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The Association of Southern Coal and Steel Producers and the Problems of Industrial Progress in Tsarist Russia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Susan P. McCaffray
Susan P. McCaffray*
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Wilmington
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Extract

In 1874 a handful of men met in the Ukrainian town of Khar'kov to establish what eventually became the Association of Southern Coal and Steel Producers. The organization's birth corresponded with that of the great Donbas coal and steel industry, and its story illuminates the exhilaration and the frustration of those who aspired to create an industrial Russia with a liberal face. The association grew prominent over the next forty years, guided by a unique group of men who advocated speedy economic modernization for their country and who embraced such imported liberal visions as private enterprise and individual liberty.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 47 , Issue 3 , Fall 1988 , pp. 464 - 482
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1988

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References

1. The organization called itself the S “ezd gornopromyshlennikov iuga Rossii (SGIR). Sources on the association include the records of its annual congresses from 1874 to 1914 (Trudy s “ezdov)\ studies on special topics by leading members, and its two journals, Gornozavodskii listok (Khar'kov, 1905–1909) andGorno-zavodskoe delo (Khar'kov, 1910–1914). A contemporary history is that of P.I. Fomin, Istoriias “ezdov gornopromyshlennikov iuga Rossii (Khar'kov, 1908); this is excerpted by von Ditmar, N. F., ed., in Kratkii ocherk istorii s “ezdov gornopromyshlennikov iuga Rossii (Khar'kov, 1908)Google Scholar. Brief secondary accountsof the Southern Association's activities are found in Lur'e, E. S., Organizatsiia i organizalsii torgovopromyshlennykh interesov v Rossii (St. Petersburg: Izd. S. Petersburgskago politekhnicheskago in-ta, 1913)Google Scholar; Shpolianski, D. I., Monopolii ugol'no-metallurgicheskoi promyshlennosti iuga Rossii v nachale XXv. (Moscow: Izd. akademii nauk, 1953)Google Scholar; Laverychev, V. la., Tzarizm i rabochii vopros v Rossii 1861–1917 (Moscow: Mysl', 1972)Google Scholar. A recent, valuable survey of the association's activities is included in Rieber, Alfred, Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Imperial Russia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), pp. 222–243 and 333–345 Google Scholar.

2. Rieber's Merchants and Entrepreneurs addresses the sectoral competition among commercial groups and also demonstrates the growth of two opposing “capitalisms” in agriculture and industry. The chauvinistic and special worldview of the Moscow businessmen is described by Owen, Thomas C., Capitalismand Politics in Russia: A Social History of the Moscow Merchants, 1855–1905 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981 Google Scholar and Ruckman, Jo Ann, The Moscow Business Elite: A Social and Cultural Portrait of Two Generations, 1840–1905 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1984 Google Scholar. The concerns of St. Petersburg industrialists and their interest in Taylorism are addressed in Heather J. Hogan, “Labor and Management in Conflict; The St. Petersburg Metal-Working Industry, 1900–1914” (Ph.D. Diss., University of Michigan, 1981) and Victoria A. P. King, “The Emergence of the St. Petersburg Industrial Community, 1870–1905” (Ph.D. Diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1982). Also helpful in understanding thediversity of Russian industrial communities is Guroff, Gregory and Carstensen, Fred V., eds., Entrepreneurshipin Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983 Google Scholar.

