First Published: in Rabochaya Mysl, No. 15, April 1902 and No. 16, November-December 1902.
Source: Alliance for Workers' Liberty
Translated: by Reuben Woolley
HTML Markup: Zdravko Saveski
Online Version: Marxist Internet Archive 2025
These three articles of workers' correspondence are from the Russian socialist newspaper Rabochaya Mysl ('Workers' Thought'), which ran from 1897-1902. These articles are from issues 15 and 16, the last two ever produced.
By this period, the newspaper was edited by Konstantin Takhtarev, and published on behalf of both the St. Petersburg Committee for the Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class ('Union of Struggle'), and the St. Petersburg Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP, whose second conference was held less than a year later).
Rabochaya Mysl 15, April 1902
There are terrible norms in place at our plant. We are fined for lateness. Whoever fails to appear at the whistle is denied entry into the plant, they are made to lose half a day and pay a fine for absence: 50 kopecks if the worker earns less than a ruble, 73 kopecks if they earn more. When it comes time to receive pay, the workers are forced to wait outside for their money for half an hour or more, during frost and blizzards. There have been many cases of sickness from colds thanks to this waiting in the frost. One comrade from the foundry became a sacrifice to this waiting period, when it came time to collect his pay he waited outside in the frost, got sick, then died. Workers have demanded that they are given their wages on the shop floor, but Iger the manager did not agree to this demand by the workers, being scared to give them the smallest concession, in case by doing so he makes them all the more demanding. Our plant not only does not have its own hospital, it doesn't even have a single bed designated for workers in the city hospitals, nor the private ones. The plant must have at least one hospital bed per every one hundred people, for all 600 people who work in the plant, that is a minimum of 6 beds. We are treated not by a doctor, but a feldsher[2], who knows nothing about medicine, while our workers often have unfortunate incidents which require serious help. Workers that have received injuries and lack the strength to work receive nothing for the missed time, even though their poor health may last weeks. An unfortunate sick man may be left with absolutely no help from the plant. What is he to do, what can he live on, how can he feed himself and his family?
Comrades, we must demand from the plant administration that those who suffer injuries are paid while in poor health no less than half of the shop wage, which would ensure that workers receive at least a little aid, to protect them somewhat from the hunger and cold. In response to requests for aid from the suffering, Mr. Iger says: "You've only yourselves to blame, you've received your mutilations and injuries due to carelessness. That'll teach you well to pay more attention next time." In the boiler room and the paint shop, they've started firing workers who were hired before spring just in time for the holidays; they've fired 10 workers already. The rest of them continue to work. Recently, one worker was given his walking papers on the order of the Okhtensky district police supervisor. In response to the worker's question, "why am I being fired?", Iger responded: "I don't know anything about it. Go to the district supervisor, ask them for forgiveness, and if they give it to you, then I will take you on for work again." The worker received his walking papers, but never went to the district supervisor after all. We must also say a few words about our impossible latrines, which are constructed hideously and without the most elementary comforts, with the aim of stopping workers from arranging "clubs" there or dilly-dallying from the job. The bosses show care and foresight everywhere - and the workers suffer from it. So then, comrades, these are our most imperative demands: payment of wages in the workshops, a plant doctor, beds for the sick, aid during time of sickness no less than half of the shop wage, abolition of fines for lateness, and improvement of water closets.
Rabochaya Mysl 16
November-December 1902.
Comrades! You will all be aware of the declaration on behalf of the boss, put up on the walls of our workshops, to demonstrate the "heartfelt care" of our dear and loving management. This declaration announces that all workers who are taken sick for any reason may receive benefits, namely: that a married worker when sick will receive a full shop wage, and a bachelor will receive half wage. This was put up at the start of May of the current year. Generally speaking, spring is a dangerous time for management: the first of May approaches, the worldwide day of workers' celebration, during which we feel within us the wish to express our solidarity with foreign comrades in their struggle for freedom, as well as the wish to declare to our oppressors - the government and the capitalists - that we are not only the workers' force that creates all their innumerable wealth, but also a force that is capable of fighting to win its own freedom. In Spring, our management can feel the fragility of its own position, and hurries to make clear how much they care about us. Last year, with the blood of our comrades, we won ourselves some concessions. But the management's memory is short-lived: having received those concessions, we calmed down; the management forgot about its former fear, and began, little by little, to take from us that which we had won. Our sick workers now no longer receive benefits when sick - the bosses receive them instead, in the form of profits and awards before the holiday season. What has our administration come to, see how true the "firm promise" of our manager Vlasyev was, made last year to the deputies on behalf of the workers, that he would not allow a moment's delay in any work! Now, when our management feels that because of winter, the workers have nowhere to go-especially just before Christmas-they have begun to lower the pay for every job - this must be because, despite the wrecking of sick days, there still isn't enough money to give awards to the higher administration.
