A Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia: The Autobiography of Semen Ivanovich Kanatchikov / Edition 1

by Reginald E. Zelnik

Overview

Semën Kanatchikov, born in a central Russian village in 1879, was one of the thousands of peasants who made the transition from traditional village life to the life of an urban factory worker in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the last years of the nineteenth century. Unlike the others, however, he recorded his personal and political experiences (up to the even of the 1905 Revolution) in an autobiography. First published in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, this memoir gives us the richest and most thoughtful firsthand account we have of life among the urban lower classes in Imperial Russia.

We follow this shy but determined peasant youth's painful metamorphosis into a self-educated, skilled patternmaker, his politicization in the factories and workers' circles of Moscow and St. Petersburg, and his close but troubled relations with members of the liberal and radical intelligentsia.

Kanatchikov was an exceptionally sensitive and honest observer, and we learn much from his memoirs about the day-to-day life of villagers and urban workers, including such personal matters as religious beliefs, family tensions, and male-female relationships. We also learn about conditions in the Russian prisons, exile life in the Russian Far North, and the Bolshevik-Menshevik split as seen from the workers' point of view.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804713313
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	07/01/1986
Series:	Studies in International Policy Ser.
Edition description:	1
Pages:	508
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.30(d)

Table of Contents

	Editor's Note	xi
	Introduction: Kanatchikov's Story of My Life as Document and Literature	xv
Part 1	Moscow
1.	My First Years	1
2.	In the "Artel"	7
3.	In the Pattern Shop	14
4.	"Sushchy"	24
5.	The Beginning of My Apostasy	27
6.	Khodynka	37
7.	Sergey Petrovich	46
8.	The Beginning of My Wanderings from Factory to Factory	50
9.	I Am an Adult	55
10.	At the Mytishchensk Factory	65
11.	Working for a "Grater"	75
Part 2	St. Petersburg
12.	In Piter	83
13.	Vasilevsky Island	90
14.	The Nevsky Gate Region	95
15.	Our Cultural Life	102
16.	At the Kornilov Evening School	109
17.	My Arrest	117
18.	In Prison	121
Part 3	My First Exile
19.	Departure	139
20.	The Meeting	145
21.	Summer and Fall	149
22.	At the Moscow Military Hospital	161
23.	Working for a Tradesman	167
Part 4	Saratov
24.	Introduction	177
25.	"To Unknown Shores" (Under Special Police Surveillance)	180
26.	The Non-Resister	183
27.	The Liberal	186
28.	"Auntie Marseillaise"	189
29.	At the Volga Steel Mill	197
30.	The Workers' Group	203
31.	Chizhik	210
32.	"The Artist"	216
33.	At the Bering Factory, "Collaborator" (The Strike)	233
34.	"A Prison to Some, But to Me--A Home"	246
35.	Unemployed	255
36.	The Socialist Revolutionaries	268
37.	Our Literature and Propaganda	286
38.	The Cooperative Workshop	293
39.	The Saratov Social Democratic Committee	302
40.	The Demonstration	313
41.	Ponty Denisov	318
42.	In Prison Again	327
43.	The Traitor	334
44.	In Tsaritsyn Prison	342
45.	To the Far North, Under Military Escort	348
46.	In Exile Again	361
47.	The Liberal Spring	380
	Editor's Postscript	387
	Notes	395
	Selected Bibliography	469

Editorial Reviews

"This excellent translation of Kanatchikov's memoirs is a significant contribution to the field of Russian history and European labor history. The personal testimony of this extremely sensitive worker-revolutionary gives the reader a special 'feel' for the life of a Russian factory worker."
—Ronald Grigor Suny
,The University of Michigan



"Kanatchikov's autobiography tells us more about the social psychology of the Russian factory worker than any other source I know. It offers rare insights into the social and political conflicts that set the stage for the Russian revolution. It also tells a wonderful story."
—Laura Engelstein
,Princeton University

From the Publisher