This book explores the impact of the 1917 Revolution on factory life
Rashin, Sostav fab. zav. prol., pp. 19, 21
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- Once he was a yardkeeper sweeping footpaths, Now he’s in the factory making shrapnel. 75
- Metalworking * 9*3 * 9*7 91.2 73*
- Woodworking 19*3 * 9*7 96.9 71.8
- Textiles and * 9*3 32.0 57-o
- They would sooner their sick, worn-out wife did the household chores
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Source: Rashin, Sostav fab. zav. prol., pp. 19, 21. peasant to overcome his rustic habits of work, the instinctive rhythm of hard and slack work, the dislike of close routine and his longing for the freedom of the outdoors.65 For a young worker, however, it certainly would have taken far less time. One must therefore be cautious in interpreting the data. In 1908 a survey of 5,720 metalworkers showed that 28% had worked less than two years in industry; 34% between two and five years and 39% five or more years. In the large factories with a workforce of more than a thousand, however, the proportion of workers with five or more years of service rose to 53% P6 These figures suggest that a majority of workers were new to industry, yet this need not mean that the labour force was obviously ‘peasant’ in character. We know that it took very little time for some peasants to submit to the cultural pressures of town life and factory work. In view of this, Soviet historians may well be right to allow only five years as the average period it would take a worker to become acculturated to industrial and urban life, but the problem is very under-researched. The preceding review of data on land-ownership and second- generation workers clearly reveals that a process of proletarianisation was taking place among the workers of St Petersburg. The proportion of ‘cadre’ workers in the workforce was increasing, owing to the decay of ties with the land and the growing number of hereditary workers. It is, however, more difficult to try to quantify the proportion of‘cadre’ workers on the eve of the war. The data on land-ownership and sending money to the countryside suggest that, at most, a third of workers had real economic links with peasant society, but these were not the sum of‘peasant workers’. In addition, there were peasants who had only just arrived in industry and who would soon lose contact with the countryside, but who had not yet acclimatised to factory life. In the five years up to 1914, nearly 85,000 workers entered the factories of the capital, so that on the eve of the war about one-third of the total factory workforce had entered industry within the previous five years.67 One can perhaps hazard that in 1914, ‘peasant workers’ and new workers (not all of whom were peasants) together comprised nearly half the factory workforce. Cadre workers, therefore, i.e. those who had severed their ties with peasant society and who had considerable industrial and urban experience, were probably in a slight majority. The war led to a decline in the proportion of‘cadre’ workers in the industrial workforce of the capital. This was caused partly by conscription, and partly by the massive influx of new workers into the factories. Throughout Russian industry about 400,000 to 500,000 (or 20% to 25% of the 1914 workforce) were conscripted into the army.68 In Petrograd the proportion was much less, since workers there were needed to produce for the war effort. Leiberov and Shkaratan estimate that about 40,000 industrial workers in Petrograd were conscripted — or 17% of the 1914 workforce.69 Those conscripted were mainly young workers without a great deal of experience of industry. Fully-proletarianised ‘cadre’ workers usually had some skill and so were less affected, since their skills were in desperately short supply. In later mobilisations, however, known militants and strike leaders were drafted into the army as punishment for participation in industrial and political protest. Leiberov and Shkaratan estimate that as many as 6,000 workers may have been conscripted on political grounds.70 They conclude, nevertheless, that the ‘cadre’ proletariat was preserved during the war. The proportion of ‘cadres’ within the workforce was reduced not so much by conscription, as by the influx of new workers caused by the wartime expansion of production. Between 1914 and 1917 the workforce of Petrograd grew by 150,000; making allowance for the 40,000 who were conscripted, this means that some 190,000 workers must have entered industry. These comprised four main groups: male and female peasants; working- class women and youth; rural artisans and urban petit-bourgeois (meshchane); and evacuees. About 68,200 women came into Petrograd industry during the war, bringing the total number of women workers to 129,800 by 1917. If one assumes that the 31,800 workers who were under the age of eighteen in 1917 had entered industry during the war, then the total number of female and young recruits was about 100,000.71 Many of these may have been from working-class families