3. The serious limits to the Russian constitutional system of 1906–1917 are described amply in Hosking, Geoffrey A., The Russian Constitutional Experiment: Government and Duma, 1907–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973 Google Scholar, and Edelman, Robert, Gentry Politics on the Eve of the Russian Revolution: The Nationalist Party, 1907–1917 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1980)Google Scholar. Arecent description of bureaucratic obstructionism is found in C. Owen, Thomas, “The Russian IndustrialSociety and Tsarist Economic Policy, 1867–1905,” Journal of Economic History 45 (September 1985): 587–606, especially 597–601.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. In the principle Donbas province of Ekaterinoslav, peasant obshchiny produced 1.3 percent of coalin 1909; nobles produced 7.3 percent; exclusively Russian firms dug 23.0 percent; and corporations with foreign participation dug 67.3 percent, according to Komitet, Gornyi Uchenyi, Sbornik statisticheskikhsvedenii o gornozavodskoi promyshlennosti Rossii v 1909g. (St. Petersburg, 1912)Google Scholar. On the establishmentof foreign firms in south Russian gornopromyshlennost’ see McKay, John P., Pioneers for Profit: Foreign Entrepreneurship and Russian Industrialization, 1885–1913 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.See also Bakulev, G. D., Razvitie ugol'noi promyshlennosti (Moscow, 1955)Google Scholar; Bovykin, V. I., Formirovanie finansovogo kapitala v Rossii: Konets XIX v.-!908g. (Moscow: Nauka, 1984 Google Scholar, chaps. 3–4; Crisp, Olga, “French Investment and Influence in Russian Industry, 1894–1914,” Studies in the Russian Economy Before 1914 (New York: Macmillan, 1976 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ol, P. V., lnostrannye kapitaly v Rossii (Petrograd: Gosudarstvennaiatipografiia, 1922 Google Scholar; Strumilin, S. G., Istoriia chernoi metallurgii SSSR, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Nauka, 1967 Google Scholar; Edward F. Yurick, “The Russian Adventure: Belgian Investments in Imperial Russia,” (Ph.D. Diss., Ohio State, 1959); and Ziv, V. S., lnostrannye kapitaly v russkoi gornoiavodskoi promyshlennosti (Petrograd, 1917)Google Scholar.

5. On French and Belgian investment see McKay, Pioneers, p. 36. McKay also concludes that the Belgians sent 66 percent of all their Russian investments to the Donbas and of the foreign capital in the Donbas in 1900 nearly 62 percent was Belgian. McKay, however, believes that as much as 18 percent of this apparently Belgian capital was really held by French investors. The difficulties in determining actual amounts offoreign investment in Russia are legion, and such numbers as we have, which originate for the most part witheconomic nationalist Ol', can best be used as indices of relative investment, and even then with caution. See McKay's discussion in Pioneers, pp. 24–39, and Carstensen, Fred V., “Numbers and Reality: A Critique ofForeign Investment Estimates in Tsarist Russia,” in La position international de la France. Aspects economiqueset financiers XIX'-XX” siecles, ed., Maurice Levy-Leboyer, (Paris, 1977), pp. 275–283 Google Scholar. Whatever historians conclude, however, contemporaries in Russia clearly believed that foreign participation in their industry was rising steadily until 1899 and that it was predominant in the south. Figures on southern production are in Khromov, P. A., Ekonomicheskoe razvitie Rossii v XIX-XXVV. (Moscow: Gos. izd. polit. litry, 1950), pp. 456–458 Google Scholar.

6. These figures on delegates to the Southern Association's annual congresses and those that follow come from the membership lists provided at the beginning of each congress report. The lists provide individuals'names and firm affiliations or occupations, honorary titles, and official positions in either the Southern Association, the government, or other organizations. See SGIR Trudy 7–38 s “'ezdov (Khar'kov, 1882–1914).

7. By foreign enterprise here I mean both firms incorporated under the statutes of another country andfirms with significant foreign financial participation. See lists in McKay, Pioneers, pp. 391–396; Finansov, Ministerstvo, Spisokfabrik i zavodov evropeiskoi Rossii (St. Petersburg, 1903), pp. 261–265 Google Scholar; and Ziv, Inostrannye kapitaly, pp. 60 and 76.

8. In the 1880s and 1890s the Southern Association was openly protesting the lack of native managersand it appears that foreign directors eventually found it quite useful to employ native engineers. Nativeengineers and managers seem to have gained predominance at the shop and mine management level by theturn of the century. See SGIR, Trudy 7 s “ezda (Khar'kov, 1882), pp. xxxvii-xxxxi; Trudy 18 s “ezda, (Khar'kov, 1893), Report #LXXXIII; Trudy 21 s “ezda (Khar'kov, 1896), pp. 516–519; and Trudy 28s “ezda (Khar'kov, 1904) 1: 5–23.

9. “Nashi zadachi,” Gornozavodskoe delo, 8 January 1914, p. 8, 329; A. I. Fenin, Vospominaniia inzhenera.K istorii obshchestvennogo i khoziaistvennogo razvitiia Rossii, 1883–1906 gg. (Prague: RussianInstitute of Prague, 1938), p. 143.

