“Unemployed intelligentsia on the streets of Petrograd”
“You see her at work everywhere: both in the center and on the outskirts. Unaccustomed hands took on the hardest physical labor. Entire artel organizations have been created, numbering thousands of unemployed members who want to work at any cost. A wide variety of groups have been introduced into the artels.
Rough physical labor is used to break ice on the streets and to transport heavy objects. Entire detachments of sawyers and woodcutters have already been sent from Petrograd to the nearest forest areas and are engaged in cutting, sawing and delivering various forest materials to stations.
Some artels have already organized workshops: metalworking, bookbinding, shoemaking, etc.
The circumstances experienced, together with the complete collapse of postal and railway communications, drew the attention of the artel workers to a new industry – free mail or couriers. Couriers take on a variety of assignments to deliver letters and money to various, difficult-to-reach places in the Russian Empire.
Through them, relations between Petrograd and Finland are served; they penetrate into the Caucasus and Transcaucasia. This matter is far from being established yet, but the delivery of city letters has already taken firm roots. Many people resort to “free mail” in need of quickly and accurately delivering a letter to the addressee and receiving a response from him. The fee for services is set at more than negligible.
The vast majority of the artel workers feed themselves by selling newspapers and magazines on the streets and by posting posters, which are currently literally plastered all over Petrograd walls, monuments and fences. But the sale of newspapers, which so many hands have rushed into, is on the decline: there is overproduction.
There is no one among this unemployed crowd. In the bureau you will see both green youth and respectable old people. Almost all intelligent professions are represented, starting from a “retired” lawyer, and ending with a student at a secondary school, already earning his living in a labor commune.
In most artels, the membership fee is set at a minimum: 5-10 rubles, half of which is paid in installments.
In many artels, a certain percentage is deducted from the participant’s earnings, from 5 to 10, of which half goes to general expenses for the organization: the other is recorded in the personal account of the artel member and constitutes his savings.
All participants have work books in which the amounts received or received by the artel worker are recorded.
The old Russian artel is now only being revived to a new life, in the person of the intellectual forces, thrown overboard of life and arranging their destiny with their own creative forces.”
(“Petrograd voice”“, April 14, 1918)
“ВЧК ОГПУ”