where the male breadwinner — husband, father or brother - had been sent to the Front, and was thus no longer able to support the family. A majority, however, were almost certainly from the countryside. Although there are no statistics on the social origin of newcomers to industry, it has been estimated that between one-half and three- quarters of the newcomers were from the peasantry.72 About 25,000 to 30,000 recruits to Petrograd industry were drawn from the rural and urban petit-bourgeoisie.73 When the war broke out, many small traders, shopkeepers, landlords, porters, domestic servants, artists and others took jobs in munitions factories in order to escape conscription. A check on reservists at the Putilov works in August 1917 led to the ‘voluntary’ departure of 2,000 workers, described as ‘book-keepers, shop-owners, tailors, artists, jewellers, corn- chandlers, coopers, landlords, and cafe-owners’.74 There were var- ious jingles about such workers which were current in the factories during the war: Once he was a yardkeeper sweeping footpaths, Now he’s in the factory making shrapnel.75 Leiberov and Shkaratan estimate that such workers comprised 5% to 7% of the factory workforce in Petrograd.76 Between 40,000 and 50,000 recruits were workers evacuated from the Baltic provinces and Western parts of Russia. Some twenty factories were evacuated from Riga — with a combined workforce of over 6,000 — and about twenty-five from Lithuania.77 In addition, many Polish workers were removed to the capital. There were around
labour force),followed by Latvians and Lithuanians (2.6%), Finns (2.3%), Germans (0.5%), Jews (0.3%) etc.79 Leiberov and Shkaratan conclude that if one subtracts the 190,000 workers who came into industry during the war from the total factory workforce in 1917, one is left with the number of‘cadre’ workers — between 200,000 and 220,000 (assuming that most evacuees were ‘cadre’ workers). This leads them to conclude that a majority of the factory workforce in Petrograd in 1917 - 50% to 52% - were ‘cadres’. But this assumes that by 1917 all those workers who had been working in industry in 1914 were ‘cadres’. This seems an un- warranted assumption, in view of the fact that at least 40% of the workforce in 1914 had either less than five years’ experience in industry or were peasant workers. Making some allowance for this, therefore, it is likely that by 1917 ‘cadres’ no longer comprised a slight majority of the workforce, as they had done in 1914, but had shrunk to perhaps as little as 40% of the total workforce.80 Sexual and age divisions By January 1917 129,800 women worked in the factories of the capital.81 This compared to 83,000 domestic servants, mostly women, who worked in dire conditions for shockingly low wages.82 Perhaps
The Petrograd textile industry had the highest proportion of women workers. After the 1905 Revolution millowners had deliber- ately increased the number of women employees. In 1907 the annual report of factory inspectors noted: ‘the increase in the application of female labour is particularly sharply reflected in the cottonweaving industry, where women weavers have ousted men. The reasons for this are as before: their greater industry, attentiveness and abstinence (they do not drink or smoke), their compliance and greater reason-
Source: Stepanov, Rabochie Petrograda, p.34. ableness in respect of pay’.85 The textile workforce was composed mainly of young single women. A survey of 7,000 textileworkers in Petrograd in 1918 revealed that 18% were aged 17 or under; 17% aged 18 to 20; 28% aged 21 to 30; 18% aged 31 to 40; and 19% aged 41 and over. 69% of women were under the age of 30 compared to 39% of men, most of the latter being boys under 17.86 Amongst the male textileworkers, who comprised only 13% of the total, 70% were married, 2% widowed and 28% single. Amongst the women, however, only 33% were married, 11% widowed and 56% single. This reflected the large share of young girls in the industry, and also the fact that the marriage rate had gone down as a consequence of the war. This was particularly striking among women textileworkers aged 20 to 30. In 1909, 74% of this group were married, whereas nine years later, only 49% were.87 By 1917 more women in Petrograd worked in the metal industries than in textiles - approximately 48,000 as against 30,000. The proportion of women in the metal industries rocketed from 2.7% in 1913 to 20.3% (see Table 8). These women worked in mass- production factories producing cartridges, shells, shrapnel, etc. Some
