Blood and gold: execution at the Lena mines. Tragic events occurred at the Lena gold mines (“Lena execution”)

Lena execution May 1st, 2018

On April 17, 1912, at the Lena mines, government troops shot down a demonstration of workers protesting against harsh living conditions.

The strike of workers of the Andreevsky mine of the Lensky gold mining partnership - "Lenzoloto" began on February 29, 1912. Created in 1855, Lenzoloto by 1911 concentrated in its hands over a third of all Siberian gold mining, united 423 mines and was the monopoly owner of gold deposits in the basin of the Lena, Olekma, Vitim, Bodaibo and other rivers.

The immediate reason for the strike was the “meat story” at the “Andreevsky” mine, retold in the memoirs of the participants in many versions:
a mine worker (sometimes specific names are given) was given rotten meat;
the workers' inspection found a horse's leg in the cook's pot;
a woman (the wife of one of the workers, or one of the “mothers”) bought a piece of meat in the shop that looked like a horse’s genital organ.

Versions in the sources are sometimes partially combined, but agree on one thing: the workers received meat that was unfit for food.

The strike began spontaneously on February 29 (March 13) at the Andreevsky mine, but then workers from other mines also joined it. By mid-March, the number of strikers exceeded 6 thousand people.

In addition to the heavy ones climatic conditions and a 16-hour working day with one day off, low wages were established, which were partially issued in the form of coupons to mine shops, where the quality of the products was extremely low and prices were quite high. In addition, fines for many violations were withheld from salaries, and there was practically no safety precautions: for every thousand people there were over seven hundred traumatic cases per year.

Low wages for miners, a working day of 11-11.5 hours (including overtime - up to 15 hours), constant calculations and fines, sales of low-grade goods at inflated prices through mine shops, a ban on the threat of dismissal from purchasing products outside the Lenzoloto retail chain multiple times increased shareholder profits, reaching more than 7 million rubles annually. Leaving the mines after the end of the hiring period was practically impossible.

Family members of workers, at the first request of the administration, were obliged to do auxiliary work for a meager pay. In 2 barracks, 103 dormitories, of which only 15 were equipped, families lived next to singles. Massive injuries and illegal dismissals of the disabled were aggravated by the rudeness of the administration. The ripening conflict was finally aggravated by the issuance of worthless horse meat to the worker of the Andreevsky mine, Bykov.

The demands of the indignant workers were rejected by the administration, and it was decided to fire the protesters. In response, gold miners at the Andreevsky mine left their jobs. In March, as a sign of solidarity with them, the workers of Utesistoy, Vasilyevsky, Aleksandrovsky, Varvarinsky, Proroko-Ilyinsky, Nadezhdinsky, Ivanovsky, Feodosievsky and other mines went on strike. By March 5, about 6 thousand miners from most of the mines in the “near taiga” were on strike.

By agreement with the administration, representatives from the workers were elected to negotiate with the authorities and hold a general meeting, at which a central strike committee was elected; later, from its composition, the Central Strike Bureau (CSB) was formed, which developed the document “Our Demands,” approved at the meeting of elected representatives.

Among the demands were: an 8-hour working day, an increase in wages by 30%, the abolition of fines, a refusal to replace money with coupons in settlements, recognition of a working commission on labor protection, the immunity of elected workers, compulsion for women to work, improved medical care, overtime pay according to agreement, replacement 27 administrative persons, placing married people separately from single people, etc.
The Lenzoloto management refused to meet these demands, promising not to fire anyone if the strike was broken. But the strike continued, taking on an organized character. The Cabinet of Ministers, the State Duma, the Mining Department and the most famous newspapers were notified about these events.

The strikers turned to the Exchange Committee with a request for assistance, as a result of which on March 7 the administration of Lenzoloto agreed to some concessions with the condition that the miners immediately return to work, but the strike continued again.

Then a military team and a special investigator arrived at the Nadezhdinsky mine important matters, comrade prosecutor of the Irkutsk District Court, official of the Lena Mining District. The prosecutor accused the elected officials of inciting and agitating for a strike and demanded individual statements from the dissatisfied people about the reasons for refusing to work. The miners refuted the authorities' assertion of incitement to a strike and pointed out that family rations had been reduced to the starvation minimum. However, the elected officials were outlawed, and several people were imprisoned in the Bodaibin prison.

On the morning of April 4, old style, more than three thousand workers moved to the Nadezhdinsky mine to submit “conscious notes” to the prosecutor, achieve the release of those arrested and take payment. But not far from the mine, captain Treshchenkov’s detachment killed 270 demonstrators and wounded 250.

The procession was peaceful, but on the orders of the gendarmerie captain Treshchenkov, the soldiers opened fire on the workers.

At the request of the Lena workers, the Social Democratic faction of the State Duma demanded an investigation into the tragedy in Yakutia. The Duma faction of Octobrists spoke out in favor of bringing the perpetrators of the massacre to justice. In the largest cities of Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic states, Siberia and others, strikes and protest rallies took place against the arbitrariness of industrialists and the police. The Minister of Internal Affairs tried to take the punishers under protection, but Nicholas II ordered an investigation into the causes and circumstances of what happened.

On June 4, a commission of members of the State Council went to the mines and established the facts of flagrant lack of rights for workers. A new employment agreement was worked out, the direct culprits of the tragedy were removed from their positions, and worker activists were released from custody. All strikers, without exception, were reinstated in their jobs, the food coupon system was abolished, and a salary increase was promised. The management of Lenzoloto was under an obligation to strictly comply with the law and the Mining Charter. On June 7, the mines resumed gold production. However, there were no fundamental changes in the situation of the workers. Soon their mass outflow from the mines began.

In 1925, using the concession decree, the Lena Goldfields company again received the right to work in the Siberian (including Lena) gold deposits for a period of 30 years. The following were also transferred to the company: Revdinsky, Bissersky, Seversky metallurgical plants, Degtyarskoye, Zyuzelskoye, Yegorshinsky coal mines. Given that the share Soviet power was only 7%, and the share of Lena Goldfields was 93%. In 1929 the company was forced to cease operations. In 1930, arbitration recognized the claim of the Lena Goldfields company against the Soviet government in the amount of 65 million US dollars. In 1968, the Soviet government admitted the claim.

On May 28, 1996, the newspaper “East-Sibirskaya Pravda” published an article “Two Lena Executions”, in which, with reference to case No. 7912 from the FSB archives, Irkutsk region, stated that in 1938 in the city of Bodaibo, according to the verdict of the Troika, 948 workers of the Lena mines were shot.

Interesting facts:
There is still a widespread misconception in the Western press that V.I. Ulyanov began to use the pseudonym Lenin after the Lena events. In fact, the pseudonym “N. Lenin" appeared long before these events - at the end of 1901.

In connection with stock exchange speculation in the shares of the Lenzoloto partnership, the names of two businessmen became widely known in Russia: stock exchange businessman Zakhary Zhdanov, who became a millionaire by playing to increase shares, and banker A. N. Trapeznikov, who played to reduce the same Lensk shares, from -Why did he go broke and commit suicide?

Over more than 160 years of existence of the Lena mines, about 1,300 tons of gold were mined.

The novel “Gloomy River” by Vyacheslav Shishkov describes a strike similar to the Lena events of 1912.

100 years after the execution, the condition of the Lena mines again became unattractive for the life of miners. Therefore, in recent years, despite the growth of gold mining in the region, there has been a steady downward trend in the population of the region.

Sources:

LENA SHOOTING OF 1912 is the name adopted in historical and journalistic literature for the events that took place on April 4, 1912 during a strike at the mines of the Lena Gold Mining Partnership.

The bass began on February 29 (March 13), 1912 at the An-d-re-evsky Pri-is-ke. By March 4 (17) there were about 6 thousand workers 48 pri-is-kov. When there were strikes, the working and living conditions were extremely difficult. Not-in-the-middle-of-the-ven-in-the-house for the-bas-to-ki-to-serve-cases you-yes-we-work-to-be-under vi-house of go-vy-di-ny (according to another version, rot-lo-go-me-sa).

In the early days, the Central Hundred-Cheche Committee and the Central Bureau worked for the bas-tov-ki. To keep things in order in the work-houses, were you old, the wine shops were closed. March 3 (16), 1912, a petition was issued to the ad-mi-ni-st-ra-tion, maintaining the requirement for the introduction of 8 -the hour of the work day and a separate op-la-you work at un-scheduled times, at a higher wage payment, cancellation of fines, prohibition of dismissal during the winter months, improvement of housing conditions -viy and medical services, dismissal of a number of representatives of the ad-mi-ni-st-ra-tion, respect-respect -th from-no-she-niya, etc. Ad-mi-ni-st-ra-tion “Len-zo-to” announced about agreement to consider the pet-ti- tion under the condition of a goiter of new work from March 6 (19), and in the opposite case - about the possibility of dismissal and you sit down and work.

Torturing the ir-kut-skogo governor F.A. Ban-you-sha ure-gu-li-ro-vat conflict between ad-mi-ni-stra-tsi-ey at-is-kov and ba-stuyu-schi-mi not let-it- lo-zhi-tel-no-go re-zul-ta-ta. On the night of April 4 (17), on the orders of Jean-Darm-Sr. N.V. Tre-schen-ko-va are-sto-va-but 11 members of the Central Bureau. On the same day, several thousand workers went to the Na-dezh-dinsky mine with a written petition to the to-va-ri-schu (deputy) of the Governor of Bern with a request for God's protection for the arrests. At the steps of the workers' search, they met over 100 soldiers, who, at the order of Tre-schen-ko-va, opened the roof. there is fire in the crowd. Official data on the number of victims of the massacre de-mon-st-ra-tion of workers from-sut-st-vu-yut; in various sources, from 83 to 270 killed, from 100 to 250 wounded. Immediately after the events of the Lensky execution, Ir-Kutsk governor-general L.M. arrived at the search station. Prince Zev, who began the investigation until the arrival of the government commission.

The strike lasted until August 1912, after which over 80% of the workers were in the process.

Reasons and circumstances of the co-existence of April 4 (17), 1912, investigation of the government commission -siya led by S.S. Ma-nu-hi-nym and the commission headed by A.F. Ke-ren-sky, created by a group of li-be-ra-lovs and social media-lists of the State Duma. Both commissions recognized the conditions of work in searches that are not together with human rights. in-st-vom, and the use of weapons is not pro-in-ci-ro-van-nym action-st-vi-mi ra-bo-chih, which pre- next is the key to eco-no-mic goals. The main responsibility lies with the management of the company, local authorities and personally with the mouth of the company. ra N.V. Tre-shchen-ko-va (was dismissed from service in the gen-darm-corps, once-ha-lo-van in the ranks and enlisted in the pen- neck militia of the St. Petersburg province). On June 7 (20), 1913, an official government report on the Lena execution, based on the re-ra-bo-tan, was published -nom dok-la-de ko-miss-siya Ma-nu-hi-na. In it, in many-pre-ki ma-te-ria-lam ras-s-tra-va-niya, the whole vi-na fact-ti-che-ski v-la-ga-las on “me” -st-working organizations.”

The Lena execution caused a wide public response (over 300 thousand people participated in strikes and protests). Liberal and especially socialist parties about the government in the pro-iso-shed-shay tr-ge -diy. Bol-she-vi-ki led by V.I. Le-ni-nym ras-smat-ri-va-li wave of public protest and ra-bo-chih hundred checks after the events of April 4 (17), 1912 as evidence of the “new revolutionary upsurge” in Russia.

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Today, workers on strike in Kamchatka, toiling for pennies in Vekselberg’s gold mines, are simply thrown out of work:

Notice how similar the positions of Governor Bantysh in 1912 and Governor Ilyukhin are in 2018. And the conclusions are the same, in 1912 the workers who protested against bestial working conditions are to blame, and today the workers whose salaries on shift were cut to 10,000 rubles were fired. This is in Kamchatka.

Well, thank you, at least they didn’t shoot me.

In the issue dated April 5 (Old Style), 1912, the popular St. Petersburg newspaper “Evening Time”1 published a brief report about the exciting events on the Lena River. In less than 24 hours, gunshots echoed across gold mines thousands of kilometers away. Eastern Siberia reached the metropolitan reading public. At the same time, a message of the same kind appeared in the business newspaper Birzhevye Vedomosti, and the information was based on an interview with one of the leaders of the Lena Gold Mining Company (Lenzoto), Baron G. Gunzburg.

The “Lena execution” is mentioned in any overview of Russian history, including in foreign textbooks; there are corresponding articles in encyclopedias. This event is openly or tacitly recognized as having the high significance of a cardinal date in Russian history, since the historical perspective seems obvious: the Lena events and the wave of strikes that followed them are unconditionally viewed as a new manifestation of the ongoing crisis of the tsarist empire, and sometimes even as the beginning of a new revolutionary upsurge, which is almost continuous continued until 1917. This was facilitated not least by the generously cited article by L. Haimson, published in 1964. As for specific studies, they were carried out only in relation to the course of events in the gold mines2. To assess the response and their impact on society and state power, they were limited to the label “crisis, new revolutionary upsurge.” The news of what was generally considered a terrible event appeared and became known to the public as if by itself, as happens in modern media, outraged primarily by the working class or only one. This article attempts to show that both of these premises are erroneous. Wide coverage of the events was the result of the powerful, joint and long-term participation of various social forces, the protest of which covered the entire social and political spectrum, receiving also the opposite impulse.
Coverage of the progress of this “case” and its immediate impact is intended to contribute to a long-term discussion about the internal situation and vectors of development of Imperial Russia before 1914.
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The publication of the first reports in these newspapers was neither an accident nor the result of a special reporter’s “instinct.” The Lenzoto administration itself contributed to the rapid dissemination of telegraph correspondence. Representatives of the company notified the management in St. Petersburg by telegraph on the night of April 5, and the head of the company, Baron Horace Gunzburg, made the news public, informing the editors of the leading St. Petersburg business newspaper in his interpretation. “Birzhevka,” founded and led by a native of Austria, Solomon Propper, had not previously taken the position of absenteeism, quite clearly criticizing the government, being, on the other hand, under the undoubted influence of the industrial and financial elite. It is worth assuming that Lenzoto’s representatives, who decided to publish (however, in a soothing and reconciling form) the news of the execution, were spurred on by the realization that the Russian newspaper public would soon find out about what had happened. Baron Gunzburg told the editors of Birzhevka that on April 5 in the morning he discovered a telegram received late at night from the town of Bodaibo, in which, among other things, it was reported that on April 4 at about 6 o’clock in the evening “the workers began to behave defiantly towards the civil authorities... On the way to Feodosiysk they were met by troops. The proposal to stop and disperse was ignored. The troops were forced to shoot.” According to Gunzburg, the next telegram to the company administration did not contain information about the clashes, notifying only that “the situation is becoming unclear,” work at one of the six mines continues. As the newspaper's editors noted, the head of the Mining Department of the Ministry of Trade and Industry in St. Petersburg “categorically” refused to provide any information about the events.

