Industrialization of the Russian Empire

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Industrialization is a process that at different times affected all European states and the Russian Empire was no exception, despite the Soviet myth of complete industrial backwardness in the pre-revolutionary period of our history.

However, it is worth noting that this process in our state was somewhat different from the events that took place in other large states. I mean, of course, such titans of the world political arena as France and Great Britain (England at the time of industrialization). In both cases, we see that the factor of the beginning of industrialization was serious and abrupt socio-political changes - bourgeois revolutions: the Great French and English, respectively. Caused by the exacerbation of relations between the people, led by the bourgeoisie oppressed by the monarchy, and the institution of the monarchy, unwilling to change and growing for centuries the social class of the nobility, unable to accept the need for reforms at the time of the revolution, they led to a sharp increase in the industrial sector in the economy and strengthening (temporarily even to full mastery) the power of the bourgeoisie over countries.

Russia went the other way. The institution of monarchy in the Russian State has become much stronger than its European "colleagues". Important factors in this strengthening were the rare succession of dynasties (2 times in a thousand years, not counting the Troubles), which led to absolute trust and even some deification of the monarch by the common people and the absence of processes that caused distrust of the church (one of the most important pillars of the monarch's power in almost any state, since power is bestowed by God) and to the nobles (the class of society on which the power of the monarch can count on in a critical situation, because there is no monarchy - there is no nobility). At the same time, in Europe, we see a situation when dynasties changed frequently, people from other states (even those who were recently bitter enemies) were often in power. The monarch in Europe in the New Time ceased to be an irreplaceable figure, since the dynastic wars that tormented Europe proved to people that the king could be overthrown by force. The reformation led to two more factors that reduced the role of the monarch in the eyes of a simple European man in the influence of newspapers on the common man, which allowed the owners of newspapers - the bourgeoisie - during the French Revolution to be one of the locomotives of the crowd, overthrowing the old ruling class.

It is also worth noting that, based on the above, industrialization was a process that came "from below", caused by a riot, which led to an extremely sharp industrial growth, when dozens of factories were built in the country every year, scientists worked for the good of industry and innovations were introduced literally in the days birth. The explosions were accompanied by a sharp increase in the urban population, especially the working class, and a deterioration in the lives of people in cities and hellish working conditions, which made it necessary to carry out reforms that had to be introduced even at the stage of the beginning of industrialization.

The Russian Empire took a different path. Our industrial growth was not so sharp (only when compared with "analogs", in fact, such rates as in Russia at the end of the 19th century are almost impossible to find in subsequent history) and was caused by ambitions and reforms on the part of the government, including and successively by emperors. The changes were accompanied by endorsements from the intelligentsia and the corresponding European (where legislative errors were already taken into account) laws concerning workers' rights, which led to a situation where a country in which the process of industrial growth began two centuries after the British, provided its workers with better in terms of wages, and in terms of laws that protect the working person.

This is where I want to end the preface and go directly to history.

I. THE GERMINATIONS OF THE INDUSTRY. FIRST STEPS IN RURIKOVICH AND FIRST ROMANOV

The first rudiments of industrial growth in our country appear under Ivan III the Great, when a large number of foreign craftsmen came to the country through the efforts of the tsar and the military industry was launched as an important sector of the state. Foreigners trained the first generation of Russian craftsmen, who continued the work of their teachers and slowly but surely developed the military and not only industry in the Moscow Principality.

Under Vasily III, there is a gradual increase in the number of workshops and workshops, however, the real interest of the sovereign and, most importantly, the boyars in this area of the economy is not observed, which led to a slowdown in growth against the background of the same Polish Kingdom.

In the era of Ivan the Terrible, there is a sharp industrial growth, caused by the military research of the tsar. Especially great progress has been made in arms and artillery affairs. In terms of the volume of production of guns and other weapons, their quality, variety and properties, Russia at that time was, possibly, the European leader. In terms of the size of the artillery fleet (2 thousand guns), Russia surpassed other European countries, and all the guns were of domestic production. A significant part of the army (about 12 thousand people) at the end of the 16th century. was also armed with small arms of domestic production. A number of victories won during that period (the capture of Kazan, the conquest of Siberia, etc.), Russia owes much to the quality and successful use of firearms.