Prior to the war, the employment of children was less widespread in the capital than in Russian industry generally. In 1914 about 8% of the workforce under the Factory Inspectorate in St Petersburg consisted of youths aged 15 to 17. In addition, about 2,000 children aged 12 to 15 were employed in porcelain and glass factories, printshops and other small enterprises.89 In the course of the war the number of young workers in Petrograd grew, but less than the national average. The number of under-i8s rose from 22,900 to 31,800, but their proportion within the factory labour force remained about the same (see Table 8). Although the proportion of young workers was the greatest in the textiles, food and leather industries, young workers were most numerous in the metal industries. It was this industry which provided a base for the youth movement in Petrograd in 1917. The labour force in Russia was remarkable for the low proportion of middle-aged workers and the almost complete absence of elderly workers in its ranks. In 1900 23% of St Petersburg factory workers were aged 16 to 20; 52% were aged 21 to 40; and only 12% were older than 40.90 The First World War dramatically changed this age balance. The fullest data on this question are provided by the industrial census of 1918, but because of the collapse of industry in the first half of that year, these data can be applied to 1917 only with some caution. The census showed that among male workers, 4.2% were under 15; 6.3% were 16 to 17; 6.5% were 18 to 20; 41.7% were 21 to 39; 38.4% were 40 to 59 and 2.9% were 60 or more.91 This represented an enormous increase in the proportion ofover-40s and a significant decline in the proportion of workers aged 21 to 40. This was an obvious consequence of conscription. Among women workers, 2.7% were under 15; 7.8% were 16 to 17; 18.4% were 18 to 20; 52.7% were 21 to 39; 17% were 40 to 59 and 1.3% were 60 or over. Women workers thus had a younger age profile than men in 1918, with a bigger proportion of under-2is and a far smaller proportion of over-40s.92 In 1918 60% of industrial workers in Russia were married or widowed. This compared to 63% of male and 46% of female metalworkers in Petrograd in the same year.93 Late marriage was the norm: 45% of male and 48% of female workers aged 21 to 30 were unmarried in Petrograd in 1918.94 Among the more highly-paid groups of workers, the marriage-rate and average family size were greatest. A survey of metalworkers in 1908 showed that 46% of those earning less than 1,5or. a day were single, compared to 21 % of those earning more than 2-50r. a day.95 In 1918 married male workers in Petrograd had an average of 2.4 dependants, but skilled metalworkers had 3.7.96 Whereas in 1897 only 30% of married metalworkers had lived with their families, in 1918 three-quarters of skilled fitters in Petrograd did so.97 In that year 71 % of all married workers lived with their families - an important indication of the extent to which workers had broken ties with the countryside since 1897. One Soviet anthropologist has suggested that women had a higher status in the working-class family than in the peasant family, and that there was a more equal division of labour within the former than the latter. She cites as evidence the opinion of M. Davidovich, surveyor of St Petersburg textileworkers, who wrote in 1909: ‘While the woman hurries straight home from the factory to the children, the husband goes off to market and to the shops to buy provisions for supper and next day’s dinner ... in his spare time the husband must always look after the children.’98 Yet there is a good deal of other evidence to suggest that domestic labour remained as much the responsibility of the woman in the ‘proletarian’ family, as it was in its peasant counterpart. A. Il'ina, writing in the journal of the textileworkers, Tkach, gives this agonising description of the lot of the working mother: Having finished work at the factory, the woman worker is still not free. While the male worker goes off to a meeting, or just takes a walk or plays billiards with his mates, she has to cope with the housework — to cook, to wash and so on ... she is seldom helped by her husband. Unfortunately, one has to admit that male workers are still very prejudiced. They think that it is humiliating for a man to do ‘woman’s’ work [bab’yu rabotu]. They would sooner their sick, worn-out wife did the household chores [barshchinu] by herself. They would rather tolerate her remaining completely without leisure - illiterate and ignorant - than condescend to help her do the housework. And on top of all these yokes and burdens, the woman worker has still the heavy load of motherhood ... Today for a working class woman, having a baby is no joy - it’s a burden, which at times gets quite unbearable." For single women who left their families, factory work may have brought a measure of economic independence,100 but for married women, the burdens of being a housewife and mother, as well as a wage-worker, were onerous in the extreme. Low wages, together with the obligation to perform unpaid domestic labour, made married women economically dependent on the wages of their husbands. Skill divisions The definition of‘skill’ is a thorny problem. Skill refers to the quality of work: a skilled job demands greater precision, dexterity and mental exertion than an unskilled job. Skill differences are rooted in the labour process - in the physical and intellectual requirements of particular operations within the process of production. Some writers have argued that it