ABSTRACT
A wave of strikes swept over Europe in the first half of 1870, demonstrating a remarkable uniformity in labour-capital relations on the continent. That uniformity was in large measure the product of Europe's growing economic interdependence, and in that phenomenon lay also the raison d'être of the International, which figured in many of the 1870 strikes and bore the blame for most of them. The strike fever affected even remote, autocratic Russia, where the IWMA played no role. A strike and lock-out late in May 1870 partially shut down the huge ‘Neva’ cotton mills of Stieglitz and Company in St Petersburg. The dispute started when several score employees protested against the unfair computation of their wages and their wretched working conditions; eventually nearly half the 2,000 workers were involved. The Russian press spoke of the ‘unprecedented’ situation, and a high governmental official referred to the ‘absolutely new phenomenon’ of a large-scale work stoppage. So novel was the event that the strikers went to prison for only a few days, and an appellate court reversed their convictions. Tsarist Russia had not, however, changed its spots: the tsar ordered the Ministry of the Interior to exile many of the strikers to distant provinces. 1
