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February 1917-]une 1918
David Mandel
Haymarket Books
Chicago, IL
The Petrograd Workers in the Russian Revolution
First published in 2017 by Brill Academic Publishers, The Netherlands © 2017 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
Published in paperback in 2018 by Haymarket Books
P.O. Box 180165
Chicago, IL 60618
773-583-7884
www.haymarketbooks.org
ISBN: 978-1-60846-006-9
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Cover design by Jamie Kerry and Ragina Johnson.
This book was published with the generous support of Lannan Foundation and the Wallace Action Fund.
Printed in the United States.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.
Leopold H. Haimson
(1927-2010)
my teacher and defender
Ivan Kupriyanovich Naumov (1895-1938)
Vyborg district worker, Bolshevik, Left Oppositionist to Stalinism
To the memories of
••
List of Tables and Maps XI
Glossary XIII
Introduction 1
1 Types of Political Culture in the Industrial Working Class of Petrograd 9
Skilled Workers 9
Unskilled Workers 26
The 'Worker Aristocracy' 38
The Generational Factor 46
2 The Social Composition of the Industrial Working Class of Petrograd and its Districts 52
The Social Composition of Petrograd's Districts 57
The Vyborg District 6i
Petergof and Narva Districts 64
Vasilevskii ostrov 65
Petrograd District 66
Moskovskaya zastava 67
Nevskii-Obukhovskii District 68
Kolomna District 68
Second City District 69
First City District 69
Rozhdestvenskii District 69
Okhta and Porokhovskii Districts 70
3 The Honeymoon Period - From the February to the April Days 71
The Labour Movement during the War 72
The February Revolution - The Birth of Dual Power 74
Attitudes Regarding State Power and the Relationship to Census Society 77
Dual Power in the Light of Attitudes before the Revolution 87 Why Dual Power? 95
Contents
VIII CONTENTS 4 The February Revolution in the Factories 102 The Eight-Hour Day 103 Wages 107 The Press Campaign against 'Worker Egoism' 112 Worker-Management Relations: 'Democratisation of Factory Life' 115 Purge of the Factory Administrations 117 The Factory Committees 121 5 From the April to the July Days 133 The April Days 133 The First Coalition Government 145 The Break with Census Society 148 The Underlying Causes of the Shift to Soviet Power 155 The Spectre of Counterrevolution 155 The 18june Military Offensive 162 Economic Regulation 165 6 The Struggle for Power in the Factories in April-June 182 7 The July Days 193 The Workers and the Menshevik-sR Soviet Majority 193 TheJulyDays 197 Reaction Unleashed 204 8 Rethinking the Revolution: Revolutionary Democracy or Proletarian Dictatorship? 217 Census Society on the Offensive 217 Final Rejection of 'Conciliationism' 226 The Question of 'Revolutionary Democracy' 239 9 From the Komilov Uprising to the Eve of October 254 The Kornilov Uprising 254 The Democratic Conference 265 Setting Course for Soviet Power 274 10 Class Struggle in the Factories - September-October 279 The Factory Committees under Attack 279 The Struggle for Production - Workers' Control Checked 281 From Workers' Control towards Workers' Management 290
Factory Committees under Pressure 'from Below' 293 The Struggle for Production and the Question of State Power 300 Quiet on the Wage Front 303
12 The October Revolution and the End of 'Revolutionary Democracy' 331 Workers' Attitudes towards the Insurrection 334
The Question of a 'Homogeneous Socialist Government' 348 Unity from Below 365
13 The Constituent Assembly and the Emergence of a Worker Opposition 371 The Elections 371
Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly 380
The Chernorabochie and the Upsurge of Anarchist Influence 388
The Lines Harden 393
14 The October Revolution in the Factories 398 'Active' or 'Passive' Control? 398 Towards Nationalisation 412 Management in Nationalised Enterprises 420
15 Summon Up Every Last Ounce of Strength or Accept Defeat! 428
Dispersal of Petrograd's Working Class 428 The 'Obscene Peace' 434
The Rise and Failure of the Opposition 440
Conclusion 474
Bibliography 485
Index of Names and Subjects 494
CONTENTS IX
11
On the Eve 307
List of Tables and Maps
Tables
i.1 Literacy among industrial workers in European Russia by industry, August 1918 10
i.2 Average monthly wage of Petrograd workers by industry, in current rubles, 1913 and 1916 16
i.3 Literacy among women textile workers, metalworkers, and all industrial workers, by age, August 1918 28
i.4 Participation in economic and political strikes in 1914, metalworking and textile sectors in European Russia 34
1.5 Literacy among Petrograd metalworkers, by age and sex, in early 1918 48