“Evening Time” reported that on April 3, work resumed at one of the mines using newly hired workers and that the entire day passed without clashes. Without any transition, it was further noted that on the morning of April 4, “some of the instigators” were arrested, and after lunch the workers went to the mine engineer N.K. Tulchinsky and demanded the release of their comrades. After their demand was rejected, a large crowd went to Feodosiysk, where the administration of the mine was located, “from where, due to defiant actions towards the local civil authorities, they were removed by force of arms.” In addition to the text of the telegram, it was explained that the crowd threw stones at the military team that was trying to push them back, and that the crowd even shot at the soldiers. On April 6, when newspaper publications about the events on the Lena began to flow in a wide stream, Lenzoto's information advantage was undermined by a completely different message. “Novoye Vremya” published a detailed “news” in its editorial, which, obviously, was still based on information received from Lenzoto and the authorities. However, it reported, among other things, that shortly before the “clashes,” i.e. At the end of the Siberian winter, the company tried to evict some strikers from the housing owned by the company. The military team had previously been increased to 340 people.
The newspaper contributed to the explanation of the reasons for the fatal volleys: the crowd, “armed with stakes, bricks and stones ... began to advance threateningly towards military unit, which was forced to fire several salvos.” A detailed interview with Gunzburg was also published, who explained that the workers’ demands “more and more began to take on a strongly political character...
Our workers were distinguished by great restraint, did their job perfectly, and there were no misunderstandings for many years. All this broke out suddenly and... took on such formidable proportions only because the workers were incited by the leaders, who apparently decided to use this movement for some of their own propaganda purposes.”

However, two pages later the newspaper published its own account of the events, and its commentary unexpectedly sharply diverged from the previous source of information. The article entitled “In the kingdom of the Gunzburgs” asked the question: “Who is to blame for this almost artificially caused catastrophe?..”. Under normal conditions, intense struggle

between labor and capital proceeds everywhere in peaceful forms. “Bloody excesses... arise only when dark forces intervene and allow themselves to speculate on human blood - in the interests of unbridled economic predation or in the interests of political agitation.” What forces were at work here? It says a lot about the administration's guilt. There was nothing political in the workers' demands, the newspaper columnist emphasized. Their wishes, for the most part, were very moderate, some even completely within the bounds of the law. However, local government and the company's management had long demanded that the strike be suppressed by military force. The company was aware of its unlimited power and behaved like a state within a state.

After this remarkable verdict, based on new, unnamed sources of information, “New Time” focused its accusatory pathos: “The Jewish bosses of the Lena Partnership, greedy for Russian gold, do not particularly value Russian blood...” And indeed, the composition of the board of Lenzoto, in which included several people with Jewish surnames and there was not a single director with an actual Russian name3, adding grist to the mill of anti-Semitic sentiments that were often found on the pages of “Novoe Vremya.”

A more cautious commentary was posted on the first day by Russkoe Slovo. This large daily newspaper published in Moscow, which, along with Gazeta-Kopeika, was the most read press organ in Russia, took a non-partisan position and acquired a good reputation for its wide but cautious information and critical commentary on events. The editors were the first to give the reader an idea of ​​the conflict as presented by the workers themselves. A telephone message was published from the “Advisory Bureau of Irkutsk Attorneys at Law” from the capital of Eastern Siberia, where on April 5 the following telegram was received: “On April 4, at night, the strike committee was arrested. The workers, according to the advice of the police chief, went to the Nadezhdinsky mine with a statement to the prosecutor. On the way, they met district engineer Tulchinsky and asked him to report to the prosecutor. At that moment, without warning, the troops fired a volley. 150 were killed, over 250 were wounded. The dead were saved with the bodies of Tulchinsky. The guard was also wounded. They shot at the workers crawling back without stopping. Attempts to sue the partnership are paralyzed by the police. Arrests those knowledgeable in the law. Doesn't do calculations. We ask for protection. The wives and children of the murdered workers are begging to be allowed to pay their last respects to the murdered. – Workers of the second distance”4. “Russkoe Slovo” limited itself to publishing without comment this laconic and dramatic news, which clearly contrasts with other versions published in the newspaper, including the official “Information Bulletin” of the Ministry of Internal Affairs5, which clearly relied on the presentation of events by Lenzoto’s leadership.

For Rech, the central body of constitutional democrats, on the contrary, the degree of its own information seemed sufficient to summarize what happened and make an impartial verdict. “This depressing number of casualties seems especially incredible in comparison with the insignificant number of troops who were at the mines. If, as newspaper reports say, three thousand workers carried out a serious riot that justified decisive action by the troops, then it is unlikely that the 340 men of the team would be able to cope with them. But in reality, obviously, there was no such riot, because no one from the military unit was injured...” The newspaper criticized, albeit in a hidden form, the position of the central government, which “closely monitored what was happening in the mines and was so aware of the events that that yesterday I had the opportunity to report all the details of the difficult drama.” On the first day, Rech limited itself to this personal observation. But the newspaper also cited other reports, in particular about the company's economic situation. It experienced an unprecedented rise under the main leaders Gunzburg and Meyer6; about 70% of the company's shares belonged to English capitalists. It is very noteworthy that Rech made no attempt, even in a hidden form, to defend the representatives of the company, despite the fact that they, like the Kadet party and Duma
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Russian leaders constantly and energetically opposed the persecution and infringement of the rights of Jews in the tsarist empire.
The next day, the author of the editorial, who most likely was P.N. himself. Miliukov, the leader of the party and head of the Duma faction of the Cadets, spoke with his visor open. According to the often quoted expression of the assassinated Prime Minister P.A. Stolypin, perhaps, there was no ground for a collision and everything is explained by “volitional impulses.” There, in the mines cut off from the whole world, every captain feels like Stolypin...” It is obvious that the workers were excited; “The theory of “opening an abscess”, favored by security guards, is also known.”
The strike “even by our laws” should have been allowed. On the other hand, gold mines do not belong to the number of enterprises, the obstacle or suspension of whose activities threatens the security of the state or is caused by public needs, “or perhaps this time the fall in the value of Lena shares was recognized as such a “social disaster?”... In the “rotting England,” the million-strong strike, which brought billions of dollars in losses to the country, took place without shedding a drop of human blood. Here, in “Holy Rus'”, not like in “Judeo-Masonic England”, the slightest misunderstanding with the workers results in blood flowing profusely...”

The author is entirely on the side of the workers, emphasizing the legality and peaceful nature of their strike and the self-evident need for organized leadership7. With reference to the speech of the new Prime Minister V.N. Kokovtsov, spoken two days earlier at a banquet organized in his honor by the Moscow merchants, in which he pointed out the dependence of the “more civilized” position of power on the degree of civilization of the people, summed up: “Uncultured methods of management threaten too great dangers to the entire social order so that you can brush them off so easily...
The authorities must set an example of respect for the individual, they must value human life - then there will be no such tragedies.” The reports and commentary of Rech made it clear that the liberal opposition had strong ties with senior government officials, who, for their part, willingly allowed latent critical positions to manifest themselves in this form. As for open periodical sources, the editors of Rech published in the same issue dated April 7 large number new news and responses to events, which became the main content of the issue, topped with a telegram from Lena workers addressed to Duma deputy Belousov8. An attempt by trusted representatives of the mine workers to enter into negotiations with the officer commanding the detachment was harshly suppressed by him. On April 3, elected representatives were arrested due to failure to appear for questioning by the investigator. As a crowd gathered to discuss the situation with the lead engineer, the troops opened fire. And this telegram contained an urgent request for a Duma request to the government. Among the interviews published in full or in summary, the position of the technical director of the mines who was in St. Petersburg, which gave rise to doubt in the official version, attracts attention: the attack of the workers on the soldiers was completely incomprehensible to him; until April 4, they were quite peaceful. He knew nothing about the alien leaders; True, among the workers there were “quite a few political exiles.” Subsequent interviews and news filled the newspaper pages. Thus, negotiations between the Prime Minister, the Minister of Trade and Industry and the Lenzoto board were reported. On the contrary, there was no news from the Department of Internal Affairs. At this early stage of the discussion of the case, it became obvious that there was no single cohesive front of responsible persons focused on embellishing and disguising the events, or the opposite side, interested in covering the events, was able to timely obtain information from it and critically evaluate it!

“Russian Word” outdid everyone, publishing new information in its issue of April 7. All well-known Duma deputies received telegrams from the workers, the contents of which were reported to the newspaper editors. The number of victims was now estimated at 275 killed.

There were 250 wounded and any use or threat of force on the part of the workers was categorically rejected. One of the telegrams ended with the following words: “Immediately submit an urgent request to the government. Seek an immediate investigation into the systematic illegal actions of the board of the Lena Gold Mining Partnership... - Representative of the workers of the Lena Gold Mining Partnership, former deputy of the 2nd Duma Batashev”9.

These petitions met with immediate response. As Russkoe Slovo and other periodicals emphasized, there was great excitement among the Duma deputies who had just gathered after the Easter holidays. A draft request immediately arose. In addition, some deputies “sent telegrams to persons known to them (in Irkutsk province - M.Kh.) asking for additional information.”

As was evident already at this stage, those in charge immediately tried to attribute the blame for the tragedy to the agitation of revolutionary elements; This suspicion could be strengthened by the fact that the newspapers urgently appealed to the radical left members of the revolutionary Duma, which was dissolved in 1907! The editors therefore gave the floor to the “non-party” deputy Belousov, who was above suspicion and “lived for a long time in this region.” His depiction of living conditions is marked by simplicity and a sense of proportion. True, he pointed to the “enormous beneficial significance of the activities of the strike committee,” which cared about discipline and order and in no way could act as an inciter to a rebellion of 6-7 thousand hastily recruited workers. In an anonymous editorial, the newspaper very sharply raises the question of responsibility for what happened, making harsh accusations against the local and central administration of the company, whose guilt is now obvious. The strike is called a “peaceful and legal struggle.” “These true culprits of the strike and the shed blood are already trying to paint the Lena drama in the form of a revolutionary revolt... The workers demanded to change the “you” to “you” in the address. Isn’t it true, “revolutionary demands”? We need the brilliant ingenuity of [Minister] V.N. Timiryazev to see “revolutionary demands” here. As for the scary-sounding “8-hour working day,” in many industries there is an 8-hour working day, because it is impossible to work more per day in these industries. We still need to decide whether it is humanly possible to work in the Lena industries for more than 8 hours a day... The events on the Lena are also characteristic for their political side,” the newspaper continues. “The astonishing ease with which weapons were launched shows that the administration is approaching the facts of the economic struggle with a worthless, outdated method.”

The newspaper “Russian Vedomosti”, published in Moscow and widely read by the educated part of society throughout Russia, including scientists and officials, on the first day amazingly refrained from commenting, placing it in a secondary place short message“from our correspondent in Irkutsk.” The second message emphasized that already at the very beginning of the strike, the Irkutsk governor convened a meeting, in which the prosecutor, a gendarmerie colonel and representatives of the gold mining company took part. At the meeting, it was decided, despite the weakening of the strike movement, to arrest the alleged instigators (members of the strike committee).

On April 7, the newspaper's editorial provided a detailed overview of the causes of the bloody events. The newspaper indicated that it (along with other press organs) had long been warning about impending events, drawing attention to them and providing its commentary. In short, like a shot, lines of the editorial the accusation was made: “On Lena... The Lena partnership dominated and dominates with that power and ruthlessness that is difficult to describe. Everything there belongs to him. Gold is mined for him, and from him the workers receive their paltry wages for it; and they give him this payment for the cramped space in his barracks and for the meager supplies from his barn... There, only extreme despair can push people to fight.” Such an unprecedentedly long strike had been expected for a long time. “Then the pressure of state power on the Lena owners could still lead to a peaceful outcome. But the Minister
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The government of commerce and industry was not interested in the “rebels.” It should be added that reports from the scene remain extremely contradictory. Now it is only clear that we are talking about more than a hundred killed: “Whoever gave the immediate cause for the clash, the very possibility of it again painfully reminds us of a deeply abnormal, impossible attitude towards issues of social struggle.” In the newspaper in once again the peaceful course of “millions of strikes in England” was noted and on this basis the intervention of the authorities and the military was severely criticized10.

What deserves special attention is the fact that it was not only the already opposition press organs that brought forward increasingly serious accusations and took the side of the workers. “Evening Time” in its issue of April 6 angrily attacked the “dividend hunters.” The already powerful Lenzoto “as a monopolist of the labor market turned the workers into slaves.” The company reintroduced the legally prohibited system of payment for work in kind (master's grub) and arbitrarily set wages. Evicting workers “from their apartments in winter was tantamount to condemning them to death from hunger and cold.” All the actions of the company known so far cannot be regarded as anything other than “deliberate provocation, incitement to disorder and rebellion.” The journalist’s accusatory pathos was also directed against representatives of the official authorities: “Many of the local authorities actively and passively contributed to this blind and harmful policy, forced silence... the local press, kept the central authorities in the dark...”

How did the socialist press react to the incident? Their obvious delay in responding to events is explained more by their rare appearance in the world than by persecution by the authorities11. One of the most widespread Social Democratic newspapers, the legal Zvezda, published in St. Petersburg, went on sale only on April 8, i.e. on Sunday, the fourth day after the Lena massacre, publishing on the first page the name list of killed and wounded demonstrators enclosed in a mourning frame12. We do not know of any other publication of those days that would have had such a stunning effect from a dry listing of the victims of the execution. The editors accompanied the monstrous list of 170 killed and 196 wounded workers with the following verse: “Oh, brothers! Cursed, cursed will be, Whoever forgets this terrible day, Who forgives this blood to the enemy...”

