Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/192

166 develop. Old Russia is being economically and socially transformed, the former class divisions being replaced by the new segregation into a class of capitalists and a class of operatives. Contemporancously there has occurred a transformation of commerce, and since the beginning of the sixties the locomotive and the steamboat have facilitated the export of grain to Europe.

So rapid was the evolution of Russian industry, so prompt the adoption of capitalistic methods of production, that no long time elapsed before the labour problem was superadded to the peasant problem. Philosophical historians and other writers could not fail to discern the mighty changes which a the growth of large-scale manufacture was effecting. Hence arose the socialistic and semi-socialistic theories of the narodniki and the early Russian socialists, who hoped to save agricultural Russia and the Russia of home industries from the onslaughts of hungry foreign capital.

The position of Russian operatives is far worse than that of the same class in Europe. Labour protection laws are comparatively inadequate, and social legislation is less efficient. Flerovskii's book, The Condition of the Working Class in Russia, published in 1869, though based upon imperfect statistical evidence, gave an accurate picture of the unhappy condition of the peasants and workers. Since then, more trustworthy data have become available. We know that in Russian factories accidents are far commoner than in the west, the percentage in some establishments being as high as 22. The popular poetry of the working classes has long been concerned with these lamentable conditions.