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The Ninth Circle: The Lena Goldfield Workers and the Massacre of 4 April 1912

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Michael Melancon
Michael Melancon*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Auburn University
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Extract

"Stretching out ahead a frigid wasteland,…so thick a sheet of ice as never locked the Don up in its frozen source"

Dante, Inferno, Canto XXXII, "The Ninth Circle"

On a wintry early April day, far out in the Lena River basin to the north of Lake Baikal, a file of workers some three thousand strong marched determinedly out of the deforested hills along a road toward a company settlement on the Bodaibo River. Most walked three or four abreast on a road narrowed by the previous night's snow fall, as others trudged along a parallel railroad track a few meters away; within the sparse township, a small figure in the distance waved his arms and shouted but his voice faded in the chill late afternoon air. As the miners proceeded along lengthy stables and stacks of firewood, a uniformed guard hurried forward to persuade them to turn off onto another road. As they rounded the stables, the road curved somewhat bringing them into full view of a substantial building; only a wooden bridge over a small stream and perhaps two hundred meters stood between the workers and their goal. A company of soldiers stood in formation beyond the bridge. The workers' lines faltered uncertainly but people pushed forward from behind.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 53 , Issue 3 , Fall 1994 , pp. 766 - 795
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1994

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References

1. Socialist Revolutionary and Socialist Democratic leaders in Paris issued a joint proclamation in protest of the massacre. In the Duma, the Social Democrats and Trudoviks entered a joint interpellation (many authors refer only to a Social Democratic interpellation). See Volkovicher, I, “Otkliki Lenskikh sobytii v Moskve,” Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, no. 3 (1923): 66–91Google Scholar; Zavety, no. 5 (1912); Zvezda, nos. 27-33 (1912); I. Menitskii, “Iz proshlogo Moskovskogo studenchestva (Otkliki na Lenskie sobytiia 1912 goda)” in Put’ k oktiabriu, vol. 1 (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1923), 143-45; Hoover Institution Archive, Nicolaevsky Archive, Box 629, File 11, “Otdel'nyi ottisk No. 3 ” Rabochego “: (Partii Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionerov) ” Zhestokii urok “; Michael, Melancon, The Socialist Revolutionaries and the Russian Anti-War Movement, 1914-1917 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1990), 16–17 Google Scholar; and V. Vladimirova, ed., Lenskie sobytiia 1912 goda (dokumenty i materialy) (Moscow: Tsentrarkhiv, 1925), 259-60. About joint socialist responses in the Duma, see M.I. Lebedev,” Lena” (Krovavyi urok): Vospominaniia uchaslnika sobytii na Lene v 1912 g. 4-ogo aprelia (Feodosia: Izd-vo Agitprokruzhkoma RKP, 1923), 17; V.I. Nevskii, ed., Lenskii rasstrel. Bibliografiia (Moscow-Leningrad: Cos. ekon. izd-vo, 1932)Google Scholar, 14; M. Ol'minskii, Iz epokhi “Zvezdy” i “Pravdy” (Moscow: Izd. polit. lit., 1956), 120-21; and A. Vitimskii, “K lenskomu voprosu,” Pravda, no. 53 (5 March 1913).

2. In his unpublished paper, “The Lena Massacre and Russian Society,” Jason Antevil, a student at Yale University, utilized Gosudarstvennaia Duma. Stenograficheskie otchety. Tretii sozyv. Sessiia piataia (St. Petersburg, 1912Google Scholar) and other sources to show the unusually harsh criticism of the government that the Lena massacre provoked among conservatives. I am grateful to Antevil for showing me this interesting research paper.

3. Each year until the fall of the old regime, strikes and demonstrations marked the shooting's anniversary. The Lena events became a part of revolutionary lore, as when during October 1914 the Moscow Group of SRs issued an anti-war leaflet that stated: “On the distant Lena and in the capitals of Russia, [the proletariat] ever demonstrates its readiness to continue the struggle” (see I., Menitskii, Revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie voennykh godov [Moscow: Izd. Kom. Akad., 1925], 139Google Scholar; Melancon, , SRs and the Anti-War Movement, 17, 149, 305 n. 96Google Scholar; and [no initials] Zhukov, “Revoliutsionnoe znachenie lenskoi zabastovki,” Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, no. 87 [1929]: 54-83).

4. G. A., Arutiunov, Rabochee dvizhenie v Rossii v period novogo revoliutsionnogo pod “ema, 1910-1914 gg. (Moscow: Nauka, 1975), 138–42Google Scholar; V. I., Bonnell, Roots of Rebellion: Workers’ Politics and Organizations in St. Petersburg and Moscow, 1900-1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 352–54, 371 Google Scholar; L. Haimson,” The Problem of Social Stability in Urban Russia, 1905-1917 (part one),” Slavic Review 23, no. 4 (Winter 1964): 620, 626; Krizis samoderzhaviia v Rossii, 1895-1917 (Leningrad: Izd-vo Leningradskogo Universiteta, 1984), 405-12, 507-8; Tim, McDaniel, Autocracy, Capitalism and Revolution in Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 142Google Scholar; R. B., McKean, St. Petersburg between the Revolutions: Workers and Revolutionaries, June 1907-February 1917 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 88–89 Google Scholar and passim; and M. Melancon, ‘ “Stormy Petrels': The Socialist Revolutionaries in Russia's Labor Organizations, 1905-1914,” The Carl Beck Papers, no. 703 (June 1988): 32Google Scholar.