10. In 1889 the Southern Association gave scholarships to fifty-five needy students at the LisichanskForemen's School. SGIR, Trudy 14 s “ezda (Khar'kov, 1889), pp. 247–250. Also see Avdakov's report on technical education and the project that resulted in the establishment of the Ekaterinoslav Higher Mining Institute in SGIR, Trudy 21 s “ezda, pp. 505–519. Fenin observes that in the Donbas “it was interesting the way the cultures blended.” Of his ten neighboring well-educated families, four were Polish, One Jewish. See Vospominaniia, pp. 53 and 120–125. For an idea of the contrast between the Donbas and Moscow business communities in the acceptance by ethnic Russians of Poles, Jews, and russified Germans, see Ruckman, The Moscow Business Elite, pp. 22–24; and Rieber, Merchants and Entrepreneurs, pp. 52–73.

11. SGIR, Trudy 29 s “ezda (Khar'kov, 1905) 1: 44. Nine years later Avdakov was invoking the same patriotic themes in support of tariffs: “At the time of the Russo-Turkish War Russian military and commercial fleets were in a dangerous situation because of their dependence on foreign coal,” SGIR, Trudy ekstrennagos “ezda, (Khar'kov, 1914), p. 6. See also “Po povodu tolkov o vrede dlia Rossii inostrannykh kapitalov, “Gornozavodskii listok, 15 January 1899, pp. 3, 647–3, 648. Another example of the strength of feeling native engineers held for the foreigners came in the SGIR's decision in 1906 to send a contribution tothe victims of a French mining disaster. Such a gift, they thought, would “underscore the close community which already exists between France and Russia. From that country were sent to us in earlier times not only investors and capital, but also our pioneers and our teachers,” SGIR, Stenograficheskie otchety 30 s “ezda, (Khar'kov, 1906), p. 247.

12. Fenin, Vospominaniia, p. 81. On gentry politics see Haimson, Leopold H., ed., The Politics of Rural Russia, 1905–1914 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979 Google Scholar and Manning, Roberta Thompson, The Crisis of the Old Order in Russia: Gentry and Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982 Google Scholar.

13. “Nashi zadachi,” p. 8, 329.

14. Provincial yearbooks offer lists of members of such organizations and zemstva. See, for example, Ezhegodnik Pridneprov'e i pamiatnaia knizhka (Ekaterinoslav, 1908–1914); and Ekaterinoslavskii adreskalendar‘ (Ekaterinoslav, 1900–1903; 1910–1912). Roberta Manning concludes that “important nonpropertied elements—like the industrial proletariat and the majority of the professionally educated intelligentsia—never received electoral rights in the zemstvo,” and nongentry proprietors “most notably the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie and the peasantry … were also strictly limited by the electoral laws of 1864 and 1890, particularly the latter,” Crisis of the Old Order in Russia, p. 414

15. For many years, in fact, the Southern Association complained to St. Petersburg about zemstvo taxassessments on industrial property without protesting the zemstva's composition—proposing only that representatives of industry be permitted to defend their interests in special tax commissions. See SGIR, Trudy 7s “ezda, p. xxix; Trudy 1a s “ezda (Khar'kov, 1891), pp. 311–313; and L. G. Rabinovich, “Doklad kommissii… ob oblozhenii zemskimi sborami gornykh promyslov iuga Rossii,” Trudy 20 s “ezda (Khar'kov, 1895), pp. 455–461.

16. Even in 1904–1905 Fenin was shocked at the “practically revolutionary character” of many gentry meetings he attended; and, although he was a Kadet elector for the First Duma, he could not rememberwhen he joined the party or “if it was official.” Vospominaniia, pp. 142 and 158. Patriotic themes were sounded at the 1905 meeting as funds were allocated for victims of the Russo-Japanese War and as Avdakovcommemorated the former Ekaterinoslav governor F. E. Keller, who had been killed in battle. SGIR, Trudy 29 s “ezda, p. 74; and Otchety 29 s “ezda, p. 9.

17. On the services that Donbas firms offered workers see Gornozavodskie Fabrichnye i Rudnichnye Vrachi Ekaterinoslavskoi Gubernii (GFRV), Trudy I s “ezda (Ekaterinoslav, 1903), pp. 34–35 and 63–64.The South Russian Dnieper Company said it spent 60, 312 rubles on its hospital alone in 1903. The Southern Association reckoned in 1904 that its members were spending almost a million rubles annually on medicalcare for employees. See Promyshlennost’ i torgovlia 1 (1908): 90–93. The association asserted that this sum represented a 6.5 ruble annual health expenditure for each worker, while the Ekaterinoslav zemstvo spentonly 60 kopeks on each resident.

