Council of the Congress of Miners of the South of Russia

Background

In 1874, the 1st Congress of Coal Industrialists of Southern Russia was convened in Taganrog ^[3] , which initiated the regular convening of such congresses ^[4] . According to the book, published in 1925 in honor of the 5th anniversary of the Union of Miners of the USSR, the immediate predecessor of the Council of the Congress of Miners of the South of Russia was an elected commission of electors. Its task was to regulate the relationship between the coal enterprises of the coal industry and railways, which were the largest consumer and carrier of Donetsk coal ^[5] . According to the information of the Russian and Soviet mining engineer Alexander Terpigorev , published in the journal Science and Life in 1944 , this electoral commission existed until 1892, when it was transformed into the Council of the Congress ^[6] .

Creation

In fact, the Council was created at the 4th Congress of Miners of the South of Russia, held in Kharkov in 1877. The initiators of the creation of the Council were Alexander Auerbakh , A. Scheuerman , Peter Gorlov , Ivan Illovaysky and a number of other owners of the mines of the Donetsk basin. In the St. Petersburg press, the formed Council was called the "Kharkov parliament." The Charter of the Council stipulated that it was created with the aim of upholding the economic interests of the industrialists of Donetsk-Pridneprovsk and Kharkiv economic regions before the government of the Russian Empire, providing them with advice. Among such interests were determined the planning of sales of coal and metal, obtaining favorable tariffs for rail transportation, establishing protectionist fees, receiving government orders, obtaining support from the state in exporting products, etc. ^[1] .

For better interaction with the government, representatives of state structures were also introduced into the Council. Also in the Council was attended by representatives of the territorial authorities, railway, scientific and technical societies, as well as major consumers of coal and metal ^[1] .

Territorial syndicates, collaboration and competition with other organizations

With the participation of the Council in 1881, the "Society of mutual credit of miners of the South of Russia" was created. Commissioners in Kharkiv established a bank. In 1883, with the active participation of the Council, the Allowance Society for Miners of the South of Russia and a credit organization for entrepreneurs were created ^[7] . The Council also formed the Exchange Committee.

In 1897, on behalf of the Council, the Statistical Bureau was formed in its composition, which was headed by the future Chairman of the Council, Nikolai von Dietmar ^[8] . In the same year, the Council founded the library ^[9] , which later became the basis for the Kharkov State Scientific and Technical Library (since 1967 - the Central Scientific and Technical Library of the Kharkov Center for Scientific, Technical and Economic Information ^[10] ).

In the early 1900s, the Council contributed to the formation of two territorial syndicates - Produgol (specializing in the sale of coal) and Prodamet (specializing in the sale of metal). Through the mechanisms of these two syndicates, the Council fought for influence on the government against its main competitor - the Council of the Congress of Ural Miners ^[1] .

The Council of the Congress of Miners of the South of Russia closely cooperated with the Kharkov Committee for the Transportation of Mining and Industrial Goods and together with it lobbied for the government the interests of favorable tariffs for such transportation ^[1] .

Increasing the role of the economic life of the Russian Empire

With the main initiative of the Congress Council ^{[11] [12]} at the end of 1904, the Council on Mining and Industrial Affairs was established under the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Empire. On December 30, 1904 ( January 12, 1905 ), its grand opening took place, at which Alexander Auerbach, a member of the Council of the Congress, made a speech in which he said that for the first time in 200 years, a structure was created in which representatives of the mining industry had the same authority as government representatives. The interests of the miners of the South in the Council under the Government were represented by the Chairman of the Council of Congresses Nikolay Avdakov with the right of decisive vote, as well as Alexander Auerbakh and E. M. Taskin ^[12] .

In 1906, the Council of the Congress of Representatives of Industry and Commerce was established in Moscow, which united more than 100 syndicates and cartels of the Russian Empire. The Council of the Congress of Miners of the South of Russia significantly increased its influence in this association after in 1907 the recent head of the Kharkov Council Nikolay Avdakov (1900-1905) was elected to the post of chairman of the Moscow Council. He served as chairman of the Moscow Council until 1915 ^[1] . In the Council of the Congress of Representatives of Industry and Commerce, the Council of Congresses of Miners of the South of Russia had one delegate and 5 candidates for delegates ^[13] .

In May 1911, at the request of the Council and at its expense, the Mining and Industrial Museum was opened in Kharkov ^[14] . According to the estimates of the head of the National Council of Ukraine on television and radio broadcasting, and in the 1990s, the researcher of the Council’s activities, Vladimir Manzhosov , this museum played an extremely important role in the life of the mining industry South ^[15] .

In addition to the museum and its own press organs, the Council had at its disposal a gas and chemical laboratory, a school of mining foremen, a medical-mechanical institute, and a legal advisory bureau. If in the 1870s there were 5 members of the Council, in the XX century the Council’s staff numbered up to 100 people, and the maintenance costs amounted to 4 million rubles of the Russian Empire per year ^[15] .

