The new emphasis upon mass revolutionary agitation caught many by surprise. Future economists like Boris Krichevsky were not slow to criticise the Emancipation of Labour Group for its ‘constitutionalism’, not understanding the need to advance democratic slogans alongside the elementary class demands of the proletariat. At the same time, many of the old hands even in Russia were reluctant to recognise the changed situation. The old habits of small propaganda circle activity died hard. In many cases, the transition to mass agitation was only accomplished after painful arguments and divisions. In his article ‘On the Tasks of the Russian Social Democrats during the Famine in Russia’ (1892), Plekhanov gave the classic Marxist definition of the difference between propaganda and agitation:
A sect can be satisfied with propaganda in the narrow sense of the word: a political party never… A propagandist gives many ideas to one or a few people… Yet history is made by the masses… Thanks to agitation, the necessary link between the ‘heroes’ and the ‘crowd’, between ‘the masses’ and ‘their leaders’ is forged and tempered.
Plekhanov stressed the urgent necessity for the Marxists to penetrate the broadest layers of the masses with agitational slogans, beginning with the most immediate economic demands, such as the eight-hour day:
Thus all – even the most backward – workers will be clearly convinced that the carrying out of at least some socialist measures is of value to the working class… Such economic reforms as the shortening of the working day are good if only because they bring direct benefits to the workers. (Quoted in V. Akimov, On the Dilemmas of Russian Marxism 1895-1903, p. 17 in both quotes.)
This gives the lie to the reformist opponents of Marxism who argue that the Marxists are ‘not interested in reform’. On the contrary, throughout history, the Marxists have been in the forefront of the struggle for the improvement of the lot of the workers, fighting for better wages and conditions, shorter hours, and democratic rights. The difference between Marxism and reformism does not consist in the ‘acceptance’ or otherwise of reforms (you only have to pose the question to see its patent absurdity). On the one hand, is the fact that serious reforms can only be won by mobilising the strength of the working class in struggle against the capitalists and their state and, on the other, that the only way to consolidate the gains made by the workers and to guarantee all their needs, is to break the power of capital and carry out the socialist transformation of society. The latter is, however, unthinkable without the day-to-day struggle for advance under capitalism which serves to organise, train, and educate the working-class, preparing the ground for the final settling of accounts with its enemies.
The conditions for the transition to mass agitational work were prepared by the development of Russian capitalism itself. Throughout the decade of the 1890s, the graph of the strike movement continued on the upturn, and at the heart of the movement stood St. Petersburg. Here were the heavy battalions of Russian labour – the metal workers, 80 per cent of whom were concentrated in big factories like the Putilov works. St. Petersburg was the place where the working class was growing fastest. Between 1881 and 1900, the working class of the capital grew by 82 per cent – Moscow grew by 51 per cent in the same period. A relatively high proportion of the Petersburg proletarians were literate – 74 per cent against 60 per cent for the rest of Russia.
It was a new and youthful population. In 1900, over two-thirds of St. Petersburg had been born outside the city, and over 80 per cent of its workers. They came from all over the Empire – hungry, penniless peasants, desperately seeking work. Those who were lucky entered the big textile and metal factories. The decisive sector in St. Petersburg was the metal industry, whereas in Moscow, textiles predominated. Well over half the workers of St. Petersburg were employed in big factories of 500 or more, while nearly two-fifths worked in giant works of over 1,000. The unlucky ones became beggars, street vendors or prostitutes.
The working day was long – between 10 and 14 hours – and conditions and safety were appalling. Workers often had to live in overcrowded factory barracks, where bad housing was made worse by polluted air and water and defective sewage, giving St. Petersburg its reputation as the most unhealthy capital in Europe. The conditions of the textile workers were particularly barbaric, working very long hours doing monotonous jobs amidst deafening noise, in unhealthy, hot, and humid conditions, the results of which, in the words of a government inspector:
[C]an be visually confirmed by [the workers’] outward appearances – emaciated, haggard, worn out, with sunken chests: they give the impression of sick people, just released from the hospital. (Quoted in G.D. Surh, 1905 in St. Petersburg: Labour, Society and Revolution, p. 54.)
