Diseño curricular Una mirada al plan de estudios del PCS-CUN Al representar un proceso formativo desarrollado por ciclos, el PCS-CUN se

Tula works and ten kilometres southwest of the town of Dedilov. Ore

was mined there in the winter from the first of December to the first

of March, because the heavy loads could be brought to the factory only

S.G. Strumilin, Istoriia chernoi metallurgii v SSSR vol. 1, feodalnyi period (1500- 1860g.g.) Moscow: 1954, pp.113-114; and l.V. Chekan, "Tulskie i kashirskie zheleznye zavody xvii veka," in Ocherki po istorii torgovli i promyshlennosH v Rossii v 17 i v nachale 18 stoletiia Moscow: 1928, p.l58.

There are some cases of Solomenskaia peasants working as assistants or even submasters within the factories, in the production process. This work was more highly paid and not so onerous or burdensome. Krepostmia manufaktura v Rossii, vol. 1, pp.31,37,122.

Strumilin, Istoriia chernoi metallurgii, pp.113, 115; and Krepostmia manufaktura

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by sleigh. The ore in this area was of low quality, from swamp deposits, in shallow beds from three to seven feet deep and from forty-two to ninety-four feet wide. The miners (rudokopy) came from the Cossacks communities and regiments (streltsy) of Dedilovskii

uezd, (the former compulsory serf and the latter ascribed labour), who

were ordered by the tsar to provide a work force of fifty men. These workers were divided into five groups of equal size, each group having a foreman and working in "shifts". As part of their feudal obligations to the tsar, each of these teams had to provide one hundred carts of ore without pay. Another 1,750 carts were to be provided by "other free people at a free price." In addition to obtaining the ore, the miners also performed the first stage of ore cleaning (obogashchenie), which involved separating the ore from stones and debris.'^^ Although mining had been a well developed industry in Germany, Hungary, and other parts of Europe for two centuries or more, the technical knowledge gained from such experience was not implemented in Tula. When one ore site at Dedilov was exhausted or flooded with water, no attempt was made at deeper or more extensive exploitation; rather, the miners simply moved on to a new location.43

B.B. Kafengauz noted that working conditions at the mines were so disagreeable that "wage payment and agreement were combined with duty and compulsion." At times, the miners petitioned the tsar to supplement their numbers with other recruits. The pay was so poor and irregular that disputes developed. In

Stoskova, Pervye metallurgicheskie, p.63.

43 Krepostnaia manufaktura v Rossii, vol. 1, pp 190. 193-194, 198, 206-207, 265, 325; A.A. Kuzin, Istoriia otkrytii rudnykh mestorozhdenii v Rossii do serediny xix v. Moscow: 1961, p.20; Stoskova, Pervye metallurgicheskie, p.63; and S. Lilley, Men,

Machines and History: The Study of Tools and Machines in Relation to Social Progress. Lawrence and Wishart, London: 1965, pp.72-77.

6 8

December 1669, thirty-seven miners refused to go to work because of delayed wage payment and overwork. They were punished with the knout and returned to their jobs by force. But it was impossible to expect these men to be enthusiastic in their mining endeavours, considering that it was not only compulsory but seasonal and secondary to their regular pursuits. Difficulty was also caused by the fact that the local governor (voevoda) did not hesitate to move the miners to some other area of work as the need arose, causing a delay in factory work until a petition to the tsar from the factory owners would bring the men back to the pits.'^^ por example, a petition submitted on 9 December 1668 tells us that voevoda Skryptsyn of Dedilov took fifty miners working for Akema and Marselis from their pits and sent them to the voevoda of nearby Bogoroditskoe to assist in bread-making. Five years later a similiar problem arose for Marselis when the voevoda of Dedilov sent the fifty miners of the iron factories (along with 380 other people) to Voronezh for shipbuilding. A petition of 31 January 1674 brought the men back to digging ore.'^

One of the strongest indications of the importance attached by the Russian government to the development of manufacturing is the extent to which royal legislation consistently defended the economic interests of factory owners against all who caused them difficulty, whether ascribed peasants, local officials, or uncooperative provincial nobles.

Royal serfs ascribed to Tula iron works found their work difficult and unpleasant and their pay low, and by the early 1670s 44 B.B. Kafengauz, Istoriia khoziastva Demidovykh v xviii-xix w. Moscow-

Leningrad: 1949, p.30; Krepostmia manufaktura v Rossii, vol. 1, pp.206-207, 29-30, 198, 194; and Kuzin, Istoriia otkrytii rudnykh , pp.20-22.

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their dissatisfactions began to show. On 3 September 1672 the Marselis family submitted a petition to the tsar stating that the dam of the Vedmenskii factory had been damaged, and that when the peasants of Solomenskaia volost were summoned to fulfil their obligations and repair it, the "old insurgents" (buntovshchiki) "Larka Osipov of Alekseevaia village and Vaska Titov, nicknamed the mutt [kobel], of Bogatkovaia village and Ivashka Mikheev of Zolotikha village" induced the peasants not to go to work "so that our factories will be destroyed." Captain Dmitrii Bitiagovskii arrived in Solomenskaia six days later, on 9 September with orders to persuade the peasants to return to work, or failing that to mete out "cruel punishment." The peasants agreed to carry out the foreigners' instructions, but trouble soon broke out again and the peasants refused to serve the factory and even petitioned the tsar (unsuccessfully) for relief of their burdens. Thus began a stormy "strike" period in which the peasantry stopped transporting fuel and ore, the factory stood idle, and the Marselis family "suffered great losses because the masters were not [able to work] but [nevertheless] during the idle days the foreigners took money according to their contracts." Apparently this dispute lasted through the winter of 1672-1673. We also have reports of "disobedient" miners at Tula and Kashira in 1657 refusing to work until orders were reissued by the tsar.46

Skilled factory workers did not participate in the disorders at Solomenskaia volost but appear in contemporary accounts of these events only as witnesses.47 This is probably because the position of masters and even apprentices in iron manufactories was good for the time, certainly better than that of ascribed peasants. Marselis paid the

Krepostnaia manufaktura v Rossii, vol. 1, pp.196, 329-345.

