Dugna Labor Riots

outbreaks during the years 1861-62 and in 1865 by workers at the Dugna Cast Iron Foundry in Kaluga Province.

The riots had the essential and characteristic traits of the initial phase of the proletarian movement in Russia: together with strictly worker demands, the rioters also put forth so-called peasant demands connected with the implementation of the Peasant Reform of 1861. In May 1861 the plant workers stopped work and presented their complaints to the governor of Kaluga Province as well as to the Provincial Office for Peasant Affairs. They complained about the low wages, illegal penalties and deductions, and compulsory work on holidays and stated their refusal to carry out the “plow” barshchina (corvée in the form of plowing the soil) on behalf of the leaser of the Novikov plant. These demands were not satisfied, and the workers struck again in February 1862 and September 1865. The Dugna labor riots, spontaneous and local, were marked by a stubborn persistence, and they ceased only after intervention by the police and the military.