want to participate in their meeting to quit work by firing several shots at them.” In October 1905, it was the “dark forces,” rather than the “workers,” who were crying “down with the government”; “students and workers” clashed with “crowds“; striking railroaders who could “be fired at the whim of their supervisors” were “conducting themselves with dignity and order.” See Novoe vremia, 24 October (4 November), 14(27) December 1905.

14. Ibid., 14(27) December 1905.

15. On the railroads, “revolutionaries” were in “full control, robbing ticket sellers, interfering with goods and passengers … and holding court over people they [did] not like, sentencing them to death and immediately, without any hesitation, carrying out the sentence.” See, e.g., Russkiia vedomosti, 11 and 15 October 1905; Novoe vremia, 19 December 1905(1 January 1906).

16. Novoe vremia, 10(23) December 1905, 12(25) December 1905; 20 December 1905(2 January 1906).

17. Kizevetter, A. A., ed., Napadki na partiiu narodnoi svobody i vozrazheniia na nikh (Moscow, 1906), 93 Google Scholar; Rechi F. F. Kokoshkina (St. Petersburg, 1907), 39 (speech given 5 June 1906); Russkiia vedomosti, 11 October 1905.

18. Russkiia vedomosti, 28 October 1905.

19. Birzhevye vedomosti, 9 and 14 December 1905 (o.s.), as reprinted in P. Miliukov, God Bor'by (St. Petersburg, 1907), 174–76.

20. Russkiia vedomosti, 19 December 1905(1 January 1906).

21. VPNS, 1906, no. 2 (March 5): 65.

22. Novoe vremia, 3(16) June 1906.

23. Chevalier, Louis, Laboring Classes and Dangerous Classes in Paris during the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (New York: H. Fertig, 1973).Google Scholar

24. See, e.g., the attack by Aleksinskii, G., “O Konstitutsionno-demokraticheskoi partii,” Obrazovanie, 1906, no. 1: 69–89 Google Scholar.

25. GARF, f. 523, op. 3, d. 15, 11. 27–28 [Election appeals and other materials, 1905–07].

26. VPNS, 1906, no. 2 (March 5): 1.

27. VPNS, 1906, no. 10 (May 11).

28. GARF, f. 523, op. 1, d. 27, 1. 52 [Kadet Central Committee Protocols].

29. VPNS, 1906, nos. 33–34 (October 26): 1750.

30. Astrov, N. I., ed., Zakonodatel'nye proekty i predpolozheniia P.N.S. 1905–07 (St. Petersburg, 1907), xi–xix Google Scholar.

31. See Kizevetter, Napadki, 100; Central Committee Protocol no. 15, 19/20 February 1906, in GARF, f. 523, op. 1, d. 27, 1. 54.

32. GARF, f. 523, op. 1, d. 27, 1. 54

33. Ibid.

34. VPNS, 1906, no. 8 (February 22): 533; 1906, no. 10 (March 8): 668.

35. VPNS, 1906, no. 8 (February 22): 533–34; 1906, no. 10 (March 8): 668–69, 672.

36. GARF, f. 523, op. 3, d. 14, esp. 11. 7–10 [Theses and various reports]. In 1917, members of the labor commission formed by the Ministry of Trade and Industry would experience a similar claim to evenhandedness when employers demanded legislation legalizing their right to strike along with that of their workers.

37. “Programma Konstitutsionno-demokraticheskoi partii,” in Astrov, ed., Zakonodatel'nye proekty, xviii.

38. If the workday exceeded nine hours, a mininum “free break” of not less than one hour was also to be set, “depending on the conditions of production and general local circumstances” [v zavisimosti ot uslovii proizvodstva i voobshche ot mestnykh uslovii]. See VPNS, 1907, no. 10 (March 8): 675–76.

39. The commission also believed, however, that the generally depressed state of industrial production meant that the workday in many places would actually be much shorter even than eight hours. See VPNS, 1907, no. 13 (March 29): 832–33.

40. I. T., “Po povodu proekta zakona o prodolzhitel'nosti rabochago vremeni,” VPNS, 1907, no. 13 (March 29): 832.

41. VPNS, 1906, nos. 33–34 (October 26): 1750.

42. VPNS, 1907, no. 17 (May 3): 1098.

43. VPNS, 1907, no. 2 (January 11): 96–97.

44. VPNS, 1907, no. 5 (February 1): 293.

45. Protokoly Tsentral'nogo Komiteta Konstitutsionno-Demokraticheskoi Partii, 1905–1911 (Moscow, 1994), t.l, 148.

46. VPNS, 1907, no. 13 (March 29): 848.

47. GARF, f. 523, op. 2, d. 3 [Reports from provincial committees to the Central Committee]. D. I. Shakhovskoi, meanwhile, wanted his colleagues to support the creation of a ministry of labor as an institutional way of assuring that workers’ interests were met, rather than subsume them under the aegis of the Ministry of Trade and Industry (as, in fact, continued to be the case until 1917). See Protokoly Tsentral'nogo Komiteta, 168 (session of 29 October 1906).

