As with the peasants, so with the workers: their expectations rocketed during the spring of 1917. Over half a million workers came out on strike between mid-April and the start of July; and the range of workers was much broader than in any previous strike wave. Artisans and craftsmen, laundry women, dyers, barbers, kitchen workers, waiters, porters, chauffeurs and domestic servants — not just from the two capital cities but from provincial towns throughout the Empire — took their place alongside the veteran strikers, such as the metal and textile workers.20 Even the prostitutes went on strike.
Most of the strikers’ demands were economic. They wanted higher wages to keep up with inflation and more reliable supplies of food. They wanted better conditions at work. The eight-hour day, in particular, had assumed an almost sacramental nature. The workers saw it as a symbol of all their rights and of their victory in the revolution. In many factories it was simply imposed by the workers downing their tools and walking out after the completion of an eight-hour shift. Anxious not to jeopardize production, or intimidated by their workers, most employers soon agreed to honour the eight-hour day (without wage reductions), although mandatory overtime was often introduced in the munitions factories as a way to maintain output levels. As early as 10 March 300 Petrograd factory owners announced their acceptance of the eight-hour day after negotiations with the Soviet, and on this basis it was introduced in most other towns.21
Yet in the context of 1917, when the whole structure of the state and capitalism was being redefined, these economic demands were unavoidably politicized. The vicious cycle of strikes and inflation, of higher pay chasing higher prices, led many workers to demand that the state impose more control on the market itself. The workers’ struggle to control their own work environment, above all to prevent their employers from running down production to maintain their profits, led them increasingly to demand that the state take over the running of the factories.
There was also a new stress on the workers’ own sense of dignity. They were now aware of themselves as ‘citizens’, and of the fact that they had ‘made the revolution’ (or had at least played a leading part in it), and they were no longer willing to be treated with any disrespect by either foremen or managers. This was often a spark for violence: offensive factory officials would be symbolically ‘carted out’, sometimes literally in a wheelbarrow, and then beaten up or thrown into the canal or cesspool. Many strikers demanded respectful treatment. Waiters and waitresses in Petrograd marched with banners bearing the demands:
WE INSIST ON RESPECT FOR WAITERS AS HUMAN BEINGS!
DOWN WITH TIPS: WAITERS ARE CITIZENS!
Domestic servants marched to demand that they should be addressed with the formal ‘you’, as opposed to the familiar ‘you’, previously used to address the serfs. Yardmen demanded that their degrading title should now be changed to ‘house directors’. Women workers demanded equal pay to men, an end to ‘degrading body searches’, fully paid maternity leave and the abolition of child labour. As the workers saw it, these were basic issues of morality. Their revolutionary aspirations, as Kanatchikov’s story shows, were inextricably linked with their own personal striving for human dignity and individual worth. Many workers spoke of founding a ‘new moral life’, based on law and individual rights, in which there would be no more drunkenness, swearing, gambling or wife-beating.22
Part of the workers’ new-found dignity was expressed in a new self-assertiveness. The workers claimed the downtown streets as ‘theirs’ by holding mass parades and meetings there. The city became a political theatre, as different groups of workers met to discuss their demands. These rallies were a vital aspect of the revolutionary spectacle. They were ‘festivals of liberation’, to adopt the phrase of Michelle Perrot, which gave the workers a new sense of confidence and collective solidarity. The whole of urban Russia seemed to have been caught up in this sudden craze for political meetings — mitingovanie as people called it. Everyone was talking politics. ‘You cannot buy a hat or a packet of cigarettes or ride in a cab without being enticed into a political discussion,’ complained Harold Williams of the Daily Chronicle:
