The Institute of sickness fund (health insurance funds) as a significant tool of social policy at domestic pre-revolutionary plants (on the example of the Kazan plant of the firm of the Krestovnikov brothers)

Fan-Yung G. Y.

The subject of our study is the social policy pursued by the owners of the Krestovnikov Brothers Factory and Trade Association at their Kazan plant on the eve of the revolutionary events of 1917 year. The most important results of this social policy and their significance are analyzed. Specific measures aimed at improving the company's social policy have been studied. The objective relationship between the improvement of production and the development of social infrastructure at an advanced chemical plant that operated in a market economy and free labor is briefly analyzed, including, within the framework of the activities of the factory sickness fund. In our work, we used, firstly, universal methods of scientific knowledge (deduction, induction, analysis, synthesis, etc.), secondly, the most important principles of historical knowledge (principles of historicism, the principle of a comprehensive study of history, the principle of objectivity, etc.), thirdly, special methods of historical research (narrative, historical-genetic, synchronistic and other methods). All this made it possible to make a critical analysis of published and unpublished sources; reveal the objective reasons for the improvement of social policy at the Kazan enterprise of the Krestovnikov brothers; scientifically substantiate the periodization of the history of the enterprise; identify similar features of homogeneous processes (the development of chemical science and the production success of the plant, etc.), etc. An important conclusion is made about the existence of an objective difference between a kind of "philanthropy" and social policy in the conditions of the functioning of advanced science-intensive production.

Keywords:advanced enterprises of pre-revolutionary Russia, pre-revolutionary chemical industry, the situation of workers at the beginning of the 20th century, the social policy of the company, the Krestovnikov brothers, Kazan province, the pre-revolutionary Russian «factory law», Kazan stearin-soap-making, glycerin and chemical plant.