48. Protokoly Tsentral'nogo Komiteta, 150 (session of 29 October 1906).

49. GARF, f. 523, op. 3, d. 15, 1. 93 [Kadet election materials].

50. GARF, f. 523, op. 3, d. 15, 1.17 [Kadet election materials]. Emphasis in original.

51. Smith, S. A., “Workers and Civil Rights in Tsarist Russia, 1899–1917,” in Crisp, O. and Edmondson, L., eds., Civil Rights in Imperial Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 145–70Google Scholar.

52. See, e.g., VPNS, 1907, nos. 33–34 (August 30): 1538ff.

53. Iordanskii, N., “Rabochaia programma i proekty rabochago zakonodatel'stva K. D. partiia,” VPNS, 1907, nos. 33–34 (August 30): 1537–40Google Scholar.

54. For example, in January 1908, according to Russkiia vedomosti, St. Petersburg workers demonstrated “very calmly” to mark the anniversary of Bloody Sunday in the face of provocations by the city authorities, despite losing their wages. Workers in large factories who stayed at their benches gave a portion of their earnings to support the unemployed. Similarly, the “fifteen to twenty thousand” Moscow workers who demonstrated on 1 May 1908 were “completely calm” and tried to avoid any direct confrontations with the police. See Russkiia vedomosti, 11(24) January 1908; Rech', 3(16) May 1908.

55. See, e.g., Malin, A., “Khronika: Stachki i usloviia truda russkikh rabochikh v 1910 godu,” Vestnik Evropy, 1912, no. 1: 292–98Google Scholar. Fines themselves, according to this author, were now averaging more than one-third of a worker's wages; and workers found themselves increasingly vulnerable as economic conditions made strikes an increasingly ineffective weapon.

56. See, e.g., Rech', 6(19), 7(20) April 1912; Vestnik Evropy, 1912, no. 9 (September): 432–34; Novoe vremia, 10(23) April 1912; Russkiia vedomosti, 8(21), 15(28) April 1912.

57. Rech', 7(20) April 1912.

58. Vestnik Evropy, 1912, no. 9 (September): 432–34.

59. Rech', 6(19), 7(20) April 1912.

60. Izgoev, A. S., “Letniia zabastovki,” Russkaia mysl', 1913, no. 8: 1–3 Google Scholar.

61. P. Miliukov, Political Memoirs 1905–1917, English edition, ed. A. Mendel (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967), 66.

62. Ibid.

63. Protokoly Tsentral'nogo Komiteta, 92ff. (session of 2 August 1906).

64. Ibid., 150 (session of 29 October 1906).

65. Ibid., 120 (session of 7 September 1906).

66. Ibid.

67. Ibid., 379 (session of 7 November 1909).

68. Ibid., 381. By 1912, and probably earlier, the Kadet leader himself was no longer a partisan of universal suffrage. The focus of the Central Committee in terms of the “vital social forces” turned entirely on the value and possibility of various electoral blocs. See, e.g., the discussions of 19 September 1911 et seq., Protokoly Tsentral'nogo Komiteta, 430–75.

69. Chuzheninov, A., “Russkoe rabochee dvizhenie,” Ezhegodnik gazety rech’na 1913 (St. Petersburg, 1913), 151–64Google Scholar.

70. Ibid., 153–57.

71. Ibid., 163–64.

72. See, esp., the discussions in the Central Committee on 11 March 1912: GARF, f. 523, op. 1, d. 30, 11. 151–57; 17 November 1912, 24 May 1913, and esp. 9 February 1914, GARF, f. 523, op. 1, d. 31, 11. 3–7, 59–68, 94–99.

73. “[The Duma fraction] will continue to struggle energetically against all attempts to take away from the working class and from the employees in ordinary trades those rights to which they are now entitled by law. We will use all of our power to broaden these rights, by means either of government legislation or by introducing legislation of our own … ” GARF, f. 523, op. 1, d. 30, 1. 168.

74. Indeed, in early 1914 Nekrasov took his colleagues in the Kadet Central Committee directly to task on this issue, arguing that even if one did not believe in the muscular fists of the proletariat (muskulistnye kulaki proletariata), it was impossible for Kadets to ignore the fact that Russian workers were an exceptionally active force. GARF, f. 523, op. 1, d. 31, 11. 104–5. (Central Committee session of 17 February 1914).

75. GARF, f. 523, op. 1, d. 16, 11. 9–11 and d. 31, 11. 104–9.

76. GARF, f. 523, op. 1, d. 31, 11. 105–6.

77. Izgoev, “Letniia zabastovki,” 2.

78. Chuzheninov, “Russkoe rabochee dvizhenie,” 159.

79. Ibid.

80. E.g., GARF, f. 523, op. 3, d. 14, 11. 4–5 and d. 15, 11. 28ff. [theses, reports, and various materials relating to Duma activities].

81. Astrov, ed., Zakonodatel'nye proekty, 28.

82. Ibid., 29–30.