is possible to measure skill by comparing the length of training necessary for different jobs.101 The problem is, however, that while skills do have real existence in the requirements of a job and in the capabilities of the worker, they are also partially determined by class struggle. Workers’ organisations can ‘artificially’ create skills, by restricting access to particular jobs; they can control the institutions and practices whereby skills are acquired, trans- mitted and recognised.102 Because skill determination is a site of class struggle, the usefulness of criteria such as length of apprenticeship or relative wage levels as ‘objective’ measures of skill must be fairly limited. The origins of the St Petersburg metal industry go back to the first quarter of the eighteenth century, but the modern metallurgical and metalworking industries came into existence only in the 1890s. From the first, they were machine-based industries, fairly advanced in technology, but still dependent on the manual skills of craftsmen. The sociologist, Alain Touraine, has distinguished three phases in the organisation of work: the first was the old system which relied on craftsmanship and required only universal machines, such as lathes, not limited to the production of a single product; the second saw the break-up of a job into its component parts, the development of mechanisation and the feeding of machines by unskilled workers; the third phase is the phase of automation, where direct productive work by human beings is eliminated.103 One could say that in the decade prior to 1917 the metalworking industry of Petrograd was moving from the first to the second of Touraine’s phases. Skilled craftsmen (masterovye) played a crucial role in the labour process in the metal industry of Petrograd. Highly-skilled workers, such as instrument-makers, pattern-makers, milling-machine oper- ators, electricians, platers or engravers, performed complex precision work, working independently from technical drawings and using sophisticated measuring instruments. Beneath them were many skilled workers who were fully trained and who could work from technical drawings, but whose work was not especially complex or precise. These included most fitters (slesan), turners (tokari), electri- cians, mechanics, planers, mortisers, etc.104 These highly-skilled and skilled men (there were no women in these trades) were directly involved in production: the rapidity of their reflexes, their visual, auditory and tactile sensibilities were crucial to the operation of the machine or tool. They were deeply knowledgeable of their work, used to taking decisions about their work, used to thinking for themselves and to exercising control over their jobs. They were respected by other workers and by management for their manual and intellectual skills. As such, they were not unlike craftsmen at Armstrong- Whitworth, the Schwarzkopf works in Berlin or at Fiat-Centro in Turin. One should not imagine, however, that the skilled metalworker in St Petersburg was a ‘labour aristocrat’. Some of the most highly-paid men did constitute a small ‘aristocracy’, but the average skilled man was far removed from the craftsman one might associate with the British ‘new model’ unions of the mid-nineteenth century. Firstly, Petersburg metalworkers were not organised into exclusive craft unions, capable of controlling entry to the trade, of imposing standard pay and conditions and of regulating workshop matters through ‘custom and practice’.105 Secondly, metalworkers did not serve a formal five- or seven-year apprenticeship. A survey of fitters at the Putilov works in 1918 showed that 67% had served an appren- ticeship, averaging 3.3 years and starting at about the age of 15 or 16; 32% had trained on the job as assistants to craftsmen (podruchnye), for 4.5 years on average.106 Thirdly, unlike British engineers in the nineteenth century, the metalworkers of St Petersburg did not rely so exclusively on manual skill: they operated up-to-date drilling machines, turret lathes, vertical boring mills, self-acting planing machines and horizontal milling machines. There were, of course, still turners who were masters of the parallel lathe, but there were many who worked automatic lathes which required them only to assemble parts, measure their dimensions and sometimes to regulate tools. Similarly, there were traditional fitters, who fitted parts with a file and scraper, ran the bearings and assembled all the parts themselves, but limit-gauges were already dealing a blow to their skills. The skilled metalworkers of St Petersburg were thus distant from British ‘labour aristocrats’, but neither were they yet the ‘mass-production’ workers of the modern assembly plant. The masterovye of the metal trades were distinguished by their craft consciousness. Many worker-memoirists remark on this. A.M. Buiko, who worked at the Putilov works at the turn of the century, recalled: Yüklə 4,02 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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