5. Several excellent Soviet document collections came out in the 1920s and 1930s. In addition, participants’ memoirs of varying degrees of interest begin appearing during the early 1920s and continuing into the 1960s. For some of the early agitationalpropagandistic essays, see Lenskii rasstrel. Bibliografiia (full citation in note 1). The publications of recent decades (only one study with a date later than the mid-1960s has surfaced) have added little to the history of the Lena events.

6. A. Blek, “Rabochie na lenskikh zolotykh priiskakh,” Arkhiv istorii truda v Rossii, pt. 1, bk. 4 (1922); pt. 2, bk. 5 (1922); pt. 3, bk. 10 (1923), 1: 69; I. I., Gamov, Ocherki dal'noi Sibiri (Gomel': Izd. kn. magazini Ia.G. Syrkina, 1894), 4-8, 24-25, 35-37, 46, 54–57 Google Scholar; Krivolutskii, A.I., V lenskoi taige (Moscow: Gos. izd. Geograf. lit., 1958), 7Google Scholar; M. I., Lebedev, Vospominaniia o Lenskikh sobytiiakh (Moscow: Izd. Polit. lit., 1957), 7–8 Google Scholar. In Russian the saying was: “Chto eto za reka? Napravo—gora, nalevo—gora, vnizu—voda, a naverkhu— dyra. ”

7. Blek, 71-75; Krivolutskii, 18; Lebedev, , Vospominaniia (1957), 8, 13-15Google Scholar; Lelevich, G, “Lenskii rasstrel,” Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, no. 5 (1922): 17–18Google Scholar; S. S., Manukhin, Vsepoddaneishii otchet chlena Gosudarstvennogo soveta, senatora tainogo sovetnika Manukhina (St. Petersburg: Tip. Shtaba Otd. Korp. Pogranichnogo Strazhi, 1912), 1–2, 56-9 Google Scholar; A. V., Piaskovskii, Lenskie sobytiia 1912 g. (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1939), 9–10, 14–16 Google Scholar; V., Pletnev, Lena: Ocherk istorii Lenskikh sobytii (Moscow: Proletkul't, 1923), 5–6 Google Scholar; P.N. Batashev, ed., Pravda o Lenskikh sobytiiakh (Moscow: Tip. Russkago Tovarishchestva, 1913), 4-6, 9-11; A., Tiushevskii, K istorii zabastovki i rasstrela na Lenskikh priiskakh (Petrograd: Chetvertaia gos. tip., 1921), 6–7 Google Scholar.

8. V. I., Semevskii, Rabochie na Sibirskikh zolotykh promyslakh (St. Petersburg: Tip. M. Stasiulevicha, 1898), 2: 2–25 Google Scholar. Already in 1872, the mining regulatory agencies subjected the new government regulations to stringent criticism: entrepeneurs had “complete discretion” in the matter of work hours and compensated incapacitated workers according to a formula that roughly covered their trip back home. Other commentators noted widespread crime and drunkenness; by the end of the work year, many workers had perished and all survivors were “penniless.” Drunkenness and the results thereof, during the trips to and from the east, caused the governor of the west Siberian Enisei Province, through which workers hired from European Russia had to pass, to request that they be escorted by Cossacks.

9. Semevskii, 2: 47-48, 60-62, 291, 432-73, 505, 647-53, 688-89, 718-19. In a general way, as regards the problems of grossly inadequate living and working conditions, industrial cooptation of officials and even in respect to the modest improvement of living conditions during the 1890s (that ultimately failed to alter the workers’ plight), the Lena mining industry fit a nationwide pattern. See Theodore H. Friedgut, “Labor Violence and Regime Brutality in Tsarist Russia: The Iuzovka Cholera Riots of 1892,” Slavic Review 46, no. 2 (Summer 1987): 247-48, 263, and his Iuzovka and Revolution: Life and Work in Russia's Donbass, 1869-1924 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), vol. 1, especially chap. 9, “Organization of Work, Physical Conditions, Wages, and Benefits,” 259-326; Robert E.Johnson, Peasant and Proletarian: The Working Class of Moscow in the Late Nineteenth Century (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1979), 80-98; Glickman, Rose L., Russian Factory Women: Workplace and Society, 1880-1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 105–55Google Scholar.

10. Blek, 1: 69-72; Manukhin, , Vsepoddaneishii otchet, 56–59 Google Scholar. The Imperial State Bank's last great favor to Lenzoto came during late 1909 when it interceded with Nicholas II to allow, by means of “Vysochaishee povelenie” (His Majesty's decree), the mining company to write off much of its past losses by means of a fiscal maneuver.

11. Belozerov was of humblest birth, received only a minimal education and worked his way up in the mining industry as a clerk-accountant, eventually becoming managing director of the Bodaibo Company and then of Lenzoto. By the 1900s, he was a millionaire who owned stores, gold mines, a mansion in Petersburg and a palatial dacha in the Crimea (Manukhin, 59-60; Vladimirova, 33; Piaskovskii, 19; “Lenskii rasstrel 1912 g.” (Novye dokumenty), Krasnyi arkhiv, no. 2 [81] [1937]: 160-64).

12. “Wolfs Fang” (Vol'chii tub) for an employee of beast-like address; “Filaret the Merciful” (Filaret Miloslix/yi) for a snooper; “Iron Apostol” (Chugunnyi apostol) for an overseer with quick fists; and “Godfather” (Kum) for another infamous for his pathological advances to miners’ wives (Manukhin, 59-64; Piaskovskii, 20-21; Vladimirova, 28).