18. Fenin argued that in the 1890s, a “disciplined and sober” miner living in Ekaterinoslav without hisfamily “had an amount sufficient to his needs and for ‘sending home',” Vospominaniia, p. 148. See als opp. 52 and 58. By his reckoning the average return on capital in the coal industry during good years wasabout 6 percent.

19. Although these averages conceal great variation, the two dozen foreign firms that employed most of the engineer-managers at least were running in the black through 1899. South Russian Dnieper paid40 percent dividends between 1896 and 1900, devouring much of its reinvestable profit; New Russian earned 20 percent to 30 percent profits in the 1880s. A more typical firm was one paying 5 percent to 10 percent dividends. See McKay, Pioneers, pp. 139, 222–223, 298, 303; and SGIR, Trudy 37 s “ezda (Khar'kov, 1912) 1: 2a, p. 9.

20. Skal'kovskii, K. A., Za god: vospominaniia (St. Petersburg: Tip. A. S. Suvorina, 1905), p. 237 Google Scholar, cited in Owen, “The Russian Industrial Society,” p. 602.

21. SGIR, Trudy 37 s “ezda 1: 2a, p. 9.

22. Yurick, “The Russian Adventure,” pp. 107, 115. Nestorenko, A. A., Ocherki istorii promyshlennosti i polozheniia proletariata Ukrainy v kontse XIX-XXV. (Moscow, 1954), p. 100 Google Scholar. P Gregory, aul R. cautions against dating recessions from contemporary accounts in his review of V. I. Bovykin's Formirovanie finansovogo kapitala in Journal of Economic History, 46 (June 1986): 543 Google Scholar. Southern manufacturers and managers, as well as southern workers, believed that the bottom had fallen out of the economy by 1900 and they mobilized to seek help in their own ways. On the slowing of French and Belgian capital to the Donbas see McKay, Pioneers, pp. 225–232.

23. On the effect of unemployment in the Donbas, see Rabochee dvizhenie v Rossii v 1901–1904gg.: sbornik dokumentov (Moscow, 1975)Google Scholar; Novopilin, G., “Iz istorii rabochego dvizheniia (1880–1903gg.),” Letopis’ revoliutsii 2 (1923): 16–28 Google Scholar; and Klienbort, L., Bezrabotitsa i dvizhenie bezrabotnykh (St. Petersburg, 1906)Google Scholar.

24. On the 1905 Revolution in the south see Ekaterinoslavshchina v revoliutsii 1905–1907gg.: dokumentyi materialy (Dnepropetrovsk, 1975); Revoliutsiia 1905–1907gg. na Ukraine: sbornik dokumentov imaterialov (Kiev, 1955), vol. 1; memoirs in Letopis’ revoliutsii, 1922–1926 and Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, 1924–1926; and Susan P. McCaffrey, “The New Work and the Old Regime: Workers, Managers and theState in the Coal and Steel Industry of Ekaterinoslav Province, 1905–1914” (Ph.D. Diss., Duke University, 1983), chap. 4.

25. SGIR, , Trudy 31 s “ezda: stenograficheskie otchety (Khar'kov, 1906), pp. 62–63 Google Scholar.

26. Kgaevskii complained that, “when we say we failed to deliver coal because of strikes the government says, ‘provide a witness .’ They turn to the … mining supervisor … but the supervisor says everything was peaceful so as to avoid trouble with his boss,” ibid., pp. 230–231.

27. Coal miners’ wages rose 27 percent from 1905 to 1907 and 20 percent from 1907 to 1913 according to Pazhitnov, K. A., Polozhenie rabochego klassa v Rossii, t. 3: revoliutsionnyi period s 1905 po 1923 g. (Moscow-Leningrad, 1924), p. 51 Google Scholar; Donbas factory workers’ pay increased 25 percent from 1904 to 1908 and 1 percent from 1908 to 1913, according to Svod otchetov fabrichnykh inspektorov 1904, pp. 172–175; 1908, pp. 142–145; and 1913, pp. 240–243. This increase probably represented some real gain for most Donbasworkers as food prices rose only 17 percent nationally between 1905 and 1913 according to Kir'ianov, Iurii I., Zhiznennyi uroven’ rabochikh Rossii kon XIX-XXV. (Moscow: Nauka, 1979, p. 131 Google Scholar. It is difficult to determine how many workers were permanent at any point, but the fact that miners as a percentage of the total population of Donbas villages dropped from 71 percent in 1905 to 45 percent in 1913 underscores the influxof family members and the strain on local welfare services. See Ivanov, L. M., “Preemstvennost’ fabrichnozavodskogotruda i formirovanie proletariata v Rossii,” Rabochii klass i rabochee dvizhenie v Rossii 1861–1917, ed. Ivanov, L. M., pp. 92–94 Google Scholar; McCaffrey, “The New Work and the Old Regime,” p. 106. The long debate on welfare is recorded in SGIR, Trudy 31 s “ezda: stenograficheskie otchety. Rabinovich's commentis on pp. 62–63.