Although the socialist press was able, albeit with a delay of several days, to join the newspaper chorus of protest, it was forced to limit itself to reprinting - sometimes verbatim - reports from other newspapers, but counted on direct connections with comrades and conscientious eyewitnesses, among whom, perhaps, could turn out to be “officials”. From that time on, Zvezda published numerous messages from “worker correspondents.” Thus, only in the issue dated April 17, 28 such correspondence were published14. In the first year of its existence, the newspaper did not take a definite position regarding the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and intermediate groups. From abroad, Lenin criticized the editorial board, which was inclined to cooperate with the “progressive bourgeoisie”15. And indeed, the stormy general protest did not provide grounds for a sharp demarcation from the non-proletarian press, which was very determined and carried out its own investigation!

Nothing was reported in Soviet historiography about the censorship persecution of the socialist press, at least in these Lena days. Only when this press dared to go further did the authorities try to apply repressive measures, as in the case of the same “Zvezda” in October 1912.16 During the Lena scandal, the famous “Pravda” was born, clearly destined to become a Bolshevik organ. The first issue of the newspaper was published on April 22. “Pravda”, naturally, did not strive

let the memory of the Lena massacre fade by carrying out further revelations. Already in the first issue there was an announcement from the editors that the proceeds from the sale of the newspaper would be transferred to “the families of the workers killed on the Lena.” It is clear that the wave of protest worried the authorities, who tried to fight it using repressive methods. These repressions were limited in most cities to so-called confiscations, which nevertheless lost in competition with the hard-working printing houses. As follows from internal correspondence, “only in rare cases did confiscations reach 10-20% of the total circulation,” unless they were carried out again by court decision. In the spring of 1912, after the Lena events, the head of the Main Directorate for Press Affairs of the Ministry of Internal Affairs complained in a letter to the St. Petersburg district prosecutor that newspapers that were “suspended” and “confiscated” in official proceedings were “publicly sold on the streets and squares of St. Petersburg”17. The fact was sufficiently exposed that the censorship in force since 1906 (which provided for prosecution and appropriate punishment after the publication of the publication. - M.Kh.) was not an effective repressive instrument on which the “old regime” could rely”18 .

Extremely conservative government circles, spurred on by the wave of protest against the Lena massacre and the newly flared up Rasputin case, tried to pull the reins once again. In February 1912, the Duma formed (to a certain extent preventively) a commission on the issue of the press; in the following months, many Duma factions introduced drafts of a new, more liberal law on the press. However, in the late autumn of 1912 N.A. Maklakov, the successor of the dismissed Minister of Internal Affairs Makarov, launched previous projects that aggravated the situation with freedom of the press, no doubt as a response to the “Lena assault” in the spring and summer of 1912.
In May 1913, Novoye Vremya published—it seems, at the instigation of liberal government officials—excerpts from the ministerial project, with which Maklakov probably intended to get ahead of the Duma’s liberal proposals.
This initiative was inspired not only by the decision of the Congress of the United Nobility in April 1912, as Soviet historiography believed; at the congress, ultra-right Duma deputy V.M. Purishkevich sarcastically stated that monetary fines and “confiscations” are an ineffective measure and that each time “thousands and tens of thousands of copies have already reached the scum of the population”19.

The radical innovation of the government bill was the introduction of an educational qualification for the “publishers” of the newspaper, with the help of which they wanted to get rid of dummies: the publisher would henceforth have to have a certificate of completion of at least a Russian high school. The next paragraph provided that 3-4 hours before the sale of the circulation, a control copy of the publication must be submitted to government authorities for approval20.
“We are actually talking about a return to preliminary censorship,” von Lucius, adviser to the German embassy in Russia, assessed the project21. The protest of the Russian public against Maklakov’s idea was sharp, principled and, right up to the right-wing press, unanimous. Menshikov summed up in Novoye Vremya that this project “will be a death sentence for the free press.” The general opinion in the press was that the project had no chance of being approved by the already agitated and increasingly oppositional Duma. The Ministry of Internal Affairs considered it best to issue a semi-refutation and no longer introduced the bill during the expiring Duma session. Some attempts were made to save the honor of the uniform, for which “hasty news” was pointed out, and the project was assessed as still “unready”, but nevertheless in official documents and the treacherous term “recycling” crept into official publications. This government retreat alone clearly demonstrates how

the situation has changed.

Immediately after the opening of the next Duma session in November 1913, the revised draft was submitted to the deputies for consideration. The softening of the new version was obvious: among other things, the provision on direct and personal responsibility disappeared.

responsibility of the “publisher” for the general content of the entire publication, and the ominous “control clock” was replaced by an order to deliver the “first copies ... immediately before the release of the general circulation” to the relevant authorities. But the new version of the law also encountered fierce resistance22. The war interrupted the discussion and the issue remained unresolved. But in any case, the combined resistance of the two main elements of the political community - the Duma and the press - was able to stop the government’s offensive23.

After this excursion about the close interaction between the press and parliament, we will return to press coverage of the Lena events. As noted, legal periodicals of banned revolutionary parties, which nevertheless had their representatives in the Duma, were belatedly able to notify their readers about the Lena drama. The local press has also become noticeably more active. “ Siberian life”, quoted by the capital's newspapers, introduced important clarifications into the overall picture and argued that the strikers were in a “peaceful and wait-and-see” mood.
At the same time, the authorities made no noticeable attempts to slow down or subject to sanctions the widespread critical campaign in the press, which rose to direct accusations. In fact, preliminary censorship, abolished in 1906, was not restored; The authorities were left to resort to “punitive censorship” upon publication of the publication, information about the use of which has not been found at the moment. With the exception of ultra-conservative organs such as Moskovskie Vedomosti and right-wing newspapers, the Russian press unanimously demanded that the leaders of Lenzoto be brought to trial, condemned the actions of local authorities, raised the question of the assistance of the highest government circles and covered in detail the needs and demands of the workers - all on the basis already their own extensive information, as well as eyewitness accounts.

In the following days, the press transferred the initiative to the State Duma. The Russian parliament met again after a long Easter break on April 9, Monday, 5 days after the disaster. Convening a special meeting was obviously impossible due to the vast expanses of the empire, since many deputies were not able to quickly get to the capital of the empire from the outback. The Third Duma, the first people's representative office, intended to complete its full 5-year term, at this time achieved independence from state power. It was convened after the dissolution of the first two, extremely oppositional Dumas of the revolutionary period of 1905-1907, on the basis of a qualification electoral law that was contrary to the constitution. Deputies of the Third Duma initially supported the reformist course of P.A. Stolypin, reworking his government's numerous legislative proposals in a constructive and sometimes corrective spirit and mostly approving them, although some central bills concerning national minorities were adopted only by a slight majority. Repeatedly the Duma sharply attacked the prime minister, in last time in 1911 regarding the law on the introduction of zemstvos in six western provinces, rejected by the State Council, which Stolypin nevertheless carried through with the help of the exceptional 87th article of the Basic Laws. The leading Duma faction, “Union of October 17” led by A.I. Guchkova, for a long time actually supported the government course, while the opposition parties, significantly weakened by the new electoral law, and especially the Kadet, as well as small factions of revolutionary parties, did not miss the opportunity to at least speak out. This Russian parliament, which was gaining self-awareness, was, however, deprived of the right, like the parliaments of Germany and Austria-Hungary, to appoint and remove the government, for a long time it was branded even in independent historiography with the label of an accommodating “lackey Duma,” which is explained by the ignorance of Duma materials, primarily minutes of meetings, as a result, assessments of Soviet historical and party literature were adopted to some extent.

The murder of Stolypin, which occurred six months before the Lena events, did not soften the extremely tense relations between the government and parliament. The majority of Duma deputies who came from all over the empire to St. Petersburg regarded

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The Lena events emerged as a new significant reason for speaking out. Among other things, Russkoye Slovo reported that deputies continued to “feverishly” collect materials for the request at the plenary session. At the same time, the situation in the government camp was marked by extreme lack of information, confusion and disputes over competence. Until the spring of 1912. Stolypin's successor V.N. Kokovtsov, who simultaneously held the posts of Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, tried to continue the reform course of his

predecessor and achieve tolerable coexistence with the restless Duma.
Retrospectively, Kokovtsov noted a certain calm that emerged at the end of winter: “The Duma, foreseeing its imminent dissolution, seemed to stir and began to rush forward the accumulated affairs”24. Source DC voltage What remained was the behavior of Rasputin, whom Stolypin, despite the resistance of the Empress, tried to remove from the capital and from the Court for a long time. Kokovtsov’s relations with “society” were not overshadowed by this; the opposition limited itself to reproaches to the government for its lack of determination to end the protracted scandal.

On the day of the Lena events, Kokovtsov was in Moscow, where businessmen there gave him a magnificent reception. Cautious by nature and wise by the experience of his predecessor, he submitted a draft speech to the emperor for approval, in which he wanted to highlight the need for “friendly interaction between society and the government, always ready to meet fair demands.” Indeed, the prime minister was very friendly received by the merchants who invited him, as well as “the entire Moscow press,” and gained full support from business circles for his general political line and financial policy, which was in fact very successful. The table speech of the leader of “young” Moscow entrepreneurs P.P. sounded dissonant. Ryabushinsky - one of the leaders of the new opposition party “progressives”. The attacks and accusations it contained against the government and the increased political demands testified to the antagonism of the economic interests of business circles and the government and the growing resistance of a significant part of the “captains of industry.” The incident was smoothed over, but the next day the first brief newspaper correspondence about the Lena massacre overtook the prime minister, like any ordinary reader. “I did not receive any news from St. Petersburg and upon returning from Moscow (probably April 6! - M.Kh.) I learned from the Minister of Internal Affairs Makarov that he also did not receive any reports, while the left Duma deputies, in particular , Kerensky, already had telegrams about the bloody massacre”25.

It is unclear whether local authorities were aware of the extent to which the delay in sending official messages weakened the position of the central government. The confusion and parallelism in the work of local institutions cannot fully explain the incredible delay in preparing official statements: only on April 7, three days after the events, the chief of the Irkutsk provincial gendarme department telegraphed the director of the Police Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs about what had happened! The press promptly drew attention to the close connection with Lenzoto of local civilian and military officials, who in a number of cases were clearly corrupt. Even before the events, it was known about the harsh living conditions of workers in the mines and the abusive treatment they received. The press now wrote about this in great detail, calling this regime, after the name of the chief engineer, “the Belozerov regime.” The order to start shooting, given by the captain responsible for the incident, N.V. Treshchenkov, corresponded to the rigoristic and cynical attitude prevailing in the company management towards the striking workers. Obviously, there were also incorruptible co-authors of the tragedy who objected to the unyielding position in relation to the demands of the strikers, and at the top the voice of conscience was not completely silent. On April 9, when the State Duma met in St. Petersburg, the Irkutsk Governor-General sent Kokovtsov an extremely excited telegram about the outrage in society and the preparation of official messages. He received no response to 6 of his requests.

previous telegrams to the Prime Minister. The situation at the mines was extremely serious. “It is absolutely unacceptable to leave without changes the conditions of service surrounding me, due to circumstances beyond my control, but nevertheless not mitigating the full burden of the moral and physical responsibility that lies on me for what happened at the Lenzoto mines”26. A remarkable statement in official correspondence! Obviously, difficult circumstances for responsible officials can be attributed to the negligent and lenient position of the central government in relation to the gold mining company, from which significant tax revenues flowed27. The “gold standard” of the Russian ruble, perceived as a major achievement, was, after all, primarily secured by the discovery and development of Siberian gold deposits.

Chairman of the IV Duma, Octobrist M.V. Rodzianko apparently sought to prevent public indignation from immediately spreading to parliament. At the opening of the first Duma meeting, he announced the death of one of the Duma deputies, the death of the head of the French parliament, Henri Brisson, and mentioned the Titanic disaster that had happened 8 days earlier (“... a grave misfortune befell the friendly and allied English nation”), but did not say a word about the victims of the Lena massacre!28 Then the Duma turned to the usual agenda and continued discussing the state budget. However, immediately after the lunch break, a breakthrough finally occurred: 3 factions - Octobrists, Cadets and Social Democrats (the latter, of course, in the most harsh form) - submitted official inquiries about the Lena events; in addition, the “nationalists”, who previously very zealously supported the government, also addressed a similar question in a softened form29. The first to be announced was the request of the although curtailed by the new electoral law, but very active “constitutional-democratic” faction; it emphasized the objective right of the mine workers to strike and its peaceful nature. Despite this, local authorities ordered to call a military team, also demanding the arrest of the elected representatives of the workers. There was no reason for “administration intervention in the economic struggle.” Addressed to the ministers of justice and internal affairs, the document contained a pointed question: “Are the ministers aware that persons under their jurisdiction, in order to promote the interests of entrepreneurs, intervened in a peaceful strike and are responsible for unprovoked mass bloodshed among a peaceful crowd of workers?”

The small Social Democratic faction in its request outlined in detail the demands of the strikers, which “without exception do not contradict our legislation and are aimed at improving the working and living conditions of workers.” This request, reflecting the spirit of class struggle, stated that “the interests of thousands of workers have been sacrificed to a handful of greedy capitalists who have made a fortune through gambling stock speculation. In the interests of entrepreneurs, families lost their breadwinners, and wives lost their husbands.” Addressing the government, the authors of the request denounced: “The bloody Lena tragedy is one of the most striking expressions of the general government policy... The day of January 9 is repeated!”

Moderate in tone, but clearly highlighting the main points, the third request was from the Octobrist faction, which under Stolypin tried to pursue a policy of “critical cooperation” with the government. More clearly than in the first two, the request of the Octobrists formulated an accusation against Lenzoto “of an obvious violation on the part of the Partnership of the rules of its relationship with the workers.” In strong legal language, it was further noted that “in the absence of information as to violent actions on the part of the workers and those injured among the troops, it is not possible to discern those conditions and circumstances that would justify the need and provide a legal basis for the use of firearms with all the painful consequences of such a measure, which caused the death of 147 people and the injury of 193 people.”

Having somewhat distanced themselves in the form and content of their appeal from the Octobrists, the “nationalist” faction are the closest supporters
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assassinated prime minister - proposed for discussion the issue of unrest among the workers and “their clashes with the troops,” with an additional emphasis on “the long-term inaction of local authorities in terms of meeting the legitimate demands of the working population.”