13. Ginzburg's letter quoted in Piaskovskii, 26-8; P. Pospelov, ed., Lenskie priiski (Sbornik dokumentov) (Moscow: Izd. “Istoriia zavodov” OGIZ, 1937), 212-15. Bad conditions and low pay caused large strikes in the Lena system during 1901; government officials concluded that no outside “socialist” agitation had occurred and that criminal prosecution of strikers was therefore “undesirable. ”

14. Pospelov, , Lenskie priiski, 222–23Google Scholar; Piaskovskii, 29-30, Manukhin, 183-91.

15. Among the substantial early publications were: Pravda o Lenskikh sobytiiakh (this publication included documents collected by the Lena workers and spirited to St. Petersburg, as well as those assembled by Kerenskii and other socialist advocates who visited the area after the shooting; its actual compilers, A.F. Kerenskii, G.B. Patushinskii, A.A. Tiushevskii, A.M. Nikitin and S.A. Kobiakov, used Batashev's name as a symbolic gesture); Manukhin, Vsepoddaneishii otchet (this volume represented the results of the investigatory commission sent by the tsarist government); and A., Nevskii, Lenskie sobytiia i ikh prichiny (St. Petersburg: Tip. “Tovstva Khudozh. lit.,” 1912Google Scholar) (written by an individual who attempted to portray Lenzoto in a favorable light). In addition, an enormous range of publicistic commentary in journals and newspapers, much of it substantial, appeared, including: F. Dan, “Posle Leny,” Nasha zaria, no. 5 (1912): 60-68; A. K-ii [Kerenskii], “O torn, chto bylo,” Zavety, no. 5 (1912): 82-113; I. Larskii, “Solidarnost',” Sovremennyi mir, no. 5 (1912); and A. Petrishchev, “Khronika vnutrennei zhizni,” Russkoe bogatstvo, no. 5 (1912): 59-81.

16. Blek, 1: 75; Vladimirova, xiv; Kerenskii, Zavety, 89; Manukhin, 327-8. Several authors claim that Lenzoto financial records show that the company paid illegal subsidies to government officials of all kinds, from police to state mining officials. Senator Manukhin's commission specifically noted Lenzoto's “illegal payments” to military personnel in both Kirensk and Bodaibo. Of course, the Lena minefields were hardly unique in having all aspects of workers’ lives fall under the control of the factory administration. Iuzovka, also a “company town,” shared many characteristics with Lenzoto (see Friedgut, Iuzovka and Revolution, 71-112 and passim).

17. Blek, 2: 51-52; Vladimirova, xiv-xv. The workers’ only alternative was to take to the taiga to search for gold themselves, a daunting prospect that those with wives and children could not entertain. Formerly, a dissatisfied worker could seek out another company, a possibility precluded by Lenzoto's new monopoly. In contrast, workers in the Donbass area, where conditions in some ways approached those of eastern Siberia, often exercised the option of picking up and leaving (Friedgut, “Iuzovka Cholera Riots,” 248).

18. Blek, 2: 51-56; Manukhin, 99-107; Pravda o Lenskikh sobytiiakh, 18-20; G.A. Vendrikh, K.V. Belomestnov and L.S. Sholokhova, Na Lene-reke (Irkutsk: Vost. Sib. kn. izd., 1984), 14Google Scholar; I., Kudriavtsev, Lenskii rasstrel (Vospominaniia uchastnika) (Kharkov: Ukrainskii rabotnik, 1934), 14–17 Google Scholar. The research of Johnson, Friedgut and Glickman about labor in other parts of the empire indicates nothing analagous to these clauses in work contracts.

19. Blek, 3: 28-9; Pravda o Lenskikh sobytiiakh, 21; Manukhin, 107-15. Daily wage estimates are very rough since much depended on how many days an individual had worked, how productive he was and how many fines he had received. For comparisons with other areas as regards the eternal problem of low wages, see Glickman, , Russian Factory Women, 107 Google Scholar; and Friedgut, , luzovka and Revolution, 299–316 Google Scholar. Miners’ wives and daughters, forced by contract into employment with Lenzoto, received much lower wages (about 90 kopecks a day) than men; the tasks they performed were menial and on the surface rather than in the mines themselves. Because of the arduous nature of mine work, the tendency Glickman and other researchers note to replace men with lower-paid and more docile women in textile and other industries did not occur at Lenzoto ( Glickman, , Russian Factory Women, 86–87 Google Scholar). After the massacre of 1912, Lenzoto began to rely more and more on laborers from far eastern countries (Korea and China) in order to escape the demands of Russian workers.

20. In an internal report, Lenzoto estimated its pay for the unskilled (chernorabochie) at one ruble thirty five per day and its average overall at one ruble ninety-six, by which figures the average yearly salary (computed at 305 work days per year) for many workers was below the 450 rubles at the low end of the scale noted by mining engineers. Some contemporary commentators insisted that actual daily pay for most miners was in the range of one ruble fifty to one ruble seventy kopecks for a likely yearly average salary for all Lena workers of 515 rubles 65 kopecks. Governor Bantysh estimated in late 1911 that, “with the most careful figures, counting only the barest necessities for workers to maintain their ability to work, the sum of [their] expenses would run 414 rubles 14 kopecks per person per year.” Others figured the likely minimum expenses at closer to 450 rubles. See “Lenskii rasstrel,” Krasnyi arkhiv, 176; Pravda o Lenskikh sobytiiakh, 26; Vladimirova, xviii. When one adds other likely expenses— transportation costs to and from the Lena system, additional outlays for married workers with children and any accidental needs—to subsistence costs, the picture becomes grim indeed.