28. In 1910 an infuriated von Ditmar urged the central government to inform zemstva that if thezemstva did not complete the assessments in the next three years, someone else would do them. SGIR, , Trudy35 s “ezda (Khar'kov, 1910), p. 40 Google Scholar, and Trudy 39 s “ezda (Khar'kov, 1914) 2: 60

29. SGIR, Trudy 19 s “ezda (Khar'kov, 1894), pp. 334–335.

30. Vestnik ekaterinoslavskago zemstva 25 August 1905, p. 862. Von Ditmar said six years later thatzemstva in industrial districts still got as much as 75 percent of their income from industrial taxes. SGIR, Trudy 36 s “ezda (Khar'kov, 1911), p. 85.

31. SGIR, Trudy 37 s “ezda 1: 2a, p. 26.

32. SGIR, Trudy 34 s “ezda (Khar'kov, 1909), p. 152.

33. SGIR, Trudy 33 s “ezda, pp. 23–24 and Trudy 34 s “ezda, pp. 152–153.

34. GFRV, Trudy 2 s “ezda, pp. 63–64; Izvestiia ekaterinoslavskago gorodskago obshchestvennagoupravleniia 10 (May, 1914): 785.

35. See SGIR, Trudy 29 s “ezda 1: 15, especially pp. 1 and 23; and 1: 15a. Workers’ health and welfare, taxation, and representation were further linked and examined in the special SGIR study, Zemstvo igornaia promyshlennost’ (Khar'kov, 1908).

36. SGIR, Trudy 34 s “ezda, p. 153. The 70 percent figure would have included industrial workers, whom managers contended they could and should speak for in zemstva.

37. On the suspicions of Moscow industrialists toward foreign-dominated firms and organizations see Rieber, Merchants and Entrepreneurs, chap. 8. Examples of critics’ health and housing surveys are L. A.Liberman, “Usloviia truda gornorabochikh v donetskom basseine,” Vestnik fabrichnago zakonodatel'stva i professional'noi gigieny 1 (January 1905): 1–28; and 1.1. Liashchenko, , “Usloviia truda na rudnikakh donetskagobasseina,” Obshchestvennyi vrach 2 (1914): 269–78; and 3 (1914): 422–38.Google Scholar

38. For the right to oversee sanitation see N. F. von Ditmar's 45-page report, “Proekt obiazatel'nykhsanitarnykh postanovlenii ekaterinoslavskago zemstva, vyrabotannyi Ekaterinoslavskoi Gubernskoi i Zemskoi Upravoi dlia predstavleniia Gubernskomu Zemskomu Sobraniiu XXXIX sessii 1904g.,” SGIR, Trudy29 s “ezda, 15a. He contended that in 1903 the zemstvo had taken upon itself rights that the mining administration had given to companies.

A 1903 law obligated firms to cover a worker's medical costs for job-related accidents and disabilities but required the doctor to assess the percentage of disability that arose solely from employment—that being the only portion of treatment for which firms were obligated. This law made adversaries of firms’ doctors andzemstvo doctors, with workers generally preferring to see the latter. See SGIR, Trudy 29 s “ezda 1: 17; and the Trudy of the first and second meetings of GFRV, which was set up in response to the 1903 law. On thecholera epidemic and efforts to combat it see Gornozavodskoe delo, 22 July 1910, pp. 881–882; Zemskoedelo. 5 March 1911, p. 426; and SGIR, Trudy 35 s “ezda, p. 157.

39. Al'bom iuzhno-russkoi oblastnoi sel'skokhoziaistvennoi promyshlennoi i kustarnoi vystavki vgorode Ekaterinoslav I9l0g., (Ekaterinoslav, 1910), p. 135.

