Dynamics and structure of strikes : on the way to the first Russian Revolution

Abstract

The research seeks to explore the basic characteristics of labor conflicts in the Russian Empire from the year 1895 to 1905. The central theme of the research is the structure of these labor conflicts, which varied by year, region and branch of industry. A second main subject is the nature of the interactions between the major factors in the labor movement in pre-revolutionary Russia. This work seeks to determine if there is a correlation between the features of the conflict and the intensity of the strike movement. The dissertation gives a new vision of the important phenomenon in the social and political history of Russia in the end of 19th / the beginning of 20th century. The present study is concerned with the lack of statistical analysis of labor conflicts in pre-revolutionary Russia. Particular attention is given to the scale of the strikes that affected all the regions of the Russian Empire and all branches of industry. The period 1895-1904 which is under consideration in the dissertation is important in Russian social history because it was the decade when the workers movement becomes more organized and politically motivated on the way to the first Russian Revolution. The research is focused on the analysis of dynamics and structure of labor conflicts in Russian industries in the decade which preceded the first Russian Revolution (1905-1907). The author characterizes the historical context of the process under consideration and provides the comparative analysis of labor conflicts in the main industrial regions of European part of Russian Empire (Left-Bank Ukraine, St.-Petersburg and Central Industrial Region) on the edge of centuries. The substantial part of the work is oriented to verification of the working hypothesis by means of the statistical analysis of a variety of labor conflicts based on the materials of the two big data bases.