LABOR UNREST IN IMPERIAL RUSSIA DURING THE WORLD-WAR-I AND THE OUTSET OF THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION IN 1917

This article is a synthesis of various quantitative studies of labor unrest in Imperial Russia during the First World War. A comparison of three periods of intense labor unrest, during the revolution of 1905 and the next two years, between 1912 and July 1914, and, during the war, between 1915 and the first months of 1917, leads to the analysis of the continuities and of the transformations that have affected the dynamic of these strike waves. This analysis has been improved through three case studies: the industries settled in the province of St. Petersburg, the metal industry considered in the whole Empire, and this branch of industry precisely in St. Petersburg. This framework allows the distinction between the effects of longer term processes of changes and conjunctural transformations of shorter term, and of particular events. On a similar base, it is possible to scrutinize the effect of the wartime conjunctures on the 1915-1916 strike wave. In conclusion are drawn the structural and conjunctural conditions that have shaped the revolutionary character of labor unrest in a specific area, the district of the large cotton manufactuers and mechanical factories in St. Petersburg, and in a peculiar moment, the days of February 1917.