2.1 Distribution and average concentration of Petrograd workers by industry, ijanuary 1917 53
2.2 Change in the number of workers employed in Petrograd, by industry, between ijanuary 1914 and ijanuary 1917 53
2.3 Changes in number of industrial workers in Petrograd, by age and sex, 1914-17 55
2.4 Distribution of industrial workers and metalworkers by district, ijanuary 1917 61
2.5 Industrial workers employed in districts as percentage of total district population 62
2.6 Social background of identified Bolshevik district committee members March-June 1917 66
5.1 Petrograd district duma election returns (number of votes cast) 152
8.1 Returns in Petrograd elections to district Dumas (27 May-5june), to the city Duma (20 August), and to the Constituent Assembly (12-14 November 1917) (number of votes cast, in i,ooos) 227
8.2 Breakdown by districts of Petrograd Duma election returns, 20 August 1917 (percent of total district vote) 228
13.1 Constituent Assembly election results in Petrograd by district (as percentage of the total vote in the district) 372
13.2 Breakdown by district of returns in elections in Petrograd district Dumas (27 May-5June), Central Duma (20 August) to the Constituent Assembly (12-14 November 1917) (percentage of the total district vote) 373
15.1 Employed industrial workers in Petrograd and Vicinity, 1january 1917-1September1918 429
15.2 Changes in sectorial distribution of industrial workers of Petrograd and Vicinity, 1january 1917-1September1918 431
15.3 Party affiliation of deputies elected to the Petrograd Soviet from operating factories 18-24june 1918 464
2.1 The districts of Petrograd in 1917 60
XII LIST OF TABLES AND MAPS
Map
Glossary
census society- the propertied classes (landed aristocracy and bourgeoisie)
defencists - socialists who argued that as a result of the February Revolution the war on Russia's part had ceased to be imperialist and that the people had a duty to support the military efforts of the Provisional Government against German imperialism
internationalists - socialists who argued that the war being waged by the Provisional Government remained imperialist and should be opposed; included Bolsheviks, Menshevik-Internationalists and Left SRS
Kadet party - Constitutional Democrats, liberal party
PSFMO - Petrograd Society of Factory and Mill Owners
revolutionary democracy (or democracy) - the workers, peasants and soldiers, as well as the members of the intelligentsia who identified with them; for all practical purposes, the constituency of the socialist parties
sRs - Social Revolutionaries - Russia's peasant party, successor to the nineteenthcentury populists; in the autumn of 1917 the Left SRS (internationalists) officially broke off to form a separate party
Sovnarkhoz - regional Council of National Economy, established by a decree of 23 December 1917
Sovnarkom - Council of People's Commissars, the Soviet government elected by the Second Congress of Soviets in October, responsible to the TsIK and ultimately the Congress of Soviets
State Duma - Russia's parliament, established in 1906 as a result of the 1905 revolution with extremely limited powers and an unequal franchise strongly biased in favour of the propertied classes
TslK- All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, elected by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies
VSNKh - Supreme Council of National Economy, established in December 1917
Introduction
Few historical events arouse stronger political passions than revolutions, and no statement about the events in Russia in 1917 provokes more controversy than the claim that it was a proletarian revolution, a view that some historians have summarily relegated to 'the realm of revolutionary mythology'. 1 Yet, the present study of the workers of Petrograd, the heart of the revolution, supports the view that the Russian Revolution was, in fact, a workers' revolution.
Of course, so complex and multi-faceted an event cannot be reduced to any simple formula. The revolutions of 1917 were also, among other things, a soldiers' mutiny, a peasant uprising, a movement ofliberation of national minorities. Moreover, the overthrow of the monarchy in February was facilitated by the krizis verkhov, the disaffection of the propertied classes, which had ripened towards the end of 1916 and embraced even the most conservative members of the dominant classes, represented by the United Nobility, 2 as well as significant sectors of the state bureaucracy and the military elite. While these privileged elements certainly did not desire a popular revolution, once it broke out, they were not prepared to join battle to save the deeply discredited Tsarist regime.
