As in industry so on the railways, the growing dislocation was counteracted only by the revolutionary initiative of the workers.
After the July events, and especially in August, the government launched an open offensive against the railway workers. The new policy put an end to the “Nekrasov spring”—the name given to the period when the Minister of Transport, the “Left” Cadet Nekrasov, was still constrained to reckon with the sentiment of the masses and to introduce Kornilovism on the railways. After the July days the Cadet Party issued a sharp protest against Nekrasov’s Circular No. 6321. This circular had been sent out on May 27 and recognised the railwaymen’s trade unions and the railway committees, which were even empowered to exercise control over the work of the railways. The ensuing period was known on the railways as the “Nekrasov spring.” The Cadets declared that the experiment in Russian railway affairs was an unfortunate one. The Special Transport Council demanded the withdrawal of Circular No. 6321, increased responsibility of officials, the abolition of all functions of control on the part of the workers and employees and the right to issue compulsory orders, for violation of which the railway disciplinary courts were to have summary powers to commit offenders to prison.
It was stated at a meeting of the Russo-American Committee, in the presence of a “high authority,” a “distinguished foreigner,” Stevens, the Chairman of an American railway commission in Russia, that
“a firm hand is required in railway affairs. The participation of employees in the administration of the railways is intolerable.”(1)
The Council of Private Railways openly demanded the complete and unconditional restoration of the pre-revolutionary conditions of labour on the railways. At a Moscow “Conference of Public Men” held on August 8 the question of militarising the railways was raised. N. D. Baidak, the Chairman of the Council of Private Railways, stated in an interview to the press that “a state of emergency must be immediately proclaimed on the railways.”(2)
The militarization of the railways was one of the “innovations” which Kornilov himself had announced in his programme. On the eve of his revolt, the general had declared: “A military régime must be proclaimed on the railway.”(3)
But the bourgeoisie considered Nekrasov far too mild a man for a Kornilov campaign against the working class. A firm hand was required. It was not essential that the Candidate should be a Cadet, and still less that he should be even more to the Right. On the contrary, best of all would be a “Socialist” who would carry out the will of the bourgeoisie as honestly as the Mensheviks Skobelev and Nikitin, or the Socialist-Revolutionaries, S. Maslov and Chernov. Such a Kornilov for the railways was found. The chiefs of the various railways proposed the Socialist-Revolutionary, S. G. Takhtamyshev, the man whom Kornilov had included in the list of members of his dictatorial government. The very first measures of the new Minister fully justified the confidence placed in him by the bourgeoisie. Speaking on July 16 at the First Railway Congress, he endeavoured to gild the Kornilov pill he proposed to administer to the seriously ailing railways by describing the happy lot of the worker aristocracy in England:
“What happiness the British worker must experience! I visited workers’ homes: they have three rooms, a kitchen, a piano. . . . The time is not far off when the Russian worker, like the British worker, will come home to a bright and tastefully furnished apartment of three or four rooms and will hear an excellent domestic concert; his daughter will play the piano and his son the fiddle.”(4)
Then, passing from a description of the paradise of the future to the reality of the present, he informed the Congress that
“the administrative and executive authority on the railways belongs to the organs of government. No interference with the orders of these organs can be tolerated.”(5)
After this speech Takhtamyshev was known to the workers on the Kazan Railway as the “fiddle” and the members of the Provisional Government as the “fiddlers.” Takhtamyshev’s speech was the signal for a wide campaign by the railway administration against the railwaymen’s committees: they were evicted from their quarters and their members were dismissed from work and prosecuted by law.
This zealous Socialist-Revolutionary Minister was succeeded by a Cadet, P. N. Yurenev. The latter announced his complete solidarity with Takhtamyshev’s policy. Yurenev expanded the latter’s programme of action in a speech he made at the all-Russian Railway Congress on August 1:
“I consider interference in the executive functions of the administration by private persons and organisations not empowered by the government to do so, interference which tends to dislocate traffic, which is accompanied by the arbitrary dismissal of responsible persons and, as a result, creates an impossible situation in the technical side of railway operation at a time when the situation at the front is what it is, at a time of military defeats and extreme danger to the State—I consider such interference a crime against the State! And the government must react with the full weight of its authority against such attempts as sheer anti-State manifestations.”(6)
Yurenev vigorously opposed the workers’ demands for an increase in wages. He met the demand of the workers in the Moscow railway shops with the curt reply: “No money!” And this was the stereotyped reply he made to all such demands.
The Kornilovites on the railways had the whole-hearted support of the compromisers. Orekhov, a Right Socialist-Revolutionary, Chairman at the Inaugural Congress of the Railwaymen’s Union (July-August) and the first Chairman of the Vikzhel—the All-Russian Executive Committee of the Railwaymen’s Union—spoke in the name of the railwaymen at the Council of State. This “Socialist” declared:
“Order, sacrifice and defence—such is the government’s appeal to us in these days. Order, sacrifice and defence—these are the words inscribed on the banner of the all-Russian Railwaymen’s Union.”(7)
The railways were one of those many “bewitched” things with which the Provisional Government seemed able to do nothing. Minister succeeded Minister, but the railways continued to fall to pieces. Yurenev was replaced by Leverovsky. Like Yurenev, he expressed his solidarity with the policy of his predecessor, and like him he resorted to repressive measures and refused to increase wages. The managements of certain of the railways endeavoured to disorganise the food supply of the workers and employees. The director of the Kazan Railway, von Mekk—who later, under the Soviet Government, was an instigator of wrecking activities on the railways—withheld urgent credits for the purchase of goods and endeavoured in this way to dislocate the food supply. Similar actions by the government and its agents in the various localities were leading to the inevitable collapse of the railways. This was aggravated by such new phenomena as wholesale desertions from the front and the spread of bag-trading resulting from the food shortage and profiteering. The amount of freight carried was 200,000 carloads below requirements in July and 248,000 carloads below requirement in August. Average daily freight carried in nine months was 19,500 carloads, or 22 per cent less than in 1916. Daily freight carried in October averaged 16,627 carloads, or 34 per cent less than in 1916. Complete paralysis menaced the railways and, consequently, the whole economic life of the country. Even the bourgeoisie made no secret of this. A prominent engineer by the name of Landsberg declared at a meeting of the Transport Council that “in the approaching winter months complete collapse is inevitable.”(8)
[1] “Our Railways,” Rech, No. 181, August 4, 1917.
[2] “The Position on the Railways,” Torgovo-Promyshlennaya Gazeta, No. 191, September 3, 1917.
[3] Central Archives of the October Revolution, Records—9, “Extraordinary Commission to Investigate the Case of General Kornilov and His Accomplices,” Register 1, File No. 18, folio 89.
[4] A. Tanyayev, Sketches of the Railwaymen’s Movement in the 1917 Revolution (February-October), Moscow, 1925, pp. 85-86.
[5] “The All-Russian Railway Congress,” Golos Zheleznodorozhnika (The Railwayman’s Voice), No. 17, July 21, 1917.
[6] “The Minister of Ways of Communication at the Railway Congress,” Vestnik Yekaterininskoi Zheleznoi Dorogi (The Yekaterininakaya Railway Messenger), Yekaterinoslav, 1917, No. 131, p. 12.
[7] Central Archives, The Council of State, Moscow, 1930, p. 168.
[8] “Collapse of the Railways,” Vestnik Yekaterininskoi Zheleznoi Dorogi, Ekaterinoslav, 1917, No. 31. p. 11.
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