Worker unrest in late nineteenth-century Russia: Tula a case-study

Regional studies are a valuable addition to the worker question in Russian historiography. This article focuses on the Tula working class in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The Tula case-study reveals that labour unrest took the form of strike action rather than complaints and mass departures and the majority of incidents occurred in only a relatively short time period - 1896-1900- which was a time of economic boom. This indicates that the workers' sense of security was, in fact, a major determinant of labour unrest. The provincial capital city, Tula accounted for two-thirds of all incidents. Economic issues were predominant, involving, in particular, concern about the level of wages, and 80 percent of the strikes involved more than a hundred participants. The average duration of strike action was three days. Compared to other industrial centres of the Russian empire, Tula workers showed a surprisingly low level of militancy or perseverance. Finally, regional loyalties seem to have been a major factor in promoting strikes.