V. I.

Lenin

Labourunrest has once again been the subject of intense and widespread
comment. The governing circles are alarmed, in all earnestness
alarmed. This is evident from the fact that it was deemed necessary to
“punish”, by suspension for a week, even Novoye Vremya , [1] that
arch-loyal newspaper ever fawning on the authorities, for an article published
in issue No. 9051 of May 11, entitled “Apropos of the Labour
Unrest”. Of course, the penalty was not inflicted because of the contents
of the article, which was replete with the warmest appreciation of the
government and the sincerest concern for its interests. What was considered
dangerous was the very discussion of events that were “disturbing
society”, the mere reference to their extensiveness and their
importance. Below we give extracts from the secret circular (also dated
May 11) [2] directing that press articles dealing with the disorders in the factories
and with the workers’ attitude towards the employers be published only by permission of the Department of Police , which proves better than
all arguments that the government itself is inclined to regard the labour
unrest as a matter of state importance. The article in Novoye Vremya is of particular interest precisely for the reason that it
outlines a complete state programme, which in effect amounts to allaying
the discontent by a few petty and in part fictitious doles to which are
attached pompous sign boards about protective policy, cordiality, etc.,
and which provide pretexts for increasing surveillance by government
officials. But this programme, which is not a new one, embodies, one may
say, the “acme” of wisdom of modern statesmen, not only in
Russia, but also in the West. In a society based on private property and the enslavement of millions of
propertyless toilers by a handful of rich people, the government cannot be
anything but the loyal friend and ally of the exploiters and the most
reliable guardian of their power. In our times, guns, bayonets, and whips
are not a sufficiently reliable guardian; it is necessary to convince the
exploited that the government stands above classes, that it does not serve
the interests of the aristocracy and the bourgeiosie, but those of
justice, that it is concerned with protecting the weak and the poor
against the rich and the powerful, etc. Napoleon III in France and
Bismarck and Wilhelm II in Germany exerted no little effort to play up to
the workers in this way. But in Europe, where there is a more or less free
press, a representative government, electoral campaigns, and
well-established political parties, all these hypocritical tricks were
quickly exposed. In Asia, however, which includes Russia, where the masses
of the people are so wretched and ignorant, and where there are such
strong prejudices fostering faith in Our Father the Tsar, tricks of this
kind are quite successful. One of the very characteristic signs that the
European spirit is beginning to penetrate into Russia is the
failure with which this policy has met in the last ten or twenty
years. Over and over again it was tried, but each time, within a few years
after the enactment of some “protective” (allegedly protective) labour law, there was a reversion to the old state of
affairs—the number of discontented workers increased, ferment grew,
unrest gained in scope—again the “protective” policy was
announced with a blare of trumpets, again pompous phrases could be heard
about heartfelt solicitude for the workers; another law was passed
providing a penny’s worth of benefit and a pound’s worth of empty and
lying words for the workers, and in a few years’ time the whole business
was repeated. The government was as frantic as a squirrel in a cage, and
went to any lengths, in one form or another, to stop up the gaps with sops
and shreds; but the discontent broke out in ever newer places with
increasing vigour.

Letus recall the outstanding points in the history of “labour
legislation” in Russia. Towards the end of the seventies there were big
strikes in St. Petersburg, and the socialists tried to take advantage of the
situation to intensify their agitation. Alexander III included factory legislation in his
so-called “popular” (but in fact aristocratic-police)
policy. In 1882 the Factory Inspectorate was introduced and at first its
reports were even published. The government, of course, was not pleased
with these reports and ceased their publication. The factory
inspection laws proved to be merely a stopgap. Then came the years
1884-85; the industrial crisis gave rise to a powerful movement among the
workers, and there were a number of turbulent strikes in the central
district (the Morozov cotton-mill strike [3] being particularly
noteworthy). Again the “protective” policy was brought to the
fore, this time advocated with particular zeal by Katkov in
Moskovskiye Vedomosti . [4]

Katkov fumed and raged over the fact that the Morozov strikers were tried by a jury, and he described the hundred
and one questions submitted by the court for the jury’s decision as
“a hundred-and-one gun salute in honour of the appearance of the
labour question in Russia”; but, at the same time, he demanded that
the “state” come to the defence of the workers and prohibit
the monstrous system of fines that had ultimately aroused the Morozov
cotton weavers to revolt. The law of 1886 was passed; it greatly widened
the powers of the Factory Inspectorate and prohibited the imposition of
arbitrary fines to benefit the employers. Ten years passed, and again
there was an outbreak of labour unrest. The strikes of 1895, particularly
the great strike of

