The Rise of the Workers’ Movement in Russia

The workers’ movement in Russia is the class foundation of the birth of Leninism and the transformation of the Russian social system.

In the early 1880s, the Russian proletariat had relatively rapid development. Take railway workers as an example, there were only 760,000 railway workers in 1861, but the number increased to 1.5 million in 1895. In the early 1890s, the number of Russian industrial workers reached 10 million, and the industrial proletariat became an important force on the political stage of Russia. The Russian working class started strikes and unrest as early as 1860s, and became more tumultuary in 1870s, causing 290 strikes and riots. At that time, most of the workers’ movements focused on economic demands, such as demanding higher wages and better working conditions. Later on, the struggles gradually shifted from an economic focus to a political one. In 1875, the South Russian Workers’ Association led by Zaslavsky was established in Odessa. It was the first independent workers’ revolutionary organization in Russia. In 1878, the Russian Northern Workers’ Association led by Obnorsky and others was established in Petersburg. In 1880s, the workers’ movement in Russia continued to upgrade. From 1879 to 1884, there were 205 riots and strikes led by workers. The scale of strikes became increasingly larger, and Petersburg and Moscow gradually became two workers’ movement centers as the struggle evolved. The rise of the workers’ movement laid a class foundation for the birth of Leninism and the reform of Russian social system in the early 20th century.

The situation of the Russian working class was conducive to launching a proletarian movement. First of all, the relative concentration of workers was conducive to their unity and revolutionary activities. Workers are highly concentrated in large enterprises. As statistics showed, from 1866 to 1890, the number of large factories employing more than 100 workers in Russia increased from 644 to 951, an increase of almost 50% in 25 years. Among them, the number of super-large factories with more than 1,000 people increased from 42 to 99, an increase of 136%. In the 1890s, such concentration and centralization of production in Russia continued to increase, and even surpassed that of some European and American countries.

In 1895, workers in small enterprises (that employ 10-15 people) in Russia accounted for 15.9% of the total number of workers, while workers in large enterprises (that employ more than 500 people) accounted for 45.2%. These two numbers in Germany were 31.5% and 15.3% respectively. As Marx pointed out, among all classes that fight the bourgeoisie, the only class that time that was really revolutionary was the proletariat. While other classes were declining and dying with the development of modern industry, the proletariat grew from the modern industry. Secondly, the double oppression of capitalism and remnants of serfdom stimulated a strong struggling spirit among Russian workers. Russian workers had low wages and poor working conditions, faced frequent work-related accidents and suffered from extremely poor lives. The heavy economic burden and inhuman living conditions aroused workers’ anger and resistance. Marx’s and Engels’ assertion in The Communist Manifesto that “the proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air” already received a positive response in Russia. At the same time, due to the relatively late development of Russian capitalism and the weakness of the bourgeoisie, it was impossible to support labor aristocracy with excessive monopoly profits. Thus, the Russian proletariats were less opportunistic than counterparts in western European countries, which was also a favorable factor for the proletarian revolution.

Lenin made active efforts to establish a Russian proletarian party. In 1893, he went to Petersburg to participate in a local Marxist group of college students, and soon became a well-received leader of the Petersburg Marxist group. In order to meet the needs of leading the workers’ movement, Lenin realized the importance and urgency of establishing a proletarian party and then made unremitting efforts to establish one. In 1895, Lenin united more than 20 Marxist groups in Petersburg to form the Union of the Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class, which was the bud of the proletarian party. Under the union’s influence, Moscow and some other industrial centers also set up similar organizations to organize local strikes. The slogan of “linking the economic struggle with the political struggle against Tsarist autocracy” was then put forward, marking a new stage of the labor movement in Russia and the combination of Marxism and the labor movement.