2 - The tsarist factory

Summary

THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE TSARIST FACTORY

The power of the tsarist autocracy did not rest on its ability to maintain ideological hegemony among the Russian people. Although it sought to procure the consent of the governed, the government was constantly compelled to resort to force. This was nowhere more apparent than in the sphere of industrial relations. Although working-class unrest exercised the tsarist administration from the 1870s onwards, it tried to ignore the existence of a ‘labour problem’, preferring to promote a strategy of paternalism, judiciously mixed with repression. Anxious that harsh exploitation of workers might push them in a revolutionary direction, the government entreated employers to show greater solicitude towards their employees, and offered workers a measure of legal protection. In 1882 and 1885 laws restricting female and child labour were passed; in 1885 a Factory Inspectorate became fully operative, and the following year hiring practices were regulated; in 1897 the working hours in private factories were limited to eleven-and-a-half hours a day. Even the experiments in ‘police socialism’, which were radical by the standards of the autocracy, especially the Zubatov scheme of 1901, were motivated more by paternalism than by commitment to the reform of industrial relations. The autocracy remained adamant that workers should not be permitted to organise collectively in defence of their interests. Where labour unrest occurred, it was seen as a deliberate subversion of the peace, and was dealt with accordingly by the police or troops. Workers had few illusions in the neutrality of the state, since police intervention to crush strikes revealed the identity of interests between employers and the authorities.