1896, [5] caused the government to tremble with fear (especially on account of the fact that the Social-Democrats were by then
regularly marching shoulder to shoulder with the workers); with
unprecedented celerity, it passed the “protective” law (June
2,1897) for a shorter working day. During the discussion of the projected
law in committee the officials of the Ministry of the Interior, including
the director of the Department of Police, declared loudly that the factory
workers must come to regard the government as their constant protector and
their just and merciful patron (see the pamphlet The Secret Documents on the Law of June 2, 1897 [6] ).

Although passed, the protective law is being cur tailed and rendered ineffective on the sly through circulars
issued by the selfsame government. Another industrial crisis sets in. The
workers for the hundredth time are convinced that the “protection” of the police government
cannot substantially alleviate their conditions, or give them liberty to
look after themselves; again unrest and street fighting, again the
government is anxious, again we hear police speeches about “state
protection”, this time proclaimed in Novoye Vremya.
Gentlemen! Will you never tire of scooping up water with a sieve?

No,the government, of course, will never tire of repeating its attempts
to intimidate the irreconcilable workers and decoy the weaker, the more
foolish, and more cowardly, by means of a dole. Nor will we ever tire of
exposing the real meaning of these attempts and of exposing
“statesmen” who-but yesterday ordered soldiers to shoot down the
workers and today are shouting about protection; who but yesterday talked
about their justice and their patronage of the workers and today are
seizing the best of the workers and intellectuals, one after another, and
leaving them to the mercy of the police without trial. Therefore we
consider it necessary to dwell on the “state programme” of
Novoye Vremya in good time before some new “protective” law is promulgated. Moreover, the admissions made
in this connection by a publication so “authoritative” in the
sphere of home politics as Novoye Vremya are worthy of attention.

Novoye Vremya is compelled to admit that the “regrettable
manifestations in the sphere of the labour question” are not
accidental. Of course, the socialists, too, are responsible (the newspaper
avoids mentioning the awful word “socialist”, preferring such
vague terms as “pernicious pseudo-doctrines” and the “propaganda of anti-state and anti-social ideas”); but ... but why
are the socialists so successful among the workers? Novoye Vremya , of course, does not miss an opportunity to hurl abuse at the
workers: they are so “undeveloped and ignorant” that they
willingly listen to the pernicious propaganda of the socialists, so
harmful to the welfare of the police. Consequently, the socialists and the
workers are to blame, and the gendarmes have long been waging a desperate
war against the guilty, filling the prisons and places of exile. But to no
avail. Apparently, there is something in the conditions of the factory workers which “engenders and fosters discontent with their
present conditions” and thus “favours the success” of socialism.

"The severe toil of the factory workers in extremely unfavourable
conditions of life provides them with a bare subsistence for as long as
they are able to work, and in every emergency when they are without work
for any length of time, they find themselves in desperate straits, as, for
example, the workers in the Baku oil fields described recently in the
newspapers.” Government supporters, thus, are compelled to admit that the
success of socialism is due to the really bad conditions of the
workers. But the admission is made in such a vague and evasive form, and
with such reservations, that it is clear that people of this sort cannot
possibly have the slightest intention of touching the “sacred
property” of the capitalists which oppresses the workers. “Unfortunately,” writes Novoye Vremya , “we
know too little about the actual state of affairs in regard to the labour
question in Russia.” Yes, unfortunately indeed! And “we” know
little, precisely because we permit the police government to keep the
whole press in slavery, to gag every one who honestly attempts to expose
the- scandalous state of affairs in our country. But “we” do
try to turn the working man’s hatred riot against the Asiatic government
but against the non-Russians. Novoye Vremya broadly hints at the
“non Russian factory managers”, and calls them “coarse and greedy”. Such a bait is likely to trap only the most ignorant
a-nd undeveloped workers, those who believe that all their misfortunes
come from the “Germans” or the “Jews” and who do not know that the German and the Jewish workers unite to fight their
German and Jewish exploiters. But even the workers who do not know this
have learned from thousands of examples that the Russian capitalists are
the “greediest” and most unceremonious of all capitalists, and
that the Russian police and the Russian Government are the
“coarsest” of all.