Despite these other dimensions of the revolution, the workers constituted the main force in the political struggle that culminated in the soviets' seizure of power in October. They provided the revolutionary movement with leadership, organisation and a disproportionate proportion of its active participants.
The aim of this book is to present a coherent account and analysis of the evolution of the attitudes and collective actions of the industrial workers of Petrograd in 1917 and in the first half of 1918, as they related to the major issues of the revolution: the war, the organisation of the economy, and the one question that subsumed all others - political power.
Too often historians of the revolution have left the workers at the margins of their accounts. When workers entered the picture, they were frequently portrayed as an elemental, anarchistic force that the Bolsheviks, the true authors and victors of October, were able to harness and manipulate for their own purposes. That version was promoted in particular by the Mensheviks following their defeat: the conscious, urbanised workers, they argued, had been diluted by the wartime influx into industry of peasants, a stikhiya, an elemental force, disoriented and politically illiterate, that drowned out the voice of the discip-
organisation of the big landed aristocracy formed in 1905.
I Keep i976, p. xiv. 2 An
lined, class-conscious workers. A similar view has sometimes been echoed in sociological literature on revolutions, presenting popular participation in them as irrational, little different, in fact, from the acts of lunatics and criminals. 3
Soviet historians, understandably, did not share that view. But they were obliged to emphasise the 'leading role of the party'. As a result, their analyses in their own way also tended to reduce the workers to objects, not of elemental instincts or demagogic propaganda, but of the party's 'leading role'. Their radicalisation in the course of 1917 was often presented as a lineal process, in the course of which the masses, aided by the party, overcame their initial illusions and errors. For example, their strong support for dual power and for the moderate socialists in the first months of 1917 was explained as the product of a 'petty bourgeois wave' that swept over the working class during the war, a curious echo of the Mensheviks' argument adduced to explain the workers' radicalism in the latter months of 1917.4 The possibility that support for dual power might have been a rational position from the workers' point of view in the early months of the revolution was not seriously entertained.
The evidence available to me when this study was originally undertaken convinced me that the workers' participation in the revolution is best understood in fundamentally rational terms, rather than as responses to alleged elemental drives or demagogic propaganda. Materials that have become available since that time have only reinforced that view. The present edition reproduces the original study with mostly minor changes, except for the final chapters that cover the post-October months and which have been expanded to include more considerable new materials. But the fundamental analysis and interpretation have not changed in any substantive way.
I argue in this book that the overwhelming support among workers for the Bolsheviks in October 1917 was based upon a reasonable understanding of their interests in the existing political and economic circumstances. In demanding that the soviets take power the workers were not moved by irresponsible Bolshevik promises of a socialist paradise just around the comer. (While the prospect of revolutions in the West did boost hope in the success of the October Revolution, it was not itself a primary motivating factor.) Nor did Bolshevik agitation make such extravagant promises. Instead, it presented Soviet power as the only alternative to counterrevolution. And if the workers agreed with that analysis, it was because it corresponded to reality that they experienced.
3 Johnson 1966, p. 152.
4 Sobolev 1973, p. 182.
2 INTRODUCTION
The workers' radicalisation in the course of 1917 was largely a defensive reaction to the threat posed by the propertied classes to the 'bourgeois-democratic' revolution of February. In that revolution, the workers' main goals had been the establishment of a democratic republic, an active peace policy aimed at bringing the war to a rapid and democratic conclusion, the introduction of the eight-hour workday, and land reform for the peasantry. The radicalisation of the workers' aims over the following months to include workers' control of the factories, state regulation of the national economy, and the transfer of power to the soviets, was a response to concrete problems they faced. In the end, it all came down to their realisation that defence of the revolution, still conceived in largely 'bourgeois-democratic' terms, demanded the exclusion of the propertied classes from influence on government policy. Hence, their support for soviet power, which meant a government of workers and peasants with no representation of the bourgeoisie and landowners.
Even so, most workers in October were not rushing to join battle. Most adopted a cautious, wait-and-see attitude, preferring to leave the initiative to others. For they had a quite sober understanding of what the transfer of power to the soviets meant: people who had spent their lives carrying out orders issued by others, would be assuming responsibility for running the state and the economy; and moreover, they would be doing so against the active, and no doubt armed, opposition of the propertied classes, who had the support of the vast majority of the intelligentsia, people with higher and specialised education. For that reason, the initiative in the October Revolution fell to the most determined section of the working class, members of the Bolshevik party or workers close to it. This was a stratum of workers whose class consciousness, whose sense of personal and class dignity, and whose aspiration to independence from the propertied classes had been forged over years of intense struggle against the autocracy and the industrialists.
