The Management of Labor Protest in Tsarist Russia: 1870–1905

In: International review of social history, Band 5, Heft 2, S. 226-248

Abstract

An autocratic regime undergoing industrialization either develops effective techniques to "manage" inevitable labor protest or sows the seeds of its own destruction. Its highly concentrated authority is incompatible with the accumulation of power within the mass movements which industrialization engenders or stirs into action. It must destroy or control them. This problem faced Tsarist Russia as it later faced Soviet Russia. In neither case were the rulers inclined to treat industrial disputes as a private affair between employers and workers and leave the solution in their hands. Yet, the two cases are radically different in methods and consequences. The modern totalitarian state directs and controls labor through worker mass organizations, by channelling the energy of the leaders and the enthusiasm of the followers into predetermined patterns. This method of control, which is essentially indirect and "from within", contrasts sharply with the old-fashioned method of direct control "from the top down", which aimed mainly at repressing rather than using labor organizations and at resolving industrial unrest partly through punishment and partly through more positive preventive measures.