Our bosses have a particular method of pilfering - so-called "fines". Fining capital grows by the day, but how large it is, how it is spent, and any reports on the matter are kept from us. It should go to the payment of benefit and support for the sick. But our pilferers' pockets are bottomless, there's always more room in them, and they will spend a long time filling them to the brim if we don't demand reports on fines - that very real form of theft - as well as their removal altogether. But, by all appearances, our bosses' consciences are not pure, and because they also worry for their peace and for the protection of what's theirs, they have placed soldiers on watch across the entire plant, to keep us in captivity with rifle butts and bullets. On top of that, there are rumours that 100 former worker-soldiers were invited to the gendarmerie and offered a salary of 10 rubles per month to provide information on unreliable workers. But "you won't do anything with us":[4] neither butts nor bullets will silence the voices of need and labour, and we have no fear of traitors, who sell their conscience to the gendarmes.
Comrades! It is time to wake up! We will remember firmly that we should expect nothing good from any bosses whatsoever! Unite, comrades, and we shall be ready for the constant, never-ending struggle.
Rabochaya Mysl 16
November-December 1902.
In September, the all-powerful master himself, the sovereign emperor visited our shipyard, and was met by a "delegation of craftsmen and workers", which brought him bread and salt, and greeted him with a speech.
The delegates did not address the tsar with the following words:
"Sovereign master! You have just had arranged for you a celebratory meeting in Kursk, during military manoeuvres. Nobility, merchants, officials - all of them gave you a low bow and said the most flattering and complimentary of words. The Lord Bishop agreed that you give the residents of Kursk more pleasure and satisfaction than the sun, for they see the heavenly luminary often, but they see you, the earthly luminary, only rarely.
"Sovereign master! Do you await the same greeting from the Baltiiskii shipyard? The same such comparisons with the sun? No, we value the sun far more than Kursk's bishop does. And we value it all the more, the further from it we must be. Our wages have fallen to 35 [rubles]. Your adjutants, mighty master, are great artists in the field of lowering pay for jobs and decreasing wages. And so, we are forced further away from the sun - into damp, sodden and dark cellars. We think that for these past three years, the food rations for beasts in the tsar's kennels and stables have not lessened, but in the government plants with living costs ever soaring, wages have fallen so sharply!...
"Sovereign master! We understand this entirely: we understand why the tsar-government's horses are kept, as before, in dry, bright and spacious stables, and the dogs live in warmth and comfort, while the workers of the tsar-government's plants are chased all the more regularly to consumption, and are dragged all the more regularly to cemetery plots for their fellows who have died prematurely. Poor maintenance of horses and dogs leads to greater losses, and calls for ever more excessive expenditure on acquiring new beasts, but when it comes to a living worker machine, you can treat that however you wish. Is it any great shame when it perishes? If it's ruined, then turn it out on the pavement like an outcast, with a five-ruble tsar's pension. Let it be a heavy burden on its family's shoulders, let it take up work scaring pigeons in a garden patch, let it beg under windows for crusts of bread to add to its five-ruble tsar's pension - what does it matter? In its place we can find as much new working force as we wish, only for it to meet the exact same fate in future. The master doesn't have to worry about that fate, he can think of the benefits to his pocket: 35 rubles, much more profitable to pay than 60!...
"The master's accounting may be very dependable - entirely dependable, even: as sure as to say that a ruble is more than a penny! But all the same, sovereign master, what is there in your accounts that should make us greet you? After all, they leave one far too bitter and salty! Go to the kennels. Go to the stables - there you will be met with joyous snickers and playful howls - firstly, because the dog and the horse, if they do not live in the wild, are directly in need of their master; secondly, because you are to them a kind master. To us, you are no "kind master" at all, and indeed no master whatsoever could be "kind" to us. Every master has their own interests, as does every worker, and the two are entirely opposed to one another. Let us say that instead of 35 rubles we started receiving 60, as before; let us say that our average wage increased all the way to 100 - all the same, we would remain living machines, working for the capitalists, and no matter how much we received, we would have to wage a struggle to escape the position of the machine, to become people. For that, we would have to fight to win a new socialist structure, to tear the plants and the machines from the hands of the masters, and hand them over as the property of all society, of all labouring people. That is not in your interests whatsoever, sovereign master, but it is the heartfelt interests of the workers - what kind of a greeting could you hope to expect from them? Go to the gatherings of the nobility, to the merchant lunches; gather before your eyes the entirety of the bureaucratic ranks - you share with each of them aims that are substantially mutual, and in a place like that, it would be the most natural of deeds for you to receive a greeting! But for us, you and your entire government stand in the way of our struggle. When the worker raises his voice for the rights of man, when he rises against his masters, when he demands to take part in the governance of the state - it is the most casual and habitual matter for you to respond to him with prison, Siberia, and troops! Beatings for the workers in Obukhov, beatings in Batumi - those are the most recent events demonstrating, very ably, the relationship of the tsar's government to the workers! Should we really be greeting you for that?
