In 1868 Nikolay Putilov (1820-1880) purchased the bankrupt plant; at the Putilov Works the Putilov Company (a joint-stock holding company from 1873) initially produced rolling stock for railways. The establishment boomed during the Russian industrialization of the 1890s, with the work-force quadrupling in a decade, reaching 12,400 in 1900. The factory traditionally[when?] produced goods for the Russian government, with railway products accounting for more than half of its total output. Starting in 1900 it also produced artillery, eventually becoming a major supplier of it to the Imperial Russian Army alongside the state arsenals. By 1917 it grew into a giant enterprise that was by far the largest in the city of St. Petersburg.
In December 1904, during the antecedent to the 1905 Russian Revolution, four workers at the plant, then called 'Putilov Ironworks', were fired because of their participation in strikes during Bloody Sunday. However, the plant manager asserted that they were fired for unrelated reasons. Virtually the entire workforce of the Putilov Ironworks went on strike when the plant manager refused to accede to their requests that the workers be rehired. Sympathy strikes in other parts of the city raised the number of strikers up to 150,000 workers in 382 factories. By 21 January [O.S. 8 January] 1905, the city had no electricity and no newspapers whatsoever and all public areas were declared closed.[2][3][4]
Launch of Volkhov at the Putilov works in November 1913
After the October Revolution of November 1917 the establishment was renamed Red Putilovite Plant (zavod Krasny Putilovets) and became famous for its manufacture of the first Soviet tractors, Fordzon-Putilovets, based on the Fordson tractor.
The Putilov Plant had a reputation[according to whom?] for its revolutionary traditions.[citation needed]
Peter Gatrell (1994), Government, Industry, and Rearmament in Russia, 1900-1914: The Last Argument of Tsarism, Cambridge University Press, ISBN0-521-46619-9.
Workers Unrest and the Bolshevik Response in 1919 written by Vladimir Brovkin in Slavic Review, Volume 49, Issue 3, (Autumn 1990) page 358-361
Media related to Kirov Plant (factory, Saint Petersburg) at Wikimedia Commons