But the other workers almost unanimously welcomed their initiative. And most continued to support Soviet power in the spring of 1918, despite the serious deterioration of their material situation and coercive measures against opposition protest adopted by the Soviet government. The alternative to Soviet power that the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries (sRS) were proposing- an all-class, 'all-national' (vsenarodnoe ), i.e. all-class government to be created by the Constituent Assembly, a government, so they argued, that could avert civil war, was indeed tempting. And yet most workers did not consider that option realistic. They saw the alternatives in the same way as the Bolsheviks: Soviet power and civil war imposed by the propertied classes or a victory of the counterrevolution.
It follows from the preceding that the evolution of the workers' politics in the period covered by this study is best understood against the background of
INTRODUCTION 3
the changing relations among the principal classes of Russian society. These relations are the basis of this study's periodisation.
The weeks between the February Revolution to the April crisis were the socalled 'honeymoon period' of the revolution, when a certain sense of national unity prevailed. But even though 'census society' (the propertied classes) had in the end rallied to the revolution, the workers, at least those who were not new arrivals to industry, had not forgotten the recent history of bitter opposition of the bourgeoisie to their aspirations. Hence, the soviet's conditional support for the liberal government and the establishment of 'dual power', understood by workers as the exercise of 'control' over the government.
In the months between the April crisis and the July Days, the old class polarisation broke through the veneer of national unity. A majority of the capital's workers came to suspect the employers of conducting a 'hidden lockout', of sabotaging production with the aim of creating mass unemployment in order to weaken the workers' movement. The government's decision to pursue the imperialist war further angered the workers. Meanwhile, the bourgeois press and politicians were speaking out with increasing boldness against the pernicious influence of the soviets on Russia's political life. A majority of workers reached the conclusion that dual power had failed and that the soviets had to directly assume power. The demand for transfer of power to the soviets meant just that: establishment of a 'democratic dictatorship' of workers and peasants, of 'revolutionary democracy' to the exclusion of the propertied classes from influence on state policy.
But matters took a tum for the worse in the July Days, when the Mensheviks and SRs, the moderate socialists who controlled the Central Executive Committee of Soviets (the TsIK) and who were now participating in a coalition provisional government with the liberals, supported repressive measures against the workers. Suddenly, the workers were made acutely aware of their situation: they faced an alliance of the propertied classes with that large part of 'revolutionary democracy' that supported the TsIK. That included most of the peasantry and the intelligentsia, and a large part of the workers and soldiers outside of the capital. The political situation seemed to have entered a dead-end, since the workers who wanted soviet power could not move forward without provoking a civil war within the ranks of the popular classes, something they did not want and they knew they could not win. The soviets, which until that time had been viewed as vehicles for realising the workers' aspirations, suddenly appeared as obstacles. Nevertheless, the workers' attachment to the soviets remained strong and they did not support Lenin's position, who called (at that time) to abandon the soviets as the future organs of popular power.
4 INTRODUCTION
By September 1917, the Bolsheviks had won majorities in the major urban soviets and garrisons, so that the fears of isolation subsided, though they remained very much in the workers' minds since the peasants' disillusionment with the SRS, their traditional party, was still far from complete. As for the intelligentsia, it was clear that it would be hostile to exclusion of the propertied classes from representation in the government. These political concerns, and the deepening economic crisis, made workers hesitate.
It was in this period, therefore, that the initiative shifted to the Bolshevik party, which included in its ranks the most determined elements of the working class. The working class of Petrograd was virtually unanimous in welcoming the October insurrection and the formation of a Soviet government. But most workers, including Bolsheviks, hoped that, now that the Rubicon had been crossed, it would be possible to restore the unity of revolutionary democracy. They overwhelmingly supported negotiations among all the socialist parties with a view to the formation of a coalition government. But when it became clear that the moderate socialists, the Mensheviks and SRS, would not participate in a government responsible solely to the soviets, that they continued to insist on inclusion, in one way or another, of representatives of the propertied classes, worker support for a coalition evaporated. In addition, their fear of isolation was assuaged when the Left SRs decided to join the Bolsheviks in a coalition government and when the peasant TsIKjoined with the workers' and soldiers' TsIK a few weeks later.