"No, sovereign master, do not expect a greeting from us! Here before you stand not your minions. Here stand people, ready to fight to the last drop of blood for a bright and free future! The broader their path, the narrower yours. Here is our greeting to you:
Down with police tyranny!
Down with the tsarist autocracy!
Long live the self-governance of the people!"
Nothing of the sort was said to the tsar. The "delegation of craftsmen and workers" greeted him otherwise. It said to him:
"Great lord of ours, tsar-father, the craftsmen and labourers, who are so boundlessly overjoyed by your visit, ask that you graciously accept from them this bread and salt and pray zealously to the All-powerful, that he may protect, for the good of Russia, your precious life for many years to come."
This was said in the name of the workers of the Baltiiskii plant! And said in those very workshops, where last year the working people were so passionately agitated, enraptured by a sudden outburst of dissatisfaction against the vicious clamping down and harassment. The plant administration itself composed and selected the necessary delegation for the tsar, and this delegation could pin anything it wanted on the workers of the Baltiiskii plant. But, comrades, that was merely a dead body used to buttress the fence; we are alive, we cannot accept that as our voice. In our struggle against the tsarist government, we will show that we hold entirely different opinions!
Those pleasant salutations were given to the tsar from the "delegation of craftsmen and workers", and the tsar gave to them a likewise good response:
"Thank you for your bread and salt, and for the feelings you have expressed. Labour honestly, behave calmly, and do not let yourselves be unsettled by foolish people, who are enemies to yourself, just as they are to me."
"Labour honestly!" Until now we had been merely revelling, we'd been blockheads, it was someone else who had been working daily shifts for 10-12 hours at the Baltiiskii plant, it was the souls of policemen that had worked the machines. Or perhaps the tsar wishes to say that we must work 24 hours in a day, in order to make the master so pleased with our labour. that he halves our salaries again? What kind of mockery of the people is this - to come to those who barely let a hand rest in their working day, and advise them to "labour honestly"!
"Behave calmly!" - that is, be like mute animals, who carry everything they are saddled with! You are bent this way and that, and you can only repeat: as long as my spirit survives, I will keep heaping praise upon the Lord and singing to the glory of the Tsar! All is well, all is well - neither living nor dead, but at least not yet in the grave!
"Do not let yourselves be unsettled by foolish people".
Comrades! Let yourself be as unsettled by these people as it is possible to be! The "foolish people" of whom the tsar speaks are the Social Democrats. The most foolish and poisonous of people! They point at the capitalists and say: 'this is who holds the worker in a decrepit state, this is who domineers over his labour and his entire life'. They point at the tsar and say: 'this is who obstructs the workers at every step from leading a struggle against the capitalists for a piece of bread, for a better share, this here is the master of the laws, of police tyranny, this is the defender of slavery in all its forms!' Judge for yourselves: the Social Democrats are rebels against all of the modern order, which crushes the workers, - what foolish people they must be! You'll be told as much by the factory owner, the priest, the district captain, the police officer, and the tsar. The only person who will not tell you so is the conscious worker, who, when addressing all of his unconscious comrades, will say to them without fail:
"Let yourselves listen to these foolish people as much as possible! Join the ranks of the Workers' Social Democratic Party[6], and under its banner lead the struggle against the capitalists and the tsar's government!"
NOTES
[1] A mechanical plant that was connected to a shipbuilding yard on the River Neva, then at the outskirts of the city.
[2] A lesser-trained medical professional, common in rural areas.
[3] The Obukhov State Metallurgy Plant was founded in 1864, and is still in operation today. In this period, it made heavy artillery and cannons (in the Soviet era, it made the first Soviet tank, the T-84). In early May 1901, a strike at the Plant led to a battle between workers and police which became known as 'the Obukhov Defense'. Several workers died or were severely injured, and strikes spread across the city the following day. The Obukhov Defense is referenced both in this article and below, in the article from the Baltiiskii Shipyard.
[4] This may be a reference to a story of this title ('You won't do anything with us: a story from the life of workers') written by the writer Sergey Nekrasov (Rubakin), and published by the press of the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs). It had a third printing in 1905, but evidence of its earlier editions is scant.
[5] A shipyard on St. Petersburg's Vasilyevsky island. Still in operation today. The yard was over the river from the Winter Palace, which made it a prime location for an official visit.
[6] i.e., the RSDLP.