User:Kristen Shelton/sandbox

Pre-Gulag Forced Labor of the Early Soviet Russia and Soviet Union
On April 4, 1912, a strike formed by the laborers of the Lena Gold Field Company turned violent when an army detachment open-fired on the crowd. In the reports that followed, a muddled version of events, essentially assuming the army and officials were justified in their actions, left many with questions surrounding the circumstances in which the violence occurred. Labor conditions of the years leading up to the event and the years following could be far from desirable, but in those years laborers maintained the legal right to strike which called for concern about the use of violence against those striking in the Lena Gold Field Company. In the years that followed, the government began taking rights and enforcing new policies of forced labor that gave less choice to laborers on not only their choice to work but where they would work as well. In July of 1918, the Russian Constitution implemented Obligatory Labor Service which was to begin immediately. Then, in 1919, the Russian Labor Code laid out the exemptions such as the elderly and pregnant women and the requirements of obligatory labor to include that workers would be given the choice to work in their trades, if the option was available. If the option was not available, workers would be required to accept the work that was available. Wages were fixed as of 1917 by the Supreme Counsel of Popular Economy and the work day was to be set to eight hours but a worker and the employer could agree upon overtime to be worked and conditions were laid out for Voluntary work, work that was done on Saturdays and Sundays. Women and children were the exception and specific conditions were laid out for them. At the end of 1919 and in early 1920, there was the introduction of the militarization of labor, supported by both Trotsky and Lenin. In the years to follow under the Stalin regime, laborers would see less and less freedoms in labor and the introduction of GULAG.