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supervisor of his factory three hundred roubles annually, while foreign masters received as much as 280 roubles. Even Russians inside the enterprise were free men who earned from 60 to 120 roubles a year plus free dwellings and regular bread and salt allotments^s and thus, these factory workers were likely to be more satisfied than ascribed serfs. Despite this, though, they did flock to join the great peasant uprising of 1667 when Stenka Razin's

lieutenant Vasilii Us passed through the Tula area49 indicating, perhaps, that for all their benefits factory workers were still discontented.

In contrast to mining or transport work, fuel-making at Tula was carried on by wage-workers completely independent of compulsory or ascribed labour, for this was skilled work and demanded true specialists. The wood was obtained from forests bought from three different landowners, located five, seven, and fifteen versts from the factory. The charcoal was prepared in special pits six versts away, under the supervision of foreign masters, five of whom in 1647 received annual wages of ninety or one hundred roubles. Russian workers cut the wood, transported it, and tended the fires, and they were each paid wages varying from ten dengi to two

altyn p>er day.50

When the Swedish traveller Kilburger visited the Pavlovskii, Porotovskii, and Tula iron factories during the 1670s,5i he reported that linden, aspen, and spruce were variously used as base material

Krepostmia manufaktura v Rossii, vol. 1, pp.313-315; and Strumilin, Istoriia chernoi metallurgii, pp.65-69.

Krepostmia manufaktura v Rossii, vol. 1, p.xxviii.

50 Kafengauz, Istonia khoziastva Demidovykh, pp.30-31; Strumilin, Istoriia chernoi

metallurgii, p.l08; Krepostnaia manufaktura v Rossii vol. 1, pp.11-13; and Gamel Opisanie Tulskogo oruzheinogo zavoda, p.lO.

7 1 for the charcoal, although birch was considered most desirable. At this time wood was brought by peasants from the province of Galich (over five hundred kilometres northeast of Tula) during the summer and sold to the factories in hundreds of baskets. A pile of wood measured three and a half arshins (about ninety-eight inches) and cost from eleven to fourteen kopecks.^^

The life of a large iron enterprise such as the one established by Vinius also demanded a number of auxiliary masters who produced various commodities required by the factory, or who saw to the maintenance and repair of its facilities. Carpenters and sawyers, for example, were charged with tending the dams, waterwheels, and the many buildings, large and small. Special smiths forged iron objects and tools required for the machinery of the Tula works; other masters made molds and bellows. The skilled work of these men was of obvious importance for the effective functioning of the Vinius manufactory, and it must be said that most of these artisans were Russians, probably free men voluntarily selling their labour power to the factory. Their wages, by Russian standards, were high.53

The Tula iron works produced cannon in large quantities, and in 1646 the partners exported six hundred to Holland, to be followed by 360 the next year. These cannon fired four to eight funt projectiles and weighed from thirty to sixty-one puds. Projectiles from two to twelve grivni in weight were smelted in large numbers, and some were as heavy as twenty-five grivni. Grenades were usually one, one and a half, or two grivni, though larger models were not uncommon. The Tula factories manufactured angle-, rod-, and bar-iron, but sheet- 52 B.C. Kurts, Sochinenie Kilburgera o russkoi torgovle v tsarstvovanie Alekseia

Mikhailovicha Kiev: 1915, pp.168-169.

53 Baklanov, et al., Tulskie i kashirshie zavody, p.68; and Krepostnaia manufaktura

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iron and wire were not often produced. A document from this period tells us that "Andrei Vinius and his comrades did make musket and carbine and pistol barrels and armour and spiked helmets, but they have [now] abandoned these activities and sent [those] masters abroad..." Since the cannon were cast directly from pig iron and not from higher-quality forged iron, it seems that the cost to the purchaser (at seventy kopecks per pud ) was also lower

Delivery records indicate that the Tula works were extremely productive. In April 1641, for example, the Munitions Office

(Pushkarskii Prikaz) accepted 1,853 cannon balls from Andrei Vinius,

and in May 1641, the Grand Exchequer (Prikaz Bolshoi Kazni) bought 684 cannon balls from the factory. In 1647, the factory was producing over five thousand puds of joint-iron per year, which demanded as much as ten thousand puds of pig iron. Probably at least twenty thousand puds of cannon and cannon balls were also produced annually in the late 1840s, and Strumilin estimates the value of 25,000 puds to have been ten thousand roubles or more.^^

Orders of this size made it possible for the factory owners, producing goods at perhaps one-tenth the cost of artisan technology, to reap profits which may have reached 2000 per cent. The actual cost of the Tula works to its owners can only be estimated, but it probably did not exceed five thousand roubles.^^ And yet Vinius was constantly in debt during the construction of these enterprises, and was forced at all times to operate with co-investors. This would seem to indicate that his initial expenses were high, although the long-

54 Krepostnaia manufaktura v Rossii , vol. 1, p.l4; Gamel, Opisanie Tulskogo

oruzheinogo zavoda, p.l4; Stoskova, Pervye metallurgicheskie, p.76; and Strumilin, Istoriia chernoi metallurgii, p.l05.

55 Strumilin, Istoriia chernoi metallurgii, p.l05. 56 Strumilin, Istoriia chernoi metallurgii, p.l09.

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