Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 16 - From Marx to Mao

STRIKE STATISTICS IN RUSSIA399Factory areasNumber of strikers (in thousands)Number ofper yearfactory workersin 1905 1895-(thousands) 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908totalI. St. Petersburg . 298 137 1,033 307 325 44II. Moscow . . . . 567 123 540 170 154 28III. Warsaw . . . . 252 69 887 525 104 35IV. —VI. Kiev,Volga andKharkov . 543 102403 106 157* 69*Total . . . 1,660 431 2,863 1,108 740 176The extent to which the workers took part in the movementvaried in the different districts. Altogether there were2,863,000 strikers in 1905 to a total of 1,660,000 workers,or 164 strikers for every 100 workers; in other words, on theaverage more than half of all the workers struck twice inthat year. But this average glosses over the fundamentaldistinction between the St. Petersburg and Warsaw areas,on the one hand, and all the other areas, on the other. TheSt. Petersburg and Warsaw areas together comprise one-thirdof all the factory workers (550,000 out of 1,660,000), butthey accounted for two-thirds of all the strikers (1,920,000out of 2,863,000). In these areas every worker struck, on theaverage, nearly four times in 1905. In the other areas therewere 943,000 strikers to 1,110,000 workers, i.e., the proportionof strikers was only a quarter of that in the two abovementionedareas. This by itself shows how wrong are theassertions of the liberals, which are repeated by our liquidators,that the workers overestimated their strength. On thecontrary, the facts prove that they underestimated theirstrength, for they did not make full use of it. Had the energyand persistence displayed in the strike struggle (we referhere only to this one form of struggle) been the same through-* These figures are not strictly comparable with the figures forthe preceding years, since the oil workers were not included in thedata prior to 1907. The resulting increase is probably not more than20-30,000.