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The Russian Social Insurance Movement, 1912–1914: An Ideological Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Sally Ewing
Sally Ewing*
Affiliation:
Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana
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Extract

Social historians have argued for three decades that the Russian Revolution was preeminently a workers’ revolution. Leopold Haimson was the first to propose, in an influential 1964 article, that workers themselves, and not, as the prevailing wisdom then held, Lenin and the Bolshevik party, prepared the way for the October Revolution. In this article, however, I will argue that in some instances ideological institutions had shaped the workers’ expectations.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , Winter 1991 , pp. 914 - 926
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Inc. 1991

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References

1. Haimson, Leopold, “The Problem of Social Stability in Urban Russia, 1905-1917,” part 1, Slavic Review 23 (1964): 619–642.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. Ibid., 626.

3. For the prewar period, see especially Bonnell, Victoria, Roots of Rebellion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983)Google Scholar, Swain, G. R., “Bolsheviks and Metal Workers on the Eve of the First World War,” Journal of Contemporary History 16(1981), 273–291 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Swain, G. R., Russian Social Democracy and the Legal Labour Movement, 1906-14 (London: Macmillan, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the later period, see Koenker, Diane, Moscow Workers and the 1917 Revolution (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981)Google Scholar, Mandel, David, The Petrograd Workers and the Fall of the Old Regime (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Mandel, David, The Petrograd Workers and the Soviet Seizure of Power (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

4. Haimson, “The Problem of Social Stability,” 639.

5. Ibid., 638.

6. Mandel argues, for example, “that the workers’ participation in the revolution was fundamentally a response to their own experience both in the factory and in the broader social setting. . . . The growth of support in the working class for the Bolsheviks was, thus, not the result of the party’s successful tapping of the workers’ irrational impulses but rather an expression of the growing correspondence between the letter’s aspirations and the party’s programme and strategy” (Mandel, Fall of the Old Regime, 3; my emphases). Koenker conceptualizes the process in similar terms: “The process by which the majority of workers identified their interests with the bolshevik party program was a product of rational, logical choices that corresponded to the changing political and economic nexus” (Koenker, Moscow Workers, 362; my emphasis).

7. Chistiakov, I., Strakhovanie rabochikh v Rossii (Moscow, 1912), 293 Google Scholar.

8. The Russians were working from the European model of the sickness kassa, where workers shared the responsibility for both financing and administering their kassy.

9. During the 1905 Revolution, social insurance demands figured prominently on workers’ petitions to the government and in contract negotiations with owners. See Chistiakov, Strakhovanie rabochikh, for a detailed analysis of those demands.

10. Danskii, B. G., “Ob izdanii i provedenu strakhovikh zakonov 23 iunia 1912 g.,” in Danskii, B. G. and Miliutin, B. T., Materialy po istorii sotsial’nogo strakhovaniia (Moscow: Istoricheskii Kommitet Tsusstrakha NKT SSSR, 1928), 6 Google Scholar.

11. Ibid.; Chistiakov, Strakhovanie, 288. On determination to scale back insurance see Roosa, Ruth Amende, “Workers’ Insurance Legislation and the Role of the Industrialists in the Period of the Third State Duma,” Russian Review 34 (October 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Pravda 166 (1912) in Bol’shevistskaia pechal’, vyp. Ill (Moscow: Vysshaia partiinaia shkola pri TsK KPSS, 1961), 261 Google ScholarPubMed.

12. Vishnevetskii, A. I., Razvitie zakonodatel’stva o sotsial’nom strakhovanii v Rossii, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1926), 27–28 Google Scholar.

13. Ibid., 35-37.

14. Strakhovanie rabochikh 2 (1913): 2.

15. Korbut, “Strakhovaia kampaniia po materialam departmenta politsii,” in Danskii and Miliutin, Materialy, 119.

16. Strakhovanie rabochikh 1 (1912): 3.

17. Lenin, , “Two Worlds,” in Collected Works (Moscow, 1963) 16:307 Google Scholar. Lenin identified the ideological front as central to the revolutionary struggle in What is to be Done. See The Lenin Anthology, ed. Tucker, Robert (New York: Norton, 1975), 23–31 Google Scholar. His characterization of German social democracy is on ibid. ,311.

