mechanisation. This was especially pronounced in the cotton
industry, where the number of mechanised weaving mills grew from
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forty-two in 1866 to ninety-two in 1876.^19 Predictably, this transformation led to a great increase in output, and to a basic reorganisation and centralisation of production: the cottage looms and peasant workshops of the previous era were overshadowed by large modem factories. Meanwhile, the previously mechanised cotton spinning industry experienced further technological improvements, as did the cotton dyeing and dye printing industries. In addition, cotton production gradually came to be concentrated in large mills which combined all the different phases of production. The largest of these were located in Moscow and Vladimir Provinces, which by the end of the century not only maintained their earlier pre-eminence in cotton weaving, but also surpassed St. Petersburg in spinning.
The cotton industry in the central provinces was also aided by Russian expansion in Central Asia, illustrating the interplay of economic and political factors in Russia's development: the opening of rail lines to Tashkent and Transcaucasia in the late 1880s and early '90s, together with a high tariff on imported cotton, led to a rapid growth of cotton plantations in these recently annexed regions. In 1888, domestic production of cotton amounted to only 1.2 million puds on top of the 7.9 million puds imported during that year; by 1900, Turkestan and the Transcaucasian region were producing 5.8 million puds per annum - more than one-third of Russia's total consumption. Almost all of the Central Asian cotton was shipped to European Russia for processing.
A trend toward mechanisation, increased productivity, and concentration of production in larger enterprises could be seen in a number of other light industries in these years. In the silk industry
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this process was only beginning at the end of the nineteenth century, with the growth of such enterprises as the Zhiro and Moscow Silk Factories, each of which employed more than 2000 workers and used steam powered equipment for part of its production. Woollen production, on the other hand, had been concentrated in larger establishments since the appearance of the first votchinal and possessional factories in the eighteenth century. Mechanisation was widespread in the 1860s and '70s, but in subsequent decades the woollen industry had difficulty competing with cheaper t e x t i l e s . A s
a result, output grew quite slowly, and the number of workers declined as smaller factories went out of business. This pattern was especially pronounced in the production of coarse woollen broadcloth (sukonnoe proizvodstvo).
Outside the textile industries, mechanisation was most pronounced in the food processing industries, especially sugar- refining. The rapid growth of this branch of production, like the expansion of the textile industry, undoubtedly reflects the development of market relations throughout the country, as ever increasing numbers of peasants came to substitute factory products for home-made ones.
Although industrialisation came to Russia after the majority of Western countries, its first "industries" were already in existence by the sixteenth century, under Ivan IV, and in some cases even earlier. These were mainly small copper, silver and in Tula iron mines and workshops producing cannon, rifles and other iron products.
The eighteenth century witnessed a very spectacular, though short lived, rise in Russian mining and industrialisation. But the serf-
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orientated Russian industry proved incapable of competing with Western industries, based on hired labour, as soon as machines began to spread in those countries towards the end of the century. The cheap labour provided by serfdom which had been an important asset for the primitive Russian industries of the early eighteenth century, but became a burdensome liability by the end of that century. Compared with the British experience, it actually delayed by at least a century the coming of the industrial revolution in Russia.
It was, therefore, only towards the end of the nineteenth century that the conflict between workers and capitalists began to appear on a national scale in Russia. Only then, under the impact of favourable government policies, did traditional Russian society begin to undergo a rapid transformation. Vast rural areas were soon converted into factory villages, and urban centres expanded to absorb new factories, shops, and residential districts. But most significantly of all, a new and greatly enlarged working population was formed as tens of thousands of peasants migrated from the countryside, forsaking their ploughs for jobs in dties and towns.
Labour force statistics testify to the magnitude of the changes that took place in the 1890s, a period of accelerated economic growth. More than one million men and women - most of them peasants - entered the industrial labour force between 1887 and 1900, bringing the total number of factory and mine workers at the turn of the century to 2.4 million. But industrial employment represented only one aspect of the growing non-agricultural economy. During the 1890s, thousands of peasants found jobs in artisanal trades and in an expanding network of "putting-out" industries in the cities and countryside. Still others earned a livelihood in commercial firms and in the flourishing service, construction, transportation, and
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communications sectors of the economy. Another large group joined the ranks of day labourers. In all of these categories combined, there were 6.4 million hired workers in the Russian Empire in 1897, the year of the country's first national census.^^i
The Russian working class consisted of heterogeneous elements employed in many different occupations and industries. Together these diverse groups were destined to play a crucial role in the country's future, and by 1900 they were already showing signs of volatility and a propensity for collective action that could not be ignored. In the 1890s, factory groups in the capital city, St. Petersburg, moimted the first large-scale city-wide strikes in Russia, and less than a decade later, during the 1905 revolution, workers throughout the Empire joined in upheavals that decisively challenged the autocratic system, forcing the government to give in to demands for constitutional reform. When the old regime finally collapsed during the February Revolution, workers once again moved to the forefront of the popular movement, this time helping to bring the Bolshevik party to power in October 1917.
As we move toward the latter half of the nineteenth century it is dearly evident that foreign entrepreneurs proved essential to break the technological barrier separating artisan production from the manufactory, though the existence of Russian artisanal talent made the absorption of Western technology much easier.i^ The flourishing of a cottage industry in the nineteenth century, a phenomenon which occurred in almost all branches of manufacturing in Russia, has been
Chislennost i sostav rabochikh v Rossii na osnovanii dannykh pervoi vseobshchei perepisi naseleniia Rossiiskoi Imperii 1897 g., 2 vols, St. Petersburg: 1906, I, pp.viii-
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122 For a discusssion of entrepreneurs who emerged from Tula see, N. I. Pavlenko, "O proiskhozhdenii kapitalov, vlozhennykh v metallurgiiu Rossii XVIII v.," in