The discussion based on the requests was opened by a member of the cadet faction N.V. Nekrasov, elected as a Duma deputy from the Tomsk province. Like subsequent speakers, he sharply condemned the actions of the authorities on the eve and at the time of the massacre30. Former Duma Chairman Guchkov, along with others, spoke in favor of the “urgency” of the requests; far-right Duma deputies Zamyslovsky and Timoshkin spoke out against it. The discussion was interrupted late in the evening, as there was no longer a quorum to make a decision. Discussion on requests addressed to the Prime Minister and the Ministers of the Interior and Trade and Industry continued the next day. This time there was more emphasis on analyzing the contents of the documents, with speakers often drawing on newspaper evidence from the last four days. In the end, the requests of the Cadets and Octobrists were accepted by a majority vote, and the text of the Social Democratic faction was rejected.
In his memoirs, Kokovtsov argued that the Minister of Internal Affairs Makarov wanted to stall for time with a response to the Duma request, taking advantage of the one-month period provided for in the law, while the prime minister himself, on the contrary, sought to give satisfaction to the Duma as soon as possible and immediately “saddled the rostrum”31.
However, the transcripts of the Duma meetings do not include the prime minister's speech. At the same time, it is stated here that it is already April 11, i.e. quite promptly, both ministers to whom the requests were addressed spoke in the Duma with detailed explanations. The Minister of Internal Affairs most involved in the events, Makarov, expressed “sincere sadness” and “a desire to find the culprits at all costs,”32 but it soon became clear where he was trying to find them. According to his order, the Irkutsk Governor-General was to personally visit the scene of the incident and “investigate those irregularities that, perhaps,

admitted there from the outside officials”, and the minister questioned the legality of the strike, although without directly naming Lenzoto as an enterprise that was subject to the legal ban on strikes33. But the punitive article of the law, Makarov emphasized, had in mind “criminal communities” that deliberately set the goal of their activity as “inciting workers to organize or continue a strike.” Proof of this, as well as evidence of the not purely economic nature of the strike, was recognized as the leading participation in it of some “ringleaders” previously convicted of political activities. Thus, the minister sought to justify the need for the authorities to intervene in the course of events. Instead of cooperating with his own announced “full investigation” and waiting for its results, the minister imprudently and clearly thoughtlessly trusted the first telegraph message from the senior police chief from Bodaibo34. In his account, the mass of workers, excited by criminal agitators, was increasingly advancing towards the soldiers guarding the company's central administration building, and neither verbal commands nor warning signals could stop the crowd. After the first salvo, the workers allegedly rose again from behind their shelters and shouted “Hurray!”

rushed at the soldiers. In a few moments they could be separated by the crowd and disarmed. Then the minister summarized: “When the crowd, having lost its mind, under the influence of malicious agitators, attacks the army, then the army has no choice but to shoot (Voices on the right: right!). So it was and so it will be in the future.”35. The last phrase, which was then so often quoted (however, without a preceding justification), was immediately perceived by the majority of the Duma as a cynical and cruel response from the government, which fueled the already seething public indignation. “These words,” Kokovtsov recalled, made a stunning impression on the Duma and the press. They forgot Rasputin, forgot their current work, suspended commission sessions and meetings of the general

meetings. The Duma began to resemble the days of the first and second Dumas and everything came down to the “Lena Massacre”36.

The ongoing public excitement, fueled by ever new details about the difficult living and working conditions of the mine workers, was transmitted to the central authorities, which from now on began to receive internal news about the situation in the mines, Lenzoto’s disgusting methods in treating workers and the actual course of the bloody massacre37. However, both the prime minister and some moderate Duma deputies really wanted to defuse the situation and conduct a regular investigation. Together with Rodzianko, Kokovtsov proposed to commission an independent and at the same time

competent person acting outside of a biased or biased investigative authority. The Duma was satisfied for now with the latest explanation from the Minister of Trade and Industry S.I. Timashev, who relied on internal official information. Timashev assured the Duma (and through it the entire public) that a conscientious investigation had begun, designed, among other things, to clarify the conflicting information from the police, gendarmerie and mining administration. In order to overcome possible resistance from the right-wing members of the government cabinet (in addition to Makarov, they should include the reactionary Minister of Justice Shcheglovitov) and among the Duma deputies, it seemed sufficient to involve the emperor in the planned event, prompting him to approve the choice of a suitable person. Kokovtsov, by his own admission, promptly looked at the candidacy of the former Minister of Justice S.S. Manukhina38.

Since mid-March, Nicholas II, along with his family and Court, had been at his summer Crimean residence in Livadia. Kokovtsov managed to guarantee the emperor approval by the Duma of a new, very important naval program for Nicholas, receiving in return consent to Manukhin’s mission. “He is a great liberal,” the emperor told Kokovtsov, “but he is an impeccably honest person and will not bend his soul”39. In the instructions to Manukhin, signed by Nicholas II on May 9, 1912, i.e. with considerable delay, he was entrusted with “an investigation into all the circumstances of the strike at the Lena fields, as well as the reasons that caused the strike...” The senator was granted extraordinary powers: he had the right to demand “testimony from all departments and employees, police, security departments, ... from credit institutions, as well as commercial and industrial enterprises.” The powers set out in paragraphs 8-10 of the instructions extended far beyond the scope of a simple explanation of the matter: Manukhin was given the task of prosecuting “illegal actions”, as well as “with his own authority, without contact with his superiors, to temporarily remove and completely remove from positions, and also to bring to trial persons civil departments, consisting of both civilian and military ranks.” The senator was also given the right to give instructions to the civil and military prosecutor in the investigation of official crimes of civil and military officials and employees of Lenzoto40.

The author needs such extensive citation of this document to emphasize two circumstances. The content and tone of the instructions remind Manukhin - consciously? – the times of Peter I, who created this mechanism so that the auditor, as the “hand of the sovereign,” could eliminate problems in public administration41. It can be assumed that Kokovtsov or other advisers to the emperor were able to cleverly take advantage of the weakened after 1905, but still living, autocratic principles of Nicholas II. On the other hand, this quasi-autocratic act bypassed all competent authorities that had already begun their own investigation, as if in response to public pressure exerted by the press and the Duma! The voice of society could find in this act full confirmation of its protest against both the private enterprise administration and local government bodies.

The rebellious Third Duma ended its meetings without directly touching on the Lena topic. The moderate factions, who fundamentally sought to deepen the reforms, hoped for a conciliatory general reception with the emperor, at which they expected to hear words of gratitude for their five-year work. Kokovtsov promised the emperor’s consent to the meeting, and in May 1912 he carried out the naval program through both houses of parliament.

cop. However, shortly before this, the Duma greatly disappointed Nicholas II in a matter that he took to heart. A clear majority of the Duma spoke in favor of the speedy reform of secular primary school while reducing the already unsatisfactory church education, rejecting government counter-proposals. As a result, Nikolai, according to Kokovtsov, reluctantly agreed to arrange the promised reception, blaming the Duma deputies for their position on the issue of parochial schools. In response, irritated deputies at the last meeting of the Duma rejected the relevant government bills by a significant majority. Thus the Third Duma completed its work, last days which were marked by new tension in already strained relations with the emperor42.
As for the progress of the investigation into the Lena tragedy, the press, although belatedly, received official confirmation of its investigations undertaken in the April days. Despite this, part of society did not want to come to terms with waiting for the results of what was likely to be a lengthy “audit.” Almost simultaneously with the Manukhin commission, an independent committee of sworn attorneys arose, a kind of antipode to the government commission, which conducted its investigation at the scene of the incident, collected testimony and documents, without any opposition from the authorities, and thanks to the assistance of the workers, it had easier access to information43 . To a large extent, the lawyers were prepared for this mission by their political orientation (among them, at least A.F. Kerensky belonged to the radical left opposition). Along with this recognized human rights activist in political cases, lawyers S.A. participated in the committee. Kobyakov and A.M. Nikitin from Moscow, and from Irkutsk, where an active “advisory bureau” had previously appeared, G.B. was invited. Patushinsky and A.A. Tyushevsky. “The situation in the gold mines was awkward,” Kerensky recalled. – Senator Manukhin’s government commission met in the same building, and our headquarters were located on the same street in the house opposite. Both commissions called witnesses and conducted cross-examinations, both recorded the testimony of Lenzoto employees and prepared reports. Senator Manukhin sent his report in encrypted form to the minister and the tsar, and we sent ours by telegraph for the Duma and the press. Needless to say, the mine administration was very offended by our invasion, but neither the senator nor the local authorities interfered with our work. On the contrary, the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia Knyazev was sympathetic to our work, and the Irkutsk governor Bantysh and his official for special assignments A. Malykh provided us with considerable assistance”44.
The results of the investigation conducted by the lawyers' committee became public much faster than the conclusions of the Manukhin commission. They were made in interviews for the press, in election speeches, and at the beginning of 1913, for the most part, they were published in a publication prepared by Batashev45.
May 19, 1912 Manukhin with his “headquarters” of 9 people left St. Petersburg, almost simultaneously with the “independent” committee of lawyers. It took 16 days to get to the scene of the events. On May 25, the commission arrived in Irkutsk by rail, where its composition was strengthened by local officials and specialists.
The first interrogations were also carried out. The general results of the official investigation, which were to be presented to the emperor, were to be kept secret until then; but, as usual, some information about the events carried out leaked to the public, not least from members of both commissions. For example, the order of the senator, given to the prosecutor of the Irkutsk District Court on July 18, 1912, to initiate a case against the main culprit of the massacre, Captain Treshchenkov, who gave the order to open fire, was made public46.

Thus, Manukhin’s mission, on the one hand, was supposed to calm the agitated society, demonstrating the serious intention of the authorities to complete the work begun; on the other hand, the senatorial audit actually carried out a very thorough official investigation, uniquely combining two political styles and, to a certain extent, even two eras: a detailed personal audit of the “sovereign envoy”

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lasted many months (a whole year would pass before the results of the investigation were published, as will be shown below) and was clearly an anachronism in the era of such mass media and information as the telegraph, telephone and daily press.47

The Prime Minister, however, wanted public opinion not to be entirely, as happened before, at the mercy of the press, free from preliminary censorship, and the Duma, which freely discussed the circumstances of the tragedy and submitted requests to the government. However, with regard to primary specific information and its commentary, the priority of the public was obvious, even if Manukhin’s report had been immediately published; Manukhin’s mission was unable to correct the negative impression that had formed in the April days of 1912 about the activities of a discouraged, helpless and timidly responsive government. A year later, the government cabinet was actually declared a co-author of the incident, while Lenzoto was subjected to strong public condemnation in advance, before the trial. The political opposition gained a new strong trump card, and the Lena events became the most pressing topic of the election campaign to the Fourth Duma. At the end of September 1912, the chief of the Irkutsk provincial gendarmerie department reported on the reports held in the city by A.A. Tyushevsky, an opposition candidate for the Duma, one of the members of the independent lawyers' committee, the central topic of whose speeches was the Lena events.
“Both reports,” the document said, “brightly illuminate, according to Tyushevsky, the oppressed position of the workers... He sharply criticized the government in the person of ministers Timashev and Makarov, while believing that Timashev himself was a shareholder of Lenzoto, which revealed the weakness of the government’s measures... ” In conclusion, Tyushevsky addressed the large public with the following tirade: “... The remains of the murdered workers cry out for sympathy, or, more correctly, for solidarity and support for the cause for which they died.” “The requested local police chief,” noted the gendarmerie report, “explained that a sergeant subordinate to him was present at the meeting, who did not notice anything illegal in the report”48. In other cases, the authorities probably reacted more sharply, but it was not only in remote Siberia that free expression of protest began to be perceived as more or less obvious.
Shots on Lena ended the political hibernation. With the death of the strong Prime Minister Stolypin, who was committed to continuing reforms, the conflict situation seemed to be muted. The new head of government had reason to count on successful work In conditions of political maneuvering, political parties increasingly focused on parliamentary work, their activities throughout the country sharply decreased, if not died down altogether. The divided social democracy showed barely noticeable signs of life; only legal newspapers were published in both capitals49. Now, everyone interested in revitalizing the activities and political self-determination of the force has received the desired reason for a new speech. The news conveyed by the press in the very first days, primarily about the unprecedented scale of bloodshed50, which the authorities failed to keep secret, served as a signal for a wave of strikes in many industrial centers of the country. This rise can at least partially be regarded as an action of solidarity, even if - as was the case on Lena itself! – the leadership of the strike movement by workers’ organizations cannot be traced. The number of strikes in the spring of 1912 grew to proportions that the country had not seen since 1905. The Duma election campaign of 1912 was lively, primarily in large cities. We can still judge the use of Lena themes during the campaign only from individual examples, since a systematic analysis of newspaper reports and party documents has not yet been carried out.
Governors, in any case, provided significant support to right-wing parties: at least two cases of direct falsification of election results are known. Despite various oppressions of the opposition, the elections held in September 1912 essentially reproduced
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exhausted the composition of the Third Duma, and the parties clearly opposed to the government - the Cadets, Progressists, Trudoviks51, Social Democrats, as well as the Polish Kolo - clearly strengthened their positions. The secret police report stated the danger of the formation of a “left bloc” of “socialists, Trudoviks, progressives, cadets, Muslims, Poles and left Octobrists like Khomyakov and Shidlovsky.” The document further emphasized that the emboldened Duma opposition was strengthening its influence in the “commercial and industrial sphere,” where workers staged strikes at the slightest provocation52.

But regardless of the election campaign, many newspapers in the summer of 1912 continued to follow the Lena topic. Thus, a sharp article in Rech on August 3 warned about the possibility of canceling the publication or mitigating adjustments to the conclusion of the Manukhin commission, which returned to St. Petersburg on July 24. The drafting and editing of the conclusion, however, dragged on until late autumn53. Lenzoto, for its part, took measures to reassure the public: in June, the distribution of odious food cards at the company’s enterprises was suspended, thereby satisfying one of the main demands of the workers. In September, at the shareholders' meeting, the composition of the company's management also underwent changes. In addition, some local employees of the company were fired, including Belozerov, hated by the workers.
The IV Duma, which met in September 1912, inherited from its predecessor a lot of unfinished business. Among them were the spring requests to the government, the ministers’ responses to them, and the preparation of the Duma’s objections, which, as before, were assigned to be dealt with by the newly formed commission on Duma requests. The majority of the Duma was determined to give the government time to present its position in detail, while speakers from the left Duma camp constantly raised the Lena theme in their speeches.
On November 27, 1912, Senator Manukhin sent the emperor his repeatedly revised report with cover letter, two weeks later, Nicholas II - as far as we know, without expressing his attitude towards the document - submitted it for discussion to the Council of Ministers. A few days later, copies of the report, printed for official use, were distributed to members of the government cabinet and soon became public knowledge54. In terms of content, the report added little new to information that had long been published in the press. It, however, confirmed the validity of most of the newspaper correspondence, including about the situation at the Lena mines on the eve of the events and about the course of the massacre itself. The conclusion of the senator, the former Minister of Justice, was given particular significance by the sharpness in defining the circumstances of the case and the formulation of the final conclusion. The living conditions of the workers in the mines were called incompatible with human dignity, the practice of treating workers adopted in Lenzoto was not in accordance with the law, the workers' strike was justified as purely economic and peaceful in nature, and the gun shots were strongly condemned as unprovoked. Manukhin’s report (this was repeated in a softened form in an official government message several months later) confirmed, repeated and detailed information that had long before been published by the press, on whose information the protesting Duma deputies relied. With a sharply increased readership, the leading Russian newspapers have thus demonstrated convincing proof of their reliability as a source of information and their readiness to speak out for the “national cause.” In addition, the press clearly highlighted one of the most unsightly sides of Russian reality. Unbearable living and working conditions in the Siberian taiga, which a newspaper reporter compared to “hard labor”; frozen ground (thawed only 5 weeks after the massacre!), which was heated in a primitive way to extract gold; workers vegetating in company-owned stuffy and cramped wooden barracks; lack of medical and sanitary services; an extremely burdensome system of fines for minor offenses and violations; compulsion to acquire food cards for the tavern shops of the Partnership; massive corruption of officials bribed by the company; its inexplicably high profits recently

time55; finally, indications of high-ranking shareholders of Lenzoto, who had their own channels of influence - all these press reports, now confirmed in Manukhin’s report, practically replaced a certain accusation.

