The workers and the administration of Tentelevskii chemical plant in Petrograd in 1917

The article analyses the activity of the Tentelevskii Chemical Plant working collective in Petrograd in 1917 mainly on the basis of unpublished archive documents. The workers can be characterized as neither highly qualified nor socially and revolutionarily active. The author tries to determine the roots of the workers' social activity in February and March 1917 and their conflict with the employer by analyzing thoroughly the workers' demands to the Company Administration (Pravlenie Tovarishchestva) and the ways of their implementation. The author's attention is mainly focused on the activity of the Plant Committee founded by the workers in March 1917. In order to define the tasks that the collective put before the Committee, the author studies the ways its members understood their objectives. The features of the Committee's activity are analyzed through the methods it used to achieve its goals, the reasons of its functional and structural transformation in 1917, relations with the Company Administration of the plant, its activity in non-government judicial bodies and state power bodies. The author concludes that the Plant Committee actually functioned as a trade union cell in 1917. The peculiar fact to be mentioned is that restrained and moderate methods used by the Committee as well as responsible attitude of its representatives (who understood the difficulties and dangers of chemical production) did not allow the collective to meddle into the plant management like the collectives of other factories in Petrograd.