As the historian N. A. Rozhkov pointed out, many other types of industrial or handicraft production were developed in Russia at that time, including metalworking, the production of furniture, tableware, linseed oil, etc., some of these types of industrial products went to export. Under Ivan the Terrible, the first paper mill in the country was also built.

Apparently, a significant part of industry and crafts ceased to exist during the Time of Troubles (early 17th century), accompanied by an economic decline and a sharp decline in the urban and rural population of the country.

In the middle to the end of the 17th century. a number of new enterprises arose: several iron works, a textile factory, glass, paper factories, etc. Most of them were private enterprises and employed free hired labor. In addition, the production of leather products was greatly developed, which were exported in large quantities, including to European countries. Weaving was also widespread. Some of the enterprises of that era were quite large: for example, one of the weaving manufactories in 1630 was located in a large two-story building, where there were machines for more than 140 workers.

II. PETROVSKAYA INDUSTRY

Since during the XVII century. As Russia lagged behind Western Europe in terms of industrial development, several nobles and officials (Ivan Pososhkov, Daniil Voronov, Fyodor Saltykov, Baron Saltykov) presented their proposals and projects for the development of industry to Peter I around 1710. In the same years, Peter I began to pursue a policy that historians call mercantilism.

The measures of Peter I to carry out industrialization included an increase in import duties, which in 1723 reached 50-75% on products of competing imports. But their main content was the use of command-and-control and coercive methods. Among them - the widespread use of the labor of registered peasants (serfs, "assigned" to the plant and obliged to work there) and the labor of prisoners, the destruction of handicraft industries in the country (leather, textile, small metallurgical enterprises, etc.) that competed with the Peter's manufactories, as well as the construction of new factories by order. An example is the decree of Peter I to the Senate in January 1712 to force merchants to build cloth and other factories if they themselves do not want to. Another example is prohibitive decrees that led to the destruction of small-scale weaving in the Pskov, Arkhangelsk and other regions. The largest manufactories were built at the expense of the treasury, and worked mainly on orders from the state. Some factories were transferred from the state to private hands (as the Demidovs started their business in the Urals, for example), and their development was ensured by the "attribution" of serfs and the provision of subsidies and loans.

Industrialization was massive. In the Urals alone, at least 27 metallurgical plants were built under Peter; gunpowder factories, sawmills, glass factories were founded in Moscow, Tula, St. Petersburg; in Astrakhan, Samara, Krasnoyarsk, the production of potash, sulfur, saltpeter was established, sailing, linen and cloth manufactories were created. By the end of the reign of Peter I, there were already 233 factories, including more than 90 large factories built during his reign. The largest were shipyards (only the St. Petersburg shipyard employed 3,500 people), sailing factories and mining and metallurgical plants (9 Ural factories employed 25,000 workers), there were a number of other enterprises employing from 500 to 1,000 people. Not all factories of the beginning - the middle of the XVIII century. used serf labor, many private enterprises used the labor of civilian workers.

The production of pig iron during the reign of Peter increased many times and by its end reached 1,073 thousand poods (17, 2 thousand tons) per year. The lion's share of cast iron was used to make cannons. Already in 1722, the military arsenal had 15 thousand cannons and other weapons, not counting ships' ones.

However, this industrialization was mostly unsuccessful, most of the enterprises created by Peter I turned out to be unviable. According to the historian M. Pokrovsky, "the collapse of Peter's large industry is an undeniable fact … The manufactories founded under Peter burst one after another, and hardly a tenth of them continued to exist until the second half of the 18th century." Some, such as, for example, 5 manufactories in the production of silk, were closed shortly after their founding due to the poor quality of products and the lack of zeal on the part of Peter's nobles. Another example is the decline and closure of a number of metallurgical plants in the south of Russia after the death of Peter I. Some authors point out that the number of cannons produced under Peter I was many times greater than the needs of the army, so such a mass production of cast iron was simply unnecessary.

In addition, the quality of the products of the Petrovsky manufactories was low, and its price was, as a rule, much higher than the price of handicraft and imported goods, for which there is a number of evidence. For example, uniforms made of cloth from Peter's factories fell into disrepair with astonishing speed. A government commission, which later carried out an inspection at one of the cloth factories, found that it was in an extremely unsatisfactory (emergency) condition, which made it impossible to produce cloth of normal quality.

