Chapter 1 of Collected Works of V. I. Lenin & Galiciana

Volume 2. Years 1895 to 1897

INDEX

  1. THE NEW FACTORY LAW.
  2. straightaway   NEWS FROM GALICIANA.

1. THE NEW FACTORY LAW
(Summer 1897. Shúshenskoie, Central Siberia. Published in 1899)

I

WHY WAS THE NEW FACTORY LAW PASSED?

On June 2, 1897, a new Factory Law established workingman holidays and shortened working hours in mills and factories.

The workers of St. Petersburg had long been waiting for this law promised by the government in 1896 after a mass strike in the spring of that year. A strike at the cotton-spinning and cotton-weaving mills was followed by others and in all cases the workers demanded shorter working hours. The government took savage reprisals: it arrested workers right and left and exiled them without trial. It also tried, in its fright, to pacify the workers with silly talk about the employers' Christian love for their workers (viz. Finance Minister Witte's circular to factory inspectors issued in 1895-96).1 But the workers jeered at this talk and no amount of persecution checked the ire of tens and hundreds of thousands. The government saw the need to yield and concede some demands.

St. Petersburg striking workers received, in addition to lies, cant and savage persecution, a governmental promise to legislate shorter working hours. The promise arrived with unusual solemnity in special Minister of Finance notices posted at the factories. The government kept its promise on the second of June.

[...]

This force [i.e., the force that compelled the government to pass the new Factory Law] was the huge strikes of 1895-96 in St. Petersburg. Thanks to the assistance received from Social-Democrats through the League of Struggle the strikers forwarded definite demands to the government and distributed socialist leaflets among the workers... The government was forced to make concessions.

The workers compelled the government to pass the new Factory Law... just as it had happened on June 3, 1886, with that Factory Act on rules, fines, wages, etc. At that time the struggle, waged most vigorously in Moscow and Vladimir gubernias, took the form of numerous strikes. Then, too, workers presented plain and precise demands to the government. During the famous Morozov strike those demands were passed up to the inspector from the crowd.2 The law of June 3, 1886, was a direct response to the workers' demands.

[...]

The laws of June 3, 1886, and of June 2, 1897, are the principal Factory Acts of Russia.

[...]

III

TO WHAT EXTENT DOES THE NEW LAW REDUCE WORKING HOURS?

The law of June 2, 1897, restricts the regular workday to 11½ hours. On Saturdays and on the eve of holidays the workday is restricted to 10 hours.

[...]

VII

HOW OUR "CHRISTIAN" GOVERNMENT CURTAILS THE WORKERS' HOLIDAYS

[...]

Our government is so fond of calling itself a "Christian" government. Ministers and other officials sweeten their speeches with phrases about the "Christian love" and "Christian sentiments" of the employers and government toward the workers, etc. But as soon as deeds take the place of words, all this hypocritical cant is sent to blazes, and the government becomes a huckster trying to extort the workers wherever possible.

Employers themselves, i.e., the best ones, long long ago petitioned for the establishment of legal rest days on Sundays and holidays.3 After fifteen years of procrastination the government has at last passed a law establishing compulsory rest on Sundays and holidays, but while making this concession it does not miss the opportunity of injuring workers by crossing out a fourth of the customary holidays. Thus the government is behaving like a real usurer: while making one concession, it concocts some other extortion. With the new law it may very well happen that some employers will try to reduce the number of off-days by compelling employees to work on holidays hitherto observed but now ignored by the new law. To forestall this possibility workers must always be ready to resist every attempt to reduce the number of holidays.

[...]

1 Count Sergei Witte (1849-1915) was at this time the Minister of Finance. During his tenure he sped up construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway and called for a school curriculum that would train personnel for industry. Witte was known for appointing subordinates based on their academic credentials or merit alone. Full Wikipedia biography here.

2 The strike took place between January 7-17, 1885, at a textile factory owned by Timofey S. Morozov in Nikolskoye (Vladimir gubernia, Moscow Oblast). The mill had a workforce of 11,000 employees. Around 8,000 struck in response to management's recurrent practice of slashing wages during the industrial crisis of the early 1880s. In 1884 fines and sundry deductions reduced gross income by an additional 20-23%. Strikers demanded a return to the salaries of 1880-1882, a cap to fines at 5% of gross income and better working conditions. On January 11, 1885, Vasily S. Volkov handed the Vladimir governor a document entitled, "Demands Based On a General Consensus of the Workers." It contained a clause favouring state control over factory owners plus the need to legislate terms of employment. Russian source: Wikipedia.

3 Elsewhere Lenin states, "The issue was raised fifteen years ago: St. Petersburg employers petitioned for a similar law as far back as 1883."

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NEWS FROM GALICIANA

December 10, 1895. El Diario de Galicia, page 2.

Assassination attempt against Nicholas II 1 by a lone man who took one shot at him as the sovereign was holding the reins of a horse-driven carriage. The bullet missed, but the horses stampeded and had it not been for the driver sitting next to him, who pulled him back, he would have been flung off the driver's seat and "broken" his head.

1 Nicholas II was born on May 6, 1868. Home-schooled in Economics and Law, he also got the rank of Preobrazhensky Regiment colonel. He was fluent in French, German and English. As Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich recalled: "On the eve of completing his education, before departing for the Life Hussar Regiment, the future Emperor Nicholas II could, based on his knowledge of English, mislead any Oxford professor into taking him for a real Englishman." However the Russian people blamed him for the defeat in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), the multifold deaths of the Khodynka Field stampede (1896) and other calamities. Next came the participation in World War I. Millions of victims, hunger, devastation, and political crises led Nicholas II to abdicate the throne on March 2, 1917. The Provisional Government tried to protect the life of him and his family by sending them away to Tobolsk the historical capital of Siberia. But in early April 1918 Lenin and the Bolsheviks decided to bring them to trial in Moscow. The royal family was removed to Yekaterinburg the principal city of the Urals District. There they were shot at Ipatiev House on the night of July 16-17, 1918. Russian sources: (i) Nicholas II by the Russian Military Historical Society, and (ii) Nicholas II: Biography in Portraits by the Federal State Digital Culture Institution.
September 17, 1896. La Opinión, diario de Pontevedra, page 1

American anarchists, British Fenians 1 and Russian nihilists planned to assassinate the Czar in France and the Queen of England in Scotland.

1 The Fenians (Irish nationalists) were the first transcontinental insurgent organization of the Western world. They operated in Ireland, England, Canada, United States, South America, New Zealand and Australia, underground inside the British Empie, and with a banking centre in Paris. Their goal was an independent Ireland free of the British Crown, democratic, liberal and republican. The Fenians took their name from pre-Christian Third Century A.D. Gaelic warrior clans, the Fiana or Fianna Eirionn who, some believe, dedicated themselves to war, the chase and the cultivation of poetry. Source: Fenian Brotherhood Origins.
May 29, 1897. El pensamiento gallego, page 3.

St. Petersburgh police arrested a man armed with knife and revolver who said he was going to kill the Czar.

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