21. Blek, 3: 29-40; Manukhin, 118-23; Pravda o Lenskikh sobytiiakh, 28-31; Tiushevskii, 12; Vladimirova, xvi-xxi. Until the government stepped in to abolish the illegal practice in 1911, Lenzoto also held salary reserves past the end of the work year for workers who signed new contracts, a sort of renewal penalty. The luzovka factory administration used financial policies as regards its workers quite reminiscent of those at Lenzoto (heavy fines, talon payments, delayed wages and so forth); talon payments in the Donbass area were, however, declining (see Friedgut, , luzovka and Revolution, 299–317 Google Scholar).

22. Blek, 3: 34-35; Lebedev, , Vospominaniia (1957), 20-21Google Scholar; Manukhin, 149-50; Pravda o Lenskikh sobytiiakh, 12, 26-27; Vladimirova, 43-44. Small store owner Izrail’ Shleimovich Tolokonskii testified that he charged 23 kopecks a pound for sugar (25 at Lenzoto); oil 45 kopecks (Lenzoto 48); flour 4.20 a.pud (4.40) and so forth. Thus, despite advantages of scale and near monopoly, Lenzoto charged higher prices than private entrepreneurs. Among the other problems with company food supplies was their extreme lack of variety; for example, carrots, beets, onions, garlic, dill and horseradish were all absent.

23. Gamov, 88-89; Manukhin, 160-66; Nevskii, 53; “Lenskii rasstrel,” Krasnyi Arkhiv, 174–75Google Scholar.

24. Manukhin, 166-70.

25. Vladimirova, xxii-xxiii, 11; Tiushevskii, 16; Pravda o Lenskikh sobytiiakh, 40-41; Nevskii, 46-47; Manukhin, 133-37. Lenzoto officials insisted that their housing was no worse than that provided other Russian laborers; data about housing elsewhere seems to confirm these assertions ( Friedgut, , Iuzovka and Revolution, 87–113 Google Scholar; Glickman, , Russian Factory Women, 63-64, 117-19Google Scholar). This was, however, a most dubious defense since extreme weather conditions and the lack of any other social or cultural amenities might have suggested to Lenzoto administrators that they better the dismal record of the empire's other employers.

26. Manukhin, 137-42; Pletnev, 20-23; Vladimirova, 41; “Lenskii rasstrel,” Krasnyi arkhiv, U4-77. During the summer, some workers escaped the barracks by building lean-tos nearby, where they withdrew “na dachu” (Friedgut notes that Donbass workers did the same). Lenzoto responded to criticism about the barracks by claiming that they were in bad shape because few carpenters were available and that the company's “constant attempts” to expand living space were frustrated by state mining inspectors’ insistence that the company hire everyone who arrived (in September). This was disingenuous since the company insisted on hiring at that time so workers had no way to escape.

27. Lebedev, , Vospominaniia (1957), 22-23Google Scholar; Tiushevskii, 12-15; Piaskovskii, 30-35; F. A. Kudriavtsev, Dnevnik Lenskoi zabastovki 1912goda. Fakty i materialy (Irkutsk: OGIZ— Irkutskoe obi. izd-vo, 1938), 6-7; Vladimirova, xxii, 9-11; Pletnev, 25; “Lenskii rasstrel,” Krasnyi arkhiv, 175-77; Blek, 2: 54-55, 3: 36-40; Manukhin, 97-106. Some Lenzoto working conditions were similar to those in other mining regions and in Russia's factories in general, others were not. On the one hand, Glickman notes the sexual harassment of women in textile mills and other plants (Russian Factory Women, 142-43, 146); the heavy use of fines in Russian industry is quite well known; and Friedgut notes one survey of Donbass mining personnel that counted a supervisor or administrator for every two miners (luzovka and Revolution, 251). On the other, Lenzoto's facilities had a remarkably makeshift character. Nonetheless, perhaps because of differences between gold and coal mining, the death rate from Lenzoto mining accidents in the one year for which data are available (1911) was significantly lower (less than two per 1, 000 workers) than that reported for 1904-1908 in the Donbass coal mines (2.89 per 1, 000 workers); ( Friedgut, , luzovka and Revolution, 279 Google Scholar).

28. Blek, 1: 78-79; G. A., Vendrikh, Lenskie sobytiia 1912 g. (Irkutsk: Irk. kn. izd, 1956), 13Google Scholar; Pravda o Lenskikh sobytiiakh, 16-17; Manukhin, 76-80. Company policy encouraged the hiring of married workers, who were preferred because of their greater stability.