In 1910-1912, the Council, together with the Geological Committee, carried out work on the compilation of the first general geological map of the Donets Basin on a scale of 3 versts per 1 inch , and also on the compilation of its geological description. This initiative contributed to the intensive geological exploration in the Donets Basin and to attracting to this work such geologists as Vasily Yavorsky and Boris Meffert ^[16] .

The Council actively promoted the development of mountain education. Through the personal Fund named after Nikolay Avdakov, which constituted 10 thousand rubles of the Russian Empire, the training of workers, as well as the best students of the Mining Institute in St. Petersburg , was sponsored. The Council in Yekaterinoslav was established Higher Mining School (since 1913 - the Mining Institute in Yekaterinoslav ). The Council contained a number of so-called rescue stations in Makeyevka , Aleksandrovka, Grushevka (the modern city of the Rostov Region Mines ) and a number of exhibition pavilions of the mining industry at all-Russian exhibitions ^[17] .

During World War I

At the beginning of World War I, the Council concentrated in its hands the management of the distribution of standardized materials (iron, leather, dynamite ) between plants and mines in the Donetsk-Krivoi Rog basin, and from the end of 1916, raw materials and rolling stock, having received the right to determine the quotas for coal and metal production for separate productions ^[15] .

Manzhosov writes that during the period between congresses, the Council represented the interests of the miners of Southern Russia before the government of the Russian Empire, for which an office of representatives was set up in Petrograd ^[15] .

The Council of Congresses actively sought from the government the right to use prisoners of war labor in enterprises of the Donetsk Basin. For the first time he appealed to the government with such a request on January 25 ( February 7 ), 1915 , requesting to send up to 40 thousand prisoners of war to their enterprises ^[18] . According to the calculations of the Council, this could increase the volume of coal production by 30 million pounds per month. The government allocated only 30% of all prisoners of war to industry , prohibiting the use of non-Slavic national prisoners of war ( Hungarians , Turks , etc.) until the end of 1915 . In this case, prisoners of war were allocated only for large mining enterprises of factory and industrial production, provided that they constitute no more than 15% of the personnel. At the next congress of miners in November 1915, a petition was made to abolish the compulsory transfer to the treasury in the amount of 25% of the earnings of prisoners of war. In 1916, the government abolished this collection. The government also fulfilled the wish to transfer from agriculture to industry 100,000 prisoner of war workers ^[18] .

During the Revolution

After the February Revolution, the Council of Congresses of Miners of the South of Russia, despite the short-term support of the revolutionary processes, later sharply criticized the activities of the Provisional Government ^[15] . In the spring and summer of 1917, 5 branch representative organizations took shape in the Council: the Union of Metallurgical Enterprises of Southern Russia ( “Sometal” ^[13] ), the Union of Large Coal-Coal Enterprises of Russia ( “Uglesoyuz” ), the Union of Anthracite Enterprises of the Donets Basin ( “Anthracitsouz” ), The Union of Medium and Small Coal- Carbonized Enterprises of the Donets Basin ( “The Second Ugly Union” ) and the Union of Salt-Industrialists ^[15] . Manzhosov notes that the trend towards the formation of sectoral representative organizations in the composition of the Council has been viewed since 1911, but only manifested itself in 1917 ^[15] .

The Council of Congresses took a tough stance in the labor legislation and banned any representation by its representative organizations in favor of improving the working conditions of workers and moving to meet their requirements, with the ultimate goal of such actions to pay off the revolutionary workers' movement. In August 1917, the Council went out with proposals to the Provisional Government to declare martial law in the Donets Basin, to deploy troops in the region and to appoint 4 commissars with the rights of governor-general, proposing the selection of such candidates. At the third conference of miners in the South of Russia in September, it was decided to close all steel mills until the workers abandoned the requirement to establish an 8-hour working day. Dozens of mines were also closed. In early October, the transfer of troops of the 3rd Cavalry Division began in the Donbass region, and the southern regions were occupied by the Cossacks Alexei Kaledin . After the Bolshevik coup in October, most of the metallurgical and coal enterprises of the Donetsk basin controlled by the Congress of the Basin were closed in protest against the installation of workers' control at the enterprises. The Council actively politically resisted the establishment of a new order in its enterprises, including at its last Congress on December 4 (17), 1917 , at which it approved a resolution on insubordination to the Bolsheviks , describing their coming to power as a “violent seizure of power by anti-state elements” ^[15] .

During the Civil War

Since the beginning of 1918, in the context of the development of the Civil War, the Council switched to the tactics of "guerrilla war" with the revolutionary movement in the region ^[15] . In January 1918, the Council was formally closed by the Bolsheviks , and its presidency, headed by Nikolai von Dietmar, was arrested by Commissioner Antonov-Ovseenko . The technical apparatus of the Council and its branch representative organizations were integrated by the Soviet authorities into their own economic bodies ^[15] . In the same year of 1918, the workers of the apparatus who refused to integrate into the Soviet structures, destroyed a substantial part of the archive of the Congress ^[19] .