The senatorial commission tried to present the course of events on April 4 in an almost detective genre. As it turned out, thousands of mine workers came out unarmed to demand that the prosecutor in Bodaibo release the arrested strike leaders. The crowd, moving in 3-4 rows along narrow and snow-covered streets, was still at a considerable distance from the company's board building when an engineer who was hurrying towards them stopped them for negotiations; at that moment, a hundred gendarmes, located on the opposite side of the bridge, fired the first targeted salvo from a distance of 150-200 m. When, after repeated orders from the officers, the soldiers opened fire on those lying and fleeing, the incident finally took on the character of a massacre56. The report noted that in no case could considerations of self-defense or repulse the attackers justify him. Since the contents of the report were known in advance through unofficial channels, the public's intense anticipation of the official government message was naturally weakened. Nevertheless, the opposition press often complained about the delay in publishing the official communique, as, for example, the newspaper “Den” in its issue of May 27, 1913: the choice of Manukhin as the head of the investigative commission should have been welcomed; the senator is a respected person by all. But “what happened as a result? What will society learn about Manukhin’s works? Why was it necessary to send him if his work is kept secret?” In January 1913, the Council of Ministers discussed Manukhin's report three times; disagreement was expressed with a number of his accusatory and condemning conclusions, primarily with the unambiguity and clarity of wording57. It is not known exactly when Nicholas II became acquainted with the opinions of his ministers and whether he contributed to further delay in discussing the report. In any case, only on May 15, 1913, the emperor approved the report, and after another 3 weeks, not the report itself, but a significantly shortened official “message”58 was published in a government body.

Meanwhile, back on February 4, 1913, the Duma commission developed and proposed for discussion its official position regarding the ministers’ responses to requests submitted by the Duma in the spring of 1912. At the same time, a special commission “on press affairs” was formed, but the Duma hesitated to submit its report to the plenary session . Apparently, the Duma majority sought to wait for the final reaction of the government and not provoke an unnecessary aggravation of relations at this moment, which were already very tense. The left, on the contrary, insisted on urgently including the report of the Duma commission on the agenda; the majority rejected this proposal, but nevertheless, representatives of the factions that initiated the discussion were given the opportunity to speak out on this problem. In March 1913, Kerensky spoke almost continuously about the Lena events for more than an hour in a sharply accusatory tone. His speech ended with an emotional cry: “It’s a terrible thing, a terrible thing, but even when there are people sitting here (pointing to the seats of the government) who also have blood on their hands... (call to order by the chairman)”59. In defiance of Kerensky, a representative of the opposite wing of the Duma, the right-wing radical Markov 2nd, spoke out, who, however, himself could not resist making accusations: “All these Lena circumstances are to blame, first of all, that mysterious joint-stock company Lenzoto is to blame, ... which turned the population of the vast Siberian region into slaves... These are the main culprits, not to mention those accomplices and connivers from the ministries of trade and industry and finance..."60

Finally, on June 7, 1913, the “Governmental Report on the case of the strike in the spring of 1912 at the mines of the Lena Gold Mining Partnership” was published. For the reader, however, the title of the communiqué, which dealt not with the massacre itself, but with its background, aroused suspicion that the government’s position deviated from the conclusions of Manukhin’s report. In the introductory part, however, the use of

the prosperity story of Lenzoto, who managed to “concentrate in his hands almost the entire gold mining of the Lena region,” generous assistance provided to the company by the State Bank, an extremely sharp expansion of the scale of the enterprise, the enormous profits received by the company since 1909. However, further the attentive reader discovered a characteristic distancing: significant Moments from Manukhin’s report were cited without comment. Thus, for example, the conclusion was simply reproduced that the Partnership, solely for reasons of increasing profits, resorted to all permissible, and often illegal, means, while at the same time reducing allocations for improving the situation of workers. The “message” also did not comment on the provisions of the report that “the darkest side of the matter at the Lena fields was the spirit of oppression and cold indifference that prevailed there, starting from Belozerov, who stood at the head of the management of the fields for more than 10 years,” that the workers’ homes “were not satisfied the most lenient sanitary requirements,” and the company neglected to introduce technical means to facilitate heavy work.

Manukhin uncovered many violations of the law and abuses that became possible due to weak official control, which, in turn, was explained by the financial dependence of a considerable number of government officials on the ash mining company. According to the senator, the last strike, like all previous ones, was purely economic in nature. The workers demanded exclusively an improvement in their financial situation and did not pursue any political goals. In the working environment, however, some political exiles were actually noticed, who, however, due to their small numbers, “could not give the strike an anti-state character. There is no doubt, however, that some of the said exiles, who belonged to the most literate and developed workers, showed their participation as elected representatives of the striking workers both in the written presentation of their evidence and in negotiating with local authorities and with the mine administration "

In a rather brief statement of its position, the Council of Ministers agreed with Manukhin’s conclusion about the exclusively economic nature of the strike, but then stated that “both in the West of Europe and here, ... strikes and strikes usually occur under the influence of central or local workers’ organizations located in more or less close contact with the general socialist movement in the country. The leaders of this movement always find in the working environment a prepared soil ... especially receptive to all kinds of destructive teachings.” Thus, the government message pushed aside the conclusion of Manukhin’s report, essentially endorsing Lenzoto and Treshchenkov’s thesis about “malicious agitation”!

The communique further emphasized that the investigation was launched through the efforts of the ministers involved (they were instructed to “enter into detailed consideration”), while the work of the Manukhin commission was de facto declared unnecessary. This happened, apparently, with the knowledge of the emperor, who a year ago approved Manukhin’s mission - another example of the deliberate double-mindedness of Nicholas II. The initiator of such a recall was a group of “hawks” in the Council of Ministers, headed by the Minister of Justice Shcheglovitov, with whose approval the odious “Beilis case” was launched in the year of the Lena massacre.

The press reaction to the government announcement was immediate, and the tone of the publications was almost unanimously critical. The liberal opposition Rech, like other newspapers, in its issue of June 8, 1913, compared the government communiqué with the senator’s initial report. The newspaper columnist began with a sarcastic comparison of the two documents: “The presentation of the essence of the report in the government message is as little similar to the report itself as Yorick’s skull that struck Hamlet to its former living owner... How discolored this report is, how carefully all the living colors have been erased from it!” Senator, insistently

the newspaper recalled, he established that the previous strikes “were purely economic in nature and did not pursue political goals”, that on April 4 the workers “did not give any reasons for execution, and did not reveal the slightest intention to attack the troops.” Once again, the newspaper branded with shame those who gave the order to shoot at those who were fleeing and seeking shelter from the zeros. The half-apology for the massacre, namely the ministerial assumption that “in such a situation, “in passing” demands could grow, moving into the realm of a political program,” from the newspaper page appeared clearly inconsistent and contrary to the clear conclusions of the senatorial audit.

The Rech columnist summed it up bitterly: “Indeed, it was so, it will be so, and you don’t need to be a prophet to foresee that everything will end with the introduction of emergency security. But why was it necessary to emphasize this by such a comparison of the report and the considerations of the Council of Ministers? Is this really necessary in order ... to eliminate any doubts about the futility of senatorial audits? With the last phrase, “Rech” clearly dared to criticize the emperor himself.

The Bolshevik Pravda took a surprisingly business-like approach to presenting its position, citing, like the liberal press, quotes from the message of the Council of Ministers. The latter cites “exclusively only facts that are absolutely impossible to deny,” but otherwise the communiqué turns the matter in such a way that the investigation should be carried out anew, directing it primarily to the activities of the strike committee. “All this casts a bright light on domestic policy towards workers... The worse the situation of workers who declare an economic strike, the more prepared the environment for political action, the more grounds there are for the arrest of economic strikers.” However, Pravda’s speech, probably out of fear of reprisals, turned out to be very correct in tone and little original in content.

The Moscow newspaper “Morning of Russia,” the organ of industrial circles and the young Progressive Party, published a very critical article on the same day under the heading “There were no culprits.” The publication emphasized that “the facts presented by Senator Manukhin are so clear and convincing that the Council of Ministers in its conclusion was forced to admit their inflexibility...” The newspaper reproached the government that the “report” raises doubts about Manukhin’s report and even about the established Senator blames Captain Treshchenkov. In a particularly critical tone, however, as in other newspapers, the fact was assessed that after all the investigations carried out, the Council of Ministers published an almost cynical-sounding statement about the need to continue the “investigation of crowds (this word also meant simply gangs! - M. X.) workers who launched an attack on the troops on April 4, 1912.” Thus, the government cabinet clearly took the side of the local authorities. “There are no culprits yet,” the newspaper concluded, “they need to be found...
What results the “investigation” and “consideration” will yield is a matter of the distant future, since both will undoubtedly drag on for an indefinite period of time. In the meantime, none of the real culprits of the Lena tragedy have suffered or will suffer, and the result of Senator Manukhin’s audit turned out to be important only for society, which thanks him.”

The next day, Novoye Vremya spoke out even more harshly. In an article entitled “Is it possible to calm down?” it was argued that the protagonists of the Lena tragedy were trying to put an end to it and calm public opinion, shocked by the senseless mass bloodshed. “But after reading the ministerial declaration, it is hard to believe that the good goal will be achieved and that the government message will really bring peace and tranquility to millions of hearts”61. This can only be achieved “with the confidence that all those responsible for the bloody disaster of April 4 will be subjected to strict punishment and that such events, which arose on the basis of exceptional administrative favor towards large entrepreneurs to the detriment of the law, the state and the rights of workers, will never happen again.” Although further in the article the usual anti-Semitic motives were heard62, “Novoye Vremya” at that moment acted as the most severe in the non-socialist
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The press is simultaneously a critic of the imperial government and the capitalist order in the economy. The newspaper put the government in its place. “The center of gravity of the Lena events for society is not at all in the strike that preceded them, ... but in its bloody finale ...” They further talked about the “criminal act of mass murder,” about “passive tolerance for violations of the law,” the government was accused of a time when all of Russia expected and demanded strict punishment for all those responsible, the Council of Ministers seemed to be looking for suitable motives to justify them. Only this newspaper could afford such attacks, since repressive measures against Novoye Vremya could lead to

that the already wide front of the anti-government struggle would now spread to the right-wing nationalist camp. By publishing its declaration with such a significant delay, the Council of Ministers probably hoped that, due to the approaching parliamentary holidays, the Duma would not have enough time or energy to respond to the next round of developments. Although the corresponding item was not actually included in the agenda of the first Duma session, opposition speakers nevertheless found reasons for new accusations, such as, for example, the leader of the Menshevik faction N. Chkheidze, who took the floor on June 12, 1913. Mentioning new “class battles” in Kutaisi province. and in the capital of the empire, he again raised the question of an urgent consideration of the report of the Duma commission on requests: “Hasn’t the time come when the workers need another bloodletting? Last year...this process was carried out on the banks of the Lena... Now isn’t it the turn of the other bank, the bank of the Kriliva River in Georgia?” One can reasonably expect that the strike will again be declared a political demonstration, and the strike committee will be made responsible for this, “at the head of which, perhaps, will be Duma deputies Tsereteli and Lomchaidze, and will it not be heard again from here (from the Duma rostrum. - M. X.) famous

formula “So it was - so it will be”?”63.

True, this time the proposal for an “urgent hearing” was rejected by the votes of 148 Duma deputies against 69. However, soon another Georgian deputy Chkhenkeli used the penultimate Duma meeting before the holidays on June 21, 1913 to speak out against the Duma majority, which approved the 3 billion budget of the “government” Lena massacre”64. “Noise from the right” and the chairman’s bell interrupted the speaker, but did not soften the growing opposition of the Duma, which was expressed in the fact that insignificant proposals of ministers were approved in whole series, but more and more often the Duma rejected the government’s legislative projects, as happened at the meeting on June 4, 1913, when Parliament rejected 9 such projects65. Passionate accusations from the Duma rostrum could satisfy public interest in the Lena drama. The press came out with new revelations. The Duma and newspaper publicists intensified public indignation and (in addition to the special investigation carried out at the behest of the emperor) prompted the government to painful self-justification, the powerful gold mining company was almost put in the dock and forced to make some changes66. The situation indicated that the Lena theme was not exhausted until the long summer pause - the last peaceful holiday of the empire.
The responses of both ministers, to whom urgent Duma requests were sent, have still not been fully discussed and assessed. It remains not entirely clear what prompted the leading Duma factions to delay the preparation of the final report of the inquiry commission so much. Perhaps this was due to the reluctance to follow the lead of the radical left factions, whose representatives repeatedly tried to put requests on the agenda, i.e. reactions to them from ministers. Presumably, the desire not to burn bridges to establish cooperation with the government, namely not to expose Kokovtsov, under whom the Prime Minister’s chair was already shaking, also played a role. IN last days May 1913 The Council of Ministers unanimously decided to declare a boycott of Duma meetings (the well-known “ministerial strike”), thereby responding to a sharp attack by the right
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Radical Markov 2nd, when discussing the state budget, hurled the phrase at the government: “You can’t steal!” Only in December 1913 did individual ministers begin to reappear in the Duma. Kokovtsov was dismissed on January 29, 1914. The post of Prime Minister was taken by the elderly I.L. Goremykin.
The report of the Duma commission on requests was included in the agenda of Duma meetings only in the late spring of 1914.67 Analyzing the reasons for such a long delay is not the author’s task. I will only note that this was facilitated by both the tactical maneuvers of various parties and the overload of the plenary sessions of the Duma. On the other hand, Kokovtsov’s successor as head of government, returned by the emperor to service from retirement, hardly did anything to reduce the growing tension in relations with the Duma. The report of the Duma commission summarized the well-known and generally accepted conclusions of various surveys, briefly outlined the ministers' responses to Duma requests, critically assessing their reasoning, and ultimately recommended that the Duma recognize the explanations of government officials as “unsatisfactory.” Many factions came up with proposals for a mandatory formula for “moving on to the next business.” The most harsh formulation was put forward by the Social Democrats, who called for condemnation of the government. Their proposal received 65 votes, i.e. much more than the radical left wing of the Duma counted, but, as expected, it was rejected by a majority of 165 votes. The formulation of the progressives, similar in terms of harshness of expression, was also rejected by 139 votes to 97. The option proposed by the “Zemtsy-Octobrists,” a centrist group of the Octobrist faction that had split by that time, was considered acceptable.

