REACHING the foundry, we find Feodor Trefanov busy with his students. Here eighty young workers are being trained as skilled moulders. Feodor moves quickly from one to another, correcting, advising, his hands and eyes eager as the youth questioning him. As he catches sight of us, he runs over, voice booming above the din, "Good! I've been expecting you!" Even his grey hair bristles with energy. "In five minutes it will be lunch time and we can spend a good hour together." Excusing himself, he runs back to a lad who wants him to examine some finished work.
The bell sounds. Joking, pulling at their companions, the youth start for the dining room. While Feodor is getting into his top-coat, jerking on his cap, his old fried, Andree Budnikov comes from another department to join us. Andree can reckon almost as many years at the foundry as Feodor.
Over bowls of steaming soup they begin relating their stories. "So you want to hear what it was like when your Arnerican capitalist, Singer, ran the works! And how we workers took over the plant! Between then and now, much has happened! Well, it was this way...."
This plant was built by Singer, we learn, in 1901. In its early years it employed about 1,200 workers, expanding by the time of the world war to a force of 4,000. Feodor, already a skilled metal worker, came to the plant's foundry to work in 1906. He had left Petersburg, after the defeat of the 1905 revolution and settled on the outskirts of the small town; living with his wife and seven children crowded together in a small one-room hut. Dixon, Singer's manager, was importing many peasants from the village as a source of "cheap, pliant labour." Conditions were very hard.
"But we couldn't say a word," Feodor explained, "all that Dixon allowed was work, and more work." Among the peasants brought in was Andree, a seasonal worker from Nizhni-Novgorod. He was put to shovelling up the sand and cleaning up the foundry, working all night for the paltry sum of one ruble and thirty kopecks. The day shift was supposed to work ten hours, but overtime, especially in the foundry, frequently stretched it to eleven and twelve.
Dixon was a shrewd business man, who served Singer's interests quite well. Utilizing the latest methods for speeding up labour and increasing its output he kept wages at a minimum. Profits soared. While his spies were active among the workers, seeking for "agitators" or even those who dared utter the slightest complaint, Dixon endeavoured to establish himself in the eyes of his employees as a benefactor. He made much display of small favours, and gave premiums at Christmas and Easter.
Deliberately he set about building up a small labour aristocracy from among the foremen and skilled workers, making them dependent on the firm's favour. To them he made loans of a thousand or fifteen hundred rubles, to build houses. As he said openly, "If you want to make men conservative, give them something to conserve." These loans he rarely asked back, but used them for pressure, keeping his foremen indebted and faithful to the company. The majority of the workers he scornfully ignored. For them not one house was built. They were left to find huts like Feodor or rent "corners" of rooms, like Andree and his family, and to worry making ends meet, as best they could.
So, in the depth of old Russia the American capitalist ran his plant quite true to form! Dixon in Podolsk might have been Ford in Detroit. The Singer Company received much attention from the Moscow governor. Special nickel and silver sewing machine models were manufactured and given to the governor and local tsarist officials "with compliments of the company." The customary, more substantial gifts followed, although not so openly. On his part, Dixon could never complain of the political aid as well as police service he received from the governor. Cleverly, in gentlemanly fashion, they played the old game of I'll- scratch-your-back-and-you-scratch-mine.
Dixon followed another deliberate policy, long practised by American, British, and other imperialists in operating their foreign-owned factories. Processes of production were kept as secret as possible, while essential parts of the machines, such as bobbins, needles, and small parts were not manufactured in Russia at all, but imported from America. This not only hindered competition from envious Russian manufacturers, but later on, when the workers took over production it caused them no small trouble--and this as we shall see, is not completely ended, even today.
Feodor and the Party nevertheless were not sleeping. Andree did not become active until later. In spite of reactionary terror, following the 1905 revolution, they succeeded in organizing over five hundred workers in study circles, with active, illegal groups in the Singer and other factories, in neighbouring villages, and in the one local hospital. There had been many strikes and demonstrations during the days of upheaval. The workers, made desperate by hunger and oppression, and supported by the villagers, had attempted to seize the Singer and all local factories, but the governor's Cossacks had proven the stronger. A new spirit, however, had been released among them which neither discharges, petty concessions from the company, not arrests and exile could completely destroy.
Feodor, being an exceptionally good worker, won great prestige among his fellows. They would often come to see how he worked. He made friends and won their confidence. The company watched him at every step. Although he had studied little at this time and was not actually a member of the Party, he understood, as he expressed it, that "it was all going toward revolution." He was busy winning others.
Unions and all revolutionary organizations were illegal. Prices of food were very high so some workers, including Feodor, organized a small co-operative store. Local merchants ridiculed them, "How is it possible for workmen to trade?" Yet the co-operative succeeded. Through it many workers were brought into the movement.
Then a great experience came to Feodor. In 1907-8 the State Duma held its elections to the Third Duma. The tsarist government, frightened by recent events, decided to restrict the number of workers' and peasants' representatives to the limit. It dared not prohibit them altogether. Feodor was one of the delegates sent by his factory to the Moscow region's conference. Here sixteen electors were to be chosen who would take part in the final choice of the workers' Duma representatives.
The government thought to provide a safety valve for itself in this manner. It calculated without the Bolsheviks. At the conference, a leaflet was given out, giving a program and list of the sixteen electors for whom to vote. Feodor's name was on the list! "When the Party asked me to run," he tells us, "my heart began to beat. On the one hand, I was being put forward. On the other, it might mean going to exile or prison. But since the Party wanted me, I felt I must do it And all sixteen of us on that list were elected. That's the kind of organization we had!" Of these, two were later elected to the Duma. One of them came to Podolsk to see Feodor, bringing important Party documents. These Feodor read and burned, transferring heir message by word of mouth to the others. There was a big meeting in the woods one night with this Duma member, which the police could not locate. Andree attended and it opened his eyes to much that was not clear before.
Feodor and his small group of comrades would meet in different workers' homes, secretly, studying, preparing themselves. They organized a small library. They read Marx, Gorky, argued, thought. In the plant, among the workers, they were agitating, raising their bread-and-butter issues, all the while enlightening themselves on political questions. Much work was likewise done among the peasantry in the villages close by. Small tea shops were opened up, where literature as well as tea was distributed and much propaganda carried on.
Dixon, getting reports from his spies on Feodor, called him in and fired him. "You've always a group of workmen around you," he told him. Feodor felt lucky to get off so lightly, and not to be sent to Siberia as well. For three months he was unemployed. His fellow-workers slipped food and help to him and his family, on the side. The police, discovering this, gave him twenty-four hours to leave town. "And where'll I go? What of my family?" Feodor demanded.
Finding work in Moscow, he travelled back on his free days, when he could afford it, to see his family, and keep contact with local comrades. Each time he came he had to report to the police, stating when he had arrived, for how long, and on what train he would leave. His wife, who at first had fully agreed with his revolutionary activities, unable to see the children suffering, now changed altogether. There were many bitter arguments, but Feodor never gave in.