Ofinterest, too, are Novoye Vremya’s regrets that the workers
are no longer so ignorant and submissive as is the peasantry. The paper
bewails the fact that the workers “are abandoning their rural
nests”, that the “factory districts become the gathering
centres of mixed masses”, that the “villagers are abandoning
their villages with their modest [that is the heart of the matter I, but
independent, social and economic interests and relationships”. Indeed, they have something to bewail. “The villagers” are tied to their
nests, and out of fear of losing them, dare not submit demands ·to
their landlord, to threaten him with strikes, etc. The villagers do not
know conditions in other places and are interested only in the affairs of
their own hamlet (the supporters of the government call this the
“independent interests” of the villager; knowing his place,
not poking his nose into politics—what can please the authorities
more?); but in this hamlet, the local leech, the landlord or the kulak,
knows every single individual; the peasants have all inherited from their
fathers and grandfathers the servile lesson of submission, and there is no
one there to awaken consciousness in them. In the factory, however, the
people are “mixed”, are not tied to their nests (it is all the
same to them where they work), they have seen and ]earned things, and are
hold and full of interest in every thing that is going on in the world.

Notwithstandingthis deplorable transformation of the humble muzhik into a
class-conscious worker, our police wiseacres still hope to delude the
working masses with phrases about “the state’s protection of the
workers’ welfare”. Novoye Vremya fortifies this hope with the
following out worn argument: “Capitalism, proud and all-powerful in
the West, is still an infant in our country, it can walk only in leading
strings, and these are provided by the government. Now, only a humble
peasant will believe this old song about the omnipotence of the
authorities! The worker, however, sees all too often that the capitalists
keep the police, the church, and the military and civil officials
in leading strings”. And so, continues Novoye Vremya , the
government “must insist” upon an improvement in the workers’ conditions, i.e., it must demand this improvement of the
employers. Simple, is it not? Issue an order, and, presto, the thing is
done. But it is easy to talk; in point of fact, the orders of the
authorities, even the most “modest”, such as the establishment
of hospitals at the factories, have been ignored by the capitalists for
whole decades. Moreover, the government would not dare to order the
capitalists to do anything that would seriously affect the
“sacred” right of private property. Furthermore, the government wants no serious improvement in the conditions of the workers,
because in thousands of instances it is an employer itself and under-pays and
oppresses the workers in the Obukhov Works and in hundreds of other
places, as well as tens of thousands of postal and railway employees,
etc., etc. Novoye Vremya , realising that no one would take the
orders of our government seriously, tries to bolster up its position with
lofty historical examples. This should be done, it says in regard to the
improvement in the conditions of the workers, “in the same way as
half a century ago, when the government took the peasant question in hand,
when it was guided by the wise conviction that it would be better, through
reforms from above, to avert the presentation of demands for such reforms
from below and not to wail for such an eventuation”.

Now,this is really a valuable admission. Before the emancipation of the
peasants, the tsar indicated to the nobility the possibility of a popular
rebellion, saying that it would be better to emancipate from above than to
wait until they began to emancipate themselves from below. And now this
cringing newspaper admits that the mood of the workers fills it with a
fear no less than did the mood of the peasants “on the eve of
freedom”. “Better from above than from below”! The autocracy’s newspaper lackeys are profoundly mistaken if they think there
is a “similarity” between the demands for reforms today and
those of that time. The peasants demanded the abolition of serfdom,
having nothing against the tsar’s rule and believing in the tsar. The
workers today are revolting first and foremost against the government;
they realise that their lack of rights under the police autocracy binds
them hand and foot in their struggle against the capitalists and for that
reason they demand liberation from governmental tyranny and governmental
outrage. The workers are also in a state of unrest “on the eve of
freedom”, but this will be the liberation of the whole people, which
is wresting political freedom from the despots.

*     * *
Doyou know what great reform is proposed in order to hush the discontent
of the workers and to demonstrate to them the “state’s protection”?
If persistent rumour is to be believed, a struggle is going on between the
Ministry of

Finance and the Ministry of the Interior. The latter demands that the
Factory Inspectorate be placed under its control; for then, it argues, the
factory inspectors will be less likely to indulge the capitalists and will
show more regard for the interests of the workers and in this way avert
unrest. Let the workers prepare for this new act of the tsar’s grace; the
factory inspectors will don different uniforms and they will be placed on
the staff of another ministry (in all probability with a rise in salary),
the very ministry, indeed (especially the Department of Police), which for
such a long time past has been demonstrating its love and solicitude for
the workers.

