Much of what we know about the prerevolutionary Russian working class comes to us through the prism of its more politically active and committed element, or through the historical record of events resulting from the interaction of "conscious" and less "conscious" workers. The tensions between intelligent^ and activist workers and, to a lesser extent, between activist and nonactivist workers have been ably portrayed in various monographs; of these, however, those studies that focus on the making, so to speak, of worker activists have tended to depict their subjects either on very broad canvases or in finely drawn miniatures.