The workers' strong attachment to Soviet power also determined their paradoxical attitude to the Constituent Assembly, which met briefly on 9 January 1918: in their view, the sole legitimate function of the Assembly, a body elected by all the classes of Russian society, was to confer national legitimacy on Soviet power, a dictatorship of the toiling classes that excluded the bourgeoisie and landowners from power. When the election returns made clear that the Constituent Assembly would not support Soviet power, most workers lost interest in it. By all accounts, their participation in the protests against its dissolution was weak. And despite their severe economic problems of the following months, most workers remained convinced that Soviet power was the only real alternative to counterrevolution. And from the experience of the defeat of the Revolution of 1905-6, as well as the defeats of the revolutionary forces in Ukraine and Finland in early 1918, they had no trouble imagining what a victorious counterrevolution would mean.
In writing this book, I tried as far as possible to rely on materials emanating from workers in order to let them speak for themselves. I hoped, in that way, to lend more credence to my contention that the workers were 'conscious' political actors and that the working class as a whole was the central, creative
INTRODUCTION 5
force in the revolution. From that point of view, my most valuable sources were, obviously, statements made by workers as reported in meeting and conference protocols, letters to the press, press reports and memoirs.
In statements of delegates to conferences and workers' letters to the press, one is dealing mainly with the more literate and politically active workers. Nevertheless, they were workers in close contact with the factory masses. Some letters were collectively written and put to a vote at factory meetings. A. Buzinov, a Petrograd worker and member of the SR party, described in the following terms the relationship between worker agitators, the politically active workers, and the factory 'masses' in the years preceding the revolution:
The 'self-made' agitator said what was in the head of each person but for which the others, less developed workers, could not find expression in words. After each of his words, the workers could only exclaim: That's it! That's exactly what I wanted to say. 5
Another important source for workers' attitudes are, of course, elections to factory committees, district and central soviets, city and district dumas, union executives, and the Constituent Assembly.
A particularly abundant source for the period covered in this book are resolutions adopted at factory meetings, which were held frequently. The fact that parts of these resolutions might closely follow the wording of party documents limits their value as original formulations of worker attitudes. But several circumstances need to be kept in mind. First, this was a time of broad political freedom and, for the most part, of intense political interest among workers. The typical factory assembly began with a report on the 'current moment' or about a particular problem facing the factory's workers. The report was usually given by one of the delegates to the Soviet or by a member of the factory committee, but sometimes also by party activists from outside the factory. Following this, other points of view were presented by activists of the other parties, local workers or people from the outside. This was followed by a general discussion, often reported as 'lengthy' or 'heated'. The meeting secretaries rarely recorded this part of the meeting. But one can reasonably assume that the whole process left workers with a clear enough grasp of the issues and the different positions. At the conclusion of the discussion, the various party fractions presented their respective resolutions, and the one that gathered majority support would then be sent to the Soviet or to the press.
5 A Buzinov i930, p. 103.
6 INTRODUCTION
Many of the resolutions were clearly composed locally, even if they did reflect party positions. These were sometimes amended from the floor. In other cases, resolutions originated from the floor. Thus, while the resolutions were often written in more literary language, this should not be taken to mean they did not express the attitudes of ordinary workers. One should bear in mind that the relationship between leaders and rank-and-file in this period was far from one-sided. Workers frequently recalled their elected deputies from the city and district soviets and from the factory committees. Local leaders not only had to consider the mood of the rank and file but they were themselves often infected by it, even when it put them in conflict with their party. At the start of the July Days, local Bolsheviks ignored the party's position and led their workers in the demonstrations. In the weeks that followed, most Bolshevik workers refused to abandon the demand for soviet power, although the party had officially done so, albeit temporarily. In the days following the October Revolution, the Menshevik-Intemationalists complained that, while the workers were supporting their call for an all-socialist coalition government, they demanded that it be responsible exclusively to the soviets, a position that the Menshevik-Internationalists were firmly rejecting.
And resolutions adopted by worker meetings were taken seriously by contemporary observers as genuine expressions of their positions. In 1918, A.L. Popov, a Menshevik, published a book-length analysis of the workers' attitudes on the question of power based exclusively on resolutions of workers' meetings.6
Another important source of information on workers' attitudes are the 'reports from the field' that were a regular feature of worker conferences and party gatherings. Finally, press reports, some written by workers themselves, are an additional, important contemporary source.