---
Notes:
[1]
Novoye Vremya ( New Times )—a St. Petersburg newspaper published from 1868 to October 1917. At first moderately
liberal, it be came after 1876 the organ of the most reactionary circles
of the nobility and the state bureaucracy. The paper conducted a struggle,
not only against the revolutionary, but also against the
bourgeois-liberal, movement. From 1905 onwards it became an organ of the
Black Hundreds.

[2]
The circular referred to was sent out by the Central Press Board to all
newspaper and magazine editors after Novoye Vremya published the
article “Apropos of the Labour Unrest”. The circular was
reproduced in Iskra , No. 6 (July 1901) in the article “St. Petersburg” (section “From Our Social Life”).

[3]
The strike movement of 1885 involved many textile enterprises in Vladimir,
Moscow, Tver, and other gubernias of the industrial centre of Russia. The
January strike of the workers at the Nikolskoye Mill, near
Orekhovo-Zuyevo, belonging to Morozov, was the biggest and had the
greatest significance. The principal demands of the strikers were the
reduction of fines, the introduction of a regular hiring system, etc. The
strike was led by the advanced workers P. Moiseyenko, L. Ivanov, and
V. Volkov. The Morozov strike, in which over 8,000 workers took part, was
crushed by tsarist troops and over 600 workers were arrested. Under
pressure of the strike movement of 1885-86, the tsarist government was
forced to issue a law on fines (the Law of June 3, 1886), according to
which fine-moneys were to be used for the needs of the workers and were
not to go into the employer’s pocket.

[4]
Moskovskiye Vedomosti ( Moscow Recorder )—a newspaper founded in 1756; beginning with the 1860s, it expressed the
views of the most reactionary monarchist elements among the landlords and
the clergy; from 1905 onwards, it was one of the chief organs of the Black
Hundreds. It continued publication until the October Revolution of 1917.

[5]
Lenin refers to mass strikes of St. Petersburg workers, mainly in the
textile industry, in 1895 and, particularly, 1896. The 1896 strike began
on the Kalinkin Cotton-Spinning Mill on May 23. The immediate cause of the
strike was the employers’ refusal to pay the workers in full for holidays on the occasion of the coronation of Nicholas
II. The strike spread rapidly to all the main cotton-spinning and weaving
mills of St. Petersburg, and then to large machine-building plants, a
rubber factory, a paper factory, and a sugar refinery. For the first time
the proletariat of the capital launched a struggle against its exploiters
on a broad front. Over 30,000 workers went on strike. The strike was
conducted under the leadership of the St. Petersburg League of Struggle
for the Emancipation of the Working Class, which issued leaflets and
manifestos calling on the workers to stand solid and steadfast in defence
of their rights; the League published and distributed the strikers’ main
demands, which included the ten-and-a-half-hour working day, increased
rates of pay, and payment of wages on time.

Thereport of the strike produced a tremendous impression abroad. The
Berlin Vorwarts (Forward ) and the Vienna Arbeiter Zeitung (Workers’ Gazette ) carried accounts of the strike. An address from
English workers, signed by the leaders of all socialist and trade-union
organisations, was translated into Russian and distributed by the League
of Struggle among the St. Petersburg workers. At a meeting of London trade
unions a report on the strike by Vera Zasulich and a speech by Eleanor
Marx-Aveling were greeted with great enthusiasm and the audience took up a
collection to aid the strikers; similar collections were taken up in other
trade unions. Collections for the St. Petersburg strikers were organised
in Ger many, Austria, and Poland. The London Congress of the Second
International, which took place in July 1896, cheered Plekhanov’s report
of the 1896 strike and adopted a special resolution greeting the Russian
workers who were “struggling against one of the last bastions of
European reaction”.

The St. Petersburg strikes gave an impetus to the working-class movement
in Moscow and other Russian cities; they forced the government to speed up
the review of the factory laws and to issue the Law of June 2 (14), 1897
limiting the working day at all factories and mills to eleven and a half
hours. The strikes, as Lenin subsequently wrote, “ushered in an era
of steady advance in the working-class movement, that most powerful factor
in the whole of our revolution” (see present edition, Vol. 13,
“Preface to the Collection Twelve Years”).

[6]
The pamphlet The Secret Documents on the Law of June 2, 1897 was
published in Geneva in 1898 by the Union of Russian Social-Democrats
Abroad.