29. The roughly 50% literacy rate among Lena workers in 1911-1912 signifies a lesser degree of literacy than Russian workers in general, who already by 1897 had attained 50% literacy ( Glickman, , Russian Factory Women, 16–17 Google Scholar). Unfortuntately, literacy statistics for Donbass miners and workers are not available; nonetheless, the information Friedgut adduces about the Donbass labor force suggests considerable similarities with that of the Lena minefields. For example, around the turn of the century, Donbass miners were 99.6 percent Russians and 98.3 percent peasants, the overwhelming majority were under forty years of age, and there was a sizable preponderance of males over females ( Friedgut, , Iuzovka and Revolution, 247–51Google Scholar), all highly reminiscent of Lena workers. With caution, one may surmise that literacy rates were also similar. Friedgut's data show that Iuzovka's metallurgical workers were a cut above mining workers in skills, salaries and living conditions. Presumably, a similar differentiation existed at Lenzoto between the miners and the workers in the Nadezhdinsk workshops, although no information is available about this. On the one hand, the degree of desperation implied in taking on life and work in far eastern Siberian mines suggests depressed socio-cultural characteristics; on the other, the liberal sprinkling of political exiles on the Lena (presumably not present in the Donbass) might indicate an opposite tendency: perhaps the two canceled one another out.

30. Iu. S., Aksenov, Lenskie sobytiia 1912 goda (Moscow: Cos. uchebno-ped. izd-vo Min. prosveshch. RSFSR, 1960), 88Google Scholar; “Lenskii rasstrel,” Krasnyi arkhiv, 177-78; Manukhin, 193-94; Pravda o Lenskikh sobytiiakh, 51, 62-3; Vladimirova, 60-61, 73-74. In its internal report to stockholders, the company claimed that all meat issued to workers was “first quality” beef and that the provisioning system supplied meat identically to workers, service employees and managerial personnel. Furthermore, the report said that the workers could not produce the horsemeat and instead had displayed a large rotten fish as proof of the company's bad provisioning. Another evidently reliable report asserted that the matter was brought into a local court, at which point Lenzoto officials did not contradict witnesses who identified the meat as horse but only claimed that it was introduced into the food supplies by someone “with bad intentions.” Senator Manukhin's commission investigated the matter, questioned numerous witnesses and accepted the account given by the workers, as substantiated by various employees. Workers’ depositions to state mining officials on 5 March stated that Stepanida Zavelina, A.G. Bykov (the first to call for the strike) and other workers got horsemeat that was identified as such by the Tatar Sh.M. Rakhimov.

31. Manukhin, 192-95; Vladimirova, 60-62, 74-75; Pravda o Lenskikh sobytiiakh, 51-55; Aksenov, , Lenskie sobytiia, 88–89 Google Scholar; Kudriavtsev, , Dnevnik, 15–16 Google Scholar; Vendrikh, 28-30; Sharapov, LP., Ocherki po istorii Lenskikh zolotykh priiskov (Irkutsk: Irk. Oblizdat, 1949), 172–73Google Scholar. According to various sources, Teppan appealed to workers’ good sense in asking them to return to work and submit written complaints through channels; other sources have him saying “What are we supposed to do with bad meat? Eat the bad meat now, you'll get better later,” and “if you don't go back to work at once, I'll fire all of you” (if accurate, these words would mark him as a person of the Belozerov type; in any case, his telegrams to Belozerov confirm that he had decided to announce the firing of all strikers on 2 March). Galkin, who took a more conciliatory stance than Teppan, sent telegrams to his superior, Governor Bantysh, that explained the strike outbreak in terms of Lenzoto violations.

32. Manukhin, 194-95; Pravda o Lenskikh sobytiiakh, 52; F.S. Grigor'ev and la. Shapirshtein-Lers, I., K istorii rabochego i revoliutsionnogo dvizheniia v Bodaibinskom zolotopromyshlennom raione. Lenskoe “9 ianvaria—4 aprelia 1912” (Bodaibo: Raionkom RKP, 1924), 94–95 Google Scholar.

33. E.I., , “Pamiati P. M. Anan'eva,” Katorga i ssylka, no. 5 (1923): 237–40Google Scholar; N. Rostov, “Novoe o Lenskikh sobytiiakh (po dannym irk. gub. zhand.),” Byloe, no. 20 (1922): 163, 166-67; P. N., Batashev, Lenskaia zabastovka. Vospominaniia predsedatelia tsentral'nogo biuro stachechnogo komiteta (Moscow: Partizdat, 1933), 29–30 Google Scholar; Lebedev, , Vospominaniia (1957), 4, 28–41 Google Scholar; G., Cherepakhin, Gody bor'by. Vospominaniia starogo bol'shevika (Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1956), 72–73 Google Scholar. One of the members of the group was the Socialist Revolutionary (SR) P.M. Anan'ev, who lived in Bodaibo after the 1905 revolution; a joint party format was desireable because “otherwise a split would occur and everything would fall through. ” Several workers, including M. Lebedev and P.N. Batashev, later wrote about a “bolshevik” group, but this is contradicted by Lebedev's own remark that “at that time I was not a member of the RSDRP” and evidence that Batashev was an SD worker of menshevik orientation. These individuals probably retroactively “bolshevized” the joint organization. Most sources indicate a circle that included persons of various political persuasions. In a 1929 article, Zhukov warned against inflation of the bolshevik role in the events and in 1933 Soviet historian V. Vladimirova denied that Batashev was a bolshevik or that a bolshevik organization existed in the mines or in Bodaibo. Earlier on, Batashev had belonged to a Kaluga marxist circle intimately tied to local SRs (see h parliinogo proshlogo, vol. II [Kaluga: Kaluzhskoe biuro Istparta, 1923], 8-10). Before 1917 such incidents were the rule in provincial Russia. Very elliptical evidence suggests that around 1910 activists formed an underground mining union that may have issued hectographed proclamations during summer 1911.