Geological exploration of ore resources and of those manufactory trades that could develop into large enterprises with the help of the support were undertaken throughout Russia. By his order, experts in various crafts were dispersed throughout the country. Deposits of rock crystal, carnelian, saltpeter, peat, coal were discovered, about which Peter said that "this mineral, if not to us, then to our descendants will be very useful." The Ryumin brothers opened a coal mining plant in the Ryazan Territory. The foreigner von Azmus worked on peat.

Peter also strongly attracted foreigners to the case. In 1698, when he returned from his first overseas trip, he was followed by many hired artisans and craftsmen. In Amsterdam alone, he employed about 1,000 people. In 1702, a decree of Peter was published throughout Europe, inviting foreigners to industrial service in Russia on very favorable terms for them. Peter ordered Russian residents at European courts to seek out and hire experts in various industries and masters of every business for the Russian service. So, for example, the French engineer Leblond - "a straight curiosity", as Peter called him - was invited to a salary of 5 thousand rubles a year with a free apartment, with the right to go home in five years with all the acquired property, without paying any taxes.

At the same time, Peter took measures to strengthen the training of Russian young people, sending them to study abroad.

Under Peter, the number of manufactories, which became technical schools and practical schools, increased significantly. We agreed with visiting foreign masters "so that they from Russian students should have with them and teach their skills, setting the price of an award and the time when they will learn." People of all free classes were accepted as apprentices in factories and factories, and serfs with a vacation pay from the landowner, but from the 1720s they began to accept fugitive peasants, but not soldiers. Since there were few volunteers, Peter from time to time, by decrees, produced sets of apprentices for training at factories.

In 1711, "the sovereign ordered to send from the churchmen and from the monastic servants and from their children 100 people who would be 15 or 20 years old and could write in order to go to scholarship to masters of different purposes." Such sets were repeated in subsequent years.

For military needs and for the extraction of metals, Peter especially needed mining and ironworks. In 1719, Peter ordered to recruit 300 students to the Olonets factories, where iron was smelted, cannons and cannonballs were poured. At the Ural factories, mining schools also appeared, where they recruited literate soldiers, clerks and priests' children as students. In these schools, they wanted to teach not only the practical knowledge of mining, but also theory, arithmetic and geometry. Pupils were paid a salary - one and a half pounds of flour a month and a ruble a year for a dress, and those whose fathers are wealthy or receive a salary of more than 10 rubles a year, they were not given anything from the treasury, "until they begin to learn the triple rule," then they were given a salary.

At the factory founded in St. Petersburg, where ribbons, braids, and cords were made, Peter assigned young people from Novgorod townspeople and poor nobles to train French masters. He often visited this factory and was interested in the success of the students. The elders were required to report to the palace every Saturday afternoon with samples of their work.

In 1714, a silk factory was founded under the leadership of a certain Milyutin, a self-taught, who studied silk weaving. In need of good wool for cloth factories, Peter thought about introducing the correct methods of sheep breeding and for this he ordered to draw up rules - "regulations on how to keep sheep according to the Schlensk (Silesian) custom." Then in 1724 Major Kologrivov, two noblemen and several Russian shepherds were sent to Silesia to study sheep breeding.

Leather production has long been developed in Russia, but the processing methods were rather imperfect. In 1715, Peter issued a decree on this matter:

“Anyway, the leather that is used for shoes is very unprofitable to wear, because it is made with tar and when there is enough phlegm, it crumbles, and the water passes; for the sake of this, it is necessary to do with the torn lard and in a different order, for which the masters were sent from Revel to Moscow to teach the task, for which all industrialists (tanners) in all states are commanded, so that from each city, as many people as they are, they are trained; this training is given a period of two years."

Several young people were sent to England to tanneries.

The government not only took part in the industrial needs of the population and took care of educating the people in crafts, it generally took production and consumption under its supervision. By decrees of His Majesty, it was prescribed not only what goods to produce, but also in what quantity, what size, what material, what tools and techniques, and for failure to comply, they always threatened with severe fines up to the death penalty.

