Third in a series around the anniversary of the death of Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) in 1924 Franco Venturi (in his book Roots of Revolution) quotes a police report on the state of things in the St Petersburg working class after the impact of the populists (Narodniks. “The gross, vulgar methods employed by factory employers are becoming intolerable to the workers. They have obviously realised that a factory is not conceivable without their labour. Without workers [the employers] can do nothing.