34. Batashev, 38; Lebedev, , Vospominaniia (1957), 50–51 Google Scholar Pravda o Lenskikh sobytiiakh, 52-53, 66-67, 149-63, 172; Lenskie priiski, 267-69; Kudriavtsev, , Dnevnik, 19 Google Scholar Manukhin, 195-96; Grigor'ev and Shapirshtein-Lers, Appendix 12: “Vospominaniia o zabastovke 1912 E. Dumpe ,” 78-79.

35. Manukhin, 196-200; Pravda o Lenskikh sobytiiakh, 149-63; Grigor'ev and Shapirshtein-Lers, Appendix 12: “Vospominaniia Dumpe,” 79-81; Vendrikh, 28-30; Vladimirova, 75-77; Lebedev, , Vospominaniia (1957), 51–53, 58-63Google Scholar; Batashev, 38; G.V. Cherepakhin, “Kak eto bylo,” Trad, no. 88 (17 April 1937). Batashev was evidently the brother of a Social Democratic deputy to the Second Duma, which led some contemporary commentators on the Lena events to confuse the two.

36. Aksenov, 91-92; Batashev, , Lenskaia zabastovka, 8-9, 38Google Scholar; Cherepakhin, Cody bor'by, 79; Grigor'ev, Shapirshtein-Lers, 110-12 (data from unpublished notebooks of E. Dumpe); M., Gudoshnikov, Lenskii rasstrel 1912-1932 gg. (Moscow and Irkutsk: OGIZ, 1932 Google Scholar, 15-17; Kudriavtsev, , Lenskii rasstrel, 30, 37Google Scholar; Lebedev, , Vospominaniia (1957), 49-54, 64-65, 71-73Google Scholar; M., Lebedev, Vospominaniia o lenskikh sobytiiakh, 2nd exp. ed. (Moscow: Sotsekiz, 1962), 62, 312–19Google Scholar; Lenskie priiski, 268-70, 285-86; Manukhin, 196-98; V. Nevskii, “K desiatiletiiu Lenskogo rasstrela,” Krasnaia letopis', nos. 2-3 (1922), 360; Piaskovskii, 58-59; F.A. Kudriavtsev, ed., Predvestnik revoliutsionnoi bury: istoricheskii ocherk, dokumenty, vospominaniia (Irkutsk: Irk. kn. izd., 1962), 195.

37. Lenskie priiski, 272-74; Grigor'ev and Shapirshtein-Lers, Appendix 6, 13-16; Pravda o Lenskikh sobytiiakh, 65-66; Kudriavtsev, Lenskii rasstrel, 33-35.

38. Manukhin, 205-7; Grigor'ev and Shapirshtein-Lers, Appendix 12: “Vospominaniia Dumpe,” 81-2, and Appendix 11: “Iz vospominanii Tul'chinskogo,” 25-9; Lenskie priiski, 275; Pravda o Lenskikh sobytiiakh, 67-68, 104-5, 150-51, 158-59, 165; Batashev, , Lenskaia zabastovka, 38–41 Google Scholar; Lebedev, , Vospominaniia (1957), 60-61Google Scholar; Vladimirova, 178-79.

39. Manukhin, 209-10, 215-20; Grigor'ev and Shapirshtein-Lers, 135-41, Appendices 7-9, 16-19, Appendix 12: “Vospominaniia Dumpe,” 85-7, Appendix 11: “Iz vospominanii Tul'chinskogo,” 29-37; Lenskie priiski, 277-84; “Lenskii rasstrel,” Krasnyi arkhiv, 176-79; Pravda o Lenskikh sobytiiakh, 59-61, 63-65, 68, 152-53, 159-60, 162-63; Batashev, , Lenskaia zabastovka, 49-50, 52-53Google Scholar; Lebedev, , Vospominaniia (1957), 66-72Google Scholar; Vladimirova, 94-97; Kudriavtsev, , Dnevnik, 30–31 Google Scholar; Tiushevskii, 29-31. According to witnesses, Captain Sanzharenko told Galkin that he regretted that the soldiers “had not had a chance to warm their hands.” During the incident, workers began to appeal to the soldiers, some of whom were sympathetic. Thus the Bodaibo soldiers were replaced in the mine area by the Kirensk unit, which lacked local ties.

40. Grigor'ev, Shapirshtein-Lers, Appendix 12: “Vospominaniia Dumpe,” 80-81, 83-84; Manukhin, 216-17; Cherepakhin, “Kak eto bylo.” The company's irate response to the “bringing out” of the distant mines was to arrest the delegates whom the strike committee had sent there; this questionable action led to an angry demonstration, after which the authorities released the arrestees, except for M.S. Ukraintsev, who resided in the area illegally.

41. Grigor'ev and Shapirshtein-Lers, Appendix 16, 108-11, Appendix 11: “Iz vospominanii Tul'chinskogo,” 38; “Lenskii rasstrel,” Krasnyi arkhiv, 177-79; Manukhin, 220-21; Pravda o Lenskikh sobytiiakh, 65-66. Even now, the company did not give up its attempts to force the issue; on 19 and 20 March it again stopped issuing food, which brought a new order from Bantysh on 21 March to feed all striking workers. Lenzoto also ignored the workers’ repeated requests for a pay-off of all back wages, which would have enabled them to purchase food.

