The article also contains a key fact that sheds light on the August tragedy: “They gradually attracted Persian laborers as well, among whom softa-mullahs54 appeared, preaching a Muslim union, and that only a Muslim will improve the life of a Muslim, and that every infidel deserves death. This preaching, given the oppression under which the Muslim workers lived, had an unquestionable effect.... The most heartrending role fell to the Persian laborers. They were literally driven to pillage. They were driven to arson. They wept, but they went and burned.” Thus, the Neftyanoye delo fairly clearly identified the oilfield arsonists, and the people who inspired those excesses—the softamullahs.
The Neftyanoye delo of October 11, 1905 contained a report from the Statistical Office of the Congress of Oil Industrialists in Baku on the impact of the arsonists’ actions: “We have established that the ruffians systematically engaged in ruining wells by throwing various objects down the shafts.... The 1,429 burned production derricks had a daily June output of 920,924 poods [110,592 barrels] or 58.1% of the total daily output.... The cost of the burned derricks based on the above evaluation has been put at 12,066,000 rubles, in addition to which workshops valued at 1,757,500 rubles were burned and destroyed, as well as boiler rooms worth 1,141,400 rubles, housing worth 2,719,600 rubles, 5,896,861 poods [708,142 barrels] of oil reserves worth an average of 23 kopecks per pood, or 1,356,300 rubles, storage facilities worth 1,582,000 rubles, materials stores worth 2,510,300 rubles, pipelines worth 1,987,400 rubles, and miscellaneous property worth 557,100 rubles. The total is 25,478,300 rubles. Thus, without counting the costs of downhole work necessary to restore wells to a normal condition and to restore their proper equipment, the oil industry currently needs capital of at least 40 million rubles (12,430,000 to restore production wells, 9,525,000 to restore wells being drilled and deepened, and some 19 million rubles for miscellaneous property).”
The Neftyanoye delo also presented the following data: “By our approximate calculation, total oil production in 1905 was expressed as 410 million poods [49.2 million barrels], 216 million less than in 1904. The consequences of last year’s events are not limited, however, to this colossal shortfall.... But that’s not all. The devastation of the oil industry has had incalculable adverse repercussions in all branches of Russian industry.”
We can add one more illustrative example to the above. Production in fields operated by the industry leader, Nobel Brothers Petroleum Production Partnership, was reduced by a third, from 8.5 million barrels in 1904 to 5.5 million barrels in 1905, and kerosene production also declined by a third, from 4 million barrels in 1904 to 2.5 million barrels in 1905, while the company’s export deliveries declined 29%, from 1.6 million barrels to 1.2 million barrels.
Overall, we should emphasize that the tragic events of August 1905 set Russia back nearly a decade in terms of production level. Russian petroleum products exports fell 57%, from 14.3 million barrels in 1904 to 6.2 million barrels in 1905.
A few years later, in 1908, Russian petroleum products exports were only 18.6% of American exports. The former head of the Caucasian Excise Tax Administration, Ludwig Perschke, cited the following figures, which speak volumes: “The loss of Far East markets was especially painful for the Baku industry, since the huge populations of India, China, and Japan offer a field for the widest development of kerosene trade.... There have been no deliveries to China since 1906.... Russia’s share of India’s total kerosene supply has fallen from 78% to 2%.”55
As for the pride of the United States, the Standard Oil Company, it regained its dominant positions on the European and Eastern kerosene markets and opened up the enormous Chinese market for its petroleum products. Meanwhile, Great Britain, on the eve of the merger of Shell Transport and Trading Company with Royal Dutch, also gained a guaranteed sector for petroleum products sales in Asia and the Far East. But its principal gain was the opportunities it created by snapping up the ruined fields on the Absheron Peninsula literally for a song, paving the way for a massive expansion of British capital into the weakened Russian oil industry.
The First Labor Union of Russian Oil Workers
The creation of the first labor union in the Russian oil industry was preceded by a significant event. On March 4, 1906, the Russian government released “Temporary Rules on Professional Associations,” which gave workers the legal right to legitimize their labor unions.
On September 29, 1906, the first workers’ assembly was held in Balakhany, and special steps were worked out to establish a labor union. Intensive organization proceeded through the month of October, and on November 7, 1906 the authorities approved the charter of the Oil Industry Workers Union. At the end of the month, the union held a general meeting at which a 12-member governing board was elected. The board was located in Balakhany, and the union had divisions in Bibiheybet, Surakhany, and in the Black City outside Baku.
The Oil Industry Workers Union did not limit itself to production problems, but attended to the most varied issues. Library reading rooms at oil fields in Balakhany, Sabunchu, Ramana, Bibiheybet, and Keshle became a focus of the labor union’s activities. These libraries became true centers of economic, political, and cultural education for the working class. The union paid a great deal of attention to issues of oil worker health preservation as well, as the oil industry was among Russia’s leaders in the number of accidents involving workers. According to factory inspectorate data, from 1907 to 1909, over 5,600 accidents occurred in the oil industry in the Baku oil district alone, which amounted to 11.2 injuries per 100 workers. In the second half of 1908, under pressure from the Oil Industry Workers Union, the Council of the Congress of Baku Petroleum Industrialists organized a Physician’s Bureau for Certification of Maimed Workers. Under the terms of the agreement reached between the Council of the Congress and the Council of Oil Industry Workers, two of the four doctors making up the Bureau were to be elected by the workers themselves. The union’s representative, in the person of its secretary, was obligated to participate in all meetings of the Bureau.
In addition to work-related injuries, epidemics were also a constant threat to workers’ lives and health. When a cholera outbreak threatened the Absheron Peninsula in the summer of 1907, the union was very active in preventing imminent disaster. On August 26, 1907, the union’s board decided to convene a meeting of field and factory commissions to discuss ways of combating cholera, and adopted specific steps to fight the epidemic. In addition, important issues relating to the organization of physician care for certification of maimed workers and improvement of medical service to drilling crew and ancillary field workers were submitted for consideration.
The Oil Industry Workers Union’s energetic activity produced tangible results from the start, reflected primarily by the growth of its ranks. Even in its early days, in late 1907 and the first half of 1908, the union counted over 9,000 members.
The first months of the union’s operation saw an emerging need for it to create its own print publication. On August 12, 1907, it released the first issue of the Gudok [“Whistle”], the voice of the Oil Industry Workers Union. This publication regularly explored the most important practical issues of the labor union movement, reported in detail on the position of the multinational oil industry working class, and fought for its rights.