The wording of this document was refined during a lengthy discussion and commission, and its contents deserve a thorough presentation. The introductory part of the resolution emphasized that both Senator Manukhin and the Council of Ministers “came to the conclusion that the difficult working and living conditions in which the workers of the Lena Partnership were placed created ready ground for the emergence of labor unrest and that the main reason for the latter, thus , is rooted in the economic field.” Thus, the Duma completely took the side of the strikers, emphasizing the unfoundedness of the suspicion that political agitation was the driving force behind the movement. Paragraph 1 of the resolution contained a reproach to the government for “measures not taken in a timely manner ... to improve the living conditions of the workers and regulate their relations with the Lena Partnership.”

Paragraph 2 condemned the fact that the comrade of the Minister of Internal Affairs challenged the validity of the prosecution of Captain Treshchenkov and tried to influence the course of the investigation. The phrase that the Ministry of Internal Affairs “continues to neglect public opinion and ignore the interests of the broad masses of the population” was sharply condemned. Then came the final verdict: “The State Duma finds that the explanations of the Minister of Trade and Industry do not remove the reproach from the department he leads for not taking all measures to prevent the event of April 4, 1912, and recognizes the explanations of the Comrade Minister of Internal Affairs as unsatisfactory and moves on to the next case.” 68. 166 deputies, including the left wing and the center, voted for this formulation, 64 voted against, mainly “nationalists” and right-wing Octobrists69.

Since the Basic Laws of 1906, as is known, did not provide the Duma, as well as the State Council, with the right to form and remove the government, such negative “formulas for moving on to the next business” were the sharpest form of disapproval of the government’s activities by parliament. At one of the last meetings of the Duma, a vote of no confidence was passed against the government, directly directed against the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and at the same time a reprimand to the trade and industrial department. This was the end of the conflict between the Russian public and the government over the bloody tragedy in Eastern Siberia, which had lasted for more than two years and, with the outbreak of the First World War, was finally relegated to the background.

The public, quite modern for those times, first represented by the press, which quickly found out the reasons and responded sharply to the events of the press, then, over the course of a long period of time,

under a lot of pressure from parliament and the press, reacted to the Lena events very sensitively, although from a deliberately critical position in relation to the state and its bureaucratic structures. With all the breadth of the range of public reaction, a common “orchestration” of the critical-revealing chorus emerged, starting with interviews and reports, journalistic investigations to photographs from the scene, from the reproduction in the press of bureaucratic inconsistencies to repeated Duma debates and election campaigns.

The telegraph and telephone, newly invented means of mass communication, carried news within a matter of hours from remote backwaters thousands of kilometers away, and the appearance of a series of photographs from the scene heralded the advent of the age of technical video information. If previously the authorities, thanks to repressive measures, often managed to conceal similar clashes and tragedies (only vague rumors about “Siberian horrors” were heard from beyond the Urals), now Russia, in this sense, has entered the European 20th century. The press and the Duma showed that their behavior and activities were in no way limited to representing the interests of individual layers and groups of the population.

Here we are faced with a pronounced social sensitivity of the entire Russian society, and not just its proletarian layer. Along with outrage at the terrible bloodshed, the public reaction was marked by close attention to manifestations of “early capitalism.” Society's assessment of these phenomena in Siberia as a scandalous incident indirectly indicates that in European Russia they have practically disappeared. The first reports of the tragedy came, naturally, from representatives of the affected workers and left-wing opposition activists, who began their own investigation. Nevertheless, major newspapers and leading Duma factions immediately picked up and widely disseminated this information. The main phase of public protest included a certain range of formulations; during it, the outsider position of the radical right was determined, but still there was no demarcation between the “proletarian” and “bourgeois” public. As they gained their own self-expression, “society” and “people” formed a united front of protest.

Public outcry, investigations and Duma requests brought about some concrete changes. These include the long-debated law on workers' insurance, which was finally adopted on the eve of the First World War71. The impact of public criticism on officials at all levels was palpable, if controversial. Lenzoto fired many employees, reorganized the management of the enterprise and put an end to some blatant abuses in the mines. The government headed by Kokovtsov reacted to the charges brought against him; the ministers involved in the case sought to justify themselves before the Duma, where, however, the matter ended with a stubborn reaction from Makarov. His resignation, which followed shortly after his speech in the Duma, can partly be explained by this abrupt step of his. Senator Manukhin, appointed by the emperor and endowed with extraordinary powers, began - with some delay, but quite thoroughly and in a tense rhythm - to investigate the incident.
The indignation that filled the senator's report was by no means a manifestation of oppositional sentiment, as he was suspected of. However, Kokovtsov, acceptable to the public, was dismissed in January 1914, and the tendency in the government to delay as much as possible the consideration of the results of the audit and the implementation of specific measures increased. The outbreak of the First World War completely saved Captain Treshchenkov from the planned trial.

The “Information Bureau” under the Minister of Internal Affairs was then engaged in collecting newspaper clippings for presentation to the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs: they were viewed, i.e. were taken seriously, even by the Bolshevik newspapers Zvezda and Pravda.

The government's attempts to suspend an independent public investigation or at least prevent public criticism of the authorities were limited to an outbreak-like “small war”

noy” against the revolutionary press with the confiscation of particularly radical publications, including books published under the authorship of Batashev. The state printing house, on the contrary, replicated and distributed all Duma speeches without any exceptions!

If the Lena tragedy is still assessed as the main milestone on the path to the inevitable revolutionary collapse of pre-Bolshevik Russia72, then this only indicates a deterministic approach that leaves out of sight the increased resistance of the system to crises and conflicts. Proponents of this approach also do not try to compare the situation in Russia with the systemic crisis in other countries where it contributed to the process of democratization. The “Lena Case,” which emerged as a result of the bloody massacre in the Siberian gold mines, illuminates the progressive stage of emancipation and initiative of society.

An independent, critical public, with the ability and necessary freedom to initiate inquiry and open debate in the press and parliament, is without a doubt one of the essential features of modern democracy. The very presence and energetic functioning of such a public, as I tried to show, can be regarded as a stage on the path to democratization of Russia. Modern Russian historians sometimes appeal to the “rich democratic traditions of the Russian people”73, however, it seems that in this case they will inevitably encounter the phenomenon of the “Lena case”.

Notes:

periodicals, see: Hagen M. Die Entraining politischer Oeffentlichkeit in Russland 1906 bis 1914. Wiesbaden, 1982. S. 153 ff.; M s R e u n o l d s L. The News and the Russian Old Regime. The Development of a Mass Circulation Press. Princeton, 1991. On the relationship between the press and political parties, see: Shevtsov A.V. Publishing activity of Russian non-socialist parties of the early 20th century. St. Petersburg, 1997. pp. 55, 92 et seq.

2 See: N a i m s o n L.H. The Problem of Social Stability in Urban Russia, 1907-1917 // Slavic Review

23/1964; 24/1965. The newest work by Michael Melanson (M e l a n c o n M. The Ninth Circle. The Lena Goldfield Workers and the Massacre of April 4, 1912 // Slavic Review 53/1994) is a thorough, well-founded study based on published,

mainly journalistic literature published after the events and before the 1930s.

3 The then management of the Partnership was elected at the general meeting of shareholders in June 1909 as “Managing Director” with an annual salary of 30 thousand rubles. became Baron A.G. Ginzburg, directors of the board – M.E. Meyer and G.S. Champanier, candidates for members of the board – V.M. Lipin, B.F. Junker and A.V. Guvelyaken, members of the audit commission - V.V. Beck, G.B. Sliozberg, L.F. Grauman, V.Z. Fridlyandsky and R.I. Ebenau. The reader, not alien to xenophobia, could thus “choose” only between Jews and Germans (RGIA, f. 1418, op. 1, d. 34, l. 98. Extracts from archival files in Moscow, Leningrad (St. Petersburg) and Irkutsk were made by me quite a long time ago. Since I did not have the opportunity to follow the changes in ciphers and the movement of archival files that have occurred since that time, I ask you to forgive the reader for the possible inaccuracies in the footnotes to archival documents - M.Kh.).

4 The ringing power of these lines fully corresponded to the actual course of events; the contents of the message were almost entirely confirmed during subsequent investigations.

5 “Information Bureau” was the creation of Stolypin, who was appointed Minister of Internal Affairs on April 8, 1906. The dynamic statesman gave great value multilateral dialogue between “society” and the renewing state (See: N a g e n M. Op. cit. S. 122 ff.).

6 Governor F.A. Bantysh, in a report to the Irkutsk Governor-General, quoted Lenzoto’s report for 1911, according to which the company’s capital in just one year grew from 6 to 11 million rubles, and its net profit amounted to 5.66 million rubles. thus amounted to at least 55% of the fixed capital (State Archives of the Irkutsk Region - GA IO, f. 32, op. 15, d. 47, l. 10 and vol.). According to the daily press, the Lenzoto share price on September 17, 1911 was 3,270 rubles, while one of the most popular securities on the stock exchange, the share of the Volzhsko-Kama Bank, cost 1,040 rubles, i.e. three times less than a share of a gold mining company!

choose their representatives to calmly discuss their demands. See the report of the Irkutsk governor: GA IO, f. 32, op. 15, d. 47, l. 11 et seq., as well as details and arguments: MelanconM. Op. cit. P. 781.

8 Belousov Terenty Osipovich, b. in 1874, he was elected as a deputy of the Third Duma by the Irkutsk city curia as a social democrat, later non-party (Boyovich M.M. Members of the State Duma. Portraits and biographies. Third convocation 1907-1912. M., 1908. P. 433).

9 First, at the request of leading officials, 50 “elders” were elected, 18 of them formed a central committee, then 5 became part of the “central bureau,” of which at least 2 were Mensheviks, 2 workers sympathizing with the Social Revolutionaries and 1 in an illegal position. Two thirds of the appointed committee members were in fact political exiles, among them P.M. Batashev. M. Melancon correctly determines his party affiliation (Menshevik), but, as evidenced by the quoted telegram, he is mistaken regarding its authorship, believing that the brother of the former Duma deputy was in Bodaibo (Melancon M. Op. cit. P. 783 et seq.) .

10 A little later, news came from neighboring Germany about a major strike in the Ruhr region, which gave liberal publicists, who were guided by Western models, additional arguments for comparison not in favor of Russia.

11 Some newspapers, especially those adhering to extreme trends, did not have the opportunity to organize daily publication of their publications and were published, such as “Zvezda”, which was authorized in 1910, 2-3 times a week. Of course, sets of such newspapers in libraries have significant time gaps. The author was guided by the current numbering of issues.

12 In the literature (Bolshevik press. A brief outline of history. 1894-1917. M., 1962. P. 298) it is erroneously indicated “March 8”. The lists were retyped by an unknown person on a typewriter, minor corrections were made to the names of the victims, and the heading “Star, June 8” was prefaced (GA IO, f. 2456, op. 1, d. 6, l. 1-4).

13 Among a total of 360 victims, only 13 had non-Russian names, which casts doubt on

a widespread assertion that the workers were dominated by Asians employed in gold

mines. The number of those killed, along with those who later died from wounds, rose to at least 230

the statement that the workers were armed only with “sticks, stones, iron rods...” (GD.

CO. III. 5. 3. Stb. 1953).

36 Kokovtsov V.N. Decree. Op. T. 2. P. 57.

37 According to Kokovtsov’s memoirs, an agreement was reached that the Duma would introduce a new request, to which the ministers would respond “satisfactorily” (Ibid. p. 62 et seq.).

38 Manukhin Sergei Sergeevich, (born in 1856), State Secretary for the Department of the Ministry of Justice (1901), Minister of Justice (1905) ( Encyclopedic Dictionary Pomegranate. Ed. 7. T. 23. P. 707).

39 K o k o v ts o v V.N. Decree. Op. T. 2. P. 62 et seq.

41 According to then and current “Western” standards, the lack of jurisdiction of government officials is one of the characteristic shortcomings of the old legal system. Regarding “senator audits,” M. Sheftel wrote: “A purely bureaucratic instrument for informing the highest authorities, audits were carried out with the help of specially sent senators or other dignitaries... and could not replace administrative jurisdiction as a means of strengthening the rule of law” (Szeftel M. The Russian Constitution of April 23, 1906. Political Institutions of the Duma Monarchy. Bruessel, 1976. P. 236).

42 Kokovtsov V.N. Decree. Op. T. 2. P. 73 et seq.

43 The former leader of the strike, Batashev, noted: “The second commission of investigation... was not endowed with special powers, but its position was strengthened by the support of public opinion and the willingness of the working class to promote a free investigation” (Batashev P.M. The Truth about the Lena Events. M., 1913. P. 3). In the Second Duma, Batashev was a radical left deputy. Robert McKean noted changes in the political consciousness of the capital's workers under the influence of the Lena events, but at the same time did not postulate the thesis of a “proletarian public” (McKean R. St.-Petersburg between the Revolutions. Workers and Revolutionaries, June 1907 – February 1917. New Haven; London, 1990. P. 98).

44 Kerensky A. Russia on History’s Turning Point. New York, 1965. P. 83. In the same year, in the elections to the IV Duma, Tyushevsky was a candidate from the left.