18. Danskii, B. G., Rabochii ustav bol’nichnoi kassy (St. Petersburg, 1913), 7 Google Scholar.

19. Strakhovanie rabochikh 5 (1913): 19. Korbut, “Strakhovaia kampaniia,” 121. The Ministry of Trade and Industry also supported several owners’ societies when they produced their own, still more advantageous, owners’ charters (see Danskii, Rabochii ustav, 8-9).

20. Schwarz, Solomon, Sotsial’noe strakhovanie v Rossii v 1917-1919 godakh (New York: Russian Institute, Columbia University, 1968), 31 Google Scholar. Later in the campaign, the Bolsheviks published the workers’ charter of the Putilov Plant as an actual charter that should serve as the example for all other workers’ charters. Pravda truda 19 (1913), in Bol’shevistskaia pechať, 365.

21. Strakhovanie rabochikh 1 (1912): 13.

22. Schwarz, Sotsial’noe, 31.

23. Lenin, , Collected Works 17:478–479.Google Scholar

24. Strakhovanie rabochikh 11-12(1913): 18; Danskii, Rabochii ustav, 11; Schwarz, Sotsial’noe, 31.

25. Strakhovanie rabochikh 1 (1912): 11; 5 (1913): 23; Voprosy strakhovaniia 9 (1913), 8. For an account of strikes in Tver’ and Zaverets, in Petrokov province, see Schwarz, , Sotsial’noe, 39–40, and Strakhovanie rabochikh 6 (1913): 1 Google Scholar. See also Korbut, , “Strakhovye zakony 1912 goda i ikh prevedenie v Peterburge,” part 2, Krasnaia letopis’ 2 (1928): 108 Google Scholar. Boycotts were common in many cities, like Ekaterinburg, Smolensk, and Moscow. See, for example, Strakhovanie rabochikh 5 (1913): 21-27; Voprosy strakhovaniia 7(1913): 1. For boycotts among weavers and other “backward” professions, see Strakhovanie rabochikh 11-12 (1913): 40; Voprosy strakhovaniia 9 (1913): 8. When they were not boycotting, Moscow workers seem to have been especially apathetic, in part because the owners were so firmly in control, but their apathy also reinforced the owners’ initial advantage. See Strakhovanie rabochikh 5 (1913): 25; Voprosy strakhovaniia 1 (1913), in Bol’shevistskaia pechať, 557; Voprosy strakhovaniia 1 (1913): 5. Blank or invalid ballots are in Strakhovanie rabochikh 7 (1913): 27.

26. Korbut, , “Strakhovaia kampaniia,” 121. Strakhovanie rabochikh 7 (1913): 29 Google Scholar. As of September 1, the number of kassy being organized or already organized for some important regions were Petersburg district, 220 kassy (37.2%); Moscow district, 205 kassy (21.6%); Warsaw district, 201 kassy (38.1%); Kiev district, 298 kassy (61.3%); Povolzhe district, 140 kassy (48.6%); Khar’kov district, 230 kassy (43.0%). Strakhovanie Rabochikh 10 (1913): 30-31. Strakhovanie rabochikh 8 (1913): 26.