Peter greatly appreciated the forests he needed for the needs of the fleet, and issued the strictest forest protection laws: it was forbidden to cut forests suitable for shipbuilding on pain of death. At the same time, a huge amount of forests in his reign were cut down, ostensibly for the purpose of building a fleet. As the historian V. O. Klyuchevsky wrote, “It was prescribed to carry the oak forest to St. Petersburg by the Vyshnevolotsk system for the Baltic fleet: in 1717, this precious dubie, among which another log was valued at the time of a hundred rubles, lay in whole mountains on the shores and islands of Lake Ladoga, half-covered with sand, because the decrees did not prescribe to refresh the tired memory of the transformer with reminders …”. For the construction of the fleet on the Sea of Azov, millions of acres of forest were cut down in the Voronezh region, the forests were turned into steppe. But a negligible part of this wealth was spent on the construction of the fleet. Millions of logs were then scattered along the banks and shoals and rot, shipping on the Voronezh and Don rivers was badly damaged.

Not content with the dissemination of practical instruction in technology alone, Peter also cared about theoretical education by translating and distributing relevant books. The Lexicon of Commerce by Jacques Savary (Savariev Lexicon) was translated and published. True, in 24 years only 112 copies of this book were sold, but this circumstance did not frighten the king-publisher. In the list of books printed under Peter, you can find many manuals for teaching various technical knowledge. Many of these books have undergone strict editing by the sovereign himself.

As a rule, those factories that were especially needed, that is, mining and weapons factories, as well as cloth, linen and sailing factories, were set up by the treasury and then transferred to private entrepreneurs. For the organization of factories of secondary importance to the treasury, Peter willingly lent out rather significant capital without interest and ordered the supply of tools and workers to private individuals who set up factories at their own peril and risk. Craftsmen were discharged from abroad, the manufacturers themselves received great privileges: they were released with children and craftsmen from service, were subject only to the court of the Collegium of Manufactures, got rid of taxes and internal duties, could bring the tools and materials they needed from abroad duty-free, at home they were freed from the military post.

Under the first Russian emperor, company enterprises were created (for the first time in large quantities) with the joint responsibility of all property holders to the state for the goods produced.

III. A CENTURY OF SLOW BUT SECURE DEVELOPMENT: FROM THE END OF PETER TO THE BEGINNING TO THE END OF ALEXANDER I

However, Peter's reforms died out along with the sovereign himself. The sharp decline was caused by the nature of Peter's reforms, which were caused only by his ambitions, were poorly received by the old Russian boyars. Enterprises were not ready for growth without the help and control of the state and quickly faded away, as it often turned out cheaper to buy goods in Western Europe, which resulted in the disregard of the post-Petrine authorities towards their own industry, excluding some military enterprises. Also, the development of industry was not facilitated by the political instability of the Age of Palace Coups and the absence of large wars, which are an important factor in the rapid progress in the military industry.

Elizaveta Petrovna was the first to think about the industry. Under her, the development of the military industry continued, which was beneficially accompanied by political stability (for the first time after Peter) and a new big war - the Seven Years. Many military factories and workshops were opened, and European traders continued to invest in the enterprises of the Russian Empire.

A new wave of real industrialization began under Catherine II. The development of industry was one-sided: metallurgy was disproportionately developed, at the same time, most of the processing industries did not develop, and Russia was buying an increasing amount of "manufactured goods" abroad. Obviously, the reason was the opening up opportunities for the export of pig iron, on the one hand, and competition from the more developed Western European industry, on the other. As a result, Russia came out on top in the world in the production of pig iron and became its main exporter to Europe.

Bilimbaevsky iron-smelting plant near Yekaterinburg: founded in 1734, photo of the late 19th century. In the foreground is a 1-2-storey building of the 18th century, in the background on the right is a new blast-furnace production, built in the 1840s.

The average annual export volume of cast iron in the last years of the reign of Catherine II (in 1793-1795) was about 3 million poods (48 thousand tons); and the total number of factories by the end of the era of Catherine (1796), according to official data of that time, exceeded 3 thousand. According to Academician S. G. Strumilin, this figure greatly overestimated the actual number of factories and plants, since even kumis “factories” and sheepfolds “factories” were included in it, “just to heighten the glorification of this queen”.

The metallurgical process used in that era has practically not changed in its technology since ancient times and, by its nature, was more a craft production than an industrial production. The historian T. Gus'kova characterizes it even in relation to the beginning of the 19th century. as “individual handicraft labor” or “simple cooperation with an incomplete and unstable division of labor”, and also states “an almost complete absence of technical progress” at metallurgical plants during the 18th century. Smelting of iron ore was carried out in small furnaces several meters high using charcoal, which was considered an extremely expensive fuel in Europe. By that time, this process was already outdated, since from the beginning of the 18th century in England it was patented and a much cheaper and more productive process based on the use of coal (coke) began to be introduced. Therefore, the massive construction in Russia of artisan metallurgical industries with small blast furnaces for a century and a half in advance predetermined the technological backwardness of Russian metallurgy from Western European and, in general, the technological backwardness of Russian heavy industry.