45 Batashev P.M. Decree. Op. The book was “banned” (according to the red form on the copy of the Rumyantsev Museum library). Most likely, most of the circulation, as often happened, has already sold out!

46 Of course, Manukhin, whose terms of reference, as noted, included the application of urgent measures, was aware of the correspondence of the Irkutsk governor Bantysh with his immediate superior, Governor-General of Eastern Siberia Knyazev. Bantysh complained that decisive news and instructions passed “besides me,” that captain Treshchenkov, who was in direct contact with the chief of the Irkutsk State Housing Administration and with the director of the Police Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs S.P. Beletsky, acted arbitrarily, hastily and even provocatively. Treshchenkov bypassed him, the governor, and in the manner noted above requested and received “instructions for the immediate liquidation of the strike committee,” then, by order of the vice-governor and against the will of him, Bantysh, he pulled troops from Kirensk to the mine. The report of the governor, resorting to self-justification, was clearly drawn up under the influence of a wave of public protest (see the typewritten copy of the report with corrections and the note “May 5, 1912”: GA IO, f. 32, op. 15, d. 46, l. 106 etc.).

47 It is surprising that in such a remote region there were found such state-of-the-art technical means of documentation as a camera! Eyewitnesses and participants in the events were filmed. According to M. Melanson, relying on the memories of one of the participants in the tragedy, even “many photographs” were taken by a certain political exile, a former professional photographer (M e l a n s o n M. Op. cit. P. 790). A photograph of a pile of corpses and a crowd surrounding them, probably workers and their wives, was reproduced at the same time in the publication: S o 1 d a n O. (Hg.). Zeitgeschichte in Wort und Bild. O.J. Bd. I. S. 15. One of the wounded workers, Mikhail Lebedev, telegraphed the Governor-General and the District Attorney that “negatives of photographs of the scene of events were confiscated from the photographers (! - M.Kh.).” Ban for this

Tysh authorized Treshchenkov to save the photo “for presentation to the minister.” Treshchenkov replied that the negatives were not confiscated from Lebedev (which he did not claim at all!), he, Treshchenkov, took the negatives from the station foreman of the Gromovsky mines, but they did not depict the scene of the collision, but the corpses delivered 2 days later to the hospital morgue (GA IO, f. 32, op. 15, d. 47, l. 13 et seq.). Repeatedly republished in Soviet times and, most likely, significantly “edited” memoirs of M. Lebedev, a revolutionary sailor who escaped from hard labor, one of the alleged leaders of the strike (Lebedev M. Memoirs of the Lena events of 1912. M., 1925), indeed contain photographs in one of the later editions, including the above-mentioned photograph.

48 GA RF, f. 102 (Special Department of the Police Department), op. 1, d. 339, l. 108 et seq.

49 See note. 17.

50 Irkutsk district prosecutor May 15, 1912 reported to the Department of the Ministry of Justice that “due to the lack of mourning sheets for those killed on the spot, Justice of the Peace Rhine wants to dig up the corpses.” Obviously, government officials sought to bury the bodies of those killed as quickly as possible and, in fact, without official registration; as a result, the corpses remained in the hospital morgue completely short time. As we have seen, the authorities' plan was thwarted by the workers themselves, who wrote down the names of those killed and transmitted this information to one or more newspapers. The prosecutor further noted that “the opening of graves is dangerous and undesirable as a reason for agitation, which continues to this day... The strike at the Lena mines has not yet been stopped, which is why it is necessary to avoid at all costs the adoption of measures that could increase the excitement of the workers.” This was followed by the conclusion that the exhumation should be prevented under the pretext that the ground had not yet thawed (May 15! - M.Kh.) and wait for the arrival of the senator (GA IO, f. 32, op. 34, d. 45, l. 9) .

69 GD. CO. IV. 2. 3. St. Petersburg, 1914. Stb. 228.

70 A similar example is the case of the train accident in August 1882 near the city.

was “suspended” by the Minister of the Interior (Laporte M. L’histoiredel’okhrana: La police secré’tedes

tsars, 1880-1917. Paris, 1935. P. 10).

71 First of all, laws on social insurance June 23/July 5, 1912, thanks to which Russia, along with other countries, including the United States, made significant progress along the path of insurance for the lower strata of society. These laws, in addition to material insurance for workers, provided for, in addition to trade unions restricting their activities, the creation of a new type of legal organizations, and

namely health insurance funds, which had developed means of communication (see: Ms. Daniel T. Autocracy, Capitalism and Revolution. Berkeley, 1988. P. 142).

72 A similar assessment is given in the work of Dittmar Dahlmann (D h l m a n n D. Die Provinz waehlt. Russlands Konstitutionell-Demokratische Partei und die Dumawahlenl906-1912. Koelh, 1996), who, however, does not provide evidence (see review by Lutz Hefner // Jahrbuecher fuer Geschichre Osteuropas. 1998. S. 428). The same tendency is revealed by Melanson’s excellent work on the course of the Lena events. The author emphasizes the participation of “conservative forces” in the rising protest movement and the “unusually wide range of public reaction,” but then seems to attribute this “public reaction” only to “official Russia,” between which and “public” Russia the split has deepened (M elan o n M. Op. cit. 793 et ​​seq.).

73 Leiberov I.P., Margolis Yu.D., Yurkovsky K.N. Traditions of democracy and liberalism in Russia // Questions of history. 1996. No. 2. P. 13. Wed. also: Shelokhaev V.V. Russian liberalism as a historiographical and historical problem // Ibid. 1998. No. 2. P. 13 (here also see Bibliography of studies of the 1990s).

Hagen Manfred, Professor, Seminar of Medieval and Modern History, University of Göttingen, Germany.

Domestic History, 2002, No. 2

Victims of the Lena execution (photo taken by an unknown employee of the mine administration and seized by the head of the punitive action, Captain Treshchenkov)

One hundred years ago, on April 4, 1912, troops shot an unauthorized procession of striking gold mine workers in the area of ​​the city of Bodaibo on the tributaries of the Lena Vitim and Olekma.

There were no grounds for extreme measures. The labor conflict could well have been resolved peacefully.

The Lenzoloto company, which owned the mines, was a typical oligarchic structure that built its business on connections in court and government circles, and the authorities were accustomed to reacting to any protest on the principle of “pulling and not letting go.”

But after the October 17 manifesto, Russia became different. In conditions of even limited democracy, an attempt to act as before turned into a political defeat for the regime.

There was also a second Lena execution in history, the truth about which was revealed only many years later.

Operation

The salary of a gold miner, depending on experience and qualifications, was from 30 to 55 rubles per month - twice as much as at factories in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and approximately ten times higher than the average monetary income of the peasantry. Those recruited in central Russia were paid allowances of one hundred rubles - a huge amount for an ordinary person.

“Since hiring for mines is a true benefit for a certain part of the population, then we can take advantage of this circumstance to lower wages compared to what we have now. And the reduced wage seems like something like El Dorado for a hungry people. With a surplus of workers, it will be easier for you make more stringent demands on workers; again, the presence of extra people in the taiga can help lower wages, which goal should be pursued by all means"

From a letter from Lenzoloto shareholder Baron Gunzburg to mine manager Belozerov

However, those chasing the long ruble quickly became convinced that life in the mines was not all sugar.

Mining was carried out mainly in mines with a depth of 20 to 40 meters. The permafrost was melted by fires, continuously pumping out water. The wet workers had to walk home in the cold. In 1911 alone, there were 896 industrial accidents, injuring 5,442 people.

The shift lasted 11 hours with one day off per week.

The company saved on social infrastructure. The workers lived in wooden barracks, of which only 10% met the minimum requirements, in terrible overcrowding.

Due to the lack of housing, it was only possible to bring a family with the special permission of the authorities, which served as an additional lever of pressure on the staff. Renting a private apartment cost half of my earnings. There was one doctor for every 2,500 people.

All the shops and shops in the area belonged to the company. Part of the salary, contrary to the laws of the Russian Empire, was issued in coupons for goods.

Strike

In 1911, the company sharply intensified its recruitment in order to create a surplus at the mines. labor force and reduce wages.

At the same time, the administration prohibited workers from free time independently search for gold sand and nuggets on the river shallows. As in California and the Klondike, not everyone was lucky, but some prospectors managed to get rich.

The strike began on March 3, 1912. The immediate cause, as on the battleship Potemkin, was poor quality meat. Eyewitnesses subsequently described the details of the incident in different ways. According to one version, a certain customer discovered a horse penis in meat intended for sale in a shop at the Andreevsky mine.

The workers formed a strike committee and presented 18 demands, including increasing wages by 30%, reducing the working day to 8 hours, improving supplies and living conditions (singles - a double room, families - a separate room), not firing people in winter, when It was almost impossible to leave the mines and address the staff first name.

“Since the mine workers of the Lena Partnership, at my request and the proposal of the board, did not start work at the appointed time, from that moment they are subject to liability under Article 367 of the Criminal Code (imprisonment in prison), the same ones who incite the workers to continue strikes, will be punished under paragraph 3, Article 125 of the same code (imprisonment in a government house or imprisonment in a fortress), which I announce to all workers for general information."

There were no political demands. There is no evidence of involvement of revolutionary parties in the strike - due to the geographical remoteness, there were no Bolshevik or Socialist Revolutionary agitators at the mines.

The company refused to negotiate. The authorities declared the strike illegal and threatened its organizers and active participants with criminal prosecution. 215 soldiers were transferred to the mine area. The costs of their transportation and maintenance were paid by Lenzoloto.

The chief of police of the Bodaibo district, gendarme captain Nikolai Treshchenkov, who in fact represented the executive power on the spot, was sharply hostile towards the strikers, declaring to his subordinates: “Well, what kind of strike is this? I can’t cope with people like that. I’ll quickly call all this trash to order!”

On April 3, by order of Treshchenkov, several members of the strike committee were arrested. The next day, between two and three thousand workers marched to demand their release.

Further events are described in a telegram sent on April 5 by strike committee member Mikhail Lebedev to Prime Minister Vladimir Kokovtsev and the State Duma:

“The Lenzoloto workers went to the Nadezhdinsky mine with complaints to Comrade Prosecutor Preobrazhensky about the illegal actions of the mine and government administration and with a request for the release of those arrested. Before reaching 120 fathoms to the prosecutor’s apartment, we were met by district engineer Tulchinsky, persuading us to stop and disperse in order to avoid a clash with the troops. The front ones, obeying, tried to stop, but the crowd of three thousand, stretched for two miles along the narrow road, not knowing the reason for the stop of the front ones, continued to press, dragging away Tulchinsky with the guard and not hearing the warning signals of the commander of the military team. Volleys followed, which continued, despite the screams. waving Tulchinsky's cap and handkerchief to stop the firing. As a result, about five hundred were killed and wounded. Tulchinsky miraculously survived under the corpses. We consider captain Treshchenkov, comrade prosecutor Preobrazhensky, and investigator-judge Khitun to be the culprits, who used weapons without being convinced of our peaceful intentions. , not involved in the events, with the powers of an investigator. Elected workers of Lenzoloto, wounded Mikhail Lebedev, paybook number 268."

"We report: the strike continues, there are no sharp manifestations of unrest. Measures of persuasion do not work, because the strike is well organized, discipline is firm. The state of affairs is wait-and-see, the workers are strictly monitoring themselves. Vodka has been taken out to Bodaibo, dynamite has been taken to one place, and is guarded in addition to the mine guard by guards. Reasons strikes - a desire to increase wages, weaken the severity of the regime, and achieve more attentive management to the needs of workers"

Telegram from district engineer Alexandrov and mining police officer Galkin to the Irkutsk governor dated March 12, 1912.

The exact number of dead and injured is unknown. Historians consider the most reliable information provided in hot pursuit by the Irkutsk advisory bureau of sworn attorneys: 150 killed and more than 250 wounded, although the roundness of the figures most likely indicates inaccuracy.

The final documents of the two commissions investigating the Lena massacre do not contain information about the number of dead, but mention is made of taking testimony from 202 wounded.

Opposition newspapers and Soviet historical literature spoke of 270 killed.

According to available data, some of the lightly wounded did not seek medical help for fear of reprisals.

The strike at the mines lasted until August. In the end, over 80% of the workers - 4,738 people - left, and new ones were recruited to take their place.

During the NEP years, the Soviet government granted a concession for gold mining in Bodaibo to one of the shareholders of Lenzoloto, the British company Lena Goldfields, but in 1929, by a strong-willed decision, it terminated the agreement. International arbitration recognized the investors' claim against the USSR in the amount of $65 million. In 1968 the money was paid.

In total, over 160 years of operation of the Lena mines, about 1,300 tons of gold were mined there.

On the 10th anniversary of the Lena execution, Joseph Stalin wrote in Pravda: “The Lena days burst into the abomination of desolation like a hurricane,” explaining what he meant by “abomination” as the prospects for “the constitutional development of Russia in the manner of Prussia.”

The Lena events were used by the Soviet writer Vyacheslav Shishkov in the plot of the novel "Gloomy River".

The well-known version that Vladimir Ulyanov took the pseudonym “Lenin” in memory of the Lena execution is not supported by facts. The Bolshevik leader had been signing his works "Lenin" since at least 1901.

Miscalculation of the oligarchs

The ownership structure of the Lenzoloto company was quite complex. 66% of the shares belonged to Lena Goldfields, a company registered in London, which, in turn, was partially owned by Russian nationals. In total, foreigners controlled 54% of Lenzoloto.

Soviet historians especially emphasized this circumstance, bluntly calling Lenzoloto an “English company.”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his book “200 Years Together” emphasized that the largest Russian co-owner of Lenzoloto, who owned about 20% of the shares, was Baron Alfred Gunzburg.

Another leading shareholder was the owner of the famous St. Petersburg machine-building plant, Alexey Putilov.

"The government commission of Senator Manukhin met in the same building, and ours was located on the same street in the house opposite. Both commissions called witnesses and conducted cross-examinations, both recorded the testimony of Lenzoloto employees and prepared reports. Senator Manukhin sent his report in encrypted form to the minister and the tsar , and we sent ours by telegraph to the Duma and the press. Needless to say, the mine administration was very offended by our invasion, but neither the senator nor the local authorities interfered with our work. On the contrary, the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia, Knyazev, was sympathetic to our work. , and the Irkutsk governor Bantysh and his official for special assignments, Malykh, provided us with considerable assistance"

Alexander Kerensky

Professor Andrei Burovsky and other modern authors see the reason for the tragedy not in the fact that the British and Jews did not feel sorry for the Russian people, but in the nature of the then state. The owners of Lenzoloto attracted high-ranking persons as shareholders, including the Dowager Empress Maria Fedorovna, and believed that with such a “roof” they could do whatever they wanted.