40. SGIR, Trudy 33 s “ezda, p. 131.

41. Les archives du ministere des affaires etrangeres beiges [MAE], Dossier 2, 900 VI. This file contains correspondence between the St. Petersburg legation and the Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs. Between1900 and 1904 Belgian diplomats in Russia reflected their citizens’ concerns by seeking more orders from Russian government agencies and assistance from their own authorities in Brussels. These envoys registered shock at Count Witte's response to the recession, which was to blame foreign businessmen for excessive speculation. See, for example, St. Petersburg Legate to Minister of Foreign Affairs Faverreau, 25 February1901, MAE, Dossier 2, 900 VI. References in this file suggest, however, that Belgian firms were promised and did receive direct grants in unspecified amounts from the Russian government in response to the crisis.

42. Informal marketing agreements had existed at least since the 1890s and had been strongly supported by Avdakov, but it seems clear that the pursuit of government-chartered marketing syndicates wasinitiated during the recession by the foreign directors of firms that had not been receiving the lion's share ofSt. Petersburg's orders. Prodamet received government sanction in late 1902 and Produgol’ in 1904. These syndicates handled all marketing for members (shareholders), allocating orders among them. The coal organization was always far from airtight, however, owing to the large number of very small, independent producers and to the refusal of a few key firms (e.g., New Russian) to join. Prodamet, however, steadily expanded thecategories of goods in which it dealt. See Shpolianskii, Monopolii ugol'no-metallurgicheskoi promyshlennostiiuga Rossii, pp. 45–47 and 84–85; and Rieber, Merchants and Entrepreneurs, pp. 240–243

43. Rieber, Merchants and Entrepreneurs, pp. 241–242.

44. Iasiukovich merits his own biography. Rieber devotes some attention to this fascinating figure onpp. 228–229, 242–243, and 342; a typical antigovernment outburst is found in SGIR, Trudy 30 s “ezda, stenograficheskie otchety, pp. 121–122, in which Iasiukovich blasts the minister of ways and communication for failing to provide enough rolling stock for southern industry. His elegant rage culminates in the assertion that “we have the audacity to suggest that we know our situation better than the minister.“

45. SGIR, Trudy 31 s “ezda 3: 436–444.

46. The Southern Association calculated that Donbas coal companies as a group had endured a .23 percent loss against shareholders’ capital in 1910 but that in 1911 they achieved 7.31 percent profits. For mixedsteel and coal firms the great jump had come a year earlier, with profits rising from 4.17 percent in 1909 to 8.40 percent in 1910. SGIR, Trudy 37 s''ezda 1: 2a, “Doklad Soveta po obshchim voprosam gornoi i gornozavodskoi promyshlennosti,” p. 9.

47. On the cholera epidemic see Gornozavodskoe delo, 22 July 1910, pp. 881–882; Zemskoe delo, 5 March 1911, p. 426; SGIR, Trudy 35 s “ezda, p. 157. On the SGIR budget see Promyshlennost’ i torgovlia10 (1912): 573. The economic upturn brought another huge influx of miners and steelworkers whose presencein the Donbas rose 70 percent and 57 percent between 1910 and 1913, stretching social services ominously.See Fomin, P. P., Gornaia i gornozavodskaia promyshlennost’ iuga Rossii (Khar'kov: Khoziaistvo Donbassa, 1924) 3: 201–202 Google Scholar.

48. 25, 000 strikers were involved in the 1911–1912 stoppages in Ekaterinoslav Province and as many more struck between January 1913 and July 1914. See McCaffray, “The New Work and the Old Regime, “pp. 234–270 and 286.

49. SGIR, Trudy 37 s “ezda 1: 3, p. 4.

50. The SGIR debated the draft legislation in 1909: Trudy 34 s “ezda, pp. 65–68; and the final act in 1912: Trudy 37 s “ezda 1: 22. Von Ditmar, who had worked on the workers’ health insurance question forseveral years, was keenly disappointed with the final product. “We will have to treat a worker for a headache, a gnat-bite, or a brawl he got into the night before,” he sputtered. A fine discussion of industrialists'reaction to the law is found in A. Roosa, Ruth, “Workers’ Insurance Legislation and the Role of Industrialistsin the Third State Duma,” Russian Review 34 (1975): 410–452.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

51. SGIR, , Trudy 38 s “ezda (Khar'kov, 1913) 1, pp. 3–4 Google Scholar; Avdakov said that Donbas coal output hadrisen 210 million poods in the first ten months of 1913, a figure with which government sources essentially agreed. See Khromov, Ekonomicheskoe razvitie, pp. 456–458.