42. Vladimirova, 71-72; Piaskovskii, 62. Treshchenkov was involved in a slaughter of Ivanovo-Voznesensk demonstrators and claimed to have been in the ranks that fired at the Gapon demonstration (Bloody Sunday, 9 January 1905).

43. Manukhin, 222-29; “Lenskii rasstrel,” Krasnyi arkhiv, 179; Grigor'ev and Shapirshtein-Lers, 148-73, Appendices 19-23, 114-22, Appendix 11: “Iz vospominanii Tul'chinskogo,” 44-50, 54, 59, Appendix 12: “Vospominaniia Dumpe,” 92-100; Cherepakhin, “Kak eto bylo ” ; Lebedev, , Vospominaniia (1957), 71-73Google Scholar; Kudriavtsev, , Dnevnik, 36–39 Google Scholar; Tiushevskii, 34-35; Lenskie priiski, 285-88; Piaskovskii, 60; Vladimirova, 54-56, 100-2; Aksenov, 104-5; Pravda o Lenskikh sobytiiakh, 119-22; Vendrikh, 79-80; Lelevich, 15; Kerenskii, , Zavety, 102 Google Scholar.

44. Manukhin, 224-25, 229-34; Grigor'ev and Shapirshtein-Lers, 170-80, Appendices 24-32, 122-29, Appendix 11: “Iz vospominanii Tul'chinskogo,” 50-57; Appendix 12: “Vospominaniia Dumpe,” 103-4; “Lenskii rasstrel,” Krasnyi arkhiv, 179-80; Lenskie priiski, 297; Cherepakhin, “Kak eto bylo ” ; Vendrikh, 80-81; Tiushevskii, 39-40; Vladimirova, xlviii-1, 55-57, 67-69, 81-82, 148-49; Zvezda, no. 26 (5 April 1912): 13; Pravda o Lenskikh sobytiiakh, 76-78. One of Treshchenkov's telegrams from 31 March asserted: “A split has taken place among the workers. If we arrest the committee now, which the [local] judiciary fully agrees with, we can expect the end of the strike.” Tul'chinskii's turnabout as regards arrests came on 2 April, when he sent Bantysh a telegram that also noted the split among workers and that recommended the “arrest of several [leaders] exercising a harmful influence.” In explanation, he later noted pressure from Treshchenkov and a telegram sent on 29 March “by the Director of the Mining Department, in the name of the Minister of Commerce and Industry” that held him in insubordination to previous instructions. The reports of several police provocateurs led the authorities unerringly to the strike leaders. One of the provocateurs, “Northern” (Severnyi), was an SR; another, “No. 12” had the initials I. G. M. and was a strike agitator. Before its arrest, the strike committee issued about twelve or thirteen hectographed proclamations, largely composed, according to Dumpe, by Cherepakhin; these militant leaflets advocated continuation of the strike, warned against strike-breakers, and questioned Tul'chinskii's trustworthiness. The exact role of these leaflets in the progress of the strike is difficult to discern. During its last days, the original strike leaders were attempting to organize a miners’ union based upon the elected barracks elders. The strike committee also gathered copies of all pertinent documents into a strike archive; after the arrests and shooting, the documents were divided into two parts. An unidentified worker carried one part of the documents to St. Petersburg, where they became the basis for the 1913 publication Pravda o Lenskikh sobytiiakh (disposition of the other part is unknown).

45. Manukhin, 234-40; Grigor'ev and Shapirshtein-Lers, Appendix 11: “Iz vospominanii Tul'chinskogo,” 57-64; Vladimirova, 68-69, 103-4, 170-71; Kerenskii, , Zavety, 103 Google Scholar; Pravda o Lenskikh sobytiiakh, 80-92, 143-44.

46. Several days earlier workers from one of the mines had brought a group complaint against Lenzoto but assistant procurator Preobrazhenskii had told them that only individual complaints would be legally appropriate. Workers had thus written and signed many hundreds of carefully worded complaints (see Kudriavtsev, , Lenskii rasstrel, 41 Google Scholar; Lelevich, 16).

47. Manukhin, 238-46; Grigor'ev and Shapirshtein-Lers, 182-85, Appendix 16, 20, Appendices 32-39, 128-37, Appendix 11: “Iz vospominanii Tul'chinskogo,” 66-75; Pravda o Lenskikh sobytiiakh, 85-92, 145, 177-216 (depositions of marchers, wounded workers and widows); Vladimirova, li-lix, 69-93, 103-11; Lenskie priiski, 294-97; Cherepakhin, “Kak eto bylo ” ; Vendrikh, 4, 93-97; Pletnev, 44-45; Lelevich, 16; “Lenskii rasstrel,” Krasnyi arkhiv, 162-63; Tiushevskii, 41-45; Kudriavtsev, , Dnevnik, 41–45 Google Scholar; Nevskii, , Lenskie sobytiia, 66–67 Google Scholar; Kerenskii, , Zavety, 109 Google Scholar; Lebedev, , Vospominaniia (1957), 88-103Google Scholar; Aksenov, 116-22. Justice Rein, who was on the train with the soldiers on the way back from Bodaibo when it passed the marching miners, recalled that Captain Lepin muttered, “We won't get by without shooting ” ; Rein also described how between the volleys Sanzharenko had stalked back and forth behind the soldiers shouting threatening imprecations if they did not shoot straight. A grim irony exists in that almost to the minute of the shooting Bantysh was sending a wire to the workers, urging them to remain calm. Estimates of the number of dead vary widely, from about 100 to more than 300. About 107 died on the spot, 70 more in the following hours and the remainder later in hospitals and clinics. The Church of The Annunciation had a list of about 170 dead, but this represented only those to whom priests had administered last rites and the church noted that the figures were incomplete. The somewhat higher figures used here represent a survey of additional deaths in clinics and hospitals.