“Everything that was evil and destructive in the modern regime, everything that ailed long-suffering Russia - all this was gathered in one fact, in the events on the Lena,” Joseph Stalin wrote in the wake of the events in the Bolshevik newspaper Zvezda, and in this In this case, it is difficult to disagree with him.

However, after 1905, Russia already had a parliament, Click albeit with limited powers, legal opposition and practically free press.

The brutal massacre blew up society and forced the government to back down.

Everyone knows the cynical phrase of the Minister of Internal Affairs Makarov at the hearings in the State Duma: “So it was, and so it will be.” But not everyone knows that he paid for his bravado with his position.

Captain Treshchenkov was fired and demoted for excessive use of force.

The circumstances of the tragedy were investigated on the spot by two commissions: the official one, headed by Senator Manukhin, and the public one, led by State Duma deputy and future Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky.

Arriving in Bodaibo, Manukhin first of all released the members of the strike committee, arrested on April 3 by Treshchenkov, and assured the workers that no one would be prosecuted for participating in the strike and unauthorized march.

Second Lena execution

There were two “Lena executions”. The second happened in early 1938.

Contrary to the well-known saying that history repeats itself first as a drama, and then as a farce, the second execution turned out to be much more tragic both in circumstances and in the number of victims. There was simply no one to protest and be indignant in the USSR.

Every Russian schoolchild knows about the “atrocities of tsarism.” Textbooks do not talk about the crimes of the Stalinist regime. The information collected by historians Aleksandrov and Tomilov in the declassified KGB archives was published only in the East Siberian Truth newspaper and on the Internet.

At the end of 1937, Moscow decided that the Bodaibo region was lagging behind in the pace of identifying “enemies of the people.” An emissary of the NKVD of the USSR, Boris Kulvets, was sent to the scene, who first of all imprisoned the district prosecutor and subsequently issued arrest warrants himself.

“There were almost no materials. We had to act more by instinct,” Kulvets reported to his superiors.

In addition to the KGB “intuition”, the basis was the “fifth point”: “Chinese affairs - I arrested every single person in the city, I also devastated the nearest mines. Only distant mines remained, 200-300 kilometers away. I sent people there. I will defeat all the Chinese in the coming days.” .

Captain Treshchenkov reported to the Irkutsk governor that he could not arrest all active participants in the strike due to the insufficient number of seats in the Bodaibo prison, designed for only 40 prisoners. Kulvets faced the same problem, but the Bolsheviks were not stopped by difficulties.

“Now, free from tsarist and capitalist oppression, you have the opportunity to mine gold not to enrich parasites, but to strengthen the power of the world’s first workers’ state.”

From a letter from Joseph Stalin to the workers of the Lena mines in connection with the 15th anniversary of the events of 1912

“More than 1,000 people were arrested. The entire building, all the corridors were packed, the canteen, the police building, warehouses, etc. were occupied. Great overcrowding, mass diseases, almost daily deaths. Nine people have already died, and the mortality rate will increase, since the food is poor, the bathhouse He can’t let everyone through, it’s a big lice,” he reported.

However, those arrested did not stay in prison for long.

The commissioner's biggest concern was the lack of staff. He mobilized local communists to help him, but could not involve civilians in beatings and torture: “The district committee of the All-Russian Communist Party of Belarus allocated several party members, but this is all an auxiliary contingent that cannot force the arrested person to speak, and I am forced to use them on business trips for arrests ".

The Siberian open spaces and climate also interfered: “Arrests are made in conditions of territorial dispersion from 200 to 50 kilometers. Due to bad weather, the party arrested from Machi, more than 150 people, got stuck on the way. It’s not my fault. A snowstorm arose, all the roads were covered with snow.”

“On March 10, I received a decision for 157 people. They dug four holes. I had to carry out blasting work because of the permafrost. I will carry out the execution of the sentences myself. I will not and cannot trust anyone.” And a few days later: “The operation, according to the Troika’s decisions, was carried out on only 115 people, since the pits are adapted for no more than 100 people. The operation was carried out with enormous difficulties. I will report in more detail when I report personally.”

Kulvets still could not pass sentences with his own authority; this was done by the NKVD “troika” in the Irkutsk region. “I was very upset that out of two parties of 260 people in the first category [to be shot], only 157 people go,” he reported.

Over the course of several months, 938 people were shot in the Bodaibinsky district. There is no data on the number of convicts “in the second category,” that is, sent to camps.

“Innocent victims, you are not worth fame. In a country where terror is the way of life, it is not a virtue to be trampled upon innocently. It is better to be trampled for the cause.”

Evgeny Yevtushenko, poet

There is not a single case known in which people, transported tens or hundreds of kilometers on foot or on a sleigh, often with virtually no security, would try to escape. Those arrested did not know any guilt and obediently followed all the instructions of the authorities, hoping that the investigation would sort it out.

“The first and second Lensky executions were carried out in different ways,” write Aleksandrov and Tomilov. “In the first case, it was shooting into an unarmed crowd of people, pursuing the goals of public intimidation. With great exaggeration, they tried to explain it as a forced measure to suppress vandalism. The second the execution was a form of terror unleashed by the authorities against their own people on the basis of ideological principles, and was carried out secretly."

“The first Lensky execution aroused all mechanisms of public reaction, caused a public investigation and discussion in order to develop methods for civilized resolution of conflicts. The mass executions of 1938 did not cause any public outcry, and their true scale begins to become clear only sixty years later.”

To what has been said, we can add that in 1912 the mass murder of its citizens by the state was an out-of-the-ordinary event, and in 1938 it was a daily routine.

Unrepentant

Both organizers of the massacres soon came to a bad end.

Treshchenkov, demoted from the officers at the beginning of the First World War, asked to volunteer for the front and died in battle on May 15, 1915. According to Aleksandrov and Tomilov, by his actions he proved that he was a patriot, although he understood patriotism in a unique way.

During the purge of the NKVD from “Yezhov’s people,” Kulvets was arrested and on May 16, 1941 received 10 years in the camps. His further fate is unknown.

Neither of them ever showed the slightest remorse.

Treshchenkov told the investigative commission that he did not consider himself guilty, since he served the Tsar and the Fatherland.

The FSB archives contain the protocol of the interrogation of Kulvets: “I declare once again, and with this I will die, that I worked honestly, did not disdain any work, to the point that I myself carried out sentences, came from an operation smeared with blood, but my moral oppression I raised it by doing a necessary and useful thing for the Motherland.”

Lena Gold Mining Partnership, located near the city of Bodaibo on a tributary of the Lena, the Vitime and Olekma rivers. As a result of the strike and the subsequent execution of workers by government troops, according to various estimates, from 250 to 500 people were injured, including 150-270 people died.

In 1910, the Lena Gold Mining Partnership, co-owned by Vladimir Aleksandrovich Ratkov-Rozhnov, a St. Petersburg entrepreneur and mayor, and his son, leader of the nobility Ananiy Vladimirovich, acquired the Andreevsky mine.

At the time of the strike, 66% of the shares of the Lena Gold Mining Partnership (Lenzoto) belonged to the Lena Goldfields company. The company was registered in London. The company's shares were traded in London, Paris and St. Petersburg. 70% of the shares of Lena Goldfields, or about 46% of Lenzoto shares, were in the hands of Russian industrialists united in a committee of Russian investors of the company. 30% of the shares of Lena Goldfields, or about 20% of the shares of Lenzoto, were in the hands of British businessmen. Approximately 30% of Lenzoto shares were owned by the Gunzburgs and their associates.

Despite the fact that the majority of Lenzoto shares were in the hands of Lena Goldfields, the direct management of the Lena mines was carried out by Lenzoto in the person of Gunzburg. The board of the partnership, in force at the time of the strike, was elected in June 1909:

Thus, by 1912, several influential groups of shareholders had formed, interested in control of the largest Russian gold mining company. On the one hand, there was a conflict of interests between Russian and British businesses on the board of the parent company Lena Goldfields; on the other hand, representatives of the management company (and former owners) Lenzoto (led by Baron Gunzburg) tried to prevent actual control over the mines from outside of the board of Lena Goldfields.

In general, the level of wages made it possible to annually recruit key workers in quantities higher than necessary. The Ministry of Internal Affairs helped Gunzburg recruit new workers. Recruitment took place throughout almost the entire territory of the empire. In 1911, about 40% of workers were recruited in the European part of Russia. The worker who signed the contract received 135 rubles as an advance (a six-month salary for a worker in Moscow) and was sent to the mines under police surveillance.

From a letter from Gintsburg to the chief manager I.N. Belozerov:

“...Now we are positively inundated with proposals coming from different places, especially from the Polish region and from Odessa, but there are also from other cities... It seems to us more than desirable to take advantage of the assistance of the Ministry [of Internal Affairs], and for the following reasons: 1. Since Hiring for the mines is a real benefit for a certain part of the population, then we can take advantage of this circumstance to lower the wages compared to what we currently have. And the reduced fee seems like an Eldorado for a hungry people. Just in case, we told the police the fee was 30% lower than the existing one. 2. We do not believe that there is any risk in having extra people. If there is a surplus of workers, it will be easier for you to impose stricter demands on the workers; again, the presence of excess people in the taiga can help lower wages, which goal should be pursued by all means ... "

The wages of miners were 30-45 rubles per month, that is, they were approximately twice as high as those of workers in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and ten to twenty times higher than the cash income of the peasantry. However, female labor not provided for in the employment contract (as well as the labor of teenagers) was paid low (from 84 kopecks to 1.13 rubles per day), and in a number of proven cases was not paid at all.

In addition, overtime prospecting for gold nuggets was permitted until 1912. These works were not paid on a timely basis; the nuggets found were handed over to the administration at approved gold prices. In the Lenzoto shop they paid 84 kopecks for a gram of native gold. In the shops of private resellers - from one to 1.13 rubles per gram. If successful, a worker could accumulate up to a thousand or more rubles in a year of such work. Immediately before the strike, mining was prohibited, and, in addition, the administration took additional measures to limit the possibility of searching for nuggets at work sites.

According to the employment contract, which each worker signed, and according to the official schedule (approved by the Ministry of Trade and Industry), the working day in the period from April 1 to October 1 was 11 hours 30 minutes per day, and from October 1 to April 1 - 11 hours at single shift work. When working two shifts - 10 hours. If necessary, the manager could assign three shifts of workers of 8 hours each. When working in one shift, the working day began at 5 a.m.; from 7 to 8 o'clock - first break; from 12 to 14 - second break; at 19:30 (in winter at 19:00) - end of work.

In reality, the working day could last up to 16 hours, since after work workers were allowed to work on prospecting for nuggets.

Gold mining took place mainly in mines in permafrost conditions. The glacier had to be heated with fires, and melt water had to be pumped out non-stop. Mechanization of mining, despite significant investments, was at an insufficient level; many works had to be done manually. It was necessary to descend into 20-60 meter shafts using vertical icy stairs. The workers worked knee-deep in water. After the shift, the workers, in uniforms damp from the water, had to walk several kilometers in the bitter cold to the barracks, which often led to illness and death. Workers were regularly exposed to the danger of collapses, received bruises and fractures. According to the workers of the Utyosisty mine, the shafts and stairs were poorly lit due to the manager’s refusal to issue the required number of candles. According to F. A. Kudryavtsev, in 1911, 896 accidents involving 5,442 workers were recorded. There was an acute shortage of doctors and hospital beds. One of the workers was able to get to the hospital only a day before his death, since the doctor had previously refused to recognize him as sick. There were 2,500 workers per doctor, not counting their family members. The government and public commission of the State Duma subsequently recognized the medical care of the workers as unsatisfactory.

The Lenzoto work barracks were overcrowded and there were not enough places for workers. Some workers were forced to rent private apartments to live. It took up to half of my earnings to pay for private apartments. In addition, as the commission subsequently found, only about 10% of the barracks met the minimum requirements for residential premises.

A member of the Kerensky Commission, A. Tyushchevsky wrote:

“Comrades, we have nothing to do here, we have only one thing left: to advise the workers to set fire to these rotten, stinking buildings and run away from this hell wherever they look.”

Taking advantage of the patronage of the Irkutsk and Bodaibo authorities, the Lenzoto administration monopolized trade and transport in the region, forcing workers to shop only in shops owned by Lenzoto and to travel only on company transport. Part of the payment was issued in the form of coupons to the company’s shops, which was prohibited by law in the Russian Empire. The denomination of the coupons was quite large, and it was not possible to change the coupons. Workers were forced to buy unnecessary goods in order to fully stock the coupons.

According to the lease agreement, it was forbidden to bring wives and children to the mines. A worker could bring his family only with the permission of the manager, thus initially becoming dependent on the will of the administration. There were quite a lot of women in the mines (up to 50% of the number of men). Being in a dependent position from the administration, women were often forced to work against their will, for low wages, or without pay at all. There were frequent cases of sexual harassment of women by the administration.

Two commissions were created to investigate the tragic events. One is government under the leadership of Senator S.S. Manukhin, the other is public, created by the State Duma, headed by the then little-known lawyer A.F. Kerensky, who sympathized with the Socialist Revolutionaries.

On May 19, the Manukhin commission, simultaneously with the Kerensky commission, went to the scene of events. By rail, both commissions arrived in Irkutsk on May 25, 1912. On July 18, 1912, Manukhin gave the prosecutor of the Irkutsk District Court an order to initiate a case against the main culprit of the massacre, captain Treshchenkov, who gave the order to open fire.

Kerensky recalled his work on the commission: “The situation in the gold mines is awkward. Senator Manukhin's government commission met in the same building, and our headquarters were located on the same street in the house opposite. Both commissions called witnesses and conducted cross-examinations, both recorded the testimony of Lenzoloto employees and prepared reports. Senator Manukhin sent his report in encrypted form to the minister and the Tsar, and we sent ours by telegraph for the Duma and the press. Needless to say, the mine administration was very offended by our invasion, but neither the senator nor the local authorities interfered with our work. On the contrary, the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia Knyazev was sympathetic to our work, and the Irkutsk governor Bantysh and his official for special assignments A. Malykh provided us with considerable assistance.”

For involvement in a criminal act, Captain Treshchenkov was dismissed from service in the gendarmerie corps, demoted to the ranks and enlisted in the foot militia.