However, after the Bolsheviks left Kharkov in the spring of 1918, the Council again continued its work in a limited format. The Council collaborated with the leadership of the Ukrainian state Hetman Pavel Skoropadsky . In Kiev, he set up a special commission at the hetman to receive and consider complaints of damages received by miners from "the activities of arbitrary organizations." The Council achieved the restoration of the provisions of the pre-revolutionary legislation, spent considerable funds on the organization of criminal police in the mines, as well as on the financing of counter-revolutionary troops ^[15] .

In January 1919, during the second arrival of the Bolsheviks in Kharkov, the leadership of the Council was evacuated to Novocherkassk (and part of the leadership of its representative organizations — to Odessa). The Council financed and supported the activities of the underground Kharkov main center of the Volunteer Army ^[20] . With the onset of Denikin’s army in the summer and autumn of 1919, the Council pursued an active policy of raising funds for the needs of the Volunteer Army . The death of the Council on July 5 (18) 1919, during a trip from Rostov to Kharkov from typhus of the Council of Nicholas von Ditmar ^[15] significantly weakened the position of the Council.

With the third arrival of the Bolsheviks in Kharkov in December 1919, the Council was completely closed.

Attempts to restore the Council during the Soviet period

In 1922 ^[21] , during the period of the new economic policy on the basis of the former administrative and technical staff of the Council of Congresses of Miners of the South of Russia, the authorities of the Soviet state attempted to create a Council of the Congress of Industry, Transport and Trade of the Ukrainian SSR . However, in 1926 ^[21] this organization was also liquidated ^[1] .

As early as 1897, the Council created the Statistical Bureau, whose task was to publish scientific materials on the development of heavy industry in southern Russia and its markets. There is a significant contribution of the bureau to the development of industrial statistics as a branch of knowledge in Ukraine ^[1] .

Statistical materials of the Council were also published in the annual Works of Congresses of Miners of the South of Russia, 65 volumes were issued before 1910 ^[17] . In addition, from 1880 its own edition of the Council “South Russian Mining Leaf” was published (from 1886 to 1903 - “Gornozavodskaya leaf”, from 1910 - “Gornozavodskoe business”). The first publisher of the magazine was a famous engineer Mikhail Yashevsky , then he was headed by engineer Sergey Suchkov . Since the end of 1903, the journal has been published under the general editorship of Nikolai von Ditmar . By 1910, the circulation of the publication was 1.5 thousand copies ^[1] .

• Nikolai Avdakov (1900-1905) ^[22]
• Nikolai von Dietmar (1906–1918)

Monographs, dissertations and encyclopedic editions

• Donik O. M. Rada Z'їzdu gіrnichopromislovtsіv Pіvdnya Rosії // Encyclopedias of the History of Ukraine. At 10 tons. / Redcol V.A. Smoliy and іn. - Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine . - Kiev: Naukova Dumka, 2012. - T. 9. Pr-S. - p. 93. - 944 p. - 5000 copies - ISBN 978-966-00-1290-5 .
• Krutik V.V. Bourgeois Ukraine and economic policy of tsarism in the pre-reform period .. - Dnipropetrovsk: Type of DDU, 1992. - 256 p.
• Shandra І. О. - dis ... Cand. inst. Sciences: 07.00.01. - Lugansk: Lugansk National Pedagogical University. Taras Shevchenko, 2007. - 211 p.
• Shpolyansky DI Monopolies of the coal and metallurgical industry of the South of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century (on the question of the relationship between monopoly and competition). - Moscow: Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1953. - 148 p.

Science Articles

• Bondarenko E.L. Congresses of Miners of the South of Russia - the largest representative organization of monopoly capital of Russia // Moscow University Bulletin. Series 8 .. - Moscow, 1961. - Vol. 1 . - pp . 52–59 .
• V. Korzun. The South Russian Mining Bourgeoisie and Labor Legislation (1905–1907) // From the History of the Bourgeoisie in Russia. - Tomsk: Publishing House Tomsk. University, 1982. - p. 79–93.
• Krutikov V.V. Main stages of the formation of the mining bourgeoisie of the South of Russia // From the history of the bourgeoisie in Russia. - Tomsk: Publishing House Tomsk. Univ., 1982. - p. 47–63.
• Manzhosov V. A. Representatives of the Organizations of the Government of the Holy Day of Russia in 1917-1919 p. // Ukrainian Historical Journal : a historical journal. - Kyiv, 1991. - Vol. 10 - pp . 77-86 . - ISSN 0130-5247 .
• Moshkin A.N., Belonozhko E.P. Congresses of miners of the South of Russia and commercial and industrial taxation in post-reform Russia in the 80–90s of the XIX century // Herald of Chelyabinsk State University. - Chelyabinsk, 2009. - Vol. 35 - No. 32 (170). . - pp . 55–58 . - ISSN 1994-2796 .
• Shandra І. З'їзди гірничопромисловців Півдня Росії as a form of representation of the bourgeoisie Donbas and Pridnіprov'ya // Kraєznavstvo: magazine. - 2011. - Vol. 4 - pp . 230-237 . - ISSN 2222-5250 . Archived October 10, 2013.