Leaving aside contemporary materials, one comes to memoirs. The most valuable belong to workers and were written at or close to the time of the events. Of memoirs by non-workers, those of N.N. Sukhanov, an editor of the Menshevik-Intemationalist paper Novaya zhizn', are without doubt the most incisive, although he was more closely familiar with the higher political circles than with the factory rank and file. In the late 1920s under the sponsorship of Maksim Gorky, a series of factory histories was commissioned. They were soon terminated but resumed again in the late 1950s. These works, based on archival and memoir materials, are of very uneven value, but when used in conjunction with other sources can yield useful information.
6 AL. Popov 1918.
INTRODUCTION 7
I am well aware of the often partisan nature of the sources used in this book. This, of course, is a problem for any social scientist or historian. But it is especially serious when the subject is a revolution that profoundly divided society and, indeed, the world. I have tried to make allowance for this, pointing out the particular bias of the sources when I cite them. On major questions, I have not relied on any single kind of source.
I did not set out in this study to prove a theory, nor did I select the evidence with a view to validating a parti pris. My purpose was to shed light on the nature of the workers' participation in the revolution. I sought to do this on the basis of all the evidence available to me. Of course, it is impossible to write about important historical events, and especially one so controversial as the Russian Revolution, without having a point of view. I have not tried to conceal my sympathy for the workers and their struggles. Nevertheless, I have considered all the data that was available to me. A book that uses the terms 'proletarian' and 'capitalist' is not necessarily less scientific than one that prefers the terms 'worker' and 'entrepreneur', although it may violate the dubious norms of positivist social science.
8 INTRODUCTION
Types of Political Culture in the Industrial Working Class of Petrograd
Students the revolution have often approached workers as a homogeneous group, a practice that can yield a rather confused and sometimes contradictory picture of working-class politics. Among Petrograd's workers, one can, in fact, distinguish at least three different, major types of political culture. These coincide roughly with three different groups of workers: the largest part of the skilled workers, especially metalworkers employed in private factories; unskilled and semi-skilled labourers; and a sub-group of skilled workers, mainly printers but also workers with lengthy service in state-owned factories and workers in factories in the semi-rural outskirts of Petrograd, who sometimes owned their own houses and a plot of land. The cultural traits and orientations brought by these groups into the revolution filtered their perceptions and shaped their responses to events. An analysis of their political cultures is, therefore, a logical point of departure for an analysis of their politics in the revolutionary period.
Skilled Workers 1
john Reed referred to the Vyborg District as the 'Faubourg St-Antoine of Petrograd'.2 Such was its reputation, earned during the pre-war upsurge of labour militancy, that I.K. Naumov, recalling his arrival from Tula in 1915 as a young worker activist, was moved to write: 'To work in Piter - that is happiness. To work on the Vyborg Side - that is my longstanding dream'. 3
Statistics on the social and industrial composition of the district give some insight into the sources of this radicalism. Not only did this predominantly proletarian district have the largest concentration of factory workers of any
1 This section deals mainly with metalworkers, who in 1917 accounted for 60 percent of the industrial workforce and the large majority of the skilled workers. Apart from the printers (treated below in the section on the 'aristocracy'), the only other groups in which there was a significant stratum of skilled workers were wood- and needle-workers.
2 This popular district of Paris was the radical heart of the French Revolution.
3 I.K. Naumov 1933, p. 5.
TABLE i.1 Literacy among industrial workers in European Russia by industry, August 1918 Industry
SOURCE: BASED UPON A.G. RASHIN, FORMIROVANIE
RABOCHEGO KLASSA ROSSII (M., i958) P. 601.
district (18 percent of the capital's total industrial workforce), but fully 84 percent of its workers were employed in the metalworking industry. In fact, the number of metalworkers in the Vyborg District alone exceeded the total number of industrial workers in any of Petrograd's other districts.4
There were two main types of metalworking: machine construction, which involved much complex, skilled work; and more simple types of metalworking, including metallurgy, founding, pipe-and-wire making, munitions, and the like. In the Vyborg District, 15 of the 21 large factories were engaged in machineconstruction. Other districts in which metalworking predominated typically were dominated by one, sometimes two, giant factories that combined both types of production. The journal of the Metalworkers' Union described the giant Putilov Works in the following terms: 'This factory is a universal one, where metallurgy and machine construction are combined ... It is a plant with a high proportion of unskilled labourers ... Metallurgy in comparison with machine construction has an extraordinary percentage of unskilled labour'. 5