27. Strakhovanie rabochikh 8 (1913): 25, and 1 (1914): 8.

28. Osipov, G. I., “Strakhovaia kampaniia v Peterburge: rabota v pravleniiakh bol’nichnykh kass,” in Danskii, and Miliutin, , Materialy, 78—81 Google Scholar; Pireiko, A., “Strakhovaia kampaniia v Rige,” in Danskii, and Miliutin, , Materialy, 150.Google Scholar

29. Some of most common changes proposed by elected representatives were that the owners give up their rights, as stipulated in the model charter, to chair the kassa board meetings and that the kassa be allowed to hold general meetings for educational and other cultural activities, as well as to invite outside speakers to lecture to the insured. Strakhovanie rabochikh 6 (1913): 31-32; 11-12 (1913): 45; 8 (1913): 26. Korbut describes the insurance campaign in various regions as characterized by a sudden surge of activity, followed by a falling off of interest (“Strakhovaia kampaniia,” 139). For similar descriptions of the campaign, see Voprosy strakhovaniia 7 (1913): 1; Strakhovanie rabochikh 11-12 (1913): 39; Strakhovanie rabochikh 2 (1914): 14; and Strakhovanie rabochikh 1 (1915): 2-6.

30. For descriptions of how workers looked to Petersburg, see Strakhovanie rabochikh 5 (1913): 23, and 7 (1913): 25.

31. Strakhovanie rabochikh 7 (1913): 19. Silversmiths and goldsmiths were also well organized but less so than the printers; see Strakhovanie rabochikh 10 (1913): 27. The printers’ resolution and petition are in Strakhovanie rabochikh 11-12 (1913): 22, and 7 (1913): 19. The decision to postpone is also in Strakhovanie rabochikh 7 (1913): 19, and the same article claims that the government also postponed opening general kassy for factories with fewer than two hundred workers to avoid encouraging other workers to insist on territorial kassy. The September meeting and owners’ response are in Strakhovanie rabochikh 10 (1913): 26, and 11-12(1913): 22.

32. Strakhovanie rabochikh 7 (1913): 19; 8 (1913): 22; 9 (1913): 30; 10 (1913): 26; 6 (1913): 31.

33. Strakhovanie rabochikh 8 (1913): 10.

34. Strakhovanie rabochikh 7 (1913): 8.

35. Gramsci, Antonio, “The Study of Philosophy and Historical Materialism,” in The Modern Prince and Other Writings (New York: International, 1957), 64 Google Scholar.

36. Korbut, , “Strakhovye zakony 1912 goda i ikh provedenie v Peterburge,” part 1, Krasnaia letopis’ 1 (1928): 157–159.Google Scholar The refusal of factories to participate can also be found in Pravda, 29 December 1912, as quoted in Schwarz, Sotsial’noe, 29. The quotation is also in Schwarz, Sotsial’noe, 28.

37. Schwarz, Sotsial’noe, 28.

38. Swain reports that “by August and September the union was being flooded with requests for advice, and the advice the union gave in return was always the same—campaign for a general city fund” (Swain, Russian Social Democracy, 173).

39. Metallist 9 (1913): 10, 11-12.

40. Strakhovanie rabochikh 10 (1913): 29, and 11-12 (1913): 18. In November 1913 Bolsheviks were elected to the Putilov kassa board (Bonnell, Roots, 405).

41. Strakhovanie rabochikh 11-12(1913): 17.

42. Metallist 10 (1913): 10. By November 1913 eight of the thirty goldsmith and silversmith factories had joined the center (Voprosy strakhovaniia 6 [1913]: 9). Strakhovanie rabochikh 11-12 (1913): 22, 20.

43. Strakhovanie rabochikh 11-12(1912): 19.

44. Ibid. 7 (1914): 3.

45. Schwarz, Sotsial’noe, 34. This debate continued, with various revisions of the proposal’s wording, but the main difference was that between subordination to “organized Marxists,” by which was meant Prav-dists, and the “kassa collective.” For a discussion of the debate, see Schwarz, Sotsial’noe, 31-36, and Swain, Russian Social Democracy, 181-182.

46. For an account of the elections, see Osipov, “Strakhovaia kampaniia,” 86-89.

47. Ibid., 94.

48. Voprosy strakhovaniia 14-15 (1914), in Bol’’shevistskaia pechať, 551.

49. Strakhovanie rabochikh 7 (1914): 5-7.