Strikes in Russia

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Lenin wrote this article for the pocket calendar Sputnik Rabochego (Worker’s Handbook) for 1914, issued by the Priboi Party Publishing House in December 1913. It contained essential information on labour legislation in Russia, the Russian and international working-class movement, political parties, associations and unions, the press, etc. The Worker’s Handbook was sequestered but the issue was sold in one day before the police could confiscate it. When Lenin received a copy of the Handbook he wrote in a letter to Inessa Armand that 5,000 copies had already been sold. A second, amended edition was published in February 1914 with deletions and amendments made for purposes of censorship and with a list of books for self-education added. Altogether 20,000 copies of the Handbook were sold.

In the majority of West-European countries, strike statistics were placed on a proper footing comparatively recently—some ten or twenty years ago. In Russia there are strike statistics dating from 1895 only. The chief defect in our official statistics, apart from understatement concerning the number of participants, is that they cover only workers in enterprises subordinated to the Factory Inspectorate. Railwaymen, metallurgical workers, tramway workers, workers in trades subject to excise, etc., miners, building and rural workers are not included in the statistics.

Here are summarised data for the entire period covered by Russian strike statistics.

Year	Number of strikes		Number of strikers
	Total	Percentage of all enterprises	Total	Percentage of all workers
1895	68	0.4	31,195	2.0
1896	118	0.6	29,527	1.9
1897	145	0.7	59,870	4.0
1898	215	1.1	43,150	2.9
1899	189	1.0	57,498	3.8
1900	125	0.7	29,389	1.7
1901	164	1.0	32,218	1.9
1902	123	0.7	36,671	2.2
1903	550	3.2	86,832	5.1
1904	68	0.4	24,904	1.5
1905	13,995	93.2	2,863,173	163.8
1906	6,114	42.2	1,108,406	65.8
1907	3,573	23.8	740,074	41.9
1908	892	5.9	176,101	9.7
1909	340	2.3	64,166	3.5
1910	222	1.4	46,623	2.4
1911	466	2.8	105,110	5.1
1912	1,918	?	683,361	?

The extent to which these figures are understated may be judged, for example, from the fact that such a cautious writer as Mr. Prokopovich cites another figure for 1912—683,000 strikers, but “according to another estimate, 1,248,000 in factories, and in addition a further 215,000 in enterprises not under the Factory Inspectorate”, i.e., 1,468,000 or almost a million and a half. The number of economic strikes (from 1905) is as follows:

Year	Number of strikes	Number of workers	Year	Number of strikes	Number of workers
1905	4,388	1,051,209	1909	290	55,803
1906	2,545	457,721	1910	214	42,846
1907	973	200,004	1911	442	96,730
1908	428	83,407	1912	702	172,052

Thus the history of strikes in Russia may be divided into four clear-cut periods (if we omit the eighties with their famous Morozov strikes, noted even by the reactionary publicist Katkov as the emergence of the “labour question” in Russia):

		Average number of strikers per annum
1st period (1895–1904),	pre-revolutionary . .	43,000
2nd period (1903–07),	revolutionary . . .	1,570,000
3rd period (1908–10),	counter-revolutionary	96,000
4th period (1911–12),	present, beginning of revival . . . . . .	394,000

In general, the average number of strikers a year in Russia over the eighteen years was 345,400. In Germany the average for fourteen years (1899-1912) was 229,500, and for Britain the average for twenty years (1893-1912) was 344,200. To give a clear picture of the connection between strikes in Russia and the country’s political history, we cite the figures for 1905-07 in three-month periods (quarters):

Years . . . . . .	1905				1906
Quarters . . . . .	I	II	III	IV	I	II	III	IV
Number of strikers (thousands) per quarter	Beginning of revolution			Revolution		First Duma
Total . . . . . .	810	481	294	1,277	269	479	296	63
Economic . . . .	411	190	143	275	73	222	125	37
Political . . . .	399	291	151	1,002	196	257	171	26

Year . . . . . . . . . . . .	1907
Quarters . . . . . . . . . .	I	II	III	IV
Number of strikers (thousands) per quarter		Second Duma
Total . . . . . . . . . . . .	146	323	77	193
Economic . . . . . . . . . .	52	52	66	30
Political . . . . . . . . . .	94	271	11	163

The extent to which workers from various parts of Russia participated in strikes may be seen from the following figures:

Factory district	Number of factory workers (thousands) in 1905	Number of strikers (thousands)
		Total for 10 years (1895–1904)	Number in 1905
St. Petersburg . .	299	137	1,033
Moscow . . . . . . .	567	123	540
Warsaw . . . . . .	252	69	887
3 Southern regions	543	102	403
Totals . . . . .	1,661	431	2,863

This table shows the relative backwardness of Moscow,, and still more of the South, and the outstanding priority of St. Petersburg and its area (including Riga), and also of Poland. The strikers in the main branches of industry were distributed as follows:

Groups of industries	Total number of factory workers (thousands) in 1904	Number of strikers (thousands)
		Total for 10 years (1895–1904)	Number in 1905
Metalworking . . .	252	117	811
Textile . . . . . . .	708	237	1,296
Printing, woodwork- ing, leather, chem- icals . . . . . . .	277	38	471
Ceramics, food . . .	454	39	285
Totals	1,691	431	2,863

This shows that the metalworkers are in the lead and the textile workers are backward, the remaining workers being still more backward.

The strikes are grouped in accordance with their causes in the following way (for 14 years, 1895-1908): political, 59.9 per cent of the strikers; on wage issues, 24.3 per cent; on the issue of the working day, 10.9 per cent; labour conditions, 4.8 per cent.

In respect of the results of the strikes we get the following division (if the number of strikers whose strikes ended in a compromise be divided equally between “won” and “lost”):

	Number participating in economic strikes (thousands)
	Total for 10 year (1895 –1904)	%	1905	%	1906	%	1907	%	1911	%	1912	%
Won	159	37.5	705	48.9	233	50.9	59	29.5	49	51	55	42
Lost	265	62.5	734	51.1	225	49.1	141	70.5	47	49	77	58
Totals	424	100	1,439	100	458	100	200	100	96	100	132	100

The figures for 1911 and 1912 are incomplete and are not fully comparable with the preceding figures. In conclusion we give brief data on the distribution of strikes according to the size of the enterprise and according to the location of the enterprise:

Number of strikers per 100 in each category:
Category of enterprise	Total for 10 years 1895–1904	In 1905
20 workers or less . . . .	2.7	47
21 to 50 workers . . .	7.5	89.4
51 to 100 ” . . .	9.4	108.9
101 to 500 ” . . .	21.5	160.2
501 to 1,000 ” . . .	49.9	163.8
Over 1,000 ” . . .	89.7	231.9
Percentage of strikes
	in towns	outside towns
1895–1904 . .	75.1	24.9
1905 . . . . .	85	15

The dominance of the workers of big industrial establishments in the strike movement and the relative backwardness of rural factories are quite clear from these figures.