Apparently, an important reason for this phenomenon, along with the export opportunities that opened up, was the availability of free serf labor, which made it possible not to take into account the high costs of preparing firewood and charcoal and transporting cast iron. As the historian D. Blum points out, the transportation of pig iron to the Baltic ports was so slow that it took 2 years, and was so expensive that pig iron on the Baltic Sea coast cost 2.5 times more than in the Urals.

The role and significance of serf labor during the second half of the 18th century. increased significantly. Thus, the number of assigned (possessional) peasants increased from 30 thousand people in 1719 to 312 thousand in 1796. The proportion of serfs among the workers of the Tagil metallurgical plants increased from 24% in 1747 to 54.3% in 1795, and by 1811 "all the people at the Tagil factories" fell into the general category of "serf factory gentlemen Demidovs." The duration of the work reached 14 hours a day or more. It is known about a number of riots of the Ural workers, who took an active part in the uprising of Pugachev.

As I. Wallerstein writes, in connection with the rapid development of the Western European metallurgical industry, based on more advanced and efficient technologies, in the first half of the 19th century. the export of Russian cast iron practically ceased and Russian metallurgy collapsed. T. Guskova notes the reduction in the production of iron and iron at the Tagil factories, which took place during 1801-1815, 1826-1830 and 1840-1849, which indicates a prolonged depression in the industry.

In a sense, we can talk about the complete de-industrialization of the country that took place by the beginning of the 19th century. NA Rozhkov indicates that at the beginning of the XIX century. Russia had the most "backward" export: there were practically no industrial products, only raw materials, and industrial products predominated in imports. SG Strumilin notes that the process of mechanization in Russian industry in the XVIII - early XIX centuries. went "snail's pace", and therefore lagging behind the West by the beginning of the XIX century. peaked, pointing to the use of serf labor as the main reason for this situation.

The predominance of serf labor and command-administrative methods of managing manufactures, from the era of Peter I to the era of Alexander I, caused not only a lag in technical development, but also the inability to establish normal manufacturing production. As M. I. Turgan-Baranovsky wrote in his research, up to the beginning to the middle of the XIX centuries “Russian factories could not meet the army's needs for cloth, despite all the government's efforts to expand cloth production in Russia. The cloths were made of extremely poor quality and in insufficient quantities, so that sometimes uniform cloth had to be bought abroad, most often in England. Under Catherine II, Paul I, and at the beginning of the era of Alexander I, bans on the sale of cloth “to the side” continued to exist, which extended first to the majority, and then to all cloth factories, which were obliged to sell all cloth to the state. However, this did not help in the least. Only in 1816 the cloth factories were released from the obligation to sell all cloth to the state and “from that moment,” wrote Tugan-Baranovsky, “cloth production was able to develop…”; in 1822, for the first time, the state was able to place its entire order among the factories for the production of cloth for the army. In addition to the domination of command-administrative methods, the economic historian saw the main reason for the slow progress and unsatisfactory state of Russian industry in the predominance of forced serf labor.

Typical factories of that era were the noble-landowners, located right in the villages, where the landowner forcibly drove his peasants and where there were neither normal production conditions, nor the workers' interest in their work. As Nikolai Turgenev wrote, “The landlords put hundreds of serfs, mostly young girls and men, in pitiful shacks and forced them to work … I remember with what horror the peasants spoke about these establishments; they said: "There is a factory in this village" with such an expression as if they wanted to say: "There is a plague in this village""

The reign of Paul I and Alexander I was accompanied by a gradual continuation of economic policy, but the Napoleonic Wars caused a certain decline in growth and did not allow all possible thoughts of the emperors to come true. Paul had big plans for the industry, wanting to create a gigantic war machine, but the conspiracy did not allow him to make his dreams a reality. Alexander, however, could not continue his father's ideas, since the country was dragged into war for a long time, emerging from which the winner, however, remained devastated by the French troops, which forced all the forces of the state to be directed to rebuilding after the war almost until the end of Alexander's reign.