About half the textile workers were women. This particularly exploited section of the class, mainly newly arrived peasants and unskilled labourers, proved to be extremely volatile. The revolutionary potential of the textile workers had already been demonstrated in the strikes of 1878-79, when the first confused attempt was made to link up the strikes and the revolutionary movement. These strikes frightened the authorities into making concessions. The First Factory Act of 1 June, 1882 prohibited the employment of children under 12 years of age from working in factories, and limited the working day for children between 12 and 15 to between 8 and 15 hours. A further Act of 1885 prohibited night work in certain branches of industry, and so on.
The workers were not destined to enjoy the fruits of their victory. The strikes were the reflection of an economic boom, related to the Russo-Turkish war, but, in the slump which followed, the capitalists took their revenge. Throughout the 1880s, a severe depression caused massive layoffs and unemployment, especially in the metal industry. Thousands of workers and their families were reduced to destitution. Those who remained in the factories had to keep their heads down and grit their teeth while the factory owners ruthlessly lowered wages. At the start of the 1890s, the economy began to pick up once more. The change was particularly noticeable from 1893 onwards. Major construction on the railways further stimulated growth in the metal industry in St. Petersburg and the south of Russia. Oil and coal fields were booming. And at once the fresh breezes of the class struggle began to blow. The idea of agitation immediately caught the imagination of the youth inside Russia. Already many of the youngsters were growing impatient with the limitations of work in the propaganda circles. The trail was blazed by the Social Democrats in the western areas of Lithuania and Poland, where the Łódź strike and May Day demonstration of 1892 indicated the explosive nature of the situation.
Tsarist Russia was, to use Lenin’s celebrated phrase, a “veritable prison-house of nations”. In the period of rampant reaction following the assassination of Alexander II, national oppression was intensified. Under the grim surveillance of Pobedonostsev, the twin watchdogs of autocracy – the police and the Orthodox Church – cracked down on everything which smacked of dissent – from independent thinkers like Leo Tolstoy to Polish Catholics, Baltic Lutherans, Jews and Muslims. Marriages consecrated in Catholic churches were not recognised by the Russian government. Under Nicholas II, the church property of the Armenian Christians was confiscated by the state. The places of worship of the Kalmyks and Buryats were closed. Forced Russification was accompanied by what amounted to compulsory conversion to the Orthodox faith.
The development of industry took place very early on in the western fringes of the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania. More industrialised than the east, more literate, and with a strong German influence, these areas were quickly penetrated by the Social Democracy. However, the workers’ movement here was immensely complicated by the national question. Oppressed by tsarist Russia, the Polish and Baltic workers and peasants had a double yoke to bear. The dismemberment of Poland, carved up between Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Prussia, created a bitter legacy of national oppression, the effects of which were to have serious consequences for the future development of the labour movement. Memories of the defeat of 1863 and the horrific repression that followed kept alive a hatred for Russia among Poles.
The Russian authorities, especially sensitive about unrest in the Polish provinces, cracked down ruthlessly on the first Polish Social Democratic groups with arrests, torture and long sentences of hard labour. But the movement, like a hydra-headed monster, reacted to the lopping off of one head by immediately sprouting two new ones. The Baltics soon became a focal point of Marxist agitation and propaganda, serving as the entry point for illegal literature and correspondence between the émigré Emancipation of Labour Group and the Marxist underground in the interior. Bernard Pares comments on the state of affairs in Poland:
Warsaw University had been completely Russianised, and Poles were taught their own literature in Russian; in 1885 Russian was introduced into primary schools as the language of teaching; Polish railway servants were sent to serve in other parts of the empire; in 1885 Poles were forbidden to buy land in Lithuania or Volhynia, where they had constituted the majority of the gentry. (B. Pares, A History of Russia, p. 465.)