4 See Table 3.4.
5 Metallist, no. 3 (1917) p. 3. The relationship between skill and the type of production is indirectly confirmed by a comparison of the sex ratios of the respective work forces. In 1917,
10 CHAPTER 1
Percent literate workers
Machine-construction
Clothing Chemicals Woodworking Paper Food Leather and fur Cotton All industry 94.7 83.6 76.5 74.9 70.0 69.6 68.1 66.o 64.1 52.2 64.0
Printing
Metalworking
A sociological study of Moscow factory workers conducted in 1924 under the direction of E. Kabo concluded: 'In the worker milieu, skill, literacy and interest in socio-political questions go hand in hand. The greater the skill, the more frequent the attendance oflectures, circles, especially political ones, the greater the number of newspapers read'. 6 The 1918 industrial census, though based on a population smaller than that ofi917, also showed that the highest literacy rates were among workers in printing and machine construction, while the lowest rates were workers in the cotton industry, the least skilled (predominantly female) sector. (see Table 1.1.)
The cultural differences that set skilled workers apart from the unskilled were striking. When he began work as an adolescent in the forging shop of the Nevskii Ship- and Machine-Building Factory, a large mixed (metallurgy and machine-building) plant, A. Buzinov was struck by the cultural abyss separating the metalworkers at this factory from the workers of the nearby textile mills. But he soon became aware that within his own factory,
the workers of the engineering shop, the machinists and turners, looked down on me from above. I realised the humble position of the hot departments: the founding, rolling and forging shops. In these, I saw people of an uncouth and oafish nature, in both their bearing and their speech. Through their robust ruddiness, one could clearly distinguish in each individual face the coarse features which said that force, not mental agility, predominates in their work. I saw clearly that next to an experienced founder even a shabby machinist seemed an educated, thoughtful person. The machinist held his head higher, was more accurate and forceful in his speech. He could put in a dozen words, including a stinging bit of irony, where the foundry worker found time for only one, and even that would be of a rather simple type. With a machinist you automatically felt like talking about something general and not just about wages. In short, the worker of the engineering shop was no longer the semi-raw material of
In the 31 European provinces of Russia, there were on average 28.4 women workers for every 100 males in metalworking, but only 17.4 per 100 in machine construction. Female workers were almost invariably employed in unskilled work. A survey of the Petrograd metalworking industry found that the average skill level among males was 54.2 (on a scale of 1-100), whereas only 12.1 among women workers. Ekonomicheskoe polozhenie Rossii nakunune Velikoi Oktyabr'skoi Sotsialisticheskoi revofyutsii (henceforth cited as Ek. Pol.) (M.-L., 1957), vol. 1, pp. 43-4; D.A. Chugaev (ed.) 1967, p. 255.
6 E.A. Kabo 1928, p. i95.
TYPES OF POLITICAL CULTURE IN THE INDUSTRIAL WORKING CLASS 11
the founding and forging shops. Indeed, he seemed to have himself undergone the shaping action of the lathes and instruments. 7
Contemporary observers agreed on what set the more skilled workers apart: a more refined personal culture, greater facility with words and complex ideas, keener interest in broader socio-political issues, and more acute sense of dignity. 8
As Buzinov indicated, these traits had some relationship to the nature of skilled work itself, which was lighter, less routine, allowed for more autonomy and was more thought-demanding. The wage agreement concluded in July 1917 in the Petrograd metal industry described workers in the highest skill category as independently carrying out particularly complex, exact tasks, guided by drawings and using exact measuring instruments. Workers in category II carried out less complex tasks requiring less accuracy, but nevertheless a quite lengthy learning period and the ability to read drawings. Workers in category III did various uncomplicated but responsible tasks, as well as precise work in mass production that required the use of certain measuring instruments. Workers in category IV minded simple machines - lathes, presses, ovens, etc. This would include most work in ordnance production. A final category, the chemorahochie (literally blackworkers), worked at heavy unskilled tasks, such as carrying, washing, loading, sorting. 9 A. Shapovalov, a skilled Petersburg metalworker, recalled that 'work on a turning lathe quite often demands a high level of intelligence, 10 an ability to read technical drawings and knowledge of arithmetic. Some jobs, for example, the turning of cones, also required a certain familiarity with geometry, algebra, and trigonometry'. 11
The following is a description of the machinist's work before the introduction of Taylorism (which eliminated a large part of the mental component of skilled factory work):
The machinist of Taylor's day started with the shop drawing and turned, milled, bored, drilled, planed etc. and otherwise machine-and-hand-processed the proper stock to the desired shape as specified in the drawing. The range of decisions to be made in the course of this process ... is
7 A. Buzinov 1930, pp. 20-1.
8 See, for example, V.S. Voitinskii 1923, p. 283.
9 Metallist, no. 1-2 (1917).
Io intelligentnost' - implying mental and cultural development.
11 A.S. Shapovalov 1934- p. 57.
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enormous ... Taylor himself worked with twelve variables, including hardness of the metal, the material of the cutting tool, thickness of the shaving, shape of the cutting tool, use of a coolant etc. Each of these variables is subject to a large number of choices ... But upon these decisions of the machinist depended not just the accuracy of the product, but also the pace ofproduction.12
While machine-construction in Russia in this period was on a generally lower technological level than in the West, the relatively weak and fluctuating demand for machinery in Russia made the introduction of batch production and a developed division of labour difficult. This situation placed special demands on workers to show resourcefulness and independence. A student of the prerevolutionary machine-construction industry found that in Russia 'the basic type of machine builder was not the worker-operator but the so-called broadprofile worker'. 13
In sum, skilled metalworking involved a high proportion of non-routine tasks, requiring decisions based upon relatively complex calculations with many variables. Executed according to technical drawings, this work fostered a capacity for independent thinking and the ability to move easily between abstract and concrete ideas.
Skilled work required a certain amount of formal education beyond elementary literacy. Shapovalov, for example, decided to attend evening technical school to acquire the knowledge needed to become a skilled worker. 14 And since acquisition of a skill involved several years of apprenticeship, the typical skilled worker, though often born and raised in the village, entered factory life at 14-16 years of age, which meant that by adulthood he was well assimilated into the urban working-class milieu.
With skill came a more developed sense of dignity, fostered by pride of craft and relative material security. After working a few years at the Workshops of the North-West Railroad, the young Shapovalov was offered the following advice by an older worker:
Go to a factory where they build new machines and do not just repair locomotives. Leave the Varshavka, Sashka. You will learn how to work, gain more experience, become a skilled worker, learn to be bold. You will
12 H. Braverman 1974, pp.110-11.
13 Ya. S. Rozenfel'd and K.I. Klimenko 1961, p. 54
14 Shapovalov 1934, p. 57.
TYPES OF POLITICAL CULTURE IN THE INDUSTRIAL WORKING CLASS 13
stop being afraid of the foremen, forge freedom for yourself. You will stop fearing being without work. You will gain a broader outlook of life. 15
S-skii, a liberal journalist writing in 1911, called the Petersburg workers 'the salt of the conscious working people' and he went on to describe the skilled metalworkers:
Workers in machine production are always in the forefront of every movement They are the aristocrats, the progressive ones. Turners, founders, blacksmiths, mechanics and machinists - these are all developed people with a well-formed sense of individuality and rather good wages At any rate, this group of workers is able to live without especially burning need, on condition, of course, of continuous employment. They are able to rent a flat, a cheap one, but nevertheless a flat, if they are married ... There is a hearth, something of which many other groups of workers are deprived ... I was never a worker myself, but it seems to me that work in machinebuilding factories, despite its burdensome nature, must develop the urge toward individuality in a man. Here there must be room for creativity. The worker must think a great deal, reason in the very process of work. And, therefore, the very essence of his work gives him a push toward selfdetermination. I have personally had occasion to talk at my home for hours with many workers on various subjects. By the form of their conversation and even by their language, they are almost indistinguishable from our intellectuals. In my opinion, they are more interesting because their judgments are fresher, and their convictions, once established, are very firm. And of late they are developing morally in the purely Russian manner - not by the day but by the hour For the most part they are city-born.
The author then described a change of shifts at a machine-building factory:
A group of workers comes out of the gates. They are wearing work clothes, not exactly in the freshest condition, but undoubtedly well-sewn and of durable quality. Their facial expressions are very serious and concentrated. Through the layer of soot, one can see sullen thought at work. They
15 Ibid., p. 74- 'Varshavka' - the Workshops of the N.W. Railroad linking Petrograd and Warsaw.
14 CHAPTER 1