48. Manukhin, 247-48, 309-18; Pravda o Lenskikh sobytiiakh, 85-89, Appendixes 57-58, 77, Appendixes 205-6, 179-80; Pletnev, 45; Grigor'ev and Shapirshtein-Lers, Appendix 33, 129-30; Lebedev, , Vospominaniia (1962), 313Google Scholar. Some accounts claim that the first volley was in the air, causing workers to fall to the ground and that when they got up to run away the real volleys started; most accounts coincide with or support the version that the first and all subsequent volleys were deadly. A professional photographer, V.P. Koreshkov, a political exile, took numerous photographs of important events during the strike, among them snapshots of the procession of workers headed for Nadezhdinsk, of the shooting itself and of the dead bodies afterward. Although the Ministry of the Interior ordered the preservation of the negatives as evidence, Treshchenkov summoned Koreshkov and confiscated and destroyed the negative of the shooting, which might have shed light on the postures of the miners.

49. Grigor'ev and Shapirshtein-Lers, Appendix 39, 135-36; Nevskii, , Lenskie sobyliia, 66–68 Google Scholar; Vladimirova, liv-lv, 116-17; Manukhin, 244-47, 313; Lenskie priiski, 301-2; Pletnev, 48-49. The testimony of Galkin is pertinent: “The entire time of the strike the mood of the workers was very peaceful … [whereas] the attitude of Treshchenkov, as well as of the officers, was always provocative.” In evaluating the intentions of the workers, one should recall, as various witnesses pointed out, that they had under thencontrol several warehouses with dynamite and many had military experience and skills in the use of dynamite; some workers later claimed that had they wished to use force, they could have done so with great effect. With reference to their former military training, others also noted that, had they had violent intentions on 4 April, they would hardly have approached the line of soldiers in an unwieldy column.

50. Grigor'ev and Shapirshtein-Lers, Appendix 12: “Vospominaniia Dumpe,” 93; Manukhin, 284-301. Soviet era publications claim, variously, that the Feodosievsk and Aleksandrovsk mines were under SR influence, that the Andreevsk and Utesitsk mines under SD-bolshevik influence, and that the Nadezhdinsk workshops were dominated by mensheviks and SD liquidators. Likewise, some claim that Cherepakhin (allegedly a bolshevik) dominated the Feodosievsk mines, whereas others emphasize the influence of Petukhov (an SR); several authors note the great influence of Zelionko (possibly a bolshevik) at Andreevsk and of Popov II (an SR) at Aleksandrovsk; Lesnykh (ananarchist) was very prominent at Utesitsk; and Dumpe and Batashev (mensheviks) supposedly dominated the workshops.

51. Manning, Roberta T., The Crisis of the Old Order in Russia: Nobility and Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982 Google Scholar; McDaniel, Autocracy, Capitalism, and Revolution in Russia; Alfred J., Rieber, “Bureaucratic Politics in Imperial Russia,” Social Science History 2, no. 4 (Summer 1978): 399–413 Google Scholar; Fuller, William C., Civil-Military Conflict in Imperial Russia, 1881-1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52. McDaniel argues in effect that the government was trapped in its own lack of a clear vision of how to proceed (Autocracy, Capitalism, and Revolution, 135-58). It realized that entrepeneurs failed to satisfy the workers’ basic needs and thus encouraged workers to organize unions and other associations; simultaneously, it repressed these organizations because of the involvement in them of “undesirable” political elements. It could not tolerate the concrete activities of organized workers, the stumbling block being socialist leaders, oftentimes moderates. This uncannily reprises what occurred on the Lena, with the absurdist and tragic twist that the authorities removed from the scene the moderate leaders who were trying to end the strike in the mistaken belief that they were perpetuating it. Across the empire, the government consistently confused workers’ legitimate demands with “politics.” As regards the Lena strike, some memoirists and Soviet authors have inaccurately claimed the strike leadership for the bolsheviks. Contemporary sources identify no particular bolshevik role. Most of the original strike leaders were against the strike by early April and Batashev had even left the Bodaibo area. The people who had influence by 4 April and who led the march were primarily SRs (Popov II, Pinaev, Brovarov and Gorshechnikov) and the anarchist Lesnykh. Thus influence seems to have passed from a group of SDs centered in the workshops to a more radical group of SRs and anarchists from the mines themselves. After the arrest of the first committee, an SR, Petukhov, became chairman of the new strike committee, which also included Pinaev and Gorshechnikov.

53. See Michael Melancon, “'Marching Together!': Left Bloc Activities in the Russian Revolutionary Movement, 1900 to February 1917,” Slavic Review 48, no. 2 (Summer 1989): 239-52.

54. To mention only the most important cases, during 1903, striking workers in the Urals fell under rifle fire; in 1905 Bloody Sunday captured the attention of the entire world, as to a somewhat lesser extent did the Lena massacre of 1912; during the war, under the cover of wartime censorship, the regime repeatedly utilized troops to fire on strikers and demonstrators, for instance during 1915 in Kostroma and Ivanovo. The last such case occurred in St. Petersburg on 26 February 1917 and led to the soldiers’ revolt that ended the tsarist regime.