xxvi, no. 2, pp. 118-19. My calculations. The figures in
brackets are those in V. Z. Drobizhev et al., Rabochii klass sovetskoi Rossii v
pervyi godproletarskoi diktatury (Moscow, 1975), p. 97.
S. Krasil'nikov, ‘Svyaz' leningradskogo rabochego s zemlyei’, Statistiches-
koe Obozrenie, 4 (1929), pp. 107-8. This is my recalculation of the figures for
single and married workers.
A. G. Rashin, Sostav fabrichnogo-zavodskogo proletariata (Moscow, 1930),
p.25. This is my recalculation of the figures for the proportion of
textileworkers and metalworkers with land. The proportion of workers in 1917 who owned land is difficult to
estimate. The 1918 industrial census is the source closest to that year,
but it covers only 107,262 workers in Petrograd - less than a third of
the 1917 workforce. This was because the census was taken at a time
when factory closures and the promise of land in the countryside had
led to a gigantic exodus of workers from the capital. Consequently,
the figures from the 1918 census (see Table 3) should be treated with
caution, since it is reasonable to assume that those workers who held
land in the countryside in 1917 would have gone back to it before the
census was taken. Those workers surveyed by the census were asked
not only whether they still owned land, but also whether they had
owned land prior to the October Revolution. 16.5% of the workers
said that they had held land prior to October 1917, and 7.9% had
farmed it.61 This was considerably lower than the national average,
for the census revealed that 31% of workers, nationally, owned land.
Despite the fact that the 1918 census almost certainly underesti-
mates the extent of land-ownership among Petrograd workers in
1917, especially among single workers (see Table 4), information
from the 1926 and 1929 censuses suggests that the underestimation
was only slight.
Using data from Prokopovich’s 1908 survey of metalworkers and
from the 1918 and 1926 censuses, Table 4provides further evidence
that only a small minority of workers owned land, and only a minority
18
Table 4
Red Petrograd
: % of workers who owned land
% single workers who:
% married workers who:
owned land
farmed land
owned land
farmed land
I9081
50%
32%
33%
12%
I9I82
12.5%
7-3%
13.7%
6.6%
I9263
21.3%
6.6%
8.8%
3-7%
Sources:
S. N. Prokopovich,Byudzhetypeterburgskikh rabochikh (St Petersburg, 1908),
P-7-
Drobizhev et al., Rabochii klass sovetskoi Rossii, p.95.
Krasil'nikov, ‘Svyaz's zemlei’, p. 107.
of these actually farmed it. It shows too that single workers were more
likely to own land than married workers. This is probably due to the
fact that the majority of peasant migrants to the capital were single. If
they married, they would be under pressure to choose either to try to
make a living on the land, or to sell up and move as a family to the
town.
The censuses of 1918, 1926 and 1929 give some information on
land-ownership among metalworkers and textileworkers (see Table5).
It emerges from this table that metalworkers were no less attached to
the land than other groups of workers. The 1929 census figures proved
to be an embarrassment to the Stalin government, since they
disclosed that there were more land-owners among the ‘vanguard’ of
the proletariat, the metalworkers, than among the ‘backward’
textileworkers. An even more interesting finding emerged from this
census. Figures showed that the proportion of land-owners was
Table 5 '■ % of total workforce who owned land
metalworkers
textileworkers
19181
18.7%
18.6%
19262
10.2%
11.6%
19293
12.4%
4.4%
Sources:
Drobizhev et al., Rabochii klass sovetskoi Rossii, p.98.
Krasil'nikov, ‘Svyaz's zemlei’, p. 108.
Rashin, Sostav fab. zav. pro!., p.30.
Table 6: % of workers owning land who began work:
Leningrad
textileworkers
Leningrad
metalworkers
prior to 1905
8.0%
17.5%
between 1906 and 1913
4.6%
14.6%
between 1914 and 1917
3.6%
12.3%
Source: Rashin,Sostavfab. zav. prol., p.30. highest among groups with the longest service in industry (see Table
6). It is thus apparent that long service in industry did not necessarily
erode the tie with the countryside. Yet workers who had worked in
industry for twenty-five years were obviously ‘proletarian’, regardless
of the fact that they owned land. This is borne out by a further finding
of this census, which showed that a quarter of workers who owned
land had been born into working-class rather than peasant families.62 This suggests that by itself land-ownership is not an adequate index of
proletarianisation.
Tables 3, 4, 5 and 6 all attest that the proportion of workers in
Petrograd who owned land declined significantly over time. Further
evidence that the working-class was becoming increasingly prole-
tarianised is found by examining data on the numbers of hereditary
workers, i.e. workers one or both of whose parents were themselves
workers, and data on the numbers of settled workers, i.e. on average
length of service in industry.
According to the 1918 census, 20% of metalworkers and 24.8% of
textileworkers had one or both parents a worker.63 The 1929 census
correlated the social origin of Leningrad metalworkers and textile-
workers with the year of their entry into industry. Whilst these data
are scanty, they point clearly to an increase over time in the
proportion of workers in Petrograd born into working-class families
and a corresponding decline in the proportion born into peasant
families (see Table 7)
The data on length of service in industry is sparser and more
difficult to interpret. Soviet historians usually assert that it took about
five years for a worker new to industry to become a fully-fledged
proletarian. It is, of course, impossible to estimate with scientific
precision the length of time which it took a peasant to become
socialised into factory life. It may have taken as long as ten years for a
Table 7
Year of entry
into industry